Excerpts

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“Sex Was Just Too Inefficient”

July 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Interesting numbers from two unrelated Pacific-Standard pieces: Almost 90% of all pig reproduction on American farms is done via artificial insemination, and Las Vegas gambling is responsible for $900 million in social costs. Excerpts follow.

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The opening of Sujata Gupta’s “Pig Sex Is Becoming a Thing of the Past“:

“Timon the boar (named after the character in the Lion King) runs around a pen full of young sows. The sows, known as gilts because they have yet to bear piglets, start squealing and frantically pacing the pen. Timon’s job is to identify gilts who are coming into heat and ready to breed. While most of the gilts run away from him, some freeze up, a sign that they’re ready for his advances. As a sow adopts the appropriate stance, Timon realizes this could be his big moment—but alas, Joey Galligan, the intern at Thomas Parsons’ research lab at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, swoops in with an almost two-foot-long catheter and artificially inseminates the gilt. Timon is led back out of the room.

Three decades ago, Timon would have had much better luck. Only two to four percent of pig farmers used artificial insemination in the 1980s, says Tim Safranski, the state swine breeding specialist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Today that figure is closer to 90 percent.

In the 1990s, Safranski and other swine experts began arguing that the time was ripe for shifting the industry over to artificial insemination. Sex was just too inefficient. Letting pigs do things the old-fashioned way meant that a single boar’s ejaculation impregnated just one sow at a time. With artificial insemination, the same sperm could impregnate dozens of sows. With the need for boars thus reduced, farmers would be able to use semen from only the most genetically superior boars. The resulting piglets would be much more similar. Uniformity is important in the meat industry, explains Parsons, because ‘if we sit down to dinner at a restaurant, both order a pork chop and yours is twice as big as mine, I might go away unhappy.'”

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From Jake Blumgart’s “Why Opening a Casino Is a Terrible Idea“:

“It is true that both Las Vegas and Atlantic City were able to do a lot with their effective monopolies on legal gaming, although not without social costs. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 also did some good in a unique context, chiefly due to the intensity of economic depression among tribal populations and the fact that much of the profits will theoretically be re-invested in those communities.

But no matter how often pundits and boosters use the term ‘Las Vegas-style casinos,’ the fact is that most communities will never experience the kind of economic boost given to Clark County or South Jersey. Las Vegas and Atlantic City were unique because they dominated a market defined by scarcity. Their customers were mostly out-of-towners who would not have otherwise spent money in the region. Tens of thousands of unionized working class jobs were sustained by a steady flow of tourist and convention dollars, cushioning both regions from capital flight and the low-wage economy. Even if other markets could emulate these successes, they came with a price. More casinos also mean more problem gamblers, some research suggests, with all the costly social ills that accompany them. There is very strong evidence that proximity to casinos increases the incidence of problem gambling. University of Las Vegas research in 1999 found that 6.6 percent of Clark County residents admitted to having a gambling problem, which is far higher than anywhere else in the country, while a fifth reported that a family member struggled with the addiction. Suicide, divorce, bankruptcy, and crime rates are all unusually high, as Sam Skolnik describes in his book, High Stakes: The Rising Cost of America’s Gambling Addiction. The chapter on Vegas is subtitled ‘Problem Gambling Capital of the World’ and notes that a preeminent gambling researcher thinks the annual social costs for Clark County could be up to $900 million.

In any case, there is only one Las Vegas.”

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“If Public Opinion Was Anything To Go By, We’d Never Go Out Of Business”

July 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Before his actual obituary in 2006, Sir Freddie Laker, who helped democratize plane travel and opened the heavens to the masses, “died” once before in the early ’80s, when the wings came off his business model. The opening of Terry Smith’s 1982 People article about Laker Airways when the Skytrain was falling:

“If any doubt remained that Sir Freddie Laker is a knight of the people, the events of this month have dispelled it. The bankruptcy of Laker Airways, which in 1977 pioneered cut-rate transatlantic air travel, struck Laker’s countrymen like the demise of an old friend. Within hours of the announcement a group of private citizens set up Freddie’s Friendly Fund, quixotically dedicated to saving Skytrain. In the first 24 hours they received $1 million in pledges—and by last week the tally was up to $5.5 million. In addition, the rock group Police promised to turn over the receipts of a Los Angeles concert totaling $185,000. From two schoolboys who donated 16 pence at a Laker airport counter to the group of Liverpool businessmen who offered $1 million, grateful travelers have rallied to Sir Freddie’s side. Says Laker stewardess Lisa Holden, who has spent her recent days gathering signatures on a petition of support: ‘If public opinion was anything to go by, we’d never go out of business.’ 

Unfortunately, Laker’s $388 million debt is more than even such extraordinary goodwill can erase. A British bank hoping to raise a last-minute $64.7 million fund to keep Laker flying admitted defeat, and an offer by the airline’s 2,500 employees to take a huge pay cut was similarly futile. For Laker staffers who lobbied vociferously at 10 Downing Street last week, their plea for government assistance was largely a symbolic last stand. ‘I’ll go under with Laker,’ said Capt. Terry Fenton. ‘I won’t find another job as a pilot, I won’t find any other job. There are no jobs. I’ll have to sell my house, just the same as 90 percent of the people here today.’

Laker was a victim of problems that have thrown other airlines into a tail-spin—skyrocketing fuel prices and decreased passenger traffic. When Pan Am (which lost $348 million in 1981) slashed its New York-London fare last November, Sir Freddie’s prospects darkened. The decline of the British pound also sapped his resources. Currently trying to sell the insolvent British Airways, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government announced that it could not intervene on Laker’s behalf.”

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“Then Along Came Sir Freddie, Charging About $240 For A Round Trip, And His Planes Were Full”

July 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sir Freddie Laker, who was mentioned in the post about Dubai’s airport, lived large and fell far, though for a while he used aggressive pricing and sharp advertising to become the center of commercial aviation, making relatively cheap transatlantic fares a reality. From his 2006 New York Times obituary penned by Jeff Bailey:

“Laker Airways began service in 1977 and upset the staid world of trans-Atlantic travel then dominated by British Airways, Pan American World Airways and Trans World Airlines, sharply cutting fares and greatly expanding the number of people flying across the ocean.

