Excerpts

You are currently browsing the archive for the Excerpts category.

“Then They Put The Electrodes On Me”

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

Shortcuts help but can they also hurt? Do we miss something fundamental by taking an abbreviated route, or does arriving at our destination sooner allow us to use the time more profitably? Here’s the thing: We’re going to find out the answer. Electrodes will be attached to our brains, pills will become available, genes will be modified. It’s closer than you might think. Are you prepared? The opening of “Zap Your Brain Into the Zone,” Sally Adee’s New Scientist account of her experimentation with brain enhancement:

“I’m close to tears behind my thin cover of sandbags as 20 screaming, masked men run towards me at full speed, strapped into suicide bomb vests and clutching rifles. For every one I manage to shoot dead, three new assailants pop up from nowhere. I’m clearly not shooting fast enough, and panic and incompetence are making me continually jam my rifle.

My salvation lies in the fact that my attackers are only a video, projected on screens to the front and sides. It’s the very simulation that trains US troops to take their first steps with a rifle, and everything about it has been engineered to feel like an overpowering assault. But I am failing miserably. In fact, I’m so demoralised that I’m tempted to put down the rifle and leave.

Then they put the electrodes on me.

I am in a lab in Carlsbad, California, in pursuit of an elusive mental state known as ‘flow’– that feeling of effortless concentration that characterises outstanding performance in all kinds of skills.

Flow has been maddeningly difficult to pin down, let alone harness, but a wealth of new technologies could soon allow us all to conjure up this state. The plan is to provide a short cut to virtuosity, slashing the amount of time it takes to master a new skill – be it tennis, playing the piano or marksmanship.” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags:

Tim Mara, New York Giants Founder, Watching The Ponies (1934)

February 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tim Mara, front left.

As the 2012 Super Bowl champion New York Giants enjoy a ticker-tape parade in Lower Manhattan, here’s a classic 1934 photograph of Tim Mara, a grade-school dropout and bookie who purchased the rights to the franchise for $500 in 1925. In this picture, Mara (1887-1859) is at a familiar haunt, the Jamaica Race Track in Queens, conducting some business. A passage about the team patriarch from Barry Gotteher’s The Giants Of New York The History Of Professional Football’s Most Fabulous Dynasty:

“As a youngster on New York City’s Lower West Side in the early years of this century, blond, pink-cheeked Timothy James Mara had no time for games. To help support his widowed mother and himself, he rushed from his morning classes at P. S. 14 to his afternoon newspaper route along Broadway. After a hurried dinner, he was at the Third Avenue Theatre every evening working as an usher. ‘It just got to be too much for a thirteen-year-old,’ he later recalled, ‘so I quit school.’

Timmy Mara was ambitious. Delivering his newspapers to the St. Denis and Union Square hotels, he was fascinated by the color and confidence of the well-heeled bookmakers who flourished le’gally in those days of plenty. At fourteen, Timmy started working as a runner collecting small tips if the bettor won or 5 percent commissions if he lost and by the time he was eighteen he was taking book himself. He opened a bindery for legal manuscripts on Nassau Street, but, within a few months, he was doing more bookmaking than bookbinding. Affable, gregarious, and honest, he made friends and customers easily; so easily that in 1921 he decided to close his successful downtown office and open a betting enclosure in the most exclusive section at Belmont Race Track. It was a bold and risky venture, but despite some early losses including $60,000 on a fillie named Sally’s Alley in 1922 Mara survived to build one of the best businesses and reputations in New York. Win or lose, Tim Mara was always good for a smile and a joke. ‘Where did you get that one from?’ he’d bellow to a prospective bettor. ‘If that animal wins, I’ll give you my watch.'”

Tags: ,

“Amazon Launching Their Own Store Will Give Customers A Way To Physically Buy Books”

February 6, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Amazon is opening a boutique retail store in Seattle, à la the Apple Stores, to sell the Kindle line. If it proves profitable, Jeff Bezos might open a chain of shops around the country, maybe internationally. In addition to selling their e-reader, Amazon will likely sell the physical books that they have begun publishing. It would be great if they also offered a carefully curated selection of books outside of their own imprint, perhaps some seminal tech books. Either way, it may likely be the final chain of stores selling physical books that will ever open in America. An excerpt from a Goodreader.com post on the topic by Michael Kozlowski:

“Amazon sources close to the situation have told us that the company is planning on rolling out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months. This project is a test to gauge the market and see if a chain of stores would be profitable. They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets.

Seattle is where Amazon’s main headquarters is based and is known as a fairly tech savvy market. It is a perfect launch location to get some hands on experience in the retail sphere. A source has told us that they are not looking to launch a huge store with thousands of square feet. Instead they are going the boutique route and stocking the shelves with only high margin and high-end items. Their intention is to mainly hustle their entire line of Kindle e-Readers and the Kindle Fire. They also will be stocking a ton of accessories such as cases, screen protectors, and USB adapters.

