Timothy Lesle - Latest Comments

Re: Changing Wheels: More multimedia journalism very quickly

Tim Lesle — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:10:48 -0000

Boy, was I wrong about Flash. But then, this was before Apple said it was going to keep Flash off of the iPad—and before we even knew it would be called the iPad.

Re: Big In Japan

Vũ Thị Quỳnh Giao — Tue, 03 May 2011 01:39:35 -0000

I am a fan of Sandel too. I've been reading his Justice book and the Justice youtube series many times.

Re: Golden Gate, Inc = Bollywood in Bay Area

Alam — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 05:21:55 -0000

I just saw this movie, and found this company Golden Gate Inc in it

http://www.imdb.com/title/t...

Thanks

Re: The Shanzhai Huaxiangji Question

ANANDHARAJ — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:41:41 -0000

The first and the second videos are shot at different ocassions since the dress of the pilot differs. The flying thing (?) in the first video looks very crude and raw whereas the gyro in the second video has a better finish. Anyway, the blogger has to come out with a better video with more profile to believe the authenticity of the first video. But it is possible for the chinese to build low cost flying machine as they do with other products.

Re: A Coast Process

Eric — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:31:20 -0000

Eric likes this.

Re: Devoted to A Fault

Jeremy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:21:58 -0000

Nice article man. I feel like going on a tour just to see all of this stuff for myself. I still haven't seen the stadium in person. We'll have to go exploring one of these days.

Great Job,
-J

Re: Devoted to a Fault, Conclusion: Education, preparation, and the stadium

Allen Taylor — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:45:59 -0000

Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.

Allen Taylor

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Tim Lesle — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:45:46 -0000

@Sheila Thanks! Will keep working at this.

@Finn Yes, there are so many connections out in the world. Always good to share.

Re: Smart Car, Dumb Car?

Tim Lesle — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:40:54 -0000

Thanks, Jack, for the note. Yeah, it's hard to know what to make of this. I see these little Smart Cars all over the place here in San Francisco. My girlfriend was excited when she first heard they'd be coming to America after having seen them in Europe.

But this March she was in a car accident. It was her Corolla versus a new Escalade that ran a red light—place your bets on how that turned out. I can't imagine a little Smart Car would have done much better than her Toyota, which was totaled. She did end up getting a little Civic to replace it.

Re: Smart Car, Dumb Car?

Jack H. — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:52:13 -0000

My wife looked at "the smart car" and then priced it.

Although I thought the car wasn't bad looking, she discovered its a bit pricy given the size. It could be really useful locally, but NOT on moderate or long road trips. For its size, its too expensive. I'd rather just go with a Honda Civic, pay a little more, and be able to take at least moderate length trips. Hondas have a track record, too, of dependability. I think the "smart car" has been around in Europe for ten years, but I don't know about its record of repair.

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Finn — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:16:03 -0000

Great post you have here. I love the video and what you really want to show about it. Its kind of a reflection that we should not forget but something to share with our fellow.

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Sheila — Wed, 27 May 2009 03:20:18 -0000

The article is excellent to read, it gives a very beautiful lesson to the readers. Its really informative. Keep it up!

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Timothy Lesle — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:26:23 -0000

Hi Mike, thanks for the note. Glad you like it! I'll be posting more soon--have been dealing with various internet malfunctions that have kept me from working on the blog.

Re: Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Mike — Sat, 23 May 2009 17:05:04 -0000

Hi, nice posts there :-) thank's for the interesting information

Re: The Russians Are Coming. Take Five.

Tim Lesle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:03:33 -0000

Hey, Kate, thanks for the comment! Glad you liked it.

Re: The Russians Are Coming. Take Five.

kate — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:33:49 -0000

thanks for this!

Re: Freeman Dyson and the Great Big World

Tim Lesle — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:41:24 -0000

Thanks, Pat. I read the Chris Mooney response after you mentioned it. I also looked at this indignant response from Joseph Romm.

No surprises, in a way, though ferocious in their tone.

Actually, one surprise. I was surprised at the casual belittling of the writer Nicholas Dawidoff, who is, if you'd believe these guys and other bloggers, a mere baseball writer. Well, what's wrong with that, first of all? Mooney jokingly says there must be a link between loving baseball and sympathizing with climate skeptics. I guess Stephen Jay Gould, who has a whole collection of baseball writing, died before the vociferous climate debates of recent years, so we aren't sure where he would stand.

Mooney says this is a good example of the disaster that ensues when editors work with reporters who don't have "scientific backgrounds." I initially read that to mean journalists with scientific training. But I haven't yet found evidence that Mooney has had similar training. I'm fairly certain Elizabeth Kolbert also doesn't have a scientific background.

One of the books that's been sitting on my shelf for a long time is The Fly Swatter, a biography of the economist Alexander Gerschenkron, by Nicholas Dawidoff. (Gerschenkron is Dawidoff's grandfather). The milieu is the mid-twentieth century world of academics and intellectuals, when professors mingled with celebrities and an outsize proportion of this population was made up of people who'd fled the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, or in Gerschenkron's case, both. Dyson's glory days would have coincided, which I find a nice thematic link.

In any case, while I'm no climate skeptic, I love how much Dyson and this story are confounding people (and I'm sure Gerry Marzorati and Alex Star and the rest of the NYT Magazine are loving it, too). They want to dismiss Dyson as a crackpot while also praising his brilliance! That's hard to do! What did Fitzgerald say about opposing ideas?

Re: Freeman Dyson and the Great Big World

Pat Joseph — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:53:42 -0000

Nice post, Tim. Have you seen Mooney's reaction to this story? I'm kinda surprised. In a way, it seems to support the contention of those who say that a certain heterodoxy has formed around the issue and that anyone who questions it is branded a heretic.

Re: China: Green Dreams (Finally)

Tim Lesle — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:52:22 -0000

Peter,

Thanks for the comment. I would have liked to have included more about the on-the-ground construction, and especially more on Dai Xiaolong, the local developer. I did communicate with people present for that stage, including Dai. The bulk of the material related to Dai was cut before the final story came out, though, due to concerns over length and relevance.

Shannon May addressed the issue of project management best when she noted that the Chinese builders did not have the proper expertise to make sure the plan was realized as designed. While she has said that Dai deserves a great measure of responsibility for the outcome, she points out there was a more fundamental responsibility on the part of the Americans to make sure it worked. After all, she notes this whole effort started with the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development and its partners—and they're the ones who selected Dai to build this. What an observer like May has pointed out is that the Center and people like McDonough wanted the credit for an innovative project but didn't want to invest as much as was needed to see it through.

The cost issue was one of the stickiest I encountered. Did McDonough and the others undershoot in their estimations? Did Dai miscalculate or, through inexperience or bad planning, simply add to cost overruns? Hard to say, although people I've talked with tend to put the blame for that more on Dai. There was talk about all kinds of payment plans, transferring land ownership for home ownership--a lot of noise, but nothing concrete. As I recall, Dai was especially reluctant to discuss the cost aspect of the houses with me. It seems that nobody expected the houses to cost as much as they did, and so there was no real plan for addressing that.

While McDonough's plans were attractive and innovative—and while Dai must have thought that a successful development would enrich the village and, especially, himself—the missing link here was an effective strategy to execute the ideas.

It's hard to say why the corporations didn't continue to support the village project, despite having donated materials and technology for the first house built, the demonstration house. My understanding, is that corporate involvement was coordinated by the Center, where they were often donors or supporters. If I recall correctly, one person involved with the Center claimed that its commitment to Huangbaiyu extended only through the construction of the first demonstration home, and the rest was Dai's responsibility. If so, that would suggest that corporate support of the village would also have ended with the demonstration house. May really nailed the relationship between corporations and the Center in a 2007 article from the Far Eastern Economic Review. Her web site hosts a PDF of the piece, provocatively titled "A Sino-US Sustainability Sham."

***

It was not easy to get an interview with Dai Xialong, and I only really managed to do so through with the tenacity of my translator and the intercession of a retired county bureaucrat. During our interview, Dai was charismatic and well-spoken. But it was clear in our limited time that he was only willing to answer the questions he wanted to answer. He was more interested in selling us on his next project, which was the biogas plant constructed in the village. (Thus the concerns mentioned up top about length and relevance.) Maybe I'll salvage the parts that were cut; it makes for a colorful addendum to the story, if a little out of date at this point.

Re: China: Green Dreams (Finally)

Peter — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:02:06 -0000

Tim,

This is a very interesting piece. I do have a couple of questions regarding this project. Most of your story highlights the fact that this village was delveloped based on the requirements of a sustainable city project and not those of the villagers. Did you get any insight regarding poor project management. It does seem there was some scope-creep and changing requirements (i.e. building materials, the lack of solar power, no southward facing houses), but what about the cost? Was there any clues leading to why the cost of the homes were so much higher than their planned cost? What happened to the businesses that were eager to donate technology to this project?

Re: Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

Tim Lesle — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:39:13 -0000

By the way, I was toying with calling this "Chronicle of the Chronicle's Death Foretold?" Meh.

Re: Mapping Photos using GeoRSS

Pierre Bernard — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:41:33 -0000

Cool! I didn't know about this.

BTW, the latest release of HoudahGeo features CSV output for upload to ZeeMaps.

Pierre Bernard
Houdah Software sarl

Re: On Being Called Out

Tim Lesle — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:13:02 -0000

Hi Catlin,

Thanks for the comment! Good to hear from you. Yeah, that Greenbuild experience was definitely unique. I'll drop you a line via e-mail in the next day or two. Thanks again!

Re: On Being Called Out

Catlin O'Shaughnessy — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:03:18 -0000

Tim -

I was in the audience that day at the International Forum. I thought it was a fascinating interaction that certainly livened up the room and blew discussions about this project - and about construction reporting - wide open for me and many others. Having shifted gears a few years back from the international development realm to writing about green building for a major publisher, I was thrilled by the fallout conversations I heard throughout the rest of the day about the relationship between anthropology and design/construction. In my opinion, the close relationship between these disciplines is not discussed often enough, and is particularly critical as we work to grow the green building movement overseas. The attempt to improve livelihoods while 'doing no harm' is an intriguing and important dilemma that should be further integrated into the discourse about projects like this one and many others.

I'm heading to UAE next week - would be very interested in your take on the community developments at Masdar, SHAMS and others. Keep up the good work.

Re: [Note on] Advertising on It, Is In Fact?

Peggy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:41:00 -0000

Why not? A friend got sponsorship from Green Mountain for hers: www.turninghoustongreen.com even though she doesn't throw a sales pitch in for the company in her articles. Altruism is great and noble; getting paid for it is also not bad.