This is a rendering of a competition entry the office recently won in Italy for a Fashion and Design Events Building in Milan. It looks kind of like a shark will gills to me : ) most of the shape and form comes from environmental drivers.
Some friends that I meet with for church on Sunday invited my room mates and I out to dinner at their house in
We had a great time hanging out and chatting. Mrs. Chao made the most amazing dinner and dessert!! A huge spectrum of Chinese dishes from salmon to noodles and pork.
It was a nice reprieve from the hot busy city to hang out in their comfortable house and get to know some other friends that I usually don't hang out with much.
I took a lot of pictures of us on the subway too, not sure why I like subway pictures so much, maybe it's because they always end up with interesting looking ppl in the background or things in motion.
I read this today on a blog link from the democratic party web site and found it quite interesting...
I’d like to say that there’s a real dialogue taking place about the state of the U.S. economy, but the discussion leaves a lot to be desired. In general, the conversation sounds like this:
Bush supporter: “Why doesn’t President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias.”
Informed economist: “But it’s not a great economy for most Americans. Many families are actually losing ground, and only a very few affluent people are doing really well.”
Bush supporter: “Why doesn’t President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias.”
To a large extent, this dialogue of the deaf reflects Upton Sinclair’s principle: it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. But there’s also an element of genuine incredulity. Many observers, even if they acknowledge the growing concentration of income in the hands of the few, find it hard to believe that this concentration could be proceeding so rapidly as to deny most Americans any gains from economic growth.
Yet newly available data show that that’s exactly what happened in 2004.
(snip)
...the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans surged by almost 12.5 percent. Meanwhile, the average real income of the bottom 99 percent of the population rose only 1.5 percent. In other words, a relative handful of people received most of the benefits of growth.
(snip)
In short, it’s a great economy if you’re a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.
Can anything be done to spread the benefits of a growing economy more widely? Of course. A good start would be to increase the minimum wage, which in real terms is at its lowest level in half a century.
But don’t expect this administration or this Congress to do anything to limit the growing concentration of income. Sometimes I even feel sorry for these people and their apologists, who are prevented from acknowledging that inequality is a problem by both their political philosophy and their dependence on financial support from the wealthy. That leaves them no choice but to keep insisting that ordinary Americans — who have, in fact, been bypassed by economic growth — just don’t understand how well they’re doing.
It was great to spend this past 4th of July in New York City. I went down to the South Street Seaport with my friends and room mates to see the fire works on the East River. There were a lot of people, but not too many. We took our dinner down there and hung out for a few hours enjoying the wonderful weather. Just as a side note, so far I think NYC has wonderful summers!!! no matter what anyone here says :) At least compared to Houston. Today the high is 80 and right now it is 62!!!!!! and it's July. If that is not a nice summer I don't know what is.