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Unbuilt Robert Moses Highway Maps

Not only does this post include two great (and chilling) maps of how Robert Moses’ New York City might have looked, but it warns us against our impulse to accept online base maps as apolitical representations.

I present my Google Maps version of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressways … Now there have been maps showing these proposed highways before … but the point of doing it up to look like a Google Map was to put these highways in a modern context … We have become so accustomed to viewing the world through Google Maps (or some other online mapping software) that I feel like these maps are starting to shape our view point of the city.

I’m reminded of the introduction to Denis Wood’s The Power of Maps, in which he says maps “enable the past to become part of our living . . . now . . . here.”


Pumping mums and airport security don’t mix

On her way home from Oslo, Jill Walker Rettberg—breastpump in tow—experiences gender discrimination in the airport security line:

On my way to Oslo I took it through as hand luggage - without milk since I hadn’t pumped yet, and the security people (young women) said it was fine and waved me through. On my way home, the airport train was delayed and I didn’t have much time for my flight. I assumed since Bergen had said the cooler pack was OK, I’d be fine taking the pump, milk and cooler packs through security again. But no - this time the security guy (an old man - coincidence?) stopped me and said the milk was OK but not the cooler packs.

Related: Jill links to a recent New York Times article on the subject.


Art in the DPRK

Socialist Realism is alive and well in the North Korean art scene.

Abstract painting does not exist as it is deemed bourgeois and anti-revolutionary, and if some representational art can be purely aesthetic without political overtones, many landscapes do portray places of the revolution or of political significance.

Anonymity is a hallmark of North Korean art because all artists must work out of state-run studio complexes. Artists are ranked A, B, or C, depending on skill level. About fifty top-ranked artists are further designated “Merited Artists” and a more elite group of 20 are designated “People’s Artists.”