Excerpted

You are currently browsing the archive for the Excerpted category.

“But Not Just Any Kind Of Ban Will Do”

May 15, 2013 in Excerpted, Politics, Urban Studies

From The Philosopher’s Beard, the opening of a post that offers non-bigoted justifications for a ban on burqas in open societies, though I don’t think the arguments would be deemed acceptable if applied to other orthodox belief systems:

“Bans on wearing the burqa and other face-covering religious garb (such as are under consideration or recently passed in several European countries) fall under a class of restrictions by government on the free choice of individuals over private matters. They thus have the appearance of being illiberal, of disrespecting people’s natural rights to manage their own affairs in general, and to follow their own plan of life in particular. In fact, it is possible to justify such a ban in liberal terms. But not just any kind of ban will do.

Political debate about the burqa in the west is dominated by an unfortunate bigotry, a species of moral foolishness antithetical to liberalism. I have heard and read serious arguments for banning the burqa because it causes vitamin D deficiency (lack of sunshine), because people will try to rob banks dressed in burqas, because this is alien to our face-to-face culture, and so on. Such arguments are, respectively, trivial, stupid, and xenophobic (if not racist).

Yet it seems to me that there are in fact plausible liberal arguments for banning the burqa (and various other things, such as addictive drugs), which focus on the harms that the burqa may do to the personal autonomy of particularly vulnerable women and girls.”

“Could You Explain The Ending To American Psycho To Me Like I’m A 5 Year Old?”

May 15, 2013 in Books, Excerpted, Film

Bret Easton Ellis, who fucked Blair who fucked Trent before they all fucked Clay, just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. He’s a godawful writer but if you want to look at his works as presaging the overt violence and sexuality of our virtual world, you can. Of course, that would be giving him far too much credit. A few exchanges from the AMA follow.

_____________________

Question:

I read in a German magazine you once were so drunk (or stoned) you confused texting and tweeting and asked for drugs on Twitter. Is that a true story?

Bret Easton Ellis:

Yeah. That’s a true story. I still left the drunken tweet on my Twitter feed, hoping one day it becomes a catch phrase.

_____________________

Question:

Favorite author? Besides yourself, of course. 

Bret Easton Ellis:

Gustave Flaubert.

_____________________

Question:

What did you think of American Psycho 2?

Bret Easton Ellis:

It was a breathtaking masterpiece.

_____________________

Question:

Could you explain the ending to American Psycho to me like I’m a 5 year old?

Bret Easton Ellis:

Not really, babe.

_____________________

Question:

A lot of people were deeply shocked by the comments you made about David Foster Wallace, even after he had tragically committed suicide, particularly when you said he was “the most tedious, overrated, tortured, pretentious writer of my generation.”

What happened to create this feud? Were you surprised at the backlash your comments received?

Bret Easton Ellis:

There wasn’t a feud. David and I had never met. But I never responded to his work. Simple as that. I was reading the new bio and it was pissing me off–the kid gloves approach. And that I thought he had a literary fraudulence about him that manifested itself in his fiction. You could say the same about me. I was not surprised by the backlash to those tweets. There are a lot of little snowflakes who somehow really respond to this faux-earnestness of DFW that I just don’t think is realistic.

_____________________

Question:

Has there ever been a critique you’ve taken to heart that had some impact on your work? 

Bret Easton Ellis:

No.

_____________________

Gustave Flaubert: Also fucked Blair and Trent.

Gustave Flaubert: Also fucked Blair and Trent.

Tags: ,

“Authorities Say Most Of The Runaways Come From White, Middle-Class Families”

May 15, 2013 in Excerpted, Urban Studies, Video

This telling segment July 31, 1971 Huntley-Brinkley Report (which was Chet Huntley’s final broadcast) is a pretty tremendous capsule of ’60s youth culture run aground, as there are accounts of rock festivals cancelled, the Manson Family murder trial in progress and Berkeley police attempting to shutter communes. Young reporter Tom Brokaw handles the Berkeley story.

The opening of the December 19, 1969 Life report about the Manson murders: “Long-haired, bearded little Charlie Manson so disturbed the American millions last week–when he was charged with sending four docile girls and a hairy male acolyte off to slaughter strangers in two Los Angeles houses last August–that the victims of his blithe and gory crimes seemed suddenly to have played only secondary roles in the final brutal moments of their own lives. The Los Angeles killings struck innumerable Americans as an inexplicable controversion of everything they wanted to believe about the society and their children–and made Charlie Manson seem to be the very encapsulation of truth about revolt and violence by the young.”

“Who Am I, And Why Would I Be Considered Some Sort Of Expert On Moneyball?”

May 14, 2013 in Books, Excerpted, Science/Tech, Sports

At present, there are 13 used copies of Eric Walker’s oddly titled, out-of-print 1982 baseball-themed paperback, The Sinister First Baseman & Other Observations, on sale from Amazon sellers, and the cheapest one, in merely “Acceptable” condition, goes for $104.96. Who, exactly, is Eric Walker and why does he have so much value for so few people?

There were always those who suspected that baseball’s conventional wisdom was not so wise, but in the 1970s, Walker, a Bay Area baseball fan birthed the idea of Moneyball before Sandy Alderson or Billy Beane had entered the game. Even he, however, had an important precursor. From “The Forgotten Man of Moneyball,” Walker’s 2009 Deadspin article, a passage about his inspiration:

“But who am I, and why would I be considered some sort of expert on moneyball? Perhaps you recognized my name; more likely, though, you didn’t. Though it is hard to say this without an appearance of personal petulance, I find it sad that the popular history of what can only be called a revolution in the game leaves out quite a few of the people, the outsiders, who actually drove that revolution. 

