Urban Studies

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“I Was Really Curious To See What He Had On That Memory Card”

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

Now that almost all the walls have ears, it doesn’t matter so much if you’re surrounded by actual prison walls or not. The jailers come to you. From a new Spiegel Q&A with Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, a public figure in a time when that description has come to mean something else:

“Spiegel:

Why are you put under such manic surveillance? There are more than a dozen cameras around your house.

Ai:

There’s a unit, I think it’s called ‘Office 608,’ which follows people with certain categories and degrees of surveillance. I am sure I am in the top one. They don’t just tap my telephone, check my computer and install their cameras everywhere — they’re even after me when I’m walking in the park with my son.

Spiegel:

What do the people who observe you want to find out, what don’t they know yet?

Ai:

A year ago, I got a bit aggressive and pulled the camera off one of them. I took out the memory card and asked him if he was a police officer. He said ‘No.’ Then why are you following me and constantly photographing me? He said, ‘No, I never did.’ I said, ‘OK, go back to your boss and tell him I want to talk to him. And if you keep on following me, then you should be a bit more careful and make sure that I don’t notice.’ I was really curious to see what he had on that memory card.

Spiegel:

And?

Ai:

I was shocked because he had photographed the restaurant I had eaten in the previous day from all angles: every room, the cash till, the corridor, the entrance from every angle, every table. I asked myself: Gosh, why do they have to go to so much trouble? Then there were photos of my driver, first of him sitting on a park bench, then a portrait from the front, a portrait from the back, his shoes, from the left, from the right, then me again, then my stroller.

Spiegel:

And he was only one out of several people who follow you?

Ai:

Yes. They must have a huge file on me. But when I gave him back the camera, he asked me not to post a photo of his face on the Internet.

Spiegel:

The person monitoring you asked not to be exposed?

Ai:

Yes. He said he had a wife and children, so I fulfilled his wish. Later I went through the photos we had taken years before at the Great Wall — and there he was again, the same guy. That often happens to me, because I always take so many photos: I keep recognizing my old guards.”

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“I Suspect That War Will Become Obsolete Only When Something Worse Supercedes It”

January 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve not read much sci-fi, so I’m not very familiar with The Forever War author Joe Haldeman. In a new new Wired podcast, the writer and Vietnam Vet shares his thoughts about warfare in this age of miracles and wonders, when science and science fiction are difficult to entangle. An excerpt:

“‘I suspect that war will become obsolete only when something worse supercedes it,’ says Joe Haldeman in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. ‘I’m thinking in terms of weapons that don’t look like weapons. I’m thinking of ways you could win a war without obviously declaring war in the first place.’

Increasingly sophisticated biological and nanotech weapons are one direction war might go, he says, along with advanced forms of propaganda and mind control that would persuade enemy soldiers to switch sides or compel foreign governments to accede to their rivals’ demands. It’s a prospect he finds chilling.

‘One hopes that they’ll never be able to use mind control weapons,’ says Haldeman, ‘because we’re all done for if that happens. I don’t want military people, or political people, to have that type of power over those of us who just get by from day to day.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

January 21, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Wheel (adjustable for different thrust lengths)."

“Wheel (adjustable for different thrust lengths).”

Sex machine parts

Not sure really where to post this, but its a real post, so please don’t junk me.

These are some of the key parts for a sex machine:

  • Power adapter for dc motor.
  • Vac-u-lock system holder.
  • Shafts with joints for wheel.
  • Wheel (adjustable for different thrust lengths).

Asking $50.

Old Print Article: “Mummies Made To Order,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1888)

January 21, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

An article about the ghoulish mummy trade in Egypt which ran in the June 17, 1888 Brooklyn Daily Eagle and was originally published in the Portland Oregonian:

“A gentleman who has just returned from an extended foreign tour was asked yesterday why he had not brought home from Egypt, among other curios, a mummy. He said there was a great deal of fraud in the mummy business. Persons purchasing mummies, of course, like to get them as well preserved and natural looking as possible, and as those found are generally in a more or less dilapidated condition, vendors have engaged in the business of manufacturing bogus mummies. They bargain with tramps, beggars and such people for their defunct carcasses, paying them a sum sufficient to make their remaining days short and sweet. These fellows are preserved and pickled and then smoked till they are good imitations of the genuine mummy. Whole rows of these articles can be seen in smokehouses at once. When sufficiently dry, they are wrapped in mummy cloth and sold, to Americans chiefly, bringing in a high price.”

“It’s Finger Lickin’ Good”

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

I was on the subway yesterday, and the woman sitting next to me told her friend that she would only eat free-range chicken because that was the ethical thing to do. If I were a chicken, my main objection to slaughterhouses would not be the accommodations. I would be happy to stay in cramped quarters provided that you did not brutally murder my family and I at the end of our visit.

We sometimes rationalize our behavior as “ethical” without changing the worst part of it because we want to believe we’re thoughtful people while still doing exactly what is most enjoyable for us.

Here’s a 1963 clip of Colonel Harland Sanders, the Pol Pot of the chicken world, guesting on What’s My LIne?

From “Demand Grows for Hogs That Are Raised Humanely Outdoors,” by Stephanie Strom in the New York Times:

“Several factors are driving the appetite for pasture-raised pork, grocers and chefs say. Consumers are increasingly aware of and concerned about the conditions under which livestock is raised, and somewhat more willing to pay higher prices for meat certified to have come from animals that were humanely raised.

Big food businesses from McDonald’s to Oscar Mayer and Safeway have promised to stop selling pork from pigs raised in crates over the next decade. Smithfield Farms, one of the country’s largest pork processors, announced this month that it was encouraging all contractors raising hogs on its behalf to move to the use of group pens, which have to be big enough for several pigs to live in comfortably, with space to walk around and bed down.

