Urban Studies

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Old Print Article: “Mind Reader Seymour’s Entombment,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1893)

February 25, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax."

“The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax.”

An Illinois mind reader planned in 1893 to have himself buried alive where he would remain while a crop grew above him. He would then emerge unscathed. There are easier ways to kill yourself. From an article in the August 7th edition in that year’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Hillsboro, Ill.–The mind reader, A.J. Seymour, is generally known in Illinois and his proposed attempt to be buried and remain in the ground while a crop of barley is grown on his grave creates interest in this state. Dr. E.C. Dunn of Rockford has been selected by Seymour as manager. Dr. Dunn says: ‘There is no question that this feat can be performed. I have seen it performed successfully three times in India, at Allahabad, Delhi and Benares. For several days Seymour will be fed upon a diet of fat and heat producing food. He will then throw himself into a cataleptic state. Their lungs will be filled with pure air to their fullest capacity and the tongue placed back and partially down the throat in such a manner as to completely close the aperture to the lungs. The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax. After parafine has been spread over the entire body, to close the pores, it will be ready for burial. The body will be put in an extra large casket. This will be placed inside another and both  will be perforated, in order that if any poisonous gases exude from the body they may make their escape and be absorbed by the soil. The interment is to be made in a clay soil.’”

“These Are Issues That Fundamentally Affect Peoples’ Lives”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

After Hurricane Sandy devastated so many people in Queens and on Staten Island in 2012, the federal government gave New York City millions to help rebuild the houses of the newly homeless (and those remaining in barely livable, damaged homes). Mayor Bloomberg set up a program called Build It Back, staffed offices with workers, and for the next 15 months not a single home was rebuilt by the program as people in need, people still struggling along in shelters, were stonewalled. NOT A SINGLE HOME. The Rapid Repair project which restored electrical and boiler service was a good use of money, but Build It Back has been a fiasco.

You read about this colossal failure in the local newspapers sometimes, but not much. It’s been treated as a minor subplot. What I have noticed is that a lot of newsprint has been devoted to nitpicking newly inaugurated Bill de Blasio over small matters since he got into office. Perhaps that’s just locals being wary of what’s unfamiliar or maybe some moneyed interests are worried about tax increases. Perhaps it’s a little of both.

No one knows yet if de Blasio will be a good mayor or not, but he did make a solid (if obvious) call in replacing the failed official in charge of the Build It Back program. Perhaps some people can still get help. From “De Blasio and the Motorcade Sideshow,” a Sally Goldenberg article in Capital:

“When a CNN reporter asked him Monday whether he believes the press is treating him unfairly, de Blasio began by saying he can ‘take the heat,’ then criticized reporters for focusing on ‘sideshows,’ instead of announcements about Hurricane Sandy rebuilding, and his court fight to keep open Long Island College Hospital. (The LICH story was covered widely, despite the detail flap.)

‘These are issues that fundamentally affect peoples’ lives and I think that’s where the public debate should reside,’ he said. ‘And I think too much of the time debate veers away into, you know, sideshows.'”

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“Some Elected Officials Ask How Far Scientists Plan To Go In Their Efforts To Engineer Humans”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sooner or later–and probably sooner–genetic engineering in humans is going to be a reality, despite fears of such things. Especially since a lot of those fears are dubious. Science and technology are imperfect, but so is nature. If we can avoid congenital disease or defect, we should. And, yes, there will be a temptation to abuse these advances as there always are, but you can’t hold back progress for that reason. For all the thousands of people who’ve been helped by science to become parents, isn’t it worth it to put up with the occasional Octomom? From a New York Times article by Sabrina Tavernise about the intersection of genetic therapy and human fertility:

“Such genetic methods have been controversial in the United States, where critics and some elected officials ask how far scientists plan to go in their efforts to engineer humans, and question whether such methods might create other problems later on.

‘Every time we get a little closer to genetic tinkering to promote health — that’s exciting and scary,’ said Dr. Alan Copperman, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. ‘People are afraid it will turn into a dystopian brave new world.’

He added that the current meeting and discussion was an attempt at ‘putting together a framework for us to prepare for this genetic revolution.’

‘The most exciting part, scientifically,’ he said, ‘is to be able to prevent or fix an error in the genetic machinery.'”

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“It Was As If He Were A Thing — A Thing That Pleased Me”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

As difficult as it is to comprehend the horror that slavery ever existed at all, it really stuns that it still exists now. The opening of a Priceonomics blog post by Zachary Crockett about the Mauritanian slave trade:

“Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane received his first slave when he was seven years old. It was the afternoon of his circumcision — his right of passage into early manhood — and he had the liberty to pick any gift imaginable. ‘It was as if I were picking out a toy,’ he recalls. ‘It was as if he were a thing — a thing that pleased me.’

With the point of a finger, Abdel selected a small boy with almond eyes and skin the color of coal to be his slave until death.

Abdel is a resident of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in western North Africa, where this is commonplace. In fact, Mauritania has the highest proportional population of slaves in the world: as many as 680,000 of the country’s 3.4 million people — 20% of the population — are considered ‘property.'”

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A Brief Note From 1892 About A Good Laugh

February 24, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the September 4, 1892 New York Times:

“St. Paul, Minn.–Miss Josie Letson of Minneapolis has been lying at the point of death at the Northwestern Hospital for the last six weeks, but because of a remarkable surgical operation, will recover. She had been taking nothing but liquid food for over a year and had become so weak she could not raise her head.