The company has already contracted the design layout of the retail location through a shell company, which is not unusual for Amazon. When Amazon releases new products to the FCC it is always done through anonymous proxy companies to avoid disclosure to their competition on what they are working on. While we don’t know the actual name of the firm they are working with we have heard rumors that they are based in Germany.

The store itself is not just selling tangible items like e-readers and tablets, but also their books. Amazon recently started their own publishing division and has locked up many indie and prominent figures to write exclusively for the company. This has prompted their rivals such as Barnes and Noble, Indigo and Books-A-Million to publicly proclaim they won’t touch Amazon’s physical books with a ten-foot pole. Amazon launching their own store will give customers a way to physically buy books and also sample ebooks via WIFI when they are in a physical location.”

Tags: ,

“A High-Tech Alternative Appeared In 1909”

February 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As recalled in a new Saturday Evening Post article by Jeff Nilsson, the first GPS for automobiles was commercially available in 1909, the year after the initial iteration of Henry Ford’s Model T. (Nick Paumgarten covered similar terrain in 2006 in the New Yorker.) An excerpt:

“As if this wasn’t enough discouragement, there was the challenge of navigating. Road signs were rare and often incorrect. Travelers were frequently reduced to driving from one roadside stranger to the next, gathering a few miles of directions at a time. The earliest road maps by Rand McNally were printed only after 1904.

Yet a high-tech alternative appeared in 1909: a real-time, on-board directional guide called the Jones Live Map. It was invented by J. W. Jones, who had also introduced the Jones Speedometer, the Jones Disc Phonograph Record, and the Jones Yobel —’the gentlemen’s automobile horn.

The idea was revolutionary. The Live Map was a small turntable device with a cable that attached to an automobile’s odometer. Before making their journeys, drivers would purchase paper discs with the route to their destination prescribed by The Touring Club of America.

At the beginning of the journey, the driver would place his journey’s disc to the Live Map’s turntable so that the journey’s starting point lined up with an arrow indicator on the glass cover. As the car began rolling, the turning odometer cable caused the map to rotate. The arrow would point to the driver’s changing position in the journey.

Each disc had up to 100 miles of travel details around its perimeter. If the journey was longer than 100 miles, the driver would replace the first disc with a second, or third part.”

Tags: , ,

“More People Live Alone Than At Any Other Time In History”

February 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Hell is other people, wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, and have you seen us in the morning? Eew! The opening of “One’s a Crowd,” Eric Kleinberg’s New York Times Opinion piece about the ever-rising number of earthlings choosing to live alone:

“More people live alone than at any other time in history. In prosperous American cities — Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis — 40 percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and in Washington, nearly one in two households are occupied by a single person.

By international standards, these numbers are surprising — surprisingly low. In Paris, the city of lovers, more than half of all households contain single people, and in socialist Stockholm, the rate tops 60 percent.

The decision to live alone is common in diverse cultures whenever it is economically feasible. Although Americans pride themselves on their self-reliance and culture of individualism, Germany, France and Britain have a greater proportion of one-person households than the United States, as does Japan. Three of the nations with the fastest-growing populations of single people — China, India and Brazil — are also among those with the fastest growing economies.

The mere thought of living alone once sparked anxiety, dread and visions of loneliness. But those images are dated. Now the most privileged people on earth use their resources to separate from one another, to buy privacy and personal space.

Living alone comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control and self-realization — all prized aspects of contemporary life.

It is less feared, too, for the crucial reason that living alone no longer suggests an isolated or less-social life. After interviewing more than 300 singletons (my term for people who live alone) during nearly a decade of research, I’ve concluded that living alone seems to encourage more, not less, social interaction.”

Tags:

“Why Can’t We Make Them Very Small, Make Them Of Little Wires, Little Elements”

February 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From Richard Feynman’s landmark 1960 lecture on nanotechnology, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom“:

“Miniaturizing the computer

I don’t know how to do this on a small scale in a practical way, but I do know that computing machines are very large; they fill rooms. Why can’t we make them very small, make them of little wires, little elements—and by little, I mean little. For instance, the wires should be 10 or 100 atoms in diameter, and the circuits should be a few thousand angstroms across. Everybody who has analyzed the logical theory of computers has come to the conclusion that the possibilities of computers are very interesting—if they could be made to be more complicated by several orders of magnitude. If they had millions of times as many elements, they could make judgments. They would have time to calculate what is the best way to make the calculation that they are about to make. They could select the method of analysis which, from their experience, is better than the one that we would give to them. And in many other ways, they would have new qualitative features.