Anyway, the short-form answer to the question is that I am the fellow who first taught Billy Beane the principles that Lewis later dubbed ‘moneyball.’ For the long-form answer, we ripple-dissolve back in time …

. . . to San Francisco in 1975, where the news media are reporting, often and at length, on the supposed near-certainty that the Giants will be sold and moved. There sit I, a man no longer young but not yet middle-aged, a man who has not been to a baseball game — or followed the sport — for probably over two decades, but a man who in childhood used to paste New York Giants box scores into a scrapbook, and who remembers, dimly but fondly, such folk as Whitey Lockman and Wes Westrum.

Carpe diem, I think.

With my lady, also a baseball fan of old, I go to a game. We have a great time; we go to more games, have more great times. I am becoming enthused. But I am considering and wondering — wondering about the mechanisms of run scoring, things like the relative value of average versus power. Originally an engineer by trade, I am right there with Lord Kelvin: ‘When you cannot measure it and express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a very meagre and unsatisfactory kind.’ I fiddle with some numbers; but I vaguely remember Branch Rickey’s work, the cover story in Life magazine for Aug. 2, 1950, [ed. note: it was actually 1954 and not a cover story] and think that I may not need to reinvent the wheel. I go to the San Francisco main library, looking for books that in some way actually analyze baseball. I find one. One. But what a one. 

If this were instead Reader’s Digest, my opening of that book would be ‘The Moment That Changed My Life!’ The book was Percentage Baseball, by one Earnshaw Cook, a Johns Hopkins professor who had consulted on the development of the atomic bomb. Today, when numerical analysis of baseball performance is a commonplace, it is hard to grasp how revolutionary, even shocking, were the concepts Cook was developing (Rickey’s work, which had quickly dropped off everyone’s radar, notwithstanding). The book was, and remains, awe-inspiring.”

Tags: , , ,

“At First Thought, It Seems Like A Pure Futuristic Boon”

May 14, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

From “Slaves to the Algorithm,” Steven Poole’s new Aeon essay about handing over function, and by extension, moral judgement, to math:

“At first thought, it seems like a pure futuristic boon — the idea of a car that drives itself, currently under development by Google. Already legal in Nevada, Florida and California, computerized cars will be able to drive faster and closer together, reducing congestion while also being safer. They’ll drop you at your office then go and park themselves. What’s not to like? Well, for a start, as the mordant critic of computer-aided ‘solutionism’ Evgeny Morozov points out, the consequences for urban planning might be undesirable to some. ‘Would self-driving cars result in inferior public transportation as more people took up driving?’ he wonders in his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013).

More recently, Gary Marcus, professor of psychology at New York University, offered a vivid thought experiment in The New Yorker. Suppose you are in a self-driving car going across a narrow bridge, and a school bus full of children hurtles out of control towards you. There is no room for the vehicles to pass each other. Should the self-driving car take the decision to drive off the bridge and kill you in order to save the children?

What Marcus’s example demonstrates is the fact that driving a car is not simply a technical operation, of the sort that machines can do more efficiently. It is also a moral operation. (His example is effectively a kind of ‘trolley problem’, of the sort that has lately been fashionable in moral philosophy.) If we let cars do the driving, we are outsourcing not only our motor control but also our moral judgment.”

Tags: , ,

“A Team Of Researchers Have Reportedly Figured Out How To Harness Photosynthesis In The Creation Of Electricity”

May 14, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

From Colin Druce-McFadden’s Dvice piece about houseplants perhaps being the future of solar cells:

“Photosynthesis is a pretty basic process that scientists have understood for quite a while. But a recent breakthrough in the collection of solar energy just might have a few members of the scientific community dusting off their biology textbooks. A team of researchers at the University of Georgia have reportedly figured out how to harness photosynthesis in the creation of electricity.

It’s actually something that it turns out is pretty intuitive, because of the way plants use solar energy to feed themselves is by splitting up water molecules and using the electrons in the creation of sugars. But the research team at the University of Georgia decided that a better use of those electrons, freed by plants from water molecules, were better off powering our devices for us.”

Tags:

Mary Baker Eddy, Nearing Mission’s End

May 14, 2013 in Excerpted, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

This classic photograph profiles late-life Mary Baker Eddy, who was the founder of the hokum known as Christian Science, a scripture-based faith healing that believed medicine and hygiene were unnecessary. She was born in 1812 in New Hampshire, began “hearing voices” in her girlhood, and was soon known for her ability to “cure” animals and people alike. Her talent and charisma and persistence allowed her to remarkably create an international cult in an age long before mass media. Even her detractors were awed by her unlikely empire. In an otherwise lacerating 1903 critique of Mrs. Eddy, Mark Twain wrote: “She is interesting enough without an amicable agreement. In several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the most extraordinary. The same may be said of her career, and the same may be said of its chief result. She started from nothing. Her enemies charge that she surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system of healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical basis. She and her friends deny that she took anything from him. This is a matter which we can discuss by-and-by. Whether she took it or invented it, it was—materially—a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it into a Klondike.”

Eddy became a shadowy figure in her later years–was she a morphine addict as rumors suggested? was she mentally unfit to care for herself?–though it didn’t diminish her hold on the public’s attention. She died on December 3, 1910. A passage about the origins of her calling from an article about her two days later in the New York Times:

“Some of her friendly biographers quote Mrs. Eddy as having said in describing the discovery of her so-called psychological sense:

When I was very little I used to hear voices. They called me. They spoke my name. ‘Mary! Mary!’ I used to go to my mother and say, ‘Mother did you call me? What do you want?’ and she would say ‘No, my child, I didn’t call you.’ Then I would go away and play but the voices would call me again distinctly.

There was a day when my cousin, whom I dearly loved. was playing with me, and she too heard the voices. She said: ‘You’re mother’s calling you, Mary,’ and when I didn’t go I could hear them again. But I knew that it wasn’t mother. My cousin didn’t know what to make of my behavior, because I was always an obedient child. ‘Why, Mary,’ she repeated, ‘what do you mean by not going?’

When she heard the voices again she went to my mother, and my cousin said:

‘Didn’t you call Mary?’ My mother asked if I heard voices and I said I did. Then she asked my cousin if she heard them, and when she said ‘Yes,’ my mother cried.

