Category Archives: history

A Sense of Awe, A Sense of Time

Posted on January 31, 2011 by AXM

The night before I left for Beijing, I watched Outsourced , a silly comedy about a man whose call center job is outsourced to India. He reluctantly takes a journey to the small town where the new center is located, and he’s promptly and predictably overwhelmed with culture shock and the frustrations of a different [...]

Don’t call it addiction

Posted on October 24, 2010 by AXM

One of the quirks of rapidly-evolving new media is that (1) we can remember a time when we didn’t need them and (2) we probably have a good number of friends who don’t need them (yet). I grew up without cell phones, Twitter, email and the like, but now I use them constantly. It’s easy [...]

The National Museum of the American Indian

Posted on September 6, 2010 by AXM

Worth a visit.

An Xiao Loves Los Angeles

Posted on September 3, 2010 by AXM

I haven’t lived in Los Angeles for nearly ten years, so it’s been a bit of a rediscovery. It’s both familiar, yet very very different, both because the city has changed and I have. Artist Michael Day sent along this great 1972 BBC documentary featuring London architectural critic Reyner Banham. It’s called, appropriately, Reyner Banham [...]