I’d like a little gadget that I can carry in my pocket, or perhaps strapped to my belt. Every N minutes (where I can set the value of N) it will record my GPS coordinates (position, altitude, and velocity) to sufficiently high precision that plotting the coordinates on a map makes sense. After a long time, perhaps as much as a month, I can connect the thing to a Macintosh via FireWire or USB or wireless, and the file of samples it has accumulated will be saved in csv or some other useful format to a file on my hard disk. Oh, and I want it to cost $200 or less.

Where can I get that? My LG vx4400 cell phone has a GPS chip in it, and is able to tell the cell network where I am when I make a 911 call. Why can’t I know?

There are such things in the world, oft observed and remarked upon, which regardless of their popular acknowledgment still may offer no little pleasure to the inquisitive seeker:

• Plush microbes (via ThinkGeek)
• An intriguing online clock (via Ron Jeffries)
• Rubber duckie memory device (via Ron Jeffries)
• The Apple PowerPod (an April Fool’s gag, via Gizmodo)
• HubZilla FireWire hub in the shape of a giant monster (via… well, somewhere a long time ago)
• Anything from Despair, Inc. (since I’ve been sitting in a lot of offices that have the standard crap on the walls, lately)

Do not, if you are presented with a noisome stain which offends your eye in the bottom corner of the shower stall of the house you are trying to sell, and which therefore you desire to remove before the morning brings strangers to muck about in your closets and hmmph and tsk at your habits, attempt to do so with a combination of Super Strong Mildew Fresh With Stain-removing Chlorine Bleach, and subsequently (due mainly to impatience) Softscrub with Clorox and Some Weird Squirty Smelly Stuff in a Bottle Which Seems To Be Dutch Cleaner, Which You Brought Back From The Netherlands When You Moved in And Started Husbandry On That Particular Mildew Strain Seven Years Ago, and which Might Be Window or Perhaps Oven Cleaner, But Dammit You Have Packed Or Perhaps Sold the Dutch-English Dictionary.

Perhaps the last one is the key element to avoid. Well, actually, no… the key element to avoid is chlorine gas.

W. A. Blaze writes in his excellent recent poser on landmarks and implication

…anyone who turns at a Starbucks is going nowhere but in circles… Drive around any populated space, USA and you navigate not by landmark but by pattern. Radio Shack doesn’t define the location, but a Radio Shack, Baja Fresh, Noah’s Bagels sequence just might.

I’d like to stroll a while from there, along such paths that may appear as we go….

I visited Las Vegas a few years back for the first time, when a large technical conference was held at the Riviera, on the Strip. The Las Vegas Strip, for those who have never experienced it first-hand, is an honestly amazing place, particularly in late July or August. To stand in the desert sun, in 106°F aridity, staring down the street past an Eiffel Tower towards a Brooklyn Bridge, shining black pyramid and ultimately to the glowing golden monolith of Mandalay Bay in the distance sets you down very firmly in a specific place in the world. Many of my colleagues somehow failed to appreciate it—to their loss, I’m afraid. The hubris and operation of the whole is breathtaking, a rare vision of an ephemeral moment in human history. I mean, the monorails, and the huge fountains that spray thousands of gallons of water into the air most of which evaporates before it has a chance to land, and all that toilet paper and shrimp cocktail. Perhaps my colleagues would be more impressed if they paid attention to the toilet paper. Before I left town, I had booked a return flight for my wife and me as soon as possible, and the first day we simply sat in our tower room in Mandalay Bay and looked down at the fascinating ebb and flow of trucks and employees in the back lot, towards the desert…. One is blessed if a partner sees wonder in the world’s same facets.

At any rate, before all this sense-of-wonder stuff set in, just when I arrived at the conference, I found that I had forgotten to pack the charger for my cell phone. I asked the concierge (yes, they have one, even at the icky Riviera) where I could go, and after he consulted with the staff a bit he pulled out a map. As he highlighted the path I was to drive, he made a little apologetic face — I understood that I was to venture out into Las Vegas proper, the native city, the town. A Radio Shack.

