Month: April 2006

Happy 50th big metal boxes!

Everyone is talking about the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, but I had no idea that it was also the 50th birthday of the lowly and omnipresent Shipping Container…

It may not be printed in red on your calendar, but April 26 is an important date in economic history. Fifty years ago, the Ideal-X, a war-surplus oil tanker with a steel frame welded above its deck, loaded 58 aluminium containers at a dock in Newark, New Jersey. Five days later, the ship steamed into Houston, Texas, where trucks took on the metal boxes and carried them to their destinations.

This was the beginning of the container revolution. By dramatically lowering freight costs, the container transformed economic geography. Some of the world’s great ports – London and Liverpool, New York and San Francisco – saw their bustling waterfronts decay as the maritime industry decamped to new locations with room to handle containers and transport links to move them in and out. Manufacturers, no longer tied to the waterfront to reduce shipping costs, moved away from city centres, decimating traditional industrial districts. Eventually, production moved much farther afield, to places such as South Korea and China, which took advantage of cheap, reliable transportation to make goods that could not have been exported profitably before containerisation.

Via Telstar Logistics, who also just created the “Big Metal Box” Flickr group for “photos of cargo containers, container terminals, container ships, and container-based architecture.”

One last thing, it’s also Captain Sensible’s birthday!

Cat army annihilates destructive rats

This is the most cheerful news item I’ve read all week…

Cat army annihilates destructive rats
(China Daily)
Updated: 2006-04-12 09:36
A group of villagers recently prepared a sumptuous fish banquet for more than 200 cats to thank them for eradicating rats from their farmland.

Yangmei villagers in Sanjiang Township of Xinhui District in the city of Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, are expecting a good harvest this year thanks to the hard-working cats.

The village committee spent more than 12,000 yuan (US$1,500) to buy more than 200 cats, which they released onto farmland to help wipe out the rat problem.

Sanjiang Village has 86.67 hectares of rice fields and 13.33 hectares of other crops and suffered from a rat infestation after most of the snakes were caught and slaughtered by local villagers in previous years.

UC Irvine awards Gregory Coleman a full Master’s degree

James writes…

Today is a great day! Today I received for my father his Master’s degree in music from the University of California at Irvine. I have to blog & run, but I’ll be back to post more details tonight.

The Register article is online now…

IRVINE – It was Gregory Coleman’s dying wish.

On the day he died, Coleman, his body tumor-ridden, could barely scratch out his initials on a letter asking UC Irvine to award him a master of fine arts degree in music.

He died from cancer in September just a few classes short of completing the curriculum.

“The last thing I told him that day was, ‘You will get this degree,'” said his son, James Coleman. “I promised him that. All I did was help him speak beyond the grave.”

Tuesday, UC Irvine awarded Coleman the diploma his father earned. University officials granted the master of fine arts degree in guitar after a several-month process of determining that Gregory Coleman’s professional and teaching career in classical music had satisfied any missing degree requirements.

His CD “Isla California” met the degree’s final requirement of composition and was called an “exceptional accomplishment.” Coleman’s degree is only one of five that the university has awarded after a student’s death.

“Getting this degree emphasizes the importance of formal education that was so vital to my father,” Coleman said. “When he taught guitar, he wasn’t just teaching music – it was about teaching life.”

James Coleman, 33, began his quest for his father’s degree shortly after he died. Almost like a lawyer, he put together evidence of his father’s work and accomplishments.

Ron Purcell, director of the International Guitar Research Archive at Cal State Northridge, entered Coleman as one of the pioneers of American guitar. He cited “Isla California” in which Coleman plays traditional music from the rancho era, as an example of the preservation of California’s historical music.

Associate Dean Colleen Reardon, also a musician, played a key role in Coleman’s quest. She demonstrated that Coleman’s numerous performances, his CDs and the extra classes he took were part of his “intellectual curiosity.” The music department’s unanimous support sealed the case.

“This was a long process,” said Fernandez. “In the end, this degree has more value – it was earned. It’s so nice to give that satisfaction and closure to the family. He was one of the best. He was agile, expressive and totally committed.”

Coleman’s battle with melanoma began 18 years ago when a student spotted a mole on his neck. Doctors removed it, and for 15 years he was symptom-free. In January 2003, doctors found eight tumors in his body. Coleman suspended his studies at UCI to go through intensive chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Mark Westling, Coleman’s friend and student of 30 years, played “Romanza” for him the day he died.

“He was an extremely elegant and passionate player,” said Westling. “This is a wonderful closure for Greg. A fitting award to an accomplished musician and someone who loved education.”

Things I Like – “I Skipped February & March” April 2006 doubleplusgood edition

1. The online collection of the journal Design from 1965 through 1974.

2. Ansel Adams’ photos of Los Angeles.

In any case I was running a search in the Los Angeles Public Library’s immense online collection of photographs when something in a record caught my eye, the name “Ansel Adams.” The image attached to this record was of a parking lot with a cars jumbled together around a prominent No Parking sign. I don’t normally associate Ansel Adams with ironic snapshots of parking lots or small format urban photography at all. Like you, a photograph by Adams means the classic evocation of the great American wilderness. It never crossed my mind that he had photographed any of the cities of men, much less Los Angeles. But there it was. Maybe, I thought, there were more.

See the Flickr set for these.

3. The Day Britain Stopped. Another in a series of BBC’s “documentary futures” programs, this one covering the domino effects generated by an overloaded and overworked transportation network.

4. Igor Oleynikov’s blog. I’ve hit link fatigue with many of the illustration blogs lately – too much similar work that’s all above-average, but Olejnikov’s work continually gives my retinas a much-needed recalibration.

5. Nils Olav. A King Penguin who lives in the Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland, Nils was recently promoted to Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Royal Guards.