The restaurant chain Chipotle and some prominent chefs like Dan Barber and Bill Telepan, both of whom have restaurants in Manhattan, have begun using meats from animals that were humanely raised. Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s do a brisk business in such meat.”

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“I Realize That Computers Are In Their Infancy, But They’re Pretty Pathetic”

January 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1987, when Omni asked Bill Gates and Timothy Leary to predict the future of tech and Robert Heilbroner to speculate on the next phase of economics, David Byrne was asked to prognosticate about the arts two decades hence. It depends on how you parse certain words, but Byrne got a lot right–more channels, narrowcasting, etc. One thing I think he erred on is just how democratized it all would become. “I don’t think we’ll see the participatory art that so many people predict, Some people will use new equipment to make art, but they will be the same people who would have been making art anyway.” Kim and Snooki and cats at piano would not have been making art anyway. Certainly you can argue that reality television, home-made Youtube videos and fan fiction aren’t art in the traditional sense, but I would disagree. Reality TV and the such holds no interest for me on the granular level, but the decentralization of media, the unloosing of the cord, is as fascinating to me as anything right now. It’s art writ large, a paradigm shift we have never known before. It’s democracy. The excerpt:

“David Byrne, Lead Singer, Talking Heads:

The line between so-called serious and popular art will blur even more than it already has because people’s altitudes are changing. When organized religion began to lose touch with new ideas and discoveries, it started failing to accomplish its purpose in people’s lives. More and more people will turn to the arts tor the kind of support and inspiration religion used to of- fer them. The large pop-art audience remains receptive to the serious content they’re not getting from religion. Eventually some new kind of formula — an equivalent of religion — will emerge and encompass art, physics, psychiatry, and genetic engineering without denying evolution or any of the possible cosmologies.

I think that people have exaggerated greatly the effects new technology has on the arts and on the number of people who will make art in the future. I realize that computers are in their infancy, but they’re pretty pathetic, and I’m not the only one who’s said that. Computers won’t take into account nuances or vagueness or presumptions or anything like intuition.

I don’t think computers will have any important effect on the arts in 2007. When it comes to the arts they’re just big or small adding machines. And if they can’t ‘think,’ that’s all they’ll ever be. They may help creative people with their bookkeeping, but they won’t help in the creative process.

The video revolution, however, will have some real impact on the arts in the next 20 years. It already has. Because people’s attention spans are getting shorter, more fiction and drama will be done on television, a perfect medium for them. But I don’t think anything will be wiped out; books will always be there; everything will find its place.

Outlets for art, in the marketplace and on television, will multiply and spread. Even the three big TV networks will feature looser, more specialized programming to appeal to special-interest groups. The networks will be freed from the need to try to please everybody, which they do now and inevitably end up with a show so stupid nobody likes it. Obviously this multiplication of outlets will benefit the arts.

I don’t think we’ll see the participatory art that so many people predict. Some people will use new equipment to make art, but they will be the same people who would have been making art anyway. Still, I definitely think that the general public will be interested in art that was once considered avant-garde.

I can’t stand the cult of personality in pop music. I don’t know if that will disappear in the next 20 years, but I hope we see a healthier balance between that phenomenon and the knowledge that being part of a community has its rewards as well.

I don’t think that global video and satellites will produce any global concept of community in the next 20 years, but people will have a greater awareness of their immediate communities. We will begin to notice the great artistic work going on out- side of the major cities — outside of New York, L.A., Paris, and London.”•

____________________________________

“Music and performance does not make any sense”:

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“Yet Some Now Fear That A New Era Of Automation Enabled By Ever More Powerful And Capable Computers Could Work Out Differently”

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

Automation and robotics will make us wealthy in the aggregate, but how will most of us share in those riches if employment becomes scarce? In the past, technological innovation has disappeared jobs, but others have come along to replace them, often in fields that didn’t even exist before. But what happens if the second part of the shift never arrives? From “The Onrushing Wave” in the Economist:

“For much of the 20th century, those arguing that technology brought ever more jobs and prosperity looked to have the better of the debate. Real incomes in Britain scarcely doubled between the beginning of the common era and 1570. They then tripled from 1570 to 1875. And they more than tripled from 1875 to 1975. Industrialisation did not end up eliminating the need for human workers. On the contrary, it created employment opportunities sufficient to soak up the 20th century’s exploding population. Keynes’s vision of everyone in the 2030s being a lot richer is largely achieved. His belief they would work just 15 hours or so a week has not come to pass.

Yet some now fear that a new era of automation enabled by ever more powerful and capable computers could work out differently. They start from the observation that, across the rich world, all is far from well in the world of work. The essence of what they see as a work crisis is that in rich countries the wages of the typical worker, adjusted for cost of living, are stagnant. In America the real wage has hardly budged over the past four decades. Even in places like Britain and Germany, where employment is touching new highs, wages have been flat for a decade. Recent research suggests that this is because substituting capital for labour through automation is increasingly attractive; as a result owners of capital have captured ever more of the world’s income since the 1980s, while the share going to labour has fallen.

At the same time, even in relatively egalitarian places like Sweden, inequality among the employed has risen sharply, with the share going to the highest earners soaring. For those not in the elite, argues David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, much of modern labour consists of stultifying ‘bullshit jobs’—low- and mid-level screen-sitting that serves simply to occupy workers for whom the economy no longer has much use. Keeping them employed, Mr Graeber argues, is not an economic choice; it is something the ruling class does to keep control over the lives of others.

Be that as it may, drudgery may soon enough give way to frank unemployment.”

“Seeing Ghosts Demonstrated How The Mind-Eye Coordination That Generated Vision Could Break Down”

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

From “Trick of the Eye,” Iwan Rhys Morus’ wonderful Aeon essay about the nature and value of optical illusions:

“People who said that they saw ghosts really did see them, according to Brewster. But they were images produced by the (deluded) mind rather than by any external object: ‘when the mind possesses a control over its powers, the impressions of external objects alone occupy the attention, but in the unhealthy condition of the mind, the impressions of its own creation, either overpower, or combine themselves with the impressions of external objects’. These ‘mental spectra’ were imprinted on the retina just like any others, but they were still products of the mind not the external world. So ghosts were in the eye, but put there by the mind: ‘the ‘mind’s eye’ is actually the body’s eye’, said Brewster.

