A Ghost is Born

I'm not sure if I should recommend the new Wilco album. I loved the 15 minutes of noise on track 11, reminiscent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (though more benign) but the rest is burdened by an uber-relaxed aesthetic, with Jeff Tweedy's bored vocals acting like protective armor -- as if to say in case we don't like it, he can say that he wasn't really trying .

I have already flip-flopped a few times. It has a cool cover, cool title and cool typeface. And I like to think that this is what Nirvana would be sounding like as Kurt Cobain was approaching 40.

Not Quite There Yet

Burt Rutan's suborbital flight yesterday probably means more to the future of suborbital hypersonic transport than space travel. Spaceship One's top speed in its 62 mile suborbital flight was some 1800 mph. Compare this to the 17,000 mph velocity required to reach orbital velocity and you realize that the difference between sub-orbital flight and orbital flight is an order of magnitude.

Is the New Trade Center More TV Tower Than Skyscraper

With all the talk during the last several months about Daniel Libeskind taking a subordinate role to Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein's preferred Skidmore Owings Merrill architect, David Childs, the talk is that Libeskind's World Trade Center plan is being watered down in the name of commerce. While others understand that large commercial developments are always a compromise between art and commercial demands, what might be getting lost here is the possibility that the site's new primary tower may not be nearly as impressive as what came before it.

Plans call for a narrow office tower slated to be the world's tallest, rising 1776 feet above lower Manhattan. Leased up to the 70th floor, the remaining levels will be devoted to open girders and an electricity generating wind farm. At first glance this seems impressive, a tower some 300 feet taller than the previous Trade Towers and 200 feet taller than Petronas Towers, currently the world's tallest. However, the new Trade Center tower will have an extremely narrow footprint. Floor plates at the base of the building are only a quarter the size of the previous Twin Towers' 40,000 square feet and steadily taper to a single point at full height. In fact, the building tapers so sharply that the top third of the structure more resembles a transmission tower than a skyscraper. The imposing quality of an office tower stems as much from its depth and width as it does from its height (the previous Twin Towers being case in point). Aesthetically, Libeskind's tower cannot help but be an improvement over its predecessor but will most likely lack the impact provided by the previous towers' sheer bulk. In fact, it may be no more impressive than Toronto's CN Tower (a radio and television mast) still remaining the world's tallest self-supporting structure at over 1800 feet.

The new Trade Center Tower's unprecedented narrow profile is almost defeatist; as if the building is scrunching itself up, determined to make itself the smallest target possible. Perhaps the compromises brought on by Silverstein's need to create leaseable space will add some heft to this soaring shrinking violet.