Ferris Wheels

I have been inactive for the holidays, but since most of the people that read this are around Fresno for the holidays as well, I guess it doesn't matter too much.

A side note for Carly, one of the first things I saw when I got to Fresno was a big ferris wheel. Honestly, its part of a big holiday thing at a new little league sports complex. Fresno is everything you hoped!

This American Life

I heard a facinating story on

This American Life

this morning. They devoted the entire program to it, which is rare. It was about an evangelical pastor, Reverend Carlton Pearson, who has basically been labeled a heritic because he is preaching that Hell does not exist. Or rather he is preaching that Hell is not the ultimate destination of those who are not born again.

there were some things that he said that I found troubling, mostly concerning the pitfalls of the megachurch, but overall I found the story well presented and enthralling. I highly recomend everyone give it a listen. The program is about an hour long, and will be available on the website soon.

This American Life

Megachurch Architecture

I just heard an update on NPR about the controversy of megachurches that are cancelling Christmas day services. I think Ed already mentioned the irony of the evangelical whinning about the shift to Happy Holidays, etc.

So I thought I would post a link to an article at Slate magazine about

megachurch architecture

It has a slide show as well. At some point I would really like to spend more time thinking about church architecture. Look for an article withing the next five years. By the way I should say that my goal over the next five years is to publish several articles on a variety of topics in a variety of publications. This is partly to start building my Phd application, but more about starting my career as an academic taking part in architectural debate. To date I have had one article pblished in the department journal, and edited the same journal the following year. Sure it's just a department journal, but you have to start somewhere.

This is the title of a book against imersion baptism

I found this while doing a search in the UW library database for "anabaptist."

Young, Samuel, fl. 1684-1700

The duckers duck'd, and duck'd, and duck'd again,
head, and ears, and all over; for plunging, scolding,
and defaming : Occasioned by a message
brought me by an Anabaptist. Thus if you stop not the
press, four men will swear sodomy against you. Humbly
offered to the consideration of learned, pious
Anabaptists; who confess I have given their cause of
plunging a dreadful blow. With friendly address to Mr.
Philosensus, whose mistake in thus joyning this Greek
and Latin word together, helps me to a thought against
plunging. That it not only tends to, but actually doth
deprive some men, but especially women, (on their own
confession) of their senses when baptized, (as they
call it) and therefore is not, cannot be an ordinance
of Christ, but a human, or rather diabolical
invention. With more arguments against plunging. By
Trepidantium Malleus

Thesis update

I am in the process of restating my thesis topic. As expected it continues to evolve, and fluctuate between levels of specificity. As one of my advisors said, you should not expect your thesis to solve the worlds problems, and should view it as the beginning of a larger project. Actually he said that about dissertations, which in my mind means it applies even more to a masters thesis. This provides some relief, because I am beginning to realize that I may not reach any conclusion, or at least that I will not have a well formulated answer to the question I anticipate, "So what is and is not ethical ornament."

I'm offering up the latest draft of my blurb for comment.

The goal of this thesis is to clarify relevant ethical concepts as they relate to architectural ornamentation and demonstrate how misunderstanding and misapplication of ethical concepts have influenced architectural theory and practice past and present.

It is vague, I know. The rough outline is that within ethics there was a separation of telos, the idea of an end goal, from the Aristotelian idea of "things as they were-things as they are-things as they should be." In architecture this translated to a focus on truth and authenticity of things as they are, namely materials. Ruskin talked about "The Lamp of Truth" which paved the way for Loos' rejection of ornament as immoral and the celebration of materials and structural expressionism. The idea of materials and forms having meaning was denied by post-war modernists in favor of form and program. While they had socialist/utopian goals, they attempted to achieve those goals by drawing on the spirit of the age, celebrating the machine age and mass production. They were simutaneously arguing that 'things as they are' (the state of design at the turn of the century) needed to change to reflect 'things as they are' (the spirit of the machine age). In essence they were determining 'things as they should be' according to 'things as they are'. The rationale for rejecting ornament was based less on morality and more on expression of the zeitgeist. With Venturi we see how the idea of meaning was acknowledged by post-modernism, but without aknowledging the ethical implications of meaning. Venturi argues that while rejecting ornament modern architecture ironically became ornament.

In the present the legacy of the rejection of ornament is a tacit acknowledgement of meaning but a denial of ethical implications, or rather a reluctance to discuss meaning in terms of ethics. This is really the area that I need to understand better. What exactly is the legacy of the moral rejection of ornament, and the subsequent rejection of morality. While in practice buildings are designed to reflect the techniques and materials of architecture (in the same way that abstract expressionism focused on expression of the paint and canvas) by doing so they have inadvertently become ornaments imbued with meaning. Meanwhile in architectural theory ornament is still condemned. What we are left with is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces divorced from the ideas that created them.

