Urban Studies

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“The History Of Technology Is The Story Of Transitions That Worked”

November 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

World fairs regularly introduced us to greatness–the telephone, the Ferris wheel, the elevator. But they grew impractical as people became more connected, as the shock of the new came directly to you and I wherever we were. In an Aeon essay, Venkatesh Rao makes a convincing case that Silicon Valley is the new world’s fair, one that never closes. An excerpt about the technological significance of the fairs:

“The history of technology is the story of transitions that worked, like the Industrial Revolution. It entered adolescence and began breaking free of the pre-modern social order at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. Even as the worldwide mercantilist social order led by Britain began to unravel, the modern industrial social order began to take shape in America.

By the time of the 1967 Montreal Expo, the scenes were safely sequestered again within Cold War institutions, after the world had been violently transformed through great wars, thousands of inventions, and a massive reordering of society along urban lines.

These fairs were equal parts technological debutante balls, theaters of wild futurist speculation, and pure circus entertainment. Cities vied to host them to signal their arrival into industrial modernity. Nations used them as public throwdowns. Corporations used them to spar over emerging markets. Artists, urban planners and architects used them to hawk entire imagined lifestyles.

It was through world fairs that a rapidly developing US announced its arrival on the global stage. From London in 1851, when it stole Britain’s thunder, to Chicago in 1893, when it formally claimed Great Power status, the young nation had taught the world about everything from bloody mechanised killing and newspaper circulation wars to electric lighting and manufacturing with interchangeable parts.

But beneath the pageantry and posturing, these fairs were more than technological Olympics. They spawned both the enduring mainstream folkways of modernity, such as suburban living and business-class air travel, as well as its dead-end subcultures, such as the world of flying-car loyalists. The fairs could do this because, fundamentally, they were large-scale exercises in what futurists call design fiction: indirect explorations of possible futures mediated by speculative, but tangible artifacts.“

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A Brief Note From 1879 About A Female Husband

November 18, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 25, 1879 New York Times:

“Australia is greatly exercised respecting a woman who has for many years passed herself off as a man, and who has married several wives. In 1857 a girl bearing the name of Ellen Tremayne came to Melbourne in the Ocean Monarch. On her arrival she married a fellow passenger of the name of Mary Delahunty, and assumed herself the name of Edward De Lacy Evans. Mary having died, ‘she’ married Julia Maynard. Julia is still alive, but Miss Edwards De Lacy Evans, having gone mad, has been confined in the Kew Lunatic Asylum, where his or her sex was discovered owing to each inmate being forced to take a bath. The curious circumstance connected to this case is that not one of the wives revealed the imposition that had been practiced upon her, nor did the miners with whom Miss Edward worked for above 20 years ever suspect that she was a woman.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

November 18, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“i am willing to share.”

Antique privvys, outhouses, foundations (van etten)

Might sound weird to some, but there are sometime treasures (bottles, toys, marbles, etc.) hidden at the bottom off old outhouses. i want to dig them out, if you have a house built before 1900 it had an outhouse at one time. obviously if you have an old foundation it may also date to that period. i am willing to share some of the “treasure.” i will only be using hand tools and ground will be like it was never touched afterwards.

“Hippies Will Be Refused Tourist Cards To Enter Mexico Unless They Take A Bath And Get Haircuts”

November 18, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

While Apollo 11 traveled to the moon and back in 1969, the astronauts were treated each day to a six-minute newscast from Mission Control about the happenings on Earth. Here’s one that was transcribed in Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon, which made space travel seem quaint by comparison:

“Washington UPI: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew has called for putting a man on Mars by the year 2000, but Democratic leaders replied that priority must go to needs on earth…Immigration officials in Nuevo Laredo announced Wednesday that hippies will be refused tourist cards to enter Mexico unless they take a bath and get haircuts…’The greatest adventure in the history of humanity has started,’ declared the French newspaper Le Figaro, which devoted four pages to reports from Cape Kennedy and diagrams of the mission…Hempstead, New York: Joe Namath officially reported to the New York Jets training camp at Hofstra University Wednesday following a closed-door meeting with his teammates over his differences with Pro Football Commissioner Pete Rozelle…London UPI: The House of Lords was assured Wednesday that a major American submarine would not ‘damage or assault’ the Loch Ness monster.”