It was, as anybody familiar with Las Vegas will confirm, a very odd feeling. The towering gaudy structures fall away surprisingly quickly and indeed can barely be seen from even a short distance to the west, and almost instantly one enters a broad continuum of Southwest Grid. That is: a great deal of adobe/cinder block walls, periodically placed corner shopping centers featuring a grocery (usually blue signage), dry goods, drug store (sometimes combined with the grocery), and a few shoe/hair places (red signage), a restaurant (usually green/white signage), and one or two specialty shops (small signs). Southwest Grid seems to be a terrain differentiated by paint colors (light, often white), coverage (80% or more ground paved) and tree plantings (almost always palms, with occasional eucalyptus where appropriate). In my limited experience, this pattern applies equally well to Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Phoenix.

In our cultural region, for example in the sprawl around Detroit, we have the same fundamental pattern, but the primary building coloration is brick-and-copper, the terrain coverage much lower (unless you count lawn as paving, which I am tempted to do), there are fountains in the drainage catchment basins adjoining the better parking lots, and the trees are pines and flowering fruit rather than palms.

Back in Las Vegas, I got my phone charger. The afternoon’s sessions were a bust, so I explored for a while. It was a fascinating drive. Some questions arose, which Mr. Blaze’s post call forth:

What is the natural spatial scale of the lives individual inhabitants of a city? In other words, if we drew a little x-y plot of the geographical coordinates of each person every ten minutes over the course of a month or two, how big would the cloud of dots be for an average person?

How correlated would the dot-patterns of different people be? I imagine that there is much diversity in the world — but many of the things I imagine are false. What differentiating structure and pattern is there in the way people use their cities? How might we divide them up into territories? How do those territories differ (and correlate with, and overlap between) class, race, voting preference, &c;?

How is it that so many cities — especially in the Southwest — have a core “Old Town” region set aside for tourists and impractical unique matters, surrounded by the more familiar Grid? Anecdotally, it seems as if residents of cities do not visit Old Towns any more frequently than tourists. Clearly there is a historic reason, since Old Towns are for the most part old (the Strip is not actually Old Las Vegas — Downtown is — but honestly I would class the two together). But has anybody ever tried to create an Old Town? What has come of it?

This last reminds me of The French Market, in the northern reaches of Columbus Ohio. When my wife and I were first dating, this New Urbanist extravaganza was thriving — boutique shops and destination restaurants and elegant condominium living all bound up in a little decorative mound of brick and exposed timbers. Twenty years ago, it was a fun place to go, and doubtless a lively place to live.

It’s dead, of course. I suspect that one does not need to have a balloon shop, flavored popcorn shop, or Thai carryout downstairs under one’s luxury apartment. On average, I suspect one would rather enjoy a Radio Shack, Starbucks, Krogers or a McDonald’s instead. Something potentially useful. Because otherwise, it’s a long way to drive to get to the grocery store anyway. And of course you would have to drive, since in Columbus taking the bus is an ill-posed question about safety and class. And of course there are no trains.

These aspects of life don’t seem to be limited to big cities and New Urbanist enclaves. Here in Ann Arbor, I find myself falling into the same patterns I used to make fun of when the “old townies” would meet me for lunch: I go downtown less often; I visit the Mall rarely, and then only peripherally; I think of restaurants in terms of what they used to be (as in, you know, “that place that used to be Sweet Lorraine’s”). Indeed, as we prepare to move to the country an inconvenient distance away, the trips downtown will probably practically disappear, the Mall will be supplanted completely, and the less-frequent visits will lead to more “used-to-be” locations.

About a year ago, our earnest Ann Arbor city planners inaugurated a new purple Link Bus system. The fares are ridiculously cheap, and the route is an expansive twisted loop that takes in all the important parts of the shopping district downtown and the central and business campuses. It seems very useful. Yet nobody rides it. Whenever I (drive) downtown, I see the vivid buses, passing their lettered stops every eight minutes, emptily looping eternally. My wife and I rode it once, just to see the loop, and we were the only folks on the entire ride; and then another time in a cold rainstorm with some friends late at night.

It will be shut down in a few weeks. It goes everywhere anybody might want to go. But it goes everywhere else, too.

In most of the US, Old Towns are the only place people walk or take the special-purpose tourist transport. Perhaps it is because in Old Towns the streets are close and twisted, built for another purpose in another day. Anywhere there is a grid of broad streets, the grid of local scale and Radio Shack/Starbucks/McDonalds imposes itself.