If I look at your face I immediately recognize that I have seen it before. (Actually, my friends will say I have chosen an unfortunate example here for the subject of this illustration. At least I recognize that it is a man and not an apple.) Yet there is no machine which, with that speed, can take a picture of a face and say even that it is a man; and much less that it is the same man that you showed it before—unless it is exactly the same picture. If the face is changed; if I am closer to the face; if I am further from the face; if the light changes—I recognize it anyway. Now, this little computer I carry in my head is easily able to do that. The computers that we build are not able to do that. The number of elements in this bone box of mine are enormously greater than the number of elements in our “wonderful” computers. But our mechanical computers are too big; the elements in this box are microscopic. I want to make some that are submicroscopic. If we wanted to make a computer that had all these marvelous extra qualitative abilities, we would have to make it, perhaps, the size of the Pentagon. This has several disadvantages. First, it requires too much material; there may not be enough germanium in the world for all the transistors which would have to be put into this enormous thing. There is also the problem of heat generation and power consumption; TVA would be needed to run the computer. But an even more practical difficulty is that the computer would be limited to a certain speed. Because of its large size, there is finite time required to get the information from one place to another. The information cannot go any faster than the speed of light—so, ultimately, when our computers get faster and faster and more and more elaborate, we will have to make them smaller and smaller. 

But there is plenty of room to make them smaller. There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now. In fact, there may be certain advantages.”

Tags:

“I Think Persistence Pays Off”

February 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Legendary Vietnam War reporter George Esper just passed away at 79. He famously refused to be called back to the U.S. by the Associated Press so that he could stay and witness the Fall of Saigon. There’s sadly little of his work online. From the Washington Post:

“While he considered his coverage of the dramatic end of the 15-year Indochina conflict the high point in a 42-year career of deadline reporting, it was far from the only one. Esper was legendary for his dogged persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

‘You don’t want to be obnoxious and you don’t want to stalk people, but I think persistence pays off,’ Esper said in an interview in 2000.

So when he was assigned to write a story for the 20th anniversary of the 1970 shootings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and could find no phone number for the mother of one of the victims, Esper drove an hour through a snowstorm to knock on her door.

‘She just kind of waved me off, and she said, ‘We’re not giving any interviews.’ Just like that,’ Esper recalled. ‘I didn’t really push her. On the other hand, I didn’t turn around and leave. I just kind of stood there, wet with snow, dripping wet and cold, and I think she kind of took pity on me.’

Like so many others over the years, she opened up to Esper.”

••••••••••

Fall of Saigon, 1975:

Tags:

“Crime Has Not Fallen In The United States—It’s Been Shifted”

February 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Raise the Crime Rate,” Christopher Glazek’s sharp and scathing n+1 think piece about America’s sprawling Prison Industrial Complex:

“Crime has not fallen in the United States—it’s been shifted. Just as Wall Street connived with regulators to transfer financial risk from spendthrift banks to careless home buyers, so have federal, state, and local legislatures succeeded in rerouting criminal risk away from urban centers and concentrating it in a proliferating web of hyperhells. The statistics touting the country’s crime-reduction miracle, when juxtaposed with those documenting the quantity of rape and assault that takes place each year within the correctional system, are exposed as not merely a lie, or even a damn lie—but as the single most shameful lie in American life.

From 1980 to 2007, the number of prisoners held in the United States quadrupled to 2.3 million, with an additional 5 million on probation or parole. What Ayn Rand once called the ‘freest, noblest country in the history of the world’ is now the most incarcerated, and the second-most incarcerated country in history, just barely edged out by Stalin’s Soviet Union. We’re used to hearing about the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots; we’re less accustomed to contemplating a more fundamental gap: the abyss that separates the fortunate majority, who control their own bodies, from the luckless minority, whose bodies are controlled, and defiled, by the state.” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags:

“It Is Also A Place Where Many People Come To Be Left Alone”

February 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t think anything in America should be prohibited if it’s only going to create a widespread black market among consenting adults. Regulated intelligently, sure, but not prohibited. That includes: drugs, guns, abortion, gambling and prostitution. (I limit this rule to America because a place like Japan seems to be fine with a lack of guns among its populace, so respect must be paid to cultural differences.)

The people of Pahrump, Nevada, go a step further, however. In this tiny unincorporated slice of Ron Paul country, the gun-loving locals are paranoid about police states and carry firearms everywhere, including government buildings. (Since the name of town is so odd, I challenge the locals to up the ante and rechristen it “Rifle Butt, Nevada.” That would do quite nicely.) Richard A. Oppel Jr. has a really good piece about Pahrump in the New York Times. An excerpt:

“This is the heart of Ron Paul country, the one county in Nevada that the 76-year-old congressman from Texas carried in the 2008 Republican caucuses, and a place that wears its libertarianism proudly.

It is also a place where many people come to be left alone. ‘There are a lot of people who hide in Pahrump,’ said Carl England Jr., who, as pastor of a Baptist church here and also proprietor of a local septic business, knows a lot about his neighbors.

Many people here have owned guns — even some, like Jerry Neese, who are scared of them — not necessarily for concerns about safety but to make a statement about living in a free country. ‘People believe in the rights they have, and want to show they believe in them,’ said Bonnie White, who owns Emmalee’s Guns and Emporium (named for her granddaughter) and sells 500 guns a year. ‘People will fight for their rights here.'”

Tags: , , ,

“What Did We Ever Do Before GPS?”

February 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It makes sense that we use our brains to lay tracks in front of us as we encounter the unknown, a sort of superhighway of our own making, and one that we can call upon again and again in life. But what if such construction isn’t required of us? The opening of Julia Frankenstein’s New York Times Opinion piece, “Is GPS All in Our Head?“:

“It’s a question that probably every driver with a Garmin navigation device on her dashboard has asked herself at least once: What did we ever do before GPS? How did people find their way around, especially in places they’d never been before?

Like most questions asked in our tech-dependent era, these underestimate the power of the human mind. It is surprisingly good at developing ‘mental maps’ of an area, a skill new research shows can grow stronger with use. The question is, with disuse — say, by relying on a GPS device — can we lose the skill too?

The notion of a mental map isn’t new. In the 1940s, the psychologist Edward C. Tolman used rats in mazes to demonstrate that ‘learning consists not in stimulus-response connections but in the building up in the nervous system of sets which function like cognitive maps.’

This concept is widely accepted today. When exploring a new territory, we perceive landmarks along a route. By remembering their position and the spatial relations between the streets, locations and landmarks we pass, we are able to develop survey knowledge (stored in the mind like a mental map), which enables us to indicate directions, find shortcuts or detours — in short, to react and navigate comfortably.”

•••••••••

Mousebot navigates maze:

Tags: ,

“Carnival Has Its Roots In A Small Company Set Up In The 1960s Which Had A Utopian Vision”

February 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “We’re All in the Same Boat–Aren’t We?” an excellent Adam Curtis BBC piece outlining the hidden history of the cruise-ship industry:

“I want to tell the story of the rise of the modern cruise ship industry from its beginning in the 1960s – how it promised to make a world of aristocratic luxury available to everyone in the west, but also the hidden story of how that promise was achieved.

In many cruise ships there are hundreds of workers from some of the poorest countries on earth who are paid minute amounts of actual wages – sometimes less than two dollars a day – to attend to the passengers’ needs.

Many of the ships’ workers can only get a living wage on the whim of the thousands of passengers above them – on the tips they choose to give them. And in the strange fun-world of the superliners the waiters, the cabin staff, the cooks and everyone else who serves, live in a state of continual vulnerability – unprotected by most of the employment laws that apply on land. Meanwhile many of the companies that own the vast ships pay practically no tax at all.

But it wasn’t always supposed to be like that.

The biggest company in the cruising world is the Carnival Corporation, based in Miami (the Costa Concordia is owned by one of their subsidiaries). Carnival has its roots in a small company set up in the 1960s which had a utopian vision that cruise liners could transform the world. One of its founders believed that the giant ships were machines that could help bring about a new era of world peace.

The liners would, he was convinced, unite the rich westerners and the poor from the ‘third world’ by bringing tourists to new and remote destinations. This would foster a new enlightened understanding of each other that would bring about equality and justice throughout the world.

But it didn’t turn out like that. And this is the story of what happened – and how the very opposite resulted.” (Thanks Browser.)

Read also:

Tags:

“Big Sur Is No Longer A Peaceful Haven For Serious Talent”

February 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1969, Hunter S. Thompson published  “It Ain’t Hardly That Way No More,” an account of gentrification washing over the bohemian California enclave of Big Sur, where he had lived at the beginning of his journalism career. The article’s opening:

“Will Liz Taylor change Big Sur?”

That was the question the San Francisco Examiner‘s society columnist asked the world recently, after she had scrambled, along with other minions of the West Coast press, to report the doings of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in California’s most famous “Bohemia,” a mountainous and sparsely populated stretch of coastline some 150 miles below San Francisco.

The occasion was the filming of a few scenes for a movie called The Sandpiper, starring Liz as a lady painter with a yen for rocky beaches and Dick as an offbeat beachcomber with a yen for lady painters. The scenes were shot here because Big Sur has some of the most spectacular scenery in America: booming surf, rocky beaches, and pine-topped mountains slanting straight to the sea.

