Coming from Behind

Not alone anymore. Slate's gearbox column has finally come up with a description of the control and visceral feel issues that make some of us drivers into obsessed rear-wheel-drive aficionados.

It's both the journalistic observation of the impending renaissance of the RWD and a critic's eye on the pure aesthetics of the experience that made this stand out.

If you have to drive everywhere, you might as well enjoy it.

Slate: Why Front Wheel Drive Sucks

Understanding Balzac

Lost Illusions is, among other things, the story of how a provincial poet in nineteenth century Paris becomes a social-climbing hack journalist. He does this, of course, in order to eat. As Uncle Karl never tired of telling us, what you do and what you believe are not always the same thing.

I, unfortunately, did this model. Tens of thousands of dollars of sophisticated software and the better part of a week; for what?

In Balzac’s words:

“And once I had a tragedy accepted! And among my papers I have a poem that will not live! And I was a good fellow! My love was pure, once – and now I have an actress at the Panorama-Dramatique for my mistress – I, who once dreamed of noble loves, for distinguished women of the great world! And now, if a publisher refuses to send a copy of it to my newspaper, I am prepared to run down a book that I think is good.”

“Ah! Those who see [the art] as I once did . . . as an angel with diaphanous wings, clad in immaculate white, with a palm of virtue in one hand and a flaming sword in the other – a sort of cross between the mythological abstraction who lives at the bottom of a well, and the virtuous poor girl of the suburbs, who refuses to grow rich at the expense of chastity, and who makes her way by efforts of a noble courage, reascending to the skies without a stain on her character (always supposing she does not end her days soiled, despoiled, polluted, and forgotten on a pauper’s bier) – men like that, whose brains are helmeted in bronze, whose hearts remain still warm under the snows of experience, and seldom met in [this great city.]” – H. Balzac, Lost Illusions, 1843

The older I get, the more I understand the world – and the less I respect it.

Compare: Romancing the Profession

Capturing Space

Polish and Passion: Theater Far and Near

Two performances in two cities in three weeks: Caffeine Theatre doing Eliot’s The Cocktail Party and the Oklahoma City Theatre Company doing an adaptation of Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. (see Consumption below) Fiction and non-fiction, old and new, North and South, large and small.

The brilliant folks at Caffeine get the points for sophistication, hands down. Complex quasi-religious allegory written by a poet set in Edwardian London; mysterious characters that conjure conspiracy theories of all stripes; strange interlocking personal relationships; that sort of thing. The mark of Caffeine is a production polished to the point of a mirror finish: nothing out of place, every movement deliberate and meaningful, and the well-considered property set that even distinguishes between clear gin and brown whiskey. Nothing is awkward, nothing accidental. This is a world of restraint, not expression, and the players seem to understand the need for undercurrent. The feel is of a true ensemble; unlike Dona Rosita no one really stands out here, and that’s probably for the best, as the material handled is so cerebral. About the Eliot, I’m not all that sure: so much of the dialogue borders on gratuitous speechifying, it can be hard to sit through – passion rarely speaks in thirty-line paragraphs. (Although, it’s worth noting that on the page it’s even harder to read through and remain interested.) His themes are as interesting as they are disconcerting: fate, intercession of agency beyond our control, societal roles, finding meaning in life. If it only weren’t for that final explanation by Riley. Difficult material, handled well. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

OCTC gets points for passion. If nothing else, staging an adaptation of non-fiction reportage is a move of nerve of the first rate. Nickel and Dimed is a favorite of mine, but the idea of actually STAGING a first-person account of life in the greasy underbelly of the labor force is another thing entirely. Much credit to Shelley Lytle for holding an essentially first-person show together, and thinking on her feet interacting with the (albeit tiny) audience. The performances ranged up and down the scale, with Rachel Carter’s transition from naive to cynical as the standout of the rest of the cast. The total lack of property hurt the cause a little, and there was always an element of the amateur waiting stealthily in the background, but the absolute commitment to the material on the part of everyone involved can justify more than a few sins. And what material. The adaptation (Joan Holden) manages to preserve the voice and indignation of Ehrenreich in almost the same tones as the book. Surprisingly, it’s even more powerful staged, with the diner and retail vignettes as dramatic as any fiction. The use of the screens as a constant reminder of the numbers was effective as well. As uncle Karl would remind us, no amount of meaning matters as much as being able to eat.