We must want it. In most of the country, nobody lives in Old Towns — perhaps a few shopkeepers and eccentrics, surely. Visitors, tourists, innocents abroad are the only ones wooed by the unique attractions and quaint narrow streets. The rest of us, when forced to do so by intense need, dash in and out as quickly as possible and afterwards wipe our brows and complain about the traffic, the parking, the jumble.

Perhaps I’d like things to be different. I recall living in the small Dutch village of Vianen, and walking a few minutes to a perfectly fine grocery and bakery every couple of days, and hopping on the bus to go to Nieuwegein or Utrecht for important stuff, and occasionally riding the train up to Amsterdam or Haarlem or Leiden for excursions. The sense of scale was pleasant.

And here? What would we do here if we undertook a broad New Urbanist renovation? What shops would we place downstairs beneath the apartments and condominiums? What restaurants would be situated in the neighborhoods, among the greige 2500-square-foot starter homes on 0.16-acre lots? What would people want near their houses? Which types of store would succeed, and which would fail?

My looping stroll seems to close ironically in on itself. In the old days, when Old Towns were being built, the natural scale came from foot and horse-drawn traffic, and things were close by. They weren’t zoned, and for the most part they weren’t planned. We like the look and feel of them. Nowadays, in cities and suburbs built according to a ritualized and pervasive city planning regime, we seem to have lost control of what goes where, and a periodic state arises that we find ugly and unappealing and oppressive.

Which is more natural? Which do we want? Are they alternatives, really?

To those dealing with the steady onslaught of Intelligent Design finaglers, Anti-globalization zealots, and Back-to-basics Neo-luddite sentiments wherever they may be found, I recommend you pick up a copy of Samuel C. Florman’s The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. Written in 1976, near the beginning of what I read as our ongoing period of anti-technological anti-intellectual anti-scientific finger-pointing, Florman is a well-spoken and insightful defender of the human side of engineering — the innateness and propriety and neutrality of technology. Alas, Florman’s defense is still as important for the scientist or engineer today as it was twenty-five years ago, for one can still today hear many of the arguments he deflated taken as Received Wisdom by the press, government spokesmen, and anti-technological intelligentsia.

Some days, we don’t seem to have made any headway at all. Endless circles. “…doomed to repeat it…” &c; &c;

For example, consider this, part of a moving response to the accusations that “technology” is a demonic entity separate from human nature itself, responsible for our troubles:

Further, if we are considering the source of a man’s discontent, let us remember that it is art, philosophy and religion that have made promises that cannot be kept. Technology’s promises can be fulfilled. Visions of beauty, truth, and eternal bliss can only be mirages. Therefore, added to our real problems are the frustrations that must follow when we recognize that our dreams of Paradise can never be realized.

Go get a copy and read it.

Negotiation has always been a great deal of fun for me. When I was a pre-failed dotcom founder, I remember that while there was a real serious side involved in planning and arguing over Very Large Sums of Money, there was also an atmosphere of gentle play in the air — a gleam in all parties’ eyes. And you got to eat out at nice restaurants a lot.

In contrast to that heady deal-making and elevator-speaking, the “seven-figure days” of the pre-bubble world, this little piddling real estate deal between us and the stunningly intransigent House Builders seriously cuts my take-home enjoyment. Now it begins to sink in how cunningly crafted the whole New Construction Infrastructure is to favor the Builder: they built the house, and they can charge whatever the hell they want to. Piss them off, or just look at ‘em funny, and they will (a) walk away, or (b) charge you more for the privilege. Both, if they can. All well within their rights, too. Wry conversations with our agents confirm this fact of life, and the ten-minute phone conversation I had with one of them nailed the case.

Unlike the situation we had prepped ourselves for over months — in which some family somewhere must sell their pride and joy, and are willing to parley on price and perks just so they can move on to their New Life somewhere else — we were at sea for a while. Ickily at sea. Nothing can really be done in the form of direct force or leverage.

“Ahh,” says the long-dormant entrepreneurial bit of my brain that years ago made me stride around like a self-important asshole in a very expensive suit, “did I just hear you say ‘direct’? Very interesting limiting word. What does that make you think of?”

Hmmm… Umm, maybe mail? You know, like “direct mail?”

“No, moron. Sheesh. Come over here and let me whisper it in your ear.” [whispers]

Ow! You hit me!… ohhhh…hmmm…

“Exactly.”