In the years after World War II this rugged South Coast, as the oldtimers call it, got a valid reputation as a hideaway for artists, writers, and other creative types. Local history abounds with famous names. Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, lived here for 19 years. The late Robinson Jeffers was Big Sur’s original poet laureate, and folk singer Joan Baez is still considered a local, although she recently moved to Carmel Highlands, a few miles north. Other famous residents have been Dennis Murphy, author of a best seller called The Sergeant, prize-winning poet Eric Barker, sculptor Benjamin Bufano, and photographer Wynn Bullock. Unfortunately, that era is just about ended. Big Sur is no longer a peaceful haven for serious talent, but a neurotic and dollar-conscious resort area.•

Tags: , , ,

“There Are Social Pressures And Brain Chemicals That Encourage Us To Stay Connected”

February 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I disagree with many of Nick Carr’s concerns about the Internet, though I always find him a really smart and lively thinker. I don’t believe new media will necessarily make us a lot smarter–at least not in the short term–but I don’t think it’s turned us from a contemplative nation of readers of thick Russian novels into pinheads. I mean, when did that earlier nation even exist? When was it ever going to exist? An excerpt from “We Turn Ourselves Into Media Creations,” a new inteview by Lars Mensel in The European in which Carr makes some points about social networking:

“Carr: There are social pressures and brain chemicals that encourage us to stay connected: It becomes very difficult to cut ourselves off from the flow of information. As technology becomes ever more deeply woven into our social processes and expectations, it becomes something more than just a matter of personal discipline. In their jobs, many people face the expectation to always monitor messages and emails coming from colleagues or clients. That pressure goes on even when they leave work and go home; they are still constantly checking information. Thanks to Facebook, social networking and other communication tools, there is now a situation where similar pressures are arising in our social lives: People you know are using online tools to plot their social lives and exchange information – it makes you feel compelled to also always be monitoring information. Obviously that doesn’t mean we don’t have free will or the choice to disconnect, we shouldn’t miss the fact that it is – like earlier technology such as the automobile – being woven so deeply into society that it is not just a matter of personal discipline to decide how to use it.

The European: A study has shown that using Facebook causes people to romanticize other peoples’ lives whilst seeing their own in a negative light: It is because people share predominately good news of flattering photos…

Carr: I saw a study that examined how people regard their Facebook friends and when somebody admired the exciting life of a friend, this friend often said exactly the same about them. It shows you how we turn ourselves and each other into media creations through social networks. As with celebrities and other media personalities, the reality can be very different from how we present ourselves online.” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags: ,

“This Particular Operation Requires Removal Of The Top Of The Patient’s Skull”

February 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Tiffany Kaiser’s DailyTech piece about Berkeley researchers making a breakthrough in the translation of brainwaves into words, which could create communication possibilities for those unable to speak–and all sorts of ethical quandaries:

“At some point in the near future, mind-reading could be a power possessed not only by fictional characters like Professor Charles Xavier (Professor X), but also real-life researchers who are searching for ways to help individuals who have lost their ability to speak.

Robert Knight, of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California – Berkeley, and Brian Pasley, a scientist in Knight’s lab at UC Berkeley, have successfully translated brain activity into words.

The team was able to do this by recruiting the cooperation of 15 patients, who were already in the hospital for intractable epilepsy treatment. This particular operation requires removal of the top of the patient’s skull, where a net of electrodes are then placed along the surface of the brain. Theelectrodes identify the origin areas of the patient’s fit, and that particular tissue is eliminated.”

Tags: , ,

Breathing At The Battle Creek Sanitarium

January 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This classic photograph from the early 1900s captures a group breathing activity at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which became one of the most famous health resorts in the world under the stewardship of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, a brilliant if eccentric doctor, a holistic enthusiast and an enterprising Adventist. Originally established in 1866 as the Western Health Reform Institute, Kellogg’s spa offered restorative hydrotherapy, diet, exercise, enemas and vibratory chairs. The good doctor also was co-inventor of the cornflake with his brother, Will Keith Kellogg. The sanitarium remained open until the 1940s when it was purchased by the U.S. government and converted into an Army hospital. An excerpt from the 1943 New York Times obituary for Kellogg, who lived until 91:

“A determined practitioner of the rules for simple eating and living he preached for all humanity, Dr. Kellogg was perhaps the best example of the truth of his own dogmas.

When he became a physician Dr. Kellogg determined to devote himself to the problems of health, and after taking over the sanitarium he put into effect his own ideas. Soon he had developed the sanitarium to an unprecedented degree, and he launched the business of manufacturing health foods. He gained recognition as the originator of health foods and coffee and tea substitutes, ideas which led to the establishment of huge cereal companies besides his own, in which his brother, W. K. Kellogg, produced the cornflakes he invented. His name became a household word.

Dr. Kellogg’s youth was one of hard work. Born in Tyrone, N. Y., on Feb. 26, 1852, he moved to Battle Creek with his parents, John Preston and Ann Jeanette Kellogg, at an early age. He worked in his father’s broom factory and also served as a ‘printer’s devil’ in Battle Creek publishing houses.”

••••••••••

Anthony Hopkins as Kellogg in the 1994 film adaptation of T.C. Boyle’s novel, The Road to Wellville:

Tags: ,

“You Could Make A Good Case That December 10, 1810, Was The Moment Sport As We Know It Began”

January 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “A Fighter Abroad,” Brian Phillips’ smart Grantland article about an 1810 boxing match, noted for its brutality, hoopla and racial politics, which helped birth modern sports:

“On December 10, 1810, in a muddy field around 25 miles from London, a fight took place that was so dramatic, controversial, and ferocious that it continues to haunt the imagination of boxing more than 200 years later. One of the fighters was the greatest champion of his age, a bareknuckle boxer so tough he reportedly trained by punching the bark off trees. The other was a freed slave, an illiterate African-American who had made the voyage across the Atlantic to seek glory in the ring. Rumors about the match had circulated for weeks, transfixing England. Thousands of fans braved a pounding rain to watch the bout. Some of the first professional sportswriters were on hand to record it.

It was the greatest fight of its era. But its significance went beyond that. Even at the time, it seemed to be about more than boxing, more than sport itself. More than anything, the contest between a white English champion and a black American upstart seemed to be about an urgent question of identity: whether character could be determined in the boxing ring, whether sport could confirm a set of virtues by which a nation defined itself.

The fight cemented a set of stock characters — the fast-talking, ultra-talented, self-destructive black athlete; the Great White Hope; the canny coach who’s half devoted to his pupil and half exploiting him — that have echoed down the centuries. In fact, so much about the fight feels familiar today, from the role of race to the role of the media, that if you had to name a date, you could make a good case that December 10, 1810, was the moment sport as we know it began.”

Tags: ,

“I Can Spill Water On It And It Would Still Work!”

January 31, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A paperback is still my favorite medium for reading. Don’t care for cloth books because I’m a reader, not a collector. Don’t like trade paper because those were made oversized just to jack up the price, and they can’t slide into a pocket. But while I do not own an e-reader yet, I can’t say I have any major problem with them. Jonathan Franzen, however, does. From Anita Singh’s Telegraph piece about Franzen’s criticism of e-books:

“The author of Freedom and The Corrections, regarded as one of America’s greatest living novelists, said consumers had been conned into thinking that they need the latest technology.

‘The technology I like is the American paperback edition of Freedom. I can spill water on it and it would still work! So it’s pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model,’ said Franzen, who famously cuts off all connection to the internet when he is writing.

‘I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.'”

Tags: ,

“I Went Back Above Ground To A Card Shop And Bought A Box Of White Chalk”

January 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From David Sheff’s 1989 Rolling Stone interview with the late artist Keith Haring, who used spare subway station panels as his canvas:

“How did you begin drawing in the subways?
One day, riding the subway, I saw this empty black panel where an advertisement was supposed to go. I immediately realized that this was the perfect place to draw. I went back above ground to a card shop and bought a box of white chalk, went back down and did a drawing on it. It was perfect – soft black paper; chalk drew on it really easily.

I kept seeing more and more of these black spaces, and I drew on them whenever I saw one. Because they were so fragile, people left them alone and respected them; they didn’t rub them out or try to mess them up. It gave them this other power. It was this chalk-white fragile thing in the middle of all this power and tension and violence that the subway was. People were completely enthralled.

Except the police.
Well, I was arrested, but since it was chalk and could easily be erased, it was like a borderline case. The cops never knew how to deal with it. The other part that was great about it was the whole thing was a performance.

When I did it, there were inevitably people watching – all kinds of people. After the first month or two I started making buttons because I was so interested in what was happening with the people I would meet. I wanted to have something to make some other bonding between them and the work. People were walking around with little badges with the crawling baby with glowing rays around it. The buttons started to become a thing now, too; people with them would talk to each other, there was a connection between people in the subway.

The subway pictures became a media thing, and the images started going out into the rest of the world via magazines and television. I became associated with New York and the hip-hop scene, which was all about graffiti and rap music and break dancing. It had existed for five years or more, but it hadn’t really started to cross over into the general population. It was incredibly interesting to me that it was reaching all kinds of people in different levels from different backgrounds. Then, in 1982, I had my first one-man show in New York at a big gallery, Tony Shafrazi, in SoHo.” (Thanks Longform.)

••••••••••

“You are known as the Michelangelo of the New York subway”:

Tags: ,

“I Can See A Time When People Plug A Simple Device Into An iPad So That Their Brain Is Stimulated”

January 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Provided it’s done in a safe and healthy way, I’m in favor of all sorts of performance enhancement. The idea of human “purity” is a lie that we tell ourselves while behaving counter to it. In his post, “The Ethics of Brain Boosting,” Jonathan Wood examines the ramifications of transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, which seems to enhance brain function. An excerpt:

“Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, who has carried out brain stimulation studies at the Department of Experimental Psychology, very definitely has a vision for how TDCS could be used in the future: ‘I can see a time when people plug a simple device into an iPad so that their brain is stimulated when they are doing their homework, learning French or taking up the piano,’ he says.

The growing number of positive results in early-stage studies, led the neuroscientists Dr Cohen Kadosh and Dr Jacinta O’Shea to talk to Professor Neil Levy, Dr Nick Shea and Professor Julian Savulescu in the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics about what ethical issues there may be in future widespread use of TDCS to boost abilities in healthy people.

The researchers outline the issues in a short paper in the journal Current Biology, and indicate the research that is now necessary to address some of the potential concerns.

‘We ask: should we use brain stimulation to enhance cognition, and what are the risks?’ explains Roi. ‘Our aim was to look at whether it gives rise to new ethical issues, issues that will increasingly need to be thought about in our field but also by policymakers and the public.’” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags: ,

“Are You Famous For Some Branch Of Sports Activity?”

January 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler,” the most famous athlete on earth during the 1920s, on What’s My Line?, 1965. During the interview segment, Dempsey suggests that the Ali-Liston fight was bogus.

In 1927, at the end of his run of dominance thanks to age and Gene Tunney, while he was training for a return to greatness which would never arrive, Dempsey suffered a personal tragedy when his brother, John, murdered his wife and committed suicide. An excerpt from a July 3, 1927 New York Times article:

“Schenectady–Apparently in a spell of temporary insanity due to a recurring attack of an illness to which he had been subject for several years, John Dempsey, brother of the former heavyweight champion, fatally shot his 21-year-old wife, Edna, in a rooming house here today. He turned the gun on himself, dying instantly.

The Dempseys had been estranged for about a year. They are survived by a two year-old son, Bruce.

Jack Dempsey was deeply affected when notified at his training camp at White Sulphur Springs, Saratoga Lake. He came at once to Schenectady and positively identified the bodies.

The boxer ordered his brother’s body to be sent tonight for burial to Salt Lake City, his former home, and Mrs. Dempsey’s body to be taken to Green Island.

It was announced that Jack Dempsey would cease his training activities for a few days because of the tragedy, but would not cancel his match with Sharkey, set for July 21 in New York City.”

See also:

Tags:

A Brief Note From 1901 About The Humble Beginnings Of Department Stores In The U.S.

January 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"One of the greatest department stores in the West was the creation of a man who used to exhibit an educated pig in a travelling circus."

From a 1901 edition of Ainslee’s Magazine:

“The department store is an evolution of the dry goods store, which exists no longer as an ambitious retail business. One of the greatest department stores in the West was the creation of a man who used to exhibit an educated pig in a travelling circus. When his estate was probated it was appraised at $15,000,000. This man opened a small dry goods store in Chicago and annexed one business after another in his neighborhood until he owned what some declare was the first department store in America. However that may be, the idea is older in England and France.”

“It Will Become A Vietnam Of Transportation”

January 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Stanford history professor Richard White’s answer to the question, “Does California need a high-speed rail line, ultimately connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles?” in the New York Times:

“We shouldn’t build it. At best it will not solve any problems for decades to come, and at worst it will become an expensive problem itself. It will become a Vietnam of transportation: easy to begin and difficult and expensive to stop.

In a state dismantling its education system and watching its existing infrastructure collapse, it is criminally profligate to build a system that will drain revenue from more-needed projects. This is like building a state-of-the-art driveway while your house collapses.

Highway 5 between Los Angeles and San Francisco is miserable, but it is not the key transportation problem in California. For high-speed rail to work, it needs to get people out of cars, but the project doesn’t touch the huge mass of traffic, which swirls daily in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas. High-speed rail between Boston and Washington, D.C., connects trains with functioning public transportation systems. This is not true in Los Angeles nor in large parts of the Bay area.”

Tags:

“Grief, Like Few Things Else, Is A Private Affair”

January 27, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

William Styron attended his idol William Faulkner’s 1962 funeral and filed a report for Life. The opening of the questionably titled, “As He Lay Dead, a Bitter Grief“:

“He detested more than anything the invasion of his privacy. Though I am made to feel welcome in the house by Mrs. Faulkner and by his daughter, Jill, and though I know that the welcome is sincere, I feel an intruder nonetheless. Grief, like few things else, is a private affair. Moreover, Faulkner hated those (and there were many) who would poke about in his private life–literary snoops and gossips yearning for the brief glimpse of propinquity with greatness and a mite of reflected fame. He had said himself more than once, quite rightly, that the only thing that should matter to other people about a wirter is his books. Now that he is dead and helpless in a gray wooden coffin. I feel even more an interloper, prying around in a place I should not be.

But the first fact of the day, aside from that final fact of a death which has so diminished us, is the heat, and it is a heat which is like a small mean death itself, as if one were being smothered to extinction in a damp woolen overcoat. Even the newspapers in Memphis, 60 miles to the north, have commented on the ferocious weather. Oxford lies drowned in heat, and the feeling around the courthouse square on this Saturday forenoon is a hot, sweaty languor bordering on desperation. Parked slantwise against the curb, Fords and Chevrolets and pickup trucks bake in merciless sunlight. People in Mississippi have learned to move gradually, almost timidly, in this climate. They walk with both caution and deliberation. Beneath the portico of the First National Bank and around the scantily shaded walks around the courthouse itself, the traffic of shirtsleeved farmers and dewy-browed housewives and marketing Negroes is listless and slow moving. Painted high up against the side of a building to the west of the courthouse and surmounted by a painted Confederate flag is a huge sign at least 20 feet long reading ‘Rebel Cosmetology College.’ Sign, flag and wall, dominating one hot angle of the square, are caught in blazing light and seem to verge perilously close to combustion. It is a monumental heat, heat so desolating to the body and spirit as to have the quality of a half-remembered bad dream, until one realizes that it has, indeed, been encountered before, in all these novels and stories of Faulkner through which this unholy weather–and other weather more benign–moves with almost touchable reality.”

••••••••••

Read also:

Tags: ,

“Republicans Were Advised To Use Certain Words In Describing Opponents–Sick, Pathetic, Lie, Decay, Failure, Destroy”

January 27, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I would assume after last night’s embarrassing debate performance, Newt Gingrich is consigned to runner-up status, a sad, pompous buffoon who was only seriously considered because of the dearth of GOP options. But perhaps conservatives view things differently than I do? At any rate, the New York Times’ Timothy Egan righteously undresses the overstuffed hypocrite in “Deconstructing a Demogogue.” An excerpt:

“Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called ‘Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.’ Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.

Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo.

He even used them, as former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams wrote in National Review Online this week, in going after President Reagan, calling him ‘pathetically incompetent,’ as Abrams reported. And he compared Reagan’s meeting with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to ‘the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich.”

•••••••••••

The full Gingrich memo about the use of language:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

   As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that “language matters.” In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt.”

   That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

   This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

   While the list could be the size of the latest “College Edition” dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Positive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

   Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

   Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!

  • active(ly)
  • activist
  • building
  • candid(ly)
  • care(ing)
  • challenge
  • change
  • children
  • choice/choose
  • citizen
  • commitment
  • common sense
  • compete
  • confident
  • conflict
  • control
  • courage
  • crusade
  • debate
  • dream
  • duty
  • eliminate good-time in prison
  • empower(ment)
  • fair
  • family
  • freedom
  • hard work
  • help
  • humane
  • incentive
  • initiative
  • lead
  • learn
  • legacy
  • liberty
  • light
  • listen
  • mobilize
  • moral
  • movement
  • opportunity
  • passionate
  • peace
  • pioneer
  • precious
  • premise
  • preserve
  • principle(d)
  • pristine
  • pro- (issue): flag, children, environment, reform
  • prosperity
  • protect
  • proud/pride
  • provide
  • reform
  • rights
  • share
  • strength
  • success
  • tough
  • truth
  • unique
  • vision
  • we/us/our

Contrasting Words

   Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

  • abuse of power
  • anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
  • betray
  • bizarre
  • bosses
  • bureaucracy
  • cheat
  • coercion
  • “compassion” is not enough
  • collapse(ing)
  • consequences
  • corrupt
  • corruption
  • criminal rights
  • crisis
  • cynicism
  • decay
  • deeper
  • destroy
  • destructive
  • devour
  • disgrace
  • endanger
  • excuses
  • failure (fail)
  • greed
  • hypocrisy
  • ideological
  • impose
  • incompetent
  • insecure
  • insensitive
  • intolerant
  • liberal
  • lie
  • limit(s)
  • machine
  • mandate(s)
  • obsolete
  • pathetic
  • patronage
  • permissive attitude
  • pessimistic
  • punish (poor …)
  • radical
  • red tape
  • self-serving
  • selfish
  • sensationalists
  • shallow
  • shame
  • sick
  • spend(ing)
  • stagnation
  • status quo
  • steal
  • taxes
  • they/them
  • threaten
  • traitors
  • unionized
  • urgent (cy)
  • waste
  • welfare

Tags: ,

“We Are Driving Close To 70 MPH With No Human Involvement”

January 26, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here,” Tom Vanderbilt’s new Wired piece about humans on the verge of relinquishing control of the wheel:

“[Chris] Urmson, with the soft-spoken, intense mien of a roboticist who has debugged a Martian rover in the deserts of Chile, occupies the nominal ‘driver’s seat’—just one of the entities open to ontological inquiry this morning.

The last time I was in a self-driving car—Stanford University’s ‘Junior,’ at the 2008 World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems—the VW Passat went 25 miles per hour down two closed-off blocks. Its signal achievement seemed to be stopping for a stop sign at an otherwise unoccupied intersection. Now, just a few years later, we are driving close to 70 mph with no human involvement on a busy public highway—a stunning demonstration of just how quickly, and dramatically, the horizon of possibility is expanding. ‘This car can do 75 mph,’ Urmson says. ‘It can track pedestrians and cyclists. It understands traffic lights. It can merge at highway speeds.’ In short, after almost a hundred years in which driving has remained essentially unchanged, it has been completely transformed in just the past half decade.”

•••••••••••

Kraftwerk, “Autobahn,” 1975:

Tags: ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »