Tag: Brooklyn College

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Brooklyn College Sculpture

This abstract sculpture was once proudly standing near Ingersoll Hall. Now it rusts in the grass. I wonder who made this monstrosity and what it was called.

Strangely enough, twisted pieces of metal welded together are closely associated with sculpture these days. When I think of sculpture, I think about granite, marble, wood, clay or bronze. I think about chisels and wax models. Rebar and welding apparatus I closely associate with construction work.

A friend of mine met her boss’ daughter carrying a huge pile of rusty metal somewhere. She asked her about what is she was going to do with it. She became very surprised and answered – “Don’t you know? I am a sculptor!”

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Brooklyn College Library

Visited Brooklyn College yesterday to take a look at the newly reopened library.

Well, they’ve spent countless millions, and now the insides look like a typical yuppie apartment. Various designer chairs (mostly Aerons and some other expensive looking wooden ones) , desks. The circulation desk looks like a reception desk in a Fortune 100 company. Tons of tables with ethernet hookups. Some crappy Dells with 15 inch flat panel monitors running Win XP are available in “labs”. Lots of air conditioning ducts and eyes-in-the-sky.

Could not find any of the books that I wanted in the horrible mainframe search app (you telnet into it from the workstations). I was looking for some Lee Friedlander photography books , “The Legend of Amdahl”, some real estate books, some books about NYPD. Nada. Oh well, there is abebooks.com and amazon.com. And I have Aerons and fast network connection at home.

I thing that royally pisses me of is that they are using crappy bright fluorescent lamps. I hate those. At work I unhooked one that is right above my cube because it was driving me nuts. Yeah, spend millions on chairs and desks and install lamps that give everyone headaches.

The La Guardia reading room is gorgeous. There were some very nice black and white photos on the walls, a mildly interesting exposition of historical documents and photographs.

If I actually found any good books and did not get a headache from the lamps it would have been a great experience.

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Brooklyn College Research

The research at my soon to be Alma Mater is on the cutting edge.

From “The Straight Dope”:
“Alexander Graham Bell suggested “ahoy!” as the standard telephone greeting, but it didn’t catch on–for obvious reasons, you may think. Don’t be so sure. Brooklyn College professor Allen Koenigsberg, author of The Patent History of the Phonograph, argues that the word that did catch on, “hello,” was previously unknown and may have been invented by the man who proposed it, Thomas Edison.”

As I always said, one year at Brooklyn College is like 2 at MIT. And this fall it’s going to be my 7th year there.

Interesting trivia about my college education: I’ve had a Pulitzer prize winning professor.

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I just purchased an awesome book called …

I just purchased an awesome book called “Invisible New York : The Hidden Infrastructure of the City”. As any hacker I am fascinated with all hidden technological things : tunnels, shafts, silos, generators, abandoned buildings. This book is a photographic essay about what the author calls “Serving Places” of New York City — things like abandoned subway stations, abandoned missile silos (turns out there are some in the Bronx), water system tunnels and valve rooms. Unfortunately the author did not include a “lost”subway station underground near Brooklyn College or bowels of Flatiron Building with its one of a kind pneumatic elevator system. The cover of the book features an absolutely amazing shot of a spiral staircase.
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