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Production year: 2011
Runtime: 3 part mini-series
Directors: Justin Kurzel
Cast: Stephen Curry, Emma Booth, Kerry Fox and Geoff Morrell
Cloudstreet, a novel by renknowned Australian author Tim Winton was published in 1991 and became a cult hit which reflected nostalgia for the Australian identity before Americanisation. The novel was adapted as a three-part mini series and released in 2011 on the small screen. Winton himself was a co-screenwriter helping to bring the novel to life along with the director Matthew Saville (Noise, The Secret Life of Us and episodes of The Slap).
Cloudstreet is a gripping mix of family saga's and secrets with a mystical edge. It follows the lives of two Australian families, the Pickles and the Lambs who are like chalk and cheese, yet come to live together over a period of twenty years, 1943 – 1963 at One Cloud Street. As a novel it reflects a distinct social climate of values and interests felt by Australians during the 90's, right after a period of 'recession we had to have, that Keating period where people started to feel slightly differently about their country and the prospects for their future'. [1] National Identity is a strong theme in the book with concerns of Australian regionalism, nationalism and internationalism and a fascination with Australian traditions and their place in the modern world.
Cloudstreet is set in urban Perth on the cusp of modernization, however for these two families it is as if the modern world does not exist. The plot 'enfolds the regional in the national, the traditional in the modern…the extraordinary within the ordinary…the metaphysical into the physical and the everyday'.[2] There's a house that seems to have its own life, boats which fly and a talking pig, amongst other supernatural elements. It's the weird and wonderful combination of the social and spiritual, which lends itself well to filmic portrayal, and creates this sense of nostalgia that Winton has running through his novel for 'a nostalgia for lost places, for an Australian accent and culture that are pre-American, pre-modern, pre-1960s'.[3] A noble Australia which some might wish we always could be, especially older generations.
These qualities find expression in the mini-series through the rich registration of Australian idioms of the 1940s and 1950s, and in the beautiful depiction of places and landscapes in and around Perth. It also focuses on a sense of community, family and connections in a time of great upheaval, which relates back to characteristics many feel shape the Australian national identity like mate-ship. In it's great attention to the movements in time, history and memory, a vision of an Australian National Identity is created for the viewer through a depiction, which posits our modern society against this absent, old-Australia. We have changed, grown, our modern world is very different to that of earlier generations, typically we construct the Australian identity through binary opposition of what we are not in relation to other nations, in Cloudstreet it is through reflecting our own now absent nation self.
Fox says: 'It's very significant for Australia and if you try to work out what it is about the piece [Cloudstreet] that makes it so extraordinary and moving, I think it has a naivety to it because [Winton] was so young when he wrote it. It has this weird truthfulness and observations without sophistication and trickery.'[4] It opens a window onto contemplation of an Australia many of us will never know. Winton reveals his own thoughts on the reason for this 'I was re-imagining it…the city of your parents, the city of your grandparents…thinking about the destruction of community, the destruction of neighborhoods…the loss of the corner shop, all the kinds of things that people get nostalgic about for good reason…Plus I was documenting all the verbal history and the nonsense and the tall stories I'd grown up with…listening to all these people talking in accents and inflections that had become pressed out of reality, out of existence by the Americanisation of our culture'.[5]
These thoughts reveal another aspect of the Australian National Identity in Cloudstreet, the fact that we have always come under the influence of other nations, before our country created strong ties with America, it was strongly influenced by Britain, surely it is naïve to think the nostalgia for a lost Australia is for a pure Australian national identity as this does not exist because of the nature of our country's history and founding.
Cloudstreet is a mystic and beautiful depiction of an older era in Australia when our National Identity was influenced by the Anglo-Celtic imprint, and shows nostalgia for these older times.
[1] Michael Bodey: Cloudstreet: Australia's best-loved novel arrives on the small screen, From: The Australian May 21, 2011 12:00AM. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/cloudstreet-australias-best-loved-novel-arrives-on-the-small-screen/story-e6frg8n6-1226057281445
[2] Robert Dixon: Tim Winton, Cloudstreet and the field of Australian Literature, Westerly 2005, Volume 50, November, Pages 240-260.
[3] Robert Dixon: Tim Winton, Cloudstreet and the field of Australian Literature, Westerly 2005, Volume 50, November, Pages 240-260.
