“Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard are sweeter…”
John Keates (Ode on a Grecian Urn)
History of Western Civilization Told Through the Acoustics of its Worship Spaces
“Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard are sweeter…”
John Keates (Ode on a Grecian Urn)
History of Western Civilization Told Through the Acoustics of its Worship Spaces
Statement of Net Position | ($1.3B)*
General Specifications for Dairy Plants Approved for USDA Inspection and Grading Service
*The UCD Financial Statements — the simple balance sheet showing assets and liabilities — is not easy to find in it crazily overproduced Finance and Business web page. Perhaps the apparent $1.3B operating loss has since been remediated. The loss may be absorbed into the larger University of California University System which consists of 23 colleges and universities.
“No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.”
— Winston Churchill

…”The curiosity and impatience of my master were so great, that he spent many hours of his leisure to instruct me. He was convinced (as he afterwards told me) that I must be a Yahoo, but my teachableness, civility and cleanliness, astonished him; which were qualities altogether opposite to those animals…”
That’s great!
The horse lies down with its owner. pic.twitter.com/lCB85DSkAl
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) February 10, 2025
In most jurisdictions the standard of care for operation and maintenance of education facilities is discovered and promulgated by a “fabric” of consensus products developed by a kind of “shadow government” created by a network of non-profit publishers; among them the International Code Council. The ICC has one of the most dynamic catalogs in the construction industry and today we drill into the the International Property Maintenance Code which completed another revision cycle in 2021. Operation and maintenance of education facilities is the (much larger) part of #TotalCostofOwnership of the real assets of a school district, college or university. Public access to most recent revision to the IPMC is linked below:
2021 International Property Maintenance Code
The transcript of public comment on the 2021 revision provides insight into the back-and-forth among the technical committee experts:
2021 IPMC Group A Public Comment Agenda
Note the concern for swimming pools, radon, light, ventilation and occupancy limits.
The ICC Group A tranche of titles will undergo another cyclic revision starting in 2023. Since so much of the ICC catalog underlies occupancy safety for education, healthcare and nearly all other aspects of the built environment we track the action on a near-daily basis. You may join any of our daily colloquia, shown on our CALENDAR, or interact directly with the ICC with the link below:
2024/2025/2026 ICC CODE DEVELOPMENT SCHEDULE
The ICC catalog is regarded as the most authoritative for education facility management. We maintain the IPMC on the standing agenda of our Hammurabi and Interiors colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next colloquium; open to everyone.
Issue: [Various]
Category: Architectural, Facility Asset Management, Space Planning
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jack Janveja, Richard Robben, Jerry Schulte
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“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
– Jonathan Swifit, Trinity College graduate
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This content is accessible to paid subscribers. To view it please enter your password below or send mike@standardsmichigan.com a request for subscription details.
“I am not an Athenian or a Greek,
but a citizen of the world.”
— (Plato quoting Socrates, Phaedo 64a)
ISCED 2011 is an updated version of the previous classification, ISCED 1997, and provides a framework for organizing education programs according to their level of complexity and content. The classification is designed to facilitate the comparison of education systems across countries and regions, and to improve the collection, reporting, and analysis of education statistics.
ISCED 2011 introduces several changes and updates, such as the introduction of a new level of education called “early childhood education,” the expansion of the tertiary education level to include short-cycle tertiary education, and the inclusion of a separate category for vocational education at the secondary level. The classification also includes detailed descriptions of the content and characteristics of each education level, as well as guidelines for classifying educational programs that do not fit neatly into the existing categories.
ISCED 2011 is widely used by national and international organizations, including UNESCO, to collect and report education data, and it provides a common language for discussing education across borders.
Replacing oil and natural gas lighting, the first practical electric light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Joseph W. Swan filed a similar Electric Lamp Patent in 1880. One of the first large-scale installations of electric lighting was at the Savoy Theatre in London in 1881, which was followed by the installation of electric lights in the Palace of Westminster in 1882. By the 1890s, electric lighting had become more widespread and affordable.
| Opticks: or, A treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflexions and colours of light | Sir Isaac Newton 1704 |
The widespread transition to LED lighting in buildings began in the early 2010s. While LED technology had been available since the 1960s, it wasn’t until the 2000s that the technology improved to the point where LED lighting was cost-effective and efficient enough to replace traditional lighting technologies like incandescent and fluorescent lighting. In addition to their energy efficiency, LED lights also have a longer lifespan than traditional lighting technologies, which makes them more cost-effective over the long term.
Today we refresh our understanding of the moment in illumination technologies. Illumination technology was the original inspiration for the electric utility industry; providing night-time security and transforming every sector of every economy on earth. Lighting load remains the largest component of any building’s electric load — about 35 percent– making it a large target for energy regulations. We are organizing our approach to this topic during 2023:
Illumination 100. Survey of illumination standards catalogs
Illumination 200. Interior illumination including industrial and laboratory occupancies
USPTO: Thomas Edison’s Patent Application for the Light Bulb (1880)
Amir Adibi: Light Bulb Patent: The Evolution of Illumination Technology
IEEE: Energy Optimization in Consumer Lightings: An IoT-Based Adaptive Control Mode
Illumination 300. Exterior illumination with emphasis on pathways
Illumination 400. Sport lighting, interior and exterior
Illumination 500. Advanced topics including relevant legislation and noteworthy litigation.
Except jankiness well into 2025. We have been doing this work since 1993 — starting with the National Electrical Code — and getting the topic organized into manageable segments will be a challenge.
Today our inquiry begins with selections from the following documents:
International Electrotechnical Commission TC 34 Lighting
IEC 60364 Electrical Installations in Buildings
Electrical installations and Protection Against Electric Shock
2023 National Electrical Safety Code
IEEE P3001.9 – Recommended Practice for the Design of Power Systems Supplying Lighting Systems in Commercial and Industrial Facilities (under development)
2023 National Electrical Code: Article 410
2019 ASHRAE 90.1: Chapter 9 Lighting
Illumination Engineering Society: Various titles
…and about 20 other accredited, consortia or ad hoc standards developers and publishers aligned principally with vertical incumbents. Illumination was the original inspiration (i.e. the first “killer app”) for the electrical power industry in every nation. Its best practice literature reflects a fast-moving, shape-changing domain.
Click in today with the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
With a @UCIrvine @UCIEngineering faculty delegation to the @PacificSymphony to discuss our joint new instrument competition. The details are still being worked out but needless to say, it will be epic! pic.twitter.com/dvT4Mfp9xU
— UCI Engineering Dean (@UCIEngineerDean) September 25, 2023
More
International Commission on Illumination
National Electrical Manufacturers Association
Lighting Systems Division Standards
National Electrical Contractors Association
Standard for Installing Indoor Commercial Lighting Systems (NECA500-06PDF)
Standard for Installing Exterior Lighting Systems (NECA501-06PDF)
Standard for Installing Industrial Lighting Systems (NECA502-06PDF)
Representative Specifications
Sam Houston State University | Division 26500 Interior and Exterior Lighting
University of Delaware | Division 265100 Interior Lighting
Cal Poly University San Luis Obispo | Division 265100 Interior Lighting
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwB pic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
— USPTO (@uspto) July 13, 2023
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