‘Traditional airlines were flying half-empty 747’s between Europe and the U.S.,’ said Robert L. Crandall, former chief executive of American Airlines. Then along came Sir Freddie, charging about $240 for a round trip, and his planes were full.

Mr. Crandall recalled going to London in the early 1980’s to meet with him, and being picked up at the airport by Sir Freddie in a Jaguar convertible and driven along country lanes at ’70 to 80 miles an hour.’ Sir Freddie then took Mr. Crandall and his wife to a country pub for lunch.

The established carriers eventually matched Laker’s low fares. Passengers drifted away from Laker, and the company, having grown too quickly by most accounts, could not meet its debt obligations.

Laker’s liquidators later sued competing airlines, claiming a conspiracy to drive the upstart out of business. The litigation was settled, and Sir Freddie received $8 million for his Laker stock, though he lost many of his personal assets.

While it lasted, with Sir Freddie appearing in cheeky advertisements (‘Fly me,’ he said), Laker Airways was the talk of the aviation industry.”

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“We Are Getting Into The Nuts And Bolts Of The Business”

July 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Houston Astros organization has great data–-even if it isn’t as proprietary as the team would like–and it aims to apply Moneyball-ish predictive analytics to the business end of baseball, hoping it will help drive ticket sales in addition to driving in runs. From Steve Zurier at BizTech:

“Data analytics has done some heavy hitting for major league baseball teams over the past decade, but many team officials say they are just scratching the surface of the technology’s potential. While there’s been much fanfare about the use of Sabermetrics and predictive analytics on baseball operations at the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox, teams are also starting to use analytics on the business side.

Ray Ebert, senior director of information technology for the Houston Astros, says new owner Jim Crane wants analytics applied to just about every part of the business.

‘We are certainly using predictive analysis to evaluate players,’ says Ebert, who’s been with the Astros for two years. ‘But we’re also applying analytics to run what-if scenarios so we can convert single-game ticket buyers into season ticket holders and keep the season ticket holders we have.’

Ebert, who applied some of these principles when working previously with the San Diego Padres, has a positive outlook on the Astros’ future, despite the team’s recent losing record.

‘The best part of this approach is that it changes the dialogue between the business analysts and the IT staff,’ Ebert explains. ‘In the past, all people on the business side ever wanted from us was to keep the website up and running and email available. Now, we are getting into the nuts and bolts of the business.’

While Ebert admits that it’s too early to report results, he says just the mere fact that the IT staff and business analysts are having the conversation is a step in the right direction.”

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“They Say That Dubai Is Shanghai On Steroids”

July 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Petrotopias eventually run dry, so the key is to use the oil money to diversify the economy, and that’s what Dubai has succeeded in doing with global air travel, though there have been pretty terrible human costs. From “The New Jet Age,” Graham Boynton’s curiously amoral Vanity Fair article on the topic, which somehow elides all mention of the abuse of workers that’s fueled the building boom:

“The emergence of these carriers marks the fourth tectonic shift in international aviation since Pan Am’s founder, Juan Trippe, democratized the industry in the early 1950s. Prior to Trippe’s intervention, air travel was the domain of the ruling classes, and fares between the U.S. and Europe were fixed by the stodgy International Air Transport Association. However, in 1952, Trippe decided to introduce a tourist-class fare between New York and London and thus began a decades-long battle between free-market flying and cartel-led regulation that would see the rise and fall of carriers such as Sir Freddie Laker’s Skytrain in the 70s and People Express in the 80s, along with the breakout success of Virgin Atlantic.

The second shift came with the arrival of the jet age, in 1958, the introduction of the Boeing 747 a little over a decade later, and then the 1978 deregulation of the U.S. airline industry. In the early days of mass air travel, national airlines such as Pan Am and TWA and flag-carrying European airlines (British Airways, Air France, Lufthansa) ruled the world through government-protected colonial-route networks. But as the colonies evaporated and new business models challenged regulation, the legacy U.S. behemoths began to fall. First Eastern, then Pan Am, then TWA.

Southeast Asia then heralded the third tectonic shift. Introducing high-quality, service-led air travel, airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Thai, and the rest all flourished as the international business-travel market grew, and as the old-world airlines struggled to survive. These fleets provided more comfortable seating, particularly at the front of the cabins, and a level of in-flight service that Western airlines had failed to offer with any conviction since the 50s.

Now we are in the fourth age. U.S. airlines are merging and morphing into giant entities with large domestic networks and relatively small international reach, offering only passable amenities on rather old equipment. Meanwhile, the Gulf airlines feature quality service at a competitive price. Peter Morris, chief economist at the aviation consultancy firm Ascend, says that these carriers have now ‘built enough critical mass to be a genuine threat to the traditional European airlines and in the near future to the Americans.’

‘They say that Dubai is Shanghai on steroids,’ notes [Emirates president Tim] Clark as he stares out of his office window in the terminal, admiring a row of gleaming Emirates A380s.”

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“The Machines Will View Us As An Unpredictable And Dangerous Species”

July 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’m not saying the Singularity won’t ever occur, but I really doubt it happens within the very aggressive timeline of the next 30 years or so. Physicist Louis Del Monte strongly disagrees. From Dylan Love at the Business Insider:

“The average estimate for when this will happen is 2040, though Del Monte says it might be as late as 2045. Either way, it’s a timeframe of within three decades.

‘It won’t be the Terminator scenario, not a war,’ said Del Monte. ‘In the early part of the post-singularity world, one scenario is that the machines will seek to turn humans into cyborgs. This is nearly happening now, replacing faulty limbs with artificial parts. We’ll see the machines as a useful tool. Productivity in business based on automation will be increased dramatically in various countries. In China it doubled, just based on GDP per employee due to use of machines.”