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“They Spiked The Track With Magnets, Alternating Their Polarity In Binary Patterns To Send Messages To The Car”

November 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The transportation revolution could have meant smart roads or smart cars, and it ended up being the latter. Smart roads were easy to devise but were prohibitively expensive to build on a grand scale. Smart cars (driverless ones, that is) were difficult to devise but if perfected could be retrofitted to any driving surface. From “Auto Learning,” Burkhard Bilger’s New Yorker article about the history of driverless cars and the role of machine learning in the sector’s development, a passage about the original car-road question:

“Almost from the beginning, the field divided into two rival camps: smart roads and smart cars. General Motors pioneered the first approach in the late nineteen-fifties. Its Firebird III concept car—shaped like a jet fighter, with titanium tail fins and a glass-bubble cockpit—was designed to run on a test track embedded with an electrical cable, like the slot on a toy speedway. As the car passed over the cable, a receiver in its front end picked up a radio signal and followed it around the curve. Engineers at Berkeley later went a step further: they spiked the track with magnets, alternating their polarity in binary patterns to send messages to the car—’Slow down, sharp curve ahead.’ Systems like these were fairly simple and reliable, but they had a chicken-and-egg problem. To be useful, they had to be built on a large scale; to be built on a large scale, they had to be useful. ‘We don’t have the money to fix potholes,’ Levandowski says. ‘Why would we invest in putting wires in the road?’

Smart cars were more flexible but also more complex. They needed sensors to guide them, computers to steer them, digital maps to follow. In the nineteen-eighties, a German engineer named Ernst Dickmanns, at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, equipped a Mercedes van with video cameras and processors, then programmed it to follow lane lines. Soon it was steering itself around a track. By 1995, Dickmanns’s car was able to drive on the Autobahn from Munich to Odense, Denmark, going up to a hundred miles at a stretch without assistance. Surely the driverless age was at hand! Not yet. Smart cars were just clever enough to get drivers into trouble. The highways and test tracks they navigated were strictly controlled environments. The instant more variables were added—a pedestrian, say, or a traffic cop—their programming faltered. Ninety-eight per cent of driving is just following the dotted line. It’s the other two per cent that matters.”

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“Cars without steering wheels,” from the 1950s:

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“Glass May Fail, But A Wider Revolution Is Under Way”

November 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Google Glass, at least in its current form, is unlikely to gain traction–too geeky, too creepy–but small and powerful cameras on drones and autonomous machines will only grow more ubiquitous. That seems inevitable. The opening of “Every Step You Take,” from the Economist:

“‘THIS season there is something at the seaside worse than sharks,’ declared a newspaper in 1890. ‘It is the amateur photographer.’ The invention of the handheld camera appalled 19th-century society, as did the ‘Kodak fiends’ who patrolled beaches snapping sunbathers.

More than a century later, amateur photography is once more a troubling issue. Citizens of rich countries have got used to being watched by closed-circuit cameras that guard roads and cities. But as cameras shrink and the cost of storing data plummets, it is individuals who are taking the pictures.

Through a Glass, darkly

Some 10,000 people are already testing a prototype of Google Glass, a miniature computer worn like spectacles. It aims to replicate all the functions of a smartphone in a device perched on a person’s nose. Its flexible frame holds both a camera and a tiny screen, and makes it easy for users to take photos, send messages and search for things online.

Glass may fail, but a wider revolution is under way. In Russia, where insurance fraud is rife, at least 1m cars already have cameras on their dashboards that film the road ahead. Police forces in America are starting to issue officers with video cameras, pinned to their uniforms, which record their interactions with the public. Collar-cams help anxious cat-lovers keep tabs on their wandering pets. Paparazzi have started to use drones to photograph celebrities in their gardens or on yachts. Hobbyists are even devising clever ways to get cameras into space.”

