Wall-E

A very cute film, with an excellent Pixar short at the beginning as usual. The 'message' part of it is a bit heavy-handed, and clearly is part of the 'greenwashing' of the youth, but at least I agree with the basic message: don't waste the planet with crap consumerism. Of course, as a big-budget Disney/Pixar film, it will probably generate as much consumerist crap as anything else, but that too is amusing in a Stuff White People Like #50 way. Really, any Disney film with a Peter Gabriel soundtrack is a bit over the top in the 'message' department. Perhaps the most ironic moment will come when you can buy the Wall-E DVD at Big 'n Large, um, I mean Walmart in a few weeks.

Wall-E the robot is a brilliant blend of ET and R2D2, and the most brilliant thing about the whole movie is that it probably took 5 minutes to localize it since there's so little English dialogue.

Architorture

As cuddlyeconomist likes to say: the only people who have proven to think the way that economists model people are other economists. This is in part because all their testing is done on second-year economics students who have already gotten some indoctrination. Psychology has a similar selection-bias.

Our trip yesterday to the Seattle Public Library demonstrates that this also applies to architects. They love the soaring 10-story central shaft with raw concrete surface, the spiral inviting flow that guides you up and around the building and making you walk from one set of escalators to another. Finally you are deposited shivering in fear along with several dozen more packed and lost people at the top floor looking down said 10-story central shaft with no clear way down save for jumping! When your group consist of people afraid of heights and others afraid of elevators, the complete lack of escalators down leaves stairs as the only option for escape. We eventually found our way to the Red Room, which for those who have not seen it is a non-Euclidian floor design full of meeting rooms all painted screaming blood red. The overall experience of the building is to bring to life one of the classic graduate-school stress nightmares: trapped in a strange library and unable to get out.

Naturally such a building has received many awards given by architects to other architects.

Unfortunately, given the headspace Margo has been in lately, it freaked her out. Personally I found the place a bit disturbing, but clearly the 10 story cement central shaft would make a bitchin' REI-sponsored climbing wall. We found refuge in the one anchor of reality you can always find while here in Seattle: We hung out in the espresso café until the others were ready to go.