October 2012

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“Reasonable People Would Have Expected A Lot Of Bad Things To Happen”

October 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Are fears of cyber attacks that paralyze electric grids overstated? In a new Foreign Policy piece, Douglas Birch argues in the affirmative. An excerpt about the dual mass power outages from last summer in America and India:

“The most important thing about both events is what didn’t happen. Planes didn’t fall out of the sky. Governments didn’t collapse. Thousands of people weren’t killed. Despite disruption and delay, harried public officials, emergency workers, and beleaguered publics mostly muddled through.

The summer’s blackouts strongly suggest that a cyber weapon that took down an electric grid even for several days could turn out to be little more than a weapon of mass inconvenience.

‘Reasonable people would have expected a lot of bad things to happen’ in the storm’s aftermath, said Neal A. Pollard, a terrorism expert who teaches at Georgetown University and has served on the United Nation’s Expert Working Group on the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes. However, he said, emergency services, hospitals, and air traffic control towers have backup systems to handle short-term disruptions in power supplies. After the derecho, Pollard noted, a generator truck even showed up in the parking lot of his supermarket.

The response wasn’t perfect, judging by the heat-related deaths and lengthy delays in the United States in restoring power. But nor were the people without power as helpless or clueless as is sometimes assumed.”

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“The Idea That We Have Some Innate Aggression Towards Animals…We Don’t”

October 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I became a vegetarian because I don’t want to hurt animals, the environment or myself. I won’t have any measurable impact on the first two, so I guess it’s all about me. Isn’t it always? Rumpus has a really good Q&A by Suzanne Koven with Dr. Neal Bernard, the son of cattle ranchers who now advocates for veganism for ethical and health reasons. An excerpt about the belief that carnivorism is a product of evolution:

“Rumpus: 

But isn’t there an evolutionary basis for meat eating—for us not to be disgusted by it? We have canine teeth, our forebears speared animals and ate them. Aren’t we hardwired for meat eating? Is the fact that cooking meat smells good to us really just a cultural thing?

Barnard: 

Meat smells good, bleu cheese smells good—to some people. But it’s acquired. If you ask a guy who’s thirty-five if a cold beer on a hot summer day would taste good, he’d say, ‘Yeah, that would taste wonderful.’ But if you could go back in time to his first taste behind the garage when he was fifteen, it probably tasted disgusting. We acquire certain tastes for things.

And if you took a baby and put a bunny in front of him, and if you had a cat and a bunny, the cat at any age would want to attack and kill the bunny and the child would say, ‘Oh, look at the bunny!’ So the idea that we have some innate aggression towards animals…we don’t.

h: if you open the mouth of a cat, a carnivore, you see that they have long canines, way beyond the other teeth. If you open the mouth of a dog, you see the same. If you open your mouth, you don’t. You have canines that are the same length as your incisors. If you have long canine teeth, it allows you to do two things: one, it allows you to snatch your prey. The other thing it allows you to do is to pull away the hide. If a dog happens to catch a rabbit or another animal, it can very easily remove the hide. If a cat catches a squirrel, they have no trouble with that. But if a person does that, they will work all day and all night to get the skin off of an animal, because they don’t have long canine teeth anymore.

We also don’t have claws. Plus we’re not fast. Plus we don’t have very good vision, or good sense of smell. An owl is a predator and can detect a mouse at a tremendous distance. Dogs have a sense of smell much greater than ours and they’re much faster than we are. We have fairly dull senses, fairly slow locomotion. In our Olympic trials, we celebrate speeds that would be an embarrassment to a bird or a dog or another animal.

We have nothing to kill prey with and nothing to remove the hide with. So the question is when did that change come? It’s something like 3.5 million years ago that we lost our long canine teeth. And most of the great apes did, too—and they’re almost entirely vegetarian. Chimpanzees will eat a little bit of meat. But, they never eat dairy products, and no other animal would do that.” (Thanks Browser.)

 

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“A Team Of Surgeons Introduced A Promising New Solution: A Tiny, Implantable Telescope”

October 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

My best guess is that anyone being born now (and perhaps many of the rest of us) will live to see cures for macular degeneration and glaucoma and most causes of blindness. But at the very least, we will develop workarounds so that the blind can regain a reasonable measure of sight. From Kyle Vanhemert at Fast Company:

“Advanced age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. in adults over the age of 60. It affects nearly 2 million people in the U.S., with half a million new cases diagnosed every year. It’s a big problem. And until recently, we didn’t have a very good way of treating it. Patients with end-stage degeneration typically had to rely on cumbersome, low-tech solutions to help them see–relics like handheld magnifying glasses and closed-circuit televisions. But earlier this month, a team of surgeons at the UC Davis Eye Center introduced a promising new solution: a tiny, implantable telescope.”

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“Crushed It”

October 2, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

The cocaine makes you feel okay, keeps the fear at bay, allows you to make another sales call. When you’re high, you imagine that everyone awaits your arrival, that your petty business deals amount to something. The streets all look like beaches, and everything is about you. The whole gang loves you and is excited to see you. They think you’re a hero, especially that tall blond. For a while, you feel so powerful. But it’s all a delusion, a chemically induced dream. You know down deep you will die someday and that you’re not leaving a mark. The fear is getting closer. There is an emptiness inside. You have to call your dealer. You have to get some help.

A Brief Note From 1857 About Free Love

October 1, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 26, 1857 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

Read also:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

October 1, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“People who know me say I am mysterious.”

My Double Life (here)

I’m well educated, grew-up in an upper middle-class neighborhood. I am just an average female. Innocent looking, well-spoken, genuine. My adult life I’ve been lost – never really going anywhere. I’ve never done anything to be proud of. People who know me say I am mysterious. I don’t agree. I just don’t do anything, so what’s mysterious about that I ask? I live a double-life. I sleep with strangers for cash. Nobody who knows me would ever believe.

“Biodegradable Medical Treatments For Remote Patient Care”

October 1, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I recently put up a post about transient electronics. Here’s a DARPA video demonstrating  such technology dissolving when treated with a few drops of water. From  the release: “DARPA hopes this advance will lead to biodegradable medical treatments for remote patient care that does not require extraction surgery while warfighters are deployed.”

“All The Strings Are Pulled By A Hand Within His Own Head”

October 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

A lot of people died unnecessarily because of Richard Nixon’s policies, but you have to say one thing for him: At least he never stabbed his wife. From “The Genius,” Norman Mailer’s 1972 New York Review of Books account of the 37th American President, who was always trying to shed the discomfort he felt with his own skin:

“He walks like a puppet more curious than most human beings, for all the strings are pulled by a hand within his own head, an inquiring hand which never pulls the same string in quite the same way as the previous time—it is always trying something out—and so the movements of his arms and legs while superficially conventional, even highly restrained, are all impregnated with attempts, still timid—after all these years!—to express attitudes and emotions with his body. But he handles his body like an adolescent suffering excruciations of self-consciousness with every move. After all these years! It is as if his incredible facility of brain which manages to capture every contradiction in every question put to him, and never fails to reply with the maximum of advantage for himself in a language which is resolutely without experiment, is, facile and incredible brain, off on a journey of inquiry into the stubborn refusal of the body to obey it.

He must be obsessed with the powers he could employ if his body could also function intimately as an instrument of his will, as intimate perhaps as his intelligence (which has become so free of the distortions of serious moral motivation), but his body refuses. Like a recalcitrant hound, it refuses. So he is still trying out a half dozen separate gestures with each step, a turn of his neck to say one thing, a folding of his wrist to show another, a sprightly step up with one leg, a hint of a drag with the other, and all the movements are immediately restrained, pulled back to zero revelation as quickly as possible by a brain which is more afraid of what the body will reveal than of what it can discover by just once making an authentic move which gets authentic audience response. Yet he remains divided on the utility of this project. Stubborn as an animal, the body does not give up and keeps making its disjunctive moves while the will almost as quickly snaps them back.”

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“I Had A Dream To Design An Urban Vehicle For The Future”

October 1, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

A promo film for the Urbee, a cleaner, striking, printable auto.

“When Timothy Leary Was In Prison He Was Visited By Marshall McLuhan”

October 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From a recent Atlantic article by Ross Andersen about video artist Jason Silva, a passage recalling a meeting between Marshall McLuhan and Timothy Leary, when the latter was imprisoned:

When Timothy Leary was in prison he was visited by Marshall McLuhan, who told Leary “you can’t stay way out on the fringes if you want to compete in the marketplace of ideas—if your ideas are going to resonate, you need to refine your packaging.” And so they taught Leary to smile, and they taught him about charisma and aesthetic packaging, and ultimately Leary came to appreciate the power of media packaging for his work. According to the article, this is where Timothy Leary the performance philosopher was born, and when he came out of jail all of the sudden he was on all these talk shows, and he was waxing philosophical about virtual reality, and downloading our minds, and moving into cyberspace. All of these ideas became associated with this extremely charismatic guy who was considered equal parts rock star, poet and guru scientist—and that to me suggests the true power of media communications, because these guys were able to take these intergalactic sized ideas and spread them with the tools of media.•

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Leary in Folsom prison, 1978:

A sample of Silva’s work:

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“The Solution Will Be The Equivalent Of One Teacher Per Student”

October 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From an Ask Me Anything at Slashdot with Steve Wozniak, an exchange about improving American education:

“Question:

Woz, what changes would you recommend to fix the K-12 education system in the U.S.?

Steve Wozniak:

Computers offered a real change in the tools of the classroom, but they don’t seem to have changed much. The learning is the same, only done via computers, for the most part. I had hoped for more.

I do want to feel a part of the big improvement someday, so I hope that there is some further step with computers. That would be when a computer becomes conscious and caring and becomes the best friend that each student wants to be with. It will look at their faces and speak the way that particular student likes and be a good friend more than a teacher.

One thing that has not changed over time in education is that we all, in a class, get the same material presentation together. The same pages as everyone else on Monday, the same pages on Tuesday, etc. Individuals as we are, we have different lapses along the way. A teacher could back up and explain something to fill in a gap, but each of the 30 students has different ‘gaps.’ The solution will be the equivalent of one teacher per student.

This opens the door to a student choosing to get only straight A’s, and only studying subjects they want to. And there will be more room to teach thinking and creativity and not all the same answer, which is not even their own answer, but out of a book. It’s a brave step, but right.

I learned the capital cities of all 50 states. How could anyone in life ever need to know such a worthless thing. The only worth is to show you can memorize it. But today it gets turned into a grade and a determination of what intelligence is. We have to break from that paradigm but can’t with today’s 30-student classes. Or should I say ‘day care?’

Schools are short of money because students don’t get a vote and votes turn into money. It’s a bad consequence of finding education to be a right and that means it has to be supplied by government. Government money follows votes. A family of 5 gets no more votes than a family of 2. Which wants the better school? But the votes by families of 2 are against more money for schools.”

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Afflictor Nation: Great Britain Reigns In September

October 1, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

Liz: Seconds before flashing vag to paps.

The top five foreign countries sending the most unique users to Afflictor in September:

  1. Great Britain
  2. Canada
  3. Netherlands
  4. Brazil
  5. Germany

Old Print Article: “The Snapping Cure,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1896)

October 1, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“He had big, muscular fingers, and he snapped them with a sound like the crack of a black snake whip.”

Prior to antibiotics and penicillin, lesser methods were used to treat a raft of ailments–including, um, finger snapping. From the December 19, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“A friend who was born in Central Illinois asked me the other day whether I have ever heard of the snapping craze that raged in the back country districts in his part of the state some thirty odd years ago. I have inhabited this planet for a little over half a century and have always been interested in popular delusions, but I had never before heard of the snappers. My friend said that a snapping doctor, who came from nobody knew where, started a curious movement by lectures in rural schoolhouses and churches. His theory was that all diseases could be thrown off by bringing the body up to a condition of high nervous tension by a peculiar method of snapping the fingers, which he had discovered and which he alone was competent to teach. He had big, muscular fingers, and he snapped them with a sound like the crack of a black snake whip. He soon got his audiences to work snapping and made them believe that they were experiencing marked benefits from the performance. For complete instruction in the art, however, he charged $50.

The craze had a run of a few months, and while it raged the school children snapped their fingers at recess time, and in the farmhouses men and women gathered evenings to practice the marvelous new healing art.”

“Digital Fabrication Could Be Used To Produce Weapons Of Individual Destruction”

October 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “How to Make Almost Anything,” Neil Gershenfeld’s new Foreign Affairs piece about the coming revolution of 3D printers, replicating machines that can replicate even themselves:

“Are there dangers to this sort of technology? In 1986, the engineer Eric Drexler, whose doctoral thesis at MIT was the first in molecular nanotechnology, wrote about what he called ‘gray goo,’ a doomsday scenario in which a self-reproducing system multiplies out of control, spreads over the earth, and consumes all its resources. In 2000, Bill Joy, a computing pioneer, wrote in Wired magazine about the threat of extremists building self-reproducing weapons of mass destruction. He concluded that there are some areas of research that humans should not pursue. In 2003, a worried Prince Charles asked the Royal Society, the United Kingdom’s fellowship of eminent scientists, to assess the risks of nanotechnology and self-replicating systems.

Although alarming, Drexler’s scenario does not apply to the self-reproducing assemblers that are now under development: these require an external source of power and the input of nonnatural materials. Although biological warfare is a serious concern, it is not a new one; there has been an arms race in biology going on since the dawn of evolution.

A more immediate threat is that digital fabrication could be used to produce weapons of individual destruction. An amateur gunsmith has already used a 3-D printer to make the lower receiver of a semiautomatic rifle, the AR-15. This heavily regulated part holds the bullets and carries the gun’s serial number. A German hacker made 3-D copies of tightly controlled police handcuff keys. Two of my own students, Will Langford and Matt Keeter, made master keys, without access to the originals, for luggage padlocks approved by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration. They x-rayed the locks with a CT scanner in our lab, used the data to build a 3-D computer model of the locks, worked out what the master key was, and then produced working keys with three different processes: numerically controlled milling, 3-D printing, and molding and casting.

These kinds of anecdotes have led to calls to regulate 3-D printers.” (Thanks Browser.)

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