[4] Michael Bodey: Cloudstreet: Australia's best-loved novel arrives on the small screen, From: The Australian May 21, 2011 12:00AM. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/cloudstreet-australias-best-loved-novel-arrives-on-the-small-screen/story-e6frg8n6-1226057281445
[5] Robert Dixon: Tim Winton, Cloudstreet and the field of Australian Literature, Westerly 2005, Volume 50, November, Pages 240-260.


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As a newbie fan to the game of football, it may be easy to understand why one would think division winners should not get an automatic home playoff game, and that playoff teams should be seated 1–6 based on their overall record. These are the same newbie fans who are only focused on stats yielding the most fantasy points and who vote for the pro bowl based on players' reputations rather than players' on-field merit. These newbie fans, unfortunately, too often latch on to the controversies and conspiracies that big-box national sports pundits create.
So why now? Why are the national pundits now pushing to change the current playoff format?
No time like the present, right? This season, the 11-5 Saints play at the 10-6 Eagles, and the 12-4 49ers play at the 8-7-1 Packers. Two teams with better overall records playing at division winners with worse records. And that isn't fair… right? So there it is. There is their catalyst to push for change. The NFL needs to be fair. Adding to their case of fairness, pundits are citing the 2010 season, which lead to the 7-9 Seahawks beating the 11-5 Saints in January 2011. A game that fans remember better as the "earthquake run," rather than by the teams' records.
We don't quite know how this post-season will unfold, but we, the fans, do remember the results from the wildcard game that borne the earthquake run. The wildcard Saints, who some argue were the better team (particularly by comparing records), lost to the division winning Seahawks. The Seahawks parlayed their division-winning automatic home playoff game into a wildcard-round victory. A victory over a supposed superior team. Would the Saints have won that game if it were played in New Orleans? Any given Sunday, right? Any team can beat any team on any given Sunday (or in this case on Saturday), and on that day the Seahawks were the better team. The following week, the same inferior Seahawks fell to the higher-seated division winner (with a better record)—the Chicago Bears, at Chicago.
Let's take a brief look at the history of playoffs in the NFL:
NFL/AFL merger, 26 teams, 14 game regular season
Two conferences: AFC and NFC
Three divisions per conference: East, West, and Central.
Playoff format (for each conference, AFC and NFC):
Three division winners + one wildcard team. Division winners 1–3 are seated according to overall record; the wildcard team plays one of the top two seats, with the caveat being that the wildcard team cannot play a division opponent until the championship round (only two rounds).
A slight change to the playoff format eliminates the previously mentioned caveat concerning divisional opponents. Now the number 4 seat plays at the 1 seat, and 3 seat plays at the 2 seat—regardless of opponents and their division.
28 teams
The NFL expands to the modern 16-game regular season and adds a 2nd wildcard team to the playoffs. The two wildcard teams play in the "wildcard game" hosted by the team with the better record. The winner of the wildcard game plays at the highest-seated division winner. Unless, as previously applied, the highest-seated division winner is a divisional opponent.
2002—Current Format
32 teams
The NFL divides each conference into four divisions, each with four teams. A bye week is incorporated into the playoff format for the top two seated teams. Thus "wildcard weekend" is born. The wildcard teams seated 5 and 6 seat are hosted by the division winners seated 3 and 4. Winners of the wildcard games go on to play the top-seated teams in the divisional round, with the highest-seated team hosting the lowest-seated team. Winners of the divisional round play in the conference championship game. The team with the highest seat hosts the championship game.
So what does all this history mean to current teams? Great question.
Once you're in the dance, anything can happen. Any given Sunday, right? Recent history gives us the 2010 Packers, 2007 Giants, and 2005 Steelers—all wildcard teams that went on to win the Superbowl. Once you're in, anything can happen. Division winners have been guaranteed a home playoff game since the merger in 1970. And as any fan will tell you, divisions are won by winning divisional games. Putting additional emphasis on winning divisional games is the current tie-breaking procedure. Divisional record is the second tie breaker, according to the NFL's current tie-breaking procedure. Thus, winning divisional games has been the impetus for teams to design their roster. Winning divisional games and a division title isn't always the right formula to win the Superbowl, but it is the ONLY guaranteed way for a team to make it to the playoff dance and host a playoff game.