“Many Women Are Not Only Very Tired Of Being Treated Like Second-Class Citizens But Are Very Funny About It”

November 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The decentralization of media has given us the Kardashians, holy fuck, but it’s also opened up an infinite number of channels for new voices, many of them comic. In the Guardian, Anna Holmes points out that the Internet has provided women a platform for feminist-tinged wit, which is great because comedy stems from dissatisfaction and the must put-upon people are often the funniest. An excerpt:

“This outpouring, which can be found in print, pop culture and all over social media, has been fuelled by any number of things. Among them are the democratising nature of the internet, the inclusion of new and previously marginalised voices and the fact that many women are not only very tired of being treated like second-class citizens but are very funny about it.

This may come as a surprise to some, because feminism and discussions of gender politics have rarely, if ever, been celebrated for their embrace of the farcical or the witty. In fact, an accusation of humourlessness has remained one of the most pervasive accusations levelled against those involved in agitating against sexism and misogyny.

You might recall Christopher Hitchens’s infamous essay ‘Why women aren’t funny,’ published in Vanity Fair. The late polemicist ended up undermining his own argument for male superiority by explaining that ‘humour, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle.’ And last year, in a disappointing interview with The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, the normally perceptive comedian Louis CK alleged that comedians and feminists are ‘natural enemies.'”

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“A Word That Sounds A Lot Like ‘Huh?’ Gets The Job Done”

November 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Huh?

Huh?

If you had asked me what word or phase is universally understood, I wouldn’t have guessed “huh?” would be it. It’s not a word I ever use. Maybe that’s why I’m so misunderstood. From Karen Hopkin at Scientific American:

“So they eavesdropped on nearly 200 conversations in 10 different tongues, from Italian to Icelandic. And they found that, in language after language, a word that sounds a lot like ‘huh?’ gets the job done. For example, [international huhs]. It’s short and sweet so it’s likely to stop the speaker before the listener gets too lost. And it sounds like a question [more international huhs], so it warrants a response. 

The sound appears not to be innate. Babies don’t use it before they say mama. But most five-year-olds are masters of ‘huh?’ No matter where they come from.”

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Old Print Article: “Abandoned Sleeper In Coffin,” New York Times (1903)

November 17, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive."

“He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.”

A hypnotist is accused of dereliction of duty and cuckoldry in an article in the February 8, 1903 New York Times. The story:

“Passaic, N.J.–Prof. Lawson Herman, a hypnotist, put Samuel Powell to sleep in a coffin at the Empire Theatre on Thursday night at midnight. A big crowd was on hand to witness the reawakening of Powell, but the professor failed to put in an appearance.

It turned out that Manager Sohl of the Passaic Opera House, with ire in his eye and a revolver in his pocket, was looking for Hermann with the avowed intention of shooting him on sight. The professor, earlier in the night, had heard of Manager Sohl’s quest, and incontinently had slipped out of the theatre and the town without apprising anyone of the departure.

At the witching hour when the yawning coffin was to give up Powell. Hermann could not be found. The big audience became impatient, and Manager Stein of the Empire became alarmed. The manager hustled around, and after some trouble secured Prof. Tony Frylinck. Prof. Frylinck worked all night before he could awaken the sleeper, and by that time the few weary spectators who had waited to see the upshot were so sleepy themselves that they lost all interest in Powell, and some of those who had dozed off rather resented his return to consciousness of his surroundings, for Powell when he learned that Hermann had abandoned him was at first greatly alarmed and then waxed exceeding wroth, and expressed his opinion of the professor in language that was as loud as it was emphatic. He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.

Manager Sohl’s lust for Hemrnan’s gore, it appears, was aroused by the fact that for the second time his wife had disappeared, and he accuses the hypnotist of hypnotizing her and taking her away. She disappeared on Thursday, and he says he raced her and Hermann to Newark. The first time she ran away she was found in Herman’s apartments in New York, and Sohl had the professor arrested.”

