Urban Studies

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“Has America Passed Peak Driving?”

June 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

An Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal argues that car-owning and driving in America may be on a long-term–perhaps permanent–downswing. You might reflexively assume that the decline began with the economic collapse, but it predated the bust by several years. The opening:

“PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ambitious goals to curb the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, unveiled last week, will get a fortuitous assist from an incipient shift in American behavior: recent studies suggest that Americans are buying fewer cars, driving less and getting fewer licenses as each year goes by.

That has left researchers pondering a fundamental question: Has America passed peak driving?

The United States, with its broad expanses and suburban ideals, had long been one of the world’s prime car cultures. It is the birthplace of the Model T; the home of Detroit; the place where Wilson Pickett immortalized ‘Mustang Sally’ and the Beach Boys, ‘Little Deuce Coupe.’

But America’s love affair with its vehicles seems to be cooling.”

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Harriett Chalmers Adams, Dodging Vampires

June 30, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s no doubt that Harriett Chalmers Adams, pictured in the Gobi Desert above and in a portrait below, was a woman ahead of her time, a bold explorer who risked life and limb in search of knowledge. But I wouldn’t say all her reconnaissance was trustworthy. During a 1918 trip through South America, she believed she encountered actual vampires, which may have been really large bats or Peruvian guys wearing capes. From the August 12, 1918 edition of the New York Times:

“Mrs. Harriett Chalmers Adams, woman explorer of South America, and the wife of Franklin Adams of the Pan-American Union, has returned to Washington from another trip to hitherto unknown parts of South America. She has now traveled more than 40,000 miles on that continent. Speaking of her experiences, she says:

‘I have gone through experiences such as, I am convinced, no white woman has had. I have circumnavigated the South American continent, covering more than 40,000 miles, and have penetrated savage wildernesses where no white woman had ever been. I have climbed mountains, walked in the extinct crater of Mount Misti, wandered in regions of mountain cold where my eyelids froze, and, descending into Amazonian wilderness, stayed in a region infested with vampires–creatures which until then I imagined to be pure myths. I have stood in the site of what is possibly the world’s oldest civilization, and have studied ruins built before the time of Babylon.’

Mrs. Adams has spent about eight years in exploration. In this work and pleasure she discovered, high in the Andes, an unknown river of peat–an important geographical discovery which sheds new light on the geologic formation of the continent. She was the first white woman to invade the interior wilderness of Peru, where she wandered about the sources of the Amazon, in company with jaguars, monstrous snakes, and other wild animals, none of which ever harmed or even attacked her, which led Mrs. Adams to the conclusion that no wild beasts are dangerous unless first attacked themselves by men. On this trip Mrs. Adams came to a region infested by vampires, which previously she had believed to be mythical, and spent a night–the most horrible, she says, of her life–among them. On this occasion her husband and Indian guides were attacked and a number of their mules killed by the blood-sucking creatures which measure three to four feet from tip to tip of their wings.”

 

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“I Don’t Think There Is Anything Like This Collection”

June 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Omni magazine was the fascinating science journal turned out by pornographer Bob Guccione, whose face and pants were both made of leather. The singular publication was by turns brilliant and bullshit and batshit. Claire Evans of Vice recently got to visit an awe-inspiring archive of the defunct mag and filed a report. An excerpt:

“When I was given, offhandedly, in an email, a shot at poking through this collection, I’d imagined long tables stacked with documents and boxes brimming with unpublished science-fiction gems. I was told it was an archive, and, to me, the word ‘archive’ implied something academic, a facility staffed by white-gloved attendants. Instead, the OMNI archive is a nebulous assortment of filing cabinets, piles of paintings, folders haphazardly stuffed with printing acetates and doodles—all strewn about a medical-supply sales office in Englewood, New Jersey. There are attendants, but they aren’t librarians; they’re employees of Jeremy Frommer, a financier and fast-talking entrepreneur who came upon the collection accidentally, when a storage locker he bought on a whim last November happened to contain a sizable chunk of the estate of Bob Guccione, lord and master of the Penthouse empire and, less famously, publisher of OMNI magazine.

Guccione, if he is remembered at all, is usually mythologized as a kitsch tycoon dripping with gold chains, shirt open practically to his waist. His 27,000-square-foot home in Manhattan was the largest private residence in the city. He collected Van Gogh and Picasso paintings and filled his homes with busts of Caesar, Napoleonic sphinxes, and hand-molded brick shipped from Italy. He was a recluse, by some accounts. He shot the early Penthouse pictorials himself. And he loved science fiction. Jane Homlish, Bob’s personal assistant for 37 years, who I met in Englewood, explained it to me this way: ‘He always said that people with genius minds—and his mind was established as genius—were always as fascinated with sex as they were science.’

