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Brooklyn College Pictures

I had to wake up early today to get to the speech class that is held at the ungodly hour of 9 AM. On Sunday. Sadists. It was raining. Brooklyn streets were foggy and smelled of jasmine tea for some reason. Ok, I did have jasmine tea yesterday, but I could not smell any on myself. The fog definitely smelled of jasmine tea. And sea.

I’ve had some espresso at Michael’s bakery on R and Nostrand and took a bus to Brooklyn College. Some pictures had to be taken.

A Jellyfish From Outer Space or a Manhole Cover? You Decide.

Brooklyn College officials like to spend money on infrastructure. About six years ago, I remember, they purchased these really expensive, but nice ashtrays.

The ashtrays came with these garbage urns. This is Brooklyn College La Guardia tower reflecting in the top of such an urn. Note the uglorific purple color. That’s the official school color. Maybe, some time in this century, I’ll get to wear a robe of that color.

The cupola of the nearby Midwood High School.

Even the storm drains are pretty.

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Yagi Decorated


You know, most New Yorkers don’t look up much. No matter how cool everything is around them, they don’t want to look like tourists. But I am secure enough in my New Yorkedness to walk around looking at skyscrapers and taking pictures with my touristy looking camera.

This hideous yagi antenna is on a top of one of the old art deco buildings on 46th street. By the way, it turns out that it named “after Hidetsugu Yagi (1886-1976), Japanese electrical engineer” and not baba Yaga as I thought. Actually it should be called “Yagi-Uda” because he invented it with the help of Dr. Shintaro Uta.

Looks like nobody cared much for Dr. Yagi’s work in Japan at the time. Of course, they regretted it after they discovered that it was used by the Allies as a radar antenna. This reminded me about how Pyotr Ufimtsev’s dense paper titled “Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction”, which was completely ignored by the Soviet military scientists, gave Denys Overholser, a Skunk Works radar specialist, all the theory needed to build F117 stealth fighter.

Indeed, yagis are very useful. You can extend the range of wi-fi networks with a yagi made out of Pringles can (gotta build one) and I’ve heard of a guy that made a yagi for his cell phone, so that he could access weak cell networks while biking across America. They may not look very good, but they have a kajillion uses in radio and tv.

Too bad there is no book about Dr. Yagi on Amazon, but here is a rather interesting site about Japanese inventors. Here’s Dr. Yagi’s statue and here’s an iteresting quote that I’ve found: “US War Crimes Commission witnessed that Professor Hidetsugu Yagi was the first Japanese “to speak proudly of his work instead of denying it all.”

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Gutenberg Would Be Oh So Pissed

I’ve recently read a very awesome book by Henry Petroski called “The Book on the Bookshelf”. It’s a book about the culture of storing an collecting books. In it he mentioned a dinner party that he attended, where owners of a pretty big library served appetizers on Taschen art books (probably purchased for a buck or so). But many of the guests did not feel right about using book pages (no matter that they carried no value) in this manner. Even though it’s probably a cooler way to use these books than letting them mold in a used book pile somewhere.

Petroski also mentioned some readers who would tear pages out of cheap paperbacks as they were reading in order to lighten their bags.

I feel, that eating over a book (unless it’s a rare edition) is ok. In fact, I don’t really care if any of the ordinary books in my library have dog ears, food stains or water damage as long as they are still readable. I have no qualms even about throwing out crappy books. But still would refuse to use a book as a plate.

Now, here’s a project I have mixed feelings about: some ljusers wallpapered their library with book pages. It looks very cool. It will probably look like ass later, when acidic paper will start to completely deteriorate in sunlight. It’s somewhat cool. Maybe even a bit creative. I’ve seen this done with old newspapers in the Le Figaro cafe in the Village though. But still, something ain’t right about that.

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The Saddam Hussein Reader

I don’t really know much about everybody’s favorite contemporary mustached dictator.

I didn’t know that Saddam’s full name is Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti. I didn’t know that his wife Sajida, two years his senior, also happens to be his first cousin. That’s seems right, she is the one who gave birth to the abominable Uday and Qusay. Uuu – die. Brrr..

Anyway, looks like Saddam’s biography shouldn’t be any less entertaining than “The Sopranos”. There’s a whole bunch of Saddamy goodness on Amazon:

The Saddam Hussein Reader
The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Understanding Iraq
or this:

What to pick, what to pick…

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Titania-Mania

My Titanium fetish is well documented in my journal. Well, here’s more titanium stuff:

There’s this guy on an island off the coast of Canada who makes the best espresso machine tampers. A tamper is a little plunger that is used to pack coffee ground into a portafilter. Tamping is one of the most critical stages in making espresso. It’s almost impossible to get good espresso without proper tamping. In fact, I’ve never seen a barrista in New York do a proper tamp. The one reason why Starbucks coffee became more drinkable is because they use automatic machines these days that tamp the grounds themselves.

I don’t own a Reg Barber tamper because I already had and Ergo Packer, which is also very finely made and instead of having a flat bottom like all other professional tampers or rounded bottom like all the crappy ones, it has a very slightly curved one. “Very scientific!” would cry characters from this novel.

Anyway. Reg finally made a small batch of titanium tampers. Gotta get one.

Moving on. In the book “Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed”, Ben Rich mentioned a special set of titanium shot glasses that his boss used for drinking with the generals. You see, the awesom SR-71 Blackbird was the first plane made entirely out of titanium. I wonder who has those glasses now.

But these guys have excruciatingly pretty titanium stuff. Sake cups, mugs, beer glasses – all made out of titanium. Jewelry is also very nice.

They can even make a street sign out of titanium for ya.

You know, I don’t want a 1958 Plymouth Fury anymore. I don’t even want a 1948 Tucker Torpedo. All I want is a 1956 GM Firebird II, the first titanium body car with a gas turbine engine. Is that too much to ask for?