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“Many A 2 And 3-Car Garage Is Being Transformed Into A Workshop Or Small Store”

November 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Duing the ’80s and ’90s, dire predictions said that violent crime in America was going to grow far worse, even as the rate was beginning to plummet. Could the same be true of traffic, which we seem to accept will only become more severe? Ownership of cars and motorcycles declined even before the Great Recession, as personal technology became more important to young Americans. They “drive” in their smartphones now. But for people who’ve always known congestion and jams, it’s difficult to imagine this brave new world. I think some points in “What Happened to Traffic?” David Levinson’s retrofuturist post at the Transportationist blog are too hopeful, but it’s a piece very worth reading. An excerpt:

“Workers no longer ‘go’ to work 6 days a week. Workers got Saturday off in the mid-20th Century. Getting every-other Friday off (the 5/4 schedule) became standard by 2015, establishing the 3-day weekend every other week as the norm. By 2020, this was every weekend, as people moved to a 9 hour day, 4 days per week at the office, and the other 4 hours were ‘at home’ work – checking email on the long weekend, erasing once strict separation of home and work. By 2025 taking every-other Monday off (the 4/3 schedule) was established in most large employers. Today we are seeing half-days on Wednesdays for many office workers, with only Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays as interactive collaboration days. The ‘flipped’ office, where people were expected to do “work” at home on their own computers, and only show up for meetings is now standard.

The empty office buildings across the landscape led to the famous Skyscraper Crash, the Real Estate Office – fueled recession of 2021. Many of those empty buildings were converted to apartments, as we had about twice as much office space as we needed with the new work arrangements. Some cities were virtually abandoned by business in this process. This helped undercut new residential construction in the suburbs, and suburban land prices fell, attracting lower income immigrants, who subdivided large tract mansions into housing for large extended families, and leading to a measurable ‘white-flight’ back to the center city. So while the suburbs were now less expensive, some actually gained population. Lower income residents still own cars, but not as many, and many a 2 and 3-car garage is being transformed into a workshop or small store.”

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“You’d Think the Thrill Might Wear Off This Whole Renewable Energy Investing Thing After A While”

November 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When I suggested recently that Google and Amazon should own their own solar farms so that they could control costs and hopefully sell carbon-neutral energy they way they do cloud space, I wasn’t aware that the Page-Brin company was already in the business and about to invest in solar in an even bigger way. From Shan Li at Los Angeles Times:

“Google Inc. plans to invest $80 million in six utility-scale solar facilities in California and Arizona as the tech behemoth continues to put money toward alternative energy projects.

The Mountain View, Calif., company will partner with solar developer Recurrent Energy and private equity firm KKR & Co. on the projects, which are estimated to generate enough combined electricity to power more than 17,000 homes, Google said in a blog post.

‘You’d think the thrill might wear off this whole renewable energy investing thing after a while,’ Google wrote on its official blog. ‘Nope — we’re still as into it as ever, which is why we’re so pleased to announce our 14th investment.’

In 2011, Google hooked up with KKR and Recurrent on four solar facilities south of Sacramento that have since started generating power. The tech giant said it has committed more than $1 billion in total on green energy projects around the globe.”

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Old Print Article: “Man With Two Brains,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1901)

November 15, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"There seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic."

“There seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic.”

So-called “Lightning Calculators” were sideshow performers more than a century ago who could solve complicated mathematical problems in their heads in front of live audiences. Few had the facility for numbers displayed by Jacques Inaudi (1867-1950), an Italian who toured extensively with vaudeville shows demonstrating his prodigious abilities. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle profiled the math man on October 15, 1901 (and misidentified his nationality). An excerpt:

“To make a real hit, mathematics in vaudeville have to be of a sensational character. The old time lightning calculator, with his demonstrations and short processes, would depreciate to the vanishing point if compared with Jacques Inaudi, ‘the man with the double brain,’ at the Orpheum this week. Inaudi is a Frenchman and his English is limited but there seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic.

One blackboard isn’t enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row. Ordinary examples apparently bore him; so, if given an option, he chooses something in the trillions. His assistant, who wears a big black mustache and a dress suit, has to work much harder, physically, than Inaudi. The latter, who faces the audience from a little projecting platform, never looks at the blackboard, but repeats the numbers given him from various parts of the house for his manager, and stage assistant, to write with Parisian flourishes. Then, when the sum in addition, subtraction, cube root or what not, is complete, the manager works it out in sight of the audience but, quick as he is, Monsieur Inaudi finished before him and gives the correct answer to the people in the front.