Bob Guccione died in 2010, by which point OMNI magazine was long gone—but in Englewood, they both live on. Sheet after sheet of slides are being dusted off, examined, and photographed. Original cover artwork from the magazine is being hunted down. Paintings are being uncrated. People like me are being brought in, simply to marvel at the goods. In one afternoon, I found cover drafts with greasy pencil notations, thousands of 35-mm slides, large-format chromes, magazines bundled with stapled paperwork, production materials, and untold amounts of photos and artwork. It’s chaos. Everything is still being fussed through and tossed around; after his storage unit mother lode, Jeremy got the bug, and the OMNI collection keeps growing. He has but one goal: to own the most complete collection in the world of ephemera relating to this largely forgotten magazine. ‘I don’t think there is anything like this collection,’ Jeremy told me. ‘I don’t even think it exists for a specific magazine, let alone the coolest geek sci-fi magazine of the 80s and 90s.'”

•••••

Guccione discusses Omni and other topics. Crappy footage but worth it.

Omni commercial from 1978, with a voiceover by the Gooch:

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“His Consistent Mistake Has Been To Regard These Powers As Essentially Benign”

June 28, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

You have to rationalize a lot if you’re going to be Bono. You have to make allowances. You can’t nitpick. You need to embrace scoundrels as well as the sainted. You actually have to convince yourself that the scoundrels have a saint within them. You must believe in large corporations–even own a stake in some–that don’t treat the downtrodden particularly well, the very downtrodden you say you stand with. It’s a tangled web you weave. You look at it as playing the inside game to try to improve the world, making small sacrifices to benefit the big picture.

But Harry Browne, in The Frontman, his excoriation of U2’s lead singer, looks at it differently. From Terry Eagleton in the Guardian:

“One result of his campaigning has been a kind of starvation chic. In this impressively well-researched polemic, Browne recounts how Ali Hewson, Bono’s wife, praised the work of her company’s Paris-based clothes designer for being influenced by dusty African landscapes. She admired ‘the way some of the clothes look like they’ve been worn before and sort of restitched … to incorporate the continent, in a sense.’ Hewson’s Messianic husband, or ‘the little twat with the big heart.’ as Viz magazine once dubbed him, has been trying to incorporate Africa into his image for a good few decades now. Like Geldof, he inherited the social conscience of the 1960s without its political radicalism, which is why he has proved so convenient a front man for the neo-liberals.

In fact, as Browne points out, he has cosied up to racists such as Jesse Helms, whitewashed architects of the Iraqi adventure such as Tony Blair and Paul Wolfowitz, and discovered a soulmate in the shock-doctrine economist Jeffrey Sachs. He has also brownnosed the Queen, sucked up to the Israelis, grovelled at the feet of corporate bullies and allied himself with rightwing anti-condom US evangelicals in Africa. The man who seems to flash a peace sign every four seconds apparently has no problem with the sponsorship of the arms corporation BAE. His consistent mistake has been to regard these powers as essentially benign, and to see no fundamental conflict of interests between their own priorities and the needs of the poor. They just need to be sweet-talked by a charmingly bestubbled Celt. Though he has undoubtedly done some good in the world, as this book readily acknowledges, a fair bit of it has been as much pro-Bono as pro bono republico.

If Bono really knew the history of his own people, he would be aware that the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s was not the result of a food shortage. Famines rarely are. There were plenty of crops in the country, but they had to be exported to pay the landlords’ rents. There was also enough food in Britain at the time to feed Ireland several times over. What turned a crisis into a catastrophe was the free market doctrine for which the U2 front man is so ardent an apologist. Widespread hunger is the result of predatory social systems, a fact that Bono’s depoliticising language of humanitarianism serves to conceal.

Browne’s case is simple but devastating.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“As The Crew Settles Into The Third Month In Its Domed Habitat On Mauna Loa, A Certain Concern Looms Large”

June 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Correspondence from Mars–“Mars, Hawaii,” that is–from an Economist correspondent taking part in a simulated space mission:

“AND on the 60th day there was much rejoicing. Candies, crackers, five-year gouda, flashing lights and an eclectic mix of music. The isolation experiment, a mock Mars mission, complete with research work and lava-field expeditions in simulated spacesuits, has reached its half-way point. You might expect the rest of the sojourn to be a downhill coast. However, as the crew settles into the third month in its domed habitat on Mauna Loa, a certain concern looms large. The psychological forecast is mixed with a chance of declining morale, increased irritability and dwindling motivation.

To be sure, the dire predictions are not specific to this mission or crew, which has got on remarkably well so far. They stem from the so-called third-quarter phenomenon, a documented condition experienced by members of isolated teams on long hauls in harsh places like the Antarctic. It occurs after a crew has got used to (or simply endured) the rigours and stresses of a mission’s early period, but when the end is not yet nigh.”