Seeing ghosts demonstrated how the mind-eye co-ordination that generated vision could break down. Philosophical toys such as phenakistiscopes and zoetropes — which exploited the phenomenon of persistence of vision to generate the illusion of movement — did the same thing. The thaumatrope, first described in 1827 by the British physician John Ayrton Paris, juxtaposed two different images on opposite sides of a disc to make a single one by rapid rotation — ‘a very striking and magical effect’. A popular Victorian version had a little girl on one side, a boy on the other. They were positioned so that their lips met in a kiss when the disc rotated.

zoetrope45The daedaleum (later renamed the zoetrope), invented in 1834 by the mathematician William George Horner, was ‘a hollow cylinder … with apertures at equal distances, and placed cylindrically round the edge of a revolving disk’ with drawings on the inside of the cylinder. The device produced ‘the same surprising play of relative motions as the common magic disk does when spun before a mirror’. (The ‘magic disk’ was the phenakistiscope, invented a few years earlier by the Belgian natural philosopher Joseph Plateau). In the zoetrope, the viewer looked through one of the slits in the rotating cylinder to see a moving image — often, a juggling clown or a horse galloping. In the phenakistiscope, they looked through a slit in the rotating disc to see the moving image reflected in a mirror. Faraday, too, experimented with persistence of vision.

Brewster’s kaleidoscope was another philosophical toy that fooled the eye. Brewster described it as an ‘ocular harpsichord’, explaining how the ‘combination of fine forms, and ever-varying tints, which it presents in succession to the eye, have already been found, by experience, to communicate to those who have a taste for this kind of beauty, a pleasure as intense and as permanent as that which the finest ear derives from musical sounds’. The kaleidoscopic illusion was supposed to teach the viewer how to see things properly; it was also, interestingly, meant to be a technology that could mechanise art. It ‘effects what is beyond the reach of manual labour’, said Brewster, exhibiting ‘a concentration of talent and skill which could not have been obtained by uniting the separate exertions of living agents.’“

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A Brief Note From 1899 About A Music Lesson

January 20, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 18, 1889 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Kerwood,  W. Va.–William Miller, a  farmer, is dying from the effects of knife wounds inflicted by George Sell, a music teacher at Stemple Ridge. A few evenings ago Sell was conducting a song when a son of Miller interrupted and a fight ensued. Sell whipped young Miller. The father interfered and Sell disemboweled the elder Miller with a knife.”

“Even She Hadn’t Expected The Cash To Make Much Difference”

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

Cherokee reservation, North Carolina, 1939.

Did you grow up sort of poor? I did. Not on food stamps but close. Not in the projects but a couple of buildings away. It leaves a mark. The general theory of poverty has long been that if a poor person received a windfall of cash, it wouldn’t matter because the poverty resides within them. They would be back to square one and in need in no time. A study by Duke epidemiologist Jane Costello about casino money being dispensed to previously poor Cherokee Indians pushed back at that idea to an extent that surprised even the academic herself. From Moises Velasquez-Manoff’s New York Times op-ed, “What Happen When the Poor Receive a Stipend?“:

“When the casino opened, Professor Costello had already been following 1,420 rural children in the area, a quarter of whom were Cherokee, for four years. That gave her a solid baseline measure. Roughly one-fifth of the rural non-Indians in her study lived in poverty, compared with more than half of the Cherokee. By 2001, when casino profits amounted to $6,000 per person yearly, the number of Cherokee living below the poverty line had declined by half.

The poorest children tended to have the greatest risk of psychiatric disorders, including emotional and behavioral problems. But just four years after the supplements began, Professor Costello observed marked improvements among those who moved out of poverty. The frequency of behavioral problems declined by 40 percent, nearly reaching the risk of children who had never been poor. Already well-off Cherokee children, on the other hand, showed no improvement. The supplements seemed to benefit the poorest children most dramatically.

When Professor Costello published her first study, in 2003, the field of mental health remained on the fence over whether poverty caused psychiatric problems, or psychiatric problems led to poverty. So she was surprised by the results. Even she hadn’t expected the cash to make much difference. ‘The expectation is that social interventions have relatively small effects,’ she told me. ‘This one had quite large effects.’

She and her colleagues kept following the children. Minor crimes committed by Cherokee youth declined. On-time high school graduation rates improved. And by 2006, when the supplements had grown to about $9,000 yearly per member, Professor Costello could make another observation: The earlier the supplements arrived in a child’s life, the better that child’s mental health in early adulthood.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"Where are you getting this shit?"

“Where are you getting this shit?”

I hate my drug dealer (Brooklyn)

I wish I never fucking met you. When I went to buy from you the first time, I couldn’t believe how cheap your prices were and how you were willing to meet anywhere, anytime. This is surely a bust, I thought. At least another rip-off maybe. But, no. You’re always up, willing to meet and in supply with low prices. Where are you getting this shit? Don’t you have a life? You’re ruining mine. 

“The Company May Even Go So Far As To Load Products Onto Trucks And Have Them ‘Speculatively Shipped To A Physical Address'”

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

Considering that predictive searching is within reach of our fingertips at all times, and Amazon’s warehouses are data-rich operations, I assumed the “anticipatory ordering” was already a highly developed thing–that the company moved products around the country (and the world) based on prognostications made by previous ordering patterns. But apparently it’s only the newest thing, and it may ultimately go a very aggressive step further than I thought it would. From Kwame Opam at the Verge:

“Drawing on its massive store of customer data, Amazon plans on shipping you items it thinks you’ll like before you click the purchase button. The company today gained a new patent for ‘anticipatory shipping,’ a system that allows Amazon to send items to shipping hubs in areas where it believes said item will sell well. This new scheme will potentially cut delivery times down, and put the online vendor ahead of its real-world counterparts.

