2013

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“Many Of The Rules That Govern Human Relationships Apply Equally Well To Human-Robot Relations”

September 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

First you fall in love and then you get married. These rules of courtship apply also to robots. If they are made to sound like us and move like us, bots are more likely to be accepted by people. Of course, we don’t treat other humans so well, either, so perhaps silicone should shudder at our embrace. From “How Robots Can Trick You Into Loving Them,” Maggie Koerth-Baker’s New York Times Magazine piece about the beginnings of a modern romance:

“In the future, more robots will occupy that strange gray zone: doing not only jobs that humans can do but also jobs that require social grace. In the last decade, an interdisciplinary field of research called Human-Robot Interaction has arisen to study the factors that make robots work well with humans, and how humans view their robotic counterparts.

H.R.I. researchers have discovered some rather surprising things: a robot’s behavior can have a bigger impact on its relationship with humans than its design; many of the rules that govern human relationships apply equally well to human-robot relations; and people will read emotions and motivations into a robot’s behavior that far exceed the robot’s capabilities. As we employ those lessons to build robots that can be better caretakers, maids and emergency responders, we risk further blurring the (once unnecessary) line between tools and beings.

Provided with the right behavioral cues, humans will form relationships with just about anything — regardless of what it looks like. Even a stick can trigger our social promiscuity. In 2011, Ehud Sharlin, a computer scientist at the University of Calgary, ran an observational experiment to test this impulse to connect. His subjects sat alone in a room with a very simple ‘robot’: a long, balsa-wood rectangle attached to some gears, controlled by a joystick-wielding human who, hidden from view, ran it through a series of predetermined movements. Sharlin wanted to find out how much agency humans would attribute to a stick.

Some subjects tried to fight the stick, or talk it out of wanting to fight them. One woman panicked, complaining that the stick wouldn’t stop pointing at her. Some tried to dance with it. The study found that a vast majority assumed the stick had its own goals and internal thought proc­esses. They described the stick as bowing in greeting, searching for hidden items, even purring like a contented cat.”•

Milgram meets metal:

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“It’s True That The World Series Has Lost A Bit Of Luster”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

I know baseball fans are supposed to hate player agent Scott Boras because he’s greedy and forces the game to be about money and makes ticket prices go up, but I don’t feel that way because it’s hypocritical in addition to being plain wrong. Boras represents his clients in a professional manner, works to see that players do as well as the owners (as it should be) and has no effect on ticket prices, since those are determined by owner perception of what the market will bear. Only in baseball can a small group of rich, supposedly capitalist people (owners) use an anti-trust exemption to eliminate competition, continually ask for welfare (i.e., taxpayer money to build luxury-box lined stadiums which price out those taxpayers) and complain about someone (Boras) who just wants a free market. Or a freer one, at any rate.

For a few years, the agent has been pitching the MLB to switch to a neutral, warm-weather site for the first two games of the World Series, in an effort to stem the championship’s increasing regionalization. It’s certainly better than anything Bud Selig and his lieutenants have come up with. Boras’ thoughts are covered this week in Nick Cafardo’s Boston Globe column, a perplexing weekly baseball roundup that mixes intelligent reporting with stupefying close-mindedness. There are gems like this: “Andy Pettitte is a Hall of Famer. Period.” No, he isn’t. Exclamation point! But even if you disagree, we should be able to debate the matter without someone preempting it so he doesn’t have to defend his position.

Anyhow, I’ll post some of the better stuff from this week’s Cafardo column, which concerns Boras’ proposal, followed by my own idea along the same lines for a rehashed Wild Card playoff.

From Boras:

“For five years super agent Scott Boras has called for something that makes a lot of sense — having the first and/or second game of the World Series take place in a neutral setting. Set it up much like the MLB All-Star Game or the Super Bowl, thus creating a year’s worth of interest in an event that has become, in Boras’s opinion, ‘regionalized.’

If you had two games to start the World Series in a warm-weather climate and/or dome, you’d create quite a buzz. The prelude to the game or games, Boras suggests, would be a gala, followed by a big ceremony where the Cy Young, MVP, and other awards would be part of a TV special in the host city. He calls it, baseball’s Oscars.

