Driving to Distraction

Americans live in a big country.  We travel serious distances and practically live in our cars, which leads to some very strange behaviors.  From the Key West Citizen in Florida:

Florida Highway Patrol troopers say a two-vehicle crash Tuesday at Mile Marker 21 on Cudjoe Key was caused by a 37-year-old woman driver who was shaving her bikini area while her ex-husband took the wheel from the passenger seat.

FDIC Insured

Don't Panic.  Your bank has failed.

I tried to log in and check up on my savings account yesterday and was immediately welcomed by the message shown above.  One of the US bank regulators, the much maligned Office of Thrift Supervision, had declared the bank failed, shut it down, and put it into receivership.  

Fortunately, this means only mild inconveniences for me.  Firstly, I had only a few hundred dollars at this bank.  I opened an account here because of a good offering on interest rates plus frequent flier miles, but once those interest rates came down I moved most of that money elsewhere, just one individual in the hot money supply.  No one is winning that game these days

However, retail banking customers in the United States are almost always insured against failure.  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, colloquially FDIC and sometimes Fi-Dec, has guaranteed savers' money since 1934.  The institution insures accounts up to $250,000 at participating banks for each customer.  Banks, rather than taxpayers, put up premiums and fees that the become the purse out of which savers are made whole.

When a bank becomes insolvent the FDIC swoops in over the weekend and closes down operations in an orderly manner before Monday morning. The FDIC has been exceptionally busy and perhaps overworked in this recession.  Around 140 banks had to be closed in 2009, and another 26 have been named so far this year with another three weeks left in the first quarter.  But I, for one, am thankful for the assurance.

"Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs"

New York's Penn Station is as charming and welcoming as it is navigable.  This diagram shows the Long Island Railroad platforms deep underground.  Passengers connecting from LIRR to a NJ Transit or Amtrak train should head for the shaded are at the top left.  However, this map doesn't show any doorways or stairs there.  Trust me, the building doesn't feel any simpler in practice.  Image from MTA website.

The online magazine Slate began a multi-part series this week on signs.  The articles focus on how people use signage to find their way around locations.  Author Julia Turner says that the great increase in travel, mostly by air, has spurred architects and planners to think carefully about how they direct people, many of them on a tight schedule and unfamiliar with the local language, to move to their desired destinations.  In some circumstances, like driving at speed down the highway, quality signs can be a matter of life and death.  

The mobility of the post-War era explains why signage has proliferated and improved, but to me the real interest is in how these systems are bettered.  Placards on the wall represent only one example of the indicators by which we navigate.  Humans can also sense environmental zones, which is why we go to a building's high-roofed multi-story lobby to look for the elevators.  That big lobby also serves as a mental centerpoint when walking around the rest of building, whether or not it is actually centrally positioned.  Also a sign can't help if it hangs in the wrong place or contains no relevant information.  This is why hospitals have big red exterior drive-thrus for patients needing emergency treatment and no banners and arrows outside for those visiting the dentist on the twelfth floor.  For these reasons specialists in directions do not refer to their craft as "sign-making" but "wayfinding."

Slate's series does more than satisfies my appetite for visual analysis, but it chooses New York and London as two of its test cases!  Why is Penn Station so confusing?  How can anyone get from A to B in London town without an A to Zed?  The Legible London project might make it possible.  Bonus: The pilot program(me) by the Mayor's office follows the incremental testing and rollout methods advocated by Michael Blastland in Analysis last week on BBC Radio 4.  Art, design, podcasts, Anglo, American  -- trifecta!  Did I mention I am not the mathematical one in this couple?

 

One of the Legible London signs on Oxford Street.  Image from wayfinding firm Applied Information Group (AIG).

Animation Nation - Take 2

Small steps brought The Secret of Kells to New York.  Image from this New York Times slideshow.