Today I may just be able to find a little block of time to see how one submits a freelance newspaper article. Or magazine article to the regional rags. Who knows — maybe I’m writing a book on the experience of finding and buying a house.

“How do you spell your last name again, Jim?”

… … …

Naaah. Enough of this. Back to work. Science, engineering, and philosophy from here on out, folks. That guy doesn’t like his ear being bit. We’re back on track.

Oh, and Ann Arbor forteana, too….

Well, yesterday I spoke with one of the builders of the house we’re negotiating for. Amazing how quickly our carefully-crafted hypotheses about the world and interpersonal dynamics can be shattered and remade.

With regards to the Buyers’ Agents and Sellers’ Agent, the Sellers and even us, I suspect now I that I have misjudged many aspects of the situation. None of the facts of the matter have changed, of course — simply how we interpret them in light of new information.

This is what they call cognitive dissonance. How disconcerting it can be.

Subtle but rather leading comments by the Buyers’ Agents to the effect that, “You know, dealing with a builder is very different from dealing with an individual owner-seller,” just slipped right through our filters. Unlike a normal seller, they’re not moving off to a new job and a brighter future; they can wait to sell it to anybody they want. Thus, they start from a strong position in the negotiations, or at least they always assume and act as if they do.

I begin to think we should have listened to the Buyers’ Agents.

No surprise that they respond to somebody trying to negotiate terms with impatience and disdain.

Subtle but rather leading hints that the people crafting the increasingly confrontational addenda to the contract were the Builders (and not the Sellers’ Agent) just slipped right through our filters. The Sellers’ Agent, I am told, has been the one who has been smoothing over the ruffled feathers of the Sellers.

I begin to think we should have listened to the Sellers’ Agent.

Our folks (the Buyers’ Agents) have to deal with intransigence and inexperience. Their folks (the Sellers’ Agent) have to deal with intransigence and ruthless business sense. Consider, for example, this fragment of a telephone conversation:

Bill: Well, Jim, we had a chance to go out there with Glenn Miller. Nice man.

Jim: I think I had a chance to work with him on a project years ago.

Bill: Well, we had a look at the things that were bothering us, and for the most part he said there really wasn’t much to worry about.

Jim: That’s what we’ve been saying all along. All you need to do is look into our reputation.

Bill: Yes, it’s a great reputation. The only thing that seems to be a major issue is the water bubbling up around the well. Glenn—

Jim: Yeah, the Health Department have already been out to see it, and we’re going to put a drainage tile around it to drain the excess water off into a ditch. That’ll clear it up fine. But there’s never been any problems with that well. I remember when we were working on the site, we had a pipe sticking up from it, and I’d go over to it to have a drink. Pleased as punch to hit a flowing well like that.

Bill: Yes, well… [Glenn Miller, when first informed that the well was a flowing well, was heard to sonorously utter “Hoe-lee shit,” and upon seeing the well itself he shook his head woefully. To avoid serious health risks, the well will have to be re-grouted. That will cost $2k or so, because it’s a flowing well — in this case that seems to mean that if you stuck a pipe into the top of the well and let it fill with water, the static head would be 4 feet high above the ground. Imagine trying to pour concrete in a fountain. Tricky. But Bill hadn’t read the official report at the point the conversation took place, so…] I’m not sure that Glenn’s report will recommend that, so I’d like to ask that you hold off on the drainage tile thing. We’re not professional well people, so I just want to make sure it gets done right.

Jim: Look, there’s never been a thing wrong with that well. The people who dug it are some of the best.

Bill: Yes, I’m sure they are. We’ll have Glenn’s report on Monday and have a look at what it says, OK?

Jim: Hey, by the way, have you got your house listed for sale, yet?

There was a good deal more. What we’re dealing with, here, is exactly what the Buyers’ Agents and Sellers’ Agent have been trying to protect us from all along: An unswerving force (the Toziers) meeting an immovable object (the Sellers).

I wonder how long they will be able to stave off the crash?

As I might have mentioned before, we don’t post a PayPal link to help offset the hosting charges and maintenance of Notional Slurry, but rather an eBay link to our current auctions and eBay store items. On offer this week are a number of vintage and antique nature and technology books — last chance before we pack it all up in preparation to moving!