‘By the end of this century,’ he continued, ‘most of the human race will have become cyborgs [part human, part tech or machine]. The allure will be immortality. Machines will make breakthroughs in medical technology, most of the human race will have more leisure time, and we’ll think we’ve never had it better. The concern I’m raising is that the machines will view us as an unpredictable and dangerous species.’

Del Monte believes machines will become self-conscious and have the capabilities to protect themselves.”

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“As Long As We Want Cheap Gas, Democracy Can’t Exist”

July 3, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ken Silverstein, a Big Oil reporter who’s written a book about the industry’s shadowy middlemen and facilitators, recently sat for an Ask Me Anything at Gawker. Michael Busch of the Los Angeles Review of Books also just interviewed the journalist, and here’s the opening:

“Question:

Unlike most books dealing with the oil industry, yours examines the internal machinery of the business, and the players who grease its wheels. Can you start by outlining the scope of your investigation into the world of oil, and the various actors it involves?

Ken Silverstein:

I’ve been writing about the oil industry for more than 15 years, and during that time, I’ve traveled multiple times to Africa and Central Asia, mostly, and Houston, of course. It’s hard to think of any commodity or good that is more important to international commerce than oil. Or more sensitive, for that matter. In this sense, it’s comparable to the global arms trade in its different hidden worlds, which is always interesting. For this project I was funded by Open Society to specifically look at middlemen and oil trading firms that have an enormous role in this trade, but whom are almost never written about. There’s all sorts of great reporting and writing about the oil industry, but rarely do we get a look at these players who are hugely significant but almost entirely hidden.

Question:

Fixers, for example.

Ken Silverstein:

There are fixers, who act as middlemen between the oil industry and those governments from whom oil companies wish to obtain concessions. For a very long time now, oil was mostly pumped in the Third World and generally shipped to the First World, and it was First World companies who controlled the trade. As our illustrious former Vice President, Dick Cheney, put it, ‘The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes.’ He was saying this at a time when he was still with Halliburton, and using it as a justification for the fact that his company was doing business with some pretty shady regimes.

It’s a good point. Because so much of the oil we rely on is located in the Third World, getting access to it has frequently involved bribing governments. Sometimes those bribes have been legal, and sometimes they haven’t been legal, but payoffs to corrupt government officials have always been involved. In the old days, there were a lot of direct bribes made until the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was passed in 1974. In Europe, bribes were legal until much more recently — you could deduct them in your taxes. But if you are a company executive, you would rather have other people dealing with these governments than having to do it yourself. It’s a very dicey area, and that’s what makes fixers useful. Companies like to have intermediaries who know a country well, or several countries. Of course, I don’t want to blame all of the corruption only on Third World governments. The companies obviously don’t like making payoffs, but they do it because they benefit; they want to win influence and government friends in the corrupt, undemocratic countries that control oil.

In Equatorial Guinea, for example — a country rich in oil but suffering under a terrible dictatorship — Exxon wanted access to the country’s deposits. The President, Teodoro Obiang [Ngeuma Mbasogo], had land, and the company bought it directly from him. President Obiang has been in power since 1979, so ‘president’ is a generous title. ‘Ruler’ is more accurate. In any event, Obiang sold Exxon some land, where they could build their own compound and develop the land for exploitation. It is safe to say they overpaid enormously for that land. It would be difficult to prove that this constitutes a ‘bribe,’ but these are the sorts of tradeoffs that are made in the name of access.

Ed Chow, a longtime Chevron executive, put it most succinctly. In places like Nigeria or Kazakhstan, he said, ‘You get the land, but you don’t provide a lot of jobs, you may be destroying the environment, and most of the profit goes to international capital. The companies don’t have a strong case to sell to local communities, so they come to not only accept highly centralized governments but to crave it. It’s a lot easier to win support from the top than to build it from the bottom. As long as we want cheap gas, democracy can’t exist.'”

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“Food Feels Different To Many People”

July 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We definitely need GMOs since even if we were friendly to our environment, and we’re certainly not, eventually the climate that allows our agrarian culture would change, and then we would be staring at famine. Even with this scary reality, no one wants to trust Monsanto with the process, the company’s name having become a curse word. From “Inside Monsanto, America’s Third-Most-Hated Company,” Drake Bennett’s Bloomberg Businessweek piece:

“The 32-year-old farmer sits in the bouncing tractor cab, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap, jeans, a Bluetooth headset, and a look of fatigue. The steering wheel is folded up out of the way. When the tractor nears the end of a row, its autopilot beeps cheerfully, and he taps a square on one of the touchscreens to his right. The tractor executes a turn, and he goes back to surfing the Web, watching streaming videos, or checking the latest corn prices. ‘You see how boring this gets?’ [Dustin] Spears asks. ‘I’ll be listening to music for 12 hours. I’ll refresh my Twitter timeline, like, a hundred thousand times during the day.’

Spears is an early adopter who upgrades his equipment every 12 months (next year’s tractor will have a fridge in the cab, he says) and who just bought a drone to monitor his fields. He can afford to: Corn prices are high, and farmers like him can take home hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Still, he thinks such technologies—the smart planter software and sensor array, the iPad app offering planting and growing advice—are only going to get more common. So does the company that makes many of those tools, as well as the high-tech seeds Spears is planting: Monsanto, one of the most hated corporations in America.

In a Harris Poll this year measuring the ‘reputation quotient’ of major companies, Monsanto ranked third-lowest, above BP and Bank of America and just behind Halliburton. For much of its history it was a chemical company, producing compounds used in electrical equipment, adhesives, plastics, and paint. Some of those chemicals—DDT, Agent Orange, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—have had long and controversial afterlifes. The company is best known, however, as the face of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. …

Technology has already dumbed down everything from flying an airliner to filing one’s taxes, and in so doing made those tasks safer and more efficient. But food feels different to many people. ‘You know, when this data-intensive system recommends you buy a certain seed, it’s going to be a Monsanto seed,’ says the author Michael Pollan, a prominent critic of industrial agriculture. ‘So I have a strong objection to letting any one company exert that much control over the food supply. It depends on the wisdom of one company, and in general I’d rather distribute that wisdom over a great many farmers.'”

