Cucuhouse blog

Stories from cucurulla street in Barcelona district 01 and the continuation of the killed blog "Güten tag rhine"

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Herzog & De Meuron and weapons

First of all I apologize for having the last post deleted. i have tried this afternoon to upload it again but it was going to take me a lot of time that I don´t have right now. Lo siento mucho por haber borrado la entrada de la boda del sábado (con lo que me gustaban las fotos y todo, en fin). Ha sido por problemas técnicos y ahora no tengo el tiempo de volver a reeditarla. Que rabia!!!

Today, I wanted to post about nice buildings here in Basel, but for two reasons this has been changed. The first one is that is incredibly hot here at nights. My room after 10PM looks like a Swiss sauna, much hotter than during sun hours (This I don’t get), and yesterday, during my 4th DVD of 24 series, in the most interesting part of the chapter, the automatic security measure of my computer against “melting” turned on and...puf!...Black screen, no blue light in the power button. From that moment on Mr.Toshiba stays functioning for some time and then the anti-melting measure comes back. This, added to the image loading problems, makes me to write instead of showing buildings. For this reason I will only post my two favorite buildings in Basel. The first one is inside Novartis campus. A glass building designed by Diener & Diener:



The other building is the one below. I know its not the most beautiful building you could expect here, but I can tell you its an important one (for me). I walk in front of that house everyday in my way to work, and see people working inside with their enormous screen computers, all windows opened, lots of scrap paper and cardboard, and full of books in the walls. But it was not until last week that I saw on the door the names of two architects. Yeah, inside this building they think buildings.


Herzog & De Meuron. Both are from Basel.

Ok. Now the second reason for this post. We can make the connection with the buildings talking about populations. Nowadays most people live in buildings, inside cities and inside states in complex societies. The book I am reading explains the transition over the past 13,00 years from small, non-centralized societies to more larger and complex ones. The author tells that the size of the population is the strongest single predictor of societal complexity. Then the following question arises. Was intensive food production that triggered population growth, leading to a complex society? Or are large populations and complex societies the cause for intensification of food production? (the book also talks about food production). Neither of them. The author calls the realtion between food production and complex societies an "autocatalitic" process, which means that both processes trigger each other at the same time, with neither of them being the single cause for the other one.
Why am I telling you this? Just because the population of bugs in my room is doing this process in a very accelerated way. I guess that there are different factors that are triggering the incredible growth of this specific population. Among them (no, don't think about dirt, my room is clean, very clean), we can consider the fact that I live one minute from the river, the high temperatures in my "swiss sauna room" at nights (which make me sweat and release some kind of feromones that bugs like I guess), the fact that my window is fully opened, and the endless food resource that my blood represents (especially for the mosquito part of the population). Well, in the history the trend has been the replacement of smaller, less complex units by larger, more complex ones, mainly because states usually enjoyed an advantage of weaponry and other technology. The centralized decision making was also an advantage over small societies. Altogether makes me think that it is time now in my room to repet history trends, and use the power of larger and technologically advanced societies. This power has been always exercised in the same way regardless of the fairness or unfairness of the cause or state they represent (the CNN girl in my tv is confirming this everyday lately with her permanent smile). Friends, it is the time to use big power against bugs. I don't have anything against insects, but in the next hours, if you are a bug in Marc's room, you are a dead bug. I'm sorry. Nuclear attack:

Music for today: Something well constructed, because of the buildings. Sigur Ros - Takk

1 Comments:

Blogger Venturello said...

Hola - Guns Germs, & Steel es muy buen libro. Te iba a preguntar si era este hasta que lei otro post en que lo mencionas por titulo. Ese me encantó, fascinante. Voy a intentar sacar tiempo este verano para leerme Collapse, porque según me dicen durante el primer año poco tiempo me quedarán (comienzo mi MBA ahora en Septiembre en el IESE). Ya has leido Flat World y The Lexus and the Olive Tree?

Me encanto tu blog, muy interesante conocer tu experiencia (y divertido los comentarios. Lo del rio parece una pasada de divertido (como dices, no es para hacerlo en el Llobregat). Me gustaría si tenemos oportunidad hacerte unas preguntas de tu internship, es el lugar y tipo de empresa que me gustaría buscar (he trabajado en otra empresa suiza de farma ;) por unos años).

Un saludo!

Juan Miguel Venturello

1:58 AM  

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