All of this, in Boras’s view, would get the corporate world involved much like it is for the Super Bowl. …

‘It would be a gathering place for all of baseball,’ Boras said. ‘The team officials would have to show up for the awards and other business. It could be the start of the hot-stove season as it once was. It would bring baseball center stage. It would make the World Series an event, much like the All-Star Game, which is the best in sports. Why not take all of the metrics of that event and apply them to the World Series?’

It’s true that the World Series has lost a bit of luster.”•

My idea for Wild Card Weekend:

End the regular season on a Wednesday and leave two days for possible tie-breaking games and travel. Three days after the season ends is Wild Card Saturday (“One Saturday, Two Celebrations”). You choose a neutral, warm-weather or domed location and hold both the AL and NL Wild Cards on the same day on the same field. (If you want a home playoff game, you have to win.) There would be one early game and one late game with “halftime” entertainment. Reveal regular-season awards in a live televised event from the host city the night before the games are played. Have cities bid on Wild Card Saturday a couple years in advance. Because you are guaranteeing two victory celebrations on the same day, it should be an easy sale for TV.•

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“People Can Win, They Can Lose, They Can Get Zonked”

September 22, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Two items related to game shows:

I think I miss stuff sometimes because I don’t have a television, but did the rest of you know that Monty Hall is still alive? The Let’s Make a Deal host and inspiration for a probability puzzle, now 92, will be interviewed this Thursday on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, which is always excellent except when his guests are chefs or Thom Yorke.

From 1973:

The two nicest comedians I’ve had chance meetings with are Catherine O’Hara and the late Phil Hartman. As you might guess, Hartman was very into his own head and quiet when not in character, but he was also very sweet. Here he is as “Philip Hartman” in a 1979 Dating Game episode, which aired, of course, during the original run of Saturday Night Live, where he was to later become an Aykroyd-ish star. Beginning at the 10:40 mark.

 

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A Brief Note From 1912 About A Machinist’s Nose

September 22, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the July 15, 1912 New York Times:

“Ludwig Wozny, a machinist, of Jackson and Beebe Avenues, Long Island City, had his nose almost cut off last evening by the automobile of Alexander C. Walker of 414 Riverside Drive. The prompt and skillful work of Dr. Brown of St. John’s Hospital, it was said last night, would save Wozny from having to go through life without a nose.”

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“Perhaps We Should Demand An End To The Unimaginable Suffering Of Victims And Their Families”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I hate when some incorrigible wiseass makes a good point in a snide way and I’m not that incorrigible wiseass. It should have been me. Henry Porter of the Guardian suggests that gun violence in America has become a humanitarian crisis requiring international intervention, just like Syria with its chemical weapons. The opening of his article:

“Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company’s concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald’s case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America‘s recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company’s chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That’s America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC’s navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.”

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“This Man Presented A Radical View Of World History”

September 22, 2013 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Immanuel Velikovsky, brilliant psychiatrist, catastrophist and complete crank, was on a first-name basis with some of the world’s greatest scientific minds–and several inane theories. His ideas from 1950 of colliding worlds played a small, supporting role in creating the paranoiac atmosphere of Philip Kaufman’s 1978 Invasion of the Bodysnatchers remake, but served little other purpose. Here’s a 1964 episode of Camera Three that featured him.

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“It Sounded Like It Was Going To Be Something Like Another War On Drugs, A Very Amorphous Thing”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Videos | Permalink

From an interview posted at the Los Angeles Review of Books which Jon Wiener conducted with Joan Didion one week after September 11, 2001:

“Jon Wiener:

The news today is that President George W. Bush has just launched —

Joan Didion:

‘Operation Infinite Justice.’ Yes.

Jon Wiener:

You’ve always paid close attention to our political rhetoric. What do you make of ‘Operation Infinite Justice’?

Joan Didion:

At first it sounded like we were immediately going to be bombing someone. Then it sounded like it was going to be something like another war on drugs, a very amorphous thing with a heightened state of rhetoric and some threat to civil liberties.”•

For a real challenge, build King Kong on top of the Twin Towers”:

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Franz Reichelt, Pride Before The Fall (1912)

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“I am confident of success.”

