Urban Studies

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“It Doesn’t Matter What’s In My Head. It Matters What That Physical Connection Is.”

September 12, 2012 in Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Public Books, Lawrence Weschler and Errol Morris discuss the latter’s obsession with the meaning of photographs, most recently 1855 pictures of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton. An excerpt:

“Errol Morris: 

It seems to me that we’ve forgotten a very important fact about photography. That photographs are physically connected to the world. And part of the study of photography has to be recapturing, recovering, that physical connection with the world in which they were taken. Something which has rarely been part of the enterprise of studying photographs. Take a photograph of Einstein, for instance. The point is, it doesn’t matter who I think it’s a photograph of. What matters is, was Einstein in front of the lens of the camera? That man. Was that man in front of the lens of the camera? Is there a physical connection between the image on that photographic plate or the digital device, whatever, and the man standing there? It doesn’t matter what’s in my head. It matters what that physical connection is.

Lawrence Weschler: 

What actually happened. But the question remains, why do you care? Or rather, why do you care so much? Because I think you really do care.

Errol Morris: 

Ultimately, why do people care about reference? Because… let’s put it this way. If you care what our connection is to the world around us, then you care about basic questions. Questions of truth. Questions of reference. Questions of identity. Basic philosophical questions. So go back to the [Roger] Fenton photographs for a moment. I want to know what I’m looking at. I think photographs have a kind of subversive character. They make us think we know what we’re looking at. I may not know what I’m looking at, even under the best of circumstances here and now. But I have all this context available to me. I know you’re Ren Weschler. I’ve met you before. We actually are friends. And I have this whole context of the world around me. But photographs do something tricky. They decontextualize things. They rip images out of the world and as a result we are free to think whatever we want about them.”

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“Every Couple Of Hours, Though, In As Little As 30 Seconds, The Barriers Break Down”

September 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “When Networks Network,” Elizabeth Quill’s excellent Science News article about the interaction of networks, the ones inside the human body and the numerous external ones we navigate each day:

“Half a dozen times each night, your slumbering body performs a remarkable feat of coordination.

During the deepest throes of sleep, the body’s support systems run on their own timetables. Nerve cells hum along in your brain, their chitchat generating slow waves that signal sleep’s nether stages. Yet, like buses and trains with overlapping routes but unsynchronized schedules, this neural conversation has little to say to your heart, which pumps blood to its own rhythm through the body’s arteries and veins. Air likewise skips into the nostrils and down the windpipe in seemingly random spits and spats. And muscle fluctuations that make the legs twitch come and go as if in a vacuum. Networks of muscles, of brain cells, of airways and lungs, of heart and vessels operate largely independently.

Every couple of hours, though, in as little as 30 seconds, the barriers break down. Suddenly, there’s synchrony. All the disjointed activity of deep sleep starts to connect with its surroundings. Each network — run via the group effort of its own muscular, cellular and molecular players — joins the larger team.

This change, marking the transition from deep to light sleep, has only recently been understood in detail — thanks to a new look at when and how the body’s myriad networks link up to form an übernetwork.” (Thanks Browser.)

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 12, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“I am gearing up for a series of cross country motorcycle trips to do
some recreational mineral prospecting over the next few years in
an effort to assemble much needed start-up and operating capital.”

Seeking help to fund a small prospecting venture. – $1 (Downtown)

I am a motivated entrepeneur that has been gearing up to assemble my
own start-up capital to fund the start-up of my own small fabrication
and Manufacturing Company.

This is in response to all the industry layoffs that have occurred 
due to foreign outsourcing over the past decade and a half.

I can make my own products and sell them on the internet.
But the banks and lenders haven’t been very cooperative.

I am gearing up for a series of cross country motorcycle trips to do 
some recreational mineral prospecting over the next few years in 
an effort to assemble much needed start-up and operating capital.

This is true financial freedom and independence at it’s best.
And it appeals to me more than I can describe in this post.

I have gotten the motorcycle and survival gear together and
I have done the research and put together an itenerary of 
places to visit across the country to do this……but I have
run low on funds to cover gas, food, tires, and repairs as 
these expenses come up out on the road while starting out.

The hardest part of any venture is getting started.
Therefore I am willing to share the proceeds from 
my first 4 trips doing this as a prospector out in the
field with those who help me get this venture started.

It’s my way of saying….”Thank You”.

Those interested in such an opportunity can
contact me with the link above and we can
discuss this matter in greater detail.

Those who help this venture get started will reap
what they sow and share in the harvest to come.

I thank you for your time.

Thanks,

Carl

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“There Will Come A Time When Robots Will Understand