Proposed Munger Hall at University of California at Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara Independent:

A consulting architect on UCSB’s Design Review Committee has quit his post in protest over the university’s proposed Munger Hall project, calling the massive, mostly-windowless dormitory plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”

In his October 25 resignation letter to UCSB Campus Architect Julie Hendricks, Dennis McFadden ― a well-respected Southern California architect with 15 years on the committee ― goes scorched earth on the radical new building concept, which calls for an 11-story, 1.68-million-square-foot structure that would house up to 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their small, single-occupancy bedrooms.

The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly. Munger maintains the small living quarters would coax residents out of their rooms and into larger common areas, where they could interact and collaborate. He also argues the off-site prefabrication of standardized building elements ― the nine residential levels feature identical floor plans ― would save on construction costs. The entire proposal, which comes as UCSB desperately attempts to add to its overstretched housing stock, is budgeted somewhere in the range of $1.5 billion. Chancellor Henry Yang has hailed it as “inspired and revolutionary.”

McFadden disagreed sharply with what the university has described as “Charlie’s Vision” for the benefits of a “close-knit” living experience. “An ample body of documented evidence shows that interior environments with access to natural light, air, and views to nature improve both the physical and mental wellbeing of occupants,” he wrote. “The Munger Hall design ignores this evidence and seems to take the position that it doesn’t matter.”

So far, McFadden continued, the university has not offered any research or data to justify the unprecedented departure from normal student housing standards, historical trends, and basic sustainability principles. “Rather,” he said, “as the ‘vision’ of a single donor, the building is a social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact on the lives and personal development of the undergraduates the university serves.” …

[I]n the nearly fifteen years I served as a consulting architect to the DRC, no project was brought before the committee that is larger, more transformational, and potentially more destructive to the campus as a place than Munger Hall.” This kind of outlandish proposal is exactly why the committee exists, he said.

McFadden draws striking comparisons between Munger Hall and other large structures to illustrate its colossal footprint. Currently, he said, the largest single dormitory in the world is Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, which houses 4,000 students and is composed of multiple wings wrapped around numerous courtyards with over 25 entrances.

“Munger Hall, in comparison, is a single block housing 4,500 students with two entrances,” McFadden said, and would qualify as the eighth densest neighborhood on the planet, falling just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It would be able to house Princeton University’s entire undergraduate population, or all five Claremont Colleges. “The project is essentially the student life portion of a mid-sized university campus in a box,” he said.

The project is utterly detached from its physical setting, McFadden goes on, and has no relationship to UCSB’s “spectacular coastal location.” It is also out of place with the scale and texture of the rest of campus, he said, “an alien world parked at the corner of the campus, not an integrally related extension of it.” Even the rooftop courtyard looks inward and “may as well be on the ground in the desert as on the eleventh floor on the coast of California,” he said.

RTWT

That architect is dead right. It looks like something Stalin would have built.

The site of the former Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, built in 1080, disused since the 1880s, and demolished in the 1960s, is going to be part of the route of a new High-Speed Railroad Line connecting London, the Midlands, the North and Scotland. But construction was delayed to allow archaeologists to first have a crack at excavating the former church site.

First, they found that the Norman Church had been built on the flint foundations of an earlier Anglo-Saxon Church. BBC 9/21/21 story

And the discoveries keep on coming. Guardian 10/29/21 story

Roman statues of a man, woman and child have been uncovered by archaeologists at an abandoned medieval church on the route of the HS2 high-speed railway.

The discovery was “utterly astounding”, according to Rachel Wood, the lead archaeologist at the site in Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire. “They’re really rare finds in the UK,” she said.

“The statues are exceptionally well preserved, and you really get an impression of the people they depict – literally looking into the faces of the past is a unique experience.”

A hexagonal glass Roman jug was also uncovered. Despite being in the ground for what is thought to be more than 1,000 years, large pieces were intact. The only known comparable item is a vessel on display in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The statues were unearthed at the ruins of a Norman church, where a team of archaeologists has been working for the past six months.

Saint Mary’s church was built in 1080, and renovated in the 13th, 14th and 17th centuries. It was abandoned in 1880, and demolished in 1966 after being declared dangerous. Its ruins became overgrown with vegetation.

In May, archaeologists and engineers began removing the remaining structure of the church and excavating the burial ground that was in use for 900 years, with the last recorded interment in 1908.

Experts believe the location was used as a Roman mausoleum before the Norman church was built. About 3,000 bodies have been removed and will be reburied at a new site.

Wood said the discovery of the statues and jug “leads us to wonder what else might be buried beneath England’s medieval village churches.

RTWT

Connecticut Hall on Yale’s Old Campus was completed in 1752.

