Brian Ulrich:

Not if, but when.

Over the past 7 years I have been engaged with a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live.

Thom Andersen:

Perhaps "Blade Runner" expresses a nostalgia for a dystopian vision of the future that has become outdated. This vision offered some consolation, because it was at least sublime. Now the future looks brighter, hotter and blander. Buffalo will become Miami, and Los Angeles will become Death Valley at least until the rising ocean tides wipe it away. Computers will get faster, and we will get slower. There will be plenty of progress, but few of us will be any better off or happier for it. Robots won't be sexy or dangerous, they'll be dull and efficient and they'll take our jobs.

Gregory Clark:

The economic problems of the future will not be about growth but about something more nettlesome: the ineluctable increase in the number of people with no marketable skills, and technology's role not as the antidote to social conflict, but as its instigator.

Niall Ferguson:

Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky.

Even Felix the Cat's luck ran out during the Depression.

Jared Diamond:

When you have a large society that consumes lots of resources, that society is likely to collapse once it hits its peak.

David Piling, at lunch with Jared Diamond:

I am famished, and opt for a bit of everything.

Ginia Bellafante:

There used to be a time if you didn't have money to buy something, you just didn't buy it.

Rebecca Brock:

People say to me, "Whatever it takes." I tell them, It's going to take everything.

Dark Stores

A good idea that doesn't happen is no idea at all.
-- Louis Kahn

This quote is relayed by Richard Saul Wurman in My Architect [2]. I enjoyed the film and would recommend it to those with an interest, but some architects seemed to want less personal journey and more architectural analysis.

Wurman also mentions this quote in the April 2001 issue of design matters:

Louis Kahn said to me shortly before he died that an idea that does not happen is no idea at all. Late in his life, Mies van der Rohe told a student interviewing him about his work that the secret to his success was to "do good work."

Other mentions of this quote: 1, 2, 3, 4.

More photos at Google.

I also liked this exchange, from the film:

Nathaniel Kahn: I think you've built way more ... you've had way more success ... rate, in terms of your buildings that you --

I.M. Pei: [sighs] Oh, building doesn't mean success. Building ... three or four masterpieces [is] more important than fifty or sixty buildings. ... Quality, not quantity.

No Idea At All

I must see this when it is generally released on March 9th.

... mesmerizes with its insight ...

... a genuinely awe-inspiring work of cinéma vérité filmmaking ... mesmerizing scenes—at once beautiful and terrible ...

... such grace and intelligence ...

... its enduring value is assured ... a high-def triptych with suavely interwoven motifs ...

... beautifully shot ...

... poetic ... intimate ... visually sumptuous ...

... haunting, oblique, lyrical, impressionistic ... remarkably contemplative, at times even serene ...

The first third ... so intense—a masterpiece in miniature, really ...

... one of the year's finest documentaries ...

... poetic cinema verité ... shot and edited so beautifully ... in the vein of ... "The Battle of Algiers" ...

Iraq in Fragments

As Mr. Whedon knows, the fastest way to a geek's heart is a story about other geeks, albeit ones with good hair and hot bodies.

Serenity

20,000 insurgents in Iraq,
20,000 hardened insurgents,
take 1,000 down,
move to another town,
22,000 insurgents in Iraq.

"It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog."

'Slog'