Category: Culture

Pelli’s Minneapolis Public Library

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Photo by
Sopheava

Overture Center Architect Cesar Pelli’s Minneapolis Public Library recently opened. Check out the Flickr photo set for a number of perspectives. More on the Library:

The new Central Library features 25 community meeting and study rooms, a state-of-the-art auditorium, an updated children’s library, a center for new Americans, a space especially for teens, and 353,000 square feet of additional access to knowledge-enhancing resources.

With one-of-a-kind architecture, design and resources, the new Central Library is a destination spot for residents, the downtown workforce and visitors interested in experiencing the library’s extensive collection; attending special events, performances and author readings; or simply relaxing with a cup of coffee in a warm, welcoming place.

Well worth checking out as Madison considers a new downtown library (please keep Kenton Peter’s metallic designs away…)

McCurrencies

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The Economist:

Happy 20th birthday to our Big Mac index.

WHEN our economics editor invented the Big Mac index in 1986 as a light-hearted introduction to exchange-rate theory, little did she think that 20 years later she would still be munching her way, a little less sylph-like, around the world. As burgernomics enters its third decade, the Big Mac index is widely used and abused around the globe. It is time to take stock of what burgers do and do not tell you about exchange rates.

The Economist’s Big Mac index is based on one of the oldest concepts in international economics: the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), which argues that in the long run, exchange rates should move towards levels that would equalise the prices of an identical basket of goods and services in any two countries. Our “basket” is a McDonald’s Big Mac, produced in around 120 countries. The Big Mac PPP is the exchange rate that would leave burgers costing the same in America as elsewhere. Thus a Big Mac in China costs 10.5 yuan, against an average price in four American cities of $3.10 (see the first column of the table). To make the two prices equal would require an exchange rate of 3.39 yuan to the dollar, compared with a market rate of 8.03. In other words, the yuan is 58% “undervalued” against the dollar. To put it another way, converted into dollars at market rates the Chinese burger is the cheapest in the table.

Buy American & Build in Mexico – Ford’s Mark Fields

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Frank Williams:

So a Mexican-built car is Ford’s hedge in the American market against Japanese-branded cars built on US soil. This is getting more and more confusing. But wait – there’s more.

Fields bragged that Ford’s new hybrids are “posting record sales of late” and their “innovations led to more than 130 patents,” with more pending. The Ford exec conveniently omitted the fact that Ford’s hybrid technology depends on technology licensed from Toyota. Nor did he mention the Japanese-made transaxles and battery packs and German-built regenerative braking systems which make Ford’s hybrids possible.

FBI’s Preliminary 2005 US “Uniform Crime Report”

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The FBI: PDF File. Madison’s results:

Violent Crime, 2004: 841 2005: 839

Murder, 2004: 2 2005: 2

Forcible Rape, 2004: 94 2005: 80

Robbery, 2004: 292 2005: 329

Aggravated Assault, 2004: 453 2005: 428

Property Crime, 2004: 7,279 2005: 7,739

Burglary, 2004: 1450 2005: 1449

Larceny-theft, 2004: 5268 2005: 5682

Motor Vehicle theft, 2004: 561 2005: 606

Arson, 2004: 83 2005: 65

I had the opportunity to speak with Madison Police Lt. Joe Balles a month or so ago regarding local crime data. He mentioned that the City of Madison Police department responds to 157,000 calls annually and that 1 out of every 3 has additional data (“crime”). The data is generally stored and reported following the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting standards.

Joe mentioned that the community does not report simple theft to them as they did in the past; bike thefts are an example of this. Finally, Joe noted that the FBI’s data model does not include some types, such as ID or credit card data theft.

Inside Apple’s iPod Factories

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Macworld:

Apple’s iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday.

The report, ‘iPod City’, isn’t available online. It offers photographs taken from inside the factories that make Apple music players, situated in China and owned by Foxconn.

The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn’s Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: “This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle’s.”

BABY LEFT FOR DEAD IS ALL GROWN UP

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Diana Walsh:

The temperature outside on the night of Dec. 30, 1987, was 45 and dropping. Cold for most anyone, but perilous for a newborn baby girl wrapped in a towel and stuffed in a brown paper bag like trash.

She probably wasn’t meant to be found alive.

When Steve Gibbons, a California Highway Patrol officer, pulled off Interstate 280 to stop and stretch his legs, she was just hours old. Her temperature had plummeted to a dangerous 90 degrees. If she had been there much longer, she would have died near the intersection of Cañada and Edgewood roads in Redwood City.

But Gibbons heard the baby’s cry.

The First Action Hero

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Bryan Myrkle:

I once read that a person with experience caring for horses knows more about what it meant to be a human in the last thousand years than anyone without. Similarly, anyone who’s driven a Model T knows more about what it felt like to be an American in the first half of the 20th Century than anyone who hasn’t. History records the Model T as a two-fold blessing: it created the American working class and it put them behind the wheel. Again, the map is not the territory. To fully appreciate the Model T’s impact on American psychology, you have to get behind the wheel.

Life in the Fast Food Lane: Rockwall Texas Culvers

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Frank Bruni:

Flame, or at least a suggestion of grilling or broiling, matters. That’s a principal reason a Whopper bested a Big Mac, cooked on a griddle. It’s why the new roster of one-third-pound charbroiled Thickburgers at Hardee’s tasted better than the steamed slivers at Krystal, a White Castle analogue in the South.

Buns matter. The large, doughy one on the classic Whataburger created ample space for three slices of tomato and a sense of heft that felt good in the hands, good in the mouth. The generously buttered, crisply toasted ones on Culver’s burgers, called butterburgers in honor of those buns, exalted whatever they encased, which included seared, loosely packed patties with more charred edges and, as a result, more flavor.

Bruni last covered the 2004 Bush campaign. Perhaps there’s a lesson in this.