Franz Reichelt was sure he was right. A tailor taken with aviation, Reichelt convinced himself in 1912 that his nouveau parachute would serve and protect. French authorities forbade his planned demonstration of the contraption with a leap from the Eiffel Tower unless a dummy was used in his stead. But Reichelt would not listen to reason: He became his own dummy. These two classic photos show him just prior to his fatal miscalculation played itself out in front of hundreds. From “Dies in Parachute From Eiffel Tower,” a New York Times article that misspells the surname of the man in decline:

“Paris–Franz Reichalt, an Austrian tailor, who had been experimenting with a new form of parachute, jumped to-day from the first platform of the Eiffel Tower, 180 feet high, and fell to the ground like a stone. He was killed instantly. 

Reichalt had long been interested in aviation questions. Every spare hour he spent pursuing this hobby. He recently decided to compete for a prize offered for the best form of parachute or other device which would safeguard an aviator in the event of an accident happening to his machine.

Reichalt tried several designs for a parachute and experimented with them in the courtyard of the house he occupied. Apparently his experiments to some extent were successful. At all events for weeks past Reichalt had been petitioning the authorities to allow him to make a serious trial of as apparatus from the Eiffel Tower.

Such permissions were not easily obtained, and that which he finally got from the Prefecture stipulated that the test be made with a dummy. There was little secrecy about the fact, however, that Reichalt intended to substitute himself for the dummy in spite of 10 degrees of frost and a stiff northeaster.

Several hundred people gathered underneath the Eiffel Tower toward 8 o’clock when the experiment was to be made. Reichalt arrived with a friend carrying his parachute, which was made of khaki colored canvas, weighing about 20 pounds and had a surface of nearly 40 square yards.

Several aviation specialists were present, among them M. Hervieu, who made several experiments with the same kind of device himself, and it is significant that M. Hervieu, on examining Reichalt’s apparatus, expressed great doubt as to its practicability, advancing one or two technical arguments against it which Reichalt was quite unable to oppose.

But he was not shaken in his conviction even at the eleventh hour, for he said almost jauntily: ‘I am confident of success.’ Mr. Hervieu emphatically declared, on seeing a preliminary test from a distance that the parachute required much too long a time to open itself out. His judgement had hardly been made when it was most fully confirmed.

Reichelt clambered over the hand rail and threw himself forward, but the parachute never opened, and his descent was one of unbroken acceleration 180 feet to the ground. His body was a shapeless mass when the police picked it up and carried it with all speed in a taxicab to the nearest infirmary.

The accident caused a protest to be raised this evening against a repetition of such experiments except with the fullest approval and knowledge of specialists.“•

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“This Essay Starts With Utopia—The Utopia Known As The American University”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I root every day for alternatives (online or otherwise) to what America’s higher-education system has become: a fast-food meal with five-star prices, preparation for a fictional world that doesn’t exist, a lottery without a prize, a trick, a hoax, a Ponzi sheme. Nobody lays out the woes better than Thomas Frank did in his recent Baffler essay, “Academy Fight Song.” The opening:

“This essay starts with utopia—the utopia known as the American university. It is the finest educational institution in the world, everyone tells us. Indeed, to judge by the praise that is heaped upon it, the American university may be our best institution, period. With its peaceful quadrangles and prosperity-bringing innovation, the university is more spiritually satisfying than the church, more nurturing than the family, more productive than any industry.

The university deals in dreams. Like other utopias—like Walt Disney World, like the ambrosial lands shown in perfume advertisements, like the competitive Valhalla of the Olympics—the university is a place of wish fulfillment and infinite possibility. It is the four-year luxury cruise that will transport us gently across the gulf of class. It is the wrought-iron gateway to the land of lifelong affluence.

It is not the university itself that tells us these things; everyone does. It is the president of the United States. It is our most respected political commentators and economists. It is our business heroes and our sports heroes. It is our favorite teacher and our guidance counselor and maybe even our own Tiger Mom. They’ve been to the university, after all. They know.

When we reach the end of high school, we approach the next life, the university life, in the manner of children writing letters to Santa. Oh, we promise to be so very good. We open our hearts to the beloved institution. We get good grades. We do our best on standardized tests. We earnestly list our first, second, third choices. We tell them what we want to be when we grow up. We confide our wishes. We stare at the stock photos of smiling students, we visit the campus, and we find, always, that it is so very beautiful.

And when that fat acceptance letter comes—oh, it is the greatest moment of personal vindication most of us have experienced. Our hard work has paid off. We have been chosen.

Then several years pass, and one day we wake up to discover there is no Santa Claus. Somehow, we have been had. We are a hundred thousand dollars in debt, and there is no clear way to escape it. We have no prospects to speak of. And if those damned dreams of ours happened to have taken a particularly fantastic turn and urged us to get a PhD, then the learning really begins.”

“I’m Personally Convinced That If It Were Not For Us, We Might Well Have President Romney”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Occupy Wall Street gave us a number–99%–that framed the last American Presidential election. The movement is pretty much an afterthought now to most observers, but its founding father, David Graeber, thinks it’s just getting started, mostly because the economic system is still broken, still on the brink. Drake Bennett of Businessweek just did a brief interview with Graeber. An excerpt:

“Question:

Were you disappointed that the Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t accomplish more? 

David Graeber:

I’m personally convinced that if it were not for us, we might well have President Romney. When Romney was planning his campaign, being a Wall Street financier, a 1 Percenter, he thought that was a good thing. That whole 47 percent thing that hurt him so much was something the right wing came up with in response to our 99 percent.

But in terms of changing the whole legislative political direction, I think that’s a lot to ask. We weren’t trying to push specific pieces of legislation. We were trying to create an environment where people could be heard. And I think we did that. We also tried to do something else, which was to create this culture of democracy in America, which really doesn’t have one. And that’s such a major task. The more fundamental the aims of a movement, the longer it’s going to take. We’re organizing in much more constrained and difficult circumstances these days, but it’s still going on. It’s just that people don’t report on it that much.”•

See also:

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 22, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Like rotting flesh.”

Bad Smell Inside My Nose

I am periodically smelling a foul odor that appears to be coming from my nasal like rotting flesh! Of course, I am concerned and I hoped that someone could offer some guidance in rectifying this matter. I also would like to add that I have been a frequent user of Afrin nasal spray for many many years. Any assistance that you may offer would be greatly appreciated.

“Every Species In The History Of Biology That Outgrows Its Resource Base Suffers A Population Crash”

September 22, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Alan Weisman’s 2007 thought-experiment, The World Without Us, isn’t just one of my favorite books of the past decade but one of my favorite books, period. His soon-to-be published follow-up, Countdown, concerns world population, which still is booming. We’ve heard before of population bombs that never detonated, but Weisman has run the numbers and is not pleased. From Kenneth R. Weiss’ Los Angles Times interview with the journalist:

“‘Our numbers have reached a point where we’ve essentially redefined the concept of original sin,’ Weisman writes. ‘From the instant we’re born, even the humblest among us compounds the world’s mounting problems by needing food, firewood, and a roof, for starters. Literally and figuratively, we’re all exhaling CO2 and pushing other species over the edge.’

The theme of the book focuses mostly on the ecological question, how many people can Earth support without capsizing? It’s not a new pursuit, of course. Scholars dating to Tertullian, in 2nd century Carthage, have written about a teeming population being ‘burdensome’ to the world.

Weisman sets out to define an ‘optimum population’ for a sustainable Earth, one that balances the overall human numbers with how much each person consumes. As far as per capita consumption is concerned, he proposes a European lifestyle as something that would be widely acceptable but not something as energy-intensive as living in the United States or as difficult as living in much of Africa and Asia.

He doesn’t specify an optimum target population, although he sketches some 20-year-old calculations by Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich and colleagues that set the number at 2 billion or so. Instead, Weisman argues that we should get on a path of reducing our numbers or suffer the fate of the profusion of deer on Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau north of the Grand Canyon that starved to death in the 1920s.

‘Like Kaibab deer, every species in the history of biology that outgrows its resource base suffers a population crash — a crash sometimes fatal to the entire species,’ Weisman writes. ‘…Inevitably –- and, we must hope, humanely and nonviolently — that means gradually bringing our numbers down. The alternative is letting nature –- the new nature we’ve inadvertently created in our own image –- do that for us.'”

“We Believe Through World Travel We May Help World Peace”

September 22, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A 1954 interview segment in which Art Linkletter, no fan of Timothy Leary, speaks to hotelier Conrad Hilton, a son of San Antonio, New Mexico, who rose to great heights in the hospitality industry and begat some especially horrifying descendants. Hilton was a believer in globalization for its diplomatic currency as well as the other kind.

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“I Think It Is Perfectly Sensible To Trust The Russians”

September 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not everyone believes in the Tao of Steve, but Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer, feels, as many of us do, that Apple has limped along since its co-founder’s death, offering new iterations instead of innovations. In a Financial Times article about the state of Apple and other topics, the former Time Managing Editor also analyzes the tense situation in Syria, seeing an intersection of Russian and American interests. An excerpt:

“I was at a dinner in Manhattan a few weeks ago, just as the Syria issue was heating up, with one of my previous biography subjects, Henry Kissinger. He gave a dazzling analysis (I would call it ‘incredible’ except that it was, in fact, exceedingly credible) of how Russia would see its strategic interests, and predicted that Russia’s president would soon insert himself into the situation by calling for an international approach to the problem. So I was impressed but not surprised when Vladimir Putin did precisely that a week later.

On some of the TV shows I went on to talk about Steve Jobs, I was asked instead about Syria – and the question was usually about whether we could possibly trust the Russians. Most of the guests got worked into a lather, saying that Barack Obama was being horribly naive to trust them. But I think it is perfectly sensible to trust the Russians: we can trust them to do what they perceive to be in their own strategic interest.

Some of Russia’s strategic interests clash with ours: they want to protect their client state Syria and minimise US influence in the region (and yank America’s chain when possible). But to a great extent, Russia’s interests in this situation actually coincide with ours – at least for the moment. Russia fears as much as the US does the rise of radical Islam just south of its borders. It doesn’t want chemical weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists. And it would like to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power.

That last interest seems to conflict with ours, since the US has called for regime change. But the Russians believe that toppling Assad is not the best idea when that might lead to al-Qaeda and other jihadist forces taking over much of Syria and getting control of some of the chemical weapons. Thus it is in Russia’s interest to get Assad to surrender his chemical weapons, rather than summarily topple him. That might actually be in the west’s interests as well.”

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“See What Happens When A Lady Listens To Her Husband?”

September 21, 2013 in Books, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Jacqueline Susann, that love machine, appearing on some sort of strange 1971 game show/physiognomy experiment called All About Faces, three years before her death. Her partner in the competition is her husband, Irving Mansfield, the publicity agent who tirelessly and skillfully plumped her books. They square off against Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows.

Related posts:

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

September 21, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

 

10 search-engine keyphrase searches bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. drive film ryan gosling
  2. how unpopular is the casting of 50 shades of grey?
  3. douglas coupland in dubai
  4. getting psychiatry through skype
  5. car gps from 1909
  6. salomon august andree exploration
  7. who will be most likely to suffer from this technological revolution?
  8. who were the communards?
  9. paper may be the single most versatile invention in history
  10. gorbachev pizza hut commercial

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A Brief Note From 1898 About Imperfect English

September 20, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the August 25, 1898 New York Times:

“Anton Wozonecski, twenty-seven years old, died at his home, 173 Eleventh Street, Jersey City, at midnight on Tuesday from poison administered by his wife through mistake. Wozonecski was suffering from an attack of bilious colic and a neighbor suggested that he should take a dose of rochelle salts.

Mrs. Wozonecski went to Freeman Stoddard’s drug store, 557 Grove Street. She says she asked for rochelle salts. She speaks English imperfectly. Mrs. Stoddard says she simply asked for ‘roach.’ He though she wanted an insect powder and gave her one. This is borne out by the package that contained it. It was originally marked ‘Persian powder,’ but this had been scratched out and the words ‘roach powder’ were written in its place.

Mrs. Wozonecski gave her husband the poison. He soon became worse and then Dr. Finnerty was called in, but when he arrived Wozonecski was dead.”

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“Where Things Get Really Worrying Is The Potential For Wireless Attacks”

September 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

My initial reaction when I heard about autonomous cars a few years back was that they sounded amazingly cool and would be much safer than vehicles guided by human drivers. My second thought was that a terrorist–or just a bored teen–would ultimately be able to make a few thousand vehicles turn left simultaneously when they should be turning right. From “The Rise of Car Hacking” by Jeremy Laird at the Independent:

“Charlie Miller, a security engineer at Twitter, and Chris Valasek, director of security intelligence at security firm IOActive, aimed to increase awareness of car hackability by hooking up a Nintendo game-console controller to a US-market Ford Escape SUV.

They were able to accelerate, brake and steer as though they were playing a video game. Except this wasn’t a game. It was a very real two-tonne SUV and it had been comprehensively hacked. Miller and Valasek also wired into a Toyota Prius hybrid car using a laptop computer and took control of several safety-critical systems including the brakes.

If there is a good news angle to this, it’s that those exploits, along with the BMW thefts, all require physical access to cars. Where things get really worrying is the potential for wireless attacks. What if the bad guys could compromise your car as easily as they take over your laptop’s web browser? And do it from behind a computer screen hundreds or thousands of miles away?”

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“The Comic Book Has Seized The Format And Exploded”

September 20, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

So far 28,000 students have signed up for an online course on comic books and graphic novels to be taught by William Kuskin, English professor at University of Colorado at Boulder, which speaks to our shifting notions of education and literacy. A couple of exchanges from the teacher’s Ask Me Anything at Reddit.

________________________

Question:

Why do you think comic books and graphic novels are such a successful storytelling medium?

William Kuskin:

Great question. You know, my own feeling is that comics are like medieval manuscripts from the fifteenth century. They are best, best, best artform for the book. They are something to have and collect and sort of worship. As the internet has made books only one medium of many for communication, the comic book has seized the format and exploded. That said, a lot of the energy has to do with community. People need a community of the imagination. Comics provide the platform for that community.

________________________

Question:

Looking forward to the course. My question is about the collapse of higher education. I was in the phd program at UPenn’s English Department (had to drop out because of severe depression unrelated to that). Anyway, I spent what free time I had trying to organize grad employees (we had already suffered the fatal(?) blow of the NLRB’s decision deeming grad employees at private unis not actually employees, so our election results had been impounded and never counted). Anyway, I did a study of the school of arts and sciences, and more than 70% of the courses were taught by adjuncts. Any thoughts on the ‘casualization of academic labor’? Also, the year most of my cohort went on the job market, there were 3 tenure-track jobs in the entire country…

William Kuskin:

This is a major question. A major one, and a difficult one. You are not alone in your experience and your # of 70% is sad, but not inaccurate. I have to put my ‘chair of the department’ hat on now to answer this. I would say three things: 1. Higher Education has been in a process of change to adjunct labor for some time. This is a painful and unplanned process. 2. Nevertheless the mission of higher education–to educate, to ennoble, and to foster new research–remains the same. I do not believe that mission will go away. Ever. In terms of graduate education, the only wise thing is to try, but also set a time limit to how long you can afford to stay in. There is much to be gained from going to graduate school, taking lessons, and moving on.•

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“We Had A Bunch Of Fireworks, And I Got A Vial Of Ether”

September 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Videos | Permalink

Who could be greater than Eric Andre and Hannibal Buress, the comedy team behind the Eric Andre Show on Adult Swim? No one. Back with a second season of the absurd anti-talk show, Andre spoke with Dave Schilling of Vice about the insane birthday parties he throws for himself every year in Los Angeles. The opening:

“Vice: 

I hope I’m not revealing too much, but your birthday parties are the stuff of legend for a certain segment of people here in LA. They go pretty much all day and all night. Why hold such a massive event every year?

Eric Andre:

You know, I don’t have any god, so I don’t have any holidays, so it’s my only time of the year to like, go all out. Just be fully self-indulgent.

Vice:

Was there a clown or something this year?

Eric Andre:

No, there was a camel, a horse, a goat, a bunny, a 300 pound stripper, two Santa Clauses, we had John K. who created Ren & Stimpy drawing caricatures. I think he left early, actually. We had a bunch of fireworks, and I got a vial of ether.

Vice:

Just one vial of ether? Did you not share?

Eric Andre:

No, you can get pretty far off one vial, since just huffing a little. It’s not like you’re chugging it. Don’t drink it.”

••••••••••

“When I’m sparring with my buddies Brad and the other boys…”:

 

“Those are some tasty-ass kids”:

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Today New York City Smells Like:

September 20, 2013 in Humor, Misc. | Permalink

Retinal surgery performed on a restroom changing table.

 

Move it, Fatty. I'm going rogue.

Move it, Fatty. I’m going rogue.

Damn you, Obamacare.

I’ve been butchered. Damn you, Obamacare!

“Most Of The Firm’s Wildest Ideas Are Dreamed Up At Google X”

September 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Well, Time‘s cover story, Can Google Solve Death?, overpromises just a little, doesn’t it? I mean, Google hasn’t even been able to solve social media. The article doesn’t provide much insight into its ostensible premise, that with the launch of Calico, a life-extension outfit, Google aims to, yes, defeat mortality, through information-rich analysis. But the piece by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman works because of its shadow premise.

The real story, not necessarily a new one but well-stated here, is that Google is a deeply strange company–which is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not like Microsoft, which rode its primary product (software) to great wealth, occasionally dabbling (unsuccessfully) in sectors it had already lost (Slate for online content, Bing for search, Zune for digital-music players). Facebook seems to be much more like Microsoft in its mission purity, whereas Google wants to cut a broader path.

No, the template for the search giant is the golden age of Bell Labs. Of course, Google hasn’t had nearly the success yet that AT&T’s R&D lab did. But it only has to hit in a couple of areas (e.g., driverless-car software leading a fleet of autonomous taxis) to begin to diversify itself into a seemingly endless future. Ultimately, it’s own life is the one Google is really trying to extend. 

From the article (which is paywalled):

“Most of the firm’s wildest ideas are dreamed up at Google X, which functions something like Google’s fantastical subconscious. It’s a secretive research arm headquartered a three-minute ride from the main Googleplex on one of the company’s 1,000-plus brightly colored bikes. While Page tends to the entire business as CEO, Brin now devotes much of his attention to X, which he runs in partnership with scientist and entrepreneur Astro Teller. Teller’s title–just to underline the operation’s stratospheric aspirations–is ‘Captain of Moonshots.’ (Teller changed his name from Eric to Astro, a reference to the AstroTurf-like buzz cut he sported in high school.) Except for his long hair, beard and mustache, he’s a dead ringer for his paternal grandfather, physicist Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb.

According to Teller, Google X’s moon shots have three things in common: a significant problem for the world that needs solving, a potential solution and the possibility of breakthrough technology making all the difference. (Making money comes later.) Even a proposed project that meets all these criteria probably won’t make the cut. ‘Sergey and I being pretty excited about it is a necessary but not sufficient condition,’ Teller explains. ‘Depending on what it is, it might require consulting experts, it might require building prototypes, sometimes even forming a temporary team to see where it goes and then saying to the team, ‘It is your goal to kill this idea as fast as possible.’’

Four big Google X efforts are public knowledge. There’s Google Glass, the augmented-reality spectacles that pack a camera and a tiny Web-connected screen you can peek at out of the corner of your right eye and control with your voice and gestures. Makani Power–a startup that the company invested in and then bought outright in May–puts energy-generating wind turbines on flying wings that are tethered to the ground but circle 1,000 ft. in the air. Project Loon aims to deliver Internet access to remote areas of the planet by beaming it wirelessly from 39-ft.-tall helium balloons hovering 12 miles in the sky. Though Calico is a Google X–style long shot, it will be a separate entity from Teller’s shop.

But if you had to pick a Google X moon shot with the most plausible chance of permanently reshaping the way we live, it would be the self-driving automobiles.”

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“They’re Proposing In Some States That Marriage Contracts Should Automatically Dissolve At Periods, Say, Of Ten Years”

September 20, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

One final interview excerpt from The Americans, the 1970 book by David Frost which also gave us the Jon Voight and Ralph Nader pieces. Here’s an exchange in which the TV host and the author and politician Clare Boothe Luce talk about the future of marriage in the U.S.:

David Frost:

Do you think marriage will change, Clare?

Clare Boothe Luce:

Oh, I think it’s changing very rapidly, yes. In some states in the Union now there are definite proposals that marriage should be contractual over a period of time, like any other human engagement. And they’re proposing in some states that marriage contracts should automatically dissolve at periods, say, of ten years, when the children presumably are grown.

