Yearly Archives: 2009

a suburb without cars is like a day without coughing

Vauban street sceneBrent pointed out this article in the New York Times about a carfree German suburb:

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.

Sound familiar? It’s the “car-lite” mode suggested by my favorite urban design manual, Carfree Cities. I’m glad to see communities implementing these principles in the real world; hopefully we can learn more about how to make places like this more common.

The city also looks well-placed as a destination for my upcoming (someday) architectural tour of Europe. Now if we could just get this silly dollar back up to its former value…

gettin’ hitched all over the place

So Maine now, huh? Sayeth the BBC:

Gay marriage is to be permitted in the US state of Maine after a bill was passed by both houses of the state’s legislature and signed by the governor.

Maine will be the fifth US state to allow gay marriage, after Connecticut, Masschusetes, Iowa and Vermont.

A number of other states, including New Hampshire and New York, are also due to consider proposals to legalise it.

Well done, New Englanders! Um, and Iowa. (Still having a hard time coming to grips with that one.) Oh, and Prop 8? Your days are numbered.

UPDATE: John notes that for those keeping score, there’s a nice map of marriage and civil union status in all US states over at Wikipedia.

heeding the Marian Call

So yeah. You like good music, right? And you likes you some sci-fi*, right? If so, I need you to do three things:

  1. Watch this. Mostly listen, really, because you’ve seen the visuals before**:
  2. Listen to lots more Marian Call music, and contemplate picking some up on iTunes or your favorite music-purchasing outlet.
  3. Wonder where Marian Call has been all your life, and realize she’ll be at Lestat’s next Wednesday night. If that’s too far away for you, there’s always following her on Twitter and asking her to tour a bit closer. (Not the same, I know.)

So there you go. I don’t ask much, do I?

* but not SyFy, because WTF, right?
** and if you haven’t, we need to talk.

Why is this site naked?

UPDATE: CSS Naked Day is over, so the site is back to its stylish self. If you missed it, the home page looked something like this:

Global Spin naked

Are things lookin’ a little 1994 in here? That’s because it’s CSS Naked Day 2009, a day when people around the world strip their sites bare so you can see what’s underneath.

The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good ‘ol play on words. It’s time to show off your <body>.

Since Global Spin looks pretty good even without CSS makeup, I decided to join in the fun. Enjoy the nostaligia; tomorrow we go back to the 21st century.