From David Remnick’s excellent 1991 Washington Post coverage of Mikhail Gorbachev’s ignominious ouster from the Kremlin, which occurred after he dismantled the Cold War Soviet machinery, leaving the former superpower less a danger to the rest of the world but seemingly no less a danger to itself:
“Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, whose battle to reform socialism has ended with the collapse of Leninist ideology and the Soviet Union, left the Kremlin tonight an exhausted and bitter man.
In his final days, Gorbachev told aides that he felt ‘balanced’ and ‘at peace’ with his choices, his place in history. But as he sat in the eerie quiet of his office last weekend receiving visitors and watching news reports on television, he learned that the presidents of the former Soviet republics, who had met to form the new Commonwealth of Independent States, had discussed not only an end to the Soviet Union but, with unconcealed relish, the details of his pension. Down the hall, members of President Boris Yeltsin’s Russian government were already taking measurements and inventory for their imminent move into the Kremlin.
‘For me, they have poisoned the air,’ Gorbachev confided to one reporter. ‘They have humiliated me.’
Gorbachev has tried hard to conceal his emotions, to cover them over with pride and the language of political euphemism. Yet his sense of rejection and betrayal from all sides seems no less profound for him than it was for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was ousted in 1964, or for Winston Churchill when he was summarily voted out of 10 Downing St. after leading Britain to victory in World War II. Four months ago, Gorbachev’s closest aides in the Communist Party, the military and the KGB arrested him and made clear an implicit threat of murder. Once back in Moscow, Yeltsin and other republics’ leaders leached him of all authority, making him look hollow and weak.”
••••••••••
In 1996, Gorbachev is interviewed by noted male impersonator, Rosie Charles:
If you’d like, they can stuff the crust with cheese, comrade:
I have 2 pony tails 1 is 13 inches of thick dark brown hair $150 – 200 and the other is about 11 inches of thick dark brown hair $ 100 – 150 i dont want to just throw this perfectly good hair away so contact me if you are intrested greatly appreciate it. please dont email me asking why dont you just donate it because i need the money. so if anyone knows where i can sell my hair ill donate the other pony tail i just really need the money right now thank you .
"A few minutes later screams were heard in the orchard."
Children playing with firearms, always a recipe for disaster, led to tragedy on Long Island 110 years ago, as this article from the January 2, 1901 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle demonstrates. An excerpt:
“Northport, L.I.–The second accidental shooting within a week at Fort Saratoga occurred about noon yesterday, and though little Carlo Bertelsen, the victim, is yet alive at noon to-day with a .32-caliber bullet in his body, little hope is entertained of his recovery.
Peter Mortensen, the 10-year-old son of Andrew Mortensen, an oysterman, took a .32 caliber pistol belonging to his grandfather from a bureau drawer, and in company with his cousin, Willi Kasso, and his playmate, Carlo, the son of a farmer, 8 years of age, he went into an orchard near their home to practice shooting at a mark.
A few minutes later screams were heard in the orchard, and Bertelsen’s parents found their child lying upon the ground with a bullet wound in his stomach. The Mortensen child in the excitement had dropped the pistol and ran away.
Dr. George H. Donahue at Northport was called and he found that the bullet had entered the child’s body just below the lung, but he was unable to locate it.
Young Mortensen, who held the pistol, had a part of one finger taken off by the same bullet that wounded his playmate.
Coroner H.H. Davidson, last night took the ante-mortem statement of the injured child, who said they had already shot the pistol off once at a mark, and were getting ready to shoot the second time when Peter Mortensen could not move the trigger, so they all took a hand in trying and the pistol suddenly went off.
Dr. Walter Lindsay, who was called in consultation last night, does not think the boy can live. This accident occurred within one half mile of where Henry Webber was accidentally shot by his brother on Friday last and which resulted in his death.”
From Hunter S, Thompson’s essay, “The Hippies,” which was originally published in the Collier’s Encyclopedia 1968 Yearbook:
Everyone seems to agree that hippies have some kind of widespread appeal, but nobody can say exactly what they stand for. Not even the hippies seem to know, although some can be very articulate when it comes to details.
“I love the whole world,” said a 23-year-old girl in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, the hippies’ world capital. “I am the divine mother, part of Buddha, part of God, part of everything.
“I live from meal to meal. I have no money, no possessions. Money is beautiful only when it’s flowing; when it piles up, it’s a hang-up. We take care of each other. There’s always something to buy beans and rice for the group, and someone always sees that I get “grass” [marijuana] or “acid” [LSD]. I was in a mental hospital once because I tried to conform and play the game. But now I’m free and happy.”
She was then asked whether she used drugs often.
“Fairly,” she replied. “When I find myself becoming confused I drop out and take a dose of acid. It’s a short cut to reality; it throws you right into it. Everyone should take it, even children. Why shouldn’t they be enlightened early, instead of waiting till they’re old? Human beings need total freedom.
“That’s where God is at. We need to shed hypocrisy, dishonesty, and phoniness and go back to the purity of our childhood values.”
The next question was “Do you ever pray?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I pray in the morning sun. It nourishes me with its energy so I can spread my love and beauty and nourish others.”•
“On June 8, 1954, Alan Turing, a forty-one-year-old research scientist at Manchester University, was found dead by his housekeeper. Before getting into bed the night before, he had taken a few bites out of an apple that was, apparently, laced with cyanide. At an inquest, a few days later, his death was ruled a suicide. Turing was, by necessity rather than by inclination, a man of secrets. One of his secrets had been exposed two years before his death, when he was convicted of “gross indecency” for having a homosexual affair. Another, however, had not yet come to light. It was Turing who was chiefly responsible for breaking the German Enigma code during the Second World War, an achievement that helped save Britain from defeat in the dark days of 1941. Had this been publicly known, he would have been acclaimed a national hero. But the existence of the British code-breaking effort remained closely guarded even after the end of the war; the relevant documents weren’t declassified until the nineteen-seventies. And it wasn’t until the eighties that Turing got the credit he deserved for a second, and equally formidable, achievement: creating the blueprint for the modern computer.”
••••••••••
Alan Turing the Cat who, by the way, pretty much sucks at math:
Time magazine heralded the advent of the Digital Age in its March 1, 1995 issue, which included an essay by Stewart Brand called “We Owe It All to the Hippies.” The piece argued, quite rightly, that the impetus for our booming tech sector came from the counterculture, courtesy of dropouts, phreaks, and hackers. An excerpt:
“In the 1960s and early ’70s, the first generation of hackers emerged in university computer-science departments. They transformed mainframes into virtual personal computers, using a technique called time sharing that provided widespread access to computers. Then in the late ’70s, the second generation invented and manufactured the personal computer. These nonacademic hackers were hard-core counterculture types — like Steve Jobs, a Beatle- haired hippie who had dropped out of Reed College, and Steve Wozniak, a Hewlett-Packard engineer. Before their success with Apple, both Steves developed and sold ‘blue boxes,’ outlaw devices for making free telephone calls. Their contemporary and early collaborator, Lee Felsenstein, who designed the first portable computer, known as the Osborne 1, was a New Left radical who wrote for the renowned underground paper the Berkeley Barb.
As they followed the mantra ‘Turn on, tune in and drop out,’ college students of the ’60s also dropped academia’s traditional disdain for business. ‘Do your own thing’ easily translated into ‘Start your own business.’ Reviled by the broader social establishment, hippies found ready acceptance in the world of small business. They brought an honesty and a dedication to service that was attractive to vendors and customers alike. Success in business made them disinclined to ‘grow out of’ their countercultural values, and it made a number of them wealthy and powerful at a young age.
The third generation of revolutionaries, the software hackers of the early ’80s, created the application, education and entertainment programs for personal computers. Typical was Mitch Kapor, a former transcendental-meditation teacher, who gave us the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3, which ensured the success of IBM’s Apple-imitating PC. Like most computer pioneers, Kapor is still active. His Electronic Frontier Foundation, which he co- founded with a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, lobbies successfully in Washington for civil rights in cyberspace. In the years since Levy’s book, a fourth generation of revolutionaries has come to power. Still abiding by the Hacker Ethic, these tens of thousands of netheads have created myriad computer bulletin boards and a nonhierarchical linking system called Usenet. At the same time, they have transformed the Defense Department-sponsored ARPAnet into what has become the global digital epidemic known as the Internet. The average age of today’s Internet users, who number in the tens of millions, is about 30 years. Just as personal computers transformed the ’80s, this latest generation knows that the Net is going to transform the ’90s. With the same ethic that has guided previous generations, today’s users are leading the way with tools created initially as ‘freeware’ or ‘shareware,’ available to anyone who wants them. Of course, not everyone on the electronic frontier identifies with the countercultural roots of the ’60s. One would hardly call Nicholas Negroponte, the patrician head of M.I.T.’s Media Lab, or Microsoft magnate Bill Gates ‘hippies.’ Yet creative forces continue to emanate from that period. Virtual reality — computerized sensory immersion — was named, largely inspired and partly equipped by Jaron Lanier, who grew up under a geodesic dome in New Mexico, once played clarinet in the New York City subway and still sports dreadlocks halfway down his back. The latest generation of supercomputers, utilizing massive parallel processing, was invented, developed and manufactured by Danny Hillis, a genial longhair who set out to build ‘a machine that could be proud of us.’ Public-key encryption, which can ensure unbreakable privacy for anyone, is the brainchild of Whitfield Diffie, a lifelong peacenik and privacy advocate who declared in a recent interview, ‘I have always believed the thesis that one’s politics and the character of one’s intellectual work are inseparable.’ Our generation proved in cyberspace that where self-reliance leads, resilience follows, and where generosity leads, prosperity follows. If that dynamic continues, and everything so far suggests that it will, then the information age will bear the distinctive mark of the countercultural ’60s well into the new millennium.”
••••••••••
As mentioned in the article, the Osborne I, the first portable computer:
My life is on an upswing. Saw Sade last night! ( she kicked ass ) Business is picking up. I’ve got a fantastic independant Woman who likes what we have. What’s left of the family is doing great. Divorced in less than 8 weeks, keeping the house/w custody of the children ( and I don’t want a damn dime from her )
Donald Barthelme’s reading list was originally published in 2003 by the Believer. In it, the postmodern short-story master made 81 suggestions to his students. Some are out-of-print, but pretty much all can be had online. You can add Barthelme’s own 60 Stories to the list.
Nothing counterintuitive about this Wired post by Brandon Keim about research that suggests that city dwellers are more stressed out than rural counterparts and more prone to mental illness. Our ability to handle social stress and stimuli isn’t very elastic, which is bad news since social stress and stimuli aren’t decreasing anytime soon, not with those wired gadgets tucked neatly in our pockets adding to the urban ills of noise, traffic and crowds. Still, I’d rather live in a city. An excerpt:
“Compared to their rural counterparts, city dwellers have higher levels of anxiety and mood disorders. The schizophrenia risk of people raised in cities is almost double. Literature on the effect is so thorough that researchers say it’s not just correlation, as might be expected if anxious people preferred to live in cities. Neither is it a result of heredity. It’s a cause-and-effect relationship between environment and mind.
What those causes are is unknown, but many researchers have speculated that urban social environments are partly responsible. After all, cities are hyper-social places, in which residents must be constantly on guard, and have mathematically more opportunity to experience stressful interaction. Too much stress may ultimately alter the brain, leaving it ill-equipped to handle further stress and prone to mental illness.
‘Most people speculated that it had something to do with social environments, but there was never any direct data,’ said Meyer-Lindenberg. ‘We provide the first mechanism that links cities to mental illness via social stress.'”
"It required two shocks to kill him. The first applied at 6:04 A.M. and the second about three minutes later."
At one point, death by electric chair was considered a progressive and humane treatment of the condemned. In the late 1880s, New York City formed a commission to devise a less cruel means of execution than hanging. They settled on electrocution and because one of the members of the commission, Alfred P. Southwick, was a dentist by trade, a dentist-office type of chair was decided upon. By 1890, New York was frying instead of hanging those convicted of the worst crimes. One such unfortunate was Lorenzo Priori, whose execution was covered with verve in the February 6, 1901 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:
“Sing Sing, N.Y.–Lorenzo Priori, who murdered Vincenzo Garaguzo in New York City December 11, 1898, was put to death in the electric chair in the state prison to-day. It required two shocks to kill him. The first applied at 6:04 A.M. and the second about three minutes later. He left with the priests who attended him a statement declaring his innocence.
"He and five other Italians, among whom was Vincenzo Garaguzo, were playing cards in the rear of the drug store for a can of beer."
Priori was employed as a clerk in Dr. Pasquale Gilliberti’s drug store, at 530 1/2 Broome Street, Manhattan. On the day of the murder, he and five other Italians, among whom was Vincenzo Garaguzo, were playing cards in the rear of the drug store for a can of beer. Priori lost the game and bought the beer. Then, returning, he waited upon a customer. Afterward he accused the other men of drinking some of the beer. A quarrel ensued and Priori left. When Garaguzo came out of the drug store, Priori, armed with a pistol, followed him to his home, where he shot and killed him.
After conviction of murder in the first degree, Priori obtained a reprieve on the ground of new evidence, showing that James Saccardo, his brother-in-law, fired the fatal shot. Priori said that his brother-in-law was a member of the Mafia and that it was fear of the vengeance of that society that prevented his denouncing Saccardo before. On January 21 Governor Odell notified Priori’s counsel that he could interfere no further in the carrying out of the sentence of death.
In the statement left by the prisoner he reiterated his innocence and declared the crime was committed by Giacomo Saccardo, as he did during his trial. In conclusion, he wrote:
“Goodbye all. I am going to heaven in the arms of Jesus Christ; going where all the innocents will go, sooner or later. I am an innocent orphan.’
"I don't want to throw these out, but I'm not drinking this crap either."
Free Tropicana ‘light’ juice (Harlem / Morningside)
There was a sale. Tropicana Fruit Punch juice, 2 for $3. But there was a catch, it said ‘light’ on the carton. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t care, I was getting a deal. I brought it home. I opened it. I tasted it.
It. Is. Disgusting.
It’s gross. It has a nasty after taste. I guess ‘light’ means light on deliciousness, because I can’t stomach this crap. My little daughter can’t either. She spit it out. My husband gagged. I bought 6 of these. And I can’t find the receipt.
I don’t want to throw these out, but I’m not drinking this crap either. So it’s yours. Five half gallon cartons of Tropicana ‘light’ Fruit Punch.
I live near 150th and riverside. Come and get it and it’s yours. I’m sorry if my ad isn’t very appealing, but i couldn’t lie to you. Who knows, maybe you might like it! First come, first serve.
The great Berenice Abbott is responsible for this classic 1935 photograph of a mini-Hooverville that rose on Houston and Mercer Streets in Manhattan. The Great Depression hit hard and people were really hurting. (Notice the baby carriage outside one of the shanties, and the framed pictures hanging, an attempt at some semblance of normalcy.) Abbott had returned to New York City in 1929 after years in Paris and was stunned by how the building boom and the economic collapse had changed the city. She spent the next decade cataloging the transformation. An excerpt from Abbott’s 1991 obituary in the New York Times:
“Perhaps her most famous picture,a view of New York at night taken from the top of the Empire State Building, presents the city as a glittering tapestry of light, with massive buildings thrusting up from the criss-crossed streets. In her New York photographs, many of which were collected in the bookChanging New York(1939), Miss Abbott also provided an invaluable historical record of the physical appearance of the city at a time when it was undergoing rapid transformation.
Miss Abbott first achieved fame as a photographer in Paris in the 1920’s with her penetrating portraits of such artists and writers as James Joyce, Janet Flanner and Jean Cocteau. She is also known for a series of photographs illustrating laws and processes of physics.
As a participant in the photographic controversies of her day, Miss Abbott was an eloquent and contentious advocate of the documentary approach. In books and articles she argued that photography was uniquely a descriptive medium, and should not be used to simulate effects that could better be achieved in other arts. ‘Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium,’ she wrote in 1951. ‘It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.'”
Errol Morris, the Tolstoy of bloggers, uses his New York Times Opinionator space to tell the story of investigating whether his late brother, Noel, had a role in the creation of email alongside MIT programmer Tom Van Vleck. It’s a two-part marathon (here and here) and quite fascinating. It all apparently started with a simple 1965 memo. An excerpt:
“TOM VAN VLECK: In 1965, at the beginning of the year, there was a bunch of stuff going on with the time-sharing system that Noel and I were users of. We were working for the political science department. And the system programmers wrote a programming staff note memo that proposed the creation of a mail command. But people proposed things in programming staff notes that never got implemented. And well, we thought the idea of electronic mail was a great idea. We said, “Where’s electronic mail? That would be so cool.” And they said, “Oh, there’s no time to write that. It’s not important.” And we said, “Well, can we write it?” And we did. And then it became part of the system.
••••••••••
Completely unrelated: Errol Morris reveals his five favorite films.
Norman Mailer’s book Of a Fire on the Moon, about American space exploration during the 1960s, was originally published as three long and personal articles for Life magazine in 1969: “A Fire on the Moon,” “The Psychology of Astronauts,” and “A Dream of the Future’s Face.” Mailer used space travel to examine America’s conflicted and tattered existence–and his own as well. In one segment, he reports on a banquet in which Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi rocket engineer who became a guiding light at NASA, meets with American businessmen on the eve of the Apollo 11 launch. An excerpt:
Therefore, the audience was not to be at ease during his introduction, for the new speaker, who described himself as a “backup publisher,” went into a little too much historical detail. “During the Thirties he was employed by the Ordinance Department of the German government developing liquid fuel rockets. During World War II he made very significant developments in rocketry for his government.”
A tension spread in this audience of corporation presidents and high executives, of astronauts, a few at any rate, and their families. There was an uneasy silence, an embarrassed pall at the unmentioned word of Nazi–it was the shoe which did not drop to the floor. So no more than a pitter-patter of clapping was aroused when the speaker went quickly on to say: “In 1955 he became an American citizen himself.” It was only when Von Braun stood up at the end that the mood felt secure enough to shift. A particularly hearty and enthusiastic hand of applause swelled into a standing ovation. Nearly everybody stood up. Aquarius, who finally cast his vote by remaining seated, felt pressure not unrelated to refusing to stand up for The Star-Spangled Banner. It was as if the crowd with true American enthusiasm had finally declared, “Ah don’ care if he is some kind of ex-Nazi, he’s a good loyal patriotic American.”
Von Braun was. If patriotism is the ability to improve a nation’s morale, then Von Braun was a patriot. It was plain that some of these corporate executives loved him. In fact, they revered him. He was the high priest of their precise art–manufacture. If many too many an American product was accelerating into shoddy these years since the war, if planned obsolescence had all too often become a euphemism for sloppy workmanship, cynical cost-cutting, swollen advertising budgets, inefficiency and general indifference, then in one place at least, and for certain, America could be proud of a product. It was high as a castle and tooled more finely than the most exquisite watch.
Now the real and true tasty beef of capitalism got up to speak, the grease and guts of it, the veritable brawn, and spoke with fulsome language in his small and well-considered voice. He was with friends on this occasion, and so a savory and gravy of redolence came into his tone, his voice was not unmusical, it had overtones which hinted of angelic super-possibilities one could not otherwise lay on the line. He was when all was said like the head waiter of the largest hofbrau in heaven. “Honored guests, ladies and gentlemen,” Von Braun began, “it is with a great deal of respect tonight that I meet you, the leaders, and the captains in the mainstream of American industry and life. Without your success in building and maintaining the economic foundations of this nation, the resources for mounting tomorrow’s expedition to the moon would never have been committed…. Tomorrow’s historic launch belongs to you and to the men and women who sit behind the desks and administer your companies’ activities, to the men who sweep the floor in your office buildings and to every American who walks the street of this productive land. It is an American triumph. Many times I have thanked God for allowing me to be a part of the history that will be made here today and tomorrow and in the next few days. Tonight I want to offer my gratitude to you and all Americans who have created the most fantastically progressive nation yet conceived and developed,” He went on to talk of space as “the key to our future on earth,” and echoes of his vision drifted through the stale tropical air of a banquet room after coffee–perhaps he was hinting at the discords and nihilism traveling in bands and brigands across the earth. “The key to our future on earth. I think we should see clearly from this statement that the Apollo 11 moon trip even from its inception was not intended as a one-time trip that would rest alone on the merits of a single journey. If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing”–he spoke almost with contempt of the meager resources of the moon–“we would certainly be history’s biggest fools. But that is not our intention now–it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow’s trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.”•
"I am looking for break up emails." (Image by Matthew Bowden.)
Emails wanted (Upper West Side)
I am currently working on a project regarding technology and society. I am looking for break up emails. Sent or received. If you have one you are willing to send to help me with this project it would be greatly appreciated!!
From Endgadget: “The material that makes the magic happen is made of flat fibers that bring 35 percent more surface area in contact with your skin than traditional round yarns — and the more cloth touching your dermis, the better it can absorb and dissipate body heat. These flat fibers are bonded with a special compound that activates when wet (by water or sweat) and lowers the temperature of both the garment and the person wearing it.”