As a last resort, physicians, by the use of a stethoscope, located an obstruction in the aesophagus about two inches below the clavicle, or collar bone. Miss Nelson was given no anesthetic and an incision was made on the left side of the neck about 4 1/2 inches in length.

The doctors dissected down to the aesophoaus, opened it, ad there found two teeth pointed downward, firmly inserted in the interior walls of the aesophagus. They almost entirely obstructed the passage.

Miss Nelson said six years ago, while in a fit of laughter, she swallowed the two teeth, which were then attached to a triangular piece of rubber in her gums.”

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“We Are In A New Normal After Snowden”

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

It’s difficult to legislate widespread behavior. Prohibition didn’t work because people kept drinking. They voted with their actions. They same is true about spying, about invasions of what we formerly considered privacy. Perhaps laws can prohibit some government intrusions, but our technology makes it too tempting for it to stop completely. Of course, the power has passed into the hands of the people as well, which has forced a transparency on government that it did not want. At the moment when people are most worried about the government having too much control, the reverse is actually happening. It’s falling away. And it’s not really about Snowden or Manning but about humans and our nature. We want to know. We like to watch. 

From Eli Lake’s Daily Beast article about James Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence officer who has come to realize the hard way that information now flows down a two-way street:

“Clapper also acknowledges that the very human nature of the bureaucracy he controls virtually insures that more mass disclosures are inevitable. ‘In the end,’ he says, ‘we will never ever be able to guarantee that there will not be an Edward Snowden or another Chelsea Manning because this is a large enterprise composed of human beings with all their idiosyncrasies.’

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, concurs: ‘I do think he recognizes that we are in a new normal after Snowden where we can’t operate with the expectation where nothing will get out,” he said. ‘If you are going to be dealing with the world where there are these disclosures you have to be more transparent to make the case to the public what you are doing and not doing.'”

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“Soldiers Are Developing Some Unorthodox Relationships With Their Machines”

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

I’m glad Newsweek is a thing again. The opening of a really good Kyle Chayka article from that publication about the frontlines of carbon-silicon relations, in the U.S. military, where cooperation, not competition, is key:

“For a glimpse at the future of human-robot interactions, it might be better to look at what’s happening in the United States military than analyzing Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with an OS voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Throughout every department of our armed forces, autonomous robots are playing a larger role in every aspect of warfare than ever before, and soldiers are developing some unorthodox relationships with their machines. Just ask Danielle.

Danielle was a TALON, a remotely operated robot used for reconnaissance in combat, as well as in tough-to-reach terrain like rocky canyons and caves. Connor, an Army sergeant, recalled that while deployed in Afghanistan, soldiers had to hole up inside their trucks each night, packing several humans as well as piles of equipment including robots into a small space. ‘Everything had to be locked up, so our TALON was in the center aisle of our truck,’ he recalls. ‘Our junior guy named it Danielle so he’d have a woman to cuddle with at night.’ Sadly, the romance was not to last: ‘Danielle got blown up,’ Connor says.

Just as World War II pilots gave their planes names like Memphis Belle, and decorated them with nose art, today’s soldiers are naming their robots after movie stars, musicians and ex-girlfriends. Brady, another Army sergeant, called his TALON Elly. ‘I talked to her, when I was at the controls. I’d be coaxing her, ‘C’mon honey,” he says. ‘They’re kind of part of the family.’ Ben, an Air Force staff sergeant, says that when one robot was detonated by an IED, his team ‘recovered the components, the carcass, if you will, and brought it back to base. The next day there was a sign out in front that said, ‘Why did you kill me? Why?’

From holding elaborate funerals for robots, complete with 21-gun salutes, valor medals, and memorial markers, to identifying with them as ‘an extension of our own personality,’ as Simon, a Marine sergeant, says, soldiers are now working effectively with robots on a more intimate level than in perhaps any other field, saving human lives in the process. The anecdotes above are from a series of interviews by University of Washington PhD Julie Carpenter, who studies human-robot interaction (the subjects’ names were changed to preserve their anonymity). The explosive ordnance disposal personnel Carpenter interviewed were, she says, ‘treating robots in ways that don’t fit neatly into how we treat other tools.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

“My husband is clean of all infection.”

“My husband is clean of all infection.”

donation (bronx)

hi my name is emy. im looking for a female that would like to carry a baby from my husband. i cant have no baby and i would like to make my life happy by letting my husband have one baby.

must live with us through the whole 9 months.

my husband is clean of all infection. he was tested. please help us have one baby. he deserves it. he’s a great man.

“They Needed Truth; He Was The Oracle”

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

As Seth MacFarlane uses some of his Family Guy wealth to reboot Cosmos on Fox, Joel Achenbach of Smithsonian magazine looks back at the show’s original host, Carl Sagan, who was something of an ambassador to his own country in the 1970s, a populist professor coaxing Americans through the shock and awe of the post-Space Race with serious scholarship, talk-show schmoozing and provocation. An excerpt:

“The Sagan archive gives us a close-up of the celebrity scientist’s frenetic existence and, more important, a documentary record of how Americans thought about science in the second half of the 20th century. We hear the voices of ordinary people in the constant stream of mail coming to Sagan’s office at Cornell. They saw Sagan as the gatekeeper of scientific credibility. They shared their big ideas and fringe theories. They told him about their dreams. They begged him to listen. They needed truth; he was the oracle.

