And yes, this entire thing was predicted by David Byrne in 1988 in the song “(Nothing But) Flowers” on the final Talking Heads album Naked.

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

Detroit looks at downsizing to save city

(Thanks, Rigel!)

(Image: Garden grows, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Payton Chung’s photostream)

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Book design in St. Gallen talks:

- Roland Früh · Hostettler & Typographic Discourse
As the editor of typographic journals Ralf Hostettler moderated discourse in typography and graphic design for almost four decades, always from St.Gallen, but with an international outlook. This talk will focus on how his editorial work influenced developments in typography and graphic design.

- Richard Hollis · St. Gallen: Tradition & Innovation
Measuring the distance between books designed in St. Gallen and those which represent ‘Swiss typography’.

- Robin Kinross · Hochuli as Editor, Writer, Publisher
Robin will discuss this part of Hochuli’s work – focusing on his VGS books and the annual booklets that he has made: the Typotron series and now the Ostschweiz series, both very much centred on St. Gallen in their subjects.

17 March 2010, 7pm
St Bride Library, London

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Brass-rubbing of a monument to co-operation found in the Seward Park social housing project, NYC. 120 x 150cm, edition of 8.

PUBLICATION AS PRACTICE
# 1: THE ARCHIVE. Guest speaker James Hoff
# 2: PHOTOBOOKS. Guest speaker Stephen Gill
# 3: BOOKS ON BOOKS. Guest speaker Arnaud Desjardin
# 4: ART WRITING. Guest speaker Fiona Banner
# 5: THE COLOPHON (Documents and Facts), REPRESENTATIONS OF COLLECTIVE PRODUCTION. Guest speaker Will Holder

Next session
Wednesday 31st March:
# 6: THE PAGE David Campany

Upcoming
# 7: THE DEFINITION OF ARTISTIC ACTIVITY OCCURS, FIRST OF ALL, IN THE FIELD OF DISTRIBUTION.’ (Marcel Broodthaers.) Guest speaker Eva Weinmayrs
# 8: APPROPRIATION, Guest Speaker Michalis Pichler

X marks the Bökship/ Donlon Books

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FlightCaster aims to provide accurate predictions about flight delays, often hours before any official notification from the airlines. As the FlightCaster about page says:

We are not regurgitating information from the airline or FAA. You can get that from many many other sources. Instead, we’re creating the next generation of flight information by using applied mathematics to provide real predictive power.

While we cannot predict every scenario, such as a freak mechanical failure, our algorithms can find 95%+ of delays.

FlightCaster predictions are currently limited to domestic flights within the US, although Canadian flights and international flights to/from the US are planned for later releases. Anyone wanting to use the service can go to the FlightCaster website and enter their airline and flight number to get a delay prediction.

Data Wrangling have posted an interesting interview with Brad Cross (the FlightCaster Math Guy) where he gives some technical insight into the underlying systems that were used in FlightCaster like Rails, Hadoop, Amazon EC2 and Clojure.

For developers, FlightCaster provides a free REST API, which returns XML results (JSON does not appear to be supported). It is still under development, but has already been successfully used in iPhone and BalckBerry mobile applications. Early adopters will have to watch out for the incomplete documentation though.

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Alexis Zavialoff and Roger Willems invite you for the presentation of Roma Publications at Motto Berlin.
With new releases by Michel François, Public Space With a Roof, Mark Manders, Erik van der Weijde, Rob Johannesma, Susanne Kriemann, plus a broad selection of older work.
Lecture by Arnoud Holleman at 8 pm, followed by a reading by Nickel van Duijvenboden.

Saturday 13 March 2010,
Starting at 6.30 pm, Motto Berlin

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According to The New York Times, the United States Treasury Department will tomorrow give Internet services license to export consumer-aimed services like instant messaging and photo-sharing to countries with which trade has previously been restricted, including Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The United States defines these nations as “closed societies” because their governments sometimes try to restrict the free flow of information between citizens, however in many cases trade is restricted by the United States in response to those actions. This new license would allow U.S.-based Internet companies like Yahoo to export certain services that can be described as “free mass-market software,” despite trade sanctions.

The U.S. State Department and members of Congress previously recommended this move to aid efforts to open up the societies in question. The value of exporting these tools has already been established.

Last year, the State Department asked Twitter to postpone its scheduled downtime so Iranian protesters could continue to use the service. Digital communication technologies like Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and SMS text messaging were used by Iranians to organize protests and to get information to the American and European media.

After Google threatened to leave China if the country doesn’t ease up its regulation and restrictions on the Internet, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech declaring the administration’s commitment to the free flow of information on the Internet. This is one example of that commitment.

We’re curious to know how our readers in the United States and elsewhere feel about this move. If you’re willing, share your thoughts in the comments, and participate in our poll: “Is the Internet a fundamental right?”

Tags: cuba, exports, iran, News, Political, sedan, trade, treasury department

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Bayou Renaissance Man: Baby-Buddha-shaped pears?.

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listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go

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The Burntwire Brothers spent two years building a custom D&D room in their house. It includes a rack of swords, medieval chandeliers on dimmers controlled by the dungeon-master, as well as hidden strobes and fog machines. It also has every goddamned game ever published, by appearances. And skulls. Iron-bound doors. You get the picture. Give these chaps the Happy Mutant of the Year award.

Two years later…

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Motto Zürich store
Perla Mode
Langstr. 84
8004 Zürich

Thurs.-Fri.: 2-7pm
Sat.: 12-5pm

zurich@mottodistribution.com

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