"One blackboard isn't enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row."

“One blackboard isn’t enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row.”

Last night Inaudi asked first for material for a sum in subtraction. Various three figure combinations were shouted here and there, with the result that when the top of the five boards had been filled to overflowing Inaudi had a proposition like  this–not before–but behind him: Subtract 297, 122, 999, 492, 322, 260 from 495, 876, 711, 411, 460, 594. It was not the sort of a sum that the ordinary school sharp would care to tackle mentally, but Monsieur Inaudi did it, with his back turned to the board; and he did something else beside. This is where the double brain theory gained its notoriety. All the while that Inaudi was calculating in amounts rather more than the average man’s spending money, he was answering questions, as to the week days of certain dates, from anybody in the audience. Many men fired the date of their birth at him and received back instantly the day of the week. A glance at the questioner’s face was enough to indicate that Inaudi’s answer had been the right one.

In the meantime the hard working manager at the blackboard had been taking violent exercise in subtraction.

‘Haf you finished?’ asked Inaudi, from his place out by the footlights.

‘Non, non,’ was the answer, ‘It ees not quite.’

‘I haf finished,’ said Inaudi, calmly.

There, still looking straight ahead, the Frenchman gave the answer, the same as that which had been worked out on the blackboard: 98, 753, 711, 919, 138, 334. After that came multiplication, square root and finally Monsieur Inaudi repeated without a falter, from beginning to end, every figure that appeared on the blackboard up stage.

Inaudi and his manager were the very pink of politeness when an Eagle man saw them later in their dressing room. More tests in mathematics followed and with them every suspicion of possible treachery vanished.

‘What were you before making use of your ability at figures?’ the reporter asked.

‘Monsieur Inaudi was a shepherd,’ his manager replied for him, ‘a shepherd, with hees sheep, in France. One day, years, ago, he came to Marseilles. A strangaire there learned what he could do in mathematiques. He heard him and took him to Paree. Since then he has been before scienteests, doctairs and all–and all say, ‘Monsieur Inaudi ees a man with two brains.’

‘Have you got a memory for other matters like your memory for figures?’

‘It ees for feegures only,’ said Inaudi, answering for himself.” 

“An Attendant Slips A Plastic Bag Inside A Lubricated Plastic Sleeve Around The Head”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Even if I wasn’t born months premature, purple and being choked by an umbilical cord, I would still be awed by a new and unlikely invention from an Argentine car mechanic that eases difficult births. It looks dangerous, but it’s a lifesaver. From Donald G. McNeil Jr. at the New York Times: 

“With the Odón Device, an attendant slips a plastic bag inside a lubricated plastic sleeve around the head, inflates it to grip the head and pulls the bag until the baby emerges.

Doctors say it has enormous potential to save babies in poor countries, and perhaps to reduce cesarean section births in rich ones.

‘This is very exciting,’ said Dr. Mario Merialdi, the W.H.O.’s chief coordinator for improving maternal and perinatal health and an early champion of the Odón Device. ‘This critical moment of life is one in which there’s been very little advancement for years.’

About 10 percent of the 137 million births worldwide each year have potentially serious complications, Dr. Merialdi said. About 5.6 million babies are stillborn or die quickly, and about 260,000 women die in childbirth. Obstructed labor, which can occur when a baby’s head is too large or an exhausted mother’s contractions stop, is a major factor.”

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“There’s An ‘Interesting Opportunity To Make A Supersonic Vertical Takeoff Landing Jet'”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Just to annoy George Clooney, Elon Musk believes he can build an electric supersonic jet. From Damon Lavrinc at Wired:

“At the New York Times DealBook conference, Musk said there’s an ‘interesting opportunity to make a supersonic vertical takeoff landing jet,’ something he began to envision after the Concorde service ended nearly a decade ago.

The physics of getting enough power on board an electric aircraft to not only carry passengers, but maintain a supersonic speed, is still decades away. Not that it matters to Musk. Like the Hyperloop, it’s something he doesn’t have time to commit to developing. At least, not yet.”

