Friedrich --

*Aaron Haspel (here) threatens that his latest "How to Read a Poem" posting will be the last in the series. Email him and theaten grievous bodily harm unless he continues.

*Jim Ryan (here) continues his excellent series on the conservative philosopher John Kekes.

*Brian Micklethwait (here) argues that while Mies van der Rohe's influence on building was largely bad, his influence on interiors was for the better.

*Now that Daniel Libeskind's mausoleum/videogame design has won the competition for the reconstruction of the WTC site, it's all the more timely to give Brian Hanson and Nikos Salingaros' brilliant essay about it a read, here.

*James Howard Kunstler is the New Urbanist movement's attack dog, an entertaining (and brainy) combination of Dennis Miller and Anne Coulter who does his ranting and joking on the topic of suburbs and buildings. I've often wondered why people in towns and cities don't form protest groups and picket aesthetic atrocities. Kunstler shows the way. His own high-blood-pressure website is here (don't miss the q&a he did with the great Jane Jacobs); a decent short interview with him is here. You can buy his eye-poppingly good book The Geography of Nowhere here.

*And, did you know that making little Flash animations of stick figures engaging in fights, especially kung-fu fights, has become a standard Web folk-art thing to do? I didn't either, until I read about it in The Scotsman. (Damn, can't find the link to the exact story anymore.) Anyway, this one guy who goes by the handle Xiao Xiao (here) is considered to be the true auteur of the school. Fun and impressive: plot lines, humor, Bruce Lee-style sound effects -- and watch for the slow-mo/3D "Matrix" passages.

Thwack, thwack,

Michael