The Sagan files remind us how exploratory the 1960s and ’70s were, how defiant of official wisdom and mainstream authority, and Sagan was in the middle of the intellectual foment. He was a nuanced referee. He knew UFOs weren’t alien spaceships, for example, but he didn’t want to silence the people who believed they were, and so he helped organize a big UFO symposium in 1969, letting all sides have their say.

Space itself seemed different then. When Sagan came of age, all things concerning space had a tail wind: There was no boundary on our outer-space aspirations. Through telescopes, robotic probes and Apollo astronauts, the universe was revealing itself at an explosive, fireworks-finale pace.

Things haven’t quite worked out as expected. ‘Space Age’ is now an antiquated phrase. The United States can’t even launch astronauts at the moment. The universe continues to tantalize us, but the notion that we’re about to make contact with other civilizations seems increasingly like stoner talk.”

________________________

In 1988, Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Hawking on God and other aliens:

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Old Print Article: “Opening His Son’s Grave,” New York Times (1882)

February 23, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

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“With a stout stick Hirsch raised the head of his son’s corpse.”

I suppose you could say that Charles Hirsch was a consumer advocate of sorts, but he probably took things a little too far. Perhaps he was driven mad by diphtheria claiming most of his children. From an article in the May 20, 1882 New York Times:

“Batavia–The village of Oakfield, in this county, is thoroughly excited over the actions of a German named Charles Hirsch, who has dug open the grave of his son Charles for the purpose of ascertaining the material of which the coffin is composed. In December, 1889, malignant diphtheria appeared in the family of Hirsch, who was the father of several children. The disease was of the most destructive type, and, one after another, in quick succession, he was bereft of five of his children. A child would be attacked in the morning, and at night would be dead, and within 24 hours buried. One son drank a cup of coffee, and in 15 minutes was taken with choking and died almost instantly. At this time the burial of another child was taking place. A Batavia undertaker had charge of the funerals, five in one week, and a few weeks ago some difficulty arose between him and Hirsch in reference to quality of the coffins which were provided. The undertaker claimed they were of certain materials, while the father and purchaser believed he had been cheated.

The misunderstanding could not be made clear, so the German determined to open one of the graves and satisfy himself. He employed the sexton to assist to him, and proceeded to the burying ground. With spades and shovels they accomplished their work speedily, for, the grave was in a low portion of the cemetery, and the earth was filled with water and handled readily. They began operations about 10 o’clock in the morning, and in an hour and a half had the grave opened and the coffin-box was reached. With tools with which he had thoughtfully provided himself Hirsch unscrewed the top of the box and removed it. Then he crushed in the glass at the head of the coffin. The body had been buried nearly 17 months, and the odor which arose from it in its advanced state of decomposition was extremely nauseating. It was borne with coolness, however, and the work was prosecuted. The coffin was nearly filled with water, and it is said the body was actually floating in it. The head and upper part of the body were best preserved. With a stout stick Hirsch raised the head of his son’s corpse and propped it up so that he could get a piece of the bottom of the coffin. He succeeded, and then broke off splinters of the side and top. Having secured what he had worked so hard for, Hirsch, assisted by the sexton, filled the grave and left it. It is reported that at noon Hirsch left the grave and secured his dinner, entering the dining-room of the village hotel and being ordered out by the landlord on account of the unbearable stench with which his clothes seemed impregnated. When the news of his proceeding became noised about, much indignation prevailed and expressions of condemnation were heard on all sides. By some it was charitably considered that the man was insane, while others believed he did it without knowing better. The former theory prevails, however, for citizens of Batavia who know him, state for some time that they have noticed peculiarities in his conduct which would be inexplicable in a sane man. He is a prosperous farmer and evidently is well to do. There is a growing feeling over his strange actions, but it is not likely the authorities will make any move in the matter. Hirsch rendered himself amenable to the law, however, besides endangering the health of many persons, by opening the grave and permitting the foul, poisonous gases and odors to escape. The grave was open for nearly three hours.”

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“It Could Just Be A Coincidence”

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

As baseball season gets closer, I think back on puzzling display copy for a New Yorker article from three seasons ago about Tampa Bay’s then-spare outfielder Sam Fuld. There wasn’t anything wrong with the actual piece by Ben McGrath–Fuld is an interesting topic as a brainy last guy on the bench who’s overcome diabetes–but the headline was destined to be very wrong the second it was published. It read “Super Sam: Early Success for a Late Bloomer.” Except there was little chance that the veteran, who enjoyed a great April, would overcome a poor hit tool, no power and a history of offensive deficiency to become a “late bloomer.” 

Fuld was just a subpar player who had a hot first month of the season, most likely because a lot of batted balls that were usually caught were finding holes. It was a statistical outlier, apt to happen from time to time, and just as likely to be corrected as more at-bats piled up. He ended that season with a .673 OPS (very substandard) and will have a tough time making the major-league squad in Oakland this spring. (Again: In all fairness to McGrath, he suggested that Fuld was just a shooting star. It’s more the hed and dek that were misleading.)

If this kind of statistical outlier happens during the middle of a season, it’s hardly noticed. But when it happens at the beginning of one, headline writers have a tendency to create a narrative that isn’t true. A player has magically improved! It will occur this season with some other player who, like Fuld, is fungible with guys in the minors.

But baseball and lesser sports don’t have ownership of such misreadings. It can also be the case with serious things like cancer clusters. We always want to investigate health crises that might have an unnatural origin, but we must remember that sometimes it’s just the numbers, merely an outlier.

From Amy Chozick’s New York Times Magazine interview with mathematician David J. Hand:

“Amy Chozick:

You also write that geographical clusters of people with diseases might not necessarily be a result of environmental issues.

David J. Hand:

 

It could just be a coincidence. Well, they could be due to some sort of pollution or infectious disease or something like that, but you can expect clusters to occur just by chance as well. So it’s an interesting statistical problem to tease these things out. Is this a genuine cluster in the sense that there’s a cause behind it? Or is it a chance cluster?

Amy Chozick:

So we shouldn’t dismiss those coincidences?

David J. Hand:

No, but if you do see such a cluster, then you should work out the chance that you would see such a cluster purely randomly, purely by chance, and if it’s very low odds, then you should investigate it carefully.”

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“They’re Based On His Belief That Technology Progresses Exponentially”

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

A passage from Carole Cadwalladr’s new Guardian profile of futurist and Google employee Ray Kurzweil, who is often, though not always, right when making his bold predictions about technology:

“Bill Gates calls him ‘the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence.’ He’s received 19 honorary doctorates, and he’s been widely recognised as a genius. But he’s the sort of genius, it turns out, who’s not very good at boiling a kettle. He offers me a cup of coffee and when I accept he heads into the kitchen to make it, filling a kettle with water, putting a teaspoon of instant coffee into a cup, and then moments later, pouring the unboiled water on top of it. He stirs the undissolving lumps and I wonder whether to say anything but instead let him add almond milk – not eating diary is just one of his multiple dietary rules – and politely say thank you as he hands it to me. It is, by quite some way, the worst cup of coffee I have ever tasted.

But then, he has other things on his mind. The future, for starters. And what it will look like. He’s been making predictions about the future for years, ever since he realised that one of the key things about inventing successful new products was inventing them at the right moment, and ‘so, as an engineer, I collected a lot of data.’ In 1990, he predicted that a computer would defeat a world chess champion by 1998. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. He predicted the explosion of the world wide web at a time it was only being used by a few academics and he predicted dozens and dozens of other things that have largely come true, or that will soon, such as that by the year 2000, robotic leg prostheses would allow paraplegics to walk (the US military is currently trialling an ‘Iron Man’ suit) and ‘cybernetic chauffeurs’ would be able to drive cars (which Google has more or less cracked).

His critics point out that not all his predictions have exactly panned out (no US company has reached a market capitalisation of more than $1 trillion; ‘bioengineered treatments’ have yet to cure cancer). But in any case, the predictions aren’t the meat of his work, just a byproduct. They’re based on his belief that technology progresses exponentially (as is also the case in Moore’s law, which sees computers’ performance doubling every two years). But then you just have to dig out an old mobile phone to understand that. The problem, he says, is that humans don’t think about the future that way. ‘Our intuition is linear.’

When Kurzweil first started talking about the ‘singularity,’ a conceit he borrowed from the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge, he was dismissed as a fantasist. He has been saying for years that he believes that the Turing test – the moment at which a computer will exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human – will be passed in 2029. The difference is that when he began saying it, the fax machine hadn’t been invented. But now, well… it’s another story.”

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“The Internet Is A Secret-Spilling Machine”

February 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I don’t read Gawker much anymore even though the site has some very talented writers and editors. I don’t look down on it–just elsewhere. Gossip has value for a society; it just doesn’t interest me very much. Viral videos and stories aren’t what I find appealing. And posts that often seem to view the world as black or white, with no gray, aren’t convincing to me.

But that doesn’t mean I’m right. In all fairness, why would company founder Nick Denton want to attract my eyeballs? I’m not going to make him any money with my interests in obscure and offbeat stuff. Getting traffic makes money, so why trash someone who’s playing by the rules of engagement? Unless, of course, an organization is outright lying and manipulating like Fox News. But I don’t think Gawker does that. I think it’s looking for truth, even if it’s usually truth I don’t care about. 

From Denton’s new Playboy interview conducted by Jeff Bercovici:

“Playboy:

So Kinja is your bet that in 10 years we will all be part of a crowdsourced gossip press reporting on one another.

Nick Denton:

The Panopticon—the prison in which everybody is exposed to scrutiny all the time. Do you remember the website Fucked Company? It was big in about 2000, 2001. I was CEO of Moreover Technologies at the time. A saleswoman put in an anonymous report to the site about my having paid for the eye operation of a young male executive I had the hots for. The story, like many stories, was roughly half true. Yes, there was a young male executive. Yes, he did have an eye operation. No, it wasn’t paid for by me. It was paid for by the company’s health insurance according to normal procedure. And no, I didn’t fancy him; I detested him. It’s such a great example of Fucked Company and, by extension, most internet discussion systems. There’s some real truth that gets told that is never of a scale to warrant mainstream media attention, and there’s also no mechanism for fact-checking, no mechanism to actually converge on some real truth. It’s out there. Half of it’s right. Half of it’s wrong. You don’t know which half is which. What if we could develop a system for collaboratively reaching the truth? Sources and subjects and writers and editors and readers and casual armchair experts asking questions and answering them, with follow-ups and rebuttals. What if we could actually have a journalistic process that didn’t require paid journalists and tape recorders and the cost of a traditional journalistic operation? You could actually uncover everything—every abusive executive, every corrupt eye operation.

Playboy:

What are the implications for the broader society? What does America look like from inside the Panopticon?

Nick Denton:

When people take a look at the change in attitudes toward gay rights or gay marriage, they talk about the example of people who came out, celebrities who came out. That has a pretty powerful effect. But even more powerful are all the friends and relatives, people you know. When it’s no longer some weird group of faggots on Christopher Street but actually people you know, that’s when attitudes change, and my presumption is the internet is going to be a big part of that. You’re going to be bombarded with news you wouldn’t necessarily have consumed—information, humanity, texture. I think Facebook, more than anything else, and the internet have been responsible for a large part of the liberalization of the past five or 10 years when it comes to sex, when it comes to drinking. Five years ago it was embarrassing when somebody had photographs of somebody drunk as a student. There was actually a discussion about whether a whole generation of kids had damaged their career prospects because they put up too much information about themselves in social media. What actually happened was that institutions and organizations changed, and frankly any organization that didn’t change was going to handicap itself because everyone, every normal person, gets drunk in college. There are stupid pictures or sex pictures of pretty much everybody. And if those things are leaked or deliberately shared, I think the effect is to change the institutions rather than to damage the individuals. The internet is a secret-spilling machine, and the spilling of secrets has been very healthy for a lot of people’s lives.”

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“What Effect Can A Novelist Have In A Culture In Which Terrorists Seem To Have Hijacked The World’s Narrative?”

February 21, 2014 in Books, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

If you’ve never watched it, here’s the 1991 BBC program, Don DeLillo: The Word, The Image, and The Gun. If I had to pick my favorite of his novels, I would say that I probably got the most pleasure from White Noise. Although “pleasure” is an admittedly odd word choice given the book’s topic is an airborne toxic event. I think the majority of his readers would choose Underworld or Libra.

Mao II is such a strange thing: Published the same year as this show, that novel has wooden characters and plotting, but it’s so eerily correct about the coming escalation of terrorism, how guns would become bombs and airplanes would not just be redirected but repurposed. It’s like DeLillo tried to alert us to a targets drawn in chalk on all sides of the Twin Towers, but we never really fully noticed. 

This program is a great portrait of DeLillo and his “dangerous secrets” about technology, surveillance, film, news, the novel, art and the apocalypse.

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“A Prominent Futurologist Has Claimed That AI Girlfriends (And Presumably Boyfriends)…Could Become A Reality By 2029”

February 20, 2014 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Computer dating, with the help of IBM’s ENIAC, stretches back at least to the 1960s (listen here to a 50-year-old radio report about it). But when futurist Ray Kurzweil talks about computer dating, he doesn’t think of the machine as a middleman but as a ladies’ man (or lady or some other variation on the theme). It’s disquieting to a lot of us, but is it just around the bend? The opening of Ben Child’s Guardian article about Kurzweil’s recent review of Spike Jonze’s Her:

“It might just be music to the ears of lovelorn geeks prepared to wait another 15 years to meet the love of their lives: a prominent futurologist has claimed that AI girlfriends (and presumably boyfriends) like the one played by Scarlett Johansson in the Oscar-nominated film Her could become a reality by 2029.

Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and Google’s director of engineering makes the claim in a review of Spike Jonze’s much-praised sci-fi romance. In a post on his website, Kurzweil delivered a generally positive verdict on the film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a man called Theodore who falls in love with his operating system, Samantha, before moving on to its technological implications.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"Here's a story that is serious to funny."

“Here’s a story that is serious to funny.”

“He Dreamt Pretty Wild,” a screenplay, check out synopsis:

Synopsis:

Here’s a story that is serious to funny. Joe fights crime after turning his coat into a makeshift cape (“cape- coat”) and flies. He becomes Super Joe! It’s pretty funny the way he handles the bad guys. Also as Super Joe, he sure does a job with the ladies, in satisfying them, that is. Without being Super Joe he also manages to straighten out a few hoodlums robbing a store in a couple of episodes. Joe and his friend Tony (depressed cause of breaking up with his girlfriend and drinking too much) get into trouble at a cocktail lounge and then an unusual encounter with the police and fire department. Joe has a crazy confrontation with his mother as a young boy. Well that’s some of the action that takes place in the dreams and daydreams, creatively intertwined. The new found dreaming experience resulted from Joe’s working out, running in the park, slipping on a bottle and hitting his head.

Joe’s relationship with his wife Terry is a nice, friendly one, as depicted in the reality part of the story. They go out shopping, spend quality time at home and baby sit Tony one night taking him out. Again, cause of Tony being depressed. With growing concern of Joe’s condition, they do see a doctor. At any rate, his dreams are a new challenge and appear uncontrollable.

Dark Comedy, Satire, 98 pages

pdf copy via email attachment

[copy from original typed script]

$7. PayPal ~ escreenplay@gmail.com

[allow minutes–24 hrs. for email process]

"Super Joe."

“Super Joe.”

"Terry."

“Terry.”

"Tony."

“Tony.”

“As The Years Go By, And The Ambitions Of The Space Age Fade, The Golden Record Takes On A Melancholy Power”

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

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross opines on the Voyager spacecraft which carried with it the Golden Record, a collection of sounds and sights from Earth sent as a message in a bottle to the cosmos in 1977. As Thomas Edison had “crossed” the Atlantic without leaving America in 1888, we were able to bounce around the stars in a similarly disembodied way. Since Beethoven and others have already rolled over, there remain only two living composers who contributed music to the recording: Laurie Spiegel and Chuck Berry. An excerpt from Ross about the former:

“Of the composers and songwriters represented on the Golden Record—Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, and various others—Spiegel and Chuck Berry are the only ones still living. I couldn’t reach Mr. Berry, but Spiegel supplied a few thoughts about what it’s like to have a work of hers wending its way into deep space. “I often think of those craft as sad and lonely,” she told me, “so very far from home, moving ever farther into the cold and the dark, sensing more and more hungrily for the slight, fading, low-level warmth of the increasingly dim sun. Yes, it is an amazing accomplishment for us humans, but it can also generate a feeling that a small part of us, the accumulated living habitation of this planet, has been propelled farther away from its home than anything ever should be. The rational part of my mind knows that I shouldn’t anthropomorphize, and see the Voyager as a being in exile or even as an extension of our own organic sensory systems. Possibly, my doing so is a carryover reaction from my horror and sadness when I learned of the Soviet dog, Laika, who died on the Muttnik (Sputnik 2) space mission that launched when I was twelve. We know all too well what a double-edged sword our technological and information-structuring brilliance can be.’

Sagan, in his lifetime, was often mocked as a dreamer, a fantasist, a fount of grandiose pronouncements. ‘Billions and billions,’ Johnny Carson famously intoned. The Golden Record almost didn’t make it onto the Voyagers, as Timothy Ferris recounted in 2007; NASA feared that Congress would find the project ridiculous. As the years go by, and the ambitions of the Space Age fade, the Golden Record takes on a melancholy power. Sagan saw it as nothing less than a message in a bottle: ‘Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced Earth to a charred cinder. But the Voyager record will still be largely intact, in some other remote region of the Milky Way galaxy, preserving a murmur of an ancient civilization that once flourished—perhaps before moving on to greater deeds and other worlds—on the distant planet Earth.'”

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“I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet”:

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Old Print Article: “Edison’s Talking Machine,” New York Times (1888)

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

“Mr. Edison was not entirely present, but he was not entirely absent.”

Thomas Edison’s phonograph, or “talking machine,” though not an immediate commercial success, was nonetheless an amazement. “He” was received in London society for a demonstration of the remarkable machine. From an article in the August 15, 1888 New York Times:

London–Thomas A. Edison was given a very handsome reception this afternoon by Col. Gourand at his beautiful villa, Little Menlo, at Upper Norwood, in Surrey. A large number of ladies and gentlemen gathered there to meet the distinguished inventor of America. The reception included a dinner, lasting from 3 o’clock to 8 o’clock. Under the inspiring influence of popular appreciation Mr. Edison made a speech, in which he dwelt first upon his first visit to England, 18 years ago, and then devoted himself to a humorous criticism of English politics and climate. He then proceeded to amaze the company by reciting ‘Bingen on the Rhine,’ and winding up with a most extraordinary whistling spasm. Then he sang a funeral march, and without waiting for an encore gave ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ He told funny stories, and, in fact, conducted quite a variety entertainment all by himself. Mr. Edison was not entirely present, but he was not entirely absent, and the perplexity of the company over the human voice and its absent owner, 3,000 miles away, was very great.

Mrs. Alice Shaw, who has quite conquered London, whistled for the perfected phonograph, and it whistled back quite as brilliantly as she did. A large number of the guests were presented to Mr. Edison via the phonograph, each making a short speech to him suitable to the occasion. When the company was breaking up three rousing cheers were given for Edison, with a tiger and long clapping of hands. The effect, when the cheers and applause were repeated a moment later, was funny in the extreme. All the introductions, whistling solos, British cheers, &c., dryly recorded on the wax cylinders, will be taken to America by Mr. W. H. Crane of ‘The Henrietta.’ When they arrive Mr Edison will find that he has a lot of acquaintances who know him very well by voice but not by sight. The reception was an exceedingly novel one, and the new machines, with their perfect articulation, excited wonder, reaching in many cases to amazement.•

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“Is It Necessary To Make Intelligent Systems Human-Like?”

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

It’s clear by now that our natural tendency is to accept machines that can feign humanness, even when there’s no logical reason to do so. That makes it easier for us to transition to a digital world but often confuses the question of what is genuine AI, what is simulacra and what is somewhere in between. In a Wired piece, Vlad Sejnoha uses Spike Jonze’s Her to take a look at the future of computerized assistants. An excerpt:

“One of the most compelling aspects of Samantha is that she behaves in an utterly human-like manner, with a true sense of what is humorous and sad. This is yet a higher level of reasoning, and huge challenges remain to truly understand — and program — social relationships, emotional ties, and humor, which are all parts of everyday knowledge. It is more conceivable that we will be able to make a system understand why a person feels sad or happy (in the most primitive terms, perhaps because of realization of goal failure or goal success), than actually simulating or replicating visceral feelings in machines.

Is it necessary to make intelligent systems human-like?

Much of human behavior is motivated by emotions and not by black-and-white logical arguments (search through any popular online news blog for evidence!). The machine thus needs to understand to some degree why a human is doing something or wants something done, just as much as we demand an explanation from them about their own behavior. There is also a very practical reason to want this: in order to interact effectively we need a model of the ‘other,’ whether it’s an app or a person. At a high level of sophistication it will be faster and more efficient to allow us to start from such models we have of humans, as opposed to slowly discovering the parameters of a wholly alien and new ‘AI tool.’

There is also that astonishing voice… Samantha had us at that first playful and breathy ‘Hi.’

The amazing emotional range and subtle modulation of Samantha’s voice is beyond what today’s speech synthesis can produce, but this technology is on a trajectory to cross the ‘uncanny valley’ (the awkward zone of ‘close but not quite human’ performance) in the next few years. New speech generation models, driven in part by machine learning as well as by explicit knowledge of the meaning of the text, will be able to produce artificial voices with impressively natural characteristics and absence of artifacts.”

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“The Attitudes That Put Lion Cubs On Store Shelves Is Not Completely Gone”

February 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Private zoos have existed almost as long as abodes themselves (here and here) and Animal Planet and the like have only persuaded Americans to take on pets they’re unable to wrangle (scroll down to second entry). Of course, the trade in illegal animals and the staging of private hunts goes beyond national boundaries–it’s a global problem. The opening of “The Exotic Animal Trade” by Alex Mayyasi at Priceonomics:

“According to a popular story, when Ronald Reagan called the Animal Kingdom pet shop at Harrods, the luxury London department store, and asked if the store sold elephants, the agent on the line replied, ‘Would that be African or Indian, sir?’

As of this year, the world famous store closed the Animal Kingdom to make way for more racks of women’s apparel. A London tabloid dubbed its closing the end of ‘one of the most extraordinary eras in retail history.’ For decades, Animal Kingdom was a fantasy come to life. The above story appears to be a myth — Reagan actually received a baby elephant from Harrods as a gift from the exiled crown prince of Albania, who lived in California when Reagan was governor. But wealthy Harrods customers did buy lion cubs, rare birds, and even an alligator. The Daily Telegraph quoted a patron: ‘It’s a great shame, it’s a London institution and an amazing place to go.’

Animal rights groups cheered the news, although no more than the closing of any pet shop. (They prefer responsible breeders and rescue operations.) The Animal Kingdom lately featured mostly a pet spa and overpriced animal collars. Due to increased animal welfare concerns and legislation such as the Endangered Species Act (passed in 1976 in Britain), more commonplace dogs, cats, and hamsters long ago replaced lions and elephants on the store shelves.

Patrons and store representatives described Animal Kingdom as emblematic of a past that contrasts with today’s concern for animal welfare and appreciation of endangered species. Yet the attitudes that put lion cubs on store shelves is not completely gone. The most well known example for Americans is the former boxer Mike Tyson, whose ownership of 7 tigers inspired jokes in the movie The Hangover. Rather than being an outlier case of an eccentric celebrity, however, the purchase of exotic animals is a multi-billion dollar industry straddling the border between legal and illegal.”

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“The Watch Makes The Gun Think”

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

Other countries have citizens with plenty of guns, but they tend to not fill their friends and neighbors with bullets constantly. In America, we haven’t figured out that trick. Until we get smarter about the psychological and cultural reasons for our shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later mentality, perhaps smarter guns can help–firearms that resemble iPhones, in a sense. From Michael S. Rosenwald in the Washington Post:

“One of California’s largest firearm stores recently added a peculiar new gun to its shelves. It requires an accessory: a black waterproof watch.

The watch’s primary purpose is not to provide accurate time, though it does. The watch makes the gun think. Electronic chips inside the gun and the watch communicate with each other. If the watch is within close reach of the gun, a light on the grip turns green. Fire away. No watch means no green light. The gun becomes a paperweight.

A dream of gun-control advocates for decades, the Armatix iP1 is the country’s first smart gun. Its introduction is seen as a landmark in efforts to reduce gun violence, suicides and accidental shootings. Proponents compare smart guns to automobile air bags — a transformative add-on that gun owners will demand. But gun rights advocates are already balking, wondering what happens if the technology fails just as an intruder breaks in.”

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A Brief Note From 1896 About An Oral Fixation

February 19, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the August 23, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“For the first time in the memory of the police of the Fifth Precinct an Italian committed suicide in that section of the city yesterday afternoon when Joseph Sanagora, 21 years old, of 67 South Second Street, shot himself in the mouth with a .38 caliber revolver. The only apparent reason Sanagora had for committing the rash act was the fact that his parents refused him 5 cents with which he wanted to buy a package of tobacco.”

“His Ideals Were Lofty — The Results Are For Others To Judge”

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

Harry Stack Sullivan.

Posting something about a survivor of the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult reminded me of an odd obituary I came across a couple months ago. It was a 1991 New York Times postmortem about psychotherapist and commune leader Saul Newton, who was an avowed enemy of the traditional family, who wanted to break our accepted bonds–chains, as he saw them–smash them to bits. He thought he could create a new reality.

I vaguely recall speaking some years ago to an old NYU professor who was a believer of Newton’s and spoke glowingly of the late doctor. I was left chilled by the conversation. From the Times obit:

His beliefs had radical political themes. Earlier he was a union organizer, an avowed Communist and a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. In recent years, he was an ardent foe of nuclear arms and power.

‘Hated and Loved’

“He was both hated and loved,” said Esther Newton, his eldest daughter, who was not involved in his therapeutic community. ‘His ideals were lofty — the results are for others to judge,’ she said. “He was very bright and creative, charismatic and definitely difficult, handsome, attractive to women and tyrannical.”

At its peak in the 1970’s, his organization had hundreds of members living in three buildings on the Upper West Side. Its formal name was the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis; a subsidiary group was the Fourth Wall Repertory Company, a theater organization based in the East Village.

In recent years the Sullivanians declined in membership, beset by unfavorable publicity, investigations by state authorities into charges of professional misconduct by therapists, child custody lawsuits, the organized opposition of disaffected former members and estranged relatives of members, internal disputes and Mr. Newton’s deteriorating health.

The group’s name was derived from the late Henry Stack Sullivan, a prominent American psychiatrist. In 1957, Mr. Newton and Dr. Jane Pearce, his wife at the time, split off from the Sullivan-oriented William Alanson White Institute to form their own organization. Most mental health experts view the Newton group as having distorted Mr. Sullivan’s name and theories.

Through their unique brand of psychotherapy, Mr. Newton and his disciples controlled virtually all aspects of their followers lives, former residents said.

Members were taught that traditional family ties were at the root of mental illness and needed to be broken to foster individual growth, ex-members said. They were assigned to lived in group apartments and were expected to sleep with different sex partners, changing as often as each night. Married couples did not live together. Permission was required to give birth. Children were raised by babysitters, with parental visits allowed one hour a day and one evening a week. Members often broke off contact with their own parents and other relatives. Under outside criticism, some of these practices were moderated in recent years.•

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

February 18, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

I AM THE BIG MAN (BROOKLYN)

hey all of you punks that want a piece of me meet me at richies gym..on stanwix street..if you have the balls come in and ask for big jim..we can box right there, i need a few punks to spar with for my next fight..ill be there all week long..there i have named the place and time punks make my day pussies..THE GREAT MAN FROM BROOKLYN HAS SPOKEN AND WILL SPEAK AGAIN.

“We Were Good Law-Abiding, Brainwashed Followers”

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

The Rev. Jim Jones went off the deep end in 1978, taking with him some true believers who had initially followed willingly and others who had approached reluctantly. There were survivors, and their stories can be instructive in understanding group delusion. Deborah Layton, a Jones aide who survived the massacre, has just published a book on the topic. She did a very candid Ask Me Anything at Reddit in connection with the publication. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way, but I find the circumstances surrounding the Jonestown tragedy completely fascinating.

As someone who was in Jonestown, do you think that it was Jim Jones’ plan all along to commit this atrocity?

Deborah Layton:

It is not shameful to find the story so fascinating. Trust me, I continue to try to make sense of the losses.

When I had finished writing Seductive Poison I was asked by a BBC documentary film crew to accompany them back to Guyana and into Jonestown. I was hesitant until the producer came on the phone and told me in his research he had come across a woman’s dissertation about the history of Guyana that some 100 years ago a white minister convinced his Amerindian flock to kill themselves and come back as white men. I realized Jones must have known this story.

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Question:

What attracted you to that lifestyle? Were recreational drugs abundant in Jamestown?

Deborah Layton:

Innocence and naivete, the belief I was joining an organization much like the peace corp. I thought I could work hard for 2 years, help the poor and the needy, and continue on with my life.

There were no recreational drugs, ever, in Peoples Temple. We were good, law-abiding, brainwashed followers — unbeknownst to all of us, only Jones was using medications.

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Question:

As far as you know, did Jim Jones tend to prey on specific demographics/people with specific (vulnerable) personality traits? I’m sure he had to have had a special kind of aggressive charm about him to recruit as many followers as he did, but how much would you credit the sheer size of Peoples Temple membership to his recruitment preferences?

Deborah Layton:

He went after well to do idealistic college students– through whom he could siphon money from their parents; he targeted poor, black seniors–then siphoned their SS checks. More joined because of the positive press he received. Most believed they were only pitching in to help an organization with good deeds. No one thought they would be forbidden from leaving. Some who left were found, brought back, then punished, one man was killed. Jones used his political clout to procure more politicians then used those associations to intimidate his parishioners.

Jones often met with new visitors, wooing them with the amount of attention he gave them, telling them how he needed their qualities in his organization, that together he and they could change the wrong in the world–racism, classism….

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Question:

Knowing what you know now, what would you say your very best life advice is?

Deborah Layton:

No one joins a cult. No one joins something they think will hurt or kill them. People join political movements, social organizations attend off-campus dinner socials believing they are mingling with like-minded people. It is often too late when one realizes they’ve been deceived.

Although my experience is extreme, I saw this tendency again when I worked on the trading floor of an investment banking firm — where invisible boundaries are crossed believing the end justifies the means. When you believe in something and think there will be a great payout, whether in spiritual points or money it is often hard to take a closer look and walk away from so much. At some point in all our lives we have been entrapped and did not know how to extricate ourselves. The less extreme and most common are abusive relationships.

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Question:

How do you feel about the fact that “drink the Kool-Aid” is such a popular phrase?

Deborah Layton:

It’s a complete misnomer, because in fact 140 babies, parents and senior citizens in Jonestown were coerced and murdered. Babies do no commit revolutionary suicide. Jones had it planned. We innocents had no idea.

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Question:

Was there a lot of sex abuse in the community? A lot of cults seem to have that.

Deborah Layton:

Peoples Temple was a celibate organization. Having said that, Jones did rape men and women against their will — for the purpose of breaking down their sense of self and soul.

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Question:

Are there any people or organizations which are currently active that you fear may go the way of Jonestown?

Deborah Layton:

Yes, some call themselves churches, however, if joining means turning your back on everything you’ve known — your family, friends who are not in the organization — you are in danger.

Question:

Any in particular?

Deborah Layton:

You know them.

Question:

Is it the church that’s involved in the study of scientists?•

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