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In 1968, Braniff predicts the future of air travel:

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“It’s The Rapid Increase In Machines’ Ability To Substitute For Intelligent Human Labor That Presages The Greater Disruption”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“The Robots Are Here” is an excellent, thought-provoking article by Tyler Cowen at Politico Magazine which considers what our progress with data and automation has wrought. If you’re not familiar with the George Mason economist’s work, this piece is a wonderful entry point. He begins by looking at the prescience of an Isaac Asimov story which predicted the intersection of deep data and the democratic process. An excerpt:

“Nearly 60 years after Asimov anticipated a decidedly dramatic intrusion of machines into our politics, we may not (yet) be offloading our democratic responsibilities to computers, but we are empowering them to reshape our economy and society in ways that could be just as profound. The rise of smart machines—technologies that encompass everything from artificial intelligence to industrial robots to the smartphones in our pockets—is changing how we live, work and play. Less acknowledged, perhaps, is what all this technological change portends: nothing short of a new political order. The productivity gains, the medical advances, the workplace reorganizations and the myriad other upheavals that will define the coming automation age will create new economic winners and losers; it will reorient our demographics; and undoubtedly, it will transform what we demand from our government.

The rise of the machines builds on deeper economic trends that are already roiling American society, including stagnant growth since 2001 and a greater openness to trade and foreign outsourcing. But it’s the rapid increase in machines’ ability to substitute for intelligent human labor that presages the greater disruption. We’re on the verge of having computer systems that understand the entirety of human ‘natural language,’ a problem that was considered a very tough one only a few years ago. We’re close to the point when we can fit the (articulable) knowledge of the entire world into the palm of our hands. Self-driving cars are making their way onto streets in California and Nevada. Whether you are a factory worker or an accountant, a waitress or a doctor, this is the wave that will lift you or dump you.”

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“And Don’t Forget The 420,000 Gallons Of Horse Urine Flowing Through The Streets Each Week”

November 14, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Matt Novak’s Paleofuture blog, housed now at Gizmodo, is one of the very best things birthed on the Internet. In a recent post, Novak examines an unrealized “centralized street-vacuum system” that was proposed in 1922 to help New York City curb its pollution problem. The opening:

“New York City at the turn of the 20th century was a pretty pungent place. Piles of garbage, millions of people cooking food, and about 2.5 million pounds of horse manure emptied into the streets per day will do that to a city. And don’t forget the 420,000 gallons of horse urine flowing through the streets each week. But some forward-thinking New Yorkers had an idea to clean up the city: establish a citywide central vacuum system.

The August 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine proposed this innovative vacuum system for the Big Apple and claimed that it would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The magazine claimed that the new system — which could be run privately, or preferably managed by the city — would also eliminate many diseases and drastically cut the mortality rate.

Science and Invention explained that the vacuum pipes needed for such a system wouldn’t be so different from the water and gas pipes that were already running through the streets.”

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“He Writes In English, For God’s Sake”

November 14, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From his Ask Me Anything at Reddit, Jerry Saltz, New York‘s smart art critic, reveals the book he most recommends for those who want to learn more about the field:

“Question:

I know next to nothing about art but I read you in New York mag all the time. My question is: What’s one book you’d recommend to someone interested in art and learning more but with next-to-no-knowledge of art history/the art world?

Jerry Saltz:

Off the Wall by Calvin Tompkins. It’s about how artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham made the train of American art history jump off the tracks, and land on a new track – the one we’re still huffing along on. And, it’s an easy read. He writes in English, for God’s sake.”

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“The Times Itself Will Likely Have To Eventually ‘Leave’ The Times”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Things are cyclical in the media business as they are in every other business. But when print was king you would never have seen the type of mass exodus of high-profile talent from the New York Times that it’s experienced in recent weeks. Because the Times isn’t part of a gigantic multi-platform corporation or flush with new-media cash, it’s at a decided disadvantage in fending off challengers for its best writers, reporters and thinkers. Just compare the financials of the Sulzberger-run company to, say, ESPN, which poached Nate Silver because it could offer him any amount of money it felt like and all the outlets he desires for his numbers. That’s not to say the Times isn’t still excellent and can’t attract more talent, but it will be difficult to maintain morale and quality if the bleeding continues.

Reading news stories about the departures yesterday, I thought that the Times itself will likely have to eventually “leave” the Times. I mean that the company will ultimately have to abandon the independence it’s always enjoyed and become another piece in a multimedia behemoth. I don’t see any other answer, though I’d like to be wrong.•

“This Could Be One Of The Craziest Extensions Of That Philosophy To Date”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Urbee is space-age car that is manufactured via 3D printer. It’s so highly fuel efficient that the makers are about to see if the second iteration of the auto can drive cross country on just ten gallons of gasoline. I would guess someday most cars will be manufactured this way, though they’ll be a market for “hand-crafted” cars the way there are for shoes and such. From Michael Kwan at Mobilemag:

“Even though we’ll keep getting talk about hydrogen fuel cells and fully electric vehicles, there is still a lot more to be said about just getting more fuel efficient vehicles at all. And this could be one of the craziest extensions of that philosophy to date.

For starters, the Urbee 2 is a car that was built using 3D printing, rather than more conventional manufacturing methods. They aim to drive the car clear across the United States on just ten gallons of fuel. To put this in perspective, the first Urbee was already able to achieve over 200mpg on the highway.”

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“I Wanted People To Feel The Passion And The Elation Of Being In The Revolution”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Economist Tyler Cowen suggests that video games are the low-hanging fruit of education, and that’s probably true. There are financial hurdles to overcome, but it would be great if textbooks were interactive and engaging. Game isn’t bad because they’re games, and we should probably stop resisting their allure on an institutional level and make them work for us. Of course the limitation of history books applies to gaming as well: The education is only good as the veracity and objectivity of the story being told.

A small step into the educational camp is being attempted by Navid Khonsari, a Grand Theft Auto veteran who’s trying to raise money to create a video game about the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He acknowledges it’s still mostly about entertainment, but it is ambitious and aims to show people what Iran wasactually like in the 1970s before the veil was lowered.

Brief aside: I can’t help but think that Iran is worse for the Revolution, for all the smart people who fled, for the assault on cultural modernity, for the repression of women, for the way it’s become isolated from many corners of the world. Of course, the U.S. should never have been sabotaging any foreign government and installing leaders friendly to us, but it feels like Iran lost decades of progress to its uprising. Of course, my version of the video game might differ from yours.

From Amanda Holpuch’s Guardian article about Khonsari’s project:

“One of the people behind some of the most popular – and violent – video games has left the world of Grand Theft Auto and developed a game prototype based on the Iranian revolution.

Since Navid Khonsari began work on the game, called 1979 Revolution, it has been labeled Western propaganda by an Iran government-run newspaper and some members of his team still use aliases to protect themselves from the repercussions of creating a video game based on a controversial event that has persistent reverberations today. Khonsari launched a Kickstarter on Wednesday, hoping to take the game from a prototype to tablet-ready, episodic series.

‘I wanted people to feel the passion and the elation of being in the revolution – of feeling that you could possibly make a change,’ said Khonsari, who moved from Iran to Canada at age 10, just after the revolution. He remembers his grandfather walking him through the early protests in Tehran.”•

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Life in Tehran just before the revolution:

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A Brief Note From 1898 About A Wife Swap

November 13, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 26, 1898 New York Times:

“San Francisco–Frank Burton, an Oregon farmer, traded wives with Frank Hall, a neighbor, a year ago, in order to get a big, strong companion to assist him in a trip to the Klondike. Now his new spouse has left him, taking with her the proceeds of the Alaska trip. Hall and Burton lived near Sylvan, Oregon.

Mrs. Hall was a tall, athletic woman capable of digging a well or baling hay. Mrs. Burton was a tall, athletic woman, capable of digging a well or baling hay. Mrs. Burton was a comely little woman, an ideal housewife, but not very strong. Burton caught the Kiondike fever in 1897. One day when he and his wife were visiting the Halls, Burton suggested that they trade wives. The women made no objection, and after some dickering Hall agreed to trade, Burton giving his wife and ‘four acres of prime onions’ for Mrs. Hall.

Soon afterward Burton and his new wife went to Alaska. Mrs. Burton No. 2 proved an efficient packhorse and carried most of the goods. The couple reached Dawson and prospered.