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“The Farm Sprang In Part From Spiritual Revelations He Had Experienced While Using LSD”

July 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Utopian communes usually go wrong, wronger or wrongest, but The Farm, a hippie collective in Tennessee founded 43 years ago by ex-marine Stephen Gaskin, who just passed away, came to no horrible conclusion. The opening of his New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin:

“Stephen Gaskin, a Marine combat veteran and hippie guru who in 1971 led around 300 followers in a caravan of psychedelically painted school buses from San Francisco to Tennessee to start the Farm, a commune that has outlived most of its countercultural counterparts while spreading good works from Guatemala to the South Bronx, died on Tuesday at his home on the commune, in Summertown, Tenn. He was 79.

Leigh Kahan, a family spokesman, confirmed the death without giving a specific cause.

By Mr. Gaskin’s account, the Farm sprang in part from spiritual revelations he had experienced while using LSD, the details of which he described to thousands of disciples, who gathered in halls around San Francisco to hear his meditations on Buddhism, Jesus and whatever else entered his mind.

But to his followers, he ultimately offered more than spiritual guidance. In founding the Farm, they said, he gave concrete form to the human longing for togetherness coupled with individual expression that had energized the counterculture.”

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“We Sell Confidence”

July 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Apart from her perplexing connection to Barry Diller–yeesh!–Diane von Furstenberg is sort of flawless, and she’s always been aware that clothes done well are never just garb, that the smallest details have meaning–even sociological meaning–right down to the zippers. From a new interview with the designer by Jess Cartner-Morley of the Guardian, a passage about her most iconic creation:

“The wrap has stayed alive and relevant for four decades because what it stands for – a woman dressing for freedom and movement and self-determination – is as compelling now as it ever was. In the early days, Von Furstenberg airily extolled the joys of a zipless dress which you could slip on quietly when you wanted to make a swift exit without disturbing a sleeping man. That boldness still feels ahead of its time in 2014, when the “walk of shame” is the butt of many a joke. ‘That’s what my brand does,’ she says. ‘We sell confidence.’ Confidence comes from comfort, as much as from glamour. She notes that it is female designers – ‘Coco Chanel, Donna Karan, me’ – who dress women in jersey, ‘because we know it feels great and lets you get on with your day, and we care about that.’ She is a unique combination of being ultra-feminine with a distinct feline slink to her walk, but comfortable being in charge and entirely without coquetry. In the introduction to her book, she tells how, as a girl revising for exams, she would pretend she had students, and imagine herself teaching them. Passivity bores her; what’s more, she says, ‘idleness breeds insecurity. It’s so important for women to have children but it is equally important for women to have an identity outside the home. You have to be engaged, you have to be part of the world. … It doesn’t have to be a job. It can be that you bake [sic] the best jam in the world and everyone wants a piece of your jam. What matters is doing something.'”

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“The Success Of Political Movements Depend On What Kind Of Media Coverage They Get”

July 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Journalism isn’t a science and while any individual organ might have its code of ethics, there is no overriding one. While that’s probably necessary, it’s alway left plenty of room for manipulators who have reduced the field, leaving it scarred and scorned with few believers. Yet the omnipresence of quasi-news like Rupert Murdoch’s outlets must have some effect, right? If you had said six years ago that President Obama would have reversed a good deal of our economic troubles, helped secure the recovery of the stock market, improved job numbers despite growing automation, kept us out of military quagmires in an exploding world, achieved something approaching universal healthcare (which seems to be good for the economy as well as good in general), heightened support for civil rights (e.g., gay marriage) and moved us in an environmentally sounder direction, and that he would do those things with an extremist opposition party controlling congress for the majority of the time, I think most Americans would have been very pleased. Yet poll after poll supposedly depicts him to be a remarkably unpopular President, with Fox News gleeful and Chuck Todd, a modified Van Dyke having a panic attack, declaring the sky is on the ground. It’s a little strange then that the two most important “polls”–the ones in November of 2008 and 2012 that involved actual polling places–were won rather convincingly by Obama. I think “winning” the media isn’t necessarily the same thing as winning, though not everyone agrees.

From Anders Herlitz’s Practical Ethics piece about the practice of news:

“Covering news and reporting events to a larger group of people is, from a historical perspective, very new. Newspapers with large readerships date back to the 19th century. Photojournalism became widespread in the 1930s. News in the common household’s TV starts becoming widespread in the 1950s. In the early days, to report news was to report facts, to publish an image was to give the audience the opportunity to with their own eyes see what happened in other places in the world. Journalists were witnesses to events in the world, and readers, viewers, listeners, were given the opportunity to through the journalist build their own opinions, to increase their knowledge about their countries, and about the world. Journalism and independent media outlets became a cornerstone of democracy. A well-informed people make better judgements, better choices, and this is enabled by the work of journalists. The culmination of this is the Vietnam War. Journalists were allowed to do their job, and to witness and report back to the American public what took place in Vietnam. Consequently, it became clear that news that in no way were false, untrue or fabricated could in fact generate a reaction in the public that, from the perspective of certain very powerful groups, was highly undesirable. How something is reported matter. Images matter. Details matter.

In the last couple of decades, powerful agents of the most various kind have learned to appreciate this insight to a larger and larger extent. Wars are no longer fought only on the battlefield, the success of political movements depend on what kind of media coverage they get, international relations issues depend on how the world perceives of the events, corporations know very well that they benefit from no media coverage at all of certain elements essential to their organizations (e.g. oil extraction in countries where there is no respect for human rights, assembly factories in poor countries, the origin of certain natural resources needed for the end-product), and even certain individuals are well-aware of the importance of their ‘personal brand’ and do their best to control how they are depicted in the media.”

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“He Cracked The Secret Of Football”

July 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

From Simon Kuper’s Financial Times piece about Dutch football, that brilliant orange, a brief history of how a coach and player drove the Netherlands to become an unlikely powerhouse:

“Dutch football wasn’t any good until 1965, when the semi-professional Amsterdam club Ajax hired a coach named Rinus Michels. Together with Ajax’s teenage prodigy Johan Cruijff, he cracked the secret of football. It’s no coincidence they did this in 1960s Amsterdam, a place where everything was being reinvented. Meanwhile a neighbourhood kid named Louis van Gaal (Holland’s coach today) watched their training sessions.

Football, Cruijff and Michels decided, was about the pass. Dribbles, warrior spirit, fitness and so on were mere details. A team has to pass fast, into space, with players constantly changing position, and everyone thinking like a playmaker. As Cruijff said, ‘Football is a game you play with your head.’

That means you need to talk about football, and sometimes quarrel about it. When Cruijff became a coach, he complained, “The moment you open your mouth to breathe, Dutch footballers say, ‘Yes but …’’ However, that was his own fault. He had turned Dutch football into a debating society. Holland’s great captain Ruud Gullit told me, ‘In a Dutch changing room, everyone thinks he knows best. In an Italian changing room, everybody probably also thinks he knows best, but nobody dares tell the manager.’ And in England, I asked? ‘In an English changing room, they just have a laugh.’

Because the Dutch think about football, they keep developing. They always used to want the ball. But here in Brazil they prefer the opposition to have it. Then, the second the Dutch win it, they break en masse. ‘Omschakeling’ – ‘changeover’ – they call it. ‘We’ve been playing reaction football all tournament,’ says Van Gaal.”

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“Jackie Dropped Cassini, Understanding Instinctively That His Work Had Become Demode”

July 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a time when high and low were defined and demarcated, designer Oleg Cassini created the White House look of Jacqueline Kennedy, and so many women wanted a copy, which made the First Lady want to divest herself of the style. It was good to be admired but not emulated. Cassini, cast aside, brought the look to the masses, giving the aspirational class of flight and desk attendants the touch of class it desired. From the Guardian:

“Cassini left Hollywood as the studios contracted in the early 1950s, and opened his own French and Italian inspired ready-to-wear business in New York. His brother had named the teenage Jacqueline Bouvier, Queen Deb of 1947. Cassini first met her in the El Morocco nightclub, five years before her marriage to Kennedy: he recalled her fit muscle tone, especially her upper arms in sleeveless gowns.

Joe Kennedy approached Cassini because he knew the designer would be discreet. As writer Pamela Clarke Keogh noted, Cassini not only dined chez Kennedy, he taught Jackie the twist, discussed the Kamasutra with Jack and once persuaded Jack to allow Jackie to wear a one-shouldered gown on a state occasion by comparing her with ancient Egyptian royalty. But Joe could never have guessed that the Cassini interpretation of Givenchy’s silhouette with exaggerated details – buttons and pockets in scale with the salons of diplomacy – would be the first American look to be popular worldwide. When the garments were displayed decades later, critics thought it an armoured style, for all its camera-catching colours. The clothes were there to protect her vulnerability.

Cassini’s greatest success was Jackie’s dress for the inauguration gala in 1961: she had ordered a complicated outfit from Bergdorf Goodman, and also a plain gown of heavy satin from Cassini. “Now I know how poor Jack feels when he has told three people they can’t be secretary of state,” she wrote to Cassini. She chose to wear his creation for the gala and kept a photograph of herself in it, leaving her old home in the snow, in her White House dressing-room. Jack told her to sit forward in her car seat, and his driver to switch on the lights, so people could see her in that dress: the young, hopeful bride of the nation.

Cassini was not responsible for the pink suit she was wearing in Dallas, in 1963, when Jack Kennedy was assassinated: that was a Chanel copy. After the president’s funeral, Jackie dropped Cassini, understanding instinctively that his work had become demode. For the rest of the 20th century, the Jackie style was visible chiefly in the uniforms of air hostesses and hotel receptionists.”

 

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“Automation Is Beginning To Have The Same Effect On White-Collar Jobs As It Has On Blue-Collar Ones”

July 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From an Economist report about higher education, an astounding triumph of modern humanity but one that must change to be sustainable and effective, a passage about the forces of disruption:

Higher education suffers from Baumol’s disease—the tendency of costs to soar in labour-intensive sectors with stagnant productivity. Whereas the prices of cars, computers and much else have fallen dramatically, universities, protected by public-sector funding and the premium employers place on degrees, have been able to charge ever more for the same service. For two decades the cost of going to college in America has risen by 1.6 percentage points more than inflation every year.

For most students university remains a great deal; by one count the boost to lifetime income from obtaining a college degree, in net-present-value terms, is as much as $590,000. But for an increasing number of students who have gone deep into debt—especially the 47% in America and 28% in Britain who do not complete their course—it is plainly not value for money. And the state’s willingness to pick up the slack is declining. In America government funding per student fell by 27% between 2007 and 2012, while average tuition fees, adjusted for inflation, rose by 20%. In Britain tuition fees, close to zero two decades ago, can reach £9,000 ($15,000 a year).

The second driver of change is the labour market. In the standard model of higher education, people go to university in their 20s: a degree is an entry ticket to the professional classes. But automation is beginning to have the same effect on white-collar jobs as it has on blue-collar ones. According to a study from Oxford University, 47% of occupations are at risk of being automated in the next few decades. As innovation wipes out some jobs and changes others, people will need to top up their human capital throughout their lives.

By themselves, these two forces would be pushing change. A third—technology—ensures it.•

“There’s A Related, Looming Inequity So Brutal It Could Provoke Violent Class War”

July 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In an excellent new Aeon essay, Linda Marsa asks a severely dystopian question: Will the parallels of widening income disparity and innovations in medicine lead to two very different lifespans for the haves and have-nots? The opening:

“The disparity between top earners and everyone else is staggering in nations such as the United States, where 10 per cent of people accounted for 80 per cent of income growth since 1975. The life you can pay for as one of the anointed looks nothing like the lot tossed to everyone else: living in a home you own on some upscale cul-de-sac with your hybrid car and organic, grass-fed food sure beats renting (and driving) wrecks and subsisting on processed junk from supermarket shelves. But there’s a related, looming inequity so brutal it could provoke violent class war: the growing gap between the longevity haves and have-nots.

