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Mortgage Complaints
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER The 2008 mortgage crisis fascinated me at the time and then last year I bought a home. Therefore, I was pretty terrified during the whole process. Plus, I felt naked having to share my entire financial life to strangers. The NY Times had a recent article on “Complaints About Closings.” It
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Transporting Transportation
The Cape Town World Cup Stadium glimmered in the afternoon sunshine, and the breeze from the ocean whipped the nearby neighborhood. Indeed, it was another perfect day in South Africa’s second-most populous city – yet there was almost no one to be seen. And there was no one on the new MyCiTi bus rapid transit
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New Years Steam
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER [UPDATE: Pratt Administration has stated that next year will be the last year (not this year) for the steam whistles, at Conrad’s discretion!] For the past 50 or so years Chief Engineer Conrad Milster has been setting up steam whistles at Pratt Institute’s campus in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn on New Year’s
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Income Rising?
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER I was reading this article on Bill Moyer’s website, which is essentially following up on a Pew Study which indicates in very broad terms that educated people tended to see increases in wages over the past 20 years. Many commenters responded by saying they hadn’t seen those sorts of increases. I
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Counting the Carbon Foot Prints and Changing Our Behavior!
In a recent discussion with a planner the question of over-consumption came up and how it impacts the health of our planet. It is understood that we consume more raw materials than a sustainable eco-system can provide for. In 2007 our (global) Ecological Foot Print was 1.5 planet earth, i.e. we consumed earth’s resources 1.5 times faster than the earth
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Architecture of Love and Death (part II)
This is the second, and last post, of Architecture of Love and Death. In the first post, I proposed that Egyptian pyramids were built in preparation of Death for their nobility, while Muslim mausoleums such as the Taj Mahal were built by family members out of love and devotion for the deceased. Islamic orthodoxy frowns upon building permanent structures over graves, fearing
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Creativity
WRITTEN BY ALINE FADER Thanksgiving was a time to take stock of the good things in one’s life. Some of the things I am thankful for (beyond the usual health/family/friends items) include: having some sort of sense of humor, and having had multiple opportunities to work with creative people. One of those creative people I
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Schouwburgplein: More than meets the eye
Dutch cities are known for many things, but grand plazas aren’t one of them. Whilst there are many older plazas in the inner cities of Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht, one plaza in Rotterdam counters the typical image of the Dutch plaza: the old-city center point surrounded by mainly low or midrise buildings. Schouwburgplein (Theatre
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Architecture of Love and Death (Part I)
This post is about funerary architecture of two different people in different times and places, ancient Egyptians and Muslim Mughals in India. Both of these people built great pieces of architecture to their dead. In Part 1 I will focus on the religious thought or absence of it behind these great pieces of architecture, i.e. Pyramids and Taj Mahal. I believe the former