View my eBay auctions here…

Never having met a geologist who was not a professor is not the only reason I want to meet Mr. Miller. When we chatted a while back about having him come over to the new not-quite-our-house to look at the spring(s), I asked him a bit about himself. One of the first jet pilots. Trained pilots for the Korean war. Played the trombone. Owned a well and drilling company until the 1960s, when the margins disappeared. Since then he’s been helping sand and gravel companies avoid stupid mistakes, remediate those that arise, and also helping residential home-builders like us ruin the serenity of the lakeshores and wetlands of our fine state by building on difficult damp spots — just the sort of thing we need on the case.

I like him already.

[Update: Also among Mr. Miller’s anecdotes heard while we were driving out to the house together, he was the first to note bacterial metabolism of hydrocarbon pollutants in groundwater in a Cape Canaveral consulting project many years back, and also the first use of LANDSAT foliage spectra to predict the soil characteristics (for obtaining construction sand for Interstate 10 between Houston and New Orleans, where useful sand was considered scant). Truly an interesting fellow.]

[not substantially changed from reality]

The Players:

• The Toziers, Bill and Barbara, who are seeking to purchase a particular house in the country, and who have a minor concern regarding some water they have found in the back yard
• The Sellers, Jack and Jim, who have built said house in the country, on spec, and whose reputation is extremely good, and who to all appearances seem fair businessmen
• The Supervisor, Joe, Jim’s brother and the man who knows everything that actually is going on at the site
• The Buyers’ Agents, who are a team of several different people who collectively represent the interests of the Toziers during negotiation of the contract by which the house in the country may be bought
• The Sellers’ Agent, an individual representing the interests of the Sellers during negotiation of the contract by which the house in the country may be sold

Toziers: Could we have somebody please look at these two big puddles in the back yard, right next to the well and the sill drain outlet? We just want to know if they’re ground water or springs or what. Not a big worry, but we really just want to know about it because we’re utterly ignorant about whether they represent an issue with the house.

The Buyers’ Agents: Sellers’ Agent, the Toziers want to know what you’re going to do about the water problems.

The Sellers’ Agent: Buyers’ Agents, there are no water problems! It is a wet year! No need to bother the Sellers with such trivia. I will therefore cross off this item from your list for our mutual convenience.

The Buyers’ Agents: Toziers, the Sellers’ Agents say, “What water?”

Toziers: Ummm.. the water, which is welling up from the ground. Around the well head and the sill drain. You really can’t miss it. We all actually stepped in it when we were there at the site last time. Maybe what we should do is include a contingency with our offer stating that we want a detailed site plan that shows the location of the house on the property, so we can show that to an engineer or something. Just a plan.

The Buyers’ Agents: Sellers’ Agent, the Toziers will be pleased to buy the house, given that they would like to walk with the builders in person and point out a punchlist of minor items needing to be repaired, and given a site plan.

The Sellers’ Agent: OK. They say fine.

The Buyers’ Agents: Toziers, they said fine! Congratulations. Start selling your house now!

Toziers Great. Now, let’s deal with that water thing. Can we have the site plan now?

The Buyers’ Agents: Yes, here, the Sellers’ Agent faxed us this one-page sketch that shows a blob where a house with a different floorplan was proposed to be sited some years ago, and approximate boundaries of the property. Will that do?

Toziers: Well… no. And we’re not actually sure why you would think that it could. We specifically stated to you folks that we were requesting a site plan showing enough detail, including the house’s siting and the topography around the house, that we could show the plan to an expert and have them sign off on the water. The point of the site plan was that we wouldn’t have to mention the flowing groundwater as an explicit contingency, according to your advice. Hang on… when you said “site plan” in the offer, did you make it very clear that what we needed would have a specified level of detail? Oh, dear… you didn’t, did you? [they sigh] OK. Tell them that this is unsatisfactory and that we need a plan in sufficient detail to settle our water concerns, or if not that we need to do something else about it. The water is probably nothing, but we are ignorant and therefore want somebody to sign off on it for us.

The Buyers’ Agents: Sellers’ Agent, the Toziers are concerned about the water around the well head. Is there a problem with the well?

The Sellers’ Agent: The well passed inspection months ago. We have the document here, and if we get past these ridiculous trivialities, we will provide a copy for you. Why are you pestering us? When will you be buying the house?

The Buyers’ Agents: Toziers, the Sellers’ Agent says that there is no water around the well. But we were there with you last time, and we saw it too. What an obstructionist the Sellers’ Agent is, eh? But, that said, is it that important?