Back in October, I wrote about attending Singapore's animation festival and seeing The Secret of Kells (sound alert), a movie directed by 33-year-old Irishman Tomm Moore.  Well, Moore's secret is now out in a big way.  The Secret earned a write-up in the New York Times on Tuesday, a major place in the New York International Children's Film Festival this month, and  a wider opening in Manhattan from today.  It also has a chance to shine at the Oscars as a nominee in the best animated feature category.  The NYT story focused only a bit on the historical underpinnings of the film and its aesthetic that I enjoyed so much.  Check out the paper's separate review to read about the distinct stylings of the animation.  Instead the big debut piece devoted most of its column inches to the word-of-mouth marketing effort employed by the film's distributors, both worldwide and in America, that earned it an Academy Award nomination.

The Secret's nomination puts it in competition with the very good films Up and Coraline.  It has only a very modest chance of success against these films, but the nomination should be a great encouragement to smaller animation outfits throughout the world.  Its inclusion loosens up the nominations monopoly usually held by Disney/Pixar.  Plus another heavyweight studio 20th Century Fox debuted Fantastic Mr. Fox to great acclaim and their own Oscar nomination this year.  The overall quality among this year's nominations suggests animation's widening talent pool should give filmgoers even more quality features to relish, even as the past decade has proven so good.  

New Yorker readers,  give The Secret of Kells a try, and if you want to be charmed by the early work of another great animation director, seek out Brad Bird's Iron Giant from 1999.

Monkey Business - Langkawi

Enjoying the waters on Pulau Beras Basah.

More pictures from our holiday time in Langkawi... and the islands nearby.  We took a boat trip on one of our afternoons to a secluded beach on Pulau Beras Basah. The adventures included watching sea eagles and Brahmin kites and a beachside barbecue.

Tasty flower crabs fresh off the grill.

The island hosts a private beach club used by a few Langkawi resorts and families.  The breezy, wooden buildings on site look as if they are barely keeping the jungle back from reclaiming the shoreline.  Much of the natural habitats surrounding nearby islands have tangled mangroves growing far out into the tidewaters.

Visitors arriving and enjoying the sands on Pulau Beras Basah.

Even as the owners keep the jungle at bay, the wildlife has already decided that tourists make for rich pickings.  Wild boars and their piglets snuffle at the forest's edge.  Macaque monkeys show up to welcome every arriving group in hopes of a handout.  You can see pictures of the troop after the jump.  Click on the link below left.

Strategic Default Meme

Stuyvestant Town and Peter Cooper Village: another investment underwater.  Photos from the NY Times.

Here's the idea.  The American housing market has become so bad that many indebted homeowners, perhaps up to ten percent of all mortgage holders, are now shouldering a repayment schedule so onerous that they would be better off returning the keys to the bank and finding their family a nicer rental someplace else. If enough people wake up to this reality and act accordingly the feeble property market could enter another round of unrestrained blood letting. 

The theory has been bubbling away in a number of news sources.  I first read about it before Christmas thanks to Daniel Gross at Slate/The Big Money.  He cited the Wall Street Journal's forecasts that in 2009 one million Americans will stop making payments on properties that they could actually afford with a bit more budgeting or additional income.  Then Nudge author Richard M. Thaler opined on these same homeowners in the New York Times, exploring what behavioral norms prevented people from making a rational business decision not to throw good money after bad.  The Planet Money podcast from NPR chimed in on the matter last week, chatting with a property lawyer in Arizona.  When the idea finally landed in the business section of the New York Times yesterday, the meme was certainly off and running fast.

Moulmein Road

The smorgasboard of religions in Singapore.  A buddhist association building stands beside the Church of Christ at right.  To the right beyond is the Sri Sathya Society.

The Passengers spent part of their Sunday afternoon photographing a few local landmarks along Moulmein Road, one of the main thoroughfares in our neighborhood.  Above and below are images of the Kuang Chee Tng Buddhist Association.

The building below stands on the opposite side of Moulmein Road.  It has a high fence around it as part of Singapore's Communicable Disease Centre, located on the campus of Tang Tok Seng Hospital.  This historic turreted house hosts the Tuberculosis Control Unit and outpatient clinic.  Notice the blue pilasters and ornamental plasterwork, architectural features imported during the colonial years.  Numerous buildings around here in the Balestier Road area have similar decoration with several outstanding examples on shophouses.

Singapore's Tuberculosis Control Unit.  The building behind, just visible at left, houses an x-ray unit.

The bluff facade of Tang Tock Seng hospital looms over the historic house of the TCU.