The life expectancy gap between the affluent and the poor and working class in the US, for instance, now clocks in at 12.2 years. College-educated white men can expect to live to age 80, while counterparts without a high-school diploma die by age 67. White women with a college degree have a life expectancy of nearly 84, compared with uneducated women, who live to 73.

And these disparities are widening. The lives of white, female high-school dropouts are now five years shorter than those of previous generations of women without a high-school degree, while white men without a high-school diploma live three years fewer than their counterparts did 18 years ago, according to a 2012 study from Health Affairs.

This is just a harbinger of things to come. What will happen when new scientific discoveries extend potential human lifespan and intensify these inequities on a more massive scale? It looks like the ultimate war between the haves and have-nots won’t be fought over the issue of money, per se, but over living to age 60 versus living to 120 or more. Will anyone just accept that the haves get two lives while the have-nots barely get one?

We should discuss the issue now, because we are close to delivering a true fountain of youth that could potentially extend our productive lifespan into our hundreds – it’s no longer the stuff of science fiction.”

 

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“It Was Poorly Communicated”

July 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Facebook didn’t think it was wrong to use its customers as unwitting subjects in a 2012 psychological test. The company still doesn’t appear to get what all the fuss is about. COO Sheryl Sandberg, leaned in and lied about the cause of the uproar, while in India. Although is it a lie if you really believe it? From R. Jai Krishna at the WSJ:

“Facebook’s psychological experiment on nearly 700,000 unwitting users was communicated ‘poorly,’ Sheryl Sandberg, the company’s No. 2 executive, said Wednesday.

It was the first public comment on the study by a Facebook executive since the furor erupted in social-media circles over the weekend.

‘This was part of ongoing research companies do to test different products, and that was what it was; it was poorly communicated,’ Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said while in New Delhi.  ‘And for that communication we apologize. We never meant to upset you.'”

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“Auto-Writers Are Able To Accurately Process An Inhuman Amount Of Data”

July 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Someday Afflictor will be published by an army of robot monkeys–I mean an even bigger army of robot monkeys–but until then you can read robo-produced pieces from the Associated Press. From Francie Diep at PopSci:

“Finance and sports are the usual targets of robot reporting. Both are a bit robotic by nature. The most basic reports involve plugging numbers from a database into one of a few standard narratives. That said, automatically written stories don’t have to be too terrible to read. One small, recent study even found human readers can’t always tell the difference between people- and algorithm-written sports stories.

The biggest argument for robot journalism is that it frees human reporters to do the kind of deeper reporting only people can do. That is likely true, and pretty cool. Another is that auto-writers are able to accurately process an inhuman amount of data, then present it in a way that humans like to see: in words. ProPublica did this last year for one of its interactive stories about public schools.”

“Something Has Changed In Recent Years”

July 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Salon’s raison d’être is to serve up red meat to blue states, to provide liberals with just enough news of conservative outrages, whether it’s the personal opinions of fat-necked fartbag Donald Trump or the judicial opinions of that cracker barrel Antonin Scalia, to keep those clicks coming. But that doesn’t mean what the site reports isn’t true or valuable. Case in point: Paul Rosenberg’s new article about the Christian Right’s separatist dreams. There are scary extremists out there seemingly beyond rational thought, some armed and others in office, who want the country to be what it used to be, even if it never really was what they think it was. History may not be on their side, but they’re sure God is. From Rosenberg:

“A Saturday ago at the annual conference of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama and other Democrats of waging a war against religious liberty and all but openly threatened a violent revolution, AP reported:

‘I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States,’ Jindal said, ‘where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.’

Of course, Jindal’s speech didn’t come out of nowhere. Jindal is notorious as a weather vane, not a leader. So this is a clear sign of the need to take threats of right-wing violence seriously — and to look to its justifications as formulated on the Christian right.

As the latest wave of theocratic violence continues to play out in Iraq, it must feel exotic for most Americans, for whom theocratic violence is something that happens elsewhere. Yet, the idea of such violence coming to America — something Jindal is apparently eager for — is hardly far-fetched. Violence against abortion providers has been with us for decades, after all, and as Jindal’s pandering suggests, there could well be much worse to come, according to a new article from Political Research Associates, ‘Rumblings of Theocratic Violence,’ by Frederick Clarkson, author of Eternal Hostility: the Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, and co-founder of Talk2Actionorg. While violent rhetoric is nothing new on the Christian right, Clarkson observes, there are reasons to take such rhetoric more seriously than ever before. Above all, some of those most dedicated to the idea of America as a Christian nation are beginning to lose faith in their inevitable success.

‘[S]omething has changed in recent years,’ Clarkson notes, as ‘disturbing claims are appearing more frequently, more prominently, and in ways that suggest that they are expressions of deeply held beliefs more than provocative political hyperbole.’ He also cites ‘powerful indications in the writings of some Christian right leaders that elements of their movement have lost confidence in the bright political vision of the United States as the once and future Christian Nation — and that they are desperately seeking alternatives.”

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“The Office Of The Commissioner Of Baseball Finally, Completely, And Probably Perpetually Became A Management Position”

July 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

ANGELOS CASTRO SELIG

Baseball has enjoyed great financial success during the uninspired tenure of Commissioner Bud Selig, but that’s mostly because changes in technology smiled on the game, creating huge demand from regional cable corporations for a quantity of family-friendly entertainment. It’s long ball meets long tail, as in many cities there actually aren’t a lot of fans watching those telecasts, but the checks clear just the same–for now, anyhow. As Selig steps down, Charles P. Pierce of Grantland examines his legacy, which more than anything announced the end of an independent figure in the commissioner’s office. That’s both good and bad: Kenesaw “Mountain” Landis’ freedom allowed him to project his racism onto the game, yet a truly conscientious person in the position could be a voice of reason concerned with issues beyond short-term wealth. From Pierce:

“In The Hustler’s Handbook, Bill Veeck wrote prophetically that, ‘In these days of corporate ownership, the Commissioner has become of particular importance to the hustler. Corporate ownership brings company men, company policy, and company cards with little holes in them. Corporate ownership, in short, brings committee-think, and with ComThink comes the banishment, discouragement, and attrition of colorful characters. The hustler is dependent upon colorful characters, because color is what is salable. Corporations don’t want to be regulated. They don’t want a Commissioner with any powers … The hustler needs a Commissioner who will throw his weight against the stuffiness, the routine, the deadly boredom of the executive suite. He needs a Commissioner who will help baseball, in spite of itself.’

(An aside: That Veeck was never commissioner, even for 15 minutes, is proof that, if there indeed is a God, He doesn’t have a healthy enough sense of the absurd, not even if you count the platypus.)

By all the standards that drove Veeck up the wall, Selig has been an enormous success. He leaves baseball an $8 billion industry, with the average franchise valued at nearly a billion dollars. There has not been a serious labor problem in 19 years. There have been 22 new ballparks built or utterly overhauled while he’s been commissioner, and the revenue-sharing money is well into nine figures a year. He has managed the drug hysteria. He will go down in the official history as a stern drug warrior who nonetheless was willing to compromise for a settlement. There seems little doubt that Selig is headed for a big afternoon in Cooperstown one day.

But the long view of history is going to say that, with Bud Selig, the office of the commissioner of baseball finally, completely, and probably perpetually became a management position. For a long time, at least theoretically, and in the dreams of people like Bill Veeck and Charlie Finley and others who would not be welcome in the world of Corporate Partners, the commissioner’s office also seemed to have a kind of ombudsman’s function. It was somehow supposed to sit in a place between management and labor, and between the game and the paying customers, in which place it was hoped the commissioner would arbitrate disputes, and that out of that arbitration would come solutions that would benefit everyone in the game, including those who devotedly followed it.”

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“Automakers Are Not Sure If Google Is Their Friend Or Their Enemy”

July 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Google sure could use the help of traditional automakers in making the robocar market a reality, which creates the potential for a win-win situation if both sides can forge an alliance. The opening of Alexei Oreskovic and Ben Klayman’s Reuters report:

“In 2012, a small team of Google Inc engineers and business staffers met with several of the world’s largest car makers, to discuss partnerships to build self-driving cars.

In one meeting, both sides were enthusiastic about the futuristic technology, yet it soon became clear that they would not be working together. The Internet search company and the automaker disagreed on almost every point, from car capabilities and time needed to get it to market to extent of collaboration.

It was as if the two were ‘talking a different language,’ recalls one person who was present.

As Google expands beyond Web search and seeks a foothold in the automotive market, the company’s eagerness has begun to reek of arrogance to some in Detroit, who see danger as well as promise in Silicon Valley.

For now Google is moving forward on its own, building prototypes of fully autonomous vehicles that reject car makers’ plans to gradually enhance existing cars with self-driving features. But Google’s hopes of making autonomous cars a reality may eventually require working with Detroit, even the California company acknowledges. The alternative is to spend potentially billions of dollars to try to break into a century-old industry in which it has no experience.

‘The auto companies are watching Google closely and trying to understand what its intentions and ambitions are,’ said one person familiar with the auto industry, who asked to remain anonymous because of sensitive business relationships.

‘Automakers are not sure if Google is their friend or their enemy, but they have a sneaking suspicion that whatever Google’s going to do is going to cause upheaval in the industry.'”

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“All It Needs, Apparently, Is A Little Better Password Protection”

June 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

I don’t know if information wants to be free, as in not having a financial cost, but I do know that it wants to be free, as in unfettered. The more data that’s mined and concentrated, the bigger the leaks will be. In a relatively unimportant example, the Houston Astros’ next-level computer database (which I blogged about earlier this year), has been compromised. From Barry Petchesky at Deadspin:

“Two years ago, the Houston Astros constructed ‘Ground Control’—a built-from-scratch online database for the private use of the Astros front office. It is by all accounts a marvel, an easy-to-use interface giving executives instant access to player statistics, video, and communications with other front offices around baseball. All it needs, apparently, is a little better password protection.

Documents purportedly taken from Ground Control and showing 10 months’ worth of the Astros’ internal trade chatter have been posted online at Anonbin, a site where users can anonymously share hacked or leaked information. Found below, they contain the Astros front office’s communications regarding trade overtures to and from other teams, as well as negotiations—a few of which actually led to trades.”

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“Philosophers Do, Indeed, Tend To Think A Lot”

June 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Love Stephen Hawking though I do, I was disappointed when he joined the “Philosophy Is Dead” chorus. I can’t tell you many otherwise intelligent people I’ve heard refer to the discipline as “bullshit,” and that’s hugely perplexing to me. With the challenges we’re facing over the next several decades–answering the technological-driven questions about ethics and the very meaning of humanness, for instance–I can’t think of a more vital time for philosophers. From “Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy,” a post by Sean Carroll in which he bats away several complaints about the study of ideas:

“Roughly speaking, physicists tend to have three different kinds of lazy critiques of philosophy: one that is totally dopey, one that is frustratingly annoying, and one that is deeply depressing.

  • ‘Philosophy tries to understand the universe by pure thought, without collecting experimental data.’

This is the totally dopey criticism. Yes, most philosophers do not actually go out and collect data (although there are exceptions). But it makes no sense to jump right from there to the accusation that philosophy completely ignores the empirical information we have collected about the world. When science (or common-sense observation) reveals something interesting and important about the world, philosophers obviously take it into account. (Aside: of course there are bad philosophers, who do all sorts of stupid things, just as there are bad practitioners of every field. Let’s concentrate on the good ones, of whom there are plenty.)

Philosophers do, indeed, tend to think a lot. This is not a bad thing. All of scientific practice involves some degree of ‘pure thought.’ Philosophers are, by their nature, more interested in foundational questions where the latest wrinkle in the data is of less importance than it would be to a model-building phenomenologist. But at its best, the practice of philosophy of physics is continuous with the practice of physics itself. Many of the best philosophers of physics were trained as physicists, and eventually realized that the problems they cared most about weren’t valued in physics departments, so they switched to philosophy. But those problems — the basic nature of the ultimate architecture of reality at its deepest levels — are just physics problems, really. And some amount of rigorous thought is necessary to make any progress on them. Shutting up and calculating isn’t good enough.”

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“We Used To Actually Have A Printing Press Here”

June 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Print newspapers are dead and dying in the U.S., with the exception of ethnic newspapers. They still flourish. Of course, that seems to be a truth with a limited future: The next American immigrants will have grown up on cheap smartphones and won’t want the inky product of their predecessors. But for now, it’s an unlikely booming industry. From Devjyot Ghoshal at the Atlantic:

“There is no ‘digital first’ strategy at 169-20 Hillside Avenue, a nondescript shop offering photo services, money transfers and video rentals in Jamaica, Queens. From its basement, Khalil ur Rehman, a first generation Pakistani immigrant, has been publishing the Urdu Times for over two decades.

In his office are two computers, a fax machine, and a phone. ‘Before, we used to actually have a printing press here,’ said Rehman, amid the distant rumble of the F-train that passes under every few minutes. Less frequently, water discharged from a toilet above noisily whooshes down a pipe next to the publisher’s desk.

It’s a barebones operation, but Rehman’s weekly newspaper has 14 editions today, with a total of nearly 100,000 copies printed every week. These include nine cities across the United States, and standalone editions in Canada and the United Kingdom. ‘Now, I’m trying to see if I can start an edition in the Middle-East,’ he said in early March. ‘I’m travelling there next week.’

At a time when the death of print media is regularly predicted, Rehman’s Urdu Times is going strong. And it isn’t alone.”

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“Not Long Ago, They Saw Us As Cranks”

June 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Most of us cling to life, and some more than others.

Cryonics isn’t just a dubious “defeat” of death, it’s also a fraught process that demands life-extension specialists act quickly and precisely. From a Financial Times “First Person” account by cryonics ambulance driver Tim Gibson, as told to Hattie Garlick:

“Within 10 minutes of a patient stopping breathing, we aim to administer oxygen and chest compressions and place the body in a portable ice bath for cooling. Then there are drugs to stabilise biological systems before the body is removed in our ambulance to a mortuary. There, the blood is flushed from the body and replaced with an antifreeze solution. Within 24 hours of death, the body must have been cooled to at least -20C.

It’s a race against time, so for cryonicists there is a certain irony in the fact that it might be seen as a bonus to be told you’re terminally ill – at least it’s not a road accident; this way there will be time to prepare. As soon as we’re alerted, we start calling the patient’s doctor, coroner, mortuary shipping service, embalmer, airline, US embassy and Homeland Security to smooth the way. These days, no one blinks an eyelid. Not long ago, they saw us as cranks.

Once, though, I dealt with a patient who had been so concerned about what the neighbours might think that they hadn’t told anyone about their plans to be cryonically preserved. The hospital, GP and relatives were all in the dark. You can’t expect to drop that kind of thing on your family and for them not to be upset.”

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“Soccer Is Booming”

June 29, 2014 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

It looks like the U.S.A. has finally fully embraced the world’s game during this year’s World Cup, and that’s largely due to globalization and ESPN’s investment in the sport. There’ve previously been great individual soccer moments in our country’s history, from Joe Gaetjens’s goal against England in the 1950 World Cup to our women’s team triumphing in 1999, but the only earlier period where football (the one where players primarily use their feet) seemed to have permanently earned a place in the American psyche was when the New York Cosmos dominated the North American Soccer League during the 1970s and 1980s. It turned out to be a false start, but for a brief, shining moment, giant stadiums, including Giants Stadium, were teeming with crazed soccer crowds. Even though the league soon lost its lustre, it did get children to start playing the sport en masse, an important step in our development.

The opening of a 1977 People article by Ira Berkow about Shep Messing, the Cosmos’ deft and sometimes daft goalie during the NASL’s heyday:

“In 1973 the struggling North American Soccer League needed some exposure. New York Cosmos rookie goalie Shep Messing took his obligation literally—he posed nude for Viva magazine’s centerfold. ‘It was publicity; I made some money, but it was a goof,’ Shep admits. ‘It’s something I wouldn’t do now.’

He doesn’t need to. Soccer is booming. Messing and his Cosmos teammates, who used to play ‘the immigrants’ sport’ in front of 600 loyal fans, are now packing 60,000 into the new Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. Playing alongside renowned foreigners like Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia, the flamboyant Messing, a Harvard graduate from Long Island, has helped keep the Cosmos at the top of the 18-team league. His 60-yd. kicks and ferocious attacks on every round object that approaches the goal have made Shep one of soccer’s most valuable players. 

Yet his biggest contribution to the sport may be as its reigning sex symbol and all-round eccentric. ‘You have to be a little nutty to want to be a goalie,’ Messing says. ‘Who else would want to face a free kick at 90 mph?’ In one confrontation during a penalty kick, Messing suddenly stripped off his jersey, waved it wildly and screamed. His rattled opponent then booted the ball two feet over the goal. As if to prove his theory that ‘goalies are always doing something weird to hang on to their sanity,’ Messing has showed up for games dressed in funereal black. Last year he wore skintight shorts; this season he is favoring baggy outfits. 

But Shep insists that at 27 and after ‘brutal’ battles around the goal—which have resulted in surgery on his thigh, knee, elbow and shoulder—he is toning down his act. ‘At first I thought the reputation would be marketable, promotable,’ he says. ‘In retrospect, that wasn’t accurate. But I’m finding it’s harder to change an image than to build one.'”

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