Old Print Article: “Owl Scared Woman Patient To Death,” New York Times (1903)

June 28, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"A nurse and doctor tried to revive her, but she was dead."

“A nurse and doctor tried to revive her, but she was dead.”

A hospitalized woman was frightened into the great beyond by an owl, and that was just the beginning of the madness recounted in this November 3, 1903 New York Times article—though at least it has a happy ending. The story:

“An owl which flew in by a window and perched on the foot of her bed frightened a woman to death in Gouvernour Hospital last night. The woman was Mrs. Elizabeth Forschleischer, forty-one years old, of 349 Madison Street.

It was about 8 o’clock when she lay in bed on the top floor, a window near the end of her bed, looking out on the river where the moon was rising, very large. A shadow seemed to cross the moon, and something hurtled through the window, and alighted at the foot of her bedstead. The creature was awesomely weird–she had never seen an owl before–and the terrified patient uttered a blood-curdling shriek.

In an instant the room was in an uproar. The other patients half rose in bed to see what was happening, and the entire staff of doctors, nurses, attendants, matrons and help of the hospital rushed to the top floor. Mrs. Forschleischer was found terrible agitated, and a nurse and doctor tried to revive her, but she was dead.

The owl meanwhile had flown to the lintel of a window, near the ceiling, and ‘te-whoo-ed’ and spread his wings. He was a foot high. A consultation was held. Dr. Emily Dunning, the woman ambulance surgeon, suggested a ladder; Dr. Batchelder, the house surgeon, a pole; Dr. Horowitz, dousing him with water; and other suggestions were made hurriedly. It was decided to try the pole.

A long curtain pole was secured by Mr. Helliken. The bird hooted at him as he made the first lunge, but the second came too close and the owl set out for the other end of the room. He hit the wall a dozen times in his flight, banged his head and body against the bedsteads and clothing and wall projections, and finally clung to a door lintel, somewhat higher than he had been before.

Most of the women patients were terribly frightened, and the nurses had to reassure them, but some laughed at the fun, sat up in bed, and joked as the pursuit of the bird went on unavailingly.

"He was put under the waste paper basket and fed on stewed prunes."

“He was put under the waste paper basket and fed on stewed prunes.”

Half a dozen failures with the pole and the caustic comments of doctors, nurses and patients led Dr. Milliken to give up in disgust. Miss Weyer, the head nurse, and Matron Stowers then tried it, but the owl clumsily, although successfully, eluded their pokes at him. He led them a chase all over the ward, while some patients screamed and others laughed heartily.

Then Dr. Horowitz wanted his suggestion of turning the hose on the owl taken up.

‘You see,’ he said. ‘If you wet his wings he can’t fly.’

This was deemed incontrovertible, and a huge syringe was trained upon the owl by Dr. Horowitz and an assistant. 

‘Fire,’ cried Dr. Horowitz, and a pail of water was discharged at the bird. It came nearer hitting the nurses than the owl, struck the wall, splashed all over it, showering pictures, bed clothing, some patients, and the floor, and a caused a shower of sarcasm to fall on Dr. Horowitz’s head. The owl did not move.

There was a tacit understanding that the plan had proved such a failure that it should not be repeated. Then Mr. Batchelder said chloroform was the only thing that would subdue the bird and bring the excitement to an end. He tied a piece of gauze to the end of the curtain pole and dipped it in chloroform.

The owl was clinging for dear life to a picture frame, which swung to and fro under his weight and frightened him more than the pursuers did. The chloroform, with great precautions, was pushed near him. He gave a loud ‘to-whoo’ of disgust, and once more flew away, clumsily banging against a dozen things in a flight of six feet and alighting on a window ledge. Again the chloroform was gingerly shoved toward him.

‘Nice birdie,’ said Dr. Batchelder, coaxingly. ‘Pretty bird; smell o’ that. Go to slee-ee-eep, birdie.’

But the owl was off again, like an aeroplane that doesn’t work, hitting some of the nurses in the head in his awkward flight.

‘Here’s what’ll do the trick,’ said Dr. Dunning, coming in with a waste paper basket tied to the end of a pole. Another chase began, and all made attempts to catch the owl in a basket, as a child would catch a butterfly in a net. The doctors and nurses upset pictures, tables, glasses, and chairs, bumped against walls and beds, and made ineffectual dabs at the bird.

Then by mutual consent and initiative the entire hospital staff got sticks and clubs and tried to hit the owl. He flew this way and that, banging against everything in the room until he flew into the kitchen. There he was cornered, a stroke brought him to the floor and Miss Weyer captured him. He was put under the waste paper basket and fed on stewed prunes, which he seemed to like. The doctor intends to keep him.”

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“Car Makers Believe Autonomous Driving Will Be Introduced Gradually”

June 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From a Telegraph article by Jeevan Vasagar about Germany automaker’s plans to gradually sway drivers into giving up the wheel:

“Devised by a team at the Free University of Berlin, the self-driving VW Passat is a highly advanced autonomous car, capable of navigating a safe path through unpredictable city traffic.

It sees the world through a spinning silver cylinder mounted on the roof, a laser scanner, which generates one million data points per second to give the car’s computer a real-time map of its surroundings.

Cameras and radar sensors provide a further wealth of detail, alongside an ultra-precise GPS based on the navigation systems used in aircraft.

It will be many years before a car this sophisticated is commercially available. But Germany’s luxury car makers have begun introducing an array of autonomous features which enable some of their leading models to drive and steer themselves.

Rather than the sudden advent of robot vehicles, car makers believe autonomous driving will be introduced gradually.

Daimler, which owns Mercedes Benz, predicts that at low speeds – such as in traffic jams or parking – cars will operate with full autonomy ‘in a matter of years.’ At higher speeds, several manufacturers plan for highly automated driving within the structured environment of the motorway.”

•••••

The great Peter Stormare, representing Deutschland:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 27, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"No formal experience necessary."

“No formal experience necessary.”

unattached/independent pro boxer looking for asst. trainer (staten island)

independent and unattached pro boxer needs assistant trainer to help prepare for upcoming bout. no formal experience necessary.

“The Robotic Companion Was Made To Look Like A Harp Seal”

June 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Hopefully technology will soon be able to prevent, even reverse, dementia, but until then researchers are experimenting with robotic companions for people with faltering faculties. From Scientific American:

“A team of international researchers recently found that a therapeutic robot companion improved the quality of life for a small group of people with mid- to late-stage dementia.

In the real-life case, the robotic companion was made to look like a harp seal. It was fitted with AI software and tactile sensors that enabled it to respond to touch and sound. The robot could express surprise, happiness or anger and even respond to certain words. Patients who spent time with the robot seemed happier and less anxious.”

“Matthews Has Seen Crazy Ants Disable Scores Of Air-Conditioning Units Near Austin, Texas”

June 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Texas already has a crazy uncle and now it has crazy ants. From NBC News, a story by Douglas Main about the paratrechina genus, which swarm into electronics, disabling, even destroying them, perhaps threatening the nation’s Twitter output:

“Exterminator Mike Matthews got the call because the home’s air-conditioning unit had short-circuited. Why an exterminator for a problem with an appliance? Because of the crazy ants.

Matthews has seen crazy ants disable scores of air-conditioning units near Austin, Texas, where the invasive creatures have been a real headache. The ants swarm inside the units, causing them to short-circuit and preventing them from turning on. Often the switches inside them need to be replaced, thanks to the ants, said Matthews, who works for the Austin-area pest control business The Bug Master.

‘When you open these things up, you see thousands of the ants, just completely filling them up,’ Matthews said.

The ants first appeared in the United States in 2002 but have become more of a menace in the past few years, spreading to many areas of the Gulf Coast, particularly Texas and Florida. The ants are obnoxious because they reproduce in large numbers, sometimes outnumbering all other ants 100-to-1. That’s a problem since ecosystems depend on a wide variety of ants to perform different tasks; domination by one species is highly unusual, said Edward LeBrun, a researcher at the University of Texas. As the ants have advanced into new habitats, they’ve had the annoying habit of swarming inside electronics, such as air conditioners and farm equipment like pumps and occasionally destroying them, LeBrun told LiveScience.”

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“What Makes Wikipedia So Valuable For Users Is What Gets In Its Way Of Becoming A Valuable”

June 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire” is the title of Amy Chozick’s short, sharp New York Times Magazine portrait of the Wikipedia founder, a singular figure in the Information Age, who was right about crowdsourcing knowledge when almost everyone else thought he was wrong, when he was treated like a punchline. The collective nature of the virtual encyclopedia made it impossible for Wales to cash in, but somehow I think he’ll slide by. Let’s weep for others. An excerpt:

“Wikipedia, which is now available in 285 languages, gets more than 20 billion page views and roughly 516 million unique visitors a month. It is the fifth-most-visited Web site in the world behind Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook; and ahead of Amazon, Apple and eBay. Were Wikipedia to accept banner and video ads, it could, by most estimates, be worth as much as $5 billion. But that kind of commercial sellout would probably cause the members of the community, who are not paid for their contributions, to revolt. ‘The paradox,’ says Michael J. Wolf, managing director at Activate, a technology-consulting firm in New York and a member of the Yahoo! board, ‘is that what makes Wikipedia so valuable for users is what gets in its way of becoming a valuable, for-profit enterprise.’

Wales suffers from the same paradox. Being the most famous traveling spokesman for Internet freedom brings in a decent living, but it’s not Silicon Valley money. It’s barely London money. Wales’s total net worth, by most estimates, is just above $1 million, including stock from his for-profit company Wikia, a wiki-hosting service. His income is a topic of constant fascination. Type ‘Jimmy Wales‘ into Google and ‘net worth’ is the first pre-emptive search to pop up. ‘Everyone makes fun of Jimmy for leaving the money on the table,’ says Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia.

Wales is well rehearsed in brushing off questions about his income. In 2005, Florida Trend magazine reported that he made enough money in his brief stint as an options-and-futures trader in Chicago, before starting Wikipedia, that he would never have to work again. But that was before he had to pay child support and rent for homes in Florida and London. When I brought up the topic recently, Wales seemed irritated. ‘It rarely crosses my mind,’ he said. ‘Reporters ask me all the time and expect me to say: ‘I’m heartbroken. Where’s my billion dollars?’  On two occasions, he compared himself to an Ohio car salesman. ‘There are car dealers in Ohio who have far more money than I’ll ever have, and their jobs are much, much less interesting than mine,’ he said during one conversation. When his net worth came up again, he brought up Ayn Rand. ‘Can you imagine Howard Roark saying, ‘I just want to make as much money as possible?’ Wales asked rhetorically.

Wales likes to invoke the higher purpose of Wikipedia.“

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Encyclopedia Britannica infomercial, 1992:

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“My Lovely Kitty”

June 26, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Taiwanese coffee kisok Let’s Caffe allows you to personalize your latte by printing the photo of your choice on it.

“When You’re Racing, It’s Life”

June 26, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Nissan has entered an electric car into competition at Le Mans, which is, of course, a great thing. But I have a further question about such races.

You know I’ve said before that it’s difficult for me to wrap my brain around people surrendering the wheel to computers, no matter how amazing an improvement robocars would be, no matter how much safer. But what if it happens? What if the large majority of autos in the future are driven by software? Would auto races be remote control affairs, the winner being the team with the best programmers and engineers? Would the driver, that mythopoeic figure, be disappeared? Would he or she go the way of the horse that used to pull the cart?

“The Bible Contemplates Marriage Between One Man And Several Women”

June 26, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Harvard Law professor and Bloomberg columnist Noah Feldman just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit to help untangle the meaning of this week’s landmark Supreme Court decisions on the Voting Rights Act and DOMA. A few exchanges follow.

____________________________

Question:

In your opinion what will congress do in regard to the voting rights act & make it whole again or will we continue to see red states suppress the vote. 

Noah Feldman:

Hard to imagine the politics that would allow for a new VRA coverage definition.

____________________________

Question: 

Justice Antonin Scalia, reading from his dissent, said, “The error in both springs from the same diseased root: an exalted notion of the role of this Court in American democratic society.” 

He also said, “In my view a perfectly valid justification for this statute is contained in its title: the Defense of Marriage Act.” 

This second quote makes it plain that Scalia’s understanding of marriage adopts the Biblical premise that it should be between one man and one women. It seems conservative thought in general on this issue shares the same diseased root: that somehow the language of the constitution should be interpreted from a Christian perspective.

What happened to separation of church and state? How can a supreme court justice in 2013 get away with making so many outrageous and purposefully inflammatory statements?

Noah Feldman:

Well, strictly speaking the Bible contemplates marriage between one man and several women, but we will pass over that. Short answer is that the justices can say whatever they like! The Ct once said we are a Christian nation.

____________________________

Question:

Will gay couples be included in the immigration reform bill after the rulings today? 

Noah Feldman:

Yes if their marriage is legally recognized in a state that recognizes same-sex marriage.

____________________________

Question:

Will the court ever decide to legalize gay marriage or will it always be a state choice?

Noah Feldman: 

I would guess they will eventually have to — perhaps 3 to 5 years depending on the progress of the litigation and of course the composition of the Court.•

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A Brief Note From 1884 About A Mad Bull

June 25, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the August 28, 1884 New York Times:

“Erie, Penn.–A mad bull attacked a farmer named Henry Grover to-day in a field and disemboweled him. The injured man was picked up and carried into his house. Physicians said that he could not possibly live.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 25, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Guys who have enough money to randomly go to outer space.”

thanks a lot asshole – you know who you are!

i fucking hate you. you make me angry. you ruined my life and now everything makes me angry. puppies make me angry. stupid hipster baristas piss me off. yoga makes me angry. people who wear leg warmers. people who wear arm warmers. facebook status updates. gluten-free labels. stores that don’t take $50 bills. atm’s that keep handing them out. vegetarians. vegans. people who don’t like fur. ugly people. fat people. skinny bitches. people who use bad grammar and make up words like refudiate. throwing up in my mouth a little and then having to swallow it. dropped calls on my iphone. waiting for the bus. paying for the bus. being ass grabbed on the bus. paying too much for cable. rainbows and fucking unicorns. children who at the age of 4 already feel entitled to give the world attitude. the asshole parents who make them like that. tim horton’s coffee. emails from nigerian princes and british estate lawyers. cel phone ringbacks. detox diets. thanksgiving. black friday. christmas. easter. valentine’s day. jesus. solar calculators. solar panels. saving planet earth. hippies. sorting my fucking garbage even though half the recycling still goes into landfill. guys who have enough money to randomly go to outer space. corn poo. tickle me elmo. endless voicemail options. the alarm clock. shitty take out. good take out. warm beer. creepy ass earwigs. god damn birds chirping in the morning. people who steal. and most of all these gorgeous awesome smelling tulips that were my favourite flower make me fucking angry!!!!!!! 

"Hippies."

“Hippies.”

"Fat people."

“Fat people.”

"Refudiate."

“Refudiate.”

“There Is An Immense—But Mostly Invisible—Cost To The Embrace Of Big Data By The Intelligence Community”

June 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Big Data as applied to terrorism (and more banal matters) is useful because it provides predictive behavior patterns without spending time and resources on locating the cause of the behavior. But should we abandon cause and just be concerned with potential effect? From Evgeny Morozov at Slate:

“The end of theory, which Chris Anderson predicted in Wired a few years ago, has reached the intelligence community: Just like Google doesn’t need to know why some sites get more links from other sites—securing a better place on its search results as a result—the spies do not need to know why some people behave like terrorists. Acting like a terrorist is good enough.

As the media academic Mark Andrejevic points out in Infoglut, his new book on the political implications of information overload, there is an immense—but mostly invisible—cost to the embrace of Big Data by the intelligence community (and by just about everyone else in both the public and private sectors). That cost is the devaluation of individual and institutional comprehension, epitomized by our reluctance to investigate the causes of actions and jump straight to dealing with their consequences. But, argues Andrejevic, while Google can afford to be ignorant, public institutions cannot. 

‘If the imperative of data mining is to continue to gather more data about everything,’ he writes, ‘its promise is to put this data to work, not necessarily to make sense of it. Indeed, the goal of both data mining and predictive analytics is to generate useful patterns that are far beyond the ability of the human mind to detect or even explain.’ In other words, we don’t need to inquire why things are the way they are as long as we can affect them to be the way we want them to be. This is rather unfortunate. The abandonment of comprehension as a useful public policy goal would make serious political reforms impossible.

Forget terrorism for a moment. Take more mundane crime. Why does crime happen? Well, you might say that it’s because youths don’t have jobs. Or you might say that’s because the doors of our buildings are not fortified enough. Given some limited funds to spend, you can either create yet another national employment program or you can equip houses with even better cameras, sensors, and locks. What should you do?

If you’re a technocratic manager, the answer is easy: Embrace the cheapest option.”

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Old Print Article: “Teachers In Despair Over Boy Terrors,” New York Times (1912)

June 24, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Impudent, sulky, spiteful. Played continually with a penknife.”

It was more than a hundred years ago that imps, devilkins, urchins and rascals ran roughshod over Brooklyn public schools, assailing teachers and fellow pupils alike with verbal and physical abuse. A remembrance of this dark time in our city’s history via the February 18, 1912 New York Times:

“A circular of inquiry sent out to Principals and public school teachers by Dr. Frank K. Perkins, Chairman of the Brooklyn Teachers’ Association’s Committee on Probation Schools, to determine whether or not condition in the schools justify his campaign for the segregation of incorrigible pupils in separate disciplinary schools has brought forth a harvest of replies telling of instances of depravity among pupils that renders insipid the charitable phrases that ‘boys will be boys.’ 

These boys boast that they are ‘hard guys,’ shake fists in the teachers’ faces and bid them go where they themselves are, according to the teachers’ intimations, unconsciously destined; they pull the hair of girl pupils and trip them; they throw spitballs and jab pins into the legs of their fellows with the armed toes of their boots, strike their teachers and their mothers, and threaten the teachers in open classroom with knives and other weapons.

Dr. Perkins, who is himself a Principal in an elementary school, believes such pupils should scarcely be allowed to associate in rooms with normal pupils, or under women teachers whose helplessness is the greater in that corporal punishment is forbidden by the school rules, and the wayward pupils know it.

"He frequently complains of pains in the head."

“He frequently complains of pains in the head.”

T.D., 14 1/2 Years–Uses vile language. Told teacher to go to —. Dismissed himself seven times in one morning. Sat on fence adjoining schoolyard and attracted other boys’ attention. Called teacher a fool.

T.S.—Truant for about twenty-eight days. When he came back he was almost intolerable. He with two others in the class admitted to teacher that he frequently got drunk. Whenever any of the girls chanced to pass him, he tripped them, kicked them, punched them, or pulled their hair. He frequently complains of pains in the head. Frequently, at the beginning of the term, when called on to read, he would leave out words and substitute others in order to suggest or give an immoral meaning.

