Excerpts

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“Some Things We Can’t Yet Imagine Will Happen”

July 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There might not always be Broadway, but they’ll always be theater. Likewise they’ll always be journalism despite the traditional economic print model being flattened before our eyes. But how will news be delivered and supported? Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger doesn’t have the answers, but he identifies all the right questions in an interview at the Browser. The opening:

“Talking about the future of news, some people might question what the fuss is about. In a couple of clicks they can find all the news they need, and what’s more it’s free. What’s the problem, in a nutshell?

The main if not the only problem is the business model. Otherwise, everything’s wonderful. There’s never been an era with more and better information, and greater ease of creating, consuming and sharing it. It’s a golden age. But at the moment, the economics of it all have yet to settle down and be worked out. There’s going to be a giant shakedown, because too much is happening to be sustained along the lines of the past. So it’s a golden age in terms of what is being created, but it’s not yet a golden age in terms of how it is all going to be paid for. Some things are going to stop, some things are going to begin, and some things we can’t yet imagine will happen. Everything is in transition.

It’s a true cliché that a crisis is also an opportunity, for us to rearrange the lego blocks. You’ve quoted CP Scott, who in 1921, with the advent of the telegraph and the telephone, said: ‘Physical boundaries are disappearing… What a change for the world! What a chance for the newspaper!’ What chances are there for the newspaper today?

It’s of an order that Scott was talking about. That was a fantastic thing – a man in his eighties who could see that these new technological advances meant that the Manchester Guardian would have access to, and would be able to distribute, news at a speed and with a range that was unimaginable when he started being editor. The same thing was true with me. When I became editor [in 1995], it was essentially a print product. But now [with the website] we’ve been catapulted into global reach and influence.”

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“Executives On The Go Will Begin Carrying Pocket-Sized Digital Communicating Devices”

July 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of a 1992 New York Times article by Peter H. Lewis that foresaw smartphones, although it didn’t quite get that the devices would be for the masses:

“Sometime around the middle of this decade no one is sure exactly when — executives on the go will begin carrying pocket-sized digital communicating devices. And although nobody is exactly sure what features these personal information gizmos will have, what they will cost, what they will look like or what they will be called, hundreds of computer industry officials and investors at the Mobile ’92 conference here last week agreed that the devices could become the foundation of the next great fortunes to be made in the personal computer business.

‘We are writing Chapter 2 of the history of personal computers,’ said Nobuo Mii, vice president and general manager of the International Business Machines Corporation’s entry systems division.

How rich is this lode? At one end of the spectrum is John Sculley, the chief executive of Apple Computer Inc., who says these personal communicators could be ‘the mother of all markets.’“‘

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“As We Expand Out Into The Solar System Then, Sure, Earth Could Have Its Own Government”

July 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Future Will Seem Normal“ at the Next Big Future,” Brian Wang’s new post about Earth forty years from now, which is interesting if very accelerated and sci-fi-ish:

“I do not see world government as inevitable (over the next 40 years for sure). But we are seeing this extra layer getting more powers. Trade organizations and treaties. But the UK and China leadership are smart enough to not give up currency sovereignty. They know the game that Germany and France are running.

Long term as we expand out into the solar system then sure Earth could have its own government, but there will still be the layers below. Not sure how it would all split out – like US federal versus states versus local. Or Canada – federal v provinces.

I see a lot more power vesting in the cities. I see mega cities forming. Especially with Sky city – factory mass produced skyscrapers at about ten times less cost and high speed transportation (high speed rail in China and perhaps low pressure or vacuum trains at higher speeds and high energy efficiency, the US could go pocket airports, robot electric cars, and small planes, beamed power could make that work.)

You could have 50 major cities in the 50-300 million pop range. Say 7 in China, 3 in the 200-400 million range and 4 in the 50 million range. Similar number in the US but smaller populations.”

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“We Will Be Able To Design Our Own Products At Home With The Aid Of AI Design Assistants”

July 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Foreign Policy, Vivek Wadhwa of Singularity University hits back at the idea that China is manufacturing America into the ground. Quite the contrary, he argues that manufacturing jobs are returning to the U.S. because of our superior knowledge of AI, though many of the tasks will be handled by robotic hands rather than human ones. A note in the article about the coming personalization of even large-scale products:

“Neil Jacobstein, who chairs the AI track at the Silicon Valley-based graduate program Singularity University, says that AI technologies will find their way into manufacturing and make it ‘personal’: that we will be able to design our own products at home with the aid of AI design assistants. He predicts a ‘creator economy’ in which mass production is replaced by personalized production, with people customizing designs they download from the Internet or develop themselves.

How will we turn these designs into products? By ‘printing’ them at home or at modern-day Kinko’s — shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop, using new manufacturing technologies that are now on the horizon.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“You Would Go From Downtown L.A. To Downtown San Francisco In Under 30 Minutes”

July 19, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Paypal founder, Tesla kingpin and private-sector space pioneer Elon Musk has a vision for the future of travel, and it doesn’t require wheels or wings. From Megan Garber at the Atlantic, Musk briefly describing his vision:

“This system I have in mind, how would you like something that can never crash, is immune to weather, it goes 3 or 4 times faster than the bullet train… it goes an average speed of twice what an aircraft would do. You would go from downtown L.A. to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes. It would cost you much less than an air ticket than any other mode of transport. I think we could actually make it self-powering if you put solar panels on it, you generate more power than you would consume in the system. There’s a way to store the power so it would run 24/7 without using batteries. Yes, this is possible, absolutely.”

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“We Will Preserve A Brain, Slice It Up, Simulate It On A Computer, And Hook It Up To A Robot Body”

July 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality,” Evan R. Goldstein’s odd and fascinating new Chronicle article about the ad infinitum view of life:

“In the basement of the Northwest Science Building here at Harvard University, a locked door is marked with a pink and yellow sign: ‘Caution: Radioactive Material.’ Inside researchers buzz around wearing dour expressions and plastic gloves. Among them is Kenneth Hayworth. He’s tall and gaunt, dressed in dark-blue jeans, a blue polo shirt, and gray running shoes. He looks like someone who sleeps little and eats less.

Hayworth has spent much of the past few years in a windowless room carving brains into very thin slices. He is by all accounts a curious man, known for casually saying things like, ‘The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading: We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body.’ He wants that brain to be his brain. He wants his 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion synapses to be encased in a block of transparent, amber-colored resin—before he dies of natural causes.

Why? Ken Hayworth believes that he can live forever.

But first he has to die.

‘If your body stops functioning, it starts to eat itself,’ he explains to me one drab morning this spring, ‘so you have to shut down the enzymes that destroy the tissue.’ If all goes according to plan, he says cheerfully, ‘I’ll be a perfect fossil.’ Then one day, not too long from now, his consciousness will be revived on a computer. By 2110, Hayworth predicts, mind uploading—the transfer of a biological brain to a silicon-based operating system—will be as common as laser eye surgery is today.”

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“Thousands frozen, and pets too”:

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“There Are Now Far More Books Available, Far More Quickly, On The iPhone Than In The New York Public Library”

July 18, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the New Republic, David A. Bell looks at the future role of brick and mortar libraries in a world without paper, pages and print. The opening:

“THEY ARE, in their very different ways, monuments of American civilization. The first is a building: a grand, beautiful Beaux-Arts structure of marble and stone occupying two blocks’ worth of Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan. The second is a delicate concoction of metal, plastic, and glass, just four and a half inches long, barely a third of an inch thick, and weighing five ounces. The first is the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL). The second is an iPhone. Yet despite their obvious differences, for many people today they serve the same purpose: to read books. And in a development that even just thirty years ago would have seemed like the most absurd science fiction, there are now far more books available, far more quickly, on the iPhone than in the New York Public Library.

It has been clear for some time now that this development would pose one of the greatest challenges that modern libraries—from institutions like the NYPL on down—have ever encountered. Put bluntly, one of their core functions now faces the prospect of obsolescence. What role will libraries have when patrons no longer need to go to them to consult or to borrow books?”

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“We Will Have Serious Voice Recognition”

July 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Bill Gates predicted Apple’s Siri in 1987. From the great Paleofuture blog at the Smithsonian: “Gates predicts the perfection of a technology that has been around for decades, but one that many people of 2012 might associate with the name Siri: voice recognition. ‘Also, we will have serious voice recognition. I expect to wake up and say, ‘Show me some nice Da Vinci stuff,’ and my ceiling, a high-resolution display, will show me what I want to see—or call up any sort of music or video. The world will be online, and you will be able to simulate just about anything.'”

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“What It’s Now Becoming Is An Extension Of Your Mind”

July 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Internet is an extension of the mind but so are books. People couldn’t memorize enough knowledge, so there were those faithful volumes of collected information to do the remembering, the reminding. But there are some not-so-subtle differences between the two tools. Readers would have to seek out information in books, whereas the Internet can be the proactive and anticipate what you want to know–what you need to know–before it even occurs to you. The functions are more complicated, as are the concerns. Although I’m in the camp that thinks it’s a huge win in the big picture. From Stephen Shankland’s new CNet article about Google’s planned future shock:

“What it’s now becoming is an extension of your mind, an omnipresent digital assistant that figures out what you need and supplies it before you even realize you need it.

Think of Google diagnosing your daughter’s illness early based on where she’s been, how alert she is, and her skin’s temperature, then driving your car to school to bring her home while you’re at work. Or Google translating an incomprehensible emergency announcement while you’re riding a train in foreign country. Or Google steering your investment portfolio away from a Ponzi scheme.

Google, in essence, becomes a part of you. Imagine Google playing a customized audio commentary based on what you look at while on a tourist trip and then sharing photo highlights with your friends as you go. Or Google taking over your car when it concludes based on your steering response time and blink rate that you’re no longer fit to drive. Or your Google glasses automatically beaming audio and video to the police when you say a phrase that indicates you’re being mugged.

Exciting? I think so. But it’s also, potentially, a profoundly creepy change.”

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“Someone With Enough Money, And Vanity And Arrogance, Might Attempt It One Day”

July 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We’re really going to eventually do this, aren’t we? We’re going to take the genetic materials of a Neanderthal and clone a member of the species. Some scientist somewhere won’t be able to resist the temptation. From a brief piece at Discover with paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer:

“Could we ever clone these extinct people?

Stringer: Science is moving on so fast. The first bit of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA was recovered in 1997. No one then could have believed that 10 years later we might have most of the genome. And a few years after that, we’d have whole Denisovan and Neanderthal genomes available. So no one would have thought cloning was a possibility. Now, at least theoretically, if someone had enough money, and I’d say stupidity, to do it, you could cut and paste those Denisovan mutations into a modern human genome, and then implant that into an egg and then grow a Denisovan.

I think it would be completely unethical to do anything like that, but unfortunately someone with enough money, and vanity and arrogance, might attempt it one day.These creatures lived in the past in their own environments, in their own social groups. Bringing isolated individuals back, for our own curiosity or arrogant purposes, would be completely wrong.”

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“When This Child Was Born, The Obstetrician, Looking At It Was Horrified”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Dr. Fredric Neuman’s harrowing Psychology Today article, “The Cyclops Child,” is one of the more bruising things I’ve read in a long time. It’s the psychiatrist’s recollection of being witness to horribly, hopelessly deformed newborns when he was an intern 50 years ago. The doctors would tell the parents that the child was born dead, and the infant would surreptitiously be given minimal care until it passed away. It was done to spare the feelings of the parents, but it’s obvious they should have been told and involved in the decision. Regardless, it’s a heartrending story. The opening paragraph:

“Probably every physician can think of one patient who affected him more than any other. The patient who has haunted me through the years was a child that I saw for only a little time at the very beginning of my career. I was an intern at a Catholic institution. I mention that because it seems to me relevant to the ethical considerations that swirled about the care of this infant. When this child was born, the obstetrician, looking at it was horrified. It was a ‘monster.’ That was the medical term used to describe a grossly misshapen baby. The doctor was concerned, then, first of all, about the effect on its mother of seeing the child. Therefore, he told the parents that it was born dead; and that the body had been disposed of.  But the child was alive. This particular ‘monster’ had deformities that were not consistent with it living for any length of time. The obstetrician must have recognized that immediately and chose to spare the parents the special anguish of looking at and knowing about this abnormal birth. But did he have the right to tell them a lie about such a critical matter? I’m not sure that there is a law to deal with such a strange situation, but I am sure the obstetrician violated medical canons. He short-circuited the parents’ wishes and concerns. Plainly, they had the right to know the truth. If a medical malpractice action had been instituted, the doctor would have been liable. By telling this lie, he was risking his career. The other people in the delivery suite were also complicit and also liable. As far as I was concerned, however, he had done the right thing.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“He’s Permanently Damaged His Credibility”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

I generally applaud contrarians, even when I completely disagree with them. People who go against the grain are very useful to the larger discussion. Baseball stats guru Bill James has long been one of those flies in the ointment pointing out truths about sports and beyond and making the conversation richer for it. But it will be tough to ever take his reasoning seriously again after his ludicrous defense of Joe Paterno’s role in enabling Jerry Sandusky’s disgraceful behavior. Why James would try to split hairs over minor points when the preponderance of evidence against Paterno and Penn State stares him in the face is beyond me. He’s permanently damaged his credibility. From James:

“The Freeh reports states quite explicitly and at least six times (a) that the 1998 incident did NOT involve any criminal conduct—on the part of Sandusky or anyone else—and (b) that Paterno had forced the resignation of Sandusky before the 1998 incident occurred … In any case, what EXACTLY is it that Paterno should have done? Fire him again? It is preposterous to argue, in my view, that PATERNO should have taken action after all of the people who were legally charged to take action had thoroughly examined the case and decided that no action was appropriate.”

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“He Said That My Kind Of Strength Was Unbelievable. It Was A One In A Million.”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Thomas Inch, bicycling.

From “The Strongest Man in the World,” Burkhard Bilger’s ungated New Yorker piece about Brian Shaw, a Colorado man born to move mountains, and the new wave of strength competitions:

“In the summer of 2005, when Shaw was twenty-three, he went to Las Vegas for a strength-and-conditioning convention. He was feeling a little adrift. He had a degree in wellness management from Black Hills State University, in South Dakota, and was due to start a master’s program at Arizona State that fall. But after moving to Tempe, a few weeks earlier, and working out with the football team, he was beginning to have second thoughts. ‘This was a big Division I, Pac-10 school, but I was a little surprised, to be honest,’ he told me. ‘I was so much stronger than all of them.’ One day at the convention, Shaw came upon a booth run by Sorinex, a company that has designed weight-lifting systems for the Denver Broncos and other football programs. The founder, Richard Sorin, liked to collect equipment used by old-time strongmen and had set out a few items for passersby to try. There were some kettle bells lying around, like cannonballs with handles attached, and a clumsy-looking thing called a Thomas Inch dumbbell.

Inch was an early-twentieth-century British strongman famous for his grip. His dumbbell, made of cast iron, weighed a hundred and seventy-two pounds and had a handle as thick as a tin can, difficult to grasp. In his stage shows, Inch would offer a prize of more than twenty thousand dollars in today’s currency to anyone who could lift the dumbbell off the floor with one hand. For more than fifty years, no one but Inch managed it, and only a few dozen have done so in the half century since. ‘A thousand people will try to lift it in a weekend, and a thousand won’t lift it,’ Sorin told me. ‘A lot of strong people have left with their tails between their legs.’ It came as something of a shock, therefore, to see Shaw reach over and pick up the dumbbell as if it were a paperweight. ‘He was just standing there with a blank look on his face,’ Sorin said. ‘It was, like, What’s so very hard about this?’

When Shaw set down the dumbbell and walked away, Sorin ran over to find him in the crowd. ‘His eyes were huge,’ Shaw recalls. ‘He said, ‘Can you do that again?’ And I said, ‘Of course I can.’ So he took a picture and sent it to me afterward.’ Sorin went on to tell Shaw about the modern strongman circuit—an extreme sport, based on the kinds of feat performed by men like Inch, which had a growing following worldwide. ‘He said that my kind of strength was unbelievable. It was a one in a million. If I didn’t do something with my abilities, I was stupid. That was pretty cool.’

Three months later, Shaw won his first strongman event.”

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Shaw deadlifting 1073 pounds this year with a torn biceps:

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“Stragglers Still Hoping For An Immersive Experience At The Multiplex Were Suckers And Masochists”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

My little brother, that provocateur Steven Boone, summing up the loud, jarring, cynical last decade of multiplex fare in a recent article at Capital New York:

“The video game industry is currently in a war that the movie industry fought and decided last decade. It’s a struggle between loud, assaultive, photorealistic game design that rewards wispy attention spans while demanding minimal problem-solving skills of its players and … games where shotguns to the face and chainsaws to the jugular are not so essential.  

The American film industry settled on high-resolution ultraviolence as the default multiplex experience sometime after 9/11 and sometime before its superheroic screen response, The Dark Knight. The violence is not necessarily a matter of content but of the graceless way shots jam up against one another now, keeping us invested through a constant state of agitation where narrative suspense used to do the trick.  

During that decade, many viewers retreated from mainstream blockbuster cinema into the bosom of what critics call a television renaissance. So many smart, adult, spellbinding, hilarious TV shows, the story goes. Any stragglers still hoping for an immersive experience at the multiplex were suckers and masochists.”

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From “Fuck You Productions”:

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“Woody Guthrie Had Composed ‘This Land Is Your Land’ As A Bitter Parody Of ‘God Bless America'”

July 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

How cool is this? The New York Review of Books has pulled from its archives a 1981 essay by Murray Kempton about Woody Guthrie, who had a machine that attempted to kill fascists, though they’re still there. Kempton’s article is a review of several Guthrie books that were published just as a nostalgia salesman was moving into the White House, having promised a return to a past that never existed. People believed the narrative and began voting their unlikely dreams instead of their realities. The result was this land became less and less yours and mine. The opening of the great piece:

“The genius of our politics is the art of distracting the resentments of a cheated middle class and letting them fall upon a worse-cheated lower class. And so we have the revolution of Woody Guthrie’s dream: the Okies and their sons and daughters have elected a one-time California labor agitator president of the United States. This triumphant populist tribune is, of course, Mr. Reagan.

Joe Klein reminds us that Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ has been recorded by such repositories of the national self-satisfaction as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the New Christy Minstrels, and Tex Ritter. It is as secure in the pantheon of celebratory anthems as ‘America the Beautiful’ and probably sits higher in the affections of school children than ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ Marching bands saluted the new president with its strains when they passed before him on Inauguration Day.

Woody Guthrie had composed ‘This Land Is Your Land’ as a bitter parody of ‘God Bless America.’ It had originally closed with the stanza:

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief office I saw my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me.

These words and like notes of alienation were excised from ‘This Land Is Your Land’ when it was smoothed into the affirmative expression that soothes us today. Guthrie accepted the amendment, but the pain of the sacrifice lingered so long that, in the early 1960s, when he was near dying, he took his son, Arlo, into the backyard and taught him the old verses, because, Klein tells us, ‘he was afraid that if Arlo didn’t learn them, they’d be forgotten.’

The genius of our politics also extends to the transformation of the song of protest into the hymn of acceptance.”

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“Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered / I’ve seen lots of funny men / Some will rob you with a six-gun / And some with a fountain pen”:

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“This Structuring, Which Is Done Primarily To Avoid Paying Taxes, Will Look Bad To Most Americans”

July 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

At Business Insider, Henry Blodget guesses why Mitt Romney won’t reveal his tax information. The Governor will have to keep playing defense until he releases the documents. Blodget’s supposition:

  • Romney has made hundreds of millions of dollars
  • He has paid very little of that (on a percentage basis) in taxes
  • He has made hundreds of millions of dollars in part because he has structured most of his income in ways that enable him to pay the least amount of taxes possible
  • This “structuring” of income has likely taken full advantage of things like the ludicrous “carried interest” tax exemption that allows private-equity investors to pay capital gains taxes on income that is actually fees [This tax treatment is one of the most outrageous and unfair elements in the entire tax code. There is no logical basis for it, and it benefits only the richest people in the country.]
  • This “structuring” has also likely taken advantage of offshore accounts, the contribution of hard-to-value securities at low valuations to Romney’s IRA (whereupon they exploded in value), and other sophisticated tools. These tools are, theoretically, available to anyone, but, in practice, are available only to those with tens of thousands of dollars to spend every year on tax-and-estate planning.
  • This structuring, which (let’s be honest) is done primarily to avoid paying taxes, will look bad to most Americans, who will know instinctively that it’s done to avoid paying taxes and that it’s not something they will ever be able to afford to do–and, therefore, will seem unfair.

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“China Could Double US Car Sales In 2017 / 2018”

July 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

China is on pace to become by far the world’s largest auto consumer in the near term. Sure, an economic collapse could slow that growth, but it will certainly be a world leader in the category. A nation with that much consumption, that much control over its citizenry and a huge sense of its own destiny, could decide the future of transportation and alternative energy. What if China announced it was allowing only electric cars by a certain date and then built the infrastructure to support that shift with the same zeal that it shows in routinely scraping the sky? From the Next Big Future:

“Auto sales in China may rise to 19.2 million this year, about 1 million lower than AlixPartners estimated last year. Sales in the world’s most populous country may increase to 21.4 million in 2013 and 23.5 million in 2014, the report said.

It is estimated that China’s automobile market will keep a stable growth from 2012 to 2015, with a compound annual growth rate of 8.1%. The sales volume is expected to reach 25.287 million by 2015.

China could double US car sales in 2017 / 2018 and be equal the combined car sales in Western Europe and the United States.”

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Jack Nicholson goes gasless in 1978:

“In 1948, I Started To Carve Into Its Face A Mounted Figure Of Crazy Horse”

July 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Perhaps a photo of Crazy Horse from 1877, though authenticity is disputed.

Interesting 1961 episode of To Tell the Truth which featured sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, who blasted and carved a mountain-scale monument of Crazy Horse in South Dakota. The artist was approached by Chief Henry Standing Bear who asked him to pay homage to a Native American hero. It began a lifetime work for the self-trained sculptor. Ziolkowski passed away in 1982, but his family has continued the construction.

An eyewitness report about the death of Crazy Horse from the September 27, 1877 New York Times: “The Schoharie Republican prints a private letter, addressed to Francisco Wood, of the village, by his son, Edwin D., who is in the Army, and as one of the guard, was present at the capture and killing of Crazy Horse. The writer said, under the date of September 16: ‘We have had considerable excitement here within the last two weeks on account of Crazy Horse. We started out on the 4th of this month with eight companies of the Third Cavalry to bring him and his band into the agency, but did not succeed in capturing him. The next day he was brought in by a lot of friendly Indians, who are enlisted and paid as soldiers. There were also a number of his own warriors with him. When the carriage drove to the guard-house, Crazy Horse got out and walked a short distance, the refused to go in. Then the struggle began. The guard surrounded him, and one of them stabbed him with a bayonet. He was then taken in the Adjutant’s office where he died in about six hours. There are all sorts of rumors about the way he was killed. Some of the papers say he stabbed himself, others say he was killed by another Indian, called Little Big Man, but I was one of the guards myself, and was there when he was stabbed, and know the man who did it. I think this was the only thing that saved a row, because there were a great many Indians there at the time, and one shot would have been sufficient to start a fight. But I think there will be no more trouble after this, because he was undoubtedly the greatest warrior that ever lived. His father was with him in all his battles with the whites; he was also with him at the time of his death. Crazy Horse was 37 years of age. He was born on the North Fork of the Cheyenne River. He fought closer to the whites than any other chief that ever lived. He has killed 37 white men beside what he has killed in battle. The other chiefs were all jealous of him. He could have been the chief of all the Indians, but would not; he only wanted to roam around the country with his band and fight the Snakes and the Crows and steal horses. The next morning he was taken to the Spotted Tail Agency, where he is buried.”

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“Striking Changes In Family Structure Have Also Broadened Income Gaps”

July 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Excellent work by Jason DeParle in the New York Times analyzing a lesser-discussed cause of American income disparity, children in working-poor homes being raised by single parents. An excerpt:

“The economic storms of recent years have raised concerns about growing inequality and questions about a core national faith, that even Americans of humble backgrounds have a good chance of getting ahead. Most of the discussion has focused on labor market forces like falling blue-collar wages and lavish Wall Street pay.

But striking changes in family structure have also broadened income gaps and posed new barriers to upward mobility. College-educated Americans like the Faulkners are increasingly likely to marry one another, compounding their growing advantages in pay. Less-educated women like Ms. Schairer, who left college without finishing her degree, are growing less likely to marry at all, raising children on pinched paychecks that come in ones, not twos.

Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.

‘It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,’ said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.”

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“What We Require Now Is A New Framework For Thinking And Talking About The Economy”

July 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Machine and the Garden,” a smart New York Times Op-Ed piece by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer which suggests that the language we use to explain the economy is all wrong:

“Call it the ‘Machinebrain’ picture of the world: markets are perfectly efficient, humans perfectly rational, incentives perfectly clear and outcomes perfectly appropriate. From this a series of other truths necessarily follows: regulation and taxes are inherently regrettable because they impede the machine’s optimal workings. Government fiscal stimulus is wasteful. The rich by definition deserve to be so and the poor as well.

This self-enclosed metaphor is the gospel of market fundamentalists. But there is simply no evidence for it. Empirically, trickle-down economics has failed. Tax cuts for the rich have never once yielded more net revenue for the country. The 2008 crash and the Great Recession prove irrefutably how inefficient and irrational markets truly are.

What we require now is a new framework for thinking and talking about the economy, grounded in modern understandings of how things actually work. Economies, as social scientists now understand, aren’t simple, linear and predictable, but complex, nonlinear and ecosystemic. An economy isn’t a machine; it’s a garden. It can be fruitful if well tended, but will be overrun by noxious weeds if not.

In this new framework, which we call Gardenbrain, markets are not perfectly efficient but can be effective if well managed. Where Machinebrain posits that it’s every man for himself, Gardenbrain recognizes that we’re all better off when we’re all better off. Where Machinebrain treats radical inequality as purely the predictable result of unequally distributed talent and work ethic, Gardenbrain reveals it as equally the self-reinforcing and compounding result of unequally distributed opportunity.

Gardenbrain challenges many of today’s most conventional policy ideas.”

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“He Urged A Single Vast City To Be Built On Top Of The Niagara Falls To House The Entire Population Of The United States of America”

July 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I read somewhere recently that if all of contemporary America had the population density of Brooklyn, we would be able to fit everyone into New Hampshire. The rest of the country would grow wild and beautiful while New Hampshire would stink like a graveyard restroom. King C. Gillette, razor magnate and Utopian socialist, encouraged the design of something similar in the 1890s: a hyper-concentrated metropolis made of porcelain buildings. Never quite happened. From “Impossible Cities,” by Darran Anderson at 3:AM:

“The inventor of the safety razor, business magnate and socialist, King Camp Gillette had similarly ambitious plans, writing The Human Drift in which he urged a single vast city to be built on top of the Niagara Falls (powered naturally by hydro-electricity) to house the entire population of the United States of America. It would measure 135 miles by 45 and consist of cylindrical skyscrapers made from porcelain. Pre-empting Fritz Lang’s Expressionist dystopia by decades, its name would be Metropolis.”

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“It May Be Time To Jettison The Notion That Robots In The Future Will Have Grippers Or Claw”

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

The ExoHand by Festo is a robot hand that’s worn like a glove. From David J. Hill at Singularity Hub: “It may be time to jettison the notion that robots in the future will have grippers or claws for hands. The German robotics company Festo recently unveiled the ExoHand, a sophisticated robotic hand that is capable of the fine motor skills that allows the human hand to have a delicate touch or perform complex manipulations.

The ExoHand comes in two forms: as the extremity of a robotic arm or a wearable exoskeleton glove. The system is designed so that the glove can aid assembly line workers performing repetitive tasks with their hands or be used for the remote manipulation of the robotic arm by a user wearing the glove.”

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“A Life In Which None Of These Possible Aspects Of Character Are Developed May Seem To Be A Life Strangely Barren”

July 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From philosopher Susan Wolf’s seminal 1982 essay, “Moral Saints” (PDF download), an argument against giving until it hurts, a passage that could support evolutionary truth or rationalize bourgeois comfort–or do both:

“If the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry ot healing the sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand. Although no one of the interests or tastes in the category containing these latter activities could be claimed to be a necessary element in a life well lived, a life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren.

The reasons why a moral saint cannot, in general, encourage the discovery and development of significant nonmoral interests and skills are not logical but practical reasons. There are, in addition, a class of nonmoral characteristics that a moral saint cannot encourage in himself for reasons that are not just practical. There is a more substantial tension between having any of these qualities unashamedly and being a moral saint. These qualities might be described as going against the moral grain. For example, a cynical or sarcastic wit, or a sense of humor that appreciates this kind of wit in others, requires that one take an attitude of resignation and pessimism toward the flaws and vices to be found in the world. A moral saint, on the other hand, has reason to take an attitude in opposition to this—he should try to look for the best in people, give them the benefit of the doubt as long as possible, try to improve regrettable situations as long as there is any hope of success. This suggests that, although a moral saint might well enjoy a good episode of Father Knows Best, he may not in good conscience be able to laugh at a Marx Brothers movie or enjoy a play by George Bernard Shaw.

An interest in something like gourmet cooking will be, for different reasons, difficult for a moral saint to rest easy with. For it seems to me that no plausible argument can justify the use of human resources involved in producing a pâté de canard en croute against possible alternative benificient ends to which these resources might be put. If there is a justification for the institution of haute cuisine, it is one which rests on the decision not to justify every activity against morally beneficial alternatives, and this is a decision a moral saint will never make. Presumably, an interest to high fashion or interior design will fare much the same, as will, very possibly, a cultivation of the finer arts as well.”

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“[They] Were The First Subscribers To The Telephone Herald“

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

These classic 1901 photographs show the Budapest offices of Telefon Hirmondo (or Telephone Herald), a newspaper service read via telephone to subscribers all over that city. Begun in 1893 by Transylvanian inventor Theodore Puskas–who died just a month after the service was launched–the Herald featured updated news all day and live music at night. It cost about two cents a day at the outset. At its height, the company had more than 15,000 subscribers and licensed similar setups in Italy and America. Local department stores, hotels and restaurants purchased several lines so that their customers could be hooked into flowing news and entertainment almost a century before Wi-Fi. The popularity of radio in the 1920s, however, made the telephone newspaper superfluous.

From an article about the U.S. iteration (in Newark, New Jersey) in the March 30, 1912 edition of Telephony:

While all the rest of the nation had to stop work and hang around the newspaper bulletin boards waiting in an agony of suspense for news from the Polo Grounds, in New York, last October, for half an hour, or perhaps thirty-three minutes, after the epoch-making innings there were ended, a privileged few in Newark, N. J., were able, while sitting in their own homes, to follow instantaneously, play by play, the demonstration of the fact that the Giants were next to the best baseball experts. These Newark folk who received news more promptly than that commodity had ever before been served in America were the first subscribers to the Telephone Herald, a newspaper which is independent of the Typographical Union and the Allied Printing Trades Council, for it is published over wires instead of upon paper. In other words, the subscriber does not read the Telephone Herald, but merely listens to it. He may listen to as much or as little of it as he likes; but whether he listens or not the Herald grinds on in one continuous edition from 8 o’clock in the morning until 10:30 o’clock in the evening. Its news is constantly on tap, like water or gas, for the small sum of $18 a year, or five cents a day. Additional news taps in one house are installed for $7 a year, or two cents a day. The Telephone Herald gets out a Sunday paper seven days a week with all the usual ‘magazine’ features, fiction, fashions, children’s stories and all the rest of it. Its one redeeming feature is that it has no comic supplement, thank Heaven!

In the evening the Herald ceases to be a newspaper and becomes an entertainer, furnishing a varied programme of instrumental music, songs, recitals, lectures or anything else that can be transmitted by wire.

While the telephone newspaper is a novelty on this side of the Atlantic one has been published regularly for eighteen years at Budapest, Hungary, under the name of Telefon Hirmondo.•


The schedule for the Newark version:

  • 8:00: Exact astronomical time.
  • 8:00-9:00: Weather, late telegrams, London exchange quotations; chief items of interest from the morning papers.
  • 9:00-9:45: Special sales at the various stores; social programs for the day.
  • 9:45-10:00: Local personals and small items.
  • 10:00-11:30: New York Stock Exchange quotations and market letter.
  • 11:30-12:00: New York miscellaneous items.
  • Noon: Exact astronomical time.
  • 12:00-12:30: Latest general news;naval, military and congressional notes.
  • 12:30-1:00: Midday New York Stock Exchange quotations.
  • 1:00-2:00: Repetition of the half day’s most interesting news.
  • 2:00-2:15: Foreign cable dispatches.
  • 2:15-2:30: Trenton and Washington items.
  • 2:30-2:45: Fashion notes and household hints.
  • 2:45-3:15: Sporting news; theatrical news.
  • 3:15-3:30: New York Stock Exchange closing quotations.
  • 3:30-5:00: Music, readings, lectures.
  • 5:00-6:00: Stories and talks for the children.
  • 8:00-10:30: Vaudeville, concert, opera.

“The Second, And Much Bigger, Problem Is That The People Who Are Doing It Are Basically Morons”

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

Gallows, 1916, Brownsville, Texas.

The death penalty is incredibly unevenly distributed based on race, financial standing and gender. Some innocent people are put to death because the system (and the people who make up that system) are fallible. And the punitive measure hasn’t proven to reduce crime. But yet it remains a part of justice in many parts of the United States. From an article by Caspar Melville in the New Humanist, a passage with defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith about the use of DNA in convictions:

“But doesn’t DNA therefore provide a more reliable scientific tool? Sorry, but no. ‘It’s true that DNA testing is a real science, unlike hair analysis, and in laboratory settings it is very reliable,’ explains Stafford Smith. ‘But there are two big problems: first, instead of doing it in a pristine lab you are doing it in a grubby crime scene. The second, and much bigger, problem is that the people who are doing it are basically morons. Obviously I’m overstating, but not by much. People who become forensic technicians in a crime lab are just not the sharpest knives in the drawer. So if the odds of getting a false match scientifically are one in 10 million, but the odds of the nitwit in the lab mixing up the samples are one in ten, then the scientific odds are irrelevant. I can only say this – I’ve had three cases with DNA evidence presented at trial, and I know for a fact that each one had it wrong.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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