Totally different. Well done. Caffeine’s link is to the left, OCTC’s is: http://www.okctheatrecompany.org/

The March away from Density in Retail

As prices are driven down by economies of scale, the number of customers required at each terminal of the global supply chain (i.e. each Wal-Mart super center) goes up and up. Which is to say: lower prices require larger and fewer retail stores, each of which requires more customers in their catchment (or “threshold”) area. (The use of customer-miles as an ever-increasing part of the supply chain (an externality?) is a subject for another time.)

This means that even at pre-existing densities, the number of things within a reasonable walking (and possibly transit) distance gets smaller and smaller. The best on-the-ground description of this I’ve seen is in Rae’s City, where he documents the mid-century chain grocery’s affect on the concentration of groceries in New Haven.

Far from a return to the romantic urban densities of the New Urbanist crowd, an even greater density would seem to be required to lure suburbanites back to urban living if they are to keep the same price structures and choices that exist now (a variant of the Church Problem, see Religious Pluralism below.) The urban problem, then, is actually getting worse. The economic underpinnings are:

2. The "threshold range" is the minimum radius of a market area needed to generate sufficient demand to support the supply of a good; it refers to the minimum (potentially also the maximum) market area which a supplier needs (or can sell to) to make his undertaking viable. More specifically, "given the equilibrium f.o.b. market price; the threshold range represents the distance to the perimeter of an area enclosing the minimum level of aggregate demand (or a minimum population) which is sufficient to permit the commercial supply of the good, i.e which permits only normal profits to be made." (Parr & Denike, 1970, p.570) Parr, John and Kenneth G. Denike, "Theoretical Problems in Central Place Analysis," Economic Geography 46(4), October 1970, pp.568-86 (Quoted in Geography 450 glossary, Krumme, University of Washington (WA).)

Manhattan densities are still workable on the left side of the graph, but get harder (and more expensive) daily.

Is ever-cheaper individual delivery the only workable answer to urban life? Will it ever be realistically feasible for the lower half of the income distribution?

Mining the Archives

Five of the entries from the original Underground version are now in the archives at their original dates in July, June, and May of 2005. (The first reference to Nickel and Dimed is here .) This includes the original World's Best Photo way back in May of '05.

-The Management

Bienvenue a Evry

Obviously not the result of a conspiracy between General Motors and FHA redlining, Evry is proof of the global appeal of the large single-family detached house.

I've been there once briefly (to see Botta's new cathedral) and still remember how - well - unFrench it felt. Note the single-use zoning.

The law of supply and demand is relentless. (To get an idea just how un-french this is, map search Blois or Chateaudun or central (non-chateau) Versailles.)

The big question is: what makes a people so familiar with high-quality urban life want to give it up for a version of North America? One wonders if they've started buying sliced bread.

The Genius of Karl Rove

Classical political theory, as I understand it, is a function of a concept called “Median Voter Theory.” A variant of competition along a line, the idea is to locate as near to the other candidate as possible, based on the knowledge that every voter from your location to the end of the continuum will vote for you and that everyone from your opponent’s position to the other continuum will vote for them. The incentive, then, is to locate as near to your opponent as possible in order to capture the maximum number of voters from their position back. In a space of two issues, with voters allotted to the candidate closest to their position in the two-issue space, the ideal location would be on the line running between and equal number of voters on each side. This is the Clinton theory.

Karl Rove introduced another wrinkle: the turnout function. The allotment of voters is not only a function of relative distance of the candidate to the voter, but also of absolute distance. Which is to say: there is a cut-off function. The candidate has a “capture-space” within a certain distance of his positions. Outside of this distance, the voter does not turn out at all, and becomes a non-allotted unit. This means that not only is it important for a candidate to capture the voters on his side of the ideal line, but to locate near concentrations within his half. Even ceding the opponent some distance from the line, if it means including a concentration within one’s “capture space,” becomes a successful strategy. Counter-intuitive to the average pollster (non-allotted voters still appear in polls) and consultant, this distinction means the difference between victory and spending the next four years grousing from the sidelines about how badly the war is going.

In the diagram above, ‘B’ locates in the spot dictated by conventional wisdom, but ‘A’ wins, able to include more voters in his “capture space.”