CompuServe Messages

I love theoretical musing. I spend a good half hour each day daydreaming about NURBS, IK, spline patches, etc…, and especially about a non intel/DOS platform, although you know what they say: familiarity breeds contempt, and I'm sure the negative side in me could fine gripes on any OS/platform. The Visual Dicitionary sounds brilliant, I've been hoping to find something like that. There is a complete volume(s) of Edwared Muybridge's Humans and Animals in Motion waiting for me at the local film/theater bookstore. I'm going to pick it up today. It is the essential motion studies book. I come from Europe (Munich, Germany) and also find architecture there more interesting on the whole, and for the same reasons: they just don't build them the way they used to. That's also why I prefer to live in older American cities like Manhattan, San Francisco, Chicago, etc…. At least there you can find a beautiful old building made of more than sheetrock and toothpicks. I absolutely DETEST modern construction methods. I have'nt lived in a building built after 1900 in quite some time. I agree with you about poor construction methods leading to excessive damage in the LA earthquake. I know there are plenty of unscrupulous, cheap contractors out there who just want to throw up a box and make some cash, and don't give a sh*t whether it'll survive the next five years, let alone a moderate to serious earthquake. Building codes in San Francisco are EXTREMELY stiff, and enforced with a heavy hand, but it payed off during the last serious earthquake here (7.1) where the damage was minimal, although there was plenty of tragedy. I feel worst for the folks in LA who have been paying off mortgages on condominiums in poorly built structures, and now have lost their homes, and are most likely not insured against an earthquake. It is a horrible tradgedy, and I wish contractors could be held responsible for building sub-standard structures that fall down in a 6.6 earthquake. It's really depressing. John Tissavary (La Luna cie)