Charles Jencks is the author of several books on art and architecture. In 2004 he won the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums with his design for Landform Ueda.
His most recent book is The Iconic Building.

One can discern the beginnings of a shift in architecture that relates to a deep transformation going on in the sciences and in time will permeate all other areas of life. The new sciences of complexity - fractals, nonlinear dynamics, the new cosmology, self-organizing systems - have brought about the change in perspective. We have moved from a mechanistic view of the universe to one that is self-organizing at all levels, from the atom to the galaxy.
Illuminated by the computer, this new worldview is paralleled by changes now occurring in architecture.

The plurality of styles is a keynote. This reflects an underlying concern for the increasing pluralism of global cities. Growing out of post-modern complexity of the sixties and seventies - Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi - is the complexity theory of the 1980s:
Pluralism leads to conflict, the inclusion of opposite tastes and composite goals, a melting and boiling pot. Modernist purity and reduction could not handle this reality very well.

The Death of God, like the death of other major narratives over the last hundred years, may be confined to the west, especially visible now that the globe is experiencing the ultimate clash of civilizations. But fundamentalisms, either American or Other, are not living cultural movements however powerful they may be. They have produced no art, architecture or writing worth preserving, and the deeper problems remain. In spite of these problems, the question of whether the new paradigm exists in architecture is worth asking. What we’re seeing may be a false start; the old paradigm of Modernism can easily reassert its hegemony, as it is lurking behind every Blair and Bush. But a wind is stirring architecture; at least it is the beginning of a shift in theory and practice.

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Posted: 12:57:48 PM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/07/03.html#a6831

Last Saturday, June 26th, after a summer evening thunderstorm, a bank of spectacular mammatus clouds formed over Manhattan," reports Snehal Patel of New York. "It was an amazing display that looked like large orange cotton balls falling from the sky."
He took this picture using an iPhone 3G:

Mammatus clouds, named for their resemblance to a cow's underbelly, sometimes appear at the end of severe thunderstorms when the thundercloud is breaking up. Researchers have called them an "intriguing enigma," because no one knows exactly how and why they form. The clouds are fairly common but often go unnoticed because potential observers have been chased indoors by the rain. If you are one of them, dash outside when the downpour stops; you could witness a beautiful mystery in the sky.

Posted: 11:36:26 AM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/29.html#a6808

Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around The World from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Posted: 12:03:06 PM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/28.html#a6805

My brother Abe [Zelmanowitz, 55] worked in the north tower of the World Trade Centre, on the 27th floor. He could have got out, but his colleague, Ed, a quadriplegic, was trapped with him. My other brother and sister-in-law called him, begging him to leave, but he said he would wait for help to get Ed out. But help came too late.

Then Bush made his speech at the National Cathedral [September 14 2001]. He mentioned my brother's heroic act, and it became immediately apparent to me that my country was going to use my brother's death to justify attacks in Afghanistan. That was as horrendous a blow to me as the actual attacks on September 11. I hoped and prayed that this country would not unleash forces in my brother's name. When it [the bombing of Afghanistan] happened, I was horrified and devastated.

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Posted: 8:21:55 PM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/24.html#a6791

GM foods were first put on the market in the early 1990s.
Typically, genetically modified foods are transgenic plant products:
soybean, corn, canola, and cotton seed oil, but animal products have been developed.

For example, in 2006 a pig engineered to produce omega-3 fatty acids through the expression of a roundworm gene was controversially produced. Researchers have also developed a genetically-modified breed of pigs that are able to absorb plant phosphorus more efficiently, and as a consequence the phosphorus content of their manure is reduced by as much as 60%.

Critics have objected to GM foods on several grounds, including perceived safety issues, ecological concerns, and economic concerns raised by the fact that these organisms are subject to intellectual property law.