It is a mess that I do not fully understand, which I'm sure is clear from my rambling attempts to communicate it. Maybe that explains why my earlier statement is so vague.

Jose

In the spirit of the holidays my mom sent me a cookie reciepe.

Jose Cuervo Christmas Cookies

1 cup of water
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup of brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup nuts
2 cups of dried fruit
1 bottle Jose Cuervo Tequila

Sample the Cuervo to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the Cuervo again, to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level cup and drink.

Turn on the electric mixer... Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl.

Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point it's best to make sure the Cuervo is still OK, try another cup..just in case.

Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 leggs and add
to the bowl and chuck in the cup of dried fruit,
Pick the frigging fruit off the floor.

Mix on the turner. If the fried druit gets stuck in
the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the Cuervo to check for tonsisticity.

Next, sift two cups of salt, or something. Who
giveshz a sheet. Check the Jose Cuervo. Now shift
the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table.
Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can
find. Greash the oven.

Turn the cake tin 360 degrees and try not to fall over. Don't forget to beat off the turner. Finally,
throw the bowl through the window, finish the Cose
Juervo and make sure to put the stove in the dishwasher.

Cherry Mistmas

As promised

I promised that I would post a picture of the Turducken, so here it is. Notice the lovely steam. It took about 9 hours to bake. The duck is barely visible at the bottom, because this picture was taken early in the carving.




I've also been lax in discussing anything related to architecture or my thesis. I wil continue to not discuss my thesis because I'm lost at the moment. As a stand in here are a couple pictures of Alvar Aalto's architecture. These are from my trip to Finland summer 04. The first is the Paimio Sanitorium, and the second in Villa Mairea.

Apple Rocks

I picked up my computer on Wednesday. It was a one week turnaround including the Holiday. They replaced the top case (the part your palms rest on) the screen, the DVD, and a bunch of cables. All that for just over $300 dollars. So know I will cathc up on the posts. I realize I haven't said anything about my thesis or architecture in a while, so I will post something soon.

Turducken

Yes that's right, the holiday craze is coming to my stomach soon, thanks to the culinary skills of my friend Liz's friend Alex. Liz has a traditional urban tribe sort of Thanksgiving, and this year features the Turducken. Pictures will be posted soon.

Please note that the links bar has finally been restored, bigger and better than ever. Let this be a lesson, save your links before switching templates.

I realize my posts have been lackluster lately. I blame the fact that my computer is down and I can never remember my blog password (it's set to auto enter from my computer). I'm not sure what the problem is, but the kind folks at Apple are either charging me $377 to fix it, or telling me that it's now an expensive paperweight. It's only 4 years old, but it has been dropped onto a concrete floor, so I think I may be in the market for a new computer. Scott, any advice?

Geborten Fun

Let me start by saying that this post in no way advocates throwing a surprise anything for me. I do not approve of being surprised.

This weekend we threw a surprise birthday brunch for my friend Jeff, which went off well. I think part of the reason he didn't suspect anything is that we threw it a week early. There was food galore and a good time was had by all.

These are a couple friends, we called to coordinate our wardrobes. You cant see it so well, but our shirts all have pointed pocket flaps and shiney buttons.

Here we are in the kitchen. I was in charge of potatoes.

Jeff got ahold of more than his share of hats, and played dinosaur. Yes, it was an alcholic brunch. A good time was had by all.

Home for the Holidays

I will be in Fresno on Weds Dec 21, untill the morning of the 31st. Are there any plans in the works? Any word about others coming to town (Johnsons or the Jay)? Maybe we could do a potluck or something.

Also, I will add congratulations to my home state for soundly defeating all of Arnold's bills. Given the way elections are going around the country there may be hope for 2008. Things are not as clear cut here. The liberal, tolerant voters in Seattle have approved a law banning smoking within 20 feet of any door or window. Now I'm not a smoker, but this is rediculous. Wat it means is that people can't even go outside a bar to smoke without being twenty feet away. In busy areas where the street is lined with bars and restaurants, that means walking into the middle of the street. Ans it doesn't help to add patios, because few places have enough room to build farther than 20 away from the building. It is a stupid law that I'm sure will end up in court. Stupid passive agressive Seattle.

A new look

I decided to shake things up a bit, so I changed my template. Fair warning to anyone that is considering it, you loose any changes you made, including the links. NowI will have to go through and redo it all. Oh well, I guess its worth it for the change of pace. Next time I will copy the code so I can paste it in rather than retyping it all.

nothing much to say

I haven't posted lately because I haven't had much to say. But I realize how utterly dissapointed I am when I go to friends blogs only to find that they haven't posted in a while (I'm looking at you Johnson), so I figure I'll put up a bit of drivel.

Here's my question, when did it become unbelievable that a guy who has reached his 30's doesn't want to dress up for Halloween. Fact is I haven't been excited about halloween for ages. I don't like dressing up, and I don't remember getting hasseled for it (with the exception of a girlfriend several years ago). Maybe it's because I'm in school again, but I keep getting shit about not wanting to go to costume parties. And the more I get hassled the more resolute I become.

On another not, related to the anti-SUV pro hybrid questionable public transportation debate on Adam's site, what happens to a Hybrid when the battery goes dead. I know what happens to an SUV. When the connection to the negative post is loose the battery doesn't get current from the alternator and the car refuses to start. Fortunately I have a stick, so I could get a push start. Of course I then proceeded to leave the headlights on and suck the thing dry. I think that given the abuse the battery has gone through since this summer, it should be replaced. Hopefully that will solve some of my car troubles. But seriously, what happens when a hybrid battery goes out. Does it cost hundreds of dollars to replace?

weekend update

Let me preface my endoursement of "Good Night and Good Luck" by saying that yes, I had a couple drinks before the movie started. The department happy hour was on Friday, and by the time we got to the theater the show was sold out. We went to the restaraunt across the street and I had a couple more drinks, untill the next show. Having said that, there were times when I wanted to shout at the screen. Not in a "this sucks, I want my money back!" way. The tension of certain scenes and the arrogance of the jr. senator got me all worked up.

On a more humorous note, I had an interesting run-in at the bus stop. I was at a cafe in Capital Hill and needed to catch a bus home. I usually drive to Capital Hill, but I was having car trouble. I don't know the bus system in that neighborhood, so I walked downtown to a stop of a bus that goes past my house. That particular stop is now my least favorite in the city. It is always full of dealers even though it is daylight in the middle of downtown. As I was waiting for the bus a lady sits down beside me and starts laughing and asks me where I'm going. Heres a recreation:

Crazy Lady: "HaHa, that bus says terminal. I'm not going to the terminal. Where you going? You going to the MOtel?"
Me: "No"
CL: "You sure you ain't going to the MOtel? Ten Dollars."
Me: "No"
CL: "I'll rock your world. I do it for five."
Me: "no thanks"

then she proceeds to go on about somebody stealing shit and gettiing shot and shooting and on and on.

Hate that bus stop!

Aristotle

One stream I am following suggests that all moral philosophy since the enlightenment is flawed because it has moved away from Aristotle's basic structure of human nature as it is, human nature as it could be if it realized its telos, and precepts of rational ethics as the means of moving from the former to the latter. The important distinction is the modern denial of telos, the idea of man having an essence that defines an end goal, rather than a continuum of development (or stagnation). While it is generally agreed that human nature is continually developing, it is rarely placed within a context of "end goal." As a result, ethics is seen as a description of how we ought to live, but is no longer seen as a functional concept.
Modern moral philosophy conceives of human nature as it is, and seeks to discern rationally who we ought to live, but denies a end goal defined by the essence of what it means to be human. Hume argued for judgment according to passions, Kant according to reason, but neither was able to move outside of their particular culture.

This is all still pretty muddled, and I'm sure my comments are filled with holes.

Kant's defense of Morality

I was just reading something that I would be interested in feedback on, particularly from those of you in the religious field, though all are welcome. In his defense of rational tests for the morality of any maxim, Kant first rejects the notion of testing according to individual happiness. He concludes that mankind's concept of happiness is too vague and conditional to be used as a universal rational basis. OK, fine with that, but then he approaches the question of religious beliefs. He repudiates the notion of testing according to whether a maxim or moral precept is commanded by God, because rationally mankind must first determine whether God's commandments are morally worthy of obedience. According to Kant, if we already possess such a standard of judgment, than God's commandments are essentially redundant. Now remember that Kant was a good God fearing Lutheran, so don't think that he was off-hand discounting God. The moral precepts he was defending were the product of his Lutheran upbringing. What he was trying to do was suggest that there must be some innate practical reason by which, appealing to nothing outside of reason, we are able to discern moral from immoral or amoral precepts. Of course it can be argued that this reason is a product of God, but I have not read enough Kant to know if he would agree.

Google Earth

Jay was writing about the google map images, and I discovred a program called google earth on the computers in our lab. Here is a picture of my apartment. I must have been gone at the time;the oil stain on the right is mine.