A few months ago Mrs. Hall told Burton that she had become weary of th slave business and had decided to leave him. She gave him $500 in gold and decamped with with the rest, about $4,500.

Burton is now back on the farm alone, while Hall and the former Mr. Burton are apparently happy. No one knows where Mrs. Hall is.”

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“I Was One Of The First Cats With A Tesla”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

New technologies take time to perfect, but it’s tough to be patient when you’re an A-Lister. In an Esquire profile by Tom Junod, George Clooney complains that his Tesla Roadster was overrated junk that took him nowhere. Coincidentally, that’s how I felt about Syriana. From the article:

“’Hey, where’s the Tesla?’ I said when I was leaving his house. I was just giving him shit; I didn’t know if he had a Tesla or not, and was trying to see if even George Clooney was susceptible to Hollywood cliché.

‘I had a Tesla. I was one of the first cats with a Tesla. I think I was, like, number five on the list. But I’m telling you, I’ve been on the side of the road a while in that thing. And I said to them, ‘Look, guys, why am I always stuck on the side of the fucking road? Make it work, one way or another.’ ”

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“‘Fiscal Cliff” Lay Largely Dormant For Decades”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Language is a funny thing, and there’s no way that Walter H. Stern could have guessed that a phrase he came up with 56 years ago would be the lead of his obituary in 2013. From Margalit Fox in the New York Times:

“In fact, the first known print citation, the O.E.D. goes on to say, appeared more than half a century ago, on Oct. 20, 1957, on the front page of The Times.

‘To the prospective home owner wondering whether the purchase of a given house will push him over the fiscal cliff,’ the article begins, ‘probably the most difficult item to estimate is his future property tax.’

The man who wrote that article — and in so doing gave life to a phrase that has lately poured from the lips of pundits, politicians and the public worldwide — was Walter H. Stern, a former real estate writer for The Times who died last Saturday at 88.

Mr. Stern was associated with The Times from 1942 until 1961, when he left to pursue a career in public relations. What he could scarcely have known that day in 1957 was that in the course of writing an analytical article about taxation, he built a small but powerful lexicographic time bomb.

‘Fiscal cliff’ lay largely dormant for decades, cropping up in The Times on only seven more occasions through the end of 2011.

Then it exploded.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

November 13, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

I can make anyone NUDE with Photoshop!

Ever wanted to see how your friends or a particular person look under their clothes?

With Nudify you have a chance to see them in their birthday suit!

I don’t judge, much, I just “undress.”

I don’t know and don’t really care what are your intentions, maybe you want to fap or maybe you just want to make a silly prank.

If things are still unclear, let me brighten them up.

I take requests! You send me pictures of a certain person (they can be wearing almost anything, though swimsuits, bikinis are a bit easier to edit), and I photoshop them nude.

You mention what type of editing needs to be done, from this list:

  • Full nude
  • Topless
  • Bottomless
  • Hairy
  • Bubbles or mosaic censorship(pixelated)
  • Facials
  • Face swap
  • Shemale
  • Dudes
  • Bizzare

Payment can be completely anonymous! Prices are fair, they usually start from just 10$

“[Google Is] Working On A Temporary Electronic Tattoo That Would Stick To The User’s Throat”

November 13, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Eventually you’ll have the implant,” promised Google’s Larry Page when asked about brain augmentation. And, sure, we could stand to be smarter, but Gogogle doesn’t just provide information–it also collects it. In that vein is this CNN story by Doug Gross about a strange, new Google patent:

“It looks like Google Glass was just the beginning. Google now appears to be aiming a few inches lower, working on a temporary electronic tattoo that would stick to the user’s throat.

Google-owned Motorola Mobility, published last week, for a system ‘that comprises an electronic skin tattoo capable of being applied to a throat region of a body.’

The patent says the tattoo would communicate with smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and wearable tech like Google Glass via a Bluetooth-style connection and would include a microphone and power source. The idea is that wearers could communicate with their devices via voice commands without having to wear an earpiece or the the Glass headset.

And how’s this for future tech? It could even be used as a lie detector.”

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