Amazon plans to box and ship products it expects customers to buy preemptively, based on previous searches and purchases, wish lists, and how long the user’s cursor hovers over an item online. The company may even go so far as to load products onto trucks and have them ‘speculatively shipped to a physical address’ without having a full addressee. Such a scenario might lead to unwanted deliveries and even returns, but Amazon seems willing to take the hit.”

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“There’s Risk In Everything We Do In Life”

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

While it seems a stretch that the Mars One project will actually deliver a handful of earthlings to our neighboring planet by 2023, more than 150,000 people, even very young ones, have applied to “die on Mars.” Whether the colony becomes a reality or not, it still makes for a fascinating experiment in psychology. From a Guardian interview with ready-to-launch 20-year-old student Ryan Macdonald:

“Guardian:

Why did you sign up?

Ryan Macdonald:

The main reason for me is that I think that on Mars I can accomplish more than I could on Earth. In three weeks, a single person on the surface of Mars could accomplish all of the science that all of the rovers over the past five years have already managed to achieve. If we want to ever prove definitively whether there is life on Mars, we will have to send someone there.

Guardian:

What are your expectations for the Mars One project?

Ryan Macdonald:

The real thing that encourages me is the inspiration factor: what the impact would be back on Earth of my going to Mars. Remember, the Apollo programme is what inspired the generation of scientists and engineers back on Earth who developed computers and smartphones and all the technology that improved our lives. Similarly, a mission to Mars would inspire a whole new generation of scientists on Earth, which would make life better for everyone.

Guardian:

What are you expecting when you first land on Mars?

 Ryan Macdonald:

Survival will have to be the first priority. Initially for the first year or so, it’ll mainly be construction; linking everything together, establishing the equipment, maintaining the solar panels, and things like that. We’ll be bringing some basic canned food to keep us going until we start actually growing our own food. In the long term it’ll be hydroponically grown vegetables and insects for protein. Potentially, later on you could bring some frozen fish eggs and start a little pond. I’d like to find a way to grow some tea on Mars. I think that’s very important for the sanity of all the people there. Once the tea is sorted out, the science would then begin properly.

Guardian:

Are you worried or scared at all?

Ryan Macdonald:

There’s risk in everything we do in life. I say I’ve applied to go to live on Mars, not to go to die on Mars. We all die eventually, of course. Actually the fact is that because things are going to be so strictly controlled, for example the diet of the people who go and the air they breathe, assuming that there is no major equipment failure, people will live longer on Mars than on Earth.”•

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“This Machine Is Capable Of Quite Impressive Feats”

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

In the 1960s, long before Boston Dynamics was creating robotic men and their best friends for the military (and now for Google), GE offered up an elephantine machinery to the Army. It could do some heavy lifting but was a cumbersome thing and not autonomous as an operator was required in the carriage.

From “They’re Robots? They’re Beasts!” Scott Kirsner’s 2004 New York Times article which shows just how much investment in the sector has grown in a decade:

“Replicating biology isn’t a breeze, and some think that despite the well-publicized introduction of Sony’s toy dog, Aibo, in 1999, useful biomimetic robots may still be many years off.

‘What has been a surprise to me is how hard it has been to make progress,’ said Shankar Sastry, a professor at the University of California who has been helping to design robotic flies, fish and the wall-climbing gecko.

Another challenge is the sporadic nature of project financing, which predominantly originates with government agencies like the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as Darpa.

‘I hate to gripe, but funding is hard to get these days,’ said Dr. [Howie] Choset, designer of snakebots that can slither up stairways or down drainage pipes.”

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“The Gold Deposits At The Site He And Jibila Were Discussing May Be Worth Billions Of Dollars”

January 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

For the past six years or so, Jeffrey Wright, one of the best actors on the planet, has been trying to extract precious minerals from the earth in Sierra Leone, hoping to aid the impoverished region. It’s an uncommon, perhaps quixotic, quest. It’s real life and it’s a movie. The opening of “Jeffrey Wright’s Gold Mine,” an article in the New York Times Magazine by Daniel Bergner:

“‘This is a relationship that could bring us all the things we desire,’ Jeffrey Wright said. He was sitting with Samuel Jibila under an awning rigged from rusty metal sheets in front of Jibila’s decrepit house in Sierra Leone. Jibila is the traditional ruler — the paramount chief — of Penguia, a little domain of jungly hills and dusty villages 250 miles from the capital. Wright is an actor who lives in Brooklyn. He has won a Tony, an Emmy and a Golden Globe and most recently appeared as Beetee in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. And for the last decade, he has been traveling to this isolated area near the Guinea border to run his small gold-exploration company, Taia Lion Resources. He wanted to maintain Jibila’s faith in his company, in his plans, but Jibila, who was surrounded by lesser chiefs in glossy robes, wasn’t feeling faithful.

Since 2003, Wright has brought in geologists to sample Penguia’s soil and streams. He leases the exploration rights here from the national government. The gold deposits at the site he and Jibila were discussing may be worth billions of dollars. He says that mining will be a boon to everyone; that the operation will put many hundreds of people to work, not counting the small shops and other businesses that will bloom; that company employees will have a real chance to rise; that paved roads will replace cratered tracks. Transformation will come to a territory so undeveloped that when the rare vehicle needs to cross a river not far from Jibila’s home, the driver pulls onto a raft and ferrymen tug the vessel across with a rope.

But despite this vision and these promises, no metamorphosis has come to Penguia.”

 

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“It Took Her That Long To Fully Regain Her Consciousness”

January 17, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I guess if I could truly know one thing that seems presently unknowable it would be why a person can believe something that is extreme–even completely untrue–and then that same person can believe, at a different time, something that is completely opposed to the original thought. How can we be programmed, deprogrammed and then programmed again? We may now the chemistry behind it, but why are some people more prone to these reactions than others? Why are we more susceptible at certain stages of our lives? Memory isn’t elastic for most of us, but it seems like the part of the brain that governs belief systems is. When I think about those questions it feels to me like AI that truly operates with the understanding of a human being is so far away. It seems that though we know more than nothing, we only know very little.

An example: To the Manson Family members, it seemed perfectly reasonable to follow the orders of a pathetic little man who wanted them to invade homes, murder the occupants in brutal fashion and scrawl horrifying messages on the walls using their victims’ blood. These were the children of good homes who, if circumstances were different, if they came of age in a less-turbulent time, probably would have been filing law-school applications or joining the Peace Corps. Sure, there was a ton of drug use that threw their chemistry out of whack, but plenty of people who haven’t used drugs join cults and or accept cultures with preposterous rules and structures. They enter into a delusion and embrace it. The human brain is such a complex and mysterious thing that it staggers me. I feel bankrupt when trying to comprehend it.

In 1976, former Manson acolyte Susan Atkins, a murderer who died in prison in 2009, who threw her life away and took the lives of others for no good reason, discussed the horrors she’d committed. She had changed her mind by then, but it was far too late.

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“The Car Has A Cockpit Wide Enough Only For The Driver”

January 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

No old technologies were harmed in the making of Elio Motors’ $6,800, three-wheel car, an automobile that uses pre-existing tech but is able to get 84 MPG (highway) because of its unique design and size. It’s set to reach the market in 2015. From Rob Lever at Yahoo! News:

“An engineer by training, [Paul] Elio began the firm in 2008 and recently took over an abandoned General Motors plant in Louisiana — one which had been producing the gas-guzzling Hummer.

In order to deliver the best fuel economy, the car has a cockpit wide enough only for the driver, with a passenger seat in the rear. It has two wheels in front and tapers in the rear to a single wheel.

‘Front-to-back seating, that’s the key to mileage,’ Elio told AFP.

This makes it principally a one-person car, but Elio said the vehicle is a good solution for the millions who drive along to work or leisure events.

Elio readily admits there is no special technology in the car — it has a three-cylinder internal combustion gasoline engine, power windows, air conditioning and anti-lock brakes. While it does not have some of the on-board electronic gadgety found in other vehicles, drivers can connect their smartphones for navigation, apps and more.”

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“They Were Known As Lady Wrestlers, And Many People Found Them Hard Not To Watch”

January 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

I interviewed the now-deceased lady wrestler The Fabulous Moolah some years ago, and I was glad it was a phoner so she couldn’t gouge my eyes. I was fascinated by someone who did what was then considered a very unladylike thing beginning in the harsh years of the Great Depression, though I knew going in that her stories would largely be bullshit. Wrestlers who came of age when the entertainment still had one foot inside the carnival tent never really told the truth because they were so committed to selling a ruse–that something fake was real. They were actors who never exited that stage. The things she did say that were true, however, were stranger than fiction. For instance: “When I was known as ‘Slave Girl,’ I managed the wrestler Elephant Boy, and he’s a priest in Ohio now, you know?” No, I did not know. This was new information.

I asked Moolah (real name: Lillian Ellison) if she considered herself a feminist, and she got a little flustered–perhaps annoyed. It occurred to me later that she thought I was asking her if she was a lesbian. I quickly explained what “feminist” meant, and things moved forward again. Moolah’s close friend, housemate and fellow ferocious wrestler Johnnie Mae Young just passed away at 90. From her obituary by William Yardley in the New York Times:

“Before thongs and silicone and spray tans made women’s wrestling the overtly sexualized spectacle that is now orchestrated by W.W.E., Ms. Young was among the most famous in a colorful cast of women who first rose to prominence in the 1940s, in part because World War II reduced the number of men who wrestled professionally. They were known as lady wrestlers, and many people found them hard not to watch.

‘When I first started wrestling professionally, the men didn’t like the girls,’ Ms. Young said, ‘because we would go out and steal the show.’

Crowds loved to hate her. Organizers sometimes shielded the ring with chicken wire to help protect her from the rotten eggs and vegetables people would throw. Other wrestlers were intimidated by her techniques and her titles.

By the late 1960s, she had become the National Wrestling Alliance’s first national women’s champion. In the late 1990s, W.W.E. hired her and her longtime friend Lillian Ellison, better known as the Fabulous Moolah, whom she had trained.

Ms. Young fought much younger wrestlers and starred in campy skits with young male wrestlers that suggested that her prowess went beyond the ring. Some of her older opponents said the work tainted the legacy of women in wrestling. Ms. Young paid no attention.”

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“There Is No Vaccine To Protect Against It And, In The Most Severe Cases, No Cure”

January 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Mets first baseman Ike Davis caught Valley Fever in Arizona two years ago during the offseason, and he hasn’t been the same player since, though that may have more to do with a long swing than a lung illness. But those in the West who don’t have to worry about hitting a slider are also catching the fungal disease, in increasingly scary numbers, and the sinister spores have compromised not just their job performances but their very lives. From “Death Dust,” an article by Dana Goodyear in the New Yorker, a description of a disease aided in its spread by real-estate development and changes in demographics:

“Cocci is endemic to the desert Southwest—California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas—and to the semi-arid parts of Central and South America. Digging—building, drilling, tilling, clearing—stirs it up, and dry, hot, windy conditions, a regional feature intensified by climate change, disperse it. In recent years, infections have risen dramatically. According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 1998 to 2011 there was a tenfold increase in reported cases; officials there call it a ‘silent epidemic,’ far more destructive than had been previously recognized. Its circumscribed range has made it easy for policymakers to ignore. Though it sickens many times more people than West Nile virus, which affects much of the country, including the Northeast, it has received only a small fraction of the funding for research. ‘The impact of valley fever on its endemic populations is equal to the impact of polio or chicken pox before the vaccines,’ John Galgiani, an infectious-disease physician who directs the Valley Fever Center for Excellence, at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says. ‘But chicken pox and polio were worldwide.’

In 2012, valley fever was the second-most-reported disease in Arizona; two-thirds of the country’s cases occur in the state. There is no vaccine to protect against it and, in the most severe cases, no cure. The population of Phoenix has grown by ten per cent in the past decade, and newcomers have no acquired immunity. The elderly and the immune-compromised—including pregnant women—are most susceptible; for unknown reasons, otherwise healthy African-Americans and Filipinos are disproportionately vulnerable to severe and life-threatening forms of the disease. (In one early study, Filipino men were estimated to be a hundred and seventy-five times as likely as white men to get sick from cocci, and a hundred and ninety-two times as likely to die from it.) But, as one specialist told me, ‘if you breathe and you’re warm-blooded, you can get this.'”

A Brief Note From 1909 About Flying Bicycles

January 16, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the September 26, 1909 New York Times:

“Paris–Jules Bois believes that motor cars will in a hundred years be things of the past, and that a kind of flying bicycle will have been invented which will enable everybody to traverse the air at will, far above the earth. Hardly any one will remain in the cities at night. They will be places of business only. People of every class will reside in the country or in garden towns at considerable distances fron the populous centres. Pneumatic railways and flying cars and many other means of quick transit will be so developed that the question of time will enter but little into one’s choice of a home. Transportation will be immensely cheaper than it is at present. As there will be less crowding, realty values and rentals will less exorbitant.”

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“Government Is Necessary. The Tools Of Policy Are Indispensable.”

January 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jeffrey Sachs is depicted by some as a dependency-creating subsidizer and by others as an extreme free-marketer–neither seems particularly apt. In a Reddit AMA to promote a free online course on sustainable development, the Columbia professor answers some critics (Angus Deaton, Naomi Klein, Dambisa Moyo) and questions about the global war on poverty.

_____________________

Question:

I’m fascinated by the new environmental technologies like billboards pulling drinking water from the air, or Mexico City’s smog eating paint. What technology do you look at as having great potential?

Jeffrey D. Sachs:

Probably the single most important breakthrough in recent years has been the dramatic decline in price of photovoltaics, which have fallen by a factor of 100X since 1977. 1 Watt of PV now costs less than $1 dollar. This will make possible an enormous upscaling of solar power in many parts of the world.

_____________________

Question:

I read The End of Poverty and I have to say, I am a huge fan of that book. I often cite your work to support ideas like that sweat-shops aren’t necessarily the evil they’re portrayed to be. Since the book, how much, in your eyes, has changed in the world? Do you feel like leaders sat up and took notice? 

Jeffrey D. Sachs:

The most important thing that’s happened since 2005 is that the idea of ending extreme poverty has actually begun to take hold. People see the success of China in ending poverty, the start of real poverty reduction in Africa, and the power of the new ICT technologies. Because of this optimism, the World Bank Development Committee voted in April to take on the goal of ending extreme poverty globally by 2030. So the idea is there, step by step.

_____________________

Question:

I’ve always argued that if agricultural subsidies were cut around the world it would be more effective in lifting people from poverty than all aid combined. It seems that lately developing countries have also gotten into the ag subsidy trap. Is it possible we’ve reached a point where reducing global ag subsidies might hurt the poor more than it helps them?

Jeffrey D. Sachs:

Ending AG subsidies, while generally a good idea, won’t solve as much as one might think, because the main beneficiaries will be large food-exporting countries, such as Brazil, not the poorest countries. Still, it’s typically a good thing to do. The subsidies are rarely fair or effective.

_____________________

Question:

When the government or culture in an area does not support elimination of poverty, have you seen other ways to make substantial progress, or is the government/leadership really the key to success or failure?

Jeffrey D. Sachs:

Government is necessary. The tools of policy (taxes, regulation, public subsidies of science, public investment) are indispensable. They are not the only things that matter, but without government, broad-based and sustained development is not really possible. Of course, governments do not need to be perfect. Thank goodness!!!•

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“I Believe In Heaven, And I Believe In Hell”

January 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Billy James Hargis was a twentieth-century American evangelical entrepreneur writ large: charismatic, ultra-conservative, segregationist, anti-communist, anti-feminist, anti-gay, McCarthy supporter, charged with abusing tax-exempt status, accused of sexual misconduct by male and female students at the Christian college he founded, etc. He sat for an interview with Tom Snyder in the late 1970s to address a number of topics, including his sex scandal. A polished TV presenter, the “hillbilly preacher” comes across well despite everything. During the conversation, the two refer to Pat Robertson as the “Johnny Carson of Evangelism.”

From Hargis’ 2004 obituary in the Economist: “For four years, starting in 1953, he launched a million hydrogen balloons from West Germany towards the east. They contained verses of Scripture, sent ‘to succour the poor starved captives of communism.’ Rather less lightly, he himself hit the pulpit across America and in ‘foreign lands,’ perfecting his own style of shouting, flailing and sweating with an energy alarming in a man of his girth.

As televangelists do, he also set up courses and centres of learning: the National Anti-Communist Leadership School, the Christian Crusade Anti-Communist Youth University and, in Tulsa, the American Christian College. A naive reporter once asked him what was taught there. Why, Mr Hargis answered, ‘anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-welfare state, anti-Russia, anti-China, a literal interpretation of the Bible and states’ rights.’ As if he had needed to ask.

After a while the authorities, stirred up by the Evil One, got interested in him. The Christian Crusade was a supposedly religious charity with tax-exempt status; yet Mr Hargis’s work seemed mostly political. Its purposes were allegedly altruistic; yet Mr Hargis drew a salary of $25,000 from it, besides his utility bills, his house, his clothes, his colour TV, his travelling expenses and his dry-cleaning bills. In 1964 the tax-exemption was withdrawn by the Internal Revenue Service, and his reputation spoiled.

Seven years later, sex reared its head. For Mr Hargis, adopted and brought up in crushing Christian poverty in Texas, fun had meant daily Bible-readings and, once a week, gospel choir. He gave the impression that nothing had ever changed. The targets of his daily wrath were not only homosexuals and women’s libbers but the blatantly sexual pop-gods of the day: ‘When the Beatles thrust their hips forward while holding their guitars and shout, ‘Oh Yeah!!’ who cannot know what they really mean?’

Yet in 1974 both male and female students at the American Christian College, and three male members of the college choir, the All-American Kids, claimed Mr Hargis had deflowered them.”

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“Sen. Dianne Feinstein Says She Once Found A Drone Peeking Into The Window Of Her Home”

January 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Richard Feynman famously asked the seminal nano question: Why can’t we write the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the head of a pin? But the past isn’t the only thing that can get small; the same holds true for what’s unfolding this very day, this very instant. And what will become of us when drones are the size of fleas and you can barely see them, can’t see them at all? From Kathryn A. Wolfe at Politico:

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she once found a drone peeking into the window of her home — the kind of cautionary tale she wants lawmakers to consider as they look at allowing commercial drone use.

The California Democrat offered few details about the incident when speaking about it Wednesday afternoon, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on drone policy at which she appeared as a special witness. But she used the episode to implore lawmakers to ‘proceed with caution.’

Feinstein said she encountered the flying robot while a demonstration was taking place outside her house. She said she went to the window to peek out — and ‘there was a drone right there at the window looking out at me.’

She held her hand inches from her face to indicate how close it was.”

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“Might These ‘Good, Honest Citizens’ With Nothing To Hide Ever Imagine That They Might Feel A Challenge To Be A Whistleblower”

January 16, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I was neither awed nor upset by Edward Snowden’s NSA leaking for a few reasons: 1) From the moment the Patriot Act passed, we had given our government a “by whatever means necessary” standard, 2) I think most Americans have embraced being watched and feel safer that way (though I don’t), 3) The technological tools of today (and certainly those of tomorrow) cannot be controlled by legislation, 4) Technology is a doubled-edged sword, and the government will be spied on as much as it spies. The power has been disseminated and it will be used, if not always well. To paraphrase Chance Gardner: “We like to watch.”

I have a great fear of imprisoning whistleblowers. We need those who will risk themselves to stop Watergates and Abu Ghraibs. And while Snowden may have stated the obvious and ironically ended up living in Russia, the ultimate surveillance state, he wasn’t wrong.

In a new Ask Me Anything at Reddit, Pentagon Papers leaker and staunch Snowden supporter Daniel Ellsberg answers an oft-asked question: Why should those with nothing to hide fear surveillance?

“Question:

I’m curious how you respond when people tell you that ‘they have nothing to hide.’ How do you help them see that this isn’t a valid argument for why they shouldn’t be concerned?

Daniel Ellsberg:

Do they want to live in a democracy, with checks and balances, restraints on Executive power? (They may not feel that they care, though I would say they should; but if they do, it’s relevant to the question that follows). Do they really believe that real democracy is viable, when one branch of government, the Executive, knows or can know every detail of every private communication (or credit card transaction, or movement) of: every journalist; every source to every journalist; every member of Congress and their staffs; every judge, at every level up to the Supreme Court? Do they think that every one of these people ‘has nothing to hide,’ nothing that could be used to blackmail them or manipulate them, or neutralize their dissent to Executive policies, or influence voting behavior? Is investigative journalism, or aggressive Congressional investigation of the Executive, or court restraints on Executive practices, really possible with that amount of transparency to the Executive of their private and professional lives and associations? And without any of those checks, the kind of democracy you have is that of the German Democratic Republic in East Germany, with its Stasi (which had a miniscule fraction of the surveillance capability the NSA has now, but enough to turn a fraction of the population of East Germany into secret Stasi informants).

Might these ‘good, honest citizens’ with nothing to hide ever imagine that they might feel a challenge to be a whistleblower, or a source to a journalist or Congressperson, or engage in associations or parties critical of the current administration? As The Burglary recounts, it was enough to write a letter to a newspaper critical of the FBI to get on J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI list for potential detention or more active surveillance. And once on, hard or impossible to get off. (See ‘no fly’ lists today ).”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

January 16, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“There was literally SHIT everywhere.”

“I think my cat sitter died in my house” or “The worst cat sitter ever”

Are you okay? Are you alive? Are you in a diabetic coma somewhere?? I was worried because when I returned home on Tuesday, my apartment looked like someone possibly left in a hurry, and the only explanation I could think of was maybe there was an emergency! An emergency so great you left the windows open on a day that never reached over 9 degrees with wind gusts below -12 degrees, all lights on, and your shit scattered everywhere.

It’s been long enough now that I assume you will never return to claim your property, offer an explanation as to why you destroyed my home, or provide me compensation for the four hours it took to clean my home of your filth and for the amount it cost me to change my locks and get replacement keys from my landlord because of your inability to follow simple instructions such as leaving keys inside the apartment so I would not be charged $150 to replace them. The changed locks was my choice because you appear so unstable I fear you might return in two months looking for the live (well, now dead) Betta fish you left behind. By the way, it was really sweet of you to leave food for me to feed him with but I’m going to go ahead and guess that the abominably cold weather had a part in freezing the poor guy to death after you abandoned him in the apartment with my cat.

Let me reiterate our agreement: In exchange for you caring for my cat for three weeks while I visited my family in California, I offered you my lovely one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side for FREE to stay in and relax after finals and finally receiving your hard earned MA from Columbia. How kind of me-you’re welcome. If someone had offered me a free place to stay and the only caveat would be playing with a sweet little kitty named Eloise, you would be damn sure I would treat their home like a fucking palace. You on the other hand treated my apartment like a motel 6.

"Did you know trash goes in the trash bin?"

“Yesterday I found a fungus covered toenail clipping.”

Here’s a list of the damage you caused in case maybe you went blind as a consequence of untreated diabetes from all the shit you ate while obviously not moving from my bed (your hypodermic needle wrappers and insulin bottles scattered around the apartment gave that one away). Maybe diabetes induced blindness was a cause for all of this? Maybe! Here it goes: Let’s start with the shit. There was literally SHIT everywhere: shit on the carpet from the cat whose litter box was so full from your failure to clean it, she resorted to shitting elsewhere; shit all over the toilet from what I assume was a shit explosion after you binged on coca-cola and fast food for three weeks straight. It took me thirty fucking minutes, THIRTY MINUTES, to scrub the toilet to remove the shit stains. I didn’t even know it was possible to clean a toilet that long.

Moving on to the kitchen: did you know trash goes in the trash bin? Do you know what a trash bin is? It’s the silver box thing in the kitchen with a convenient foot lever that you step on so the top opens and you can easily deposit your garbage into it, hopefully with a bag in there so your crap doesn’t soil the entire bin. I take it you know what bags are, because those were scattered all over the damn kitchen (and the rest of the house) with rotting food from your many food deliveries leaked all over them. Somehow none of those bags made it into the trash bag in the trash bin, along with a bag full of trash just sitting open on the floor (and only two inches from the actual trash!) where my cat and all sorts of other critters seeking rotting food might poke around. In the actual trash bin was a trash bag, but rather then open the trash bag to deposit trash, you just threw it ON TOP of the bag. Maybe there’s something to this approach, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Oh, let’s not forget the counter and sink! The counter, I don’t even want to know what you spilled all over it, because it took me twenty minutes to scrub off. The sink was another interesting find. At this point, I wasn’t surprised it was piled full of dishes. What did surprise me was despite every single dish I own crammed into the sink filthy and unwashed, an entire bottle of dish soap somehow disappeared. I put out a fresh Mrs. Meyers rhubarb scented dish soap bottle for you to use while I was away, imagining the joy you might get out of the aromatic scent while washing your plates in my lovely little apartment while it snowed outside, but no, it was emptied when I returned, and alas no dishes had been washed during the snowstorm. Maybe in your diabetic induced blindness you became confused and drank it or washed your hair with it. God only knows.

"WASH YOUR HANDS! It prevents disease."

“WASH YOUR HANDS! It prevents disease.”

And now my favorite part, the bedroom: As I walked in I was almost relieved when I saw you stripped the bed. Maybe she washed my sheets, I thought. No, no you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. They were at the foot of my bed, covered in food stains like I have never seen. I lived in the Tenderloin in San Francisco for the past couple of years before moving to NYC and I have seen cleaner sheets on beds left outside because of a bed bug infestation that homeless people have slept on for two weeks while waiting for garbage men to dispose of them. Did you literally not leave my bed while I was away? Were you bed-stricken from disease? Was using my $200 duvet as a napkin necessary? If you used my dish soap as shampoo or body wash, how in the hell did you leave behind a visible yellow body-sized stain on the mattress cover that could only be explained by never washing oneself? Maybe you died in my bed…I almost hoped for this as this too might explain the mess. Well, I threw out the sheets. I couldn’t remove the hot cheetos colored stains on the duvet despite using more SHOUT than is environmentally safe. I actually had to BLEACH the walls where you spilled coke, indian food, and cupcakes off the side of the bed. I think you confused the space under my bed as a trash bin. It was like digging for treasure in the 12 inch space under my bed! After removing 4-5 to-go food containers, candy bar wrappers, coke bottles, more needle wrappers, and a cupcake wrapper so glued to the floor I had to leave some frosting behind after sweeping and mopping (twice!), I still continue to find shit you left behind in my room! Yesterday I found a fungus covered toenail clipping, a used bandaid and a oil stained paper bag under my radiator. On Sunday, I found a place on the wall I missed where you wiped your hands of more hot cheetos stains. WASH YOUR HANDS! It prevents disease. And me having to clean up after your for weeks after you’ve vanished.

And last but not least, let’s not forget that you left behind a live fish. That was really the icing on the cake. What kind of monster leaves behind a pet? How did you manage to keep it alive at all? The fact that you’re still walking the earth upright is a miracle in itself. I Googled your name hoping to find any sign of you, dead or alive, and I came across your LinkedIn profile.

My favorite part was this:

“Causes I care about:

  • Animal Welfare
  • Children
  • Civil Rights and Social Action
  • Education
  • Health
  • Human Rights
  • Politics”

What. Animal Welfare? I can’t. I ain’t got time for these lies!

You have zero empathy for animals so cross that right off the list. Children? Here’s hoping nothing ever pops out of your vagina that has the ability to cry. Civil rights and social action? The most you’ve ever engaged in fighting for civil rights is expressing your freedom to chose to sit in bed all day and eat. Education? You must be one of those people who paid your way in, never went to class, and paid people to write papers and take tests for you in order to pass Health? Obviously not high on your list of priorities…

The fact is you don’t care about anything but yourself. You took advantage of me and violated my home and the things I care about. You should be ashamed of yourself. You are disgusting. You are despicable. You are a monster. You knew there would be no consequences if you came into my home and trashed it. I knew going into this that could very well be a possibility. And frankly, you give off a shady vibe. You and your creepy little friend you brought by when I introduced you to my cat and my home. But I trusted you anyways because why would anyone want to harm someone else’s home and pet? So maybe I am mostly to blame but it was YOU and your belligerent and uncaring existence that did the damage. So fuck you. Karma is coming your way. Someday someone is going to literally diarrhea all over the things you love. Good luck.

“You are a monster.”

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