Urban Studies

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“The Whole History Of Man Is Just An Effort By People, Writers, To Just Write Your Name On The Great Wall”

March 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Matthew Hahn interviewed Hunter S. Thompson for The Atlantic in 1997, discussing the impact of the Internet on journalism and culture, among other matters. Thompson was particularly prescient about the ego-feeding nature of new, decentralized media. An excerpt:

“Matthew Hahn:

The Internet has been touted as a new mode of journalism — some even go so far as to say it might democratize journalism. Do you see a future for the Internet as a journalistic medium?

Hunter S. Thompson:

Well, I don’t know. There is a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist. You can’t really believe what you read in the papers anyway, but there is at least some spectrum of reliability. Maybe it’s becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything’s acceptable as long as it’s interesting.

I believe that the major operating ethic in American society right now, the most universal want and need is to be on TV. I’ve been on TV. I could be on TV all the time if I wanted to. But most people will never get on TV. It has to be a real breakthrough for them. And trouble is, people will do almost anything to get on it. You know, confess to crimes they haven’t committed. You don’t exist unless you’re on TV. Yeah, it’s a validation process. Faulkner said that American troops wrote ‘Kilroy was here’ on the walls of Europe in World War II in order to prove that somebody had been there — ‘I was here’ — and that the whole history of man is just an effort by people, writers, to just write your name on the great wall.

You can get on [the Internet] and all of a sudden you can write a story about me, or you can put it on top of my name. You can have your picture on there too. I don’t know the percentage of the Internet that’s valid, do you? Jesus, it’s scary. I don’t surf the Internet. I did for a while. I thought I’d have a little fun and learn something. I have an e-mail address. No one knows it. But I wouldn’t check it anyway, because it’s just too fucking much. You know, it’s the volume. The Internet is probably the first wave of people who have figured out a different way to catch up with TV — if you can’t be on TV, well at least you can reach 45 million people [on the Internet].”

“One Day We Could Have Conductive Materials That Grow, Evolve, And Self-Repair”

March 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Rust never sleeps, and it would make sense that chemical reactions and biological materials, programmed to keep advancing, would eventually be engineered for use in our tools, in everything from smartphones to solar panels, allowing such goods to auto-repair and biodegrade. From Rachel Feltman at Quartz, an investigation into the latter:

“One day we could have conductive materials that grow, evolve, and self-repair. Researchers at MIT have taken the first steps to creating them. A new study describes ‘living materials’ that combine bacterial cells with nonliving materials that can conduct electricity and emit different colors of light. The study is just a proof-of-concept, but researchers say that future applications could include cheaper, more efficient solar panels and biosensors.

‘When you look around the natural world,’ lead author Timothy Lu told Quartz, ‘you can see that biology has done a great job of designing unique materials. But in our day-to-day lives, we use materials that aren’t alive in any way.’ These plastics, he says, require lots of energy to make and use. ‘The goal,’ he says, ‘is to find a way to engineer living cells so you can make them into materials you might not find naturally.’

His team used E. coli, which naturally produces biofilms—communities of bacteria like the plaque on your teeth—that grow to cover a surface. Bacteria in biofilms have unique ways of organizing and communicating with each other to survive, which is a quality the researchers found attractive for producing new materials.”

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“Wearable Devices Already Exist To Monitor And Transmit Patients’ Data”

March 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “The Data Companies Wish They Had,” Max Taves’ new WSJ article, there are back-to-back passages which stress the quantified direction we’re heading in with all our smart gadgets, a world in which algorithms are measuring, at a distance, the performance and expiration date of humans and machines alike. The passage:

“An Eye on Appliances

Whirlpool Corp., the Benton Harbor, Mich., appliance maker, has a vast reach in American households—but wants to know more about its customers and how they actually use its products. Real-time use data could not only help shape the future designs of Whirlpool products, says CIO Mike Heim, but also help the company predict when they’re likely to fail. The technological costs, which have made this kind of real-time monitoring prohibitive, are continuing to decline, says Mr. Heim.

Taking Patients’ Pulse

Spun off from the Cleveland Clinic, Explorys creates software for health-care companies to store, access and make sense of their data. It holds a huge trove of clinical, financial and operational information—but would like access to data about patients at home, such as their current blood-sugar and oxygen levels, weight, heart rates and respiratory health. Having access to that information could help providers predict things like hospitalizations, missed appointments and readmissions and proactively reach out to patients, says Sarah Mihalik, a vice president of provider solutions.

Wearable devices already exist to monitor and transmit patients’ data. But cost, privacy and a lack of standardization are big barriers, says Explorys co-founder and Chief Medical Officer Anil Jain.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 24, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Are you looking to start over? (Everywhere)

Is your life not going in the direction you wish, to the point that at times you just wish you were someone else and elsewhere? We’ve all been there, so just drop a line and I will listen and help if I can. Talk to you soon!

“The Main Result of All These Developments Will Be To Eliminate 99 Percent Of Human Activity…If We Look At Humanity As It Is Constituted Today”

March 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Kevin Kelly is probably the most articulate contemporary voice on matters relating to how the rise of the machines will remake the meaning of humanity, but, of course, these hopes and fears have been around for awhile. In Michael Belfiore’s new Guardian article, which I think is way too chipper about what will likely be a very painful transition to an autonomous society, he quotes Arthur C. Clarke from five decades ago on the topic. 

By the way, if memory serves, the Clarke essay that’s referenced predicted that by 2001 houses would be able to fly, and communities could migrate south when it was cold. I can’t be mistaking that detail, can I? The excerpt:

“As early as the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke, professional visionary and inventor of the communications satellite, predicted the end of menial labor (mental as well as manual), due to mechanization (and, more disturbingly, bio-engineered apes). In his essay The World of 2001, originally published in Vogue and reprinted in his book The View from Serendip, Clarke wrote: ‘the main result of all these developments will be to eliminate 99 percent of human activity … if we look at humanity as it is constituted today.’

Our salvation, in Clarke’s view, will lie in our looking toward loftier pursuits than all those kinds of jobs that machines will take over:

In the day-after-tomorrow society there will be no place for anyone as ignorant as the average mid-twentieth-century college graduate. If it seems an impossible goal to bring the whole population of the planet up to superuniversity levels, remember that a few centuries ago it would have seemed equally unthinkable that everybody would be able to read. Today we have to set our sights much higher, and it is not unrealistic to do so.”

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Old Print Article: “Lost To Himself For Fourteen Years,” New York Times (1911)

March 23, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Rogers, his head swathed in bandages, with part of his skull missing where physicians had removed a portion of the bone, asked for pen and paper."

“Rogers, his head swathed in bandages, with part of his skull missing where physicians had removed a portion of the bone, asked for pen and paper.”

For well over a decade, S. Chandler Rogers was not feeling like himself. According to an article in the October 22, 1911 New York Times, the messenger and sometimes prizefighter was waylaid by three men on a Manhattan sidewalk, suffered brain trauma, and couldn’t recall his identity for the next decade and a half. One day in Seattle, a second mysterious incident brought the attack back to him in great detail. Unfortunately, the beleaguered man said the latter episode completely erased memories of his life during the intervening 14 years.The story:

“Seattle, Wash.–In a fight with three toughs at Sixteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, New York, on May 1, 1897, S. Chandler Rogers had his skull fractured, and later he was thrown into the Hudson River. For fourteen and a half years he lived under the name of George Kelly. He became demented at his home in Port Blakeley on Oct. 10, and to-day regained his senses and announced his right name at Providence Hospital.

Rogers, his head swathed in bandages, with part of his skull missing where physicians had removed a portion of the bone, asked for pen and paper and wrote a clear, concise, intelligent letter to his half sister, Miss Florence Douels, 418 West Thirty-second Street, New York. He wrote:

‘I am in a hospital and all O.K.’

Then he added a paragraph asking that Father Dougherty of the Paulist Society, New York, come to see him.

When Rogers had finished his letter, after telling his physicians and his nurse that his right name was Rogers and not Kelly, he asked for a newspaper. It was handed to him and he read at the top of the first page:

‘Seattle, Saturday, Oct. 21, 1911.’

Rogers turned one look of appeal and wonderment toward the physician, Dr. Milton G. Sturgis, and to his nurse.

‘Am I really in Seattle?’ he asked. And then he broke down and wept.

Although the man is still in a serious condition, he was strong enough to suppress his grief after a few moments and then told a straight and apparently reliable story of his marvelous experience.

‘I do not know where I have been or what I have been doing for fourteen years,’ he said. ‘I know that I was born in New York City in 1880, that I lived with my grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Douels, 418 West Thirty-second Street, and that my name is S. Chandler Rogers. I was first a newsboy in New York and then a messenger with a big trust company. I used to box in a theatre to earn a little side money. On May 11, 1897, I took a vacation.

‘With a friend I went to a theatre accompanied by two girls. I took my girl home, then started to walk to my own abode. At the corner of Sixteenth Street and Eighth Avenue, I met three men who asked me for a match. I told them, ‘I am no match factory.’ Then one made a pass at me. I struck at him with brass knuckles on my right hand–I always wore them at night. It was then near midnight. Another man of the three struck me with a blackjack and I fell to my knees. The next I knew I was swimming in the river, almost stark naked. I remember catching hold of a pile and calling for help. I can remember being dragged from the river, and that is the last I know, except that I woke up here in this hospital in Seattle, Tuesday morning.’

Dr. Bruce Elmore, who became interested in the case, talked to Rogers about people he knew in New York. As an intern in Roosevelt Hospital fourteen years ago, Dr. Elmore knew many of the men and places of which Rogers told. He also knew Father Daugherty, for whom Rogers asked as soon as he was able to talk coherently.

Married two months ago, Rogers, as George Kelly, left his home on Tuesday evening, Oct. 10, for a trip to the mill town. He had not been feeling well for some time. He went to a store on Port Blakeley and ordered some groceries for his wife. Then he disappeared. Three days later he was found by bloodhounds in the dense forest near Port Blakeley. He was stark naked and was crawling around on his hands and knees and snapped and barked at the dogs. 

On Friday, Oct. 13, he was brought here, and Dr. Sturgis was asked to examine him. He was unable to speak, could not see, and apparently was paralyzed. Sunday last an operation was performed and a portion of his skull removed, where it pressed on his brain for fourteen years and more.

Rogers does not now remember his recent marriage.”

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“By 2035, There Will Be Almost No Poor Countries Left In The World”

March 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In this year’s Gates Annual Letter, which was mentioned during his appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, Bill Gates sees a world without impoverished nations in about 20 years. We certainly have the tools to make that a reality, though I would assume some nations will be held back by awful political realities. An excerpt:

“The bottom line: Poor countries are not doomed to stay poor. Some of the so-called developing nations have already developed. Many more are on their way. The nations that are still finding their way are not trying to do something unprecedented. They have good examples to learn from.

I am optimistic enough about this that I am willing to make a prediction. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. (I mean by our current definition of poor.)2 Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer. Countries will learn from their most productive neighbors and benefit from innovations like new vaccines, better seeds, and the digital revolution. Their labor forces, buoyed by expanded education, will attract new investments.”

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“These Kids Are Connected To Their Herd – They Always Know Where It’s Moving”

March 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet,” Douglas Adams’ perceptive 1999 piece about Web 1.0 and where it was all headed:

“But the biggest problem is that we are still the first generation of users, and for all that we may have invented the net, we still don’t really get it. In The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker explains the generational difference between pidgin and creole languages. A pidgin language is what you get when you put together a bunch of people – typically slaves – who have already grown up with their own language but don’t know each others’. They manage to cobble together a rough and ready lingo made up of bits of each. It lets them get on with things, but has almost no grammatical structure at all.

However, the first generation of children born to the community takes these fractured lumps of language and transforms them into something new, with a rich and organic grammar and vocabulary, which is what we call a Creole. Grammar is just a natural function of children’s brains, and they apply it to whatever they find.

The same thing is happening in communication technology. Most of us are stumbling along in a kind of pidgin version of it, squinting myopically at things the size of fridges on our desks, not quite understanding where email goes, and cursing at the beeps of mobile phones. Our children, however, are doing something completely different. Risto Linturi, research fellow of the Helsinki Telephone Corporation, quoted in Wired magazine, describes the extraordinary behaviour kids in the streets of Helsinki, all carrying cellphones with messaging capabilities. They are not exchanging important business information, they’re just chattering, staying in touch. ‘We are herd animals,’ he says. ‘These kids are connected to their herd – they always know where it’s moving.’ Pervasive wireless communication, he believes will ‘bring us back to behaviour patterns that were natural to us and destroy behaviour patterns that were brought about by the limitations of technology.’

We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.

Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.”

“The Appeal Of A Behavioural Approach Is Not That It Is More Effective But That It Is Less Unpopular”

March 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a new Financial Times article, Tim Harford looks at all angles of behavioral economics, which has reached its ascendancy in the years since Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize win in 2002. In Kahneman’s hands, the discipline seems to have a lot of merit, but all too often with others its feels like shaky narratives supplanting other shaky narratives. There are so many variables in the world that easy answers can obscure complex situations. Did the Broken Windows Theory really lead to a reduction in crime in NYC when other cities that didn’t implement it experienced similar decreases? Is the answer more complicated? Is it not completely knowable? Does just replacing shattered glass make it easier to not address why we’re producing criminals? From Harford:

“In 2010, behavioural economists George Loewenstein and Peter Ubel wrote in The New York Times that ‘behavioural economics is being used as a political expedient, allowing policy makers to avoid painful but more effective solutions rooted in traditional economics.’

For example, in May 2010, just before David Cameron came to power, he sang the praises of behavioural economics in a TED talk. ‘The best way to get someone to cut their electricity bill,’ he said, ‘is to show them their own spending, to show them what their neighbours are spending, and then show what an energy-conscious neighbour is spending.’

But Cameron was mistaken. The single best way to promote energy efficiency is, almost certainly, to raise the price of energy. A carbon tax would be even better, because it not only encourages people to save energy but to switch to lower-carbon sources of energy. The appeal of a behavioural approach is not that it is more effective but that it is less unpopular.

Thaler points to the experience of Cass Sunstein, his Nudge co-author, who spent four years as regulatory tsar in the Obama White House. ‘Cass wanted a tax on petrol but he couldn’t get one, so he pushed for higher fuel economy standards. We all know that’s not as efficient as raising the tax on petrol – but that would be lucky to get a single positive vote in Congress.’

Should we be trying for something more ambitious than behavioural economics?”

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“Are These The Sneakers Of A Millionaire Sheik?”

March 23, 2014 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A great hoax plays upon a real desire or anxiety, and no one’s been better at pushing those buttons than prankster Alan Abel. In a 1970s scam, the wiseacre posed as a tennis-loving sheik, playing off America’s fear and loathing of newly minted OPEC millionaires, at a time when our post-WWII lustre had faded. Abel, one of the cultural ancestors of Sacha Baron Cohen, created the character of Prince Emir Assad, who competed in a Pro-Am tourney.

“I Found Myself Incarcerated In An Anonymity”

March 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver was many things, and not all of them were good. But no one could deny he was a fascinating fashion designer. After fleeing the United States when charged with the attempted murder of police officers in Oakland in 1968, the revolutionary spent seven years hiding in a variety of foreign countries.  A mostly forgotten part of his walkabout was Cleaver surfacing as a fashion designer in Paris at the very end of his exile. As shown in the print advertisement above, his so-called “Penis Pants” had an external sock attached so that a guy could wear his manhood on the outside. Cucumber sales soared.

From an article Cleaver penned about the early part of his life at large for Ramparts in 1969, a look at the more serious side of expatriation:

“SO NOW IT IS OFFICIAL. I was starting to think that perhaps it never would be. For the past eight months, I’ve been scooting around the globe as a non-person, ducking into doorways at the sight of a camera, avoiding  English-speaking people like the plague. I used so many names that my own was out of focus. I trained myself not to react if I heard the name Eldridge Cleaver called, and learned instead to respond naturally, spontaneously, to my cover names. Anyone who thinks this is easy to do should try it. For my part, I’m glad that it is over.

This morning we held a press conference, thus putting an end to all the hocus-pocus. Two days ago, the Algerian government announced that I had arrived here to participate in the historic First Pan-African Cultural Festival. After that, there was no longer any reason not to reach for the telephone and call home, so the first thing I did was to call my mother in Los Angeles. ‘Boy, where are you at?’ she asked. It sounded as though she expected me to answer, ‘Right around the corner, mom,’ or ‘Up here in San Francisco,’ so that when I said I was in Africa, in Algeria, it was clear that her mind was blown, for her response was, “Africa? You can’t make no phone call from Africa!” That’s my mom. She doesn’t relate to all this shit about phone calls across the ocean when there are no phone poles. She has both her feet on the ground, and it is clear that she intends to keep them there.

It is clear to me now that there are forms of imprisonment other than the kind I left Babylon to avoid, for immediately upon splitting that scene I found myself incarcerated in an anonymity, the walls of which were every bit as thick as those of Folsom Prison. I discovered, to my surprise, that it is impossible to hold a decent conversation without making frequent references to one’s past. So I found myself creating personal histories spontaneously, off the top of my head, and I felt bad about that because I know that I left many people standing around scratching their heads. The shit that I had to run down to them just didn’t add up.

Now all that is over. So what? What has really changed? Alioto is still crazy and mayor, Ronald Reagan is still Mickey Mouse, Nixon is in the White House and the McClellan Committee is investigating the Black Panther Party. And Huey P. Newton is still in prison. I cannot make light of this shit because it is getting deeper. And here we are in Algeria. What is a cat from Arkansas, who calls San Francisco home, doing in Algeria? And listen to Kathleen behind me talking over the telephone in French. With a little loosening of the will, I could easily flip out right now!”

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Cleaver was sadly not wearing his Penis Pants when he sat down in 1969 with William F. Buckley to discuss the Man and the Pigs and other handy generalizations. At the 3:28 mark.

“In The ‘Golden Era’ Of The 1960s And 70s, They Made Twice As Much Money As NFL Stars”

March 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I know it seems odd to not completely recall for sure, but I’m only fairly certain that in the aughts I interviewed the Professional Bowlers Association’s then-chairman Steve Miller, an erstwhile Nike executive who was charged with trying to rescue the formerly popular TV sport from the scrapheap. He encouraged his stars to scream for attention, to talk trash like pro wrestlers, to get into the gutter if need be. The games wouldn’t be fixed, but the sport would. But any gains have been marginal.

Anyone now a senior citizen can likely recall a time when top bowlers were envied for their earning prowess by NFL running backs, when Earl Anthony was as revered as Earl Campbell. Stunning, but true. The opening of “The Rise and Fall of Professional Bowling,” Zachary Crockett’s Priceonomics post:

“There was a time when professional bowlers reigned supreme.

In the ‘golden era’ of the 1960s and 70s, they made twice as much money as NFL stars, signed million dollar contracts, and were heralded as international celebrities. After each match, they’d be flanked by beautiful women who’d seen them bowl on television, or had read about them in Sports Illustrated.

Today, the glitz and glamour has faded. Pro bowlers supplement their careers with second jobs, like delivering sod, or working at a call center. They share Motel 6 rooms on tour to save on travel expenses, and thrive on the less-than-exciting dime of beef jerky sponsorships.

Once sexy, bowling is now synonymous with cheap beer and smelly feet. In an entertainment-saturated culture, has the once formidable sport been gutter-balled? What exactly is it like to be a professional bowler today?”

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In the 1970s, AMF, the sporting-goods manufacturer, sold a computer system and printer that would tabulate rankings of bowling leagues with the push of a button–the DataMagic Bowling Data Computer.

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“Japan’s Perception Of Itself As Isolated And Different Persists To This Day”

March 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Actroid-DER.

Actroid-DER.

Why is Japan unlike any other place on Earth, not just in the way that all nations are unique, but in a deeper and stranger way? What’s with the monkey waiters, the karaoke machines, the warm embrace of lifelike robots and the penchant for personal electronics and hardcore porn long before the rest of the world joined in? My guess would be that the chief ingredients are a homogenized populace, siding with Hitler during WWII and being on the receiving end of two atom bombs. In David Pilling’s Foreign Policy piece “Why Is Japan So…Different?” he examines the question in greater historical detail. An excerpt:

“Some foreign observers have been as enthusiastic about promoting Japan’s alleged uniqueness as the Japanese themselves. Of course, all nations are unique, but in Japan this truism became a fetish. The Japanese developed a form, which dates back to the Tokugawa era but which flourished in the post-World War II period, of quasi-philosophical writing called Nihonjinron, or ‘essays on the essence of Japaneseness.’ Written by both Japanese and foreigners, these tracts sought to explain what made the Japanese unique and how they differed from foreigners, who were, all too often, lumped into one homogeneous category. Such lines of inquiry often settled on a description of the Japanese as cooperative, sedentary rice farmers who use instinct and heart rather than cold, Western logic. Unlike Western hunter-gatherers, the Japanese were seen as having a unique sensitivity to nature, an ability to communicate without language through a sort of social telepathy, and a rarefied artistic awareness.

In 1946, U.S. anthropologist Ruth Benedict made it respectable to see the Japanese as a race apart with the publication of her classic study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She described a highly codified society operating with conventions all-but-incomprehensible to outsiders. Her work paved the way for shelf after shelf of Nihonjinron texts by Japanese authors. These multiplied with Japan’s post-war economic success, which the Japanese and foreigners alike began to attribute to the country’s supposedly unique organizational and social structures. Gavan McCormack, an Australian academic, describes Benedict’s book as ‘one of the greatest propaganda coups of the century.’ In stoking Japan’s own sense of its own uniqueness, he argues, the book helped sever Japan’s psychological ties with its Asian neighbors. ‘What they believed to be ancient tradition,’ he writes, ‘was quintessentially modern ideology.’

Japan’s perception of itself as isolated and different persists to this day, often to its disadvantage. It has, for example, hampered the country’s electronics industry: Japanese manufacturers often produce goods perfectly adapted to Japanese customers but of little global reach. It yearns for what it sees as its rightful place in the hierarchy of nations — it has for years waged a campaign to obtain a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. But whether defending whaling, or the rights of its leaders to worship at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the ‘souls’ of more than 2 million dead Japanese soldiers, including 14 class-A war criminals from World War II, Japan often has a hard time explaining itself to the rest of the world.

Some in Japan, however, especially on the right, seem bent on preserving the mystique of a country that is somehow unintelligible to outsiders.”

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Monkey waiter in Japanese restaurant wearing lady mask:

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A Note From 1892 About A Mound Of Skulls

March 20, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 29, 1892 New York Times:

“San Antonio, Texas–A dispatch from Carrizo Springs, Dimmit County, says that twenty-five miles south of that place, near the Encinal Road has been discovered an oval-topped mound covered with petrified human skulls. The mound is about 100 feet in height, circular in form, and joined on one side to a short range of hills of about the same height.

On the summit, and for some distance down the sloping side, it is covered with what appear to be smooth, spherical bones, which upon close inspection prove to be petrified human skulls distorted into grotesque shapes.

By removing the sand and loose dirt from the orifices of the face, the unmistakable human countenance is revealed. Bones of other classes are found there, and from all appearances the whole mound is formed of human skulls. The subject of opening the mound has been agitated, but as of yet it has not been done.”

“Page Suggested Sharing Information With The ‘Right’ Companies”

March 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I admire Google for its Bell Labs-sized ambitions, but Larry Page telling us to trust his company with our private information is only slightly less ludicrous than Mark Zuckerberg lecturing the President about the NSA. It’s just a ruse to try to convince the more gullible among us that Silicon Valley isn’t Big Brother-ish. That’s a lie, of course. The government and Google and Facebook and, to a good extent, the rest of us, are all working in the same direction: to gather as much data we can to survive in the Information Age. Page and Zuckerberg want what’s inside your head; they even want to implant information there. I don’t doubt that Page has plenty of noble intentions, but a publicly traded behemoth’s largesse only goes so far. The beast must be fed.

From a WSJ report of a conversation between Page and Charlie Rose, a handsome robot who once had an epiphany on a tennis court:

“In what has become a Silicon Valley ritual, Page criticized electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies, based on leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

‘We need to know the parameters of what the government is doing and why,’ Page said. ‘The government has done itself a disservice. I’m sad that Google is in the position of protecting you from what the government is doing.’

When it comes to individuals trying to shield themselves from private companies, however, Page said people shouldn’t be ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water.’

Page suggested sharing information with the ‘right’ companies is important for technology to advance, and that Google is among those companies. ‘We spend a lot of time thinking about these issues,’ he said. ‘The main thing we need to do is provide (users) choice” and show them what data will be used.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 20, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Health / Wellness."

“Health / Wellness.”

Rap Ghost writer for hire  (Lower East Side)

I can write a song , verse or hook for you about any topic you want and make it as complicated or as simple as you want it. I can write a specific song about your personal life experiences and make it sound as though it was written by the person who actually lived it.

I can cover any and all topics and styles including but not limited to the following:

1) Comedic

2 Social / political causes

3) Life stories

4) Love

5) Criminal activity

6) Depression / struggle

7) Happiness / success

8) Battle raps

9) A conversation or argument between 2 people on opposite sides of an issue

10) Dedications

11) Health / Wellness

" A conversation or argument between 2 people on opposite sides of an issue."

“A conversation or argument between 2 people on opposite sides of an issue.”

“The Humane Pig Farmer Believes That What He Does For A Living Is Wrong”

March 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve mentioned before that the idea of free-range chicken doesn’t sound particularly ethical to me. If I were a chicken, my main objection to the slaughterhouse would not be the accommodations. I would be happy to lodge in cramped quarters provided you do not kill me and my family when it’s time to check out.

Is it any more decent if we treat chickens, pigs, cows and other creatures relatively kindly before killing them for food and clothes? The opening of “Loving Animals to Death,” James McWilliams’ American Scholar article about the Food Movement’s considerable blind spot:

“Bob Comis of Stony Brook Farm is a professional pig farmer—the good kind. Comis knows his pigs, loves his pigs, and treats his pigs with uncommon dignity. His animals live in an impossibly bucolic setting and ‘as close to natural as possible.’ They are, he writes, so piggy that they are Plato’s pig, ‘the ideal form of the pig.’ Comis’s pastures, in Schoharie, New York, are playgrounds of porcine fun: ‘they root, they lounge, they narf, they eat, they forage, they sleep, they wallow, they bask, they run, they play.’ And when the fateful day of deliverance arrives, ‘they die unconsciously, without pain or suffering.’

Comis’s patrons—educated eaters with an interest in humanely harvested meat—are understandably eager to fill their forks with Comis’s pork. To them, Comis represents a new breed of agrarian maverick intent on bucking an agricultural-industrial system so bloated that a single company—Smithfield Foods—produces six billion pounds of pork a year. Comis provides a welcome alternative to this industrial model, and if the reform-minded Food Movement has its way, one day all meat will be humanely raised and locally sourced for the ‘conscientious carnivore.’

Except for one problem: Comis the humane pig farmer believes that what he does for a living is wrong. Morally wrong. ‘As a pig farmer, I lead an unethical life,’ he wrote recently on The Huffington Post. He’s acutely aware that he ‘might indeed be a very bad person for killing animals for a living.’ Comis’s essential objection to his line of work is that he slaughters sentient and emotionally sophisticated beings. His self-assessment on this score is unambiguous. His life is one that’s ‘shrouded in the justificatory trappings of social acceptance.’ To those who want their righteous pork chop, he asserts that ‘I am a slaveholder and a murderer’ and that ‘what I do is wrong.’ Even if ‘I cannot yet act on it,’ he concludes, ‘I know it in my bones.'”

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Old Print Article: “First Volunteer For Leap To Mars,” New York Times (1920)

March 20, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some had too little faith in Robert Goddard and his rockets, but Captain Claude Collins had too much. The president of the Aviators’ Club of Pennsylvania offered, nearly a century ago, to be blasted to our neighboring planet, fueled in his dreams to a good extent by Goddard’s exciting work. From an article that contains a telegraph from the would-be spaceman in the February 5, 1920 New York Times:

“By Telegraph to the Editor of The New York Times.

PHILADELPHIA–In order to aid science and arouse the people of the nation to act to make America the peer of other nations in the air, I make the following proposal in full seriousness and stand ready to carry out its stipulation at any time. I am connected with no commercial concern, and am not making this proposal for monetary gains.

Believing the plans of a noted scientist to send a super-rocket from the earth to Mars, in the body of which a person would be stationed, can be developed into a reality, I hereby volunteer to attempt this inter-planet leap and offer to do so, gratis, in an endeavor to realize these aims of science and to successfully alight in the neighbor-world, providing the following stipulations are carried out and to reciprocate for the danger entailed. I am first enabled to make a tour of the nation by air to appeal directly to the people in an endeavor to awaken America to the menace we face in the air and to bring some action which may result in placing the United States on a par with other nations aeronautically, before possibly terminating my earthly existence.

It shall be agreed that:

1. I shall be permitted to assist in planning the construction of the rocket and the details of the venture.

2. Communication, either by radio, light or other means shall be definitely established with Mars and a rocket, similar to that which I am to make the leap, be constructed and successfully launched and landed on that planet previous to my start.

3. A board of ten prominent scientists shall agree to the practicability of the completed rocket and possible success of the same in reaching the planet with me safely.

4. Ten days before the scheduled start of the leap insurance to the amount of $10,000 shall be taken out for me in favor of my heirs, with the understanding and consummation of a further agreement to the effect that none of the parties to this agreement be held responsible for anything which may happen to me under any circumstances. 

5. Representatives of the press of New York City in co-operation with the Aircraft Manufacturers; L.L. Driggs, President of the American Flying Club; Jefferson de M. Thompson, President of the Aero Club of America; the scientist who shall make the rocket, as well as any other persons desired by the aforenamed, heads of the institutions he represents, shall supervise all plans and arrangements for the proposed leap and equipment; they shall also back up and assist me in compiling addresses and successfully completing the tour of the nation and visits to all large American cities with the understanding that an airplane be furnished by the aircraft manufacturers and my expenses be covered in the usual lecture method to be later agreed upon.

This agreement shall become valid upon the date signed by the first of those parties named and expire six months after that time, date of expiration being not later than Dec. 31, 1920.

Under no circumstances shall I fail to make the leap after the above stipulations have been complied with during the life of this agreement, unless with the approval of those who have become party to it.

(Signed)
CAPTAIN CLAUDE R. COLLINS
New York City Air Police.
President Aviators’ Club of Pennsylvania; Organizer Philadelphia Air Force; International Licensed Airplane Pilot.”

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“What Were Once Fringe Tactics Are Now Increasingly Mainstream”

March 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

One of my favorite magazine articles of the aughts was a 2004 New York Times Magazine piece about BzzAgent, a stealth marketer that, among other things, embedded volunteers in spaces public and private (malls, movie theaters, barbecues, etc.) with instructions to talk up a specific brand of product, hoping the campaign would go “viral” via word of mouth. The practice has obviously only grown more insidious with the boom of social networks, though the actual human contact is no longer as vital. Even “workers” in this area have been encroached upon by algorithms.

Below is a repost of an item I put up about the article three years ago.

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Thinking about The Truman Show reminded me of Rob Walker’s brilliant, frightening 2004 article,“The Hidden (in Plant Sight) Persuaders,” in the New York Times Magazine. Penned before social media really took off, the article examines how BzzAgent, a Boston-based marketing firm contracts citizens to engage in surreptitious whisper campaigns to promote products. That person in the mall conspicuously reading a just-published book or loudly mentioning a great new band–they may be BzzAgents. Most amazingly, apart from earning a few small rewards which they often don’t bother to collect, these people are unpaid volunteers just wanting to be a part of a stealth machinery, like airport cultists merely trying to plant the idea in your head that flowers are nice to buy. The article’s opening:

“Over the July 4 weekend last summer, at cookouts up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest, guests arrived with packages of Al Fresco chicken sausage for their hosts to throw on the grill. At a family gathering in Kingsley, Mich. At a small barbecue in Sag Harbor, N.Y. At a 60-guest picnic in Philadelphia.

We know that this happened, and we even know how various party guests reacted to their first exposure to Al Fresco, because the Great Sausage Fanout of 2004 did not happen by chance. The sausage-bearers were not official representatives of Al Fresco, showing up in uniforms to hand out samples. They were invited guests, friends or relatives of whoever organized the get-togethers, but they were also — unknown to most all the other attendees — ‘agents,’ and they filed reports. ‘People could not believe they weren’t pork!’ one agent related. ‘I told everyone that they were low in fat and so much better than pork sausages.’ Another wrote, ‘I handed out discount coupons to several people and made sure they knew which grocery stores carried them.’ Another noted that ‘my dad will most likely buy the garlic’ flavor, before closing, ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

These reports went back to the company that Al Fresco’s owner, Kayem Foods, had hired to execute a ‘word of mouth’ marketing campaign. And while the Fourth of July weekend was busy, it was only a couple of days in an effort that went on for three months and involved not just a handful of agents but 2,000 of them. The agents were sent coupons for free sausage and a set of instructions for the best ways to talk the stuff up, but they did not confine themselves to those ideas, or to obvious events like barbecues. Consider a few scenes from the life of just one agent, named Gabriella.

At one grocery store, Gabriella asked a manager why there was no Al Fresco sausage available. At a second store, she dropped a card touting the product into the suggestion box. At a third, she talked a stranger into buying a package. She suggested that the organizers of a neighborhood picnic serve Al Fresco. She took some to a friend’s house for dinner and (she reported back) ‘explained to her how the sausage comes in six delicious flavors.’ Talking to another friend whom she had already converted into an Al Fresco customer, she noted that the product is ‘not just for barbecues’ and would be good at breakfast too. She even wrote to a local priest known for his interest in Italian food, suggesting a recipe for Tuscan white-bean soup that included Al Fresco sausage. The priest wrote back to say he’d give it a try. Gabriella asked me not to use her last name. The Al Fresco campaign is over — having notably boosted sales, by 100 percent in some stores — but she is still spreading word of mouth about a variety of other products, and revealing her identity, she said, would undermine her effectiveness as an agent.

The sausage campaign was organized by a small, three-year-old company in Boston called BzzAgent, but that firm is hardly the only entity to have concluded that the most powerful forum for consumer seduction is not TV ads or billboards but rather the conversations we have in our everyday lives. The thinking is that in a media universe that keeps fracturing into ever-finer segments, consumers are harder and harder to reach; some can use TiVo to block out ads or the TV’s remote control to click away from them, and the rest are simply too saturated with brand messages to absorb another pitch. So corporations frustrated at the apparent limits of ‘traditional’ marketing are increasingly open to word-of-mouth marketing. One result is a growing number of marketers organizing veritable armies of hired ‘trendsetters’ or ‘influencers’ or ‘street teams’ to execute ‘seeding programs,’ ‘viral marketing,’ ‘guerrilla marketing.’ What were once fringe tactics are now increasingly mainstream; there is even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association.”

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BzzAgent, the social media machine:

“I Drove An Automobile Around The World Fifty Years Ago”

March 19, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

George Schuster, driver of the Thomas Flyer that won the New York-to-Paris “Great Race” of 1908, appears on I’ve Got a Secret five decades later. Prior to Schuster’s trek, no “automobilist” had driven across America during the winter.

“The Law Required Them To Wear Distinctive Garb: Gloves, High-Heeled Shoes, And A Bell On The Head”

March 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Via the always amusing Delancey Place blog comes this excerpt from Ross King’s Brunelleschi’s Dome about laws governing prostitutes’ clothing in Renaissance Italy:

“Held … in Florence’s communal prison the Stinche … were more serious criminals-heretics, sorcerers, witches and murderers — for whom unpleasant fates awaited: decapitation, amputation or burning at the stake. Executions took place outside the walls, in the Prato della Giustizia, ‘Field of Justice.’ These were popular public spectacles — so popular, in fact, that criminals often had to be imported from other cities to satisfy the public’s demand for macabre drama. This vice squad worked in tandem with the Orwellian-sounding Ufficiali dell’Onesta ‘Office of Decency,’ which was charged with licensing and administering the municipal brothels that had been created in the area around the Mercato Vecchio. The specific aim of these public brothels was to wean Florentine men from the ‘greater evil’ of sodomy. Prostitutes became a common sight in Florence, not least because the law required them to wear distinctive garb: gloves, high-heeled shoes, and a bell on the head.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

March 19, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

Why is it so hard for murderers to get rid of bodies? (I can think of really good hiding places)

So why don’t murderers think it through and hide bodies better?

Makes no sense to me. 

Even mobsters don’t do it right. They get caught decades later from these old murders they did at the start of their careers.

“This Technology Is Going To Revolutionize Human Communications!”

March 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Technology is an opportunity but not a panacea. While the Cold War was still on, it seemed to some that interconnectivity would warm relations, that we could 0 and 1 our way to utopia. As the current headlines remind us, disconnects can still occur among the connected.

The opening of “Slow Scan To Moscow,” Adam Hochschild’s 1986 Mother Jones article about the growing electronic link between peoples of the U.S. and the Soviet Union:

“Joel Schatz has wire-rimmed glasses and an Old Testament-sized beard. A big head of curly black hair flecked with gray adds a few extra inches to his sixfoot-two frame. ‘This trip we’re about to take,’ he says enthusiastically, ‘is so important that I’ve even gotten a haircut.’ Its effects are not noticeable.

Joel is sitting in the study of his San Francisco apartment, where most of the furniture consists of pillows on the floor. The largest thing in sight is an enormous reflector telescope, which can be pivoted around on its pedestal and aimed out a high window, Joel explains, ‘to remind me of my place in the cosmos. We’re all voyagers out there.

‘If I had millions of dollars I’d build neighborhood observatories all over the world. And at each one I’d have good conga drums, so people could drum together as well as observe.’

The object of Joel’s attention at this moment, however, as it is much of the time, is his four-pound, briefcase-size Radio Shack Tandy Model 100 portable computer. ‘I bought this machine for $399. For $1.82 a minute – $1.82! – I can send a telex message to Moscow. This technology is going to revolutionize human communications! Think what it will mean when you can get thousands of Americans and Soviets on the same computer network. Once scientists in both countries begin talking to each other on these machines they won’t be able to stop. And we’ll be taking a running leap over the governments on both sides.

‘I’m not a scientist,’ Joel adds. ‘I’ve only owned a computer for four months. I don’t understand how they work. I’ll leave that to other people. I’m just interested in how they can improve communication on this planet.’”

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Radio Shack Tandy 102 portable computer, the final refresh of the 100 series:

“Would We Not Want To Forbid The Crazy Risk Of Driving?”

March 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s difficult to envision a time when driving by humans is outlawed even if autonomous vehicles are safer, but perhaps a “sin tax” will arise in the form of higher insurance for those who cling to the wheel. In “Would We Ever Ban Human Driving?” all sides of the issue are analyzed by Brad Templeton, who’s a consultant to Google in the driverless sector. The opening:

“I often see the suggestion that as Robocars get better, eventually humans will be forbidden from driving, or strongly discouraged through taxes or high insurance charges. Many people think that might happen fairly soon.

It’s easy to see why, as human drivers kill 1.2 million people around the world every year, and injure many millions more. If we get a technology that does much better, would we not want to forbid the crazy risk of driving? It is one of the most dangerous things we commonly do, perhaps only second to smoking.

Even if this is going to happen, it won’t happen soon. While my own personal prediction is that robocars will gain market share very quickly — more like the iPhone than like traditional automotive technologies — there will still be lots of old-style cars around for many decades to come, and lots of old-style people. History shows we’re very reluctant to forbid old technologies. Instead we grandfather in the old technologies. You can still drive the cars of long ago, if you have one, even though they are horribly unsafe death traps by today’s standards, and gross polluters as well. Society is comfortable that as market forces cause the numbers of old vehicles to dwindle, this is sufficient to attain the social goals.”

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A Brief Note From 1897 About Girls In A Pigpen

March 18, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the October 11, 1897 New York Times:

“Poughkeepsie–The charge that three girls, inmates of the Orphan Home for Girls at Tivoli, were confined in a pigpen by way of punishment, was not denied by the Superintendent, E.F. George, when he was asked about it to-day. He says that three girls were thus punished for what the doctor said was laziness, and that the punishment cured them. The only part of the story which Mr. George denies is that the children were kept in the pigpen for forty-eight hours. He says that they were kept there twelve hours instead.

The village talk goes so far as to intimate that the children and the pigs were inclosed in the same building, but this Mr. George denies. He says that no pigs were in the barn at all. The pens are all filled with pigs now, however.

The children were put in the pens a month ago. The names of the little ones are Hazel Cahill of New York, eight years old; Beulah Delehanty of Poughkeepsie, eight years old, and Mabel Moore of New York, nine years old. The matron of the home is Mrs. George, the wife of the Superintendent. She says that the people of the village are down on her husband because he tried to break up gambling and horse racing in the town. The management of the home was discussed a year ago, when May Conklin, twelve years old, committed suicide by taking paris green, because, as it was said, the matron had cut off her hair.”

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