Excerpts

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“He Is, In A Sense, Trying To Second-Guess The Future”

October 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

I posted a brief Jeremy Bernstein New Yorker piece about Stanley Kubrick that was penned in 1965 during the elongated production of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The following year the same writer turned out a much longer profile for the same magazine about the director and his sci-fi masterpiece. Among many other interesting facts, it mentions that MIT AI legend Marvin Minsky, who’s appeared on this blog many times, was a technical consultant for the film. An excerpt from “How About a Little Game?” (subscription required):

By the time the film appears, early next year, Kubrick estimates that he and [Arthur C.] Clarke will have put in an average of four hours a day, six days a week, on the writing of the script. (This works out to about twenty-four hundred hours of writing for two hours and forty minutes of film.) Even during the actual shooting of the film, Kubrick spends every free moment reworking the scenario. He has an extra office set up in a blue trailer that was once Deborah Kerr’s dressing room, and when shooting is going on, he has it wheeled onto the set, to give him a certain amount of privacy for writing. He frequently gets ideas for dialogue from his actors, and when he likes an idea he puts it in. (Peter Sellers, he says, contributed some wonderful bits of humor for Dr. Strangelove.)

In addition to writing and directing, Kubrick supervises every aspect of his films, from selecting costumes to choosing incidental music. In making 2001, he is, in a sense, trying to second-guess the future. Scientists planning long-range space projects can ignore such questions as what sort of hats rocket-ship hostesses will wear when space travel becomes common (in 2001 the hats have padding in them to cushion any collisions with the ceiling that weightlessness might cause), and what sort of voices computers will have if, as many experts feel is certain, they learn to talk and to respond to voice commands (there is a talking computer in 2001 that arranges for the astronauts’ meals, gives them medical treatments, and even plays chess with them during a long space mission to Jupiter–‘Maybe it ought to sound like Jackie Mason,’ Kubrick once said), and what kind of time will be kept aboard a spaceship (Kubrick chose Eastern Standard, for the convenience of communicating with Washington). In the sort of planning that NASA does, such matters can be dealt with as they come up, but in a movie everything is visible and explicit, and questions like this must be answered in detail. To help him find the answers, Kubrick has assembled around him a group of thirty-five artists and designers, more than twenty-five special effects people, and a staff of scientific advisers. By the time this picture is done, Kubrick figures that he will have consulted with people from a generous sampling of the leading aeronautical companies in the United States and Europe, not to mention innumerable scientific and industrial firms. One consultant, for instance, was Professor Marvin Minsky, of M.I.T., who is a leading authority on artificial intelligence and the construction of automata. (He is now building a robot at M.I.T. that can catch a ball.) Kubrick wanted to learn from him whether any of the things he was planning to have his computers do were likely to be realized by the year 2001; he was pleased to find out that they were.•

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“Of The Many Secret Post-Victory Plans Floating Around…The Least Secret Is Romney’s Intention To Implement Paul Ryan’s Budget”

October 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Two quick excerpts from Jonathan Chait’s just-published New York piece about the post-election agendas of Mitt Romney and President Obama:

Romney’s plan:

“Let’s first imagine that, on January 20, Romney takes the oath of office. Of the many secret post-victory plans floating around in the inner circles of the campaigns, the least secret is Romney’s intention to implement Paul Ryan’s budget. The Ryan budget has come to be almost synonymous with the Republican Party agenda, and Romney has embraced it with only slight variations. It would repeal Obamacare, cut income-tax rates, turn Medicare for people under 55 years old into subsidized private insurance, increase defense spending, and cut domestic spending, with especially large cuts for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs targeted to the very poor.

Few voters understand just how rapidly Romney could achieve this, rewriting the American social compact in one swift stroke. Ryan’s plan has never attracted Democratic support, but it is not designed for bipartisanship. Ryan deliberately built it to circumvent a Senate filibuster, stocking the plan with budget legislation that is allowed, under Senate ‘budget reconciliation’ procedures, to pass with a simple majority. Republicans have been planning the mechanics of the vote for many months, and Republican insiders expect Romney to use reconciliation to pass the bill. Republicans would still need to control 50 votes in the Senate (Ryan, as vice-president, would cast the tiebreaking vote), but if Romney wins the presidency, he’ll likely precipitate a partywide tail wind that would extend to the GOP’s Senate slate.”

Obama’s plan:

“On the morning of November 7, a reelected President Obama will do … nothing. For the next 53 days, nothing. And then, on January 1, 2013, we will all awake to a different, substantially more liberal country. The Bush tax cuts will have disappeared, restoring Clinton-era tax rates and flooding government coffers with revenue to fund its current operations for years to come. The military will be facing dire budget cuts that shake the military-industrial complex to its core. It will be a real-world approximation of the old liberal bumper-sticker fantasy in which schools have all the money they require and the Pentagon needs to hold a bake sale.

All this can come to pass because, while Obama has spent the last two years surrendering short-term policy concessions, he has been quietly hoarding a fortune in the equivalent of a political trust fund that comes due on the first of the year. At that point, he will reside in a political world he finds at most mildly uncomfortable and the Republicans consider a hellish dystopia. Then he’ll be ready to make a deal.”

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“A Quantum Machine Would Be A Million, Trillion, Trillion, Trillion Times Faster Than The Most Modern Supercomputer”

October 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The wild card in the future of technology is quantum computing, which would allow us to place heretofore unimaginable power in every shirt pocket. From Adam Frank in the New York Times:

“Classical computers use ‘bits’ of information that can be either 0 or 1. But quantum-information technologies let scientists consider ‘qubits,’ quantum bits of information that are both 0 and 1 at the same time. Logic circuits, made of qubits directly harnessing the weirdness of superpositions, allow a quantum computer to calculate vastly faster than anything existing today. A quantum machine using no more than 300 qubits would be a million, trillion, trillion, trillion times faster than the most modern supercomputer.

Going even further is the seemingly science-fiction possibility of ‘quantum teleportation.’ Based on experiments going on today with simple quantum systems, it is at least a theoretical possibility that one day objects could be reconstituted — beamed — across a space without ever crossing the distance.

When a revolution in science yields powerful new technologies, its effect on human culture is multiplied exponentially. Think of the relation between thermodynamics, steam engines and the onset of the industrial era. Quantum information could well be the thermodynamics of the next technological revolution.'”

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“We Are Witnessing A Shift To A New Social Model”

October 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

More people are opting to live alone, choosing to not have families. It’s mostly because we suck, and being in close proximity to other people who are similar to us reminds us of this fact. But there are other reasons. The opening of a piece about this significant societal shift by Joel Kotkin at New Geography:

“For most of human history, the family — defined by parents, children and extended kin — has stood as the central unit of society. In Europe, Asia, Africa and, later, the Americas and Oceania, people lived, and frequently worked, as family units.

Today, in the high-income world and even in some developing countries, we are witnessing a shift to a new social model. Increasingly, family no longer serves as the central organizing feature of society. An unprecedented number of individuals — approaching upwards of 30% in some Asian countries — are choosing to eschew child bearing altogether and, often, marriage as well.

The post-familial phenomena has been most evident in the high income world, notably in Europe, North America and, most particularly, wealthier parts of East Asia. Yet it has bloomed as well in many key emerging countries, including Brazil, Iran and a host of other Islamic countries.

The reasons for this shift are complex, and vary significantly in different countries and cultures.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“The Rightwing Has Staked It All On Being Able To Create An ‘Entity’ Out Of Comically Ill-Fitting Parts”

October 14, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I read Richard Ford’s most famous novel, The Sportswriter, when I was a teen and liked it, but I was probably too young to fully appreciate it. (The same goes for Saul Bellow’s Herzog.) I always felt old for my age on the inside, but some cultural experiences require life experience. Ford presents a clutch of ideas about America in a new Financial Times diary. His take on the condition of the modern Republican party:

“Before President Obama scored his unhappy ‘own goal’ in the first debate, I was thinking about what might happen to the Republicans if they lost the election. More than in most political seasons, the rightwing has staked it all on being able to create an ‘entity’ out of comically ill-fitting parts – nutcase birthers, gay-marriage haters, anti-government and anti-tax fanatics, gun nuts, a smattering of reluctantly legitimate Romney supporters, plus a few grumpy GOP moderates who can’t think of what else to do with the vote they inherited from their old man. Quite a colourful circus tent. Nobody, including the Republicans, thinks this comprises a real political party – the kind where members sort of think the same about stuff. All they jointly hold dear is a race-tinged abhorrence of our not-inept, but not-entirely-ept-either, chief executive, whom they can’t believe was ever elected in the first place. But if Obama gets elected again, and their cocked-up contraption teeters over on to its side, then I was thinking they don’t really have much left for the future, except cross-eyed bitterness. But I now think that’s wrong. They’ll just throw a few of the noisier birthers and gay-bashers over the side, spasm smilingly back toward the middle and call that ‘new unity.’ This may bespeak an actual virtue of a vast, ungovernable country like ours, able to absorb most discords into an accommodating mediocrity. Though there’s the new question now: what happens if the bastards win? Do they actually govern? How?”

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“For The Greeks The Vast Stretches Of The Sea Must Have Had The Same Sort Of Mystery And Remoteness That Space Has For Our Generation”

October 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Before 2001: A Space Odyssey became screen legend in 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke struggled forever to complete the project that was originally entitled, Journey Beyond the Stars. From a 1965 “Talk of the Town” piece by Jeremy Bernstein in the New Yorker (subscription required) about the work-in-progress three years before its release:

Our briefing session took place in the living room of Mr. Kubrick’s apartment. When we got there, Mr. Kubrick was talking on a telephone in the next room, Mr. Clarke had not yet arrived, and three lively Kubrick daughters–the eldest is eleven–were running in and out with several young friends. We settled ourselves in a large chair, and a few minuted later the doorbell rang. One of the little girls went to the door and asked, ‘Who is it?’ A pleasantly English-accented voice answered, through the door, “It’s Clarke,” and the girls began jumping up and down and saying, “It’s Clark Kent!”-a reference to another well-known science-fiction personality. They opened the door, and in walked Mr. Clarke, a cheerful-looking man in his forties. He was carrying several manila envelopes, which, it turned out, contained parts of Journey Beyond the Stars. Mr. Kubrick then came into the room carrying a thick pile of diagrams and charts, and looking like the popular conception of a nuclear physicist who has been interrupted in the middle of some difficult calculations. Mr. Kubrick and Mr. Clarke sat down side by side on a sofa, and we asked them about their joint venture.

Mr. Clarke said that one of the basic problems they’ve had to deal with is how to describe what they are trying to do. “Science-fiction films have always meant monsters and sex, so we have tried to find another term for our film,” said Mr. C.

“About the best we’ve been able to come up with is a space Odyssey–comparable in some ways to Homer’s Odyssey,” said Mr. K. ‘It occurred to us that for the Greeks the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation, and that the far-flung islands Homer’s wonderful characters visited were no less remote to them that the planets our spacemen will soon be landing on are to us. Journey also shares with the Odyssey a concern for wandering, and adventure.”•

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“At The End Hughes Was Shrunken, Wasted—He Was 6’1″ And Weighed 93 Pounds”

October 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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From a 1979 People Q&A with Wilbur Thain, who was the final doctor to treat Howard Hughes, a singular American character who lived in fear of the outside world but was betrayed from within:

People:

Was Hughes an impossible patient?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

That’s a masterpiece of understatement. He wanted doctors around, but he didn’t want to see them unless he had to. He would allow no X-rays—I never saw an X-ray of Hughes until after he died—no blood tests, no physical exams. He understood his situation and chose to live the way he lived. Rather than listen to a doctor, he would fall asleep or say he couldn’t hear.

People:

Is that why you didn’t accept his job offer after you got out of medical school?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

No, I just wanted to practice medicine on my own. I understand that Hughes was quite upset. I didn’t see him again for 21 years. He was 67 then. He had grown a beard, his hair was longer. He had some hearing loss partially due to his work around aircraft. That’s why he liked to use the telephone: It had an amplifier. He was very alert and well-informed. His toenails and fingernails were pretty long, but he had a case of onchyomycosis—a fungus disease of the nails which makes them thick and very sensitive. It hurt like hell to trim them. For whatever reason, he only sponge-bathed his body and hair.

People:

What was the turning point?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

After his successful hip surgery in August of 1973 he chose never to walk again. Once—only once—he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom with help. That was the beginning of the end for him. I told him we’d even get him a cute little physical therapist. He said, “No, Wilbur, I’m too old for that.”

People:

Why did he decide not to walk?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

I never had the chance to pry off the top of his head to see what motivated decisions like this. He would never get his teeth fixed, either. Worst damn mouth I ever saw. When they operated on his hip, the surgeons were afraid his teeth were so loose that one would fall into his lung and kill him!

 People:

What kinds of things did he talk about toward the end of his life?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

The last year we would talk about the Hughes Institute medical projects and his earlier life. All the reporting on Hughes portrayed him as a robot. This man had real feelings. He talked one day about his parents, whom he loved very much, and his movies and his girls. He said he finally gave up stashing women around Hollywood because he got tired of having to talk to them. In our last conversation, he told me how much he still loved his ex-wife Jean Peters. But he was also always talking about things 10 years down the road. He was an optimist in that sense. If it hadn’t been for the kidney failure, Hughes might have lasted a lot longer.

People:

Do you have any regrets?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

Sure, sure. I wish I could have treated him the way I wanted: Fix his teeth—that would have been Number One. It would have helped his diet. I wish I could have treated him just like any patient in a county hospital who comes in with a broken hip, bad teeth and rundown health. At the end Hughes was shrunken, wasted—he was 6’1″ and weighed 93 pounds. When his kidneys failed in Acapulco, a major medical center like Houston was the only hope. But knowing Hughes, he would have refused to be placed on dialysis. He always said, “I don’t want to be kept alive by machines.” Howard Hughes was still imposing that tremendous will of his—right up to the last.•

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“Lenny Was Called A ‘Sick Comic,’ Though He Insisted That It Was Society Which Was Sick And Not Him”

October 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Lenny Bruce understood that there were few things more obscene than a society full of people making believe that obscene things never happened, since pretending and suppressing and hiding and shushing allows true evil to flourish. The opening of Ralph J. Gleason’s emotional 1966 obituary of Bruce in Ramparts: 

“WHEN THE BODY OF LEONARD SCHNEIDER—stage name Lenny Bruce—was found on the floor of his Hollywood hills home on August 3, the Los Angeles police immediately announced that the victim had died of an overdose of a narcotic, probably heroin.

The press and TV and radio of the nation—the mass media—immediately seized upon this statement and headlined it from coast to coast, never questioning the miracle of instant diagnosis by a layman.

The medical report the next day, however, admitted that the cause of death was unknown and the analysis ‘inconclusive.’ But, as is the way with the mass media, news grows old, and the truth never quite catches up. Lenny Bruce didn’t die of an overdose of heroin. God alone knows what he did die of.

It is ritualistically fitting that he should be the victim, in the end, of distorted news, police malignment and the final irony—being buried with an orthodox Hebrew service, after years of satirizing organized religion. But first, in a sinister evocation of Orwell and Kafka and Greek tragedy, he had to be tortured, the record twisted, and the files rewritten until his death became a relief.

Lenny was called a ‘sick comic,’ though he insisted that it was society which was sick and not him. He was called a ‘dirty comic’ though he never used a word you and I have not heard since our childhood. His tangles with the law over the use of these words and his arrests on narcotics charges were the only two things that the public really knew about him. Mass media saw to that.

When he was in Mission General Hospital in San Francisco, the hospital announced he had screamed such obscenities that the nurses refused to work in the room with him, so they taped his mouth shut with adhesive tape. The newspapers revelled in this and he was shown on TV, his mouth taped and his eyes rolling in protest, being wheeled into the examining room. Words that nurses never heard?

What new phrases he must have invented that day, what priceless epiphanies lost to history now forever. Once, in a particularly poignant discussion of obscenity on stage, Bruce said, ‘If the titty is pretty it’s dirty, but not if it’s bloody and maimed . . . that’s why you never see atrocity photos at obscenity trials.’ He used to point out, too, that the people who watched the killing of the Genovese girl in Brooklyn and who didn’t interfere or call a cop would have been quick to do both if it had been a couple making love. ‘A true definition of obscenity,’ he said, ‘would be to sing about pork outside a synagogue.’

Bruce found infinity in the grain of sand of obscenity. From it he took off on the fabric which keeps all our lives together. ‘If something about the human body disgusts you,’ he said, ‘complain to the manufacturer.’ He was one of those who, in Hebbel’s expression, ‘have disturbed the world’s sleep.’ And he could not be forgiven.”

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“The Owners Would Be Paid For The Energy Their Vehicles Produce”

October 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I know that some health clubs have rigged their treadmills so that exercisers produce energy to help run the gyms, and experiments show that smart sidewalks can turn pedestrians into a power source. So, it only makes sense that automobiles could be used to create, not just consume, energy. From the Futurist:

“A scheme envisioned at the Technology University of Delft would use fuel cells of parked electric vehicles to convert biogas or hydrogen into more electricity. And the owners would be paid for the energy their vehicles produce. 

Another project at the university is the Energy Wall, a motorway whose walls generate energy for roadside lighting and serve as a support for a people mover on top.”

“They Will Surely Have Some Very Disruptive Effects”

October 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Connected personal computers mostly disrupted pure-information businesses like music and travel agencies. But 3D printers will strain even endeavors that require a physical component. From Peter Frase at Jacobin:

“Like the computer, the 3-D printer is a tool that can rapidly dis-intermediate a production process. Computers allowed people to turn a downloaded digital file into music or movies playing in their home, without the intermediary steps of manufacturing CDs or DVDs and distributing them to record stores. Likewise, a 3-D printer could allow you to turn a digital blueprint (such as a CAD file) into an object, without the intermediate step of manufacturing the object in a factory and shipping it to a store or warehouse. While 3-D printers aren’t going to suddenly make all of large-scale industrial capitalism obsolete, they will surely have some very disruptive effects.

The people who were affected by the previous stage of the file-sharing explosion were cultural producers (like musicians) who create new works, and the middlemen (like record companies) who made money selling physical copies of those works. These two groups have interests that are aligned at first, but are ultimately quite different. Creators find their traditional sources of income undermined, and thus face the choice of allying with the middlemen to shore up the existing regime, or else attempting to forge alternative ways of paying the people who create culture and information. But while the creators remain necessary, a lot of the middlemen are being made functionally obsolete. Their only hope is to maintain artificial monopolies through the draconian enforcement of intellectual property, and to win public support by presenting themselves as the defenders of deserving artists and creators.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“A Library Of A Million Volumes Could Be Compressed Into One End Of A Desk”

October 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a new Maria Popova piece at Slate about Vannevar Bush’s 1945 Atlantic essay, “As We May Think,” a passage about the compression of information:

“Marveling at the rapid rate of technological progress, which has made possible the increasingly cheap production of increasingly reliable machines, Bush makes an enormously important—and timely—point about the difference between merely compressing information to store it efficiently and actually making use of it in the way of gleaning knowledge. (This, bear in mind, despite the fact that 90 percent of data in the world today was created in the last two years.)

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.”

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“Bradbury Spent His Childhood Goosing His Imagination With The Outlandish”

October 11, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In Lauren Weiner’s New Atlantis article about Ray Bradbury, she provides a tidy description of the Space Age sage’s youthful education:

“Bradbury spent his childhood goosing his imagination with the outlandish. Whenever mundane Waukegan was visited by the strange or the offbeat, young Ray was on hand. The vaudevillian magician Harry Blackstone came through the industrial port on Lake Michigan’s shore in the late 1920s. Seeing Blackstone’s show over and over again marked Bradbury deeply, as did going to carnivals and circuses, and watching Hollywood’s earliest horror offerings like Dracula and The Phantom of the Opera. He read heavily in Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allan Poe, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs; the latter’s inspirational and romantic children’s adventure tales earned him Bradbury’s hyperbolic designation as ‘probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world.’

Then there was the contagious enthusiasm of Bradbury’s bohemian, artistic aunt and his grandfather, Samuel, who ran a boardinghouse in Waukegan and instilled in Bradbury a kind of wonder at modern life. He recounted: ‘When I was two years old I sat on his knee and he had me tickle a crystal with a feathery needle and I heard music from thousands of miles away. I was right then and there introduced to the birth of radio.’

His family’s temporary stay in Arizona in the mid-1920s and permanent relocation to Los Angeles in the 1930s brought Bradbury to the desert places that he would later reimagine as Mars. As a high-schooler he buzzed around movie and radio stars asking for autographs, briefly considered becoming an actor, and wrote and edited science fiction ‘fanzines’ just as tales of robots and rocket ships were gaining in popularity in wartime America. He befriended the staffs of bicoastal pulp magazines like Weird Tales,Thrilling Wonder Stories, Dime Mystery, and Captain Future by bombarding them with submissions, and, when those were rejected, with letters to the editor. This precocity was typical. Science fiction and ‘fantasy’ — a catchall term for tales of the supernatural that have few or no fancy machines in them — drew adolescent talent like no other sector of American publishing. Isaac Asimov was in his late teens when he began writing for genre publications; Ursula K. Le Guin claimed to have sent in stories from the age of eleven.”

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Harry Blackstone, Sr. with his classic bit, “The Bunny Trick”:

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“All History Has Become A Record Of Disturbance”

October 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In his Aeon think-piece about environmentalism, Liam Heneghan suggests that in order to save nature we need to free ourselves of some accepted notions of preservation in favor of a more integrative approach:

“The environmental historian Donald Worster writes about the fall of the ‘balance of nature’ as an idea, and points out that this disruptive world-view makes nature seem awfully like the human sphere. ‘All history,’ he notes, ‘has become a record of disturbance, and that disturbance comes from both cultural and natural agents.’ Thus he places droughts and pests alongside corporate takeovers and the invasion of the academy by French literary theory. If the idea of a balance resurrects Plato and Aristotle, the non-equilibrium, disturbance-inclined view may have its own Greek hero: Heraclitus, pagan saint of flux. ‘Thunderbolt,’ Heraclitus wrote in Fragment 64, ‘steers all things.’

In its brief history, the science of ecology appears to have smuggled in enough ancient metaphysics to make any Greek philosopher nod with approval. However, the question remains. If the handsaw and hurricane are equivalents in their ability to lay a forest low, it is hard to see how we can scientifically criticise the human destruction of ecosystems. Why should we, for instance, concern ourselves with the fate of the Western Ghats if alien introductions are just another disturbance, no different from the more natural-seeming migration of species? The point of conservation in the popular imagination and in many policy directives is that it resists human depredations to preserve important species in ancient, intact, fully functional natural ecosystems. If we have no ‘balance of nature’, this is much harder to defend.

If we lose the ideal of balance, then, we lose a powerful motive for environmental conservation. However, there might be some unintended benefits. A dynamic, ‘disturbance’ approach has fostered some of the most promising new approaches to environmental problems such as urban ecology and restoration ecology. That’s because it is much less concerned with keeping humans and nature separate from one another.“

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“The Strange Properties Of One Boy’s Eyes Has Made Him An Internet Sensation”

October 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Sometimes when we know something different, even scary, is soon to begin, we nervously misread its arrival. In a simple genetic mutation, for instance, we can see the future of genetic engineering, a science that can make us great but right now just makes us uneasy. From Peter Murray at Singularity Hub, a story about a Chinese boy born with blue eyes who’s viewed as a real-life X-Man in his homeland:

“Although the notion is revolting to many, at some point in the future we’ll have the know-how and the tools to genetically modify our bodies to make us stronger, better looking, more intelligent. In Dahua, in south China, the strange properties of one boy’s eyes has made him an Internet sensation. Headlines abound label him a one-of-a-kind, real life X-Man, miraculously given the gift of cat-like vision through genetic mutation.

In all likelihood, however, his miracle probably only extends as far as being able to see at night a little bit better than average, and even this has not been properly documented. In all likelihood, this is more a case of wishful thinking, overactive imagination, and the desire for attention.

Nong Yousui’s blue eyes are an anomalous, but not entirely unseen, occurrence among Chinese children. They are rare enough, however, to trigger worry among Yousui’s parents. Doctors promptly allayed their worries, saying that the boy’s vision was fine.

Years later, Yousui finds himself the center of an online frenzy.”

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“They Soon Became All The Rage In The Region”

October 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“De humani corporis fabrica libri septem,” Andreas Vesalius, 1543.

From a Discovery list of obscure facts about postmortems, a passage about the autopsy as live performance:

“Paduan judge Marcantonio Contarini, obsessed with the anatomical drawings of Andreas Vesalius, endorsed autopsies on executed criminals; they soon became all the rage in the region. Starting in 1539, hangings were scheduled around planned autopsies, which were performed to packed houses in special theaters.”

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“The Real And The Unreal In A Sense Became Totally Confused”

October 9, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you read this blog regularly, you know I’m a little obsessed with Clifford Irving, the writer who in 1970 accepted a million-dollar check for his authorized biography of the reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes. One problem: Hughes knew nothing about the book. The author was trying to pass off a fake and pocket a huge payday, and just as fascinating as the ruse was Irving doggedly sticking to his story even after the whole thing fell apart spectacularly. It was a literary scandal of Madoff-ian proportions, and a case study in extreme psychological behavior.

In 1972, as Irving was about to serve a stretch in prison for fraud, Ramparts magazine assigned Abbie Hoffman to do a Q&A with the trickster. An excerpt from the resulting article, “How Clifford Irving Stole That Book“:

Abbie Hoffman:

Did you ever get the idea, once the authenticity was questioned, of publishing it as a work of fiction? Would that have been really possible?

Clifford Irving:

You mean since recent events?

Abbie Hoffman:

Yeah.

Clifford Irving:

Oh, yeah, I still would like to have the book published. I think it’s the best novel I’ve ever written and it could easily be turned into a novel. It could also be published as is, provided libelous passages were taken out of it and provided that it stated very clearly that it’s a bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes. There is a court ruUng on it. As we understand it the court has given us permission to publish part or all of the book, provided that it’s made perfectly clear that it doesn’t purport to be genuine.

Abbie Hoffman:

I thought a funny incident occurred at Germaine Greer’s press party when you were introduced to Chief Red Fox. Could you talk about that a little?

Clifford Irving:

I went to this cocktail party. I was dragged along by Beverly Loo and Robert Stewart. I hate those damn cocktail parties but I had nothing to do and I wanted to meet Germaine Greer ’cause I heard she was six feet tall. But she was far more interested in talking to women’s liberation people and I stood around like a dope for awhile until I saw this beautiful old man in a corner. I asked about him and was told that’s Chief Red Fox, a 101-year-old Sioux Indian chief, and I said, ‘Beautiful, I’ve got to meet him.’ And I sat at his feet for an hour or two, talked to him, and he was a marvelous old man. But the way he came on to me with the broad American accent and told me how he danced at supermarket openings and was on the Johnny Carson Show where he did a war dance to liven things up, also the way he talked about Indian history, made me a little leery and I thought, well, he’s great but he’s not a 101-year-old Sioux Indian chief. Despite the fact that he was decked out like a technicolor western with a war bonnet and greasepaint make-up. And I went up to Beverly Loo and said,’He’s a great man, Beverly, but he’s no more a 101-year-old Sioux Indian than you’re the Empress Loo of the Ming Dynasty. She got very uptight about that and said, ‘What do you mean? How dare you!’ and I decided not to upset her any further so I backed off. Then of course it turned out later that there were great doubts thrown on the veracity of his books and his identity as well. I don’t know if I really smelled it out but something was funny there. I think maybe I was thinking in terms of a hoax since I was involved with one, and Chief Red Fox seemed to fit right into the category.

Abbie Hoffman:

When incidents like that happened did you start to feel you were watching a movie being made about your life or that you were acting out some kind of movie role?

Clifford Irving:

Well, going through that year I often felt that it was a happening because we sometimes had control over events but so many things happened that were absurd. And after awhile—not that I saw myself as a movie star—I saw this whole thing developing as a script, a movie script which no one would ever buy because it was ridiculous, it couldn’t possibly happen. The real and the unreal in a sense became totally confused—not that I really thought I was writing the autobiography of Howard Hughes, although of course in the act of creation you have to believe to a certain extent, but when you stop work you don’t believe any more. I mean you know what you’re doing but all the events had such a quality of ludicrousness and fantasy and coincidence that reality did at times blend with unreality. I think for the publishers as well.•

“I thought, well, he’s great but he’s not a 101-year-old Sioux Indian chief.”

See also:

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“Can You Really Be Fond Of Something You Know You Plan To Replace?”

October 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Devin Coldewey has a smart essay at Techcrunch pointing out that the tech items we use constantly and depend on for function, the ones that look so beautiful, provide little emotional connection for us because of their uniform and disposable nature. I agree with his assessment of digital culture, where disposal is built into the agreement. Analog technology, like those scratchy LP records that were purchased to not only be played but also to be collected, can hold us in their sway and attach themselves to our hearts and minds. Not so with an iPod. An excerpt:

“It’s a puzzling and complicated relationship we have with technology, as it is personified (for lack of a better term) in our iPhones, laptops, and other gadgets. We hold them and touch them every day, look at them for hours on end, sleep next to them. But how little we care for them!

I know that much of this is because what interests us in our devices is not the device itself, but that to which it is a conduit. Our friends, a map of the world, the whole of human knowledge (if not wisdom) at our fingertips. I don’t value my laptop the way I value my jacket because if I lose the laptop, my friends and Google and Wikipedia will still be there, waiting for me to find another way to get at them. It’s not so surprising, then, that we don’t value this middle-man object much.

And although we share so much of our lives with these devices, they don’t last very long. We’re like serial monogamists, committed until something better comes along, usually after a year or two. Can you really be fond of something you know you plan to replace?

Yet however reasonable it appears, still it disturbs me. It strikes me as wrong that our most powerful and expensive and familiar objects should be the ones we love the least.”

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“Baumgartner Would Become The First Human To Ever Break The Sound Barrier In Free-Fall”

October 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m with Neil Armstrong: You never should take risks just for the sake of taking risks. But I would assume Felix Baumgartner’s derring-do in his spacesuit will aid science in some manner. High winds got the best of Baumgartner over the past 48 hours, so his historic fall from the heavens has been delayed. From Paul Harris in the Guardian:

“Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s attempt to parachute to earth from the edge of space has been postponed for the second day running after gusty winds in New Mexico hampered the launch of the balloon that would take him skywards.

Baumgartner, a 43-year-old former soldier, was aiming to jump from 23 miles above the Earth in a specially pressurised suit, plummetting to the ground at speeds that would break the sound barrier before he triggers his parachute.

The stunt, if successful, would break five world records. Baumgartner would become the first human to ever break the sound barrier in free-fall; make the highest free-fall altitude jump, ride the highest manned balloon flight and longest free-fall and his jump platform is believed to be the largest manned balloon in history.”

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“Do You Have Small Hands? Do You Smell Like Cabbage?”

October 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

For some reason, a carnival worker subjected himself to an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. Wiseasses descended immediately. Some highlights follow.

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Question:

Do you have small hands? Do you smell like cabbage?

Answer:

No I have normal sized hands.

And no I don’t. I’m actually super particular about my smell. I always use the same scent of everything. Right now my shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, body spray, body wash are all from dove fresh cucumber. I’ll probably change it for fall/winter though.

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Question:

Could you throw a hoop on the chimney of my house?

Answer:

Maybe? If I had a lot of tries?

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Question:

How often do you have to clean up vomit from the tilt-a-whirl?

Answer:

I never had to but the cleaning people have to do it pretty often. We call it a protein spill. Actually one of the cleaning people threw up as well just kind of in front of ring toss and then he went home and another cleaning person came and cleaned it up. We have a lot of sweepers though…sometimes I think they just have nothing to sweep really and they just walk around.

“Treatment Of Most Diseases Still Focuses Largely On Managing Symptoms”

October 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From “Patient, Heal Thyself,” Randy Rieland’s new post at Smithsonian, a passage about the hopes for duplicating regenerative medicine in humans which is exhibited in a particular type of mouse:

“Mammals scar after they tear their skin. But not the spiny mouse. It can lose more than 50 percent of its skin and then grow a near perfect replacement, including new hair. Its ears are even more magical. When scientists drilled holes in them, the mice were able to not only grow more skin, but also new glands, hair follicles and cartilage.

And that’s what really excites researchers in human regenerative medicine, a fast-emerging field built around finding ways to boost the body’s ability to heal itself. As amazingly sophisticated as medicine has become, treatment of most diseases still focuses largely on managing symptoms–insulin shots to keep diabetes in check, medications to ease the strain on a damaged heart.

But regenerative medicine could dramatically change health care by shifting the emphasis to helping damaged tissue or organs repair themselves.”

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“The Roads Of Ann Arbor Are Now Home To A Fleet Of Several Thousand Cars That Constantly ‘Talk’ To One Another”

October 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the BBC, a report about thousands of smart cars in Ann Arbor that communicate with one another even if the drivers don’t:

“If you want to find the smartest drivers in the world, you need to head for the home of the US car industry. Just outside Detroit, lies the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The drivers there are not any more intelligent than other parts of the world, despite it being a famed college town. However, their cars are.

That’s because the roads of Ann Arbor are now home to a fleet of several thousand cars that constantly ‘talk’ to one another. The scheme, known as the Safety Pilot Model Deployment project, offers a potential blueprint for the future of road transport. Like many projects it aims to cut congestion and make the road network more efficient. But this vision of the future is missing one thing: crashes.”

“The Entire Thing Would Even Be Capable Of Vertical Takeoff And Landing”

October 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Declassified documents reveal that the Air Force worked stealthily on a flying saucer craft in the 1950s. From Sebastian Anthony at Extreme Tech:

“The aircraft, which had the code name Project 1794, was developed by the USAF and Avro Canada in the 1950s. One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of ;between Mach 3 and Mach 4,’ (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km).

As far as we can tell, the supersonic flying saucer would propel itself by rotating an outer disk at very high speed, taking advantage of the Coandă effect. Maneuvering would be accomplished by using small shutters on the edge of the disc (similar to ailerons on a winged aircraft). Power would be provided by jet turbines. According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).”

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“Retirement Will Be A Periodic Thing”

October 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Following up on yesterday’s post about biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, an excerpt from “The Invincible Man,” a 2007 Washington Post profile by Joel Garreau of the scientist who believes we can conquer aging:

“At midday in George Washington University’s Kogan Plaza off H Street NW, you are surrounded by firm, young flesh. Muscular young men saunter by in sandals, T-shirts and cargo shorts. Young blond women sport clingy, sleeveless tops, oversize sunglasses and the astounding array of subtle variations available in flip-flops and painted toenails.

Is this the future? you ask de Grey.

‘Yes, it is precisely the future,’ he says. ‘Except without people who look as old as you and me.’

‘Of course the world will be completely different in all manner of ways,’ de Grey says of the next few decades. His speech is thick, fast and mellifluous, with a quality British accent.

‘If we want to hit the high points, number one is, there will not be any frail elderly people. Which means we won’t be spending all this unbelievable amount of money keeping all those frail elderly people alive for like one extra year the way we do at the moment. That money will be available to spend on important things like, well, obviously, providing the health care to keep us that way, but that won’t be anything like so expensive. Secondly, just doing the things we can’t afford now, giving people proper education and not just when they’re kids, but also proper adult education and retraining and so on.

‘Another thing that’s going to have to change completely is retirement. For the moment, when you retire, you retire forever. We’re sorry for old people because they’re going downhill. There will be no real moral or sociological requirement to do that. Sure, there is going to be a need for Social Security as a safety net just as there is now. But retirement will be a periodic thing. You’ll be a journalist for 40 years or whatever and then you’ll be sick of it and you’ll retire on your savings or on a state pension, depending on what the system is. So after 20 years, golf will have lost its novelty value, and you’ll want to do something else with your life. You’ll get more retraining and education, and go and be a rock star for 40 years, and then retire again and so on.’

The mind reels. Will we want to be married to the same person for a thousand years? Will we need religion anymore? Will the planet fill to overflowing?”

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“Handwriting Has Been Regarded As Almost The Most Powerful Sign Of Our Individuality”

October 8, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

My earliest childhood memory is of lying on the living room floor of my family’s home and trying to pick up Crayolas with my toes. I doubt there was a day in my life until recent years when I didn’t spend several hours holding a pen or pencil or marker (with my fingers, not toes). That’s what writers did. And there were unintended benefits: There seems to be a strong connection between penmanship and memory. Write a fact on a piece of paper and it’s much more likely you’ll recall that fact.

I can’t tell you the last time I held any writing utensil in my hand. Whether it’s doing a crossword puzzle or paying a bill or jotting down a note, a screen and keypad do the job. But I don’t fret over the change. Yes, memories and individuality are diminished in some ways in a paperless world, but I’ll accept the trade-off any day. Having crayons as a child was wonderful, but you know what else would have been great? Having access to the mountain of information that is accessible 24/7 to us all now. It’s a net win.

Not everyone agrees, however. In a Guardian essay, Philip Hensher urges the reclamation of penmanship. An excerpt:

“We have surrendered our handwriting for something more mechanical, less distinctively human, less telling about ourselves and less present in our moments of the highest happiness and the deepest emotion. Ink runs in our veins, and shows the world what we are like. The shaping of thought and written language by a pen, moved by a hand to register marks of ink on paper, has for centuries, millennia, been regarded as key to our existence as human beings. In the past, handwriting has been regarded as almost the most powerful sign of our individuality. In 1847, in an American case, a witness testified without hesitation that a signature was genuine, though he had not seen an example of the handwriting for 63 years: the court accepted his testimony.

Handwriting is what registers our individuality, and the mark which our culture has made on us. It has been seen as the unknowing key to our souls and our innermost nature. It has been regarded as a sign of our health as a society, of our intelligence, and as an object of simplicity, grace, fantasy and beauty in its own right. Yet at some point, the ordinary pleasures and dignity of handwriting are going to be replaced permanently.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“They Have To Be Able To Imagine A Future The Failure Of Which To Materialize Would Feel Like A Loss”

October 8, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Marek Kohn’s excellent Aeon essay about long-range planning, a passage about how the present might fall into ruin if we weren’t convinced of a future:

“How can you care about something you can’t imagine? For all but the most rigorous moral philosophers, caring requires more than a logical reckoning of duty. People need visions of things they feel attached to, or find beautiful, or moving. They have to be able to imagine a future the failure of which to materialise would feel like a loss. Points on the horizon that help people to see something in the far future may help them feel connected to it. They may also encourage people to believe that there actually will be a future.

After you have systematically cleared the horizon of time and it has faded to white, imagine what is likely to happen if you let someone else get their hands on your vacant landscape. Like as not, they will strew apocalypse all over it: ruins, mutants, scattered bands armed against each other. People seem irresistibly drawn to the end of the world — but if they catch glimpses of a future in which spiritual edifices or ancient documents endure, they might be more inclined to help secure it, and less inclined towards nihilistic fantasy.

They don’t have to have a view of the far horizon in order to factor the distant future’s interests into their actions. The interests of their children and grandchildren will be more alive in their minds: serving them may well serve those of more distant generations, too. But at this possibly critical moment, when our imaginative sympathies need all the help they can get, it’s worth trying to focus a 1,000-year stare.”

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