Toziers: Look, can we just get together with them all and go there and see it? All we want to do is have somebody—an engineer or a geologist or somebody—look at it and tell us whether the water flowing up around the well head and the sill drain are a problem. It’s not complicated, is it? Water, problem, quick yes or no, and we’re done. What do The Sellers say about it?

The Buyers’ Agents: We don’t think the Sellers have heard about it, yet.

Toziers: OK, I guess we’ll just have to bring it up when we meet them face to face at the house to create the punch list of items to be repaired.

some days later, at the house…

Toziers: Hello, Jack and Jim. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

[The Toziers are unaware that “Jim” is in fact Joe. This is not made clear by any of the Sellers’ party.]

The Sellers: And a pleasure to meet you, Toziers. Why have we all been summoned here?

Toziers [seeing blank look on the face of The Sellers and The Sellers’ Agent] Well, there are some minor things we wanted to clear up — cracks in the grout and minor settling stuff that is to be expected over the first few months of a house’s life — and we thought it would be expeditious to talk directly. Here are a few minor concerns, mostly just cosmetic items.

The Sellers: Well, while recalcitrant to do anything that requires serious effort, we will be happy to polish and finish everything on your list. We would have to do that anyway, if the deal were to fall through and we were to list the house for sale again. Is there something else?

Toziers: Well, the site plan. Have you perhaps brought it along? This little squiggle isn’t sufficient, of course, because as we communicated in detail to our Buyers’ Agents and thereby to your Sellers’ Agent, we would need sufficient topographic detail and the house’s footprint and elevations so that we could show the plan to an engineer or other person skilled enough to sign off on the water flowing in the back yard.

The Sellers’ Agent: Well, frankly there is no such thing in the world. Such a plan would include an unreasonable degree of detail, and would surely be very costly — what we have provided in our fax is the site plan. Therefore, having acceded to the stated wording of the contingency while disregarding all that extraneous and non-binding verbal explanation of social context, we will not be providing any other plans. Was there anything else?

Toziers: Well, yes, the water itself, then.

The Sellers: Water? What water?

later, in the back yard by the well head

Bill: See, Jim, this puddle here? Is that something we need to worry about?

“Jim” [actually Joe]: Well, what happened is this: When we drilled the well there were no problems. Several months passed, and then of a sudden this water started to appear around the well head. I think it is a spring or other layer of groundwater, which was struck when the well was dug during the dry years we have recently experienced.

Bill: I see the wisdom in your hypothesis, and find it persuasive. Do you think there might be a problem?

“Jim” [actually Joe]: I doubt it very much, but of course if there is we will be happy to fix it. But the well has passed inspection, and you will note that we are standing some distance below the elevation of the house’s foundation. Surely we did not strike the same water flow when we dug the house.

Bill: I am relieved. It is a pleasure to speak with you directly on the matter.

“Jim” [actually Joe]: Was there something else?

Bill: Walk with me to the sill drain. Do you see the water welling up around it, much as it was over there on the other side of the house?

“Jim” [actually Joe]: Yes, this drainage tile was placed to bring water away from the foundation of the house, which is a standard prophylactic measure with all of our fine houses to avoid unforeseen future problems. We noted no water in the sill drain trenches when we built them, nor did any water flow here until recently. Like as not we struck the same layer of groundwater as we did at the well head when we dug this trench. But surely there is no problem, since we are many paces from the house.

Bill: Yes, I see this, but we seem to be standing, this time, higher than the elevation of the floor of the house, and the puddle surrounding the drain pipe covers the mouth. I hesitate to guess whether the layer of groundwater we see here is flowing out from the sill drain, or we have another spring here. If a spring, I am concerned that you might have struck the same layer when digging the basement, but did so during the dry years we have recently experienced. Also, you might note that while the well head is on the right side of the house, this drain is on the left side of the house, implying to my untrained mind that they may represent a larger body of water pressing against the house itself, which lies in the middle. I am sure this would be practically unthinkable, but as an ignorant city slicker, I would just like to discuss it long enough to argue the possibility away. Insofar as it is now a wet year, might we have somebody skilled in such matters look at this?

“Jim” [actually Joe]: I’m not sure who one would have look at it.

