Alienation? Dry skin. Narrow interests. Be different by acting like everyone else?

Postmodern Architecture was made to make the people living and working inside these buildings or near them to think of the future. No room for regrets, stuck in every box, a different person trying to be happy.

My father's friend, Charles Janks wrote an important book about Corbusier called LE CORBUSIER AND THE TRAGIC...from an interview w/D.L. Van Vactor

First of all, Le Courbusier was one of the great non-objective printmakers in the period between 1920 and 1960 when he built the Corbusier Visual Arts Center at Harvard in 1961, my father's senior year. So my father saw that building go up. My father thought it was the first building at Harvard that was one of the great examples of modern architecture. My father's friend John Douglas attended classes there with a teacher from Paris, Zerko (not sure about the spelling), from Romania(?). Having that building there was a tremendous inspiration to my father.

Later, when my father was teaching at Harvard, he used to go to showings at the Harvard film archive, which were held inside that building.

Corbusier was a hero to my father.

My father's friend, Charles Janks wrote an important book about him called LE CORBUSIER AND THE TRAGIC VIEW OF ARCHITECTURE.

Le Corbusier was first cousin to one of my father's favorite Swiss artists, Louis Soutaire whose drawings are some of the most extraordinary in 20th century art. Soutaire was put in an asylem by his family because he was going out on these manic spending sprees, and being Swiss, his family was very conservative. Corbusier got Soutaire shows in Germany and one in New York. And one in Chicago in the Artist Club. Mainly le Corbusier supplied Soutaire with art supplies. Soutaire remained at the asylem but had plenty of time to paint and draw. For a while, when he was first locked up, he didn't have any materials, any colors or canvas. There was another artist who helped Soutaire. These shows were a success.

Watching the oil business go down the drain

Anybody who sells oil that they're pumping at the moment for the present price per barrel of about $37 dollars should have their head examined. The oil should be stored in tanks and if the oil keeps going down, maybe the wells should be capped until oil goes up to at least $80 per barrel; what I'm talking about in particular is oil that has been produced from wells that have been drilled this year. Instead of offsetting drilling expenses with income from oil sold all of those costs should be taken as a tax loss: Those costs will never be recouped from production for a very long time until the price of oil goes up to a reasonable level of $80+ per barrel. Basically all of the badmouthing of the oil industry by the Democrats during the the past presidential election has done is to damage our country's vital interests in being able to have people that can invest in drilling oil wells with a good likely-hood of making a small profit from their investment at the end of it. They're right. It is a matter of national security to be able to produce our own oil domestically. There are a number of permits to drill on government owned lands already issued, so that should be done before we do anymore drilling in the Arctic or the Gulf of Mexico. But nobody's going to drill if there's no chance of making a profit. And nobody should have to sell oil at a loss.

We've seen many businesses ruined in the United States over the years: the steel business, the auto business, the railroads, farming and now oil. The trouble with our representative government is that they're all lawyers with a couple of exceptions and they've never had to find a product that had a reasonable chance of finding a market, founding a business to produce it, which means investing capital at great risk, then keeping that business solvent and weathering the ups and downs of any venture. And the Bush family in particular has done everything possible to destroy our freedoms, upon which our democracy is based! In other words when politicians start playing politics around an issue such as the high profits of the oil business this past year which will be offset by some of the lowest profits that they've ever had as we go into '09, they may not know it, but they are playing with fire and there are dire consequences from their bullshit. They have never understood the oil business and that includes a lot of Republicans.

oil

We should have a fixed minimum price $80 per barrel and a law that states that American refineries have to buy American oil first from American suppliers for their needs and thereafter can buy on the world market for whatever price they can get it once American suppliers have sold their supply and can't supply anymore until the next month. I'm sure there's a reason that wouldn't fly. But why be subject to speculators setting the price per barrel? It's totally irrational. Why was nobody in the oil business a year ago able to predict that there would be an over-supply from September '08 to the present, which back in January of '08 would have affected the futures delivery price for these last four months? Are they unable to use their computers or their probability theory calculous to make predictions? I think this is the biggest failure of the math geniuses who have not been able to apply math to the economy. And the banks! Barney Frank, Harry Reed! Putting an added 175 billion in pork barrel, which was a big issue during the election...I don't think Obama's going to do anything about any of this. Maybe superficially. Whatever that means. What else is new?