Over one third of all regular season games are played against division opponents. Teams that sweep the division have a tremendously higher chance of winning the division. Obviously there are exceptions to every rule, but generally, teams design their rosters to win division games. They draft to accent their strengths and minimize their weaknesses against their division opponent's strengths. For example, AFC South teams spent a lot of draft picks during the 2000's on players who could stop Peyton Manning. That didn't stop Peyton and the Colts, however, from winning seven division championships in from 2000–2010. AFC North and NFC East teams are built to play physical football, stop the run, and run the ball. These rosters are often composed of run-and-hit linebackers and line-of-scrimmage controlling linemen. These rosters are also often susceptible to West Coast and run-and-shoot offenses. Although all teams have weaknesses against other teams and schemes, they have shaped their rosters to win the most divisional games, and to win their division. Changing a playoff format that has been around, at least in principle, since the 1970 merger would seriously hinder teams who have drafted well and prudently shaped their rosters. The hard work of General Managers like Ozzie Newsome, Ted Thompson, Thomas Dimitroff, and Kevin Colbert would be compromised if the playoff seatings were changed. They, along with all other General Managers and front office people, have designed their teams to win their respective division. Sure there are many, many other factors involved in becoming a successful football team and winning the Superbowl, but the biggest key to winning a Superbowl is making it to the playoff dance.
Sometimes the football gods are cruel. See the 1972 divisional playoff game between the Steelers and the Raiders, or the 2012 "fail marry" play between the Packers and Seahawks. Contrary to the big-box pundits who argue that the 2011 earthquake run wildcard game exemplifies the necessity for change, any true football fan will tell you that the Seahawks earned the right to host a playoff game by winning their division. That same year the Seahawks boasted a division best 4-2 divisional record. It is fair to point out that the 6-10 49ers also had a 4-2 divisional record that year. Sure the football gods were cruel to the Saints that year, but this is hardly the first time the football gods have played a cruel joke on an NFL fan base. As a matter of fact, the two games played this wildcard weekend will mark only the 18th time since 1989 that a team with a worse overall record will host a playoff game, in any round!
Division winners have earned the right to host a playoff game. Those pundits arguing to change the playoff format are doing nothing more than selling controversies to newbie fans with the goal of selling advertising.

subset: commoncrawl


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Microsoft Word ties footnote anchors in the main text and footnote numbers at the start of footnotes to the same style. Consequently, it's difficult to get full-height footnote numbers followed by a period (cf. Chicago Manual of Style, SBL Handbook of style).
That being said, the process discussed at Word MVPs does still seem to work with Word 2016. If it's desirable to have the note number followed by a period and a space rather a tab character, the following modified Visual Basic macro code should do the trick:
ActiveDocument.Footnotes.Add Range:=Selection.Range
With Selection
.Paragraphs(1).Range.Characters(2) = ""
.InsertAfter "." & Space(1)
.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
End With
Unfortunately, it doesn't immediately seem feasible to intercept Zotero's insert citation macro, and that macro doesn't appear to be tied to this particular function in Word. So, an update to what Word runs for the InsertFootnote command won't be triggered by Zotero's InsertCitation macro. If anyone has suggestions about how to do so, however, those are certainly welcome.
Last updated: by


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I call this "a journey into Orthodoxy, because it was both a journey towards and a journey in the Faith. I am reading every day, in discussions among Orthodox "converts", wrangles about the deficiencies of heterodox confessions and how much the opponent is infected by them. For me, my Christian pilgrimage could be best described as the rebuilding of an inheritance upon what was already a pretty sound foundation.
When I went up to University in my home town of Christchurch, I began to be aware of "High Church". Religious differences had not meant much up to then; I remember that in a group of friends I ventured to visit the various denominations round about: the whole range of protestantism from the Methodists through to the classic Pentecostals, (who were already present, but not enjoying the sensational attention that they came to receive in the 60s). I found all this interesting, but nothing was really striking until I found S. Michael's, Oxford Terrace, Christchurch. under Fr Cecil Gault. The first reaction, I think, was a certain amusement that anyone could get away with that sort of thing in an Anglican Church. Rome was generally considered forbidden and dangerous in the 50's, and I had met it, I think, only in books.
But the amusement soon gave way to a sense that here was an altogether new level of majesty, of grandeur, of holiness. I was involved with the SCM, and the Anglo-catholics there impressed me, although for a while their "intolerance" repelled me. I remember a single visit to the Liberal Catholics, and toying with the idea that solemn ceremonies might be combined with an SCM theology. But as I began to get into theological study (I had offered in 1956 for ordination and was in College House) the historical weight of support for the high church doctrines became clearer, and I gradually admitted that the holiness could not be separated from the boundaries that dogma had set around the Faith. The Anglican Church did not offer much guidance in study, especially as I was doing the ecumenical BD from the presbyterian faculty at Otago; but there was a fair enough library and I followed my nose. Feeling threatened by Rome (especially as I had become engaged) I discovered the history of the Old Catholics and fortified myself against the Papal Infallibility. A chance arose to travel to Germany and advance both my knowledge gained in an MA in German, and my knowledge of the non-English strains of Christianity. By luck, we found ourselves in Bonn and a job was available for both of us, and so an acquaintance with the Old Catholics grew. We attended their parish in Bonn for the months we were there, we hitch-hiked to Holland over the Easter holiday and "did" Holy Week in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Easter Vigil in the Cathedral in Utrecht. Later I travelled for the SCM through Switzerland and Austria to Greece to a conference.