Church going folk

So last night, after a cram session for today's German test, I had lost much of my English vocabulary. There is a college Christian group that meets in the arch building (why here?) on Thursdays for worship. My friend was commenting that they were all hanging around for a long time after it ended, and I said it was all part of the community building, etc. It was then that I realized I forgot what we called that time. You know, the coffee and donut time.

So here is my question:

What do you call the time set aside for socializing, and the space where that occurs? Also what are the various names for the worship space?

Yes, I am ashamed that I don't remember what they were called at my church (any help Heather). Problem is we switched to the all in one sanctuary basketball court, so those separate spaces disappeared.

And yes, I realize this points out how long its been since I attended church, hence the name of my blog.

Side note: I ran a spell check just now. The spell check does not know the word "blog"

Earl

OK, so on a lighter note than the last couple posts, I honestly think one of the funniest shows on TV at the moment is My Name is Earl. It stars (and is produced by) Jason Lee of Mallrats, Chasing Amy, etc. He credits Steve Buscemi as his inspiration for becoming an actor, so you know he has unique tastes. Of course it is on at the same time Amazing Race (good, lets tear families apart by setting them at each others throats) and Commander in Chief (paving the way for Hillary 2008). Check it out

Moral assertions

Here are a couple statements linking morality with aesthetic issues.

"..there was no decoration in the houses; people lived with a robust simplicity- proof of their moral wholesomeness."
-Le Corbusier

"A pressed glass bowl trying to look like crystal, a machine-made coal scuttle trying to look hand-beaten, machine made mouldings on furniture, a tricky device to make electric fire look like a flickering coke fire, a metal bedstead masquerading as wood- all that is immoral. So are sham materials and sham techniques. And so is all showy, pompous, blatant design."
- Nikolaus Pevsner

"To us clarity means the definite expression of the purpose of a building and the sincere expression of its structure. One can regard this sincerity as a sort of moral duty..."
- Marcel Breuer

"Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strength."
-Adolf Loos

These are just a few that came to mind, but they serve to frame the discussion. Claims of morality focus on either honesty in the use of materials, the removal of ornamentation, or the expression of structural forces. An example of the latter would be Ruskin's description of colonetes in Gothic architecture as honest, because they express the way gravitational forces are transferred to the ground. Therefore the entirely non-structural colonetes (fake columns attached to the actual columns) are an example of how Gothic is the only true and Christian architecture.

Friday

OK, its Friday and I've spent some of the day working hard, so a little humor is in order. I came across this hilarious blog about horrible knitting projects.

http://youknitwhat.blogspot.com

Any thoughts?

Let me throw this out there to anyone who cares to respond:

Do you think there is an ethical component to aesthetics? Does the look of an object have anything to do with ethics? Of course this also questions how you define ethics.

I know that these things are much more interesting with pictures, so here you are. This is my studio space, in the thesis "pit". We've only been in school for a week and already my desk is a mess. Hopefully I will aquire a bookshelf soon, because the stack of books is just beginning.
a brief lesson:
der Tisch= the table (masculine)
das Buch= the book (nuetral)
die Lampe= the light (feminine)

the gender thing is really confusing, because it isn't tied to anything in particular about the object, you just have to know.

Guten Tag

I decided to take a German class this quarter, and hopefully for the rest of the year. I would like to think that it is all packed away inside me somewhere, cultural heritage and all that. Unfortunatly that doesn't seem to be the case. Of course I've only had 5 classes, and haven't really studied much on my own (flashcards and the like) so I can't be too surprised.

The rest of the quarter will be taken up by an AutoCAD class, GSA (grading and tutoring) for an Arch history class, and researching my thesis. My thesis has something to do with the relation of ethics and aesthetics, but I'm not exactly sure where the research will take me. I know that it will not get into issues of sustainability or professional ethics. Most people who write about it focus on either honesty of materials (don't paint wood to look like marble) or ethics as representation of the ethos (zietgiest, worldview) which I think is a cop-out, or at least a misuse of the term ethics. Expect to read more about it in the posts to come.

Other than that my life is the same. I still live in a tiny studio, I'm still single, and I'm still being crushed under a rising mountain of debt that only the lottery or my eventual demise will resolve. On the bright side I have my health, good friends, and a passion for what I do. Debt be damned, I'm staying in school!

Aufgefallen

So I tried to ues the title of the blog for the web address, but somebody already beat me to it, hence the boring justinkliewer.blogspot. Oh well.

I know that I promised on the last blog that it would end when I returned from Taiwan, well it did. Sure it was implied that I wouldn't continue blogging, but I lied. I do that sometimes. Its not pretty, but there you have it, call me a sinner if you will, I can take it. I was jealous (another sin) of my friends blogs, and decided that I wanted a way to keep them up to date about my comings and goings. So really I'm doing this for all of you.

Your welcome.