Yale Officialdom ought to feel ashamed for its hypocrisy on Free Speech, its swooning embrace of Left-wing Intolerance and Mob Rule, its eagerness to climb onboard any form of fashionable irrationality and hysteria.

Yale should apologize for letting a mob of snowflakes hound the Master of Silliman and his wife out of office. Yale should apologize for renaming Calhoun College, for modifying the College Master title, and for naming one of two new colleges for a mentally-disordered radical nobody not a communist had ever heard of.

If we want to go back historically, Yale ought to be ashamed at supporting the Communist subjugation and enslavement of Indochina (which still persists) and the subsequent genocide in Cambodia. Yale should be ashamed for closing down the two ROTC programs, tearing down both their buildings, and selling the French 75mm Field Gun awarded to the Yale Artillery Battalion by the French Government in commemoration of their service in WWI for scrap. Yale ought to look at the history of Kingman Brewster saying that the Panthers couldn’t get a fair trial and being proven correct in an ironical sense when acquittals and a few slap on the wrist convictions were handed down by a New Haven jury to the accused unquestionably guilty of murder and torture.

But, no, Peter Salovey thinks we ought to feel simply awful over there being Negro slaves in Colonial New Haven almost three centuries ago. It also requires investigation, and regret, that Yale circa 1915 actually participated in a general era of National Reconciliation during a time in which the last combatants in the War Between the States were passing from the scene.

In the Gothic and Georgian lunatic asylum bordering New Haven’s Green, so thoroughly has the Left’s absolute obsession with Identity Group Victimhood taken possession of the inmates and staff that professional scholars no longer view certain particular aspects and periods of History with objectivity and detachment. Instead, they might as well adopt period costumes because they are fanatically determined to connect with that History as active partisans and they are equally determined to inflict injury upon and punish their long-deceased (and, at this point, essentially imaginary) opponents.

Yale News:

For the past year, Yale scholars, librarians, New Haven community members, and student researchers have been digging through Yale’s own past for a deeper understanding of the university’s historical relationship with slavery and its legacy.

During a three-day academic conference starting Oct. 28, experts from across Yale and the nation will discuss what they’ve learned so far, including new insights into the construction of Connecticut Hall, an iconic Old Campus structure built in part by enslaved Africans, and the “reconciliationist” approach to Yale’s Civil War memorial in Woolsey Hall. …

Salovey has described the “Yale & Slavery” project — part of an ongoing national discussion about racism and discrimination — as an urgent reckoning with the university’s history, and an important opportunity to analyze, understand, and publicly communicate it.

“Like many of America’s oldest institutions, Yale has seldom, if ever, recognized the labor, the experiences, and the contributions of enslaved people and their descendants to our university’s history or our present,” Salovey said. “For generations, we have looked away from what is in plain sight. But now we are acknowledging that slavery, the slave trade, and abolition are part of Yale’s history.

“It is important we shine a light into every concealed corner of our past, because moving forward requires an honest reckoning with our history, and because the purpose of our university is to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge. The fundamental work we all share applies as much to Yale’s past as anyone’s.”

The conference is hosted by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, part of the MacMillan Center at Yale. Founded in 1998, the Gilder Lehrman Center is the first such center in the world to study such international historical questions.

Topics during the conference will include the university’s 18th-century theological roots; the economics of slavery-created wealth; the place of Southern slaveholders at Yale during its first two centuries; medical and scientific legacies of race at Yale; forces of abolition at the university; the history of labor in building the campus; and why the inclusion of Confederate veterans was central to the purpose of the university’s Civil War memorial when it was created in 1915.

RTWT

“In a Lonely Place” (1950).

Titus Techera and Terry Teachout Substacking on Film Noir.

The films noir that remain watchable, by contrast, are the ones that concentrate on the dark crosscurrents of middle-class American life & revolve, as do the great Westerns of the ’40s & ’50s, around the problem of individual responsibility. To be sure, the tacit assumption is that the anonymous cities in which films noir are set are so corrupt that upright individual conduct is all but impossible. Nevertheless, every classic film noir hinges on a crucial moral choice made by the protagonist, as Walter Neff, Fred MacMurray’s character, admits to the audience in his voice-over narration for Double Indemnity: “I’m not trying to whitewash myself,” he says about the crime he commits out of love, lust, & greed. “I fought it…only maybe I didn’t fight it hard enough.”

Remember this item from August 22nd?

Daily Mail:

The mysterious deaths of a British Google engineer and his family on a hiking trail were not a case of homicide, police say.

The bodies of Jonathan Gerrish, 45, his wife Ellen Chung and their daughter Muji – along with their dog Oski – were found by search teams on Tuesday in an area of the Sierra National Forest known as Devil’s Gulch. …

The Marisopa County Sheriff’s Office is now ruling out homicide in the hiking trail deaths, Fox News reports. Spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said: ‘Initially, yes, when we come across a family with no apparent cause of death, there’s no smoking gun, there’s no suicide note, there’s nothing like that, we have to consider all options.

‘Now that we’re five days in, no, we’re no longer considering homicide as a cause of death.’

———————————

Outside magazine:

On October 21, 2021, the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office announced its long-awaited conclusions about what had killed an active, outdoorsy family and their dog on a hiking trail in California’s Sierra National Forest on August 15. They determined that the family died of “hyperthermia and probable dehydration” on a day when temperatures hit 109 degrees. The cause of death of Oski, an eight-year-old Aussie-Akita mix, remains undetermined. Based on a veterinary examination of the dog’s remains and other evidence on the scene, Sheriff Jeremy Briese said Oski probably also died of heat-related issues. …

The mystery surrounding the family’s death both saddened and captivated people worldwide. Speculation flew on social media, where armchair sleuths hypothesized about everything from poisoning by drug cartels, to a hit by Garrish’s one-time employer, Google. A more promising hypothesis, reported in September by the San Francisco Chronicle, was that the family had been exposed to dangerous anatoxins from algae blooms in the nearby South Fork Merced River (the Sierra National Forest closed the surrounding area as a precaution). The investigation’s toxicology report proved otherwise.

In a press conference, Briese said 30 different agencies aided his office’s investigation, including the FBI. “This is an unfortunate and tragic event due to the weather,” Briese said.

The trail where the Chung-Gerrish family died is an approximately eight-mile loop with more than 4,000 feet of elevation change. It starts at 3,880 feet of elevation, drops down to a river valley at 1,800 feet, and then climbs back out. Hikers typically access it from a dirt road called Hites Cove Road, about 18 miles northeast of Mariposa, at a rudimentary trailhead. There is no cell phone service in the area. Leak Pen, an assistant recreation officer at the Bass Lake Ranger District, which oversees that portion of the Sierra National Forest, described the loop as “steep and challenging and mostly popular during the cooler spring months.”

When the family began their hike at 8:00 A.M. on Sunday, August 15, it was about 75 degrees. The investigation noted that Gerrish’s cell phone showed he had researched the trail the day before using an app, charting out the family’s route. They probably expected to be on the trail for four or five hours, back home in time for a late lunch. They’d packed some snacks, a bottle with baby formula, and an 85-ounce bladder full of water. A common guideline for adult hikers is to drink 16 ounces of water per hour under normal circumstances. Following that math, two people hiking for four hours need 128 total ounces of water. Add in extra for the dog, and to contend with the hot temperatures forecast that day, and Chung and Gerrish probably should have been carrying two 85-ounce bladders. They did not bring a water purifier or a portable dog bowl.

Their hike began with a steep, yet scenic 2.2-mile descent down to the South Fork Merced River, by which time temperatures would have risen by at least 15 degrees, into the 90s. From there, the family trekked parallel to the river for just under two miles. During that time, it’s easy to imagine Oski romping along the riverbank and getting a drink. Perhaps Chung and Gerrish began to worry about their own dwindling water supply. It was searingly hot, over 100 degrees when they reached the hike’s halfway point at the intersection with the Savage-Lundy Trail, which would bring them back to their car.

The app that Gerrish had used to plan their outing wouldn’t have told him that the Ferguson Fire of 2018 had incinerated all the California incense-cedars and pines that used to shade the trail. The tourism site Yosemite.com calls the Savage-Lundy “the most difficult trail in the area.” It gains more than 2,000 feet of elevation in its three-mile ascent, on a south/southeast facing slope exposed to constant sunlight. The Chung-Gerrish family only made it up the first two miles. Temperatures for that section of the trail, from 12:50 P.M. to 2:50 P.M., topped out at 109 F. When local authorities found their bodies two days later, the bladder was empty, save for small traces of water.

Puppies are for torturing, cars are evil, and your kids belong to the state. You guys are absolutely killing it today.

— Federalist Muskrat 🇺🇸 (@Muskrat__) October 25, 2021

Yesterday I rented a boat and took the leader of one of Flexport's partners in Long Beach on a 3 hour of the port complex. Here's a thread about what I learned.

— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) October 22, 2021

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Johnny Sanphillippo describes some interesting aspects of the operation of the economics of modernity on the residential market of San Francisco.

New York City is slightly different, but shares the same rent control and building permit policies and the same national tax system.

I enjoy chatting with strangers as I walk around the city. People self-select in or out of these conversations, but the ones who chat back teach me quite a lot I’d probably never know any other way. This lady described how she and her husband built this home themselves back in 1953. He had just returned from the Korean War, rolled up his sleeves, bought lumber, and built the place with the help of his working-class tradesmen family members with minimal debt.

Land was affordable, building materials were readily available, and regulations hadn’t yet twisted themselves into the Gordian knot of the present moment. Construction permits were a simple over-the-counter transaction for a nominal fee. I’ve talked to many people of that generation all around the country, including a few of my own relatives, and it was common for people to build their own homes seventy years ago, even in big cities.

Here’s another little tidbit about this house. According to the algorithms, this place is currently worth $1,400,000. Rent for a property like this is assumed to be $4,500, although that number is substantially too low in my experience. Public records show property taxes on this house are $766 per year. That’s a consequence of Proposition 13, a 1978 tax revolt that caps property tax at the value of the house on the day it was purchased, plus a 2% annual increase, rather than present value.

That one law is probably what’s keeping a lot of older folks in their homes as prices reached for the stars over the decades, which is exactly what the law was designed to do. But it had unintended consequences. In order to make up for the lost revenue, the city has found all sorts of alternative income streams, not least of which is to massively jack up the cost of new building permits. This same couple couldn’t duplicate the construction of their own home today largely because the culture and economy that existed in 1953 is entirely gone.

RTWT

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Alec Baldwin weeping outside sheriff’s office.

Postmillennial:

The Sante Fe Sheriff’s office said in a statement that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza “…were shot when a prop firearm was discharged by Alec Baldwin, 68, producer and actor.”

According to Variety, Alec Baldwin fired the prop gun on the set of Rust in New Mexico Thursday, accidentally killing Halyna Hutchins and wounding Souza. The movie was filming at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, a popular production location south of Santa Fe.

The Sheriff’s office received a 911 call reporting the incident at 1:50 PM Mountain Time. According to investigators, “…it appears that the scene being filmed involved the use of a prop firearm when it was discharged. Detectives are investigating how and what type of projectile was discharged.”

Deadline previously reported that “…a principal castmember cocked a gun during a rehearsal, unaware that there were live rounds in it, hitting two people, a man and a woman. The man was hit in the shoulder, while the woman was airlifted to the hospital for stomach surgery.”

Possibly if Alec Baldwin was not such an enemy of firearms ownership, he might, in his sixty-eight years of life, had become acquainted with the ordinary standard rules of safe gun handling. He would have known better than to point a gun at people and pull the trigger. Especially he would have known better than to depress a trigger never bothering to look and find out whether or not the gun was actually loaded.

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Spencer Klavan is perfectly justified in ranting against this intolerable, absolutely shameful stupidity. It shows what sheep people have become. My parents’ generation would never have put up with this.

Walking through an airport these days is like digging through sedimentary layers of useless government regulation. The TSA security line is where every hare-brained bureaucratic policy goes to die. Except they don’t die: they sit, fossilized in horrible suspended animation, crust upon crust of outdated protection against misunderstood crises.

Here is what happens now when you board a plane. You have to put on your COVID-19 mask as you approach the first security checkpoint, where you will be asked to take off your mask to verify your identity. Then you put on your mask but take off your belt and shoes, preparing to irradiate your body and your possessions in x-ray scanners. If anything seems amiss you will be apologetically groped by some poor functionary. Both of you will be too embarrassed by the indecency of it all to look one another in the eye, and the agent will be so eager to get the whole thing over with that if you really were hiding anything, he certainly wouldn’t find it. …

Maybe you buy a ten-dollar cardboard sandwich to eat on the plane, where you will be accosted if you do not put your mask back on between bites. Mercifully at long last you will land. Then the flight attendants will remind you to exit the plane slowly, leaving spaces between rows. This is because you need to maintain six feet of distance from the people with whom, for the past few hours, you have sustained a level and duration of physical proximity you otherwise reserve for your spouse. Safety first, you see.

The cumulative effect of this elaborate kabuki show is humiliation. It is shameful and emasculating to lurch through a series of stylized gestures that obviously make no sense. Everyone involved can see there is no coherent logic behind the several procedures which now govern airline travel. When tested, they do not appear particularly effective. Many of them obviously contradict and frustrate one another. Being forced to do irrational things, like being forced to say things you don’t believe, is a form of insult.

These nonsensical parlor tricks, dreamed up by inept politicians to assuage their own creeping sense of inadequacy, induce a superstitious kind of comfort in irrational neurotics and a crushing sense of demoralization in normal people. For decades our leaders have been too cowardly or sly to say what they were really after, too out-of-touch to see or care how their ineptitude would affect us, and too distant from the consequences of their actions to feel any accountability to real, demonstrable results.

RTWT

HT: Vanderleun.