We returned to Christchurch after a year, and were immersed in curacy life in a low parish, and then in a moderately high one that matched the "low" parish we had attended in London. Such was the let-down of the first parish that I went to Fr Gault and asked him to train me in saying mass in preparation for my priestly ordination. Thus began a formation that was simply irreversible. The remaining years in the Anglican Church saw me immersing myself increasingly in the Roman tradition which I had come to see as the authentic source of all that was good in the English tradition and its natural completion; at the same time as proposals for unity with protestants led the Anglican Church in NZ (as elsewhere) to surrender one after another the decisive boundaries that had marked it off from the mainstream of protestantism.
I had had a few contacts with the Eastern Orthodox Church. Our chaplain at College had taught us to approve of it, and I had managed to see a few Greek and Russian services, and to read some of Brightman's Liturgies. I began to say that refuge in the Orthodox Church seemed to me the only way forward, although it seemed to me that for most of the High Church it presented a formidable task of cultural re-learning. I am amused now to think of the optimism with which I told the Greek Metropolitan that I thought my Greek (I did know the modern pronunciation) was good enough to do services in.
The watershed seemed to me to come in 1969 when the Anglican General Synod gave formal permission to its members to accept the Holy Communion from other Churches in such a way that it was difficult to pretend that it had not abandoned its position concerning the Apostolic Successsion of ordination.
remember coming out of the Synod in the
Hall at S. Mary's Merivale, sick at heart amidst rejoicing by
and kneeling before the great East Window of Our Lady, and asking what
I should now do. It seemed I was to hold on to see how the matter
clarified itself
The year 1970 saw a number of encouraging things in my parish of Lyttelton, arising from a High Mass we held in honour of the 200th birthday of L.v.Beethoven, accompanied by recordings from his 2 masses, and in aid of the preservation of the wall-paintings in the Church. Not only did it lead to a quite successful restoration; it also marked the high tide of my life in Anglicanism.
[right] [left]
Although my first approach was to
the Greek Church when it became clear that I must move, I found
were unable to help me, and I was encouraged by Fr Nicholas
of Sydney to apply to Bishop Gibran of the Antiochian Church. This is
it happened:
"1- There
is an orthodox Chapel in N.Z. (Dunedin) and few families who had never
had an orthodox
priest. You may be interested in serving them.
2- If there are enough people willing to form a western rite Parish under the Antiochian Jurisdiction, I shall be ready to come and meet with you all and finalize the project."
I accepted the first as I did not think I had "enough people" and did not think I should divide the parish.of Lyttelton. But although he steered me firmly away from my Anglican past and towards the services of the Eastern Rite (the 7-fold Office, as I had used from western sources up to my trip to Sydney), he remained, in theory at least, very supportive of the Western Rite. One conversation in Melbourne I remember went like this:
"Bp: If you can find 20 families who want to worship in the Western Rite, you can serve them.
I: But what if the ***** attack it?
Bp: They
can - not! The canon law of
Orthodox Church is the canon law of
the undivided catholic Church,
and in that law there are [thirteen?*] Eastern Typica and [five?*]
Western Typica "
(* I cannot remember the exact numbers now).
never heard directly what pressure may
have been brought to bear on him in the following years, so I
not speculate. Plenty of people have done that already. But although
was apparently some difficulty in practice in giving public
he several times repeated his support in letters and told me he had
withdrawn his promises to me. One difficulty he did speak of (in 1986)
was the condition in Metropolitan Anthony' s instructions that priests
should not be bi-ritual.
It was not until February 1997, 2 years before his death, that he told me before witnesses that the permissions given in Britain (which were not, as it turned out, acted on) had removed this difficulty for him.
I still hold documentation to show that every detail of what we did 1976-1978 was described by me in letters and approved by the Bishop, who was abroad much of the time. So the decision to be Eastern Rite puzzled and dismayed me, and I never knew exactly what was behind it, although some people thought they knew.