She talked with me that night and told me, when I heard them again–no matter where I was-to say: ‘What wouldst Thou, Lord? Here I am.’ That is what Samuel said, you know, when the Lord called him. She told me not to be afraid, but to surely answer.

The next day I heard voices again, but was too frightened to speak. I felt badly. Mother noticed it and asked me if I had heard the call again. When I said that I was too frightened to say what she had told me she talked with me and told me that the next time I must surely answer and not fear.

When the voice came again I was in bed. I answered as quickly as I could, as she had told me to do, and when I had spoken a curious lightness came over me. I remember it so well! It seemed to me I was being lifted off my little bed, and I put out my hands and caught the sides. From that time I never heard the voices. They ceased.”

 

Tags: ,

“I Would Prefer To Not Spread And Democratize The Ability To Fight War To Every Single Human Being”

May 14, 2013 in Excerpted, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

Those drones we send out to “cleanly” do our dirty work will no doubt eventually become tools of terror. Eric Schmidt tells the Guardian that we should ban privately owned drones, but it would seem to be impossible in our maker culture to put that cat back in the basket. An excerpt from the article:

“The use of cheap, miniature ‘everyman’ drones needs to be banned by international treaties before such devices fall into the hands of private users including terrorists, the head of Google has said.

In an extended interview with the Guardian, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google and an adviser to Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, warned of the potential of new technology to ‘democratize the ability to fight war,’ and said drones could soon be used to harass and spy on neighbors.

‘You’re having a dispute with your neighbor,’ he hypothesized. ‘How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?’

Schmidt set out the trajectory of robotic warfare and considered whether it would be confined solely to national governments. ‘It’s probable that robotics becomes a significant component of nation state warfare,’ he said.

‘I’m not going to pass judgment on whether armies should exist, but I would prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to fight war to every single human being.’”

Tags:

“It Stretched Everybody’s Imagination”

May 13, 2013 in Excerpted, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

From “China: Year Zero,” Christian Caryl’s Foreign Policy piece about the modest beginnings of an economic miracle, an excerpt about Americans attending 1979′s curious Canton Trade Fair:

“On the appointed day, they set off from Guangzhou in a van that jolted down hideous dirt roads for hours. At one point it broke down, and everyone had to get out and walk to a spot where the Chinese hosts were able to arrange for another ride. The walk was not a total loss; the little group passed by a rural private market where local farmers were hawking all manner of produce, a vignette none of the Americans in the group could ever remember having seen before.

Finally, after a full day’s journey in the intense heat, they arrived at their destination. It turned out to be just across the border from Hong Kong — not far from the Lo Wu crossing where all foreigners made their entry into mainland China. (In these days you couldn’t fly directly to Beijing from the outside world.) The bewildered Americans followed their hosts to the top of a dike, where the Chinese guides gestured at the vista spread before them. It was not clear what they were meant to look at. All that the Americans could see was the usual South China landscape: There were rice paddies, worked by peasants and their water buffalos in the time-honored manner, and duck ponds. There were a few trees, and here and there a modest peasant dwelling. What the Chinese were describing seemed to bear no relationship to the observable reality. This, they told the Americans, was the location of something called the Baoan Foreign Trade Base. The party had designated it as a special location for foreign investment. According to the plans under consideration, it would soon be the site of chemical factories and textile mills and manufacturing plants. And, oh yes, there would also be plenty of hotels for the foreign businessmen. It was going to be a wonderful chance to make money.

The Americans thought the Chinese were crazy. ‘It stretched everybody’s imagination,’ [Tom] Gorman said. ‘I don’t think there was one of us who listened to the briefing and thought, ‘Yeah, that sounds feasible.’ It was, emphatically, ‘Come on, what are you smoking?’

The next day, after an uncomfortable night spent in the only existing local hotel (which had no electricity or running water), the Americans attended a briefing where the Chinese unrolled blueprints that depicted acres of factories, warehouses, and other facilities. The plans betrayed a startling ambition. ‘It was really hard to believe,’ Gorman recalled. ‘Nothing in China at that point happened quickly — except politics. Business and construction didn’t happen on those kinds of timelines.’”

Tags: ,

“[She Is] Probably As Responsible As Any Other Living Person For The Ridiculous And Sorry State Of American Television Journalism”

May 13, 2013 in Excerpted, Urban Studies, Video

Barbara Walters proved to be just as good as the men in the media world, but, sadly, no better. More Joan Lunden than Joan Didion, she didn’t enlighten but entertained, sinking gleefully along with the culture, participating in its descent. The opening of a Walters takedown at Salon, on the day she announced her retirement, by the consistently and delightfully petulant Alex Pareene:

“Barbara Walters has announced her retirement from journalism, a profession she claims to have been practicing for more than 50 years. Walters, the former co-host of the Today show, ABC World News, 20/20, and current co-host of The View, is a national icon and a pioneer, and probably as responsible as any other living person for the ridiculous and sorry state of American television journalism. She has announced her retirement a year in advance, so that a series of aggrandizing specials can be produced celebrating her long and storied career. So let’s get things started off right, by reminding everyone how her entire public life has been an extended exercise in sycophancy and unalloyed power worship.”

_____________________

“Baby, baby, baby, you have Bieber Fever”:

Tags: ,

“There’s A Single, Towering Problem In The Electric Car Business: A Lack Of Infrastructure”

May 13, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

From Farhood Manjoo’s new Slate piece about Elon Musk’s underlying strategy in developing electric-car infrastructure in America:

“Tesla wants to be just like Apple. That’s not a bad goal—Apple has done quite well for itself. But what few in the tech press have noticed is that Musk seems to have another tech titan in mind: Google. Musk knows that there’s a single, towering problem in the electric car business: a lack of infrastructure. Batteries aren’t good enough, charging stations are too far apart, and there aren’t enough mechanics and dealers. Tesla is trying to create this infrastructure by itself, which means everything’s moving more slowly than it could. If the entire car business worked together to improve this stuff, batteries and charging infrastructure would improve at a faster pace.

So how can Tesla persuade General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes, BMW, and other car giants—not to mention other car startups that are similar in size to Tesla—to all work together to improve the world’s electric vehicle infrastructure? By licensing its tech to its competitors, in the same way that Google gives Android away to every phone-maker in the world.

That’s exactly what Tesla has started doing. “

Tags: ,

“Matt Moore Suggested A Sensor Inside The Baseball And One Inside The Pitcher’s Cap That Would Cause The Ball To Explode”

May 13, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech, Sports

Baseball pitchers should have been wearing padded caps or fitted helmets for years, but, you know, Bud Selig is MLB Commissioner, so everything has to move at a glacial pace. The only good thing to come out of the harrowing recent incident that saw Toronto pitcher J.A. Happ suffer a skull fracture after being struck by a batted ball was the solution to the problem brainstormed by Tampa Bay’s southpaw Matt Moore. From Roger Mooney in the Tampa Tribune:

“ST. PETERSBURG - It was after the shock of seeing the line drive slam into the side of J.A. Happ’s head had subsided a bit – after word spread through the Rays dugout that as scary as it seemed, the Toronto starter would be OK – when the Tampa Bay pitchers discussed ways to avoid such incidents.

Matt Moore suggested a sensor inside the baseball and one inside the pitcher’s cap that would cause the ball to explode when it came within a certain distance of the pitcher’s head.

‘That’s Matt’s great idea. I kind of like it,’ Rays pitcher David Price said.”

Tags: , , , ,

“A Technician Was Tending To The Delicate Task Of Growing The Tens Of Billions Of Cells Needed To Make The Burger”

May 12, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

In the future, and not too far in it, genetically modified foods and in vitro ones will be our best hope, perhaps our only hope. The opening of a New York Times article by Henry Fountain about a hamburger “born” of beef-muscle tissue grown in a Dutch lab, a project I blogged about nearly a year ago:

“MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — As a gastronomic delicacy, the five-ounce hamburger that Mark Post has painstakingly created here surely will not turn any heads. But Dr. Post is hoping that it will change some minds.

The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in-Vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality.

‘Let’s make a proof of concept, and change the discussion from ‘this is never going to work’ to, ‘well, we actually showed that it works, but now we need to get funding and work on it,’ Dr. Post said in an interview last fall in his office at Maastricht University.

Down the hall, in a lab with incubators filled with clear plastic containers holding a pinkish liquid, a technician was tending to the delicate task of growing the tens of billions of cells needed to make the burger, starting with a particular type of cell removed from cow necks obtained at a slaughterhouse.”

Tags: ,

“When Machines Get Incredibly Cheap To Run, People Seem Correspondingly Expensive”

May 12, 2013 in Books, Excerpted, Science/Tech, Urban Studies

The opening of Jaron Lanier’s piece in Wired about Moore’s Law, which is excerpted from his new book, Who Owns the Future?:

“Moore’s Law is Silicon Valley’s guiding principle, like all ten commandments wrapped into one.

The law states that chips get better at an accelerating rate. They don’t just accumulate improvements, in the way that a pile of rocks gets higher when you add more rocks. Instead of being added, the improvements multiply. The technology seems to always get twice as good every two years or so. That means after forty years of improvements, microprocessors have become millions of times better.

No one knows how long this can continue. We don’t agree on exactly why Moore’s Law or other similar patterns exist. Is it a human-driven, self-fulfilling prophecy or an intrinsic, inevitable quality of technology?

Whatever is going on, the exhilaration of accelerating change leads to a religious emotion in some of the most influential tech circles. It provides a meaning and context.

Moore’s Law means that more and more things can be done practically for free, if only it weren’t for those people who want to be paid. People are the flies in Moore’s Law’s ointment. When machines get incredibly cheap to run, people seem correspondingly expensive.

It used to be that printing presses were expensive, so paying newspaper reporters seemed like a natural expense to fill the pages. When the news became free, that anyone would want to be paid at all started to seem unreasonable.

Moore’s Law can make salaries — and social safety nets — seem like unjustifiable luxuries.”

Tags:

“I’ve Lost Touch With The World”

May 10, 2013 in Excerpted, Film, Video

The final vignette from Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, which features Lower East Side staple Taylor Mead, who passed away on Wednesday. He acted in numerous Andy Warhol films, but let’s not hold that against him.

From Mead’s obituary by Douglas Martin in the New York Times: ”It was as an actor in what was called the New American Cinema in the 1960s that he made his biggest mark. Warhol recruited him as one of his first ‘superstars,’ and from 1963 to 1968 he made 11 films with Mr. Mead. In all, Mr. Mead figured that he had made about 130 movies, many of them so spontaneous that they involved only one take.

The film critic J. Hoberman called Mr. Mead ‘the first underground movie star.’ The film historian P. Adams Sitney called one of Mr. Mead’s earliest films, The Flower Thief (1960), ‘the purest expression of the Beat sensibility in cinema.’

The Flower Thief, directed by Ron Rice, stars Mr. Mead as a bedraggled mystic wandering the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco with open-mouthed wonder. He carries with him his three prized possessions: a stolen gardenia, an American flag and a teddy bear.

It goes almost without saying that Mr. Mead was playing himself, as Susan Sontag observed in Partisan Review. ‘The source of his art is the deepest and purest of all: he just gives himself, wholly and without reserve, to some bizarre autistic fantasy,’ she wrote. ‘Nothing is more attractive in a person, but it is extremely rare after the age of 4.’”

Tags: , , ,

“In Ten Years, I Envision Iran As An Economically And Politically Stable Country That Is At Peace With The U.S.”

May 10, 2013 in Excerpted, Politics, Video

Hooshang Amirahmadi, a Rutgers Public Policy professor of Iranian birth, is running an unlikely campaign to become the next President of that country and supplant the wackjob Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A return engagement for the Shah may seem more likely, as Amirahmadi’s attempt is largely being powered by social media, including Facebook and Reddit, which have greater prominence outside of Iran than within it. He just did an Ask Me Anything at the latter site. A few excerpts follow.

__________________________

Question:

Do you believe that Iran can give up its nuclear program and rest assured that the United States will not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs well into the future?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

The problem between the US and Iran did not start with the nuclear issue, rather with the Islamic Revolution or even the 1953 coup. I don’t believe a nuclear Iran can be immune from US intervention nor can a non nuclear Iran necessarily face US intervention. There are many countries with nuclear power that face American intervention (Pakistan) and other nations without nuclear power that do not face intervention (Turkey). Therefore, the nuclear technology is irrelevant to the way american foreign policy operates. What matters is the strategic relationship between the US and the particular country.

__________________________

Question:

I was just wondering what are your views on women’s rights and how they should dress?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

There should be no difference between men and women. All laws for men should be the same for women, including the dress code. We support a free society for all and elimination of all kinds of discrimination against women and other disadvantaged groups. Of course while women should be able to choose their lifestyle privately, they must be held accountable for their choices in the public arena as well, just like men have to.

__________________________

Question:

How do you feel about Israel?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

The animosity between Iran and Israel is unfortunate but entirely reconcilable. The fact of the matter is that the two countries have no territorial, religious, historical, nor ideological dispute. During much of Iran’s history, good relations were in place with Israel. The only thing that stands in the way is this: the Islamic Revolution. In 1979, Iran had a revolution that enshrined in its constitution the mandate to stand up for oppressed peoples around the world. It identified the Palestinians as one of those people and has taken a rejectionist stance toward Israel as a result. Therefore, the root of this problem lies in solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem. This has been a conflict since at least 1948, thirty years before the Islamic Revolution. I believe that the only lasting, peaceful solution is a two state solution with a viable, independent Palestinian state and a safe Israel with secure borders. Once that Israeli-Palestinian problem is solved, I believe the Iranian-Israeli conflict will go away much quicker than many imagine.

__________________________

Question:

If your two-state solution doesn’t work, what will happen with Israeli-Iranian relations? Will you remain neutral?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

The two state solution is a realistic approach and is reachable as there is no other alternative. Unfortunately, because of certain tensions in the region and Israel’s nervousness about its security, the two state solution is being postponed. A change of administration in Iran and a few other regional countries will certainly help bring Israelis in line w a two state solution. This will happen and it is a matter of time. Again, it will happen only if the animosity toward Israel in the region is reduced making Israel more certain of its security in the future.

__________________________

Question:

Do you worry about being killed? Have there been threats or attempts on your life? And how do you avoid this?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

I do not worry about this, and there have not been threats on my life. I don’t believe there is any reason for such a thing to take place because everything I promote is pro-peace and within the framework of the Islamic Constitution. I am not promoting war, sanctions, nor regime change. I am simply trying to offer positive solutions to the issues that matter to Iranians, as well as the international community, the most. From the inflation and unemployment, to US-Iran relations and foreign policy, I have never said anything that is out of the bounds of the country’s constitution.

I have always said that I have zero interest in being a martyr!

___________________________

Question:

Where do you envision Iran being in ten years?

Hooshang Amirahmadi:

In ten years, I envision Iran as an economically and politically stable country that is at peace with the US and all of its neighbors. I remain an eternal optimist and will do everything I can to be a part of this developmental process. Iran’s current economic situation is unfortunate, since Iran is actually a very wealthy country with rich energy and natural resources, a highly-educated workforce, varying climates, access to strategic waterways, and many other positive attributes. The reasons holding back Iran’s economic development are primarily mismanagement and sanctions. As someone who has been a peacemaker in US-Iran relations for thirty years, I would be best positioned to help realize that peace. In addition, economic development is my academic and professional background. I have taught international development and public policy as a tenured professor at Rutgers and have worked for many governments and international organizations on development. I wish to offer my background and expertise to help develop Iran economically as well. A lot can be achieved in ten years!

____________________

Iran just 34 years ago:

Tags: ,

“A Phonograph Album Release, The Staple Of Stand-Up Comedians In His Time, Never Happened – Until Now”

May 9, 2013 in Excerpted

Brilliant Andy Kaufman, as physical as he was cerebral, never recorded a comedy album during his heyday, but he apparently was obsessed with his then-newfangled micro-cassette recorder and compiled lots of odd audio-only material. The folks at Drag City have used it to package a posthumous album debut, Andy and His Grandmother, to be released July 16. I haven’t heard it yet, but here is the press release describing the work:

“Andy Kaufman changed the worlds of comedy and performance in the 1970s, showing fans and friends alike a determination to follow put-ons into territory no one had ever even considered ‘comic’ before. His fervor was so intense that when he passed away suddenly in 1984, it seemed as if the ultimate disappearing act had been staged; one that some people believe is still ongoing, with the reveal soon to come.

Among the many things that Andy achieved in his lifetime (and in the years following), a phonograph album release, the staple of stand-up comedians in his time, never happened – until now. Andy and His Grandmother is material never heard before, a skimming from 82 hours of micro-cassette tapes that Andy recorded during 1977-79. Andy regarded the micro-tape recorder as a fantastic new way of capturing his hoaxing, and carried it with him everywhere, for use at any given moment. Real life was the ultimate frontier for him, and these tapes demonstrate the heart of Andy’s comedy. With gusto, he involves those closest to him, as well as total strangers, in put-ons, falsehoods and other provocations, pushing the limit on logic and emotional investment in everyday situations from the trivial to the deeply personal until any suspension of disbelief is out of the question for all involved, and everyone becomes fully immersed in whatever scenario Andy is suggesting as the new reality.

With so much material on hand, Drag City turned to a writer, producer and comedian whose resume indicated to us that he was a true child of Kaufman’s twisted talent. Since the late 90s, Vernon Chatman‘s work has been experienced by television viewers and aficionados of South Park, Wonder Showzen, Xavier: Renegade Angel, The Heart She Holler, andDoggie Fizzle Televizzle, as well as fans of the Drag City DVD release Final Flesh. Vernon dug deeply into the tapes, working with editor Rodney Ascher (director of the notorious, controversial, and even acclaimed Room 237 documentary) to come up with a concept for a single LP that would include several dozen excerpts. Along the way, Vernon produced several tracks, adding effects to pieces that were clearly unfinished (in particular, ‘Sleep Comedy’) and drafting SNL’s Bill Hader to provide narration for the journey. The finished album, with liner notes from Vernon and Kaufman cohort Bob Zmuda is a work of comedy for our times – one that was performed over thirty years ago. Andy And His Grandmother is out July 16th on Drag City.”

Tags:

“I Never Thought I’d See This In My Lifetime”

May 9, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech

Trials for memory-related brain implants may begin within two years, providing hope for those who’ve suffered severe trauma or a stroke. In the longer-term, enhancement for those with no debilitation will be an issue. From Michael Stat at Future Leap:

“A team of neuroscientists from the University of Southern California (USC), Wake Forest University (WFU), the University of Kentucky and DARPA have developed a memory implant technique that could help restore memories lost by stroke and localized brain injury.

The first step in restoring memories is to record, in undamaged tissue, the unique activity patterns associated with the formation of particular memories.  Step two is to use these patterns to predict what the ‘downstream’ damaged areas should be doing.  Step three is to replicate the desired activity in healthy areas by stimulating brain cells with electrodes.

The research is focused on the hippocampus, where short-term memories are solidified into long-term ones by the movement of electrical signals through neurons.  Professor of biomedical engineering Theodore Berger of USC has used mathematical models to program electrodes to mimic these movements.

‘I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime,’ Berger said to CNN. ‘I might not benefit from it myself but my kids will.’”

Tags:

“Happy Are The Ones Who Have Stupid Enemies”

May 9, 2013 in Excerpted, Politics

I don’t think it’s a proverb, but it should be: Happy are the ones who have stupid enemies. The GOP which has gone increasingly apeshit over the past few decades has now reached the point of certifiable. But the lords of the party aren’t just wrong-minded about their politics but their strategies as well. Those they demonize have nothing to worry about. Two examples:

1) Smirking crapbag Dick Cheney, whose sheer incompetence and dishonesty in regards to Iraq got nearly 5,000 of our soldiers killed and likely more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis, has stated that Hilary Clinton should be subpoenaed in regards to Benghazi. And it’s completely fine to fully investigate that horror and its aftermath, but for someone who fucked over the entire world to be treating Clinton like a war criminal because several people were tragically killed in the madness of the modern-day Middle East shows just how much of his own poison Cheney has gulped. The lack of accountability and proportion is stunning.

2) The Koch brothers want to buy lots of newspapers and use them as propaganda for their right-wing madness, and while that would suck for the fine journalists who work at various papers, it shows how out of touch these dunderheads are. Instead of using their money in effective ways, they are going to buy media in its twilight and appeal to a dying demographic. From Hamilton Nolan at Gawker: “Evil corporatist archconservative billionaires the Koch brothers are considering making a bid to buy several big newspapers from the Tribune Co., including the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune. Unions and liberal politicians are justifiably alarmed by this prospect. They’re trying to pressure the shareholders not to sell to the Kochs. Here’s another, perhaps more productive idea: let the Kochs buy that crap.

The Koch brothers, much like fellow archconservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch, are old. Old, and rich, and conservative. This means a few things:

1. They feel (wrongly, not that it matters) that the media has an incorrigible liberal bias against their interests.

2. They have enough money to buy media outlets.

3. They don’t understand new media.

Therefore, rich old conservatives, like Rupert Murdoch or Philip Anschultz or the Koch brothers love the idea of buying newspapers. They don’t care that the era of newspaper dominance of the media is now permanently over.”

Tags: , , , ,

“Lately He Had Started Telling People He Was The Dalai Lama”

May 9, 2013 in Excerpted, Film, Sports, Urban Studies

I was taken aback–and perhaps you were?–when I heard that Bennett Miller had cast Steve Carrell as John du Pont in Foxcatcher, the forthcoming film about the wealthy benefactor of amateur wrestling, a schizophrenic whose money kept treatment at a distance, who descended into utter madness in the 1990s, and ultimately murdered Olympic hero David Schultz. The heavily armed du Pont, who’d played host to underdog sports since the 1960s, was arrested only after a two-day stand-off with the police. The opening of “A Man Possessed,” Bill Hewitt’s 1996 People article about the tragedy:

“Lately he had started telling people that he was the Dalai Lama. If anyone refused to address him as such, he simply refused to talk to them. That was bizarre, but then John E. du Pont, 57, a multimillionaire scion of the fabled industrial family, had always been odd. For fun he drove an armored personnel carrier around his 800-acre estate, Foxcatcher. He complained about bugs under his skin and about ghosts in the walls of the house. By and large, friends and family shook their heads, fretted about his ravings—and waited for the inevitable breakdown. ‘John is mentally ill and has been mentally ill for some time,’ says sister-in-law Martha du Pont, who is married to John’s older brother Henry. ‘But this year he really went over the edge.’

No one realized how far over until Friday afternoon, Jan. 26. Around 3 p.m., Dave Schultz, 36, a gold medalist in freestyle wrestling at the 1984 Olympics, was out working on his car at Foxcatcher, in leafy Newtown Square, Pa., 15 miles west of Philadelphia, where du Pont had established a residential training facility for top-level athletes. Suddenly du Pont pulled into the driveway of the house where Schultz lived with his wife, Nancy, 36, and their two children, Alexander, 9, and Danielle, 6. From the living room, Nancy heard a shot. When she reached the front door she heard a second. Looking out in horror, she saw a screaming du Pont, sitting in his car, extend his arm from the driver’s side window, take aim at her husband, facedown on the ground, and pump one more bullet into his body. After pointing the gun at Nancy, du Pont drove down the road to his home, leaving her to cradle her dying husband. 

During the two-day standoff that ensued, some 75 police and SWAT team members surrounded the sprawling Greek-revival mansion that du Pont called home. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, du Pont emerged, unarmed, to check on the house’s heating unit, which the police had turned off, and was taken without a shot being fired. That evening, a gaunt, ashen-faced du Pont was arraigned in a Newtown Township courtroom on a charge of first-degree murder, which in Pennsylvania can carry the death penalty. As investigators tried to piece together a motive for the seemingly senseless killing, there emerged the sad, scary portrait of a man believed to be worth more than $50 million who was rich enough to indulge his madness and to put enough distance between himself and the world at large to ensure that no one really bothered him about it.”

Tags: , , , ,

“Only In The Last Few Decades Has A Mathematics Of Roughness Emerged”

May 9, 2013 in Books, Excerpted, Science/Tech

The opening of a really good Jim Holt New York Review of Books piece about the posthumously published memoir by Benoit Mandelbrot, father of the fractal, who saw the mathematics of roughness not only in clouds and cauliflower but in financial markets as well:

“Benoit Mandelbrot, the brilliant Polish-French-American mathematician who died in 2010, had a poet’s taste for complexity and strangeness. His genius for noticing deep links among far-flung phenomena led him to create a new branch of geometry, one that has deepened our understanding of both natural forms and patterns of human behavior. The key to it is a simple yet elusive idea, that of self-similarity.

To see what self-similarity means, consider a homely example: the cauliflower. Take a head of this vegetable and observe its form—the way it is composed of florets. Pull off one of those florets. What does it look like? It looks like a little head of cauliflower, with its own subflorets. Now pull off one of those subflorets. What does that look like? A still tinier cauliflower. If you continue this process—and you may soon need a magnifying glass—you’ll find that the smaller and smaller pieces all resemble the head you started with. The cauliflower is thus said to be self-similar. Each of its parts echoes the whole.

Other self-similar phenomena, each with its distinctive form, include clouds, coastlines, bolts of lightning, clusters of galaxies, the network of blood vessels in our bodies, and, quite possibly, the pattern of ups and downs in financial markets. The closer you look at a coastline, the more you find it is jagged, not smooth, and each jagged segment contains smaller, similarly jagged segments that can be described by Mandelbrot’s methods. Because of the essential roughness of self-similar forms, classical mathematics is ill-equipped to deal with them. Its methods, from the Greeks on down to the last century, have been better suited to smooth forms, like circles. (Note that a circle is not self-similar: if you cut it up into smaller and smaller segments, those segments become nearly straight.)

Only in the last few decades has a mathematics of roughness emerged, one that can get a grip on self-similarity and kindred matters like turbulence, noise, clustering, and chaos. And Mandelbrot was the prime mover behind it. He had a peripatetic career, but he spent much of it as a researcher for IBM in upstate New York. In the late 1970s he became famous for popularizing the idea of self-similarity, and for coining the word ‘fractal’ (from the Latin fractus, meaning broken) to designate self-similar forms. In 1980 he discovered the ‘Mandelbrot set,’ whose shape—it looks a bit like a warty snowman or beetle—came to represent the newly fashionable science of chaos. What is perhaps less well known about Mandelbrot is the subversive work he did in economics. The financial models he created, based on his fractal ideas, implied that stock and currency markets were far riskier than the reigning consensus in business schools and investment banks supposed, and that wild gyrations—like the 777-point plunge in the Dow on September 29, 2008—were inevitable.”

Tags: ,

“For A Few Hours In The Bar The Baseball Player Does Not Feel So Alone”

May 8, 2013 in Excerpted, Sports, Urban Studies

In wake of the NBA’s Jason Collins announcing that he’s gay–and the largely positive and supportive response to him–Deadspin unearthed a 1982 Inside Sports article about Glenn Burke, a gay pro athlete during the 1970s, who was out to his teammates in a less-enlightened era for sexual politics. The opening:

“The game is over and the baseball player sits in the hotel lobby, his eyes fixed on nothing. He thinks his secret is safe but he is never quite sure, so at midnight in the lobby it is always best to avoid the other eyes. He neither hears the jokes nor notices that a few teammates are starting to wear towels around their waists in the locker room. He does not want to hear or see or know, and neither do they.

The baseball player waits until the lobby empties of teammates and coaches. Some are in the bar, some out on the town, some in their rooms. Some, of course, have found women. He walks briskly out the door toward the taxicab, never turning his head to look back. He mutters an address to the driver and has one foot in the cab. …

‘Hey, where you going, man? You said you were staying in tonight.’

The baseball player feels his lie running up the back of his neck. ‘Changed my mind.’

‘Can I come with you? I got nothing going tonight.’

The baseball player pauses. ‘You don’t want to go where I’m going,’ he says at last. He is leaving a crack there, in case this teammate knows the secret and really would like to go with him.

‘Okay—have it your way.’

The baseball player is in the back seat, the door slams, his heart slams, the cab is pulling away. Fifteen minutes later it stops a block from the place the passenger actually intends to go. He pays the driver. Did the driver look at him sort of funny?

The baseball player steps out and walks back a block, his face turned 90 degrees to his left shoulder, away from the traffic, just in case. What if he meets someone he knows there tonight? There was the ballplayer’s brother the one night and the son of.a major league manager another. Man, they have to know, don’t they? And if he is recognized tonight, should he pretend he is someone else?

Suddenly he is pulling open the door and the men inside smile and the music swallows him and for a few hours in the bar the baseball player does not feel so alone.”

