Urban Studies

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“So Why Has America Chosen These Inequality-Enhancing Policies?”

June 29, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The poor and middle class in America are not only under siege by the automation of industries but by our inability to execute policies that intelligently remedy disparity, that keep the gulf from growing so wide. In the final installment of “The Great Divide” series at the New York Times, Joseph Stiglitz looks at how we traveled from World War II to 99 and 1. An excerpt:

“Our current brand of capitalism is an ersatz capitalism. For proof of this go back to our response to the Great Recession, where we socialized losses, even as we privatized gains. Perfect competition should drive profits to zero, at least theoretically, but we have monopolies and oligopolies making persistently high profits. C.E.O.s enjoy incomes that are on average 295 times that of the typical worker, a much higher ratio than in the past, without any evidence of a proportionate increase in productivity.

If it is not the inexorable laws of economics that have led to America’s great divide, what is it? The straightforward answer: our policies and our politics. People get tired of hearing about Scandinavian success stories, but the fact of the matter is that Sweden, Finland and Norway have all succeeded in having about as much or faster growth in per capita incomes than the United States and with far greater equality.

So why has America chosen these inequality-enhancing policies? Part of the answer is that as World War II faded into memory, so too did the solidarity it had engendered. As America triumphed in the Cold War, there didn’t seem to be a viable competitor to our economic model. Without this international competition, we no longer had to show that our system could deliver for most of our citizens.

Ideology and interests combined nefariously. Some drew the wrong lesson from the collapse of the Soviet system. The pendulum swung from much too much government there to much too little here.”

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Old Print Article: “Eric Robot, The ‘Perfect’ Mechanical Man, Talks To Broadway Audience,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1929)

June 29, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Robots seem to have been capable of offering rudimentary salutations to Madison Square Garden conventioneers more than eight decades ago, but a Broadway speech and Q&A in the Roaring Twenties by a robot named Eric may not have been entirely legit. The bucket of bolts could certainly gesture and nod, but his “voice” may have come from an offstage confederate via remote wireless, though no such possibility was entertained in a report about the unusual stage debut in the January 20, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The story:

“Eric Robot, ‘the perfect man,’ made his first public appearance in America on the stage of the John Golden Theater, 58th St. and Broadway, yesterday afternoon.

Eric arrived from England with Capt. William Henry Richards, secretary of the Model Engineering Association of England, 14 days ago, and plans a tour of the continent. Eric is the mechanical man invented by Captain Richards after many years of private experimental work, and was exhibited before the public for the first time 17 weeks ago in London.

Eric is made of aluminum, copper, steel, miles of wire, dynamos and electro-magnets. His eyes are two white electric bulbs, and his teeth, or rather tooth, is a blue bulb which, on the command, ‘Smile, Eric,’ appears, accompanied by a sputtering sound. The upper half of Mr. Robot’s body, Captain Richards explained, is devoted to the speaking mechanism, and the rest to the movable parts. Eric made a five-minute speech yesterday, talking in an ordinary male voice. Eric was bombarded with questions by the audience, and having been posted with answers to hundreds of probable questions, made a fairly good showing.”

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“What Was Once A Stage Of Life Is Now Turning Into, Well, All Of Life”

June 29, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

People who glorify McJobs as dignified, honest work are almost always those who don’t have to do them. In a Financial Times essay, Douglas Coupland, who sees our technology-driven tomorrow as tragicomedy, revisits the neologism for dead-end, soul-killing, low-wage work that he popularized in his 1991 novel Generation X, back when most people thought such stalled careers were a phase the young people were going through and not our future, all of us. An excerpt:

“Back in the early 1990s I began to see the start of a process that’s currently in full swing: the defunding and/or elimination of the mechanisms by which we once created and maintained a healthy middle class. What was once a stage of life is now turning into, well, all of life.

In the early 1990s I wanted to set a book in a fast-food restaurant and in order to make field notes, I tried hard to get a job in various Vancouver-area McDonald’s restaurants but, as a reasonably well-nourished male in his mid-thirties with no references on his application, I raised too many alarm bells and I never got a job, and good on fast food for having HR mechanisms that can filter out infiltrators like me. A decade later I ended up setting a blackly comic novel in a Staples (The Gum Thief), which is basically fast food but with reams of A4 instead of pink goo-burgers. The point was to foreground the fact that a minimum wage job is not a way to live life fully, and to be earning one past a certain age casts a spell of doom upon its earners, sort of like those middle-class Argentines who lost their jobs in the crash 15 years ago and never went back to being middle class again.

McDonald’s campaigned for years and ultimately failed to have the definition of the word McJob revised in the Oxford English Dictionary, in 2006 even renting a big screen in Piccadilly Circus to put forth its viewpoint. The saga of this process is a fun read on Wikipedia but, given the accelerating shrinkage of the middle class, it all seems like a frivolous corporate bonbon from a nearly vanished era. Discussions of a minimum wage in 2014 seem to have a nasty bite. As I’ve said before, we’re all going to be working at McDonald’s into our eighties (not all, of course, on the minimum wage) but the relentless parade of numbers that are making this clear to us is starting to frighten people to the core. It’s really happening.”

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A Brief Note From 1910 About A True Believer

June 27, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the March 21, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Massillon, Oh.–Because ill health prevented her from attending Palm Sunday services, Mrs. Jeremiah Yando, 65 years old, drowned herself in a cistern in the rear of her home.”

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“It’s A Matter Of What Are You Doing To Battle Those Inequities”

June 27, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you were living in extreme poverty, in a place rotten with disease, who would you rather see, someone with a laissez–faire attitude who was proud of himself for not causing any unintended consequences as he stood on the sidelines, or someone like Jeffrey Sachs or Bill and Melinda Gates, who, sure, can’t make the world perfect, but who might give you some of the tools you need to survive, maybe even thrive a little? It’s awfully easy to dismiss philanthropists for their failings as they learn the best ways to succeed, but if I were in great need I would always gravitate to people who might give me something real even if it wasn’t ideal. From Samiha Shafy and Mathieu von Rohr’s Spiegel interview with Melinda Gates:

“Spiegel:

In your speech at the WHO, you said that you and your husband despise inequity. But isn’t it strange when you return from your trips to your luxurious mansion on Lake Washington outside of Seattle? A property for which you have to pay more than a million dollars a year in taxes.

Melinda Gates:

I think it is the same for you if you go to the developing world and then come home and get into your car with seat heaters. Or you come home, turn on your shower and you have hot water. I don’t care whether you live in a small apartment or in a giant house, there are inequities. Quite frankly, neither Bill nor I would build that house again if we had it to do all over again. But it’s a matter of what are you doing to battle those inequities and for Bill and me, we have now oriented our life around that. We’re spending not only our money, but also our time.

Spiegel:

Are you doing so partly out of a sense of guilt?

Melinda Gates:

No, I wouldn’t say guilt. We feel like we have a responsibility. Any of us that is lucky enough to grow up in a country like Germany or Great Britain or Japan or the US ought to do something for the rest of the world.

Spiegel:

The French economist Thomas Piketty recently triggered a debate with his book in which he argues that iniquities are also growing in the industrialized world. His recipe is that of raising taxes for the very rich. Do you agree with him?

Melinda Gates:

Bill and I are both in favor of an estate tax and we’ve actually been quite outspoken about that. But it hasn’t gotten very far in the US. If you’re in the upper quartile of income in any of these wealthy economies, you ought to give back more than other people. Bill, Warren Buffett and I are quite involved in trying to get people of substantial wealth to commit to giving half back, either in their lifetime or at their death.”

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“Crack Wasn’t The Real Problem”

June 27, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Neuroscientist Carl Hart shares contrarian views about drugs in his new book, High Price. In addition to refusing the idea that methamphetamines destroy a person’s looks–that widely held belief is just the result of a very successful anti-drug propaganda campaign, he argues–Hart doesn’t think crack is nearly as addictive as it’s made out to be. From an interview by Amy Chozick in the New York Times Magazine:

“Question:

You begin your book High Price with a story about an experiment you did. You offered a crack addict a hit or $5.

Carl Hart:

He chose the cash. Why did you lead with this? We have rigorous science to support that crack cocaine is not as addictive as people think and that they have been hoodwinked. I was hoping people would want to read further if they had a myth busted right up front.

Question:

How do you think Hollywood plays into our perceptions about drugs and addiction? It’s not only Hollywood.

Carl Hart:

One of Public Enemy’s bigger songs, ‘Night of the Living Baseheads,’ is all about this crack addict who’s just fiending. Public Enemy did so many good things, but on that song, they were wrong. And New Jack City is on TV, like, every week. Remember New Jack City?

Question:

Yes, the movie about a drug kingpin who turns an apartment complex into a crack factory.

Carl Hart:

Again, the filmmakers were trying to help their community, but the problem was that crack wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was unemployment, lack of education, lack of skills. Politicians are happy not to have to focus on those larger issues. You can just focus on crack cocaine, put more cops on the street and make tougher laws.”

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“We Don’t Know How Quickly It Will Come, Just That It Will”

June 27, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a New York Review Books piece, Bill McKibben lays out the sobering ramifications of the Great Melt, which can be slowed down and perhaps managed to some extent with technological innovation and political will, but which cannot be stopped. An excerpt:

“In mid-May of this year, a pair of papers were published in Science and Geophysical Research Letters that made clear that the great glaciers facing the Amundsen Sea were no longer effectively ‘buttressed.’ It turns out that the geology of the region is bowl-shaped: beneath the glaciers the ground slopes downward, meaning that water can and is flooding underneath them. It is eating away at them from below and freeing them from the points where they were pinned to the ground. This water is warmer, because our oceans are steadily warming. This slow-motion collapse, which will occur over many decades, is ‘unstoppable’ at this point, scientists say; it has ‘passed the point of no return.’

This means that as much as ten feet of sea-level rise is being added to previous predictions. We don’t know how quickly it will come, just that it will. And that won’t be all. A few days after the Antarctic announcement, other scientists found that much of Greenland’s ice sheet shows a similar underlying geology, with warm water able to melt it from underneath. Another study that week showed that soot from huge forest fires, which are more frequent as a result of global warming, is helping to melt the Greenland ice sheet, a remarkably vicious cycle.

In certain ways none of this really comes as news. A leading glaciologist, Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), has calculated that given the paleoclimatic record, our current atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases are probably enough to produce an eventual sixty-nine feet of sea-level rise.2 But it’s one thing to know that the gun is cocked, and another to see the bullet actually traveling; the news from the Antarctic is a turning point. It doesn’t mean we should give up efforts to slow climate change: if anything, as scientists immediately pointed out, it means we should ramp them up enormously, because we can still affect the rate at which this change happens, and hence the level of chaos it produces. Coping over centuries will be easier than coping over decades.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 26, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Fun in the Produce Aisle."

“Fun in the Produce Aisle.”

A Collection of 37 Different Erotic Lesbian Stories!

1. Paula is a Little Bitch

2. Under Cover Lesbian Gets Caught

3. My Girlfriend is Our Little Secret

4. My Wife Takes on a Dominatrix

5. When A Woman Blackmails Another Woman

6. A Ride To The Park

7. When a Wife Has Different Intentions

8. Carmen’s Dilemma

9. Maid to Order

10. Lori Experiments with Her Neighbor

11. A Bit of Filipina Blackmail

12. Under Cover

13. Mommy’s Little Secret

14. My Wife’s Fantasy

15. A Ride To The Park

16. Jacob’s Discovery

17. Carmen’s Dilemma

18. Lesbians in the Laundry Room

19. Lesbians in the Restaurant

20. Lesbians in the Library

21. Lesbians Trying on Clothes

22. Fun in the Produce Aisle

23. Two Lesbians on an Elevator

24. When the Maid Found Her Tied

25. She Uses Her Best Friend’s Mother

26. She Enjoys an Older Woman in the Swing

27. She is Left Naked in the Park

28. They Are Rented a Special Room at Check-In

29. She Installs a New Swing

30. She is Blackmailed into Being an Escort

31. Panty Smothering Payback

32. When 2 Strippers Knock on Your Door

33. She is Left Tied in the Dressing Room

34. She Tries Her First Couple

35. Tied to the Picnic Table and Left

36. On Display on the Front of the Boat

37. They Make Her Walk Naked Down the Street

"She Enjoys an Older Woman in the Swing."

“She Enjoys an Older Woman in the Swing.”

"She Enjoys an Older Woman in the Swing."

 

Old Print Article: “Jonathan Reed Stricken In Tomb Where He Lived,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1905)

June 26, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“He said that if he could keep her warm she would just as much be his wife as before her death.”

Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially when we’re talking about the dearly departed, but one businessman in 1905 was too sad to let go when his wife died. He decided to keep her “alive” in her elaborate tomb and to keep her company. From an article in that year’s March 23 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Jonathan Reed, who has lived almost continuously for seven years in the tomb of his wife at Evergreen Cemetery, was found shortly after 4 o’clock today, lying on the stone floor of the tomb apparently in a dying condition. The laborer who discovered the old man did not know who he was and before he had been identified he was taken in an ambulance to the Kings County Hospital. It was reported at 8 o’clock that Mr. Reed was still alive, but in a very critical condition.

The workman who found Mr. Reed happened to pass the doorway of the tomb shortly after 1 o’clock. He noticed that the iron door stood partly open, and thinking that something was wrong entered the tomb. When he saw the old man on the floor he thought that he was dead and hastened to inform Policeman Dooley, the special patrolman assigned to the cemetery, of the fact. Dooley, without waiting to investigate, summoned Dr. Meister from the Bradford Street Hospital to attend the man. Dr. Meister reached the tomb at 1:30 o’clock. He saw at once that the man was not dead, but had suffered a severe stroke of apoplexy. The physician sent a call to the Kings County Hospital for an ambulance, which carried Mr. Reed to the hospital, before any of those who had attended him knew who he was.

When the marble workers and the other business men near the cemetery heard of the old man’s illness, they made an effort to have him sent to his home, but he had already been placed in the pauper’s ward at the hospital and it was decided to let him remain there.

Jonathan Reed, according to his own statement, is 70 years of age. He was formerly prominent in the Eastern District of Brooklyn as a business man and is believed to be wealthy. When his wife died about eight years ago, Mr. Reed had built for her in Evergreen Cemetery one of the most remarkable tombs ever constructed. It was his belief that there was no such thing as a life after death. When his wife died he told friends that the only change which had come about was that the warmth had left her body. He said that if he could keep her warm she would just as much be his wife as before her death. Acting on this theory, Mr. Reed had the tomb fitted elaborately with a dwelling room and from the time of its completion up to the present he had lived there constantly. 

For a period of several hours every day and every night Mr. Reed had been accustomed to sit by the casket of his dead wife and talk to her just as he did when she was alive. He says that she understands everything that he says and that he understands the responses which she makes. 

In spite of this remarkable eccentricity in regard to his dead wife, Mr. Reed is in other respects an unusually intelligent and interesting man. He converses on all subjects with a degree of knowledge and insight rare to a person of his age. It is only upon the subject of death that he appears to be at all deranged.”

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“We’ve Become Too Much Of A Spectator Culture”

June 26, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Great interview by Tyler Cowen at American Interest with Ralph Nader, the consumer watchdog and politician who’s mostly been right and occasionally colossally wrong, tied to the latter’s publication of Unstoppable, a book about finding political common ground in a divisive age. In one exchange, Nader decries the corporatization of sports, which he believes has made us passive spectators. I suppose this might be true of athletics, but I don’t think in a broader sense that the average person has ever participated more in society than right now. Of course, a participatory culture is only as good as its participants. An excerpt:

“Tyler Cowen:

Do you think we need a more communitarian culture to push back against the corporate state and its abuses? I’m very struck by something in your book The Seventeen Solutions, for instance, where you talk about how America needs a new tradition of sports. Sports, you say, shouldn’t be something corporate-run that people watch on television, but something they do themselves, something that creates community, something that brings people together. Is that kind of social cohesion a necessary first step?

Ralph Nader:

Yes. We’ve become too much of a spectator culture, spending the better part of each day in front of screens. One of the consequences is that the few more athletic kids play while the rest watch, and the lack of physical activity leads to obesity. It’s not just youngsters; adults conform with the purposes of corporate advertising. The processed food producers and some other corporations, like pharmaceuticals, get rich when Americans get fat.

Corporations are also extremely adept at commercializing childhood and maneuvering around or undermining parental authority. They urge children to nag their parents at a young age to buy junk food, soft drinks, and violent video games. You see fewer kids out in the street now, just playing. These old games we used to play, like hopscotch—kids today wouldn’t even know what you’re talking about. But they do know a lot about video game violence and the heroes and villains involved.

So I think we do need a broad recognition of the need to bring the neighborhoods and communities into more participatory sports. Just a hoop, and throwing the ball into a hoop—anything to connect human to human rather than let kids wallow more and more in virtual reality. The whole electronic world is affecting us in ways we have yet to discover. That amount of time spent day after day in front of these screens can’t not have an effect on the human mind, and probably not a healthy one.”

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“The Few Who Provide Good Ideas Will Reap Huge Rewards”

June 26, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “New World Order,” a Foreign Affairs essay by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, authors of The Second Machine Age, and Michael Spence, which astutely examines the new normal and what it will likely bring:

“Recent advances in technology have created an increasingly unified global marketplace for labor and capital. The ability of both to flow to their highest-value uses, regardless of their location, is equalizing their prices across the globe. In recent years, this broad factor-price equalization has benefited nations with abundant low-cost labor and those with access to cheap capital. Some have argued that the current era of rapid technological progress serves labor, and some have argued that it serves capital. What both camps have slighted is the fact that technology is not only integrating existing sources of labor and capital but also creating new ones.

Machines are substituting for more types of human labor than ever before. As they replicate themselves, they are also creating more capital. This means that the real winners of the future will not be the providers of cheap labor or the owners of ordinary capital, both of whom will be increasingly squeezed by automation. Fortune will instead favor a third group: those who can innovate and create new products, services, and business models.

The distribution of income for this creative class typically takes the form of a power law, with a small number of winners capturing most of the rewards and a long tail consisting of the rest of the participants. So in the future, ideas will be the real scarce inputs in the world — scarcer than both labor and capital — and the few who provide good ideas will reap huge rewards. Assuring an acceptable standard of living for the rest and building inclusive economies and societies will become increasingly important challenges in the years to come.”

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“We Get So Worried About These Things That We Don’t Get The Benefits”

June 26, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Google’s Larry Page, who believes you’ll eventually have a brain implant, tells Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times, somewhat defensively, one of the main obstacles of technologists who wish to quantify and mine our lives: 

“Farhad Manjoo:

You’re saying the usefulness of the products will change how people feel about them?

Larry Page: 

Yeah, and we know that if we talk about things before people see them, there’s a much more negative reaction. That’s one of the things we learned. It’s really important for people to be able to experience products; otherwise you fear the worst without seeing those benefits.

I’m not trying to minimize the issues. For me, I’m so excited about the possibilities to improve things for people, my worry would be the opposite. We get so worried about these things that we don’t get the benefits. I think that’s what’s happened in health care. We’ve decided, through regulation largely, that data is so locked up that it can’t be used to benefit people very well.

Right now we don’t data-mine health care data. If we did we’d probably save 100,000 lives next year. I’m very worried that the media and governments will try to stoke the people’s fears and we’ll end up in a state where we could benefit a lot of people but we’re not able to do that. That’s the likely outcome.”

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“My Coffin Doesn’t Have A Phone”

June 26, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

It might be hyperbolic to refer to Jack White as the final rock star, but I think it’s fair to say he’s the last great one rooted in the Industrial Age. It’s not just the garage rock parked in a time before driverless cars but also his lyrical imagery. In the 80 words of “Hello Operator,” how many means of communication now obsolete or in their obsolescence are worried over? Telephone operators, payphones, mail carriers, carrier pigeons, obituaries, coinage, paper money, paper documents and print newspapers.

“Hello Operator”

Hello operator 
Can you give me number nine? 
Can i see you later? 
Will you give me back my dime? 
Turn the oscillator 
Twist it with a dollar bill 
Mail man bring the paper 
Leave it on my window sill 
Find a canary 
A bird to bring my message home 
Carry my obituary 
My coffin doesn’t have a phone 
How you gonna get the money? 
Send papers to an empty home? 
How you gonna get the money? 
Nobody to answer the phone

___________________________

Jack and Meg discuss the Tesla coil, invented in 1891:

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A Brief Note From 1910 About A Long Walk

June 25, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Chicago–Joseph Mikulec, who claims that he left Croatia, in Austria, February 5, 1906, on a 25,000 mile walk practically around the world, for a purse of $10,000 offered by an Austrian magazine if he finished the journey within five years, will be the guest of the local Croatian colony on Sunday. He will leave Sunday night for Springfield, part of his task being to visit the capital of every state in the Union. So far on the journey Mikulec has worn out forty-four pairs of shoes and is nineteen days ahead of schedule.”

________________________

Joseph Mikulec, globe trotter:

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“There Is No Telling Whether Robots Will Ever Replace Jockeys”

June 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Thinking about silicon taking jobs from carbon reminded me of an 2012 Wall Street Journal article by Pia Catton about the possibility of introducing robotic jockeys into horse racing, a sport that’s always been fascinated with gadgets. An excerpt:

“The idea that seems to have the most potential is the notion of replacing jockeys with robots. In fact, it is already happening: After years of controversy surrounding child riders, camel racing switched to lightweight remote-controlled machines. The guidance that a jockey provides to a horse comes through shifts of weight and control of the reins and whip.

John Cisneros, a former jockey and assistant to trainer Mike Harrington, said horses wouldn’t pay attention to a nonhuman. ‘Horses are much more agile than camels,’ he said.

Even if the jockey makes a mistake in judgment, Reed said, that is part of the race. ‘Sometimes they’re the hero, sometimes the goat.’

However, it isn’t unthinkable that these functions could be performed by a machine, even though there is no telling whether robots will ever replace jockeys. But if they do, there might be one group that is silently pleased by the idea: the trainers.

‘I’m a proponent of remote-control robots—where the trainers could work the joystick from the grandstand,’ joked [trainer Gary] Contessa.”

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“Owning A Smartphone Is Not The Equivalent Of Owning The Means Of Production”

June 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Marc Andreessen is sure that the Information Age, like the Industrial Age before it, will lead to an explosion of wealth, and he’s probably right. But who will own that wealth? Will it be concentrated or diffuse? Can a highly automated society provide enough jobs or will we be playing with our smartphones in the margins? Will we have to settle for bread and Kardashians? At Jacobin, in an open letter to Andreessen, Alex Payne asserts that the average person isn’t as frightened by robots as those who own them. An excerpt: 

“While I didn’t jibe with your take on recent macroeconomic history, I was heartened to see that you’re interested in empowering individuals through technology:

[T]he current technology revolution has put the means of production within everyone’s grasp. It comes in the form of the smartphone (and tablet and PC) with a mobile broadband connection to the Internet.

If we’re going to throw around Marxist terminology, though, can we at least keep Karl’s ideas intact?

Owning a smartphone is not the equivalent of owning the means of production. I paid for my iPhone in full, but Apple owns the software that runs on it, the patents on the hardware inside it, and the exclusive right to the marketplace of applications for it. If I want to participate in their marketplace, Apple can arbitrarily reject my application, extract whatever cut of my sales they see fit, and change the terms whenever they like.

Same story with their scant competitors. It seemed like a lot of people were going to get rich in the ‘app economy.’ Outside of Apple and Google, it turns out, not so much. For every WhatsApp there are thousands of failures.

The real money in tech is in platforms, network effects, scale. Sell pickaxes and jeans to the miners, right? Only today it’s Amazon selling the pickaxes. The startup with its servers on EC2 is about as likely to find gold as a ’49er panhandler. Before the startup goes out of business, Amazon gets paid.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 25, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I have a bronze sculpture of a gun-wielding clown."

“I have a bronze sculpture of a gun-wielding clown that was done by a noted erotic/S&M sculptor.”

Looking for an appraiser who deals with fantasy/erotic art – $1000 (Midtown)

Does anyone know of a good appraiser who has experience with erotic/fantasy/horror fine art? I have a bronze sculpture of a gun-wielding clown that was done by a noted erotic/S&M sculptor here in NYC. I inherited the statue so I don’t have any more details, I just know that it is allegedly “worth something” but don’t know what to do with it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Old Print Article: “Radio ‘Howls’ Made Music By Russian Edison’s Invention,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1928)

June 24, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The young inventor, with sweeping gestures of his hands, 'drew music from the ether.'"

“The young inventor, with sweeping gestures of his hands, ‘drew music from the ether.'”

The creator of an 1920s electronic instrument that seemingly stole music from the air, Leon Theremin was considered the Russian counterpart to Thomas Edison for his innovations in sound and video. He also created ingenious spying devices for the Soviet Union when he returned to his homeland–perhaps he was kidnapped by KGB agents but probably not–after a decade in the U.S. The text of a January 25, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article reporting on the Manhattan demonstration of Theremin’s namesake instrument in front of a star-studded audience:

“In the not-too-distant future there is likely to be found in thousands of homes a simple and inexpensive device whereby music lovers may by a mere waving of the hands conjure from the air entrancing melodies.

This conclusion seems possible as the result of a demonstration last night in the Hotel Plaza of the ‘Theremin Vox,’ by its inventor, Prof. Leon Theremin, a slender, rosy-cheeked young Russian, the ‘Russian Edison.’

Musical celebrities, including Rachmaninoff, Toscanini and Kreisler, sat spellbound with amazement as the young inventor, with sweeping gestures of his hands, ‘drew music from the ether.’

By these same gestures he caused the colors of a spotlight played on his face to change in keeping with musical tones, thus creating a synthesis of color and harmony.

It was frankly described as crude by both the inventor and J. Goldberg, who assisted in the demonstration. They made it clear that they were not musicians and that far better results could be achieved by one possessing musical technique.

The apparatus is not a reproducer or transmitter, like the photograph or radio, but an actual originator of music, creating sound by the principle of applying different frequencies of an alternative current–the so-called ‘heterodyne’ principle.

Its novelty consists in the method of controlling these frequencies of current by turning the knob of an ordinary condenser or by moving the hand within an electromagnetic field set up in the instrument, thus converting ‘radio howls’ into music.”

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“They Want A Kit That Can Be Applied To Almost Any Car The Market Tells Them To Target”

June 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A parallel industry to the driverless car market will, at least initially, be kits that allow owners of pre-autonomous models to retrofit their rides to have robocar capacity. It appears odd to invest money in companies that would seem to have a short shelf life since the hands-free option will likely be standardized in the coming decades, but there are profits to be made in the interim. From a post by Google driverless-cars consultant Brad Templeton:

“So far it’s been big players like Google and car companies with plans in the self-driving space. Today, a small San Francisco start-up named Cruise, founded by Kyle Vogt (a founder of the web video site Justin.tv) announces their plans to make a retrofit kit that will adapt existing cars to do basic highway cruise, which is to say, staying in a lane and keeping pace behind other cars while under a driver’s supervision.

I’ve been following Cruise since its inception. This offering has many similarities to the plans of major car companies, but there are a few key differences:

  • This is a startup, which can be more nimble than the large companies, and having no reputation to risk, can be bolder.
  • They plan to make this as a retrofit kit for a moderate set of existing cars, rather than custom designing it to one car.

They’re so dedicated to the retrofit idea that the Audi A4 they are initially modifying does not even have drive-by-wire brakes like the commonly used hybrid cars. Their kit puts sensors on the roof, and puts a physical actuator on the brake and another physical actuator on the steering wheel — they don’t make use of the car’s own steering motor. They want a kit that can be applied to almost any car the market tells them to target.”

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“Far From Being A Scary Prospect, That’s A Good Thing”

June 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Algorithms replacing workers and upending industries wouldn’t be so frightening provided we had some political solution to reconcile a free-market economy and an automated one should not enough new industries bloom to keep wealth from being even more unevenly distributed. But political solutions aren’t our forte right now. I think Steven Rattner, who did yeoman’s work during the auto bailout, is far too optimistic about the labor market, at least during this painful, transitional period, but he believes the Information Age will play out the same way as the Industrial Age. From “Fear Not the Coming Age of Robots,” his op-ed piece at the New York Times:

“Call it automation, call it robots, or call it technology; it all comes down to the concept of producing more with fewer workers. Far from being a scary prospect, that’s a good thing.

Becoming more efficient (what economists call ‘productivity’) has always been central to a growing economy. Without higher productivity, wages can’t go up and standards of living can’t improve.

That’s why, in the sweep of history, the human condition barely improved for centuries, until the early days of the industrial revolution, when transformational new technologies (the robots of their day) were introduced.

Consider the case of agriculture, after the arrival of tractors, combines and scientific farming methods. A century ago, about 30 percent of Americans labored on farms; today, the United States is the world’s biggest exporter of agricultural products, even though the sector employs just 2 percent of Americans.

The trick is not to protect old jobs, as the Luddites who endeavored to smash all machinery sought to do, but to create new ones. And since the invention of the wheel, that’s what has occurred.

When was the last time you talked to a telephone operator? And yet if rotary dial telephones hadn’t been invented, millions of Americans would currently be wastefully employed saying “Central” every time someone picked up a telephone receiver. More recently but similarly, the Internet has rendered human directory assistance nearly extinct.

Of course, I can’t prove that the impact of some new wave of technological innovation won’t ever upend thousands of years of history. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

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“Two-Person Vehicles Will Be Suspended From Elevated Magnetic Tracks”

June 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sheer coolness aside, a network of hover cars suspended by a magnetic track doesn’t sound like the future of transportation to me. But that’s what skyTran is planning to build in Israel. From Jane Wakefield at the BBC:

“A 500m loop will be built on the campus of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) followed by a commercial network, according to skyTran, the company that will build it.

Two-person vehicles will be suspended from elevated magnetic tracks, as an alternative transport method to congested roads, the firm promised.

The system should be up and running by the end of 2015.

The firm hopes the test track will prove that the technology works and lead to a commercial version of the network.

The plan is to allow passengers to order a vehicle on their smartphone to meet them at a specific station and then head directly to their destination.”

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“After Every Major Tsunami And Earthquake The Organ Brokers Come In Right After The Relief Agencies”

June 24, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Scott Carney is an investigative journalist whose 2011 book, The Red Market, looks at the world’s very unsettling illicit trade in human flesh, including an Indian “blood farm,” in which a former dairy farmer kidnapped people, drained their blood and sold it. Carney just finished writing his next book, which focuses on the grisly and confusing death of a man at an Arizona Tibetan retreat, but his new Ask Me Anything at Reddit still mostly centers on underground human-organ trafficking, which is usually less about a shanghaied victim than pure economic predation. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

How much of the illegal trade is actually non-consensual though? Do a lot of people sell their organs on the black market out of economic necessity or are they mostly forced into it by gangsters?

Scott Carney:

It’s impossible to get accurate statistics of anything having to do with the illegal organ trade–but from what I witnessed it seems to me that the majority of the trafficking occurs because very rich companies and hospitals take advantage of desperately poor individuals. So, technically, most of it is consensual, it’s also incredibly coercive. There’s a reason that after every major tsunami and earthquake that the organ brokers come in right after the relief agencies.

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Question:

So it’s less kidnapping people and leaving them in bathtubs full of ice and more pressuring incredibly poor people into selling their organs or face starving to death?

In a way that’s much worse, rather than individual acts of violence it’s an entrenched economic problem that is a lot harder to fix than simply arresting a few kidnapping gangs.

Scott Carney:

Yes. It’s really rare to kidnap people–especially tourists. However, it DOES happen. In this article in Foreign Policy I wrote about several cases where people are simply picked up off the streets and robbed of their organs. That said, it is generally a lot less risky for the brokers to simply convince people they’ve entered into a fair trade, rather than raise suspicion amongst law enforcement.

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Question:

How valuable are each of the harvested body parts approximately? Does it vary widely around the world or are different organs more valuable in different countries?

Scott Carney:

This is a tough question because body parts don’t have a fixed value. Their price fluctuates like a used car. However, I did write a piece for Wired a few years ago where I tried to come up with general prices. Check it out here.

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Question:

How big is this industry estimated to be? How many organ trades a year are we talking worldwide? Obviously with all things criminal we don’t have exact stats but are we talking tens of thousands or millions or what?

Scott Carney:

It is easily worth billions of dollars, but there is no solid statistic that I can point to. It turns out that the criminals are terrible at filing quarterly reports. The best I can point to is a WHO report that says that 10% of organ transplants happen on the black market.

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Question:

Are there any other known places in the world where black market organ trading occurs? And how do they transport the organs?

Scott Carney:

It’s a global problem. I think just about every country has some relation to it. Live organs aren’t usually transported across international lines. In those cases the patients fly abroad for surgery.

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Question:

Do you think an increase in voluntary organ donation would help reduce this market?

Scott Carney:

This is a fascinating question that has more than one answer. I tackle it in the last chapter of my book a little bit. In short, I have to say no. While voluntary donation will increase the overall supply of organs, it does nothing to stem the overall demand. Since 1984 when the National Organ Transplant Association started up the waiting list for a kidney was almost seven years long. Today, with vastly expanded voluntary supply (I think it is something like 50,000 transplants a year now), the list is still just as long. What is happening is that as the supply grows, doctors find more eligible recipients for organs. It’s perverse, but the demand for organs is actually a reflection of the supply. Not the other way around.•

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A Brief Note From 1910 About Sleepy People

June 23, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the April 11, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Evansville, Ind.–Scores of people in this community complained yesterday that they were unable to get enough sleep. In fact, in several instances people have slept for fifteen or twenty-four hours and still were sleepy. The attribute this inclination to sleep to Halley’s comet.”

“His U.S. Publicity Blitz In The Few Weeks After His Release Has Reasserted Him As A Celebrity First, Convicted Killer Second”

June 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some people who should know better are perplexingly treating that murderer Michael Alig like he’s a cute celebrity with some gossip to dish–you know, a reality star who just so happens to be clutching a bloody knife and a bottle of Drano–rather than a narcissistic murderer who dismembered another human being. These college-educated geniuses send out happy tweets about Alig’s post-prison menu and such. One meshuganah at the Huffington Post who interviewed the killer referred to him as a “rehabilitated citizen,” as if he would actually know. Emma Brockes of the Guardian is the latest to unfortunately interview Alig, but at least she gets to the heart of the new abnormal while analyzing a lowlife who thinks he’s something else. An excerpt:

“For a year or so before he left prison, Michael Alig was phoning in tweets to a friend on the outside, who updated his account with aperçus from the exercise yard and cute observations about daytime TV. How did Justin Bieber get his hair to stand up like that? Why was everyone so mean to Madonna? After almost two decades inside, Alig’s persona seemed little changed from the 1990s, when his fame as the king of the New York club scene rested on a combination of low humour, high camp and the laboriously outrageous (one of his signature moves was to urinate in people’s drinks). ‘I just look ADORABLE in my mess-hall whites & hair-net,’ ran a typical tweet from earlier this year. ‘Where are the paparazzi when you need them?’

Since the 48-year-old’s release last month, it’s a tone that has jarred with expectations of what remorse looks like, and Alig has had to temper his adorableness with lots of qualifiers about how sorry he is, an effort undermined by those of his friends who turned up at the prison gates to greet him. As the media waited, and Alig emerged looking slight and sober, a group of ageing ex-club kids giddy on Red Bull and vodka bounced around laughing and screaming, as if serving 17 years for manslaughter were just another of Alig’s inventive, satirical breaks with convention. ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d have thrown them out,’ he says now, ‘but they probably weren’t people I would have invited.’ He does his best to look chastened.

No matter how disagreeable the crime or the perpetrator, a celebrity felon is protected from the full force of public condemnation by the buffer of his fame. Someone who has it all and squanders it should, if anything, incur less sympathy than a regular criminal, but they don’t. The height of the fall is so great, and the public humiliation so widespread, that any show of contrition is received as the satisfying end to a well-wrought story (I’m thinking primarily of Jonathan Aitken here).

And so it has been with Alig, whose US publicity blitz in the few weeks after his release has reasserted him as a celebrity first, convicted killer second.”

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“I Have No Idea Why Anyone Would Do It, Even If The Equipment Were Free”

June 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal visited the smartest home in America–the Maryland abode of SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson–and came away perplexed by the way the “convenient” gadgets actually complicate the quotidian life. He does, however, see potential for one innovation that may be a problem for the security industry. An excerpt:

“Mr. Hawkinson believes the most compelling application for smart-home technology, at least for now, is home security. Surveys suggest about 80% of Americans might like some kind of security and home-monitoring system. For $300, SmartThings will sell you a kit that fits the bill—while also avoiding the monthly fees associated with traditional home-security systems.

Google apparently agrees with Mr. Hawkinson, as its Nest subsidiary, which started out making a smart thermostat, announced Friday that it’s acquiring Internet-connected video-camera startup Dropcam. What’s a surveillance camera for if not home monitoring and security?

It’s this task-driven approach to selling the idea of the smart home—offering a device or kit that solves a specific problem, rather than an all-in-one solution—that seems most likely to overcome the reluctance of most of us to add complexity to our personal sanctuaries. If you need to monitor a pet, elderly parent or home, why wouldn’t you add a straightforward system to do it?

But frankly, other than people who have very specific reasons to add automation to their homes, I have no idea why anyone would do it, even if the equipment were free. As countless reviewers have noted, including in this newspaper, even when smart-home technology works as advertised, the complexity it adds to everyday life outweighs any convenience it might provide.”

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