Bill: I would think perhaps a civil engineer or geologist would be appropriate. We will be happy to arrange to get them here, at our expense, simply to tell us not to worry. We like this place a great deal, and also you and Jack, whose reputation is excellent and who seem to be very high-quality builders, and friendly fellows as well. We would very much like to live here.

“Jim” [actually Joe]: [nods]

after another week…

The Toziers: Buyers’ Agents, we have added text to the contract to the effect that we will have a professional look at the water coming up from the ground in the back yard of the house. because of our relative ignorance of such things, our purchase of the house is contingent upon this being cleared up and explained by somebody who understands ground water and drainage and such. Is that clear?

The Buyers’ Agents: Yes. I just got off the phone with the Sellers’ Agent, who made it clear that the well has passed inspection, and therefore she can’t understand why you’re being such nitpicking fools about it.

The Toziers: Look, when Bill talked with Jim, it all seemed straightforward. All we need to do is have somebody like the Sanitarian or a geologist go out there and look at it and tell us it’s all right.

The Buyers’ Agents: Sellers’ Agent, the Toziers are still worried about the water. It’s no big deal, but they want to be certain it’s not a problem.

The Sellers’ Agent: Sorry? What water problem? Look, we already said we would re-do the grade in the yards.

The Buyers’ Agents: Sellers’ Agent, they mean the water around the well.

The Sellers’ Agent: The well has passed inspection, months ago. We have the documents here, and if we can just get past this ridiculous sticking point we will provide them happily. When will they be buying the house??

The Buyers’ Agents: Toziers, they still don’t think there’s a problem.

Toziers: But we stood there and talked with Jim about it.

The Buyers’ Agents: Well, Jim isn’t hearing in this conversation, is he. You talk to us, and we talk to The Sellers’ Agent, and typically we work it out for you. On your behalf. Tell us again what this water problem is? What was that about the sill drain you were saying? Is the basement wet?

Toziers: No, here, let me draw you a picture. [draws picture] See? There is water near the well and the sill drain. Jim said they might have struck a spring when they dug them. We just want to know what that means to the house in the long term.

The Buyers’ Agents: Oooh! I see. OK — Sellers’ Agent, the Toziers are asking again about the water near the well, and the sill drain too.

The Sellers’ Agent: The Sellers are addressing the water around the well. What the hell is this about the sill drain?! Haven’t you told your Buyers that they’re not allowed to add new contingencies to the list this late in the game? Nobody ever said anything to me about the sill drain. This is ridiculous and unreasonable. I am going to cross this whole thing off the page, and at this rate I will advise my clients to kill the deal because your Buyers are being so unreasonable. When are they going to buy the house???

The Buyers’ Agents: Toziers, it doesn’t look good. The Sellers’ Agent made it sound like she was about to cancel the whole thing over this. We don’t know what to tell you to do… but is this really that important?

Toziers: It didn’t start off that way, no.

To be continued…

Back in January I wrote about an unusual news story, and opined that it might take off, or might not — and wondered why. I come across it again tonight, via a story in the Guardian, and frankly it’s almost as if nothing has happened in the intervening months, and I am reading the original January story again word-for-word.

You might find it interesting. I do. But in the context of the original essay, I also find it interesting that the Google news search I set up still only has thirteen hits as of this writing; a search of Google News for William Krar comes up with seven.

Intriguingly, in light of my little essay, is the opening of the first Google News hit that does come up for Krar:

WASHINGTON, March 14 (UPI) — Since his appointment as attorney general, John Ashcroft’s Washington office has issued 2,295 news releases. Not one of them has mentioned the name William Joseph Krar.

[Among other things, I am reminded that I need to put a lot of good citations in that original essay. The eminent and very important Dan Sperber, for example. Coming soon!]

Just noted, though almost certainly it’s already made the rounds: Light-transmitting concrete

Makes me want to build something very interesting. It should be pointed out that nothing requires that the fibers are aligned and pass straight through the structure. For example, one can easily imagine a method of arranging curved fibers into a structural wall that would render it, in effect, a “horizontal skylight”.

[via Fortean Times]

Update: My wife, always more pragmatic than I am, points out an unforeseen issue with bidirectionally semi-transparent walls: night. At best, your house would glow eerily from the lamps inside; at worst, you’d project potentially embarrassing shadow-puppet shows to the neighbors.

Just reading a noteworthy essay by Jerry M. Landay at MediaTransparency. You may want to have a look as well.