A.W.—Impudent, sulky, spiteful. Played continually with a penknife. Became impudent when I told him to put it away. One day when I insisted, he said: ‘I’ll stick you with it.’ In a quarrel over a book strap on Nov. 8 he stuck the knife into a boy’s arm.

L.K.—Brought a tube to school through which he threw spitballs, striking a boy in the eye. When reprimanded, he threw his books on the floor, stamped and scraped his feet, banged his desk, and in a loud and threatening voice used the most vile and insulting language. Not satisfied with this exhibition of temper, he placed a pin in his shoe and started to annoy the boys in his vicinity by jabbing them.”

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“It Has No Hands, Holes In Place Of Ears, And The Mona Lisa Smile Of Something Undead”

June 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Another post which concerns the work of Dmitry Itskov and other immortality enthusiasts. This one presents the opening of a smart report about transhumanism from Andrew Couts at Digital Trends:

“Behind me, a Florida-orange senior citizen, in her orange blazer, wearing orange earrings, an orange bead necklace, and a white summer fedora, stands on the tip-toes of her orange leather loafers to get a better look at the weird scene unfolding in front of the crowd in the lobby of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in midtown Manhattan.

‘Yes,’ I tell Orange Woman. ‘The one sitting down is a robot. The one standing up is the guy who made him … er … it.’

‘Oh!’ she says. ‘I couldn’t tell the difference.’

‘Gemanoid HI-2,’ as it’s called, is an exact replica of its eccentric creator, Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro. Same hair. Same all-black shirt and pants. Same little necklace. The only discernable difference between the two is that, while Dr. Ishiguro tells jokes, Mr. Gemanoid sits silently, slightly cross-eyed, blinking and jerking its head, with the eternally confused look of someone who suffered a paralyzing stroke while contemplating the ethics of Westboro Baptist Church.

In a tripod contraption next to Gemanoid hangs another of Ishiguro’s creations – a demented Casper the Ghost with all the charm of an aborted fetus. Its legs are a fused-together chunk. It has no hands, holes in place of ears, and the Mona Lisa smile of something undead. Ishiguro calls it Telenoid, an android designed with human-like features, but without all the pesky details that save onlookers from missing out on cold-sweat nightmares.

‘Well, that’s just wonderful,’ says Orange Woman. ‘It’s so lifelike!'”

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“It Is Future Failure That Is At Issue”

June 24, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve posted before about Henry Petroski’s first book, To Engineer Is Human, which I love. It’s the one that made crystal for a non-engineer like myself that building bridges and buildings is not only a matter of science but also of best guesses. All these years after that 1985 volume–and with many books in between–Petroski has published a sequel of sorts, To Forgive Design, which examines, among other things, how the lessons of the past are no match for climate change of today and tomorrow. From “Collapse and Crash,” by Bill McKibben, in the New York Review of Books:

“But what if, in fact, the old war stories are becoming obsolete? The engineer, like the insurance agent, is hampered by the fact that his skill depends on the earth behaving in the future as it has in the past. As Petroski writes,

Since it is future failure that is at issue, the only sure way to test our hypotheses about its nature and magnitude is to look backward at failures that have occurred historically. Indeed, we predict that the probability of occurrence for a certain event, such as a hundred-year storm, is such and such a percentage, because all other things being equal, that has been the actual experience contained in the historical meteorological record.

That record, however, is now shattered. In the course of Petroski’s lifetime, and all of ours, we’ve left behind the Holocene, the ten-thousand-year period of benign climatic stability that marked the rise of human civilization. We’ve raised the global temperature about a degree so far, but a better way of thinking about it is: we’ve amped up the amount of energy trapped in our narrow envelope of atmosphere, and hence every process that feeds off that energy is now accelerating. For instance, this piece of simple physics: warm air holds more water vapor than cold. Already we’ve increased moisture in the atmosphere by about 4 percent on average, thus increasing the danger both of drought, because heat is evaporating more surface water, and of flood, because evaporated water must eventually come down as rain. And those loaded dice are doing great damage. The federal government spent more money last year repairing the damage from extreme weather than it did on education.”

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“Designers’ Imaginations Were Allowed To Run Riot With Little Consideration Of Practicality Or Budget”

June 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From an Economist article about newly released archives which detail futuristic tech projects in Britain that never reached fruition, a brief bit from 1968 about the MUSTARD (the Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device) space shuttle:

“READERS of a certain age may remember Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s sci-fi puppet shows—Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet—filmed, as the Andersons put it, in “Supermarionation”. Those who remember Captain Scarlet in particular may find one of the pictures here eerily familiar. English Electric’s Fighter Jet Take-Off Platform, a flying airfield, is not quite the Cloudbase from which the immortal captain operated. But it was intended, like its fictional counterpart, to launch and receive planes while itself airborne. It would have taken off and landed vertically in, say, a jungle clearing otherwise inaccessible to the aircraft piggybacking on it.

English Electric was one of the firms merged into what eventually became BAE Systems, and BAE has recently been through its archives and publicised some of the projects dreamed up in the glory days of the 1960s, when designers’ imaginations were allowed to run riot with little consideration of practicality or budget. MUSTARD (the Multi-Unit Space Transport And Recovery Device), for example, was designed by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). It could pass for something out of Fireball XL5 or Supercar—though it also resembles Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo which will, Virgin hopes, soon be taking paying passengers to the edge of space. It would have been a three-stage space-plane, though only one stage would have made it into orbit. The other two were reusable boosters.”

•••••

“This man will be our hero, for fate will make him indestructible. His name: Captain Scarlet.”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 23, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

i used to be a good man

but i am not sure anymore. the world is closing in on me. i was a good father husband and i have a lot to show for it….so why am i feeling so low? why do i feel like i just want to cry? not sure. but all i know is i am tired of worrying..i am going to be 60 in a few months…and the wild ride has gotten to me. sometimes i just want to go out for that pack of … cigarettes and never come back…..and i don’t even smoke. oh well.

A Brief Note From 1921 About PEDs

June 21, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 28, 1921 New York Times:

“Pittsburgh, Pa.–The nimble Pirates, minus the tendency to crack in the heat of a National League pennant chase, and a Pitt football team that will display more agility than any trick movie star, are promised for 1922 by A. Lincoln Bowden, a Pittsburgh oil man, who has volunteered to supply both aggregations with dried monkey meat during the coming year. Glands will be included in the menu, according to the Pittsburgher, who has offered his services in the spirit of a devoted gridiron and diamond fan and says he wants Pittsburgh athletes to beat the world.

Mr. Bowden is about to depart for South America to lay in a supply of monkeys of a superior class, which he has frequently observed in Ecuador. The invigorating element of monkey meat and glands, he asserted, will give indomitable power and unlimited aggressiveness to the baseball and football men.

In proof of his assertions, he points to the case of of a Pittsburgher who was in Ecuador with him two months ago. In this case, Mr. Bowden said, although the patient was quite bald, a diet of monkey meat caused new hair to grow on his head, while all pains and aches left him and neither the heat of the jungle nor the cold of high mountain plateaus affected him in the slightest degree.”

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“The Minimalist House Is An Idea That Continues To Fascinate Piano”

June 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Digoene is Renzo Piano’s new attempt at a mobile home. From Vitra:

“The development of Diogene

In an interview with Renzo Piano, the architect explains that the ideal of minimalist housing is something which he has been considering since his student days. It is a kind of obsession, but a good one. A living space of two by two by two metres – just enough space for a bed, a chair and a small table – is a dream many architecture students share. Back then, he was unable to realise the idea. At the end of the 1960s, however, when Piano was teaching at the Architectural Association in London, he joined forces with his students to build mini houses on Bedford Square. The architect has also designed boats, cars and, a few years ago, cells for the nuns of the Poor Clare nunnery of Ronchamp. There too, it was about minimising the spatial environment of these people, not for reasons of economic efficiency, but for self-moderation. The minimalist house is an idea that continues to fascinate Piano, particularly in an era in which his office is dealing with big projects, for instance what was Europe’s tallest high-rise at the time of its completion in 2012 – ‘The Shard’ in London.” (Thanks Pop-Up City.)

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“Brainteasers Are A Complete Waste Of Time”

June 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You know how Google famously asked applicants brainteasers during the interview process? Like, how many basketballs can you fit into this office building? You and I always knew this was self-flattering, grandstanding nonsense that was predictive of nothing, and even Google management has finally come around. From Adam Bryant’s New York Times interview with Laszlo Bock, Google Senior Vice President of People Operations:

“Laszlo Bock

On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.

Instead, what works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up.

Behavioral interviewing also works — where you’re not giving someone a hypothetical, but you’re starting with a question like, ‘Give me an example of a time when you solved an analytically difficult problem.’ The interesting thing about the behavioral interview is that when you ask somebody to speak to their own experience, and you drill into that, you get two kinds of information. One is you get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation, and the valuable ‘meta’ information you get about the candidate is a sense of what they consider to be difficult.

On the leadership side, we’ve found that leadership is a more ambiguous and amorphous set of characteristics than the work we did on the attributes of good management, which are more of a checklist and actionable.

We found that, for leaders, it’s important that people know you are consistent and fair in how you think about making decisions and that there’s an element of predictability. If a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom, because then they know that within certain parameters, they can do whatever they want. If your manager is all over the place, you’re never going to know what you can do, and you’re going to experience it as very restrictive.”

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