Tags: ,

“Their Practices Are Broadly Perceived As Cultish And Macabre”

May 8, 2013 in Excerpted, Science/Tech

From Stephen Cave’s excellent new Aeon article about cryonics, a passage about Trygve Bauge, a dreamer who believes he can delay death long enough to defeat it:

“The young Norwegian’s dream was to found his own cryonics facility, one that could survive whatever perils the future might hold. No one could say how long it would be before the technology would be invented that could repair and reanimate his grandpa, so [Trygve] Bauge had to ensure he was safe until the time came. Having explored many options, he settled for Colorado and the Rocky Mountains, mostly because their inland location would permit a generous 30-minute warning if a nuclear attack was launched from submarines off either of America’s coastlines — he had no idea that the Cold War was coming to an end just as he was finalising his plans. He bought a plot of land above the little town of Nederland, a few miles southwest of — and 3,000ft above — the city of Boulder, with spectacular views and a climate not unlike his native Norway. There he started building.

Bauge was then and remains, at the age of 55, a visionary. Like most visionaries, his ambition inhabits a middle space between the prophetic and the pathological. On the one hand, his dream of a day when we will conquer death is rooted in the very real medical and scientific progress of previous centuries; on the other hand, his single-handed struggle with the Reaper feels like an inability to accept brute reality.

Exactly the same dichotomy permeates the cryonics movement. Its advocates argue using data and logic, yet their practices are broadly perceived as cultish and macabre. Cryonicists consider the rest of us to be deluded, walking blindly towards death, whereas the rest of us see them as fantasists, a little disturbed and a little disturbing, clinging to the corpses of their loved ones like Catholic peasants to a saint’s severed finger. One group or the other must have it badly wrong. The question is, which?

Bauge rigorously followed the logic of death-defiance. The main building he constructed was fireproof, bulletproof and designed to survive earthquakes and mudslides. Nothing would shift it from its outcrop on the windy mountainside. The structure was even designed to withstand nuclear attack (until Bauge decided to put in windows). Form was entirely sacrificed to function, creating a dull grey concrete block with peculiar angles, like something made by a clumsy toddler. In September 1993, Bauge deemed his facility, if not finished, at least habitable, and he and his mother moved in.

But he hadn’t yet built the cutting-edge cryonic storage chambers, so grandpa required temporary digs. These were the early days of cryonics and arrangements were makeshift. The young man quickly threw up a shed behind the main house, where Morstøl’s steel casket could be entombed in dry ice. The following year he even took on a new client, the recently deceased Al Campbell from Chicago, who joined grandpa Morstøl in the ice box. It seemed that both the idea and the practice of cryonics were making progress.”

Tags: ,

“In 2010 There Were 33,687 Deaths From Motor Vehicle Crashes And 38,364 Suicides”

May 8, 2013 in Excerpted, Urban Studies

In my whole life in NYC, I have never seen more unhappy people than I have since the economic collapse in 2008. The stress levels have been tremendous. Not a day goes by when I don’t encounter a few middle-aged, directionless adults pulling a single piece of wheeled luggage behind them, destination seemingly unknown.

But it’s not just the poor who seem miserable. I’ve watched as reasonably successful people who I thought were basically decent act out with an astonishing level of ego, trying to cover up their unhappiness, flailing angrily because they need more and more. I bet it’s not so different where you are, either: People can’t fulfill their needs, basic or otherwise. And the connectivity and narcissism of the Internet has not made us feel better. What is it that we really want?

It’s a generalization, sure, but we live in desperate times. So I guess I’m not as surprised as I should be that more Americans now die from suicide than automobile crashes. From Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times:

“Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.

More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday’s issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.

Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly, and the surge in suicide rates among middle-aged Americans is surprising.

From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.

The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group in which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000. For women, the largest increase was seen in those ages 60 to 64, among whom rates increased by nearly 60 percent, to 7.0 per 100,000.

Suicide rates can be difficult to interpret because of variations in the way local officials report causes of death. But C.D.C. and academic researchers said they were confident that the data documented an actual increase in deaths by suicide and not a statistical anomaly. While reporting of suicides is not always consistent around the country, the current numbers are, if anything, too low.”

Tags:

“The Film Was A Sleeper Hit In 1952, Establishing Mr. Harryhausen As Someone Who Could Deliver Astonishing Footage”

May 8, 2013 in Excerpted, Film, Science/Tech, Video

Sad to hear of the passing of special-effects legend Ray Harryhausen. I lost interest in animation and action-adventure fare when I was a small kid, but I can still recall his skeleton-fight sequence from Jason and the Argonauts and the monsters from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.

From Harryhausen’s New York Times obituary:

“With help from his parents — especially his father, a machinist and inventor — Mr. Harryhausen was soon teaching himself the basics of stop-motion animation and producing short films of dinosaurs and apes in the family garage. While still in high school, he got an appointment to meet Mr. O’Brien and showed him some early work; on Mr. O’Brien’s advice, he studied anatomy and sculpture and took night classes in film production.

The two men stayed in touch through Mr. Harryhausen’s early working years as a technician making stop-motion ‘Puppetoon’ shorts for Paramount, humorous animated training films for the Army during World War II and, after the war, his own animated short films of Mother Goose stories and some advertising work.

Then, when Merian C. Cooper, the director and producer of King Kong, set out to make another feature with Mr. O’Brien about a giant ape, Mr. O’Brien remembered Mr. Harryhausen and hired him to animate most of the film, Mighty Joe Young, released in 1949. It won an Academy Award for special effects.

Its success spurred Mr. Harryhausen to try developing feature projects of his own. After several false starts came The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, partly based on a short story, “The Fog Horn,” by Ray Bradbury, whom Mr. Harryhausen had gotten to know as a teenager through a local science fiction club. The film was a sleeper hit in 1952, establishing Mr. Harryhausen as someone who could deliver astonishing footage on a tight budget and draw big audiences.”

_______________________

An example of  Harryhausen’s teenage work from the garage in the late ’30s, a stop-motion telling of evolution:

 

Tags: ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »