Good Morning Charles,
Are you bewaring the Ides of March?:)

The other thing that Mayor Bloomberg has done is kick off an ad campaign against teenage pregnancy:

http://www.city-journal.org/2013/eon0311…

To be sure, it is hotly controversial:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/nyregi…

Still, I commend him for trying to tackle an intractable problem. By & large, I like what Mayor Bloomberg has done for NYC. No wonder it is appealing.

Charles,
Whoops! @1 I accidentally placed the comment in the wrong posting thread. It's in the correct one now.

Complex adaptive systems.

Charles: You'd love The Quark and the Jaguar, if you haven't already read it.

@3, i needed a good book recommendation. this sounds perfect. thanks.

I'm reminded immediately of Tracy Kidder's 1983 Pulitzer winner The Soul of a New Machine, essentially the story of a new type of computer being built and the obsessive, tireless engineers that birthed it. The creation of the thing was at exactly the point where computers reached a complexity that no one person could possibly comprehend. It seems the "death of the author" is extending also to our habitat, both through the end of "master builders" and also "master governors" (the notion that Obama's presidency has been especially imperial flies in the face of how even his modest projects have so often been stunted). The liberal in me is ultimately comfortable with this; it means our institutions, processes, and projects will depend and reflect our sociality. I admit we do sacrifice the kind of Romantic success of our "masters" and that certain aesthetic modes are going to be nigh-impossible to achieve, excepting perhaps modest intimations through corporate and private patronage. What we must develop, in a pragmatic-liberal spirit (ala Richard Rorty), is a poeticized process, an aesthetic of construction and use. The installations of Christo seem a helpful model in this regard, given how the process of their making and striking is integral to the piece itself.