What I
did understand was that advertizing
the Western Rite was inviting trouble. I concluded that if it had a
it was to be rather individual and very discreet. Accordingly I looked
for somewhere remote where a small congregation might worship without
Ashley is what we found in 1982.
Unlike the above, it was hand-typed and photocopied and only 3 copies were made. Much of the material was able to be taken from the Monastic Matins and the Monastic Diurnal which were out of print. These had been recommended to me by Fr Schneirla in 1971 as used by clergy in the Vicariate at the time. I did use the Diurnal and a Latin Monastic Breviary up to my ordination.
According to Canon Douglas in his Preface to the Diurnal, the monastic breviary was preferable to the Roman because the order of the Psalter in the latter had been drastically revised in 1913. When I discovered the 1828 and 1868 books in Selwyn College library, I found that this form of the Roman office avoided the problems of the later ones, and by leaving out heterodox saints one had considerable simplification, and the interruption of the Psalter was far less severe. I also found that the design was simpler than the monastic office; and besides, I was not a monk.
According to a post to a western orthodox group that I saw today, the Benedictine Office was actually an adaptation of the Old Roman office. If this is correct, it seems confirmed by my experience of using both.
While I was in Lyttelton, I had the use of Fr Edward Startup's Altar copy of the English Missal, which he later gave me in exchange for a later edition. As far as the requirements of popular tolerance and the Prayer Book allowed, I conformed to the Roman rite as set out there. It was therefore an enormous encouragement to receive in 1971 copies of the Antiochian Western rite missal which made it clear that I could actually be required to do what, against considerable resistance, I had been striving to do for years. After using the Byzantine services exclusively for my first few years in Dunedin, I resumed saying Mass in the western rite first for the Auckland mission in 1976, and then daily in Dunedin in my house chapel from about 1980. It carried me through a time in which the psychological warfare and "shell-shock" of some of my school classes meant that I needed all the strength I could find.
At this point it may be as well to explain that the numbers of Orthodox in New Zealand interested in supporting the Antiochian Church's services were so small that from the beginning I had offered to work to support myself, which I did briefly in a bookshop, and then for 12 years in a RC High School. It was partly the strain of this work that motivated me to seek a self-supporting lifestyle at Ashley, even though in the event this had to be supported for most of the last 15 years by the unemployment benefit. This has been the situation of the priests who have followed me: none of us has been able to be paid a salary by the congregation, and we have supported ourselves by our own efforts. Priests of other jurisdictions have been in that position too. Of course, the aim has always been to raise the congregations to the level at which they can support their clergy as normal; but to be realistic, that goal is still some way off.
So, I had an English Missal, the 1933 edition; I had the various editions of WR in both the Roman ("Gregorian") and Anglican ("Tikhon") versions as used in the NY Vicariate, and I had Bp Gibran's words: find out about what the various western rite use, but don't feel bound to them necessarily. In the event the usage is essentially the "Gregorian" which follows closely the Overbeck 1970 Moscow mass. For the 20 years that the Office and Mass have been said here at Ashley, every day with few exceptions, the Mass has conformed to the Calendar of the (1828) Breviary; and I have made a few small adjustments in translation; but otherwise I think things are done, as authentically as resources permit, according to the standards of the Vicariate.
Two small improvements (I hope) in the translation are as follows:
I - te, Mis - sa
Go ye, Mass is done.
Services had been held in Christchurch since 1973, mainly in the Byzantine Rite for the local Lebanese and other Orthodox. From 1986 to 1996 this continued to be the use on Sundays at Ashley, and at the beginning congregations were not too bad (around 10). But the ethnic attendance fell away and by late 1995 only 3 persons were coming from Christchurch, all converts. Since there was now a regular Greek service in Christchurch, and since a number of local Food Bank clients had begun to pray with me, accept spiritual help, and ask for baptism / chrismation, it seemed worth while to set up a Sunday western mass at a regular time and see if it grew ( early 1996) It did not, but the new members came from time to time. Bp Gibran visited the following year and gave his blessing to the arrangement.
After 4 years, the Sunday Western Mass has not collected a regular congregation, and an 11 am Divine Liturgy was been revived on the first Sunday of the month. It is too soon to say whether it will fare better than the Liturgies from 1986 - 1996; but on December 3, 2000, at Ashley, 3 people came out from Christchurch, 2 converts and an Anglican visitor. The number present (5) exactly equalled the congregation at the 9.45 am Mass the previous Sunday.
In the years since then, the congregation at Ashley has grown to 4/5; and the monthly 11 am Liturgies, revived at Cathedral Grammar. had a slightly larger attendance until the arrival of Fr Victor Didenco. He moved to a classroom and the congregation of Romanians and Russians grew; a move to a suburban Church building is awaiting final approval. And Fr Michael Elder was ordained priest and serves a small congregation at Diamond Harbour.
I personally hope
that we can continue to make this offering
to God here at Ashley, even if there is not much to show. Western
Rite is, among other things, a tangible sign that the Orthodox Church
serious about wanting reunion with Western Churches on the basis of the
unity in the faith and tradition of the ancient "Undivided" Church of
first thousand years, without ethnic or cultural obstacles. It was the
Patriarch of Constantinople who, twice in the 19th century, replied to
Papal letters about unity by saying that matters such as the chant, the
style of the vestments, and the details of the prayers, which had
varied, were not barriers to unity, but only those things in which the
Roman Church had fallen away from its own true self: he then enumerated
exactly the details which are now corrected in what have become the
Western Rites.
Since Fr Ian joined us as a
determined supporter of the Western Rite, I have accepted the
obligation to digitalize the Office and the Missal. This will probably
take the rest of my life. (See completed files on the Deanery website).
Please pray for us here. And if you will, drop us an e-mail. I should love to hear from you.


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LAKE WORTH — Four Lake Worth High School students could be suspended from school for more than a month for staging an elaborate hoax Thursday by claiming two girls were abducted at gunpoint from the school parking lot, school officials said Friday.
Principal David C. Cantley said he suspended the four girls, two sophomores and two juniors, for 10 days, the maximum he is allowed. But Cantley said he will seek an additional 30-day suspension for each girl from Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Thomas Mills.
The teen-agers were arrested Thursday on charges of reporting a false crime, a misdemeanor, after two of them fabricated a story as a coverup so the other two could run away from home, according to police. The charges were filed with the juvenile division of the Palm Beach County State Attorney`s Office, police said.
``You`re looking at a wild goose chase,`` said Lake Worth Police Lt. Ralph McCleod.
Police had stopped blue vans with tinted windows countywide that matched the description of a van the four non-existant kidnappers were supposed to be driving. But the missing girls, who had packed their bags beforehand, had just skipped a class and left the school, police said.
The extended suspensions, if approved, ``will wipe out any chance of them passing this semester,`` Cantley said.
The girls` parents could appeal the extended suspension in a hearing, if they so request, he said.
``I don`t know what they will do,`` he said.
Cantley said he didn`t consider recommending expulsion because ``it would probably dash any chance they had of graduating.`` He also said he believed the perpetrators of the hoax did not realize ``the consequences of what was going on, what they were doing to us.``
``I think we`ve made our point (to them),`` he said. ``Let`s hope they come back next year, rise above this thing and start afresh.``


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Metropolitan Storage Warehouse134 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139
Status: In planning
Themes: Innovation and collaboration
Renovation and renewal
Enhancement of life and learning
Completion: To be determined
For the planned renovation and creative re-use of the Metropolitan Warehouse, a range of options are under consideration, including maker spaces, common and study areas, research and innovation spaces, and street-level retail.
Completion Date
Themes and priorities
The Institute has identified the Metropolitan Warehouse as a renewal and redevelopment opportunity. Originally designed by Peabody & Stearns and built in 1895, Met Warehouse is one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood. With its square brick tower, crenellated corbelled cornice, and small windows, it resembles a medieval castle on a city street corner. The renovation project will endeavor to preserve the integrity and appearance of this historic architecture.
Now in the planning stage, the project will repurpose Met Warehouse's storage spaces for different uses by today's community. Current options under consideration include maker spaces, common areas and study spaces, research and innovation spaces, and street-level retail space along Massachusetts Avenue. The proposed maker space would help MIT meet the increasing demand for hands-on learning opportunities, and new gathering, research, and study areas would provide dynamic options for MIT community members to collaborate.
Given its central location and historic status, the creative repurposing of Met Warehouse will "make this building far more of a distinctive asset to our community than it has ever been before," according to Associate Provost Karen Gleason, the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and chair of the Metropolitan Warehouse Advisory Group.
Image credits
In the News
- MIT Collaboration with Dar Group supports the future of architecture, planning, and design; MIT Resource Development, June 26, 2018
- Metropolitan Storage Warehouse is potential new location for School of Architecture and Planning; Historic building would create "design hub" for MIT, with benefits for surrounding community; MIT News, June 14, 2018


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Whether your project is a new kitchen installation or a double-storey home extension, larger projects benefit from CAD (Computer Aided Design).
Here at WeBuild4U Builders in Manchester, we work closely with an architect who can produce professional electronic drawings for your project. These are very helpful in working out all the fine detail and making sure everything fits together. These drawings will help you visualise the end result and make it very easy to change and adjust your plans before construction work starts.


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The world's largest solar plant is killing birds melting them with heat
The world's largest solar plant is awesome—unless you're a bird like the one in this image published by the corporation BrightSource Energy. This bird flew over the plant and was killed by its deadly heat levels, which can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537C). Apparently, this was expected.


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Skip to comments.Sowell: Prophets and Losses: Part II
Posted on 02/04/2013 1:13:06 PM PST by jazusamo
People on both sides of tax issues often speak of such things as a "$300 billion tax increase" or a "$500 billion tax decrease." That is fine if they are looking back at something that has already happened. But it can be sheer nonsense if they are talking about a proposed increase or decrease in the tax rate.
The government can only raise or lower the tax rate. Whether the actual tax revenues that the government will collect as a result will go up or down is a matter of prophecy. And these prophecies have been far too wrong far too often to base national policies on them.
When Congress was considering raising the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent in 1986, the Congressional Budget Office advised Congress that this would increase the revenue received from that tax. But the Congressional Budget Office was wrong, not simply about the amount of the tax revenue increase, but about the fact that the capital gains tax revenue actually fell.
There was nothing unique about this example of tax rates and tax revenues moving in opposite directions from each other and also in opposite directions from the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office. Reductions of the capital gains tax rates in 1978, 1997 and 2003 all led to increased revenues from that tax.
The Congressional Budget Office is by no means the only government agency whose prophecies have been grossly unreliable. Anyone who looks at the history of the Federal Reserve System will find many painful examples of wrong prophecies that led to policies with bad consequences for the whole economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
Democrats will look right into the camera and tell the public that lowering taxes to increase revenue is a lie...never happened....a Republican myth.....etc.
The media will never correct the speaker(s).
We have exactly two brilliant people in this country who should either be in office or be shaping policy for those in office: Thomas Sowell and Newt Gingrich.
Needless to say, neither one of them is popular with the GOP-e. Personally, I think it's because the latter group can't understand a word they say (despite the fact that they are both excellent writers and everybody here on FR can certainly understand them).
"Democrats will look right into the camera and tell the public that lowering taxes to increase revenue is a lie...never happened....a Republican myth.....etc"
You are exactly right. They have been telling this lie for decades - "TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS" they call it. The media repeats the lie and the masses lap it up. Facts don't matter when the lie is told over and over again.
I wonder if the Laffer Curve is even a footnote in Modern Monetary Theory as presented in macro econ courses in today's college classrooms:
I may expect too much from Dr. Sowell, he definitely knows better.
No, the CBO has no authority to correct Congress; as a result, they are "wrong" more often than not.
The CBO is obligated to analyze what they are given by Congress, including assumptions made, with double counting and absurd projections.
They may question only the math, not the absurd assumptions and future projections made.
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Interestingly, industrial corporations offered the earliest antecedents for these efforts when they co-located component providers in client factories in order to capture the benefits of reduced friction and misunderstanding while improving speed, coordination and cost-reduction. Advantages now being reaped by enterprises engaged in far more intangible, but frequently more valuable and global initiatives.
What is significant is that a growing body of evidence provides detailed support for these policies, citing the psychological and sociological underpinnings for the findings, as the following article explains. JL
Wendy Marx reports in Fast Company:
Coworking spaces are far less important than their social structures, where workers feel a sense of individual autonomy, that's linked to a sense of collaboration. Coworkers also shape their environment—which can significantly improve workers' performance and productivity. Independence, adaptability, flexibility are fundamental human needs. So it isn't surprising that they've been linked to positive outcomes in the workplace
Employees from the likes of General Electric, Walmart, and Toyota— 4,000 companies a year, in fact—wend their way to a 60-person company based underneath a parking garage in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The visitors are coming to see firsthand how Menlo Innovations, a software development company, is reinventing the way we work.
Menlo, according to CEO Richard Sheridan, has sought to disrupt a crisis-ridden software development industry and set a standard in quality by optimizing its own work environment. At Menlo, programmers work in pairs that rotate every five days, and the company's social structure is designed to help employees collaborate. Recently the company expanded its office to allow startups and entrepreneurs to work out of the space right alongside Menlo programmers, generating connections and innovation in the process.
More than just another trendy curiosity of the tech industry, this approach seems to have a strong basis in the psychology of performance. Menlo Innovations is hardly alone in its experiment, of course. By now, coworking is a robust movement, with WeWork growing fast and its ambitions high, and other coworking outfits taking a wide, often surprising variety of forms.
Lately, even traditional companies—including those that tour Menlo for inspiration as well as many that don't—have emulated certain elements of coworking in order to encourage their own employees to interact more. According to spokesperson Laura Paredes, General Electric plans to make large parts of its new Boston headquarters, slated to open in 2018, accessible to the public for innovation, learning, and collaboration.
And according to researchers who've studied the effectiveness of coworking, they're all on to something. Here's why.
Two Basic Human Needs Coworking FulfillsA team of researchers at the University of Michigan's Steven M. Ross School of Business led by business professor Dr. Gretchen Spreitzer, who also directs the Center for Positive Organizations, has spent the last four years studying coworking. In the process, they've interviewed the founders of coworking companies around the U.S. and surveyed more than 200 workers from dozens of coworking spaces; one team member spent six months as a coworking member.
Their research uncovered two key benefits to the coworking experience, both of which have been linked to improved employee performance. Simplified somewhat, it comes down to flexibility and autonomy without dispensing with meaningful community.
It turns out that coworking spaces' hallmarks—like funky design features—are far less important than their social structures, where workers feel a sense of individual autonomy that's still linked to a sense of collaboration, the Michigan team told me in interviews. Most coworking spaces, for all their variation, tend to strike that careful balance between those crucial needs—in ways that neither solo freelancing nor the traditional office experience usually provide.
Typically, coworkers pay a monthly fee in exchange for the freedom to work when, where, and how they want. Often open 24/7, coworking facilities let members come and go and sit wherever they like. There's no forced socialization. You can be as friendly or as reserved as you want.
Coworkers also have the freedom to literally shape their environment—which some research suggests can significantly improve workers' performance and productivity. In their research, the Michigan team found that some coworking companies have taken it upon themselves to redesign their spaces to better meet members' needs, raising additional money to do so and inviting users to help design the new features.
Independence, adaptability, flexibility: These characteristics are fundamental human needs. So it isn't surprising that they've been linked to positive outcomes in the workplace, too, from improved performance to higher rates of employee commitment and engagement.
They also help explain why more companies are embracing flexible work schedules—many of the same ones, in fact, that are exploring coworking. GE, Parades tells me, now offers flexible work arrangements for all its U.S. employees as long as they've got their managers' approval.
Communities That Minimize Internal CompetitionBut this isn't the whole story, the Michigan researchers found. Autonomy and flexibility may be crucial, but your work environment is hardly the only factor that can supply them. The other key benefit that coworking spaces tend to offer is a sense of community—not just any community, but one where people, as Dr. Spreitzer puts it, are "free to be themselves" because they don't feel they're competing with those around them. As a result, ideas are more freely shared.
Spreitzer, Garrett, and their third colleague Dr. Peter Bacevice, director of research at architecture and design firm HLW International, found that that type of communal spirit provides the necessary ballast to autonomy. While too much freedom can actually hurt productivity, grafting a community structure onto an already flexible one provides what she calls "the optimal degree of control."
Typically, people join coworking spaces because they want to be part of a community while still doing their own thing. Members often share their thoughts and needs on Slack or some other communal platform. Everyone is usually expected to volunteer to maintain the facility. Lectures, outings, and other events are planned—but optional.
Here's one coworking member that PhD candidate Lyndon Garrett interviewed as part of the research:
It's really positively affected my work because it . . . makes me happier all the time, and having people around that I'm not in competition with but who can bring experience from different industries and different situations is really, really helpful . . . I've been able to come in contact with ideas I wouldn't have normally come in contact with.Traditional companies are trying to create that same sense of serendipity. AT&T has created coworking-like spaces where the company's own engineers mingle with independent developers and startups in order to accelerate AT&T's innovation cycle. The office furniture company Steelecase redesigned its corporate office to include a work café that strongly resembles those at the center of many coworking spaces, based on the idea that employees may be stimulated and build friendships with people outside their work unit.
So if more employers follow suit in the months and years ahead, they aren't just jumping on a trendy bandwagon. Sure, they might be doing that, too, but they're also trying to tap into the science that helps explain what makes people work well—alone and together.