2011

You are currently browsing the yearly archive for 2011.

First Female Computer Science Ph.D. Was A Nun

March 2, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"We’re having an information explosion…and it’s certainly obvious that information is of no use unless it’s available."

From “The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History” on Maximum PC:

“Although Barbara Liskov is often named as the first woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in computer science, that honor actually goes to Sister Keller who beat Liskov to the punch by three years. After earning her Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin in 1965, Sister Keller went on to assist in the development of BASIC computer language at Dartmouth – which had previously held a ‘men only’ rule. Sister Keller, who also held a BS in Mathematics and an MS in Mathematics and Physics from DePaul University, felt that women should be involved in computer science (especially in the field of information specialist) and has been quoted as saying ‘We’re having an information explosion…and it’s certainly obvious that information is of no use unless it’s available.’ Also interested in advancements toward AI, Sister Keller founded – and directed – the computer science department at Clarke College for twenty years.”

Tags: ,

Old Print Article: “Seekers After Fine Complexions Find Running A Valuable Exercise,” Brooklyn Daile Eagle (1902)

March 2, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

"When you first take up this sport, after two laps, say, you are blowing like porpoises."

Running didn’t take hold as a popular exercise in America until the 1960s, but it had its moments in earlier decades, as evidenced by a brave group of New York women who took the then-rare activity out of doors in 1902. An execerpt from a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from June 29th of that year:

“Arabella Knickerbocker has a new fad for improving her complexion. It is running, or ‘sprinting,’ as she calls it. ‘Nothing gives me a better color or makes better lungs than running, some one tells me,’ explains Arabella to a group of lovely maidens, ‘so I am training, and determined to learn to run, if not like an antelope, at least some way, somehow.’

‘How perfectly lovely,’ exclaims one who was valedictorian at her class in college, and knows a thing or two. ‘We used to sprint now and then, too. Some one who lectured at the college on ‘Girls,’ and what he didn’t know about them, remarked incidentally, with more point than gallantry. ‘There are no girls today who can run.’ We didn’t exactly run that man off the college grounds, but we then and there formed a club, with a president and rules and bylaws and a prize at the end of a mile.’

‘Well, there are eight of us at the gym,’ continued Arabella, ‘and after practising running in all its branches within doors, we finally boldy ventured forth into the street.’

If girls would turn their athletic attention to running they would find the novel pastime the most exhilarating in the world, as well as one of the most healthful. Excessive running  is as injurious as any other excess, but frequent and easy running is one of the best exercises, and both men and women should run. Of course when you first take up this sport, after two laps, say, you are blowing like porpoises; you haven’t any wind. For one reason, you probably come down with a thud on your heels; you should know that you cannot run unless you get the spring from your toes.

After learning the rudiments of running in a gymnasium, practice should be continued out of doors, for fresh air is one of the factors in the sport. It is the fresh air that is going to give Diana that bewitching color in her cheeks and purify every drop of blood in her body.”

‘

Tags:

Sorry For The Slow Posting Earlier Today

March 2, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

 


Server problem. Seems to be remedied.

John Belushi SNL Screen Test (1975)

March 2, 2011 in Videos | Permalink

Eyebrow gets arched, Brando gets impersonated.

Tags: ,

The Future (Perhaps) Of Government Buildings

March 2, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The decommissioned McNair US army barracks in Berlin is soon to be posh apartments.

Marginal Revolution pointed me toward this Financial Times piece about the (perhaps) coming trend of disused public buildings being repurposed as upscale abodes. An excerpt:

“In a suburb of Berlin, a German-American investment consortium is converting the disused McNair US army barracks into upmarket apartments. In the US, the original New Jersey Medical Center – a publicly funded hospital in the 1880s extended with art deco blocks in the 1930s – has now become apartments and a retirement community.

Such transformations are still relatively rare. Yet in the next few years they may become commonplace as western governments tackle budget deficits – and in doing so, free up a glut of public-sector buildings.

In some ways, the UK is ahead of the trend, thanks to two complementary tranches of legislation. First, planning policies have discouraged building on unspoilt ‘greenfield’ land, with the result that house builders have targeted old offices and warehouses for new developments. Secondly, health and safety laws have rendered many landmark public buildings effectively obsolete for their original purpose – making them so expensive to modernise that only residential conversion makes financial sense.”

Russian Performance Artists Kiss Policewomen

March 2, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

An odd protest by the outlandish anarchist troupe Voina, a favorite of Banksy.

Voina member Alex Plutser-Sarno to Don’t Panic magazine: “Anarch-art-activism is the only lively activity in Russia. Nowadays, when even hope for democracy in Russia is ruined, painting flowers and pussy cats or making any other ‘pure’ art, lacking a socio-political content, is to support the right-wing authorities. The symbol of anarchy – a skull-and-bones – has to be painted right at the Russia’s parliament building.”

Tags: ,

A Note About Childbirth From 1915

March 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"From the tenth to the nineteenth-born the mortality was markedly greater."

“Vitality of Last Children: The old belief, still common among the laity, that first-born children are endowed by nature with greater vitality and logevity than last-born, has induced Doctor Alfred Ploetz of Munich, Germany, to make an exhaustive study to ascertain if this were true. He compiled the returns from a very large number of families of the nobility, and his figures show, generally speaking, that the vitality of the first to ninth-born children varied little, but that from the tenth to the nineteenth-born the mortality was markedly greater.”

•Taken from the 1915 World Almanac and Book of Facts.

Tags:

Classic DVD: RoboCop (1987)

March 1, 2011 in Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Released in 1987 in anticipation of an expected urban crime wave that never arrived in America, Paul Verhoeven’s near-future social satire nonetheless remains a sharp indictment of the practice of outsourcing justice and a reminder that weapons are made to be used.

“Old Detroit,” as it is called, is a necropolis only inhabited by predators and prey. But it is about to be bulldozed and replaced by the corporate urban center known as Delta City, courtesy of the greedy overlords at Omni Consumer Products. In order to clear the area of criminals so that they can start reaping profits, the fine folks at OCP have built a robotic crime fighter that they are about to unleash. But the bot badly malfunctions, gunning down an OCP exec. “I’m very disappointed,” says one of the corporate honchos in a hilariously deadpan line, as the employee lies dead on a conference table. But an ambitious, immoral fellow exec (Miguel Ferrer) has an answer. Create a cyborg that incorporates the best of technology with the human brain. He gets the opportunity to hatch his plot when a young cop named Murphy (Peter Weller) is shot to pieces by brutal thugs. Wires and microchips soon transform him into RoboCop. Of course, there are complications when the Singularity arrives, and the erstwhile Murphy soon becomes difficult to control.

As mentioned, RoboCop was made at a moment when crime was rising in the country and every last expert was predicting a continued spike. That never happened (and some of the theories for the decline are controversial). But the film isn’t just concerned with momentary social problems. It also deftly sends up America’s lingering Cold War mentality, which demands that we police the entire world, even when we have to outsource much of the nasty business, as we’ve done recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Greek chorus of the film is a series of parodies of TV news and commercials that comment on the action; in one of the latter, a game called “Nukem” is advertised as the kind of good family fun in which “you get them before they get you.” That’s the mentality RoboCop employs when he initially goes rogue, rationalizing that “somewhere there is a crime happening.” There always is.•

Tags: , ,

Folding Machine Gun Fits In Back Pocket

March 1, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Has a flashlight, too.

“What Makes A Smart, Well-Educated Mother Of Four Go On A Killing Spree?

March 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Amy Bishop's Harvard Ph.D. thesis was entitled, "The Role of Methoxatin (PQQ) in the Respiratory Burst of Phagocytes."

Being denied tenure was the motive bandied about in the wake of Professor Amy Bishop’s shooting spree in Huntsville, Alabama, last February, in which she murdered three fellow academics and wounded several others. The general feeling that higher education is somehow broken seemed to contribute to the acceptance of the refelxive explanation. Amy Wallace of Wired takes a deeper look at the tragic events in “What Made This University Professor Snap?” An excerpt:

“What makes a smart, well-educated mother of four go on a killing spree? In the more than 12 months since Bishop became the first academic in US history to be accused of gunning down fellow professors, many theories have been offered up. One is that she’s a lunatic. That suggestion came from her attorney.

Bishop’s court-appointed lawyer, Roy Miller, called her simply ‘wacko.’ Later he apologized for his word choice, but he has continued to press the point. ‘They’re going to try to show she’s sane, that she was just mean as hell,’ he tells me, referring to the prosecution, which is seeking capital murder charges against Bishop in the killings of department chair Gopi Podila and professors Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. ‘If they seek the death penalty, which we have to assume they will, our only defense is mental.’

The Wacko theory is often accompanied by the Tenure Made Her Do It hypothesis, which posits that the grueling, years-long process of trying to win a permanent professorship—and the despair that accompanied being denied tenure by her peers—made Bishop snap. This explanation got a lot of traction right after the vicious slayings, in part because it seemed to open the door to a more general indictment of academia. Is the tenure process itself vicious? Some, like Katherine van Wormer, a blogger for Psychology Today who has herself been denied tenure, says it is. ‘I would describe the denial of tenure as an end to one’s career, to one’s livelihood,’ van Wormer wrote after the killings. ‘Being denied tenure, in effect, fired by your peers, is the ultimate rejection.’

But the Tenure Made Her Do It assertion is undermined by the calendar. Bishop learned she would not get tenure in March 2009, 11 full months before she transformed a routine faculty meeting into an execution chamber. She appealed the faculty’s decision, thus extending the process. But that appeal was denied for good in November 2009—still three months before her alleged crimes. What’s more, although tenure decisions are not public, university officials say Bishop had indicated she’d found out which colleagues had voted for and against her. Yet she shot some of the very people who had supported her. If this was tenure-related payback, it was carried out with less than surgical precision.” (Thanks Longreads.)

Tags: ,

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 1, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

??????????

Lets Switch (Brooklyn)

Well! Here you are! Now that you have clicked on the link to this ad, and are slowly reading each word, one at a time, you are getting closer and closer to your new life. Exciting isn’t it? Tantalizing even. Perhaps you are wondering, “but what will happen to my life when I leave it?” No worries, mate! Your life will be in good hands; polished every so slightly for the whole world to silently envy. I will make the most of your life, and you will make the most of mine.

So, now I suppose it is time to tell you what treats lay ahead: 1. The body of a 20 year old, red-haired, slightly curvaceous, out of shape, woman. Too much cheese and broccoli makes her gassy, but don’t worry, every morning you will be surprised with a timely B.M. It’s like clockwork 2. Occasionally enjoys the carcass of dead, most likely breaded and fried chicken, but usually consumes veggies in all of their forms. Be warned, dairy can cause an over production of phlegm, and fried foods make her bloated. Keep an eye on the thighs. 3. You will be living in a two bedroom apartment in South Slope. Your bedroom will have a large closet, some plastic drawers, two shelves that have yet to be put up, and a twin bed. Sometimes the kitchen sink gurgles through the night. Sometimes mice will make friends with your hair in the morning. But hey! You still got the bathtub that doesn’t unclog! 4. Which brings us to our next chapter of your new life: friends. Well, they are few and far between. When deciding between old high school friends that smoke too much weed, or ones who spell things like, “D33z NuTz” you have readily chosen: your sister, your neighbor, Barefoot’s 7 dollar Cabernet Sauvignon, and Netflix. Don’t get too down: your an honors student who goes to school for free! 5. But hush, new soul mate, I know how enraptured you are to get started in your other-worldly experiences once you take over my life. But before we begin this transformation there are a few formalities. Please, have 800 dollars in cash upfront as to pay your months rent. Memorize the info on your fake I.D (I don’t want to come back with my body in jail, thank you very much) and expect to pay interest on the few hundred dollars I have on the few credit cards I own. Another helpful detail you will thank me for: don’t let my leg hair get too long, my legs start to get dry and itch like crazy. FInally the most important pointer, when a family member calls practice: agree, sigh, rhetorical “no way!”, repeat.

I think you are ready for the thrills that await you. Live in the now! Not the past or future. Be all you can be! Only, *you* will be me. And I will be *you*! Oh, I should have mentioned earlier, if you are balding, over 35, broke, have children, overweight, have no cable, live outside of the new york city area, own more than two cats, not rich, not famous, have an STD, have crazy roomates/ ex boyfriends, live in a walk-up, have a tail/webbed feet/other physical deformities, have less friends than I do, or finally, cannot control your bowels in public, I do not think this is relationship you should consider getting into.

Happy trading!:

 

“The Podcars Were To Be Powered By Solar Panel Arrays On Top Of Buildings”

March 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Masdar City’s proposed podcars have been scrapped, a casualty of the economic slowdown. From David Hill on IEEE Singularity Hub:

Sounding like something out of a Robert Heinlein novel, Masdar City’s integrated transportation plan involves four initiatives, but it was the podcar system, designed by the Italian company Zagato and developed by Dutch firm 2getthere, that held the most promise. The plan proposed a driverless fleet of 3,000 free-moving, electric vehicles that could transport 2 to 6 passengers between 85 to 100 stations, tallying up to 135,000 trips a day along preprogrammed routes. This system of podcars was basically a replacement for taxis, providing privacy to passengers without the congestion common in other urban centers. A wi-fi network would maneuver the podcars through obstacles in real time as magnets along the path continuously pull the vehicle into alignment with little variance: if one is missed, the podcar continues but if two are missed, it comes to a stop. Ultimately, the podcars were to be powered by solar panel arrays on top of buildings (which was also axed from the budget) and thermal energy-storing molten salt technology allowing the vehicles to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.•

Tags:

Afflictor Nation: Who Ruled February?

March 1, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair: Just smart enough to be dangerous.

Great Britain sent more unique visitors to Afflictor during February than any other foreign nation. Here are the Top 5 finishers:

  1. Great Britain
  2. Canada
  3. Germany
  4. Australia
  5. India

Tags:

Transforming Typewriters Into Computer Keyboards

March 1, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Philadelphia inventor Jack Zylkin’s site: “The USBTypewriter is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad! The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine). So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use.” (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

Tags:

How To Tell If Someone Is Dead In 1902

March 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

 

“Tests of Death: Hold mirror to mouth. If living, moisture will gather. Push pin into flesh. If dead the hole will remain. If alive it will close up. Place fingers in front of a strong light. If alive, they will appear red; if dead, black or dark. If a person is dead decomposition is almost sure to set in after 72 hours have elapsed. If it does not, then there is room for investigation by the physician. Do not permit burial of the dead until some certain indication of death is apparent.”

•From the 1902 World Almanac and Encyclopedia.

What About This Thing? Is It The Future Of Print?

February 28, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) displays demonstrated by Samsung in Vegas recently. They’re bendable. (Thanks Reddit.)

Delmonico’s At Its New Uptown Location (1902)

February 28, 2011 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Delmonico's kicthen in 1902: "In the restaurant, smoking would now be permitted...this change was at the insistence of women."

This classic 1902 photo of Delmonico’s, a famed New York City restaurant opened in 1827 as a cafe and pastry shop, by erstwhile sea captain Giovanni Del-Monico and his brother Pietro, an experienced candy seller. The shop became a restaurant and inched uptown to new locations as Manhattan life gradually stretched northward. In the above photo, the restaurant had been relocated to Broadway and 44th Street by a new generation of Delmonicos, as the nineteenth-century was coming to a close. An excerpt about the move–and the changes instituted at the new locale–from the Steak Perfection site:

“On April 20, 1896, Young Charles Delmonico signed a 15-year lease and surprised the entire city when he announced that ‘Del’s’ would open a new restaurant farther uptown, at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. The city center had continued its move northward, and Delmonico continued to follow.

As the new structure was being built, everyone assumed that Delmonico’s Restaurant would continue at the Madison Square location on 26th Street.  The location there was particularly convenient for shoppers, and it was nearby the crossing of Fifth Avenue, Broadway and 23rd Street, which was becoming known as the heart of the metropolis.

On November 15, 1897, the new Delmonico’s Restaurant on 44th Street opened to universal praise and some shock.  In the restaurant, smoking would now be permitted (previously, smoking had been permitted only in the cafe).  This change was at the insistence of women, who resented the fact that the men would ‘retire to the smoking room’ after dinner.  With this change, women believed that the men would be averse to desert them after dining.

Another change and surprise was the addition of an orchestra, which would play ‘in the background.’  Previously, listeners were expected to cease movement and to concentrate when an orchestra played, so that they and all could enjoy the music.  Now, music would be played while patrons ate and even talked.”

Tags: , ,

“You Don’t Need Geiger Counters Or Special Suits; You Just Have To Stay With The Tour”

February 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Chernobly skies still choked in 2010. (Image by Piotr Andryszczak.)

In “Chernobyl, My Primeval, Teeming, Irradiated Eden,” Outside writer Henry Shukman tours the site of the world’s worst nuclear power plant disaster 25 years after the massive meltdown. There are some signs of life, though you couldn’t really call them green shoots. An excerpt:

“Today, around 5,000 people work in the Exclusion Zone, which over the years has grown to an area of 1,660 square miles. For one thing, you can’t just switch off a nuclear power plant. Even decommissioned, it requires maintenance, as does the new nuclear-waste storage facility on site. The workers come in for two-week shifts and receive three times normal pay. Any sign of disease at the annual medical, however, and they lose their jobs.

There are also some 300 people living in the zone: villagers who’ve been coming home to their old farming lands since not long after the disaster and teams of radio ecologists from around the world who’ve come to study the effects of radioactive fallout on plants and animals. They’ve effectively turned the zone into a giant radiation lab, a place where the animals are mostly undisturbed, living amid a preindustrial number of humans and a postapocalyptic amount of radioactive strontium and cesium. On the outside the fauna seems to be thriving: there have been huge resurgences in the numbers of large mammals, including gray wolves, brown bears, elk, roe deer, and wild boar present in quantities not recorded for more than a century. The question scientists are trying to answer is what’s happening on the inside: in their bones, and in their very DNA.

ONCE YOU ENTER THE ZONE, the quiet is a shock. It would be eerie were it not so lovely. The abandoned backstreets of Chernobyl are so overgrown, you can hardly see it’s a town. They’ve turned into dark-green tunnels buzzing with bees, filled with an orchestral score of birdsong, the lanes so narrow that the van pushes aside weeds on both sides as it creeps down them, passing house after house enshrined in forest. Red admirals, peacock butterflies, and some velvety brown lepidoptera are fluttering all over the vegetation. It looks like something out of an old Russian fairy tale.

Ukraine officially opened Chernobyl up to tourism in January 2011, but small groups have been able to visit the zone for the past few years. There are small tour operators based in Kiev that take visitors on day trips. You don’t need Geiger counters or special suits; you just have to stay with the tour, pass through several checkpoints, and get tested for radiation on your way out. The tours will shuttle you around some of the main sites—the deserted city of Pripyat, a small park filled with old Soviet army vehicles used in the cleanup, various concrete memorials to the fire crews who lost their lives after the blast. Visitors are strictly confined to areas the author ities have scanned and declared safe.” (Thanks Longreads.)

Tags:

Falling-Down Drunk At The New York Times

February 28, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Gay Talese recalls elbows being bent by tipsy Timesmen. (Thanks Big Think.)

Tags:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

February 28, 2011 in Misc., Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"Old poison/apothecary jars."

 

ANTIQUES WANTED BIZARRE STRANGE WEIRD UNUSUAL WILL PAY CASH (Staten Island)

Greetings, I am a buyer and collector of fine antique items ranging from Victorian era to early Modern. I am always glad to meet and purchase items for CASH if the price is right and they fit my criteria. Please feel free to respond anytime and I will get back to you promptly for a discussion by phone or email. You can always expect the utmost courtesy and professionalism. Standard Antiques and collectible items are welcome but I SPECIALIZE in bizarre and odd items such as:

  • Victorian Post-Mortem Photography
  • Old Poison/Apothecary Jars
  • Victorian Coffins and Urns
  • Old Surgical Equipment/Devices
  • Mortuary Equipment/Embalming Items
  • Old Keys/Locks
  • Animal Skulls Bones/Other Bones Skulls
  • Books on strange subject matters
  • Small Taxidermy such as squirrels/bats/cats/small dogs/reptiles
  • Masonic and Secret Society Lodge Items
  • Old Religious/Reliquary Items
  • Early Industrial Items/Gears/
  • Vintage Horror Movie Items/Masks

 

Still Famous In 10,000 Years?

February 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jesus Christ: Q rating off the charts.

Which people who are currently famous will still be famous 10,000 years from now? It won’t be Gwyneth Paltrow, that’s for sure. Her singing at the Oscars last night nearly made Quadaffi surrender. But that very difficult question is taken on by the fertile mind of economist Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. An excerpt:

“I’ll go with the major religious leaders (Jesus, Buddha, etc.), Einstein, Turing, Watson and Crick, Hitler, the major classical music composers, Adam Smith, and Neil Armstrong.  (Addendum: Oops!  I forgot Darwin and Euclid.)

My thinking is this. The major religions last for a long time and leave a real mark on history. Path-dependence is critical in that area.

Otherwise, an individual, to stay famous, will have to securely symbolize an entire area, and an area ‘with legs’ at that. The theory of relativity still will be true and it may well become more important. The computer and DNA will not be irrelevant. Hitler will remain a stand-in symbol for pure evil; if he is topped we may not have a future at all. Beethoven and Mozart still will be splendid, but Shakespeare and other wordsmiths will require translation and thus will fade somewhat. The propensity to truck and barter will remain and Smith will keep his role as the symbol of economics. Keynesian economics may someday be less true, as superior biofeedback, combined with markets in self-improvement, ushers in an era of flexible wages, while market-based expected nominal gdp targetingprevents a downward deflationary spiral.”

Tags: ,

Matt Alaeddine, World’s Largest Contortionist

February 28, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“Fatt Matt” Alaeddine is a 400-pound Edmonton contortionist and comedian who performs at fringe festivals. circuses and on subway platforms. (Thanks Edmonton Journal.)

Tags:

How Babies Were Entertained In 1900

February 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

 


From “For the Baby’s Amusement,” in the May 29, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“One way of amusing little children is to have a hook screwed in the ceiling over the middle of the bed or cot, attach a cord to it long enough for the baby to reach, tie either a soft worsted ball or a knitted doll and the baby will play with it.”

Old Print Article: Bicycle Troubles, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890s)

February 28, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

"A man frequents the park who is in the habit of cutting them about the ankles with a whip."

Bicycling became a huge craze in America during the 1890s. It was a healthy fad that was good for hearts, lungs and mayhem–lots of mayhem. A few brief stories of bike-related turmoil from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle follow.

••••••••••

“Recent Events” (September 29, 1894): “Chicago women who ride bicycles in bloomers in Washington park have complained to the police that a man frequents the park who is in the habit of cutting them about the ankles with a whip when they pass him.”

••••••••••

“Don’t Ride in Long Island City” (August 25, 1892): “The hardships a bicycle rider is likely to encounter in Long Island City beside bad roads was fully ventillated in the police court of that city yesterday. George A. Phail is superintendent of the Danier dynamo works, at Steinway. He lives at Winfield and, until two weeks ago, enjoyed great pleasure and exercise in riding across the country roads, a distance of about three miles, to and from his work. On August 8, Phail on his way home through Newtown avenue on his bicycle, encountered Cerl Springer and Gustav Zeigler on the roadway. Springer didn’t fancy the style Phail was putting on and Zeigler does not like bicycles anyway. Zeigler refused to get out of the way to let Phail pass and the latter, in attempting to turn out of Zeigler’s way, was precipitated down an embankment, bicycle and all. Phail gathered himself up the best he could under such circumstances and the irate Germans both told him it served him right, as he had no business riding there. Smarting under his injuries Phail talked back to the Germans and in an instant Springer and Phail were clinching. Zeigler went to his companion’s assistance and soon the prostrate form of the bicycle rider lay in the roadway and was being made a foot ball by the German.

••••••••••

“A Bicycler’s Arrest” (June 8, 1896): “Some of the new New York policemen are as over busy as their predecessors were neglectful. One of them notified a young woman on a bicycle that her lamp was out. The young woman dismounted and lit her lamp. Then the policeman arrested her. She was carried away in a patrol wagon, locked up in a cell, in the company of riff-raff gathered from the streets on Saturday nights, who insulted and jeered at her, and the sergeant in charge was as officious and ill mannered as his underling. Her relatives finally learned of the arrest and secured her release on bail. At the court Magistrate Simms roundly lectured the policeman and gave an honorable discharge to the young woman, as he considered that by lighting her lamp, when warned to do so, she had complied with the law.”

••••••••••

“Max Miller’s Wedding Postponed” (September 11, 1893): “Max Miller, a bicycle machinist and expert bicycle rider, employed near the park entrance, was to have been married Saturday evening. Instead of a happy bridegroom he was escorted to a cell in the Flabush station house, charged by his employer with stealing some $200 worth of bicycle goods. His intended bride was allowed to visit him in his cell yesterday afternoon.”

••••••••••

“Broadsword Fight Awheel” (May 10, 1897): “An unusual sight greeted many cyclists at the Lynwood track yesterday, where ‘Colonel’ Nicholas Hartmann, the broadsword fighter, was practicing his profession, mounted on the front seat of a tandem bicycle. The swordsman was incased in his fighting armor and withstanding the assaults of his trainer in clever style.”

••••••••••

Bicycle trick riding, 1899:

Tags: , , , , ,

Result Of The Robot Marathon In Osaka

February 27, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I posted earlier about the Robot Marathon taking place in Osaka, Japan. Here is the result. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

« Older entries § Newer entries »