I think that the reasons for this are, first and most importantly, that ours is now a very mobile world. And people move around very fast. The old traditions, all of them, religion, all the rest of them, seem to be collapsing. One out of every three marriages today ends in divorce. 

And there is a drive now to legalize that thing, so that there’ll be no more divorce trials, and no more struggles over alimony. Simply that people marry, and the union dissolves every ten years.

Now as a Catholic and a Christian, I deplore this. But this seems what is likely to happen. And another thing too, we’ve got to remember that the life span has been greatly lengthened, and that people now live to be eighty. Women outlive the men. In the old days, not a hundred years ago, you go into a New England graveyard and you’ll see on the gravestone, over and over again, ‘Here lies John Jones and his first wife, Mary, and his second wife, Jean, and his third wife, Kate. A man wore out three women, of course, that was before they conquered childbirth fever.

Now women outlive men, according to statistics, by five years. So any kind of Christian marriage, normal marriage, will probably last fifty years. And it’s highly debatable how many people there are in the world who aren’t sick to death of one another after twenty, no less fifty.•

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September 20, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

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Old Print Article: “A Strange Delusion–Ohio Fanatics Who Worship A Woman As Christ,” New York Times (1886)

September 19, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"A party of 30 or 40 people, most of them prominent and above the average in intelligence, believe that Mrs. John E. Martin, of Walnut Hills, is Christ manifest in the flesh."

“A party of 30 or 40 people believe that Mrs. John E. Martin is Christ manifest in the flesh.”

A religious mania with a gender twist arose in urban Ohio in the late nineteenth century, according to an article in the July 18, 1886 New York Times. The story:

“Cincinnati--One of the most remarkable religious manias of which there is any record has broken out in a little circle in this city. A party of 30 or 40 people, most of them prominent and above the average in intelligence, believe that Mrs. John E. Martin, of Walnut Hills, is Christ manifest in the flesh, and that her sister, Mrs. John F. Brock, is the Holy Ghost. The followers of these two young women meet at Mrs. Brook’s house and worship them both. Mrs. Martin has exerted some strange and wonderful influence that has put them completely in her power, and they are fanatics on the subject. One of the followers of this woman Christ is named Jerome. He was a bookkeeper here for the Cincinnati agency of D. Appleton & Co., the New-York publishers. He gave up his position of $1,800 a year to serve the female Saviour of mankind. To an Enquirer reporter who saw him to-day he said in an earnest and eloquent conversation: ‘I have seen God face to face in the last half hour.’

A young man named Cook, who works in the auditor’s office of the Adams Express Company, has also been captured. He resigned his position, and has attached himself to the new sect. They believe that all churches are frauds, and the preachers a set of fools. Accounting for the fact that Christ should manifest himself in a female, they say that in heaven there are no sexes, and the Saviour is as liable to appear in a woman as in a man. Mrs. Martin, the ‘New Christ,’ and Mrs. Brook, the ‘Holy Ghost,’ they say, are the only two perfect women on earth, and that the millennium is at hand. This movement has been going on quietly for a year without becoming generally known. The women seclude themselves, and will not be seen by any one who is not a worshiper, or vouched for by one of them. Many have sold their homes and taken houses near the woman on the hill. Those who have given up their positions say they do not need work or money. All they need is spiritual food, and this will be furnished by the Lord, just as it was furnished to the children in the wilderness.

A Miss Andrews, who lives with her mother on Walnut Hills, is almost insane from excitement, and passes her whole time in weeping, singing, and praying. Her mother has tried to show her the folly of her belief, but in vain. Among the worshipers of these new gods are Mrs. Judge Worthington, Miss Julia Carpenter, Miss Emma Black, Mrs. L.H. Foulds, Mr. John Cook, Miss Cook, Mr. E.W. Jerome, Miss Marie Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Burke, Mr. and Mrs. Reuben Sherwood, Mrs. Flora Miller, Mr. Sheppard, Miss Homitt, and Mrs. Crocker. In this list are numbered some of the best people in Cincinnati. Exposure to public ridicule, it is thought, will bring them to their senses.”

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