Although most GM crops are grown in North America, in recent years there has been rapid growth in the area sown in developing countries. For instance in 2005 the largest increase in crop area planted to GM crops (soybeans) was in Brazil (94,000 km2 in 2005 versus 50,000 km2 in 2004.)
There has also been rapid and continuing expansion of GM cotton varieties in India since 2002. (Cotton is a major source of vegetable cooking oil and animal feed.) It is predicted that in 2008/9 32,000 km2 of GM cotton will be harvested in India (up more than 100 percent from the previous season).
Indian national average cotton yields of GM cotton were seven times lower in 2002, because the parental cotton plant used in the genetic engineered variant was not well suited to the climate of India and failed. The publicity given to transgenic trait Bt insect resistance has encouraged the adoption of better performing hybrid cotton varieties, and the Bt trait has substantially reduced losses to insect predation.

Though controversial and often disputed, economic and environmental benefits of GM cotton in India to the individual farmer have been documented.

Some scientists argue that there is more than enough food in the world and that the hunger crisis is caused by problems in food distribution and politics, not production, so people should not be offered food that may carry any degree of risk.

This argument assumes that genetically modified foods present risks not present in traditional foodstuffs, which are demonstrably not free of risk.

High-fructose corn syrup & Obesity in Children? - video's

Posted: 10:29:26 AM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/22.html#a6776

Some people claim that modern crop pictures are just abstract landscape art, drawn in English fields by human fakers with rope and boards, and that such patterns have no deeper meaning.

Such a view is profoundly wrong, because serious researchers can now understand clearly what most crop pictures mean.

Two pictures from the summer of 2008 showed for example pi to ten digits as 3.141592654, or our nine-planet solar system as it will appear on December 23, 2012 when the Mayan Long Count calendar ends.

Detailed forensic inspection of the fields suggests that neither picture (nor many others) could have been locally human-made. Quite surprisingly, instead of alien symbols, those authentic crop pictures often show long-forgotten symbols from our distant past on Earth:
whether from Egypt, the ancient British Isles or central America.

Read more HERE

Posted: 12:15:12 AM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/19.html#a6765

Glaciers and Glacial Warming, Receding Glaciers

The first photographs made for World View of Global Warming, ten years ago, were of glaciers in Antarctica and Peru. This page shows a selection of the locations where we have documented glacier and ice cap retreat -- a small set of images illustrating the overwhelming evidence from hundreds of glaciers and ice caps on every continent that global warming is severely affecting the water and glacial cycles of the planet. This is a profound change that unlike natural cycles like the Little Ice Age of the 16th and 17th centuries is proceeding very rapidly and appears tied to no natural cycles. The best correlation for this change to all but a handful of the 160,000 land glaciers and parts of the great ice caps is to rising atmospheric temperatures tied to increasing amounts of greenhouse gases.

The largest implication of this loss of glaciers is not the change in scenery, but the fact that the seasonal meltwater from glaciers, especially in Asia and South America, is the life support for billions of people. Large cities like Lima get much of their water from glaciers. In other parts of the world, glacier water keeps streams cool and full for salmon and other important wildlife. And as more and more water reaches the ocean, it is increasing sea level at a faster rate --- which threatens every coastal city and shoreline. New scientific projections show at least a three foot (one meter) rise in ocean levels by the end of this century, part of which is also due to the expansion of warming sea water. This will inundate rice fields and estuaries that feed billions, and push into the heart of the worlds largest cities --- and make each storm a threat of more devastating waves and surges.

The Pasterze, Austria's longest glacier, was about 2 kilometers longer in the 19th C. but is now completely out of sight from this overlook on the Grossglockner High Road. The Margaritzen-Strausee, a dammed artificial lake, now is in the place where the glacier terminus was in 1875. Measurements of the Pasterze began in 1889 and it has been pulling back the entire time, in approximate step with regional temperatures that have been increasing. The glacier is now about eight Km long and loses about 15 meters per year. However in 2003 the Pasterze decreased 30 meters in length and 6.5 meters in thickness.

Read more:H E R E

Posted: 7:50:15 AM  
link to this article: http://www.marinasmasters.com/2006/categories/articles/2009/06/15.html#a6747