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“Mumford Thought That The Clock Was One Of The Technologies That Allowed Capitalism To Emerge”

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

From Evgeny Morozov on the Browser, a passage about Lewis Mumford’s feelings about technology, especially the invention of clocks:

“Technology became something of a subject, I guess, in the late 1860s/70s but it only really emerged as a field for academic study in the late 1930s. The most influential early book aimed at a popular audience was Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford, published in 1934. It touched the worlds of history and economics and, to an extent, political philosophy. Mumford tried to look back as far as he could and study how human societies incorporated various technologies, but also how they made choices about which technologies to take on, how to regulate them, and how those decisions ended up shaping societies themselves.

The most famous example he evoked was the invention and wide acceptance of the clock. Mumford thought that the clock was one of the technologies that allowed capitalism to emerge because it provided for synchronisation and for people to cooperate. But I think this was also one of the first texts that critically engaged with the potentially negative side effects of technology. Mumford actually looked at how some technologies were authoritarian – that was his term – how some led to centralisation and establishment of control over human subjects and how some of them were driven by a completely different ethos.“

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“The Robot Can Even Send A Text When The Drink Is Done”

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

Briggo has introduced Intelligent Networked Coffee Kiosks at the University of Texas, so robistas can make your lattes. From Anton Olsen at Wired:

“When I was in Austin for SXSW the family and I stopped by Briggo’s prototype robotic coffee shop at the University of Texas. Someone mentioned robots and coffee in the same sentence and I couldn’t resist.

The first version of Briggo went online in November 2011 and it appears to be a hit with students and professors alike. Customers can order drinks off the web, a smart phone app, or at the kiosk itself. Even before ordering, the status of the queue and estimated time for each drink is clearly listed. This gives the customer some flexibility to choose a quick coffee drink over their favorite americano if the queue is backed up. Payment is handled at the time the order is placed so all that’s left to do is pick up the coffee on the way to class. The robot can even send a text when the drink is done.”

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“The Las Vegas Strip Is A Demonstration Of Water Imagination, Of Water Mastery, And Also Of Absolute Water Confidence”

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

Charles Fishman, author of The Big Thirst, nominates Las Vegas as the most water savvy area of the United States. It seems counterintuitive that a piece of desert crammed with swimming pools and gargantuan fountains could be considered water smart, but the city consistently makes it work despite meagre natural resources. An excerpt from his book at Marketplace:

“There is no two-mile stretch of ground anywhere in the United States that has such a density of water features, water attractions, and sheer water exuberance. Las Vegas, which can invest something as routine as breakfast with outlandish extravagance, has taken our most unassuming substance and unleashed it as the embodiment of glamour, mystery, power, and allure. In the way that only Las Vegas can, it has created a whole new category–ostentatious water.

The Las Vegas Strip is a demonstration of water imagination, of water mastery, and also of absolute water confidence.

It’s all the more remarkable because Las Vegas is the driest city in the United States. Of the 280 cities in the United States with at least 100,000 people, Las Vegas is No. 280 in precipitation and No. 280 in number of days each year that it rains. Las Vegas gets 4.49 inches of precipitation a year. And it rains or snows, on average, just nineteen days a year.

A metropolis with 2 million residents and 36 million visitors a year, Las Vegas gets ninety percent of its water from a single source, Lake Mead, the spectacular, man-made reservoir created on the Colorado River by Hoover Dam. When Lake Mead is full, it holds a sixty-year supply of water for Las Vegas.

But Las Vegas is legally allowed to take only a tiny sliver of Lake Mead water — 300,000 acre-feet a year, 98 billion gallons. All the water Las Vegas is allowed lowers the lake between two and three feet. Las Vegas’s allocation is about 4 percent of what everybody else gets to take from Lake Mead — 96 percent of the water people use from Lake Mead goes to either California or Arizona. And Las Vegas’s allocation is fixed in law, just as the allocations of California and Arizona are fixed — so the amount of water Las Vegas has access to hasn’t changed even as Las Vegas’s population has doubled, and doubled again, even as the city has added 100,000 new hotel rooms, along with fountains and waterfalls, swimming pools and shark tanks.”

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Evel Knievel’s failed attempt at jumping the fountains at Caesars Palace, 1967:

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“Public Personal Vehicles Available At The Swipe Of A Credit Card”

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

It’s a really interesting question: If automobiles had never been invented and we were making the first ones right now, what would the design look like? I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t look like Robert Hagenstrom’s answer, the Urban Flower vehicle, which he designed as if it were the initial automobile. It resembles a Segway crossed with an iron maiden. From Yankodesign: “Lanes, traffic lights, zebra crossings, standard parking lots, and the car itself would be replaced with compact, solar powered charging stations, and public personal vehicles available at the swipe of a credit card. The personal craft would navigate the streets much in the same way as a person on a crowded sidewalk; aware of surrounding objects, and in constant communication others around it, avoiding congestion as it navigates unique routes to its destination.”

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“You Know I Hate To Ask, But Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”

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

Gary Numan questioning the fealty of his social network, 1979.

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“Bookshelves Will Survive In The Homes Of Serious Digital-Age Readers”

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

In his new Slate article, “What Will Become of the Paper Book?” Michael Argesta predicts that while printed books will soon be a thing of the past for the masses, specialized, elaborately designed volumes will continue to be published for those with disposable income. An excerpt:

“Who will buy these new, well-made paper books? One likely result of the transition to e-books is that paper book culture will move further out of reach for those without disposable income. Debt-ridden college students, underemployed autodidacts, and the everyday mass of bargain-hunters will find better deals on the digital side of the divide. (Netflix for books, anyone?)

As paper books become more unusual, some will continue to buy them as collectors’ items, others for the superior sensory experience they afford. There’s reason to think this is happening already: Carl Jung’s Red Book, a facsimile edition featuring hand-painted text and illustrations, sold well in America in 2010 despite its $195 price tag. When readers believe that a book is special in itself, as an object, they can be persuaded to pay more.

Bookshelves will survive in the homes of serious digital-age readers, but their contents will be much more judiciously curated. The next generation of paper books will likely rival the art hanging beside them on the walls for beauty, expense, and ‘aura’—for better or for worse.”

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“There Are New Ways To Represent Reality…There Are New Technologies”

May 9, 2012 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Michelangelo Antonioni, in 1982, thinking about a “future with no end,” knowing that film–and everything else–would soon change greatly. The rise of the machines and the fall of communism altered the landscape, as movies became more non-verbal for a truly global, multilingual market.

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“It Proved To Be A Book Not Only Ahead Of Its Time But (Sadly) Of Ours As Well”

May 9, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Mark Bittman at the New York Times mentions Ernest Callenbach’s 1975 futuristic novel, Ecotopia, in his most recent column. Callenbach, who also founded Film Quarterly, recently passed away. The book fantasizes that Northern California, Washington and Oregon secede to create a green paradise in which fossil fuels are banned. I’ve always meant to read it but never have. I must correct this. From a TomDispatch post about the late writer:

“Callenbach once called that book ‘my bet with the future,’ and in publishing terms it would prove a pure winner. To date it has sold nearly a million copies and been translated into many languages. On second look, it proved to be a book not only ahead of its time but (sadly) of ours as well. For me, it was a unique rereading experience, in part because every page of that original edition came off in my hands as I turned it. How appropriate to finish Ecotopia with a loose-leaf pile of paper in a New York City where paper can now be recycled and so returned to the elements.

Callenbach would have appreciated that. After all, his novel, about how Washington, Oregon, and Northern California seceded from the union in 1979 in the midst of a terrible economic crisis, creating an environmentally sound, stable-state, eco-sustainable country, hasn’t stumbled at all. It’s we who have stumbled.  His vision of a land that banned the internal combustion engine and the car culture that went with it, turned in oil for solar power (and other inventive forms of alternative energy), recycled everything, grew its food locally and cleanly, and in the process created clean skies, rivers, and forests (as well as a host of new relationships, political, social, and sexual) remains amazingly lively, and somehow almost imaginable — an approximation, that is, of the country we don’t have but should or even could have.

Callenbach’s imagination was prodigious. Back in 1975, he conjured up something like C-SPAN and something like the cell phone, among many ingenious inventions on the page. Ecotopia remains a thoroughly winning book and a remarkable feat of the imagination, even if, in the present American context, the author also dreamed of certain things that do now seem painfully utopian, like a society with relative income equality.”

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Callenbach discussing Ecotopia in 1982:

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“The Test Infrastructure Will Be Unpopulated”

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

Pegasus Holdings has announced it’s building an insta-ghost town in New Mexico. It will be a mid-size American city that could house 35,000, but no one will live there. The fully functioning soundstage city will be used to experiment with smart technologies. From the company’s press release:

“Targeted for completion in 2014, CITE will resemble a mid-sized American city, including urban and suburban neighborhoods, open spaces and highways. It will reflect the current mix of new and aging infrastructure found in most U.S. cities. This will allow innovators, researchers, and potential investors the only environment of its kind to test their technologies in a facility that is not only secure, but also replicates real-world challenges. Unique to CITE, the test infrastructure will be unpopulated, allowing for a true laboratory without the complication and safety issues arising from having residents.

CITE will provide the opportunity for end-to-end testing, evaluation and demonstration of new intelligent and green technologies and innovations emerging from the world’s public laboratories, universities, and the private sector allowing them to better understand the cost and potential limitations of new technologies prior to commercial introduction. CITE will also provide a new testing and evaluation opportunity for those small and medium firms which often find testing prohibitive, cost and otherwise, at existing public and private facilities. Among the countless testing opportunities are integration of renewable energies, intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks, smart grid cyber security and terrorism vulnerability.”

 

“Get Ready To Rethink The McDonald’s Experience”

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

I love everything about McDonald’s except for the food–the awful, awful food. Oh, and the smell coming from the food. That also blows.

But from the kitchen systems to the bright-colored plastic furniture to the branding and packaging, I’m really taken by it all. If only the food didn’t taste like feet with ketchup.

In a recent (and very good) New York Times Magazine article by Keith O’Brien about the chain’s contemporary, Gladwellian marketing strategy, it was noted that West Coast outlets have begun adding flat-screen TVs that play a nascent McDonald’s Channel. No, you won’t see war coverage or towers being struck by airplanes. It’s innocuous stuff aimed at keeping diners in the restaurants longer, in the hope that extended stays will mean additional purchases. Here’s the promotional video for the channel.

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“Skull Was One Common Ingredient, Taken In Powdered Form To Cure Head Ailments”

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

Medical history is stained by human blood, but not only that of patients. For centuries, human remains were vital ingredients in solutions used to treat a myriad of maladies. From Maria Dolan at Smithsonian:

“[Louise] Noble’s new book, Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture, and another by Richard Sugg of England’s University of Durham, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, reveal that for several hundred years, peaking in the 16th and 17th centuries, many Europeans, including royalty, priests and scientists, routinely ingested remedies containing human bones, blood and fat as medicine for everything from headaches to epilepsy. There were few vocal opponents of the practice, even though cannibalism in the newly explored Americas was reviled as a mark of savagery. Mummies were stolen from Egyptian tombs, and skulls were taken from Irish burial sites. Gravediggers robbed and sold body parts.

‘The question was not, ‘Should you eat human flesh?’ but, ‘What sort of flesh should you eat?’’ says Sugg. The answer, at first, was Egyptian mummy, which was crumbled into tinctures to staunch internal bleeding. But other parts of the body soon followed. Skull was one common ingredient, taken in powdered form to cure head ailments. Thomas Willis, a 17th-century pioneer of brain science, brewed a drink for apoplexy, or bleeding, that mingled powdered human skull and chocolate. And King Charles II of England sipped ‘The King’s Drops,’ his personal tincture, containing human skull in alcohol. Even the toupee of moss that grew over a buried skull, called Usnea, became a prized additive, its powder believed to cure nosebleeds and possibly epilepsy. Human fat was used to treat the outside of the body. German doctors, for instance, prescribed bandages soaked in it for wounds, and rubbing fat into the skin was considered a remedy for gout.

Blood was procured as fresh as possible, while it was still thought to contain the vitality of the body. This requirement made it challenging to acquire.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“The New Gaming Tables–Incorporating RFID, Secure E-commerce And Banking, Multi-Touch, Digital Video, And Web Technologies–Are Anything But A Throwback”

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

Apart from Kentucky Derby day, horse racing has long suffered a diminished place in the sports and gambling worlds, so the Hong Kong Jockey Club decided to make itself over with high-tech, touchscreen gaming tables. From David Zax at MIT: “Horseracing almost feels like a throwback; it evokes images of old men angrily stubbing out cigars. But the new gaming tables–incorporating RFID, secure e-commerce and banking, multi-touch, digital video, and web technologies–are anything but a throwback. Up to eight gamers can play at a time. The tables debuted at the sleek and stylish ‘Adrenaline Bar’ at Happy Valley, Hong Kong’s most famous racecourse.”

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Jess Dixon Floating, It Appears, In A Flying Car (1936)

May 7, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jessie Earvin Dixon was a mid-century American inventor from Alabama who would appear to have designed a roadable helicopter. In the classic photo above, Dixon seems to be hovering above ground in his vehicle, though apart from this photo there are no test results extant. It’s hard to believe an invention of this magnitude wouldn’t have been a bigger deal if it truly worked, but perhaps it somehow fell through the cracks.

  • From a 1941 Mechanix Illustrated article that was posted on Modern Mechanix:

“This Helicopter-Car Flies Over Traffic!

JESS DIXON, of Andalusia, Ala., got tired of being tied up in traffic jams, so he designed and built this novel flying vehicle. It is a combination of automobile, helicopter, autogiro, and motorcycle. It has two large lifting rotos in a single head, revolving in opposite directions. It is powered by a 40 h.p. motor which is air-cooled. He claims his machine is capable of speeds up to 100 miles an hour.”

“1936 = Roadable helicopter. 1pOH; 40hp air-cooled engine. Coaxial rotor system with cyclic and collective pitch control. ‘Foot pedals actuated a hinged vane on the tail, counting on rotor downwash for yaw control.’ In a photo the helicopter is seen hovering, but no test results were found.”

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“Jogging Can Add More Than Five Years To People’s Lives”

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

I’ve always wondered if marathoners have lifespans different from the average. Do they live longer or shorter because of the extreme workout their hearts consistently get? It would seem, according to some new research, that at least those who jog moderately receive great benefit from the exercise. Though you have to assume people jogging regularly might be living healthier in other ways, too, so perhaps there’s some correlation to go along with the causation. From Counsel and Heal:

“Jogging can add more than five years to people’s lives, according to a recent Danish research.

According to Peter Schnohr, chief cardiologist of the Copenhagen City Heart Study, between one and two-and-a-half hours of jogging per week could add around 6.2 years to men and 5.6 years to women.

‘The results of our research allow us to definitively answer the question of whether jogging is good for your health,’ said Schnohr in a statement.

‘We can say with certainty that regular jogging increases longevity,’ Schnohr added.

Back in 1970s, few men died while running, raising speculations whether jogging had more harm than benefits. Some said jogging might be “too strenuous for ordinary middle aged people.’

However, the new study from Copenhagen City Heart suggests that jogging in fact is improving longevity, and it doesn’t have to be strenuous to receive the benefits. Just one hour per week could do the trick.”

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Enhanced running in a leisure suit:

“Which Objects Do You See?”

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

The beginning of retinal implants being used in earnest. Will blindness, in our lifetimes, become fully curable?

“Would You Describe In What Way Your Children Were Involved In The Skinner Box?”

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

I put up a post about B.F. Skinner’s daughter staunchly denying that she was raised as some sort of guinea pig in a behaviorist box. Here’s the psychologist himself refuting such claims.

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“Socialism Isn’t The Answer To The Basic Problem Haunting All Rich Nations”

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

The free market can be corrupted, but all-out socialism would be a horrible remedy to that. Almost as bad would be not repairing our increasingly rigged form of capitalism. The opening of Robert Reich’s blog post, “The Answer Isn’t Socialism,” written in the wake of France moving leftward:

“Francois Hollande’s victory doesn’t and shouldn’t mean a movement toward socialism in Europe or elsewhere. Socialism isn’t the answer to the basic problem haunting all rich nations. 

The answer is to reform capitalism. The world’s productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits. The result is widening inequality coupled with slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment.

In the United States, almost all the gains from productivity growth have been going to the top 1 percent, and the percent of the working-age population with jobs is now lower than it’s been in more than thirty years (before the vast majority of women moved into paid work).” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Oh Karl the world isn’t fair / It isn’t and never will be / They tried out your plan / It brought misery instead / If you’d seen how they worked it / you’d be glad you were dead.” (Thanks LRR.)

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“One Example Is An In-Canal Hearing Protection Device That Will Provide Enhanced Hearing Capabilities”

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

I’ve noticed a few articles in the last week about DARPA planning to implant microchips in soldiers, which reminded me that I had read something about the topic in Wired a couple years ago. From that Katie Drummond piece:

“Editing DNA could have widespread implications, but Darpa seems most interested in two: microchip implants that restore senses and movement in traumatic injury patients, and the ongoing Darpa goal of boosting troop performance in the field: On the other end of the size scale, a primary goal is to apply microsystem techniques to soldier-protective biomedical systems. One example is an in-canal hearing protection device that will provide enhanced hearing capabilities in some settings, but be able to instantly muffle loud sounds of weapons fire. This one example will improve inter-personnel communications and at the same time drastically reduce the incidence of hearing loss in combat situations. For these examples and many more, the goal is to bring exceptionally potent technical approaches to bear on biological and biomedical applications where their capabilities will be significant force multipliers for the DoD.”

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“Civil Aviation Had Never In Its History Shown A Profit”

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

Poetry and airplanes are beautiful, but you shouldn’t try to make a living from them. From Alain de Botton’s A Week at the Airport, a section about the author’s meeting with then-British Airways boss Willie Walsh, who was enduring a myriad of obstacles while the airline bled cash:

“Considered collectively, as a cohesive industry, civil aviation had never in its history shown a profit. Just as significantly, neither had book publishing. In this sense, then, the CEO and I, despite our apparent differences, were in much the same sort of business, each one needing to justify itself in the eyes of humanity not so much by its bottom line as by its ability to stir the soul. It seemed as unfair to evaluate an airline according to its profit-and-loss statement as to judge a poet by her royalty statements. The stock market could never put an accurate price on the thousands of moments of beauty and interest that occurred around the world every day under an airline’s banner: it could not describe the sight of Nova Scotia from the air, it had no room in its optics for the camaraderie enjoyed by employees in the Hong Kong ticket office, it had no means of quantifying the adrenalin-thrill of take-off.”

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Machines Assembling, Inspecting Machines

May 4, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Ford, which gave America the perfected assembly line, now has robots playing a crucial role in the building and inspection of its vehicles. If you look closely, you can see people in the background. It’s so quiet. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

“This Is Certainly Not The First Time That A Technological Salesman Has Come To Dubai”

May 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

How does Dubai not have an underwater hotel–or twelve–already? Deep Ocean Technology is planning to remedy this oversight with the Water Discus Underwater Hotel, which will have accommodations both above and below sea level. Whether the hotel materializes or not, no one will be surprised. From Simeon Kerr of the Financial Times:

“Before the financial crisis that hit Dubai in 2009, there were plans to build an underwater hotel, known as Hydropolis, but the project has not materialised.

‘This is certainly not the first time that a technological salesman has come to Dubai and, if this project fades away, it wouldn’t be the first time either,’ said Todd Reisz, editor at Al Manakh, a project researching urban development in Gulf cities.

The announcement has revived memories of the seemingly crazy schemes dreamt up during the city’s property bubble that ended with a bust that pushed the emirate to the brink of default in 2009.”

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“It Has Long Been An Important Problem In Medical Science To Devise Some Method Of Mitigating The Pain Of Surgical Operations”

May 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Atul Gawande’s New England Journal of Medicine piece, “Two Hundred Years of Surgery,” the moment in the Western world when medical procedures began to migrate from the external to the internal:

“The crucial spark of transformation — the moment that changed not just the future of surgery but of medicine as a whole — was the publication on November 18, 1846, of Henry Jacob Bigelow’s groundbreaking report, ‘Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation‘ The opening sentences crisply summarized the achievement: ‘It has long been an important problem in medical science to devise some method of mitigating the pain of surgical operations. An efficient agent for this purpose has at length been discovered.’ Bigelow described how William Morton, a Boston dentist, had administered to his own patients, and then to several more who had undergone surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a gas he called ‘Letheon,’ which successfully rendered them insensible to pain. Morton had patented the composition of the gas and kept it a secret even from the surgeons. Bigelow revealed, however, that he could smell ether in it. The news burst across the world. The Letters to the Editor pages were occupied for months with charges and countercharges over Bigelow’s defense of Morton’s secrecy and credit for the discovery. Meanwhile, ether anesthesia rapidly revolutionized surgery — how it was practiced, what could be attempted with its use, and even what it sounded like.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Often I Find Myself And Others, Too, Behaving In A Way That I Deplore”

May 4, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Environment influences mindset, no doubt, and someone’s perception of the world may vary depending of where they live or grew up. But the idea that cities make people more unfeeling, that the crowd relieves us of our capacity for goodness, seems a popular but unwarranted stereotype. But that’s the premise of “City and the Self,” by Stanley Milgram and Harry From, 1972.

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“Thousands Of Sky Gazers Wandered About The Midnight Streets, Astounded At What They Could See”

May 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Matthew Lasar’s new ArsTechnica piece about the great solar storm of 1859, when the Earth became scarily brilliant:

“In New York City, San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, thousands of sky gazers wandered about the midnight streets, astounded at what they could see. ‘Crowds of people gathered at the street corners, admiring and commenting upon the singular spectacle,’ observed the New Orleans Daily Picayune. When the September 1 aurora ‘was at its greatest brilliancy, the northern heavens were perfectly illuminated,’ wrote a reporter for The New York Times. He continued:

At that time almost the whole southern heavens were in a livid red flame, brightest still in the southeast and southwest. Streamers of yellow and orange shot up and met and crossed each other, like the bayonets upon a stack of guns, in the open space between the constellations Aries, Taurus and the Head of Medusa—about 15 degrees south of the zenith. In this manner—alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves—rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red, the magnificent auroral glory continued its grand and inexplicable movements until the light of morning overpowered to radiance and it was lost in the beams of the rising sun.

Popular descriptions of the spectacle appeared everywhere. In 2006, a team of space scientists assembled a collection of eyewitness newspaper accounts of the storm. What stands out in these reports is the astonishment, awe, and even pleasure that the world experienced for a week—followed by a sobering realization of how close our planet is to its indispensable star.”

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“A Crash Can Hurt More Than The Body”

May 2, 2012 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Life speeds in one direction, and how can anything ever be different? Then events occur. Similar traumas in the past haven’t caused a break, but this one takes hold. The brain rewires itself. All is different now. You can never return.

British racer Stirling Moss in the crash that retired him, 1962.

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