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Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design
Von Charles Montgomery
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Länge: 596 Seiten7 Stunden
A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can—and do—make us happier people
Charles Montgomery's Happy City will revolutionize the way we think about urban life.
After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?
The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, and during an exhilarating journey through some of the world's most dynamic
cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a "sexy" lipstick-red bus to ease status anxiety in Bogotá; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Paris's urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have transformed their lives by hacking the design of their streets and neighborhoods.
Full of rich historical detail and new insights from psychologists and Montgomery's own urban experiments, Happy City is an essential tool for understanding and improving our own communities. The message is as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting our cities for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city, the green city, and the low-carbon city are the same place, and we can all help build it.
Charles Montgomery
Charles Montgomery was named a 2003 Lowell Thomas Silver Award winner by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation. Published originally in Canada as The Last Heathen, this book won the prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction in 2005. The author divides his time between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Mexico City.
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Rachel Louise Snyder
Amity Shlaes
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Happy City - Charles Montgomery
1. The Mayor of Happy
There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work, in order to be alive like this; that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself … The fact is, a person is so far formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.
—Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
I chased the politician through the bowels of a dull cement office block on the edge of a twelve-lane freeway. Everything about him suggested urgency. He hollered with the hurried fervor of a preacher. He wore the kind of close-trimmed beard favored by men who don't like to waste time shaving. He jogged through the building's basement parking deck in a long-legged canter, like a center forward charging for a long pass.
Two bodyguards trotted behind him, their pistols jostling in holsters. There was nothing remarkable about that, given his profession—and his locale. Enrique Peñalosa was a perennial politician on yet another campaign, and this was Bogotá, a city with a spectacular reputation for kidnappings and assassination. What was unusual was this: Peñalosa didn't climb into the armored SUV typical of most public figures in Colombia. Instead, he hopped on a knobby-tired mountain bike and quickly cranked his way up a ramp into the searing Andean sunlight. Then he was off, jumping curbs and potholes, riding one-handed, weaving across the pavement, and barking into his cell phone while his pin-striped trousers flapped in the breeze. His bodyguards, a photographer, and I all pedaled madly behind, like a throng of teenagers in the wake of a rock star.
A few years earlier, this ride would have been a radical and—in the opinion of many Bogotanos—suicidal act. If you wanted to be assaulted, asphyxiated by exhaust, or run over, Bogotá's streets were the place to be. But now it was 2007, and Peñalosa insisted that things had changed. We would be safe. The city had gotten happier, thanks to his plan. Happier—that was the word he used over and over again, as though he owned it.
Young women giggled as he passed. Overall-clad laborers waved.
Mayor! Mayor! a few of them shouted in Spanish, though it had been six years since Peñalosa had held that job, and his campaign to regain it had barely begun. He waved back with his phone hand.
Buenos días, hermosa! he said to the girls.
¿Cómo le va? he answered the men.
Hola, amigo! he offered to anyone who looked his way.
We're living an experiment, he finally yelled back at me as he pocketed his cell phone. "We might not be able to fix the economy. We might not be able to make everyone as rich as Americans. But we can design the city to give people dignity, to make them feel rich. The city can make them happier."
There it was, the declaration I have seen bring tears to so many eyes with its promise of urban revolution and redemption.
It's been six years since my ride with the Mayor of Happy, but the memory has remained with me, as vivid as the Andean sun. That was the day the journey began.
You may never have heard of Enrique Peñalosa. You may not have been among the crowds that gave him a hero's welcome in New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Lagos, or Mexico City over the last decade. You may never have seen him raise his arms like an evangelist or holler his philosophy over the noise of a hundred idling car engines. But his grand experiment and his even grander rhetoric inspire an urbanist fervor wherever he goes. Peñalosa has become one of the central figures in a movement that is changing the structure and soul of cities around the world.
I first saw Peñalosa work his rhetorical magic back in the spring of 2006. The United Nations had just announced that some day in the following months, one more child would be born in an urban hospital or a migrant would stumble into a metropolitan shantytown, and from that moment on, more than half the world's people would be living in cities. Hundreds of millions more were on their way. By 2030 almost five billion of us will be urban. That spring, Habitat, the UN's agency for human settlements, called thousands of mayors, engineers, bureaucrats, and do-gooders together for the World Urban Forum. The delegates met in a harborside convention center in Vancouver to figure out how to save the world's exploding cities from disaster.
The world had little inkling of the great recession slouching on the horizon, yet the prognosis was bleak. The problem? On the one hand, cities were pumping out most of the world's pollution and 80 percent of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. On the other, all predictions suggested that cities were going to be slammed by the effects of climate change, from heat waves and water scarcity to waves of migrants running from droughts, floods, and water wars. The experts agreed that cities would bear more than three-quarters of the cost of adapting to global warming. They would be short on energy, tax revenue, and jobs. There seemed to be no way they were going to be able to help citizens meet the goals of security and prosperity that urbanization had always seemed to promise. The gathering was sobering.
But the mood changed when Peñalosa took the podium. He told the mayors that there was hope, that the great migration was not a threat—no!—it was a tremendous opportunity to reinvent urban life. As poor cities doubled or tripled in size, they could avoid the mistakes that rich cities had made. They could offer their citizens lives that were better, stronger, freer, and more joyful than those offered by most cities of the day. But to accomplish this, they would have to completely rethink their beliefs about what cities are for. They would have to let go of a century of thought about city building. They would have to let go of some of their dreams.
To make his point, Peñalosa told a story.
Toward the end of the twentieth century, Bogotá had become a truly horrible place to live—one of the very worst on earth. Overwhelmed with refugees; seared by a decades-old civil war and sporadic terrorism in the form of grenades and firebombs (deadly explosive potatoes being the most common means of attack); and hobbled by traffic, pollution, poverty, and dysfunction, the Colombian capital was regarded both at home and abroad as a living hell.
When Peñalosa ran for the mayor's seat back in 1997, he refused to make the promises doled out by so many politicians. He was not going to make everyone richer. Forget the dream of becoming as wealthy as Americans: it would take generations to catch up to the gringos, even if the urban economy caught fire and burned blue for a century. The dream of riches, Peñalosa complained, served only to make Bogotans feel bad.
"If we defined our success just in terms of income per capita, we would have to accept ourselves as second- or third-rate societies—as a bunch of losers," he said. No, the city needed a new goal. Peñalosa promised neither a car in every garage nor a socialist revolution. His promise was simple. He was going to make Bogotans happier.
And what are our needs for happiness? he asked. We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality.
Ironically, in giving up the chase for the American dream, Peñalosa was invoking a goal set out in the American Constitution: by pursuing a different kind of happiness, Bogotans, despite their relatively meager paychecks, really could beat the gringos.
These days, the world is not lacking for happiness gurus. Some insist that spiritual practice is the answer. Others tell us that we must simply ask the universe for prosperity, that we can get closer to God by getting richer, and get richer by inching closer to God. But Peñalosa did not call for mass counseling or religious indoctrination or state-funded courses in positive psychology. He did not preach the law of attraction or the tenets of transformative wealth. This was a gospel of transformative urbanism. The city itself could be a device for happiness. Life could be improved, even amid economic doldrums, by changing the shapes and systems that defined urban existence.
Peñalosa attributed an almost transcendent power to a certain kind of urbanity. Most things that people buy in stores give them a lot of satisfaction the moment they buy them, Peñalosa told me. But after a few days, that satisfaction decreases, and months later, it completely melts away. But great public space is a kind of magical good. It never ceases to yield happiness. It's almost happiness itself. The humble sidewalk, the park, the bike path, and the bus were suddenly elevated to the psycho-spiritual realm.
Peñalosa insisted that like most cities, Bogotá had been left deeply wounded by the twentieth century's dual urban legacy: First, the city had been gradually reoriented around private automobiles. Second, public spaces and resources had largely been privatized. Cars and mobile vendors took over public plazas and sidewalks. People had walled or fenced in what were once public parks. In an age where even most of the poor had televisions, common civic space was disregarded and degraded.
This reorganization was both unfair—only one in five families even owned a car—and cruel. Urban residents had been denied the opportunity to enjoy the city's simplest daily pleasures: walking on convivial streets; sitting around in public; talking; gazing at grass, water, falling leaves, and other people. And playing: children had largely disappeared from Bogotá's streets—not because of the fear of gunfire or abduction, but because the streets had been rendered dangerous by sheer speed. When any parent shouted, Watch out! everyone in Bogotá knew that a child was in danger of being run over. So Peñalosa's first and most defining act as mayor was to declare war: not on crime or drugs or poverty, but on private cars.
A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can't be both, he announced.
He then threw out the city's ambitious highway expansion plan and instead poured his budget into hundreds of miles of bike paths; a vast new chain of parks and pedestrian plazas; and a network of new libraries, schools, and day-care centers. He built the city's first rapid transit system, using buses instead of trains. He hiked gas taxes and banned drivers from commuting by car more than three times a week. I'll discuss the details later, but the thing to understand here is that this program redesigned the experience of city living for millions of people, and it was an utter rejection of the philosophies that have guided city builders around the world for more than half a century. It was the opposite of the city that North American laws, habits, the real estate industry, financing arrangements, and development ideologies have favored. In particular, it was the opposite of the vision that millions of middle-class people around the world have chased to suburbia.
In the third year of his term Peñalosa challenged Bogotans to participate in an experiment, a día sin carro. As of dawn on February 24, 2000, all private cars were banned from city streets for the day. More than eight hundred thousand vehicles sat still that Thursday. Buses were jam-packed and taxis hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands of people followed Peñalosa's example and hit the streets under their own steam, walking, cycling, skating to work and school.
It was the first day in four years that nobody was killed in traffic. Hospital admissions fell by almost a third. The toxic haze over the city thinned. People still got to work, and schools reported normal attendance. Bogotans enjoyed the day so much that they voted to make it a yearly affair, and to ban all private cars during rush hour every day by 2015. People told pollsters that they were more optimistic about city life than they had been in years.
Peñalosa recounts this story with all the fervor of Martin Luther King on the Washington Mall, and with similar effect. I saw three thousand people at the World Urban Forum leap up from their chairs and cheer in response. UN statisticians brought their hands together despite themselves. Indian economists beamed and loosened their ties. Senegalese delegates shook and danced in their carnival-colored wraps. Mexican architects whistled. My heart beat faster, too. Peñalosa seemed to be affirming what so many urban thinkers are sure of, but very rarely have the guts or the audacity to say. The city is a means to a way of life. It can be a reflection of all our best selves. It can be whatever we want it to be.
It can change, and change dramatically.
Is urban design really powerful enough to make or break happiness? The question deserves consideration because the happy city message is taking root around the world. Since Peñalosa's three-year term in office—consecutive terms are illegal in Colombia—delegations from dozens of cities have landed in Bogotá to study its transformation. Peñalosa and his younger brother, Guillermo, the city's former parks manager, were called to advise cities on every continent. While the elder proselytized from Shanghai to Jakarta to Lagos, the younger hit Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Toronto. While Guillermo whipped up hundreds of activists in Portland, Enrique was urging planners in Los Angeles to let traffic become so unbearable that drivers simply abandoned their cars. In 2006 Enrique Peñalosa was the talk of Manhattan after he announced to crowds of gridlock-obsessed New Yorkers they should ban vehicles entirely from Broadway. Three years later, the impossible vision began to come to life around Times Square. The happy city had gone global.
The Peñalosa brothers are far from alone in the happy city crusade. The movement has its roots in the antimodernist foment of the 1960s and has gradually drawn architects, neighborhood activists, public health experts, transportation engineers, network theorists, and politicians into a battle for the shape and soul of cities—a confrontation that is finally reaching critical mass. They have torn down freeways in Seoul and San Francisco and Milwaukee. They have experimented with the height, shape, and facades of buildings. They have turned the black top of suburban shopping malls into mini-villages. They have reconfigured entire towns to better suit children. They have torn down backyard fences and reclaimed neighborhood intersections. They are reorganizing the systems that hold cities together and rewriting the rules that dictate the shapes and functions of our buildings. Some of these people aren't even aware that they are part of the same movement, but together they are aiming a wrecking ball at many of the places we have spent the last half century building.
Peñalosa insists that the unhappiest cities in the world, the ones perfectly calibrated to turn wealth into hardship, are not the seething metropolises of Africa or South America. The most dynamic economies of the twentieth century produced the most miserable cities of all, Peñalosa told me over the roar of traffic in Bogotá. I'm talking about the U.S., of course—Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, cities totally dominated by private cars.
For most Americans, the claim that prosperity and the cherished automobile propelled wealthy cities away from happiness is practically heresy. It is one thing for a Colombian politician to offer advice to the world's poor, but it is quite another for him to suggest that the world's most powerful nation should be taking design criticism born on the potholed byways of South America. If Peñalosa is right, then not only have generations of planners, engineers, politicians, and land developers been mistaken, but millions of us have taken a wrong turn on the road to the good life.
But then again, over the last few decades, prosperity and well-being in America have followed completely different trajectories.
The Happiness Paradox
If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half century should have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the United States and other rich nations such as Canada, Japan, and Great Britain. Riches were piled upon riches. By the turn of the century, Americans traveled more, ate more, bought more, used more space, and threw away more stuff than ever before. More people than ever got to live the dream of having their own detached home. The stock of cars—and bedrooms and toilets—far surpassed the number of humans who used them.* It was an age of unprecedented bounty and growth, at least until the great recession of 2008 stuck a needle into the balloon of optimism and easy credit.
And yet the boom decades of the late twentieth century were not accompanied by a boom in happiness. Surveys show that people's assessment of their own well-being in the United States pretty much flatlined during that time. It was the same with citizens in Japan and the United Kingdom. Canada fared only slightly better. China, the new star of supercharged GDP growth, is providing yet more evidence of a paradox. Between 1999 and 2010, a decade in which average purchasing power in China grew more than threefold, people's ratings of their own life satisfaction stalled, according to Gallup polls (although urbanized Chinese were happier than their rural cousins).
In the final decades of the last century, Americans increasingly complained of personal problems. By 2005 clinical depression was three to ten times as common as it was two generations ago. By 2010, one in ten Americans reported that they suffered from depression. Six to eight times as many college students experienced depression in 2007 as they did in 1938. Although this may be partly due to cultural factors—it's now more acceptable to talk about depression—objective mental health statistics are not encouraging. High school and college students—the easiest group to survey—climbed higher and higher on what mental health researchers cheerily call the Paranoia, Hysteria, Hypochondriasis, and Depression scales. One in ten Americans is taking antidepressants.
Analysis from free-market think tanks such as the Cato Institute assures us that high levels of economic freedom and high average incomes are among the strongest correlates of subjective well-being, which is to say that being rich and free should make us happier. So why wasn't the half-century surge in wealth accompanied by a surge in happiness? What was counteracting the effect of all that money?
Some psychologists point to the phenomenon dubbed the hedonic treadmill : the natural human tendency to shift our expectations along with our changing fortunes. The treadmill theory suggests that the richer you get, the more you compare yourself to other rich people and the faster the wheel of desire spins beneath your feet, so that you end up feeling as though you haven't made any progress. Others blame the growing income gap, and the realization by millions of middle-class Americans that they were falling farther behind the richest members of society, especially during the last two decades. There is some explanatory truth in both of these theories, but economists have crunched the survey numbers and concluded that they only partially explain that widening gap between material and emotional wealth.
Consider this: The decades-long expansion in the American economy paralleled the migration of society from the country to cities, and from cities to the in-between world of sprawl. Since 1940, almost all urban growth has actually been suburban. In the decade before the big bust of 2008, the economy was driven to a large extent by the boundless cul-de-sac-ing, tract housing, and big-box power centering of the landscape at the urban fringe. For a time, it was impossible to separate growth from suburbanization. They were the same thing. More people than ever got exactly what they thought they wanted. Everything we have come to believe about the good life would suggest that this suburban boom was good for happiness. Why didn't it work? And why was faith in this model so quick to evaporate? The urban shake-up that began with the mortgage crisis in 2008 hit the newest, shiniest, most sprawling parts of the American city the hardest.
Peñalosa's argument was that too many rich societies have used their wealth in ways that exacerbate urban problems rather than solve them. Could this help explain the happiness paradox?
It's certainly a good time to consider the idea, now that tens of thousands of freshly paved cul-de-sacs across the United States have passed six springs without sprouting new homes. From the United States to Ireland to Spain, communities on the edge of suburban sprawl, that most American of forms, have yet to regain their pre-crash value. The future of cities is uncertain.
We have reached a rare moment in history where societies and markets appear to be teetering between the status quo and a radical change in the way we live and the way we design our lives in cities. For the first time in nine decades, census data in 2010/2011 showed that major American cities experienced more growth than their suburbs. It's too early to tell if this is a complete turning of the tide of urban dispersal. Many forces are at play, from the lingering housing market slowdown and high unemployment to historically low population mobility. But other forces are systemic and powerful enough to permanently alter the course of urban history.
First is a reckoning on energy. It will probably never again be inexpensive to fill a gas tank. There is too little easy oil left in the ground, and there are too many people competing for it. The same goes for other nonrenewable forms of energy and raw materials. The sprawl city requires cheap energy, cheap land, and cheap materials, and the days of cheap are over. Another force is a truth acknowledged by every sober, informed observer: cities are contributing to the crisis of climate change. If we are going to avoid the cataclysmic effects of global warming, we must find more efficient ways to build and live. Of course it is not at all certain that a rush back to urban density will produce better lives than did suburban dispersal.
But the happy city theory presents an alluring possibility.
If a poor and broken city such as Bogotá can be reconfigured to produce more joy, then surely it's possible to apply happy city principles to the wounds of wealthy places. And if more extravagant, private, polluting, and energy-hungry communities have failed to deliver on happiness, then the search for a happier city might well be expected to reveal a greener, more resilient city, a place that saves the world while saving our own lives. If there was a science behind it, presumably that science could also be used to show how all of us might renovate good feelings in our communities.
Of course, Peñalosa's rhetoric is not science; it raises as many questions as it answers. Its inspirational qualities do not constitute proof of the city's power to make or break happiness, any more than the Beatles' All You Need Is Love is proof that all you really do need is love. To test the idea, you would have to decide what you meant by happiness, and you would need a way to measure it. You would have to understand how a road, a bus, a park, or a building might contribute to good feelings. You would have to tabulate the psychological effects of driving in traffic, or catching the eye of a stranger on the sidewalk, or pausing in a pocket park, or of feeling crowded or lonely, or of the simple feeling that the city you live in is a good or bad place. You would have to go beyond politics and philosophy to find a map of the ingredients of happiness, if it exists at all.
The cheers in that Vancouver ballroom echoed in my ears for the five years I spent charting the intersection of urban design and the so-called science of happiness. The quest led me to some of the world's greatest and most miserable streets. It led me through the labyrinths of neuroscience and behavioral economics. I found clues in paving stones, on rail lines, and on roller coasters, in architecture, in the stories of strangers who shared their lives with me, and in my own urban experiments. I will share that search with you, and its hopeful message, in the rest of this book.
One memory from early in the journey has stuck with me, perhaps because it carries both the sweetness and the subjective slipperiness of the happiness we sometimes find in cities.
It occurred on the afternoon that I chased Enrique Peñalosa through the streets of Bogotá. Just as he had insisted on that first ride, our cycle across what was once one of the most infamous of cities was a breeze. The streets were virtually empty of cars. Nearly a million of them had stayed home that morning. Yes, it was el día sin carro, the car-free experiment that had grown into a yearly ritual.
At first the streets felt slightly eerie, like landscapes from a postapocalyptic Twilight Zone episode. All the rumble and roar of the city quieted. Gradually we expanded into the space left by the cars. I let go of my fear. It was as though an immense tension had been lifted from Bogotá, as though the city could finally shake out its exhaustion and breathe. The sky was a piercing blue. The air was clear.
Peñalosa, who was running for reelection, needed to be seen out on his bicycle that day. He stumped compulsively, hollering that same Cómo le va at anyone who appeared to recognize him. But this did not explain his haste or his quickening pace as we traversed the north end of the city toward the Andean foothills. He stopped answering his phone. He stopped answering my questions. He ignored the whimpers of the photographer who crashed his bicycle on the curb ahead of him. He gripped his handlebars with both hands, stood up, and muscled into his pedals. It was all I could do to keep up with him, block after block, until we arrived at a compound ringed by a high iron fence. Peñalosa dismounted, breathing hard.
Boys in crisp white shirts and matching uniforms poured through a gate. One of them, a bright-eyed ten-year-old, pushed a miniature version of Peñalosa's own bicycle through the crowd. Peñalosa reached out, and suddenly I understood his haste. The guy had been rushing to pick up his son from school, as other parents were doing that very moment all up and down the time zone. Millions of minivans, motorbikes, hatchbacks, and buses were congregating outside schools from Toronto to Tampa at this very moment—the same ritual, the same drumming of steering wheels, the same stop and go, the same corralling and ferrying of children. Only here, in the heart of one of the meanest, poorest cities in the hemisphere, father and son would roll away from the school gate for a carefree ride across the metropolis. This was an unthinkable act in most modern cities. It was also a demonstration of Peñalosa's urban revolution, a terrific photo op for the happy city.
The Mayor of Happy
Enrique Peñalosa in Bogotá, 2007 (Andrés Felipe Jara Moreno, Fundación por el País Que Queremos)
Look, he yelled to me, waving his cell phone toward the bicycles that flooded around us. Can you imagine if we designed the entire city for children?
We followed a wide avenue that had indeed filled with children, as well as suited businessmen, young ladies in short skirts, apron-clad ice-cream men pushing refrigerated tricycles, and vendors selling sweet arepas from pushcart ovens. They did seem happy. And Peñalosa's son was safe—not because of those bodyguards, but because he could travel freely, even veer that bike wildly off course without fear of being struck by a speeding automobile. As the sun fell and the Andes caught fire, we arced our way along the wide-open avenues, then west along a highway built just for bicycles. The kid raced ahead. Peñalosa let go of his impulse to campaign. He followed his son, laughing, and the bodyguards huffed and pedaled hard to catch up, and Juan, the photographer, wobbled behind on his bent rims.
At that point I wasn't sure about Peñalosa's ideology. Who was to say that one way of moving was better than another? How could anyone know enough about the needs of the human soul to prescribe the ideal city for happiness?
But for a moment I forgot my questions. I let my handlebars go, raised my arms in the air in the cooling breeze, and remembered my own childhood of country roads, afterschool wanderings, lazy rides, and pure freedom. I felt fine. The city was mine.
2. The City Has Always Been a Happiness Project
The question of the purpose of human life has been raised countless times; it has never yet received a satisfactory answer and perhaps does not admit of one … We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men show by their behavior to be the purpose and intention of their lives. What do they demand of life and wish to achieve in it? The answer to this can hardly be in doubt. They strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so.
—Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
Whatever creates or increases happiness or some part of happiness, we ought to do; whatever destroys or hampers happiness, or gives rise to its opposite, we ought not to do.
—Aristotle, Rhetoric
If you wandered into the city-state of Athens a little over twenty-four hundred years ago, you would invariably find your way to the agora, a broad plaza filled with market stalls and lined by the Athenian governing council's meeting chambers, law courts, marbled temples, altars to gods, and statues of heroes. It was a glorious place, simultaneously stately and messy with commerce. If you pushed your way through the crowds of shoppers and vendors, you might have encountered a bearded gentleman holding philosophical court on the veranda of one of the great halls at the agora's edge. This is where Socrates regularly pummeled his fellow citizens with questions that challenged them to see the world anew. Do not all men desire happiness? Or is this just a ridiculous question? Socrates famously asked one interlocutor. Receiving the answer most of us would give, he continued, Well then, since all of us desire happiness, how can we be happy? That is the next question.
If we are going to figure out if cities can be reconfigured to boost happiness, we actually need to start one question earlier: What, exactly, do we mean by happiness? This was a question of public preoccupation in Athens, and it has occupied the minds of philosophers, gurus, shysters, and, yes, city builders ever since. Even though most of us believe that happiness exists and that it is worth pursuing, its dimensions and character seem always just out of reach. Is happiness simply contentment or the opposite of misery? Even straightforward definitions feel subjective: A monk might measure it differently than a banker or a nurse or an architect would. Some people find no greater bliss than in flirting on the Champs-Élysées. Others find it grilling hot dogs in the privacy of a secluded backyard.
One thing is certain: we all translate our own ideas of happiness into form. It happens when you landscape your garden or choose where to live. It happens when you buy a car. It happens when a CEO contemplates the form of a new skyscraper headquarters or when a master architect lays out a grand scheme for social housing. It happens when planners, politicians, and community boards wrestle over roads, zoning laws, and monuments. It is impossible to separate the life and design of a city from the attempt to understand happiness, to experience it, and to build it for society. The search shapes cities, and cities shape the search in return.
This was especially true in Athens. From the middle of the fifth century A.D., the Greeks gave the idea of human happiness a privileged place among goals. Although only a small fraction of the Athenian population actually enjoyed the rights of citizenship, those who did experienced enough wealth, leisure time, and freedom to spend a lot of time arguing about the good life. It was wrapped around a concept they called eudaimonia, which can be translated literally as "to be inhabited or accompanied by a good daimon, or guiding spirit," though it's best understood as a state of human flourishing. Each philosopher argued for a slightly different version of it, but after a few decades of debate Aristotle summed up the emerging view thus: everyone pretty much agreed that good fortune, health, friends, power, and material wealth all contributed to that blessed state of eudaimonia. But these private assets were not quite enough, not even in a city-state where citizens could experience all of life's hedonistic possibilities. Existing for pleasure alone was a vulgar state befitting animals, he argued. A man could achieve pure happiness only by reaching the height of his potential, and that meant not just thinking virtuously but behaving virtuously too.
Meanwhile, civic and personal well-being were intimately linked.* The polis, the city-state, was a shared project that Athenians cared for with almost religious fervor. The city was more than a machine for delivering everyday needs; it was a concept that bound together Athenian culture, politics, mores, and history. Its citizens were like hands on the deck of a ship, Aristotle noted, with a common duty to propel it forward. In fact, he argued that the polis was the only vehicle through which a man could really achieve eudaimonia. Anyone who did not concern himself with public life was himself less than whole.
The relationship between these ideas and the design of the city in which they grew was striking. The Athenians sought the patronage of their gods—they maintained a neighborhood of stone palaces for Athena and other members of the Greek pantheon on the flat hilltop of the Acropolis—but the Athenian sense of personal agency and civic spirit was reflected in architectures closer to the earth. Just beneath the Acropolis, any citizen—that is, a free male born in the city—could have his say on civic policy at the speakers' platform that was cut into the side of the Pnyx Hill. There was enough room for a gathering of twenty thousand citizens in this natural amphitheater, a staggering embodiment of the new principle of equal speech. The eudaimonia debate raged at the academies of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, but it always returned to the agora, whose openness at the heart of the city-state was not a demonstration of executive power, as it is in so many modern plazas, but an invitation to participate in the life of the polis.
The Agora
The Greek philosophy of the good life was built right into the heart of Athens. Surrounded by temples, monuments, law courts, and government meeting chambers, the agora was a truly public place where commercial goods and ideas were traded freely. (Robert Laddish, All Rights Reserved, www.laddish.net)
It is hard to say whether these open architectures nudged Athenians toward a more civic philosophy or whether it was philosophy itself that produced architecture. But together they seemed to demand that virtuous citizens infuse public gathering places with potent, even dangerous vitality. Of course, even in classical Athens, there were limits. Socrates challenged his agora audiences' thinking about the role of the gods so relentlessly that he was sentenced to death for corrupting Athenian youth. The tension between free speech, shared space, and civic stability has continued to inform urban design ever since.
Shape-Shifting
As philosophies about happiness shift, so does urban form. The Romans, like the Athenians, were so deeply attached to their city that Rome itself was a spiritual project. Civic pride drove heroic feats of engineering and architecture—from aqueducts, highways, sewers, and massive ports to muscular temples and basilicas—which helped Rome grow into the world's first megacity, with a peak population of more than one million.* As Rome grew fat on the fruits of its vast empire, its citizens adopted a new god of happiness. In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar approved construction of a temple to Felicitas, the god of pleasure, fortune, and fertility, not far from the Curia Hostilia, the meeting place of the
larryerick
This book could easily have been a 5-star work, but it occasionally stumbles or loses focus. The title, for instance. I have a hard time imagining the persons who need to read this book the most, doing so, based on the title. Those folks aren't looking for "happy" cities. This isn't Disneyland. They're looking for fast, congestion-free commuting. There's nothing wrong with single-occupancy car driving that having everyone else take the bus or stay at home wouldn't cure. Or better yet, the ability to walk just a few steps to everything we need on a daily basis. As the author, himself, says, "In other words, we would like to have our cake and eat it, too, the ideal world being one in which we reap the benefits of OTHER PEOPLE choosing to live in apartments and town houses nearby, but not close enough to disturb our sleep [in our single family homes.]" The author does do an excellent job of providing ample and significant data plus colorful and insightful anecdotes to explain why modern cities tend to be the way they are, why that is often a problem for the cities' inhabitants, and concrete steps that could be taken to solve those same problems. However, he missteps to various degrees in areas, such as what seems an unfounded bias specifically against bus transportation, beyond the obvious. He recognizes that implementing solutions is often a tedious, thankless, and frequently unsuccessful endeavor, but, knowing how government works, as I do, I seldom see him show much appreciation for the level of negative reaction to the change he advocates, for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with rational thought. Perhaps, it is because the author is Canadian and not American. I've watched enough Canadian news media to know Canada has its own political squabbles and shenanigans, but I doubt they match the current America temperament for taking an opposing position for no other reason than that someone else who is not just like us in race, religion, and other demographic characteristics proposed it. In short, many folks will never read this book who should, but, fortunately, those who will read it, will find many ideas and much encouragement to implement them. Good luck to them.
snash_44
A book briefly exploring what makes us happy and then shows how our cities as presently configured, particularly in the dispersed city, does not foster happiness. Plans and examples of how the city can be made happier make up the second half of the book. It is good and further supports the prescriptions of Jane Jacobs and her followers.
sharon.flesher
I wish I could force everyone to read this book. Those of us interested in urbanism have been schooled in the benefits of shaping our cities to a scale suited for humans rather than designing them to facilitate motorized traffic. Human-scaled cities, in which the tyranny of cars is minimized so that residents feel comfortable navigating public space, can reduce pollution, improve health, and save money. In Happy City, Canadian writer Charles Montgomery focuses on another benefit that is often overlooked: good urban design can make us happier.
Drawing on the findings of psychologists and sociologists as well as designers, architects, planners and philosophers, Montgomery considers both the large and small elements of design contributing to well-being. That happiness is increased when the view out the window is a lovely body of water rather than a cement wall will come as no surprise. But quite likely, very few people are aware that the arrangement of windows and doors in buildings will impact their comfort and enjoyment when walking by at street level, or that the height and layout of living spaces can influence residents' relationships with each other.
As in most books and articles touching on the movement known as New Urbanism, suburbia does not get much love in Happy City. However, Montgomery refrains from vilifying sprawl. He notes that some people enjoy suburban living and he does not condemn that preference. The family with the one-acre lot on a cul de sac in Rockville is just as entitled to their happiness as are the apartment denizens of Dupont Circle (my example). However, as other writers have argued, Montgomery agrees that urban dwellers should not be subsidizing the inefficiencies of sprawl, and the gap between supply and demand of housing in walkable communities needs to be reduced so that this choice is available to more who want it.
Montgomery travels the world to highlight places where human-scaled design interventions have met with utilitarian success such as Bogota, Vancouver, Portland, London, and, of course, Copenhagen [note to self: must stop googling Danish immigration policies]. Ultimately, this is a call for citizen activism (with a supporting website), to inspire neighbors and "citadins" that the road to happiness is more easily walked together.


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Google acquires more IBM patents
The latest batch of IBM patents include e-mail, server backup, e-commerce, advertising, mobile technologies and database tuning
By Juan Carlos Perez
News Editor, IDG News Service |
Google has acquired more IBM patents, adding more than 200 to approximately 2,000 patents it had previously bought from IBM.
The move, first reported by the blog SEO by the Sea, was confirmed by a Google spokesman who didn't immediately comment on why the company is interested in these particular patents and on how they may benefit Google products and its customers.
The latest set of IBM patents, transferred to Google on Dec. 30, 2011, includes 222 patents and covers a variety of technologies, including email management, server backup, tuning and recovery, e-commerce, advertising, mobile Web page display, instant messaging, online calendaring and database tuning. Google acquired about 1,000 IBM patents in July of last year and about 1,000 other IBM patents in September.
In the past, Google officials have said that acquiring patents helps the company prevent intellectual-property lawsuits and that, when one is filed against it, patents boost Google's ability to defend itself.
It's hard to determine which patents represent technology that Google plans to develop and which ones are intended as litigation protection, said IDC analyst William Stofega.
However, considering the rash of IP-related lawsuits in the mobile market, it's safe to assume that many mobile-related patents Google acquires are meant to strengthen its ability to fight lawsuits, said Stofega, who is IDC's program director of mobile device technology and trends.
"Google has had a great run with what they've done so far and it's clear their patent portfolio isn't as rich as those of others, especially in mobile," he said. "If you're going to be a mobile platform player, you need to make sure you have your ducks in a row regarding intellectual property."
A large part of Google's motivation for buying Motorola Mobility is the latter's patent portfolio, which includes more than 24,000 patents. That $12.5 billion deal is due to close early this year, after the companies obtain all necessary approvals.
Juan Carlos Perez covers search, social media, online advertising, e-commerce, web application development, enterprise cloud collaboration suites and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Home Development Belmont Names Two New Residence Halls
Belmont Names Two New Residence Halls
Surrounded by members of Belmont University's Class of 2014, today Belmont President Dr. Bob Fisher announced the names of the campus' two new freshmen residence halls at an afternoon ribbon cutting ceremony. Adjoined by a central lobby, one hall is being named Patton Hall, in honor of longtime Trustee Carolyn Patton, while the other residence will be called Bear House, reflecting the site of a bear house that was located on Adelicia Acklen's original property. Together, the six-story halls provide an additional 103,000 square feet of residence space for more than 400 Belmont freshmen.
"Belmont University continues to grow at a remarkable rate, with early enrollment numbers for the coming semester looking strong once again," Fisher said. "It's important that Belmont remains student-centered, placing our students' needs first even as we experience significant enrollment increases. These new halls guarantee that Belmont will provide a unique and innovative space to welcome incoming classes into the heart of campus."
Carolyn Patton, a 1958 alumna and current member of Belmont's Board of Trustees, and her husband Clem are responsible for an endowed, merit-based scholarship that provides full tuition for four years to a student with an ACT of 29 who possesses strong leadership potential.
Mrs. Patton said, "Belmont has certainly grown since [I attended], but I am proud of the way it has held on to those qualities that I enjoyed in its early days. Clem and I believe that our country, and indeed the world, needs students in higher education to graduate not with just head knowledge but with the moral and spiritual foundation to become the wise and compassionate people that are so needed in the world of business, ministry, science and, especially, in day-to-day family and home life. We believe Belmont provides this foundation, and we want to help accomplish these goals."
The other new residence hall provides a unique opportunity to revisit Belmont's legendary history. When construction began on the new halls last summer, remnants of Adelicia Acklen's original Bear House and Bowling Alley/Billiards Building were uncovered. Tucked beneath layers of asphalt, these two structures went unnoticed for nearly 100 years, providing those who knew of them little more than mystery as to their exact location and design.
Acklen, the original mistress of Belmont Mansion, designed and constructed an ornate octagonal house on the property of her estate to house her family's pet bear. The only structure of its type in the United States, Belmont's Bear House was based on a garden building from the Chateau de Versailles in France and reflected the classical style of the Mansion. After the Mansion was sold, the Bear House became part of Belmont College and Seminary, and later Ward-Belmont, before being razed sometime between 1928 and 1932.
Mark Brown, executive director of Belmont Mansion, said, "In calling this new residence hall 'Bear House,' Belmont helps keep Adelicia's memory alive while also providing appropriate symbolism to the university's mascot, the Bruin."
In addition to offering more housing space, Patton Hall and Bear House provide a unique living-learning community lifestyle by placing first-year students in the heart of campus. Connected via an underground tunnel to Maple Hall, another freshman residence which opened last year, the new structure includes classroom space on the bottom level to accommodate First Year Seminar courses. The building also continues Belmont's initiatives toward environmental sustainability with water source heat pumps and air conditioning as well as green flooring and paint. Positioned behind Heron and Pembroke Halls and facing the university's soccer field, the halls sport a tower staircase near the center of the overall structure that is topped by a cupola, providing an architectural nod to Belmont's signature Bell Tower.
Nashville-based architect Earl Swensson Associates oversaw building plans, and R.C. Mathews was the contractor on the year-long project.
Belmont Named a Best Business School for 2021 by The Princeton Review
Alumnus Nick Ashburn Shares Insights from Impact Investing Initiative
Alumnus Newsome Performs During Superbowl Halftime Performance
Speech/Debate Team Outshines Competition
Tom Brokaw Announced as Moderator for 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate


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text:
La costa Knox (en anglès, Knox Coast) és la part més occidental de la costa de la Terra de Wilkes a l'Antàrtida Oriental. S'estén entre el cap Hordern (66°15′S  / .250, 100.517) en els pujols Bunger, límit amb la Terra de la Reina Mary, i les petites illes Hatch (  / -66.883, 109.267) en l'entrada oest de la badia Vincennes, límit amb la costa Budd.

L'àrea és reclamada per Austràlia com a part del Territori Antàrtic Australià, però està subjecta a les restriccions establertes pel Tractat Antàrtic.

Part de la costa oest està ocupada per la barrera de gel Shackleton, que va de la costa cap a fora fins a la completament coberta de gel illa Bowman. Aquesta illa va ser descoberta el 28 de gener del 1931 per l'Expedició de recerca antàrtica britànica, australiana i neozelandesa (BANZARE), liderada per Douglas Mawson. A la barrera de gel es troba l'arxipèlag Highjump, enfront de la costa Knox i l'illa Mill.

Aquesta costa Knox va ser descoberta al febrer del 1840 per l'Expedició Wilkes dels Estats Units, liderada per Charles Wilkes, qui la va nomenar en homenatge al tinent Samuel R. Knox, capità d'un dels vaixells de l'expedició, l'USS Flying Fish.

La Unió Soviètica va inaugurar el 15 d'octubre del 1956 una estació científica denominada Base Oasi o Oazis a l'àrea central dels pujols o oasis Bunger   / -66.27472, 100.74694. La base va ser tancada el 17 de novembre del 1958 i el 21 de gener del 1959 va ser lliurada a Polònia i canviada de nom Base A. B. Dobrowolski, però només va ser ocupada per unes poques setmanes. Entre el 22 de febrer i el 17 de març del 1979 la base va ser reactivada per Polònia, però els seus ocupants hagueren d'evacuar-la cap a la Base Mirni.

El 1987 la Unió Soviètica va construir la Base Oasi 2 a uns pocs centenars de metres de A. B. Dobrowolski, sent utilitzada en la temporada d'estiu fins a mitjan dècada del 1990. A 7 km de Dobrowolski Austràlia va construir l'estació d'estiu Edgeworth David.

A 1340 km al sud de la costa es troba la Base Vostok de Rússia, inaugurada el 16 de desembre del 1957 i d'operació permanent.

Referències

Antàrtida

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


10 BAY CHRONICLE, FEBRUARY 3, 2011 window onWA I PA PA Progressive Glasses Confusing? 1 Hour Glasses ~ Two Pair Deals ~ Call for Details Prescription glasses vary in price and visual performance, with prices from $269 to over a $1000. Have a quote from elsewhere and Find it confusing? or are not sure you are getting the right price or product? Come and see us. We explain all your options not just the most expensive ones. see us last* *offer to see us last not strictly enforced. You are welcome to see us first and save time as well as money. Chloe and Douglas Right into Outdoor Power Equipment z n . o c . p o h s l h it s . w w w STIHL SHOPTM Waipapa Shop 1, The Palms Klinac Lane, Waipapa Phone 09 407 6140 Offer valid until 28 February 2011 or while stocks last. Commercial strength savings! SAVE UP TO $150 Heavy-duty Hedgecutters STIHLHS45450mm,HS45600mm Model shown is STIHL HS 45 450mm Powerful Brushcutters STIHLFS130,FS130R,FS110,FS110R,FS90,FS90R Model shown is STIHL FS 110 407-8600 a/h Graham 407-9774 Waipapa Loop Road, Kerikeri ENGINEERING For all steel, stainless steel, aluminium, sheetmetal, welding consumables & engineering supplies www.truweld.org.nz MACHINING WELDING HYDRAULICS ALUMINIUM STAINLESS SHEET METAL FABRICATION 3458754AA IT'S A NEW YEAR -- TIME FOR NEW SECONDHAND BOOKS Village Books @ Waipapa (next to The Warehouse) has a fantastic selection of secondhand books for you to choose from. There's something for everyone and the prices are reasonable. Don't forget, we are always looking to buy new stock to add to our already extensive collection. So now is the time to clear out your shelves and bring us your old books as you make room for those books you received for Christmas. Kaye also offers a repair service for your shabby books or a fnding service for out of print or new titles. Come and browse. Contact the shop on 09 407 3086 or email villagebooks1@gmail.com Open 9.30 -- 5.00 Mon-Fri 10.00-1.00 Saturdays "Exciting Giftware. Deals on all Beds & Furniture" 3455076AA New nursery is blooming Green thumbs: Plant wholesalers Yuan and Tim Edgecombe have traded at Kapiro Rd for 10 years. Good selection: Plant Zone Direct stocks a wide range of plants in a spacious display area. If you love plants but have lamented the clos- ure of garden centres in Kerikeri in recent years, you may want to check out the new plant nur- sery on Kapiro Rd. Plant wholesaler Tui Downs has opened a retail nursery that offers a wide range of trees and shrubs, including New Zealand's largest collec- tion of vireya rhododen- drons. Owner Tim Edge- combe says he and wife Yuan opened Plant Zone Direct six months ago because they saw a need in Kerikeri for another general nursery with a spacious display area. Plant Zone Direct stocks natives, palms, subtropical plants, fruit trees and flowering shrubs and offers annual and vegetable seedlings in spring. We try to cover every- thing. The only gap is flower and vegetable punnets.'' They are especially proud of the large vireya collection they acquired from Te Puna Cottage Gardens in Tauranga three years ago. We have several hun- dred varieties of vireyas in the shop at any one time.'' Business has been good, but they are keen to see customers who attended plant sales they held at Tui Downs three times a year. We're doing better than we thought we would do, and a lot of people still don't know about us.'' They also welcome new customers and are happy to offer advice to novice gardeners who aren't sure which plants are right for their gar- dens. We propagate and grow 85 percent of what we sell ourselves.'' Plant Zone Direct is on Kapiro Rd next to the Little Dippers indoor, heated pool. The nursery is open Tuesday to Saturday from 9am to 5pm.


Nomobo Capsules - No Mo Mouth Odour, No Mo Body Odour. Internal deodorant capsules. LOOKING GOOD IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH - YOU CAN SMELL GOOD IN EVERY PART OF YOUR BODY WITH NoMoBo. A powerful but safe, natural herbal solution to immediately stop body odour from every part of your body and bad breath. Essential for people who work closely with other people like Doctors, Dentists, Hairdressers, Masseuses, Dance Instructors, Models, Actors, Nurses and for all those people who have high body odour which cannot be masked by deodorants (which actually make the body odour smell worse).


text:
The Untold Story of Pegasus, the Greek Divine Horse
Sucheta Pradhan Jun 18, 2019
Pegasus, the divine horse from Greek mythology, has inspired the myths of several countries the world over. Here is an insight on the mythology of the creature that was Pegasus.
The Pegasoi Aithiopes were a herd of winged horses bearing a pair of horns in the Ethiopian myth. These were inspired by Pegasus who, according to the regional mythology, was born on an island near Ethiopia.
One of the best known mythical creatures, Pegasus (Greek: Pégasos), the divine winged stallion of Greek mythology, always tends to occupy a special place. The horse has been associated with almost every type of being and/or creature of the Greek myth, right from the gods to monsters, and even mortal heroes.
It is perhaps this all-inclusive nature of the divine beast that is responsible for its popularity. In other words, because the beast is often associated with so many mythical beings, it tends to make its appearance in more mythological tales than other divine animals.
Owing to this, numerous facets of Pegasus' nature have been unfolded, and because most of them symbolically help in the betterment of humankind, Pegasus is not only the most venerated of the mythical creatures, but its tale has also seemed to travel to faraway lands, the mythological traditions of which also bear similar mythical creatures.
The Birth of Pegasus
✢ The 3rd century BCE Hellenistic Greek poet Lycophron, in his famed poetic work, Alexandra, mentions that Medusa, the famed Gorgon (a creature having vicious snakes on its head instead of hair) was already pregnant at the time when the Greek hero Perseus advanced to kill her.
✢ The Greek myth has established that she carried the offspring of Poseidon (God of the Sea) in her womb.
** Some sources tell us that Medusa was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. It was only after this episode that she was cursed by the goddess and became a Gorgon. Some later sources tell us that Medusa had a brief love affair with Poseidon.
✢ When Perseus decapitated Medusa with his mighty sword, her two children popped out of her neck. One of them was, obviously, Pegasus. The other one was Chrysaor, meaning "one who bears a golden armament."
** This story of the birth of Pegasus is very similar to that of Athena herself. Even the goddess had popped out of her father, Zeus' neck―fully-grown and armed.
✢ Hesiod, the 8th century BCE Greek poet, in his treatise, Theogony, has mentioned that Pegasus was born from the Earth, when a droplet of Medusa's blood fell on the ground. This happened near pegai (springs) of Oceanus (personification of World Ocean), from which the beast got its name.
✢ Another account of Pegasus' birth likens its birth with that of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love). According to this account, Pegasus and Chrysaor were born when Medusa's blood got mixed with the foam of the sea (symbolizing Poseidon).
✢ Nonnus, a 5th century CE Greek poet, in his verse composition, Dionysiaca, says that the sword of Perseus was actually Eileithyia (Goddess of Childbirth) in disguise, who helped Medusa deliver her children even as she was dying.
Bellerophon and Pegasus
✢ It has been established by the Greek and later by the Roman myth that Bellerophon, "the greatest hero and slayer of monsters, alongside Cadmus and Perseus, before the days of Heracles", was the master of Pegasus.
✢ When Bellerophon set out to kill the chimera, a deadly, fire-breathing monster of Lycia in Asia Minor, Polyeidos, a Lycian seer, told him that it would be impossible for the hero to defeat Chimera alone.
✢ The seer further told Bellerophon that he would only be successful in the task he had taken up, if he managed to tame Pegasus, the divine stallion.
✢ Owing to this, Bellerophon attempted to capture the horse numerous times by applying all kinds of tactics, but in vain.
✢ One afternoon, frustrated by his yet another unsuccessful attempt, Bellerophon retired to the nearby temple of Athena, in order to get some rest for a short while. Before going to sleep, he prayed to the goddess of war to give him power so that he can be successful in taming the seemingly uncontrollable beast.
✢ Pindar, the 5th century BCE Greek poet, in his verse, Olympian Ode, writes that as Bellerophon was slumbering in Athena's shrine, the goddess went into his dream and gave him a golden bridle. She asked the hero to use the bridle to tame the horse.
✢ When Bellerophon woke up, he actually found the bridle lying next to him. He used it to tame Pegasus, and became his master since that time.
✢ Hesiod, in his treatise, Catalogue of Women, however, narrates a completely different story. According to him, Pegasus and Bellerophon were half-brothers, fathered by Poseidon. Poseidon gave Pegasus to Bellerophon so that the hero could roam around the earth easily, and without getting tired.
** Despite the huge discrepancies in the accounts narrating the nature of relationship between Pegasus and Bellarophon, one thing is for sure. The horse did aid the hero to fight and defeat chimera.
However, Ovid, the 1st century CE Roman poet, in his book, Fasti, mentions that Pegasus was highly disturbed and unhappy with its strange bridling, and registered its protest from time to time.
Nonnus supports the view of Hesiod with regard to Pegasus and Bellerophon being half-brothers. But, he also narrates how Pegasus made Bellephoron fall off its back a number of times, to register its protest against being tamed.
✢ Pseudo-Hyginus, a 2nd century CE Roman mythographer, in his account, Astronomica, narrates an instance wherein, after the chimera was killed, Bellephoron tried to fly to heaven with Pegasus. They had almost reached heaven, when the hero looked down at the earth, fell off, and died instantly.
Legend of the Hippocrene
✢ The Hippocrene was the spring that belonged to the Muses (Goddesses of music, song, and dance).
✢ Literally translated as "Horse's Fountain", it was located on Mt. Helicon in the Thespiai region of Boeotia in ancient Greece. Mt. Helicon is believed to be the earthly abode of the Muses.
✢ According to the 1st century BCE Greek geographer, Strabo, the Hippocrene was formed when Pegasus struck hard with its hoof on the mountain, in order to take flight.
✢ The 2nd century CE Greek traveler and geographer, Pausanias, tells us that the water from the Hippocrene was considered to be sacred. It was used for the purpose of cleansing.
Pegasus on Mt. Olympus
✢ It is believed that after the death of its master, the stallion flew to Mt. Olympus, where it received a warm welcome from all the gods and goddesses.
✢ Zeus was particularly impressed with the horse. He kept it in his household stables, and made sure that Pegasus was well-cared for.
✢ One of the two winged horses, driving the chariot of Zeus across the sky, was Pegasus.
✢ Moreover, Pegasus also carried Zeus' thunderbolts from the workshop of Cyclops, the one-eyed giant. Owing to this, Pegasus was also often referred to as the "thundering horse of Jove (Zeus)" in the Roman myth.
✢ Pleased with the services that Pegasus gave to Zeus, the king of Gods placed it in the heaven forever as the constellation of stars.
✢ Aratus, a first century CE Greek poet, in his astronomical poem, Phaenomena says that the constellation in the northern sky that resembles a horse is actually Pegasus, who roams around in the realm of Zeus.
Pegasus and Perseus
✢ The association of Pegasus with Perseus, other than in the story concerning the horse's birth, seems to be a later addition to the ancient Greek myth.
✢ A trend of depicting Pegasus and Perseus together began primarily during the Renaissance era. Several works of art depicted the relationship between the two.
✢ Especially, the later versions of the rescue of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from the clutches of a horrendous sea monster by Perseus, often mention that the hero was accompanied by Pegasus.
The earlier mythological accounts say that Hermes gave his winged sandals to Perseus, which helped him fly to Ethiopia.
Right from its inception, the legend of Pegasus has been a subject of rich symbolism as well as iconography. The horse has been depicted very vividly, especially on the ancient Greek pottery, sculptures, and paintings. Even in the Middle Ages, Pegasus seems to have been one of the favorite subjects of artists and writers-painters, sculptors, and poets alike.
But, what is most awe-inspiring in the personality of Pegasus is that the creature that stood for wisdom and fame in the beginning, now symbolizes a spiritual energy that has access to the realm of Gods.


I have been looking for shallow speakers for surrounds which have higher efficiency. The on-wall series of different brands are too expensive and low on efficiency. Are there high sensitive, low cost and Shallow speakers which can be driven by say Marantz NR series? This is where my search began.
The Jordans are low in sensitivity. I wanted to check with the speaker gurus if the same design can be replicated philips / Boston Acoustics HiQ drivers.
I have tried folded TL with car speaker having 92 dB SPL. It is playing superb!
Go ahead with one such good driver instead of big (8~12 inch ones) ones and make a similar TL. Your speaker cabinet ill be narrower too if you choose a 6"X9" driver or of lower size.
That's 0.02 paisa worth experience from a non guru wanderer.
If it sims well, it'll work well! Anything else is a shot in the dark.
Waiting for the DIY experts to simulate when they get time The physics of speakers are beyond my comprehension. I hope somebody gives it a shot and identifies a low cost driver which is would go well with this design.
Sumanta, I have read your open baffles & pipe speakers blog and you definitely belong to a guru-category for me. I really do not know what tool to download and simulate this kind of a design.
Well I follow simple MJK table for tapered TL and then mass load it (or not) by my ears alone. Simulation can't change or influence my listening. To start a design, simulation helps. Simulations and experiences made the thumb rule table of MJK, hence I follow that. I am a lazy guy who invest 30 rupees to get a return of 70~85 rupees. Unfortunately I am successful for speaker design case only. I wish I could be successful on money market as well.
I am sure simulation helps.
I am very happy that you read my blog. Thanks a lot. I wish I culd help you on the simulation part.


Irving Philips is best know for his silent gag strip Mr. Mum, which ran from the late fifties til the early seventies as a daily panel and Sunday strip. Before that Philips worked as a cartoonist, but before that he had another strip that was much less fanciful. It ran in selected papers in the early fifties, usually as a square of four panels. Apparently there was a cartoon version as well, whichmakes me think it started life as a regular cartoon series for on eof the weekly's (or a proposal for one). I have shown some of these before, but the (original) cartoon is a new find.


text:
The Parlour Portfolio, Or, Post-chaise Companion: Being a ..., Volume 1
A new edition of a very old book has just been published at Paris : it is entituled " Everlasting Prophecies, from the year 1521, to the end of the World." The Author is Joseph Justo, of Naples. The Academy of Sciences, at Paris, is said to have transmitted this little work of fiftyfour pages, to the Minister, Louvois : and, what is still more, to have found it invariably correct for the last 140 years. Of the year 1806, it is said, " Let people procure a supply of oats and commodities, for at the end of August commences a great war, which extends to many regions. The people suffer death, and great calamities. In 1807, a great quantity of snow will fall in the beginning of February ; many inundations." The most important prophecy relates to the year 1811: " It will be difficult to preserve the cattle, through the severity of the winter: from that year, a peace of a whole century will be enjoyed by Christendom; bread, wine, and clothing will then be cheap."
At a late contested election at Southson, between Mr. B. E. and Mr. G. R., a waggoner belonging to the former, accosted a servant of the latter, while driving an ox team into the town : 6. Well, John, I dear ze them oxen be to be rosted for your pearty to-day, beant them?" « Oh, yes," answered John, "and the waggon is a gwine to be steawed for yourn."
VOL. I.
There is living at present in the parish of Donaghadee, a farmer, aged 85 years, who has enjoyed such uninterrupted health, that he never had an head-ache but once, and that was occasioned by his having drank some strong Highland whiskey. There is also another instance of longevity in the same parish: a man aged 100 years, who enjoys good health, and can walk on an average ten miles every day.
· A traveller was lately boasting of the luxury of arriving at night, after a hard day's journey, , to partake of the enjoyment of a well-cut ham, and the left leg of a goose. Pray, sir, what is the peculiar luxury of a left leg ?"—" Sir, to conceive its luxury, you must find that it is the only leg which is left .!"
A few days since an elderly man, who professed to be stone blind, and deplorably infirm, collected a great deal of money from the charitable visitants of a church in a great provincial city. Not long after he was observed by one of his benefactors approaching, with the boy who led him, to the door of a public house, when he exclaimed: " No, this is not the house;" and pointing to another, at a little distance, " see, that is the
sign !"
A sample of opium, the produce of Porto Santo, one of the Madeira Islands, has been received in this country. It is said to be the natural juice of a poppy, yielded by incision. Its smell is much more aromatic than the common opium. It is also free from every impurity. Trial has been made with it on a cancerous patient, who, from the long habit of using opium was thought a fit subject of comparison ; but after the first dose, being taken alternately, not the least possible difference could be discovered between the Madeira and the common opium.
Justice of Peter the Great.—Miss Hambleton, a Maid of Honour to the Empress Catherine, wife to Peter the Great, had an amour, which, at different times, produced three children. She had always pleaded sickness, but Peter, being suspicious, ordered his physician to attend her, who soon made the discovery. It also appeared, that a sense of shame had triumphed over humanity, and that the children had been put to death as soon as born. Peter enquired if the father of them was privy to the murder; the lady insisted that he was innocent, for she had always deceived him, by pretending they were put to nurse.
Justice now called upon the Emperor to punish the offence. The lady was much beloved by the Empress, who pleaded for her; the amour was pardonable, but not the murder. Peter sent her to the castle, and went himself to visit her; and the fact being confessed, he pronounced her sentence with tears, telling her that his duty, as a prince, and God's vicegerent, called on him for that justice which her crime had rendered indispensably necessary, and that she must therefore prepare for death. He attended her also to the scaffold, where he embraced her with the utmost tenderness, mixed with sorrow. And some say, that when the head was struck off, he took it up by the ear, whilst the lips were still trembling, and kissed them: a circumstance of an extraordinary nature, and yet not incredible, considering the peculiarities of his character,
A Gascon qui pro quo.—Two of Napoleon's officers, from Gascony, disputing, a short time since, in the garrison of Boulogne, upon some topic of the day, one of them unhandsomely contradicted the other, by saying, " That's not true : I know the whole affair much better." The asserter of the fact instantly said," You are very bold, sir, to dare give me the lie ; if I was a little nearer to you, I would box your ears, to teach you better manners; and you may consider the blow as already given." The brother officers present were alarmed for the consequence; but the other Gascon assuming a serious air, rejoined, " And I, sir, to punish you for your insolence, now run you through the body ; so consider yourself dead." The singularity of the repartee pleased the whole company, and naturally produced an immediate reconciliation a la Gascon!
The art of fainting with grace at a féle, or a masquerade ball, is now a part of female tuition in the polite world : it is found to bring those belles into fashionable notoriety, who have not yet acquired the Amazonian skill of dashing through an elegant mob by the muscular force of shoulders and elbows !
Anecdote of Field Marshal Wade..When Field Marshal Wade was only Lieutenant, he happened to be one of a party of officers in company with the Duke of Cumberland. The Duke, in the course of the evening, missed a favourite snuff-box, which he confidently asserted was in his pocket on entering the room. This induced a proposal, that the doors should be closed, and each individual searched; upon which Lieutenant Wade drew his sword, saying, he was an officer, and a gentleman, and that it was at the peril of any one to attempt to search him; but that far from wishing to prevent an investigation, he had no objection to retire into a private apartment, with one or two of the party, and there convince them the box was not in his possession. This was acceded to, when having informed them where he had dined and producing from his pocket the remains of a cold fowl, he added, that


Please visit the Washoe County Library's Upcoming Events page for Paws 2 Read times and dates at a library near you.
Paws 4 Love dogs play an important role in our community at Washoe County libraries and schools with its Paws 2 Read program for children of all ages.
Each month, therapy teams visit area libraries to participate in this engaging program where friendly dogs lend a loving, non-judgmental ear to beginning readers. Research has shown that when a child is given repeated opportunity to read to a dog, the child grows more confident in their reading ability and develops a desire to read on their own.
A recent study with third graders reading out loud to dogs for 10 minutes, once a week, showed those students improved their reading fluency by 12 to 46 percent, compared to no improvement for the class that had regular classroom instruction. Educational and psychological research has shown that children's reading levels increase one to two years by reading to dogs on a weekly basis.


text:
package com.getperka.flatpack.visitors;

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertFalse;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertSame;
import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;

import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.util.UUID;

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.inject.Provider;

import org.junit.Test;

import com.getperka.flatpack.FlatPackTest;
import com.getperka.flatpack.Visitors;
import com.getperka.flatpack.codexes.EntityCodex;
import com.getperka.flatpack.domain.Employee;
import com.getperka.flatpack.ext.DeserializationContext;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;
import com.google.gson.JsonPrimitive;

public class PackReaderTest extends FlatPackTest {

  @Inject
  private EntityCodex<Employee> employeeCodex;
  @Inject
  private Provider<PackReader> readers;
  @Inject
  private Visitors visitors;
  @Inject
  private Provider<PackWriter> writers;

  @Test
  public void testReadWriteProperties() {
    assertEquals("employee", employeeCodex.describe().getName());

    Employee e1 = makeEmployee();

    StringWriter out = new StringWriter();
    serializationContext(out);
    try {
      visitors.visit(writers.get(), e1);
    } finally {
      closeContext();
    }

    JsonObject obj = new JsonParser().parse(out.toString()).getAsJsonObject();
    // Check embedded properties
    assertFalse(obj.has("address"));
    assertTrue(obj.has("street"));

    Employee e2;
    DeserializationContext d = deserializationContext();
    try {
      e2 = employeeCodex.allocate(obj, d);

      PackReader reader = readers.get();
      reader.setPayload(obj);
      visitors.visit(reader, e2);

      // Check referential integrity
      assertSame(e2, employeeCodex.read(new JsonPrimitive(e2.getUuid().toString()), d));
    } finally {
      d.runPostWork();
      closeContext();
    }

    // Verify callbacks called
    assertTrue(e2.employeePostUnpack);
    assertTrue(e2.employeePreUnpack);
    assertTrue(e2.employeePre1Unpack);

    check(e1, e2);
  }

  /**
   * Verify a property with only a setter works as a write-only property.
   */
  @Test
  public void testWriteOnlyProperty() {
    UUID uuid = UUID.randomUUID();

    JsonObject obj = new JsonObject();
    obj.addProperty("uuid", uuid.toString());
    obj.addProperty("writeOnlyProperty", "Hello World!");

    Employee e;
    DeserializationContext d = deserializationContext();
    try {
      e = employeeCodex.allocate(obj, d);
      PackReader reader = readers.get();
      reader.setPayload(obj);
      visitors.visit(reader, e);
    } finally {
      closeContext();
    }
    assertEquals("Hello World!", e.writeOnlyProperty);

    StringWriter out = new StringWriter();
    serializationContext(out);
    try {
      visitors.visit(writers.get(), e);
    } finally {
      closeContext();
    }
    obj = new JsonParser().parse(out.toString()).getAsJsonObject();
    assertEquals(2, obj.entrySet().size());
    assertTrue(obj.has("uuid"));
    assertTrue(obj.has("employeeNumber"));
    assertFalse(obj.has("writeOnlyProperty"));
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub