Hall of Famer, Bill Murray

Bill Murray seems to have a fun part-time job.  He's part-owner of the Charleston, SC minor league team.  He's invested in many minor league teams over the years, and those efforts (plus being Bill Murray) have gotten him inducted into their Hall of Fame.  Watch his great acceptance speech and remember the joy of an afternoon at the ballpark.

"This is the architect's problem."

I'm trying to read everything I can that comes from Joseph Lstiburek, PhD, PEng.  If you haven't heard of him, you're probably not putting your buildings together right.  If you have heard of him, you probably still aren't doing it right.  Joseph's making the case far and wide that Building Science is an unknown and undeveloped discipline.  Schools don't teach it, practitioners barely register it.  We're in an age with incredibly high-tech materials and systems and the sophisticated modeling software to understand how our buildings are actually performing, but we might as well be draped in a tarp.  We do not understand how our buildings work.  Listen to Joe.  There's a lot to learn.

Follow the link for an interview with Dr Lstiburek, and then start to track down his own writings.
via ArchNewsNow: http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature396.htm

Thin Air + Long Lines

Outside Magazine's been sending regular updates from this season at Everest.  Poor weather and high popularity have proven to be a fatal mix.  Last weekend, some 300 climbers and guides attempted to take advantage of a break in the weather.  At least 4 people died, with a total count of 10 for this season thus far.  Conditions don't seem to be improving.  Too many green climbers are forcing their summit.  Stay tuned to Outside's coverage for continuing reports -

http://www.outsideonline.com/featured-videos/adventure-videos/climbing/Summit-Day-on-Everest.html

Say it with an icon

The Noun Project is crowd sourcing the heiroglyphics of contemporary times.  Icon graphics are developed by contributors and available to the common man for download as scalable vector graphics (meaning it won't lose resolution when scaled up) free of charge.  If pictures say 1000 words, icons can at least amount to a few.  Start speaking in pictographs here.

Ice Cube on Design, LA and the Eameses (Round 2)

As it turns out, we can still rely on Ice Cube to convey how design is straight up gangster.

Michael Graves is Dignifying Accessibility

Not only has he found a really great house to renovate, Michael Graves is re-defining universal design as a moral imperative.  He just hopes that he'll be around long enough to begin to make an impact.

When Imagination Goes Wild

This elementary school kid named Caine spent his summer building an arcade our of cardboard boxes in his Dad's East-LA Autopart Shop.  His creativity didn't land him many customers until a small-time filmmaker stopped in for a car part and ended up making a short film about Caine's work.  The result of the film is a new foundation created by Caine to promote youth creativity.  Over the course of one week since this video's release, the foundation has raised nearly $200,000.