Excerpts

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“Nobody Messed With My Hippocampus Or Your Prefrontal Cortex”

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

A consequence of our information-rich world is that we forget a lot more than we used to, though that doesn’t mean our memories have grown worse. We likely also remember as much as ever–it’s just that the information we possess at any given time shifts more now. The Internet is a “brain” outside of our brain, and some people worry about that the way Socrates was concerned that the written word was an affront to oral tradition. He was right to think that writing would alter who we are, but that’s probably just a natural part of the evolution of the species. From Evan Selinger’s new Slate article about technology-enhanced memory:

“Ubiquitous information and communication technology is a major player in the memory enhancement game. I’m not alluding to products that target impairments, like the iPhone app for combating dementia. Rather, I mean commonplace software that people use to make recall less taxing, more extensive, or easier to visualize.   

For instance, Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA protest made 162 million users, accustomed to turning to the site for those idle questions that crop up every day, feel absent-minded. Nobody messed with my hippocampus or your prefrontal cortex. Rather, Wikipedia’s actions were jarring because Internet use affects transactive memory, which is ‘the capacity to remember who knows what.’ If we know information is available online, we’re inclined to remember where it can be found, rather than struggle to retain the facts. This evolutionary tendency to off-load taxing aspects of cognition into the environment—natural or built—extends beyond using devices to recall information we’re already familiar with.

This is called ‘extended cognition,’ and it plays a crucial role in a controversial view called the ‘extended mind’ thesis. Advocates argue that data-management technologies, from low-tech pads to high-tech computers, don’t always function as mere memory-prompting tools. Sometimes, they deserve to be understood as parts of our mind. “

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“What would it mean to have no place in time?”:

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“Pan Am Would Start Taking Reservations For Commercial Passenger Flights To The Moon”

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

Pan Am began the “First Moon Flight’s Club” in 1968, a waiting list for civilian space travel before we even landed a man on the moon. It wasn’t just a gimmick–it was something that the airline’s founder Juan Trippe believed would happen in the near future. From Cosmos:

“IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE 1968. Three men — Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders — were coasting 100 km above the Moon, the first astronauts to ever circle it. From inside their tiny Apollo 8 command capsule, they pointed a TV camera toward Earth, showing millions of viewers back home what no one had ever seen before. They snapped a famous picture — Earthrise — of our blue world ascending above the lunar horizon. And then they read aloud the story of creation according to the Book of Genesis.

Back home, a record TV audience was watching. When transmission ended 17 minutes later, an announcer broke the reverie to breathlessly report that Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan American — one of the world’s largest airlines at the time — had announced that Pan Am would start taking reservations for commercial passenger flights to the Moon.

The next day, The New York Times reported that Pan Am had been deluged with inquiries and had established a First Moon Flights Club — effectively, a glorified waiting list for space tourists. Within days, Trans-World Airlines followed suit.”

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“In the beginning…”:

“I’m so tired and I wish I was the moon tonight”:

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“Thirty-Five Years Later, It’s The Only Apollo Science Experiment Still Running”

February 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From “What Neil & Buzz Left on the Moon,” on NASA’s official site:

“The most famous thing Neil Armstrong left on the moon 35 years ago is a footprint, a boot-shaped depression in the gray moondust. Millions of people have seen pictures of it, and one day, years from now, lunar tourists will flock to the Sea of Tranquility to see it in person. Peering over the rails … “hey, mom, is that the first one?”

Will anyone notice, 100 feet away, something else Armstrong left behind?

Ringed by footprints, sitting in the moondust, lies a 2-foot wide panel studded with 100 mirrors pointing at Earth: the ‘lunar laser ranging retroreflector array.’ Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong put it there on July 21, 1969, about an hour before the end of their final moonwalk. Thirty-five years later, it’s the only Apollo science experiment still running.

University of Maryland physics professor Carroll Alley was the project’s principal investigator during the Apollo years, and he follows its progress today. ‘Using these mirrors,’ explains Alley, ‘we can ‘ping’ the moon with laser pulses and measure the Earth-moon distance very precisely. This is a wonderful way to learn about the moon’s orbit and to test theories of gravity.’

Here’s how it works: A laser pulse shoots out of a telescope on Earth, crosses the Earth-moon divide, and hits the array. Because the mirrors are ‘corner-cube reflectors,’ they send the pulse straight back where it came from. ‘It’s like hitting a ball into the corner of a squash court,’ explains Alley. Back on Earth, telescopes intercept the returning pulse–‘usually just a single photon,’ he marvels.”

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A Brief Note From 1897 About A Two-Headed Cat

February 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"While the two heads were fairly well formed one of them had only one eye." (Image by law_keven@Wikipedia.)

From the January 17, 1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“There was a two headed cat at Bellevue hospital, New York, yesterday afternoon. It was dead and in a bottle of alcohol. H.M. Vanderbilt of 249 Jefferson Avenue, this city, took the curiosity to the hospital to show the physicians. The cat was born in his cellar, he said, and lived only a few minutes. While the two heads were fairly well formed one of them had only one eye. The physicians at Bellevue were anxious to have the curiosity left at the hospital, but after exhibiting it, Mr. Vanderbilt brought it back to this city.”

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“How Did Our Perception Of Ourselves End Up So Far Out Of Sync With Reality?”

February 16, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “The Mobility Myth,” Timothy Noah’s New Republic piece which argues that opportunity for upward mobility in America has narrowed as the economic divide has widened:

“When Americans express indifference about the problem of unequal incomes, it’s usually because they see the United States as a land of boundless opportunity. Sure, you’ll hear it said, our country has pretty big income disparities compared with Western Europe. And sure, those disparities have been widening in recent decades. But stark economic inequality is the price we pay for living in a dynamic economy with avenues to advancement that the class-bound Old World can only dream about. We may have less equality of economic outcomes, but we have a lot more equality of economic opportunity.

The problem is, this isn’t true. Most of Western Europe today is both more equal in incomes and more economically mobile than the United States. And it isn’t just Western Europe. Countries as varied as Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and Pakistan all have higher degrees of income mobility than we do. A nation that prides itself on its lack of class rigidity has, in short, become significantly more economically rigid than many other developed countries. How did our perception of ourselves end up so far out of sync with reality?” (Thanks Browser.)

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“It May Be The Extension Of Consciousness”

February 15, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

If I was asked to name a single recent book that best crystallizes the media-drenched world we live in today, the clever things we’ve done to ourselves and each other, the way the sun never sets nor rises anymore in our endless stream of flickering images, the way we’re smarter and dumber, closer together and further apart, I would choose Douglas Coupland’s Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!  That may seem like an odd thing to say about a book written about someone who died in 1980, but Coupland’s brilliant first chapter analyzes the contemporary media landscape with rare insight and then proceeds to march forward from McLuhan’s birth as the philosopher grows to understand the signs and symbols and links of a brave new world that was in its infancy (and still is). Coupland is mostly known for his fiction, and that’s a proper match for McLuhan, whose ideas were fantastic–they couldn’t be true, yet, more often then not, they were.

The 1962 McLuhan quote that Coupland uses at the book’s outset:

“The next medium, whatever it is–it may be the extension of consciousness–will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip it into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”

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“You know nothing of my work”:

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Flannery O’Connor, In A Bright Mood (1947)

February 15, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

"She was touched by evil and no doubt knew it." (Image by Cmacauley.)

This classic photograph profiles arguably the greatest American short-story writer, Flannery O’Connor, in a happy moment with friends Robie Macauley and Arthur Koestler. O’Connor, who suffered from lupus, managed in her brief life to find all of the darkness of humanity in narrow strips of the South. How could someone whose illness made it necessary to live a sheltered life have such a deep understanding of terror? Did she herself possess the capacity for great evil, which remained dormant for reasons we can’t quite understand? From “Touched by Evil,” Joseph O’Neill’s excellent 2009 Atlantic consideration of O’Connor and her work:

“One problem with O’Connor the exegesist is that she narrows the scope of her work, even for Catholic readers. To decode her fiction for its doctrinal or supernatural content is to render it dreary, even false, because whatever her private purposes, O’Connor was above all faithful to a baleful comic vision derived, surely, from an ancient, artistically wholesome tradition of misanthropy. Nonetheless, a spiritual drama is playing out. Only it is not the one put forward by the self-explaining author, in which she figures as an onlooker occupying the high ground of piety. On the contrary, Flannery O’Connor’s criticism reveals her as scarily belonging to the low world she evokes. She was touched by evil and no doubt knew it. That is what makes her so wickedly good.”

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“Each Rep Was A Carnival Of Toil And Pain”

February 15, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

More than anything else, George Butler and Charles Gaines’ 1977 pseudo-documentary, Pumping Iron, brought the appeal of muscle mass to America. A loose look inside the world of competitive bodybuilding starring a charismatic if Machiavellian Arnold Schwarzenegger, the film focused on Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, which was ground zero for bicep building and steroid taking in the U.S. The original Gold’s is the focus of Paul Solotaroff’s new Men’s Journal article, “Muscle Beach and the Dawn of Huge.” The opening:

“Robby Robinson, a wedge of black marble, arrived in Venice Beach in 1975 with one oversize suitcase and seven dollars. That was every dime he had after quitting his job and selling everything of value but the trophies he’d won at bodybuilding shows in the Jim Crow South. He’d left behind a wife, three small children, and a certain localized fame as the best-ever body in the state of Florida, fronting 20-inch biceps, a 28-inch waist, and 205 pounds of peaked, freak muscle on his hourglass, 5-foot-8 frame. But if your dream back then was to make the cover of Muscle Builder and storm the palace of giants in your sport, there was one thing to do and one place to do it: Join Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach. With the ocean at its back, the sun through its skylights, and the biggest men on Earth trooping in by the dozen to bench 450 before breakfast, Gold’s was Camelot-by-the-shore. You felt its pull in your hyper­trophied heart, deep in the belly of that reckless muscle.

Robinson, born and raised in the swamps of Tallahassee by an illiterate mother and a bootlegging father who later abandoned his 14 children, had a deep and perfectly rational terror of whites. Driving to shows in Mississippi and Georgia, he had seen the signs posted on rural light poles: niggers, don’t get caught here come sundown. But it was a letter from a white man that had brought him to Venice: a written invitation from no less than Joe Weider, the publisher of Muscle Builder, to come out and join his stable of champion bodies living and training large in Los Angeles. Robinson got off the plane expecting to be met by Weider, or if not by him then by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Weider’s Austrian prince, who’d won the title of Mr. Olympia five times running. Neither showed up, though, and after standing around for hours, Robinson tossed the suitcase over his shoulder and walked nine miles to Venice in platform heels.

He found a place to crash at a fellow bodybuilder’s and showed up at Gold’s one morning that spring, gawking through the window, dumbstruck. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to train. I was so in awe. All my idols in one room! Arnold and Denny Gable, Bob Birdsong and Franco Columbu; these beasts working out with no shirts or shoes and a crowd of people watching from the street.’ The gym manager, Ken Waller (a Mr. America and Mr. Universe), saw Robinson hulking by the door. ‘You,’ he growled. ‘You wanna train here? Fine: Come lift what we lift.’ He pointed to a pair of humongous dumbbells, 150-­pounders with tapered grips. ‘Get down on that bench and give me 10,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, get the fuck out and stay out.’ Robinson, who’d built himself in backwoods gyms, had never seen dumbbells half so big. Somehow he got them onto his thighs, then, trembling, winched his back down on the bench. Each rep was a carnival of toil and pain, the weights teetering as they went up and ticked back down, the fibers of his mid-pecs shrieking. ‘I’ve no idea how I did that set,’ says Robinson, now 65 and still wondrously carved, his traps and triceps bulking through a linen shirt, his waistline waspish as ever. ‘But the adrenaline going through me then, that drive to be one of them — it was like a double shot of steroids and B-12.’ He fought the 10th rep up, screaming and twisting, then dropped the weights on the concrete floor. ‘You’re in,’ grunted Waller. ‘You’re one of us. Now go and give me a dead lift of 700.'”

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“Can you believe how much I am in heaven?”

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“He Was Thin, Tearful And Tense”

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

From an NPR report by Howard Berkes about the recently deceased aerospace engineer Roger Boisjoly, who fought like mad but futilely to stop the launch of the doomed 1986 Challenger space shuttle:

‘The explosion of Challenger and the deaths of its crew, including Teacher-in Space Christa McAuliffe, traumatized the nation and left Boisjoly disabled by severe headaches, steeped in depression and unable to sleep. When I visited him at his Utah home in April of 1987, he was thin, tearful and tense. He huddled in the corner of a couch, his arms tightly folded on his chest. But he was ready to speak publicly.

‘I’m very angry that nobody listened,’ Boisjoly told me. And he asked himself, he said, if he could have done anything different. But then a flash of certainty returned.

‘We were talking to the right people,’ he said. ‘We were talking to the people who had the power to stop that launch.'”

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“Obviously a major malfunction”:

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“A Majority Of Catholic Voters In The Poll Were At Odds With The Church’s Official Stance”

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

The Catholic Church is run by old white men who lead materially comfortable existences, and the television industry is only slightly better. Maybe that’s why the TV analysis of the birth control brouhaha–even in many liberal outlets–has been so skewed in favor of the Catholic Church. I continually hear how President Obama is going to pay a price for the conflict, and I just don’t see it. Poll results from the New York Times:

“On contraceptive coverage, 65 percent of voters in the poll said they supported the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover the cost of birth control, and nearly as many, 59 percent, said the health insurance plans of religiously affiliated employers should cover the cost of birth control.

In a compromise last week, President Obama said insurance companies could shoulder the costs required under the new federal health care law, but the Conference of Catholic Bishops and other religious leaders continue to oppose the rule.

A majority of Catholic voters in the poll were at odds with the church’s official stance, agreeing with most other voters that religiously affiliated employers should offer health insurance that provides contraception. Jennifer Davison, 38, a Catholic from Lomita, Calif., agrees with the federal requirement. ‘My opinion is that it is a personal issue rather than a religious issue,’ she said in a follow-up interview.”

“Are You In Any Sense A Newscaster?”

February 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Walter Winchell wielded a fearsome power from the 1930s through the 1950s, via his newspaper gossip column and radio show, and often used his influence poorly and viciously. He was immensely famous during his prime and nearly completely forgotten by his death in 1972. Winchell appeared on What’s My Line? in 1952. At the 18-minute mark. 

Dick Cavett recalled spending an evening with the late-life Winchell, in the New York Times: “Winchell had fear-induced influence most everywhere, and in his heyday had acquired from his cop friends the sort of official police car radio forbidden to ordinary citizens, allowing him to habitually cruise the night and, upon hearing of a crime in progress, speed there for a column item.

‘They never give me a ticket for speeding,’ he boasted to me. A moment too soon. Minutes later, we got one. Somewhere on lower Park Avenue, while responding to a police call.

To his chagrin, my companion of the night’s name and visage cut no ice with the young rookie.

Despite the lives he purportedly ruined when at his peak — careers made and destroyed with a few words in his column or on the air — it was still sad to see the old lion now toothless. At one precinct we’d visited earlier, where in better times a chorus of, ‘Hey, Walter!’ would have gone up, only an ancient sergeant knew who he was. Walter devoured the scrap.

To the young cops, he was a cipher. My knowledge of his past victims — said, even, to include a few suicides — at that moment didn’t matter. That evening, as I accompanied him on his nightly prowl, I felt like quietly paying someone to say, ‘Hey, ain’t you Walter Winchell?’

And then it happened. At one precinct, a young gendarme with a good ear suddenly said, ‘Hey, Pop. Say something else! Talk again.’ He did.

‘Oh, my God! I know who you are!’

W.W. beamed.

‘You’re the announcer on The Untouchables!

Someone had been smart enough to cast the uniquely voiced Winchell — an excellent actor with, once, the most instantly identified voice in America — to narrate The Untouchables, the then popular T.V. crime series about the tough cop Eliot Ness in Prohibition Chicago. Winchell’s staccato delivery was perfect for the intermittent narration bits.

At the moment of recognition, Winchell grinned and seemed to visibly drop 20 years. To almost anyone not a victim of his past predations, it would be hard not to be moved by that moment, seeing the effect on the old fellow. Fame — though vastly reduced to a voice-over — had administered a craved injection.

Delighted, the former giant grabbed a pen and, eagerly and gratefully — although it had not been sought — signed an autograph.”

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“Inequality Has Only Been Ended Through Communist Revolution, War Or Deflationary Economic Collapse”

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

From an American Interest interview with Libertarian thinker Peter Thiel (who was also profiled by George Packer in the New Yorker last year):

“Francis Fukuyama: I’d like to begin by asking you about a point you made about there being certain liberal and conservative blind spots about America. What did you mean by that?

Peter Thiel: On the surface, one of the debates we have is that people on the Left, especially the Occupy Wall Street movement, focus on income and wealth inequality issues—the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. It’s evident that both forms of inequality have escalated at a very high rate. Probably from 1973 to today, they have gone up faster than they did in the 19th century. The rapid rise in inequality has been an issue that the Right has not been willing to engage. It tends either to say it’s not true or that it doesn’t matter. That’s a very strange blind spot. Obviously if you extrapolate an exponential function it can go a lot further. We’re now at an extreme comparable to 1913 or 1928; on a worldwide basis we’ve probably surpassed the 1913 highs and are closer to 1789 levels.

In the history of the modern world, inequality has only been ended through communist revolution, war or deflationary economic collapse. It’s a disturbing question which of these three is going to happen today, or if there’s a fourth way out. On the Right, the Tea Party argument has been about government corruption—not ethical violations necessarily, but inefficiency, that government can’t do anything right and wastes money. I believe that is true, and that this problem has gotten dramatically worse. There are ways that the government is working far less well than it used to. Just outside my office is the Golden Gate Bridge. It was built under FDR’s Administration in the 1930s in about three and a half years. They’re currently building an access highway on one of the tunnels that feeds into the bridge, and it will take at least six years to complete.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“A Way Out Of A Financial Mess Is Discovered As If By Magic!”

February 14, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Slate has republished “The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician,” a 2001 Lingua Franca article by James Ryerson about his detective work into a shadowy, deep-pocketed benefactor of traditional metaphysics. The opening:

“In June 2000, the philosopher Dean Zimmerman moved from the University of Notre Dame to Syracuse University with his wife and three kids, only to see their new house catch fire the day they moved in. Much of what they owned was destroyed. ‘We were out of the house for six months,’ he recalls. ‘It was a miserable experience.’

The week after the fire, Zimmerman got a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant that brought encouraging news: ‘You will move to a wonderful new home within the year,’ it read. Zimmerman, a metaphysician with side interests in resurrection and divine eternity, was heartened by the prophecy. And when he returned to the restaurant three months later, his second fortune was equally promising: ‘A way out of a financial mess is discovered as if by magic!’

The next day Zimmerman received a letter from the A.M. Monius Institute. Printed on official-looking stationery and signed by the institute’s director, Netzin Steklis, the letter offered Zimmerman a ‘generous’ sum of money to review a sixty-page work of metaphysics titled ‘Coming to Understanding.’ As the letter explained, the institute “exists for the primary purpose of disseminating the work ‘Coming to Understanding’ and encouraging its critical review and improvement.’ For Zimmerman’s philosophical services, the institute was prepared to pay him the astronomical fee of twelve thousand U.S. dollars.” (Thanks Longform.)

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“They Propose Sending Robots To Seed The Surface Of The Moon”

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

While Newt Gingrich and others seem determined to turn the moon into a strip mall, a lunar Levittown of sorts may be feasible soon thanks to a quartet of USC professors and their plan for “contour construction.” From Tim Maly at Fast Company:

“First, you solve the material transport problem by making the moon base out of the moon itself. Second, you mitigate the ‘humans are expensive’ problem by keeping them on the ground until the last minute–you use robots to build the base. Recently, USC Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture), and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) completed their first research visualization for a system to do exactly that.

Using a technique called contour crafting, they propose sending robots to seed the surface of the moon with the basic infrastructure for a moon base (landing pads, roads, hangars, etc.). Once the construction is completed, human crew could lift off and move into their new home.”

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A house printed in a day:

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“The Age Of Corporations Is Coming To An End”

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

I don’t think corporations have necessarily entered into a certain and permanent decline as information technology expert Venkat Rao does in “A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100,” but I really enjoyed his essay. I always like thinking about things building up or falling apart–stasis isn’t that interesting. The opening of Rao’s work:

“On 8 June, a Scottish banker named Alexander Fordyce shorted the collapsing Company’s shares in the London markets. But a momentary bounce-back in the stock ruined his plans, and he skipped town leaving £550,000 in debt. Much of this was owed to the Ayr Bank, which imploded. In less than three weeks, another 30 banks collapsed across Europe, bringing trade to a standstill. On July 15, the directors of the Company applied to the Bank of England for a £400,000 loan. Two weeks later, they wanted another £300,000. By August, the directors wanted a £1 million bailout.  The news began leaking out and seemingly contrite executives, running from angry shareholders, faced furious Parliament members. By January, the terms of a comprehensive bailout were worked out, and the British government inserted its czars into the Company’s management to ensure compliance with its terms.

If this sounds eerily familiar, it shouldn’t. The year was 1772, exactly 239 years ago today, the apogee of power for the corporation as a business construct. The company was the British East India company (EIC). The bubble that burst was the East India Bubble. Between the founding of the EIC in 1600 and the post-subprime world of 2011, the idea of the corporation was born, matured, over-extended, reined-in, refined, patched, updated, over-extended again, propped-up and finally widely declared to be obsolete. Between 2011 and 2100, it will decline — hopefully gracefully — into a well-behaved retiree on the economic scene.

In its 400+ year history, the corporation has achieved extraordinary things, cutting around-the-world travel time from years to less than a day, putting a computer on every desk, a toilet in every home (nearly) and a cellphone within reach of every human.  It even put a man on the Moon and kinda-sorta cured AIDS.

So it is a sort of grim privilege for the generations living today to watch the slow demise of such a spectacularly effective intellectual construct. The Age of Corporations is coming to an end. The traditional corporation won’t vanish, but it will cease to be the center of gravity of economic life in another generation or two. They will live on as religious institutions do today, as weakened ghosts of more vital institutions from centuries ago.

It is not yet time for the obituary (and that time may never come), but the sun is certainly setting on the Golden Age of corporations. It is time to review the memoirs of the corporation as an idea, and contemplate a post-corporate future framed by its gradual withdrawal from the center stage of the world’s economic affairs.” (Thanks TETW.)

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“He’s Right To Highlight Social Dimensions Of The Crisis Among Low-Skilled White Workers”

February 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Social theorist Charles Murray has repugnant politics, but the very progressive Nick Kristoff is able to find common ground with him on an aspect of poverty. That’s why I like Kristoff so much: He doesn’t care about sides, only solutions. The opening of “The White Underclass” in the New York Times:

“Persistent poverty is America’s great moral challenge, but it’s far more than that.

As a practical matter, we can’t solve educational problems, health care costs, government spending or economic competitiveness so long as a chunk of our population is locked in an underclass. Historically, ‘underclass’ has often been considered to be a euphemism for race, but increasingly it includes elements of the white working class as well.

That’s the backdrop for the uproar over Charles Murray’s latest book, Coming Apart. Murray critically examines family breakdown among working-class whites and the decline in what he sees as traditional values of diligence.

Liberals have mostly denounced the book, and I, too, disagree with important parts of it. But he’s right to highlight social dimensions of the crisis among low-skilled white workers.

My touchstone is my beloved hometown of Yamhill, Ore., population about 925 on a good day. We Americans think of our rural American heartland as a lovely pastoral backdrop, but these days some marginally employed white families in places like Yamhill seem to be replicating the pathologies that have devastated many African-American families over the last generation or two.”

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“I Said This Fellow Was Like An Angel”

February 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sometimes you see someone like Jon Voight, a Birther who vilifies President Obama–not just criticizes him or vehemently disagrees with his politics–but labels him as Other and Evil. When you listen to Voight, you might imagine that there’s a degree of racism at play, and maybe the actor himself doesn’t realize it. Maybe he’s the kind of person who’s troubled by a person of color who is highly educated and successful. Perhaps he’s able to rationalize it by being friendly with minorities he believes to be on a lower social plane than he is, whom he sees as no threat to his ego. Perhaps he likes to imagine himself a protector of such people. Maybe in return he can assign “Magic Negro” qualities to them. Maybe when he hears a black voice in his head, it’s an uneducated, stereotypical one that takes him back to an earlier age in which he was more comfortable. Something tells me this recent anecdote he told CNN puddinghead Piers Morgan is more a world view than an isolated incident. Oh, and Morgan doesn’t really understand what the word “brilliant” means, does he?

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“Piers Morgan:

Midnight Cowboy was the movie that exploded you onto the scene, one of my favorite all-time movies. There’s a brilliant story about how you got this. Just tell me quickly. 

Jon Voight:

Well, it’s not a quick story. 

Piers Morgan:

It is going to have to be. Otherwise, we might get cut off again. 

Jon Voight:

Well, listen, I was told — I did a screen test and I was — with three other fellows, great actors. I was told it came down to another fellow and myself. And it was finally given to the other fellow. 

They finally came back around to me for some reason because they had a difficulty making this thing work. I get a call. They said, Jon, it’s come back to you. Be at your phone at 10:00 tomorrow morning. This is a Saturday morning. John Schlesinger will call you, invite you over to his place just to take a look at you, because it’s been a couple weeks since he’s seen you. And who knows. Good luck. 

So, of course, I couldn’t sleep that night. It rained that night. The wind was blowing against — blowing the rain against my apartment building. I got up early. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t — I was nervous. 

So I said, well, I’m going to go out and do some grocery shopping. I went out into this rain with my umbrella and I got some groceries. And coming back, I saw in the middle of the street this fellow who I had known who was a homeless man, black fellow, who said he was a boxer and he had kind of puffy eyes and stuff like that. 

I thought, yes, he’s a boxer all right. He was in the middle of the street. It was in the middle of the street, just lost. And the rain was coming down. I ran up to him and I said, George, George, you’ve got to get out of this rain. You’re going to get pneumonia. 

He was like that. I said, George, listen, I’m going to take you up to my apartment and I will give you a sandwich or something. I said, George, listen, you se that liquor store across the street? I’ll go get a bottle of scotch, a little bottle of scotch, and you can come up to my place and get out of the rain. He went, oh, OK. So I got the bottle of scotch, went up to my place. And George sat down. I made him a sandwich, tuna fish sandwich. I can still see this sad looking tuna fish sandwich. I said, George, you know, I’m waiting for a call that’s going to come at any time, and it could change my life because it’s a big movie. I’m a movie actor. I might get this part. 

He said, [stereotypical voice] oh, I hope you get it. I pray you get it. With that, the phone rings. I said, come on, George. Let’s go over and see if this is the fellow. So I had a hall wall phone. I get on. I said hello. 

And I hear the voice says, hello, Jon, John Schlesinger here. Jon, you know, we’re looking at your screen test and we may come your way. But I would like to see you just for a few minutes. Do you think you could come over to my place and just have a little chat? 

I said, that’s fine, John. It’s raining. I’ll get a cab. He gives me the address. I hang up the phone. I said, George, it looks good. I’m going to go over and see him. I’m so glad, he says. I said, now you sit here. Don’t go outside. If you go outside, here’s a coat. I had an extra coat. I said — and just, you know, you can stay here. If I’m a couple of hours, you can stay here. But if you go, take the coat. 

So I leave George. I go over and see John Shlessinger. And John and I — John was as good as his word. He just wanted to say hello, just see how we were doing. We had a little laugh. We did get along. 

He said, Jon, I’ll call you within the hour. We’ll let you know the decision. I said, that’s just fine, John. So I went back. Got a cab both ways. Last money I had to get the cab, see. 

Get back to the place and George is sitting in the same place. I saw a couple bites out of the sandwich, nothing much out of the liquor. I put a glass out for him. I told him — I said, it looks good. We’re going to get a call in a second. He was excited. 

The phone rings. I go to the phone, saying, George, come on. So George is right there in front of me. I take the phone. I am looking right at George like I’m looking at you. I said hello. He said, hello, Jon, John Shlessinger here. It looks like we’re going to go with you. 

I said that’s wonderful, John. He said, yes. We’re going to have costumes on Monday and I’ll have somebody call you. Congratulations. I said thank you so much. He says, is there anything that you’re concerned about? Is there anything you’re concerned about? 

No, John, I said. John, I think you’ve done the right thing. I’ll be terrific in this part. I can’t wait to se you on Monday. Thank you so much. He said, well, very, very good, Jon. I’ll see you then. Hang up the phone. 

I said, George, I got the part. He said, [sterotypical voice] I prayed for it. I so glad. I prayed for you. I prayed for you. I knew you would get it. Then I said — for some reason I said, George, what’s the first thing I should do? George says call your mother. She would be so glad. 

I called my mother. I said, Hi, mom. I just got a great part. It’s going to change my life. Wonderful, Jon. Have you called your brothers? I said, no, but I will. 

And I think to this day, I said this fellow was like an angel. If he hadn’t been in my life — I was more concerned about his well- being, I wouldn’t have been relaxed and I would never have said what I said, which is I’m going to be terrific in this part. You made the right decision.”

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“The Changes Are Tectonic”

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

Over the last three decades, America has become a country where the non-wealthy flatline and the rich grow richer. And that’s not just limited to money. As an article by Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times points out, while the education gap between white blacks and whites has shrunk, the chasm between well-to-do and poor children has widened exponentially. Programs like the Harlem Children’s Zone are green shoots, but that type of intelligent investment in education is clearly the exception. Sadly, that gives sophists like Charles Murray (who’s quoted in the piece) more opportunity for their ugly politics.

It reminds that having access to endless information doesn’t mean we’re using that opportunity correctly. What should be a great equalizer–cheap technology connecting us to each other and everything we would ever need to know–creates only a wider gap if only the few are being nurtured to use these tools in an empowering way. From the Times article:

“Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

‘We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,’ said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

‘With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there’s a good chance the recession may have widened the gap,’ Professor Reardon said.”

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“He Knew From His Plastics Success That The Chemicals Industry Was Ripe For Exploiting”

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

From Clare O’Connor’s new Fortune profile of Manoj Bhargava, the inscrutable force behind the 5 Hour Energy empire:

“Bhargava says he spent his 20s traveling between monasteries owned and tended by an ashram called Hanslok. He and his fellow disciples weren’t monks, exactly. ‘It’s the closest Western word,’ he says. ‘We didn’t have bowler haircuts or robes or bells.’ It was more like a commune, he says, but without the drugs. He did his share of chores, helped run a printing press and worked construction for the ashram. Bhargava claims he spent those 12 years trying to master one technique: the stilling of the mind, often through meditation. He still considers himself a member of the Hanslok order and spends an hour a day in his Farmington Hills basement in contemplative silence.

Bhargava would return to the U.S. periodically during his ashram years, working odd jobs before returning to India. For a few months he drove a yellow cab in New York. When he moved back from India for good, it was to help with the family plastics business at his parents’ urging. He spent the next decade dabbling in RV armrests and beachchair parts. He had no interest in plastics whatsoever but devoted himself to buying small, struggling regional outfits and turning them around. By 2001 Bhargava had expanded his Indiana PVC manufacturer from zero sales to $25 million (he eventually sold it to a private equity firm for $20 million in 2006). He decided to retire and moved to Michigan to be near his wife’s family. ‘Nobody moves on purpose to Detroit,’ he says. His retirement lasted two months. He knew from his plastics success that the chemicals industry was ripe for exploiting. ‘Chemicals are really simple,’ he says. ‘You mix a couple things together and sell it for more than the materials cost.’

Bhargava takes a shot of his creation every morning and another before his thrice-weekly tennis game. He shakes his head at the suggestion that taking shots infused with caffeine is at odds with his quest for inner stillness. ‘5-Hour Energy is not an energy drink, it’s a focus drink,’ he says, turning one of the pomegranate-flavor bottles around in his hands. ‘But we can’t say that. The FDA doesn’t like the word ‘focus.’ I have no idea why.'”

••••••••••

“Sleepy? Groggy? Dying for a nap?”

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A David Remnick Anectdote About President Obama

February 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fo shizzle.

Fo shizzle.

Courtesy of Joe Pompeo in Capital New York:

“‘This detail is funny and irrelevant so I’ll retail it,’ he said. ‘I was in a meeting with President Obama not long ago, on foreign policy, that was off the record. One of the people was kind of hectoring about the fact of how much money we give to Egypt, to which the president replied, ‘True dat.”

The crowd erupted.

‘I thought, I will bet this is the first time that this has happened in any kind of briefing ever in the White House,’ said Remnick.”

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Elsa Schiaparelli, With Mannequin, Wearing Shoe Hat (1937)

February 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic photo of daring Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli modeling her Shoe Hat reveals a fashionista who was equally surrealist artist. From a May 17, 1937 Life magazine article about the designer outfitting the wife of former royalty:

“The sheer weight of pomp and ceremony has focused world interest on London where a shy Englishman and his proper English wife have been crowned rulers of the world’s greatest empire. But genuine human interest turned rather to Tours across the channel where a more romantic drama was enacted. Certainly the women of the world were little absorbed in the conventional satin gowns of England’s new queen. What Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson would wear, however, aroused their avid curiosity. Mrs. Simpson did not disappoint them. She ordered her gowns from Elsa Schiaparelli, maddest and most original of Paris couturières. With typical boldness, ‘Skap’ fashioned for the bride of the year a white dance frock with a daringly tight bodice and a bright red lobster stretched the length of the flaring skirt. On other dresses were button shaped like fish, chessmen, butterflies. The complete wardrobe of 17 ensembles cost Wallis Simpson an estimated $5,000.”

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“A Very Small Incision Is Made In The Astronaut’s Skin For Each Biocapsule”

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

From a Gizmodo report about the NASA Biocapsule, a breakthrough that will allow for automatic diagnosis and time-release treatment of astronauts in space and, eventually, people on Earth:

“Picture this: An astronaut is going to Mars. The round-trip journey will take between two and three years. During that time, the astronaut will not have access to a doctor, and there’s a lot that can go wrong with the human body in space. So, prior to launch, the astronaut is implanted with a number of NASA Biocapsules. A very small incision is made in the astronaut’s skin for each Biocapsule (probably in the thigh), which is implanted subcutaneously. It’s outpatient surgery that requires only local anesthetic and a stitch or two to close the wound. But after it’s complete, the astronaut’s body is equipped to deal with a whole host of problems on its own.

One of the primary threats in space is exposure to high levels of radiation. When astronauts travel beyond Low Earth Orbit (i.e., to the Moon or Mars), they are at risk of acute radiation exposure from ‘solar particle events,’ sudden releases of intense radiation from the sun, which can damage bone marrow and wipe out someone’s immune system. That’s where the NASA Biocapsule kicks in: It could be filled with cells that sense the increased levels of radiation and automatically disperse medicine to help the body compensate.

This isn’t science fiction.”

••••••••••

“It Could Let Us Download Movies From The Lamps In Our Home”

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

I’ve posted before about Harald Haas, the Austrian software designer who is able to stream data using simple household light bulbs and lamps. More about Haas and his Li-Fi from Michael Watts in Wired UK:

“Using off-the-shelf electronics, he can stream videos using an ordinary light bulb fitted with signal-processing technology of his own design. The lamp shines directly on to a hole cut into the oblong box on which it sits. Inside this box is a receiver that converts the light signal into a high-speed data stream, and a transmitter that projects the data on to a screen as a short video. If Haas puts his hand in front of the lamp, excluding the light, the video stops.

Haas, 43, holds the chair of mobile communications at Edinburgh University’s Institute for Digital Communications. His demo is scientifically groundbreaking: it proves that large amounts of data, in multiple parallel streams, can be transferred using various forms of light (infrared, ultraviolet and visible). The technology, he says, has huge commercial potential. His device can be used with regular lighting and electronics — albeit reconfigured — and could transform the way we access everything from video to games, accelerating the speed of internet access by many hundreds of megabits. It could let us download movies from the lamps in our homes, read maps from streetlights and listen to music from illuminated billboards in the street.”

••••••••••

“We have 14 billion of these lightbulbs”:

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“The Putty Takes The Form Of A Gel That Gets Injected Into The Broken Bones”

February 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The ability to repair a broken human bone within days is moving closer to reality, thanks to Fracture Putty. From Geek.com:

“Speeding up the time it takes to heal a broken bone is highly desirable, and a solution may be on the horizon. Research being carried out at the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center has helped create a new gel being referred to as Fracture Putty. It’s major benefit to those suffering broken bones is its ability to heal them in just a few days, or in the case of severe breaks, cut the healing time to weeks instead of months.

Fracture Putty has yet to be tested on humans, but it has already been proven to work in animals. The putty takes the form of a gel that gets injected into the broken bones. It then goes to work rapidly generating bone much faster than a body can achieve on its own.

The key to Fracture Putty is the use of mesenchymal stem cells that produce a protein key to bone generation. The cells survive long enough after injection into the patient to cause a rapid generation of new bone, thus healing it very quickly.

The time it takes to heal depends on the severity of the fracture, but in all cases it should speed up the process. In cases where complex or multiple bone fractures have a occurred, Fracture Putty could mean the difference between losing a limb and making a full recovery.”

“Is It A Vehicle Which Does Not Go About Entirely On Land?”

February 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Chuck Yeager never went to the moon, but he was pretty much father to all the astronauts. Perhaps the greatest pilot ever, the first one to ever break the sound barrier, the Colonel guested on What’s My Line? in 1964.

From a 1983 People account of Yeager’s greatest feat: “October 14, 1947. He is strapped inside an orange, needle-nosed firecracker with stubby, razor-thin wings, dangling nearly five miles above the rattlesnake ridges and skeletal Joshua trees of the California high desert. Around him gurgles an incipient hellfire of alcohol and liquid oxygen, just waiting to erupt. His right side hurts like a sumbitch: Two days ago, on a wild midnight horseback ride, he’d been thrown and sprung two ribs—all part of what author Tom Wolfe in his 1979 panegyric to the aces of aerospace, The Right Stuff, calls ‘the military tradition of Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving.’ No drinking today, but right quick now he’d be driving…

Straight toward the Barrier.

It hangs out there somewhere ahead: invisible, murderous—a zone of wild turbulence that can flip even the best-prepared aircraft into a wing-shredding spin. Already the Barrier has claimed the life of a top test pilot, Britain’s Geoffrey de Havilland, son of the famed aircraft designer. De Havilland’s DH-108 was hammered to bits, like a macerated moth, as it neared the Barrier.

Now it is Yeager’s turn to try. At 26,000 feet the B-29 mother ship goes into a shallow dive and unloads its ordnance. The firecracker with the man in its belly—known as the Bell X-1 but christened ‘Glamorous Glennis’ by its pilot—drops like a bomb. As Yeager lights off the four rocket chambers, fire leaps from the orange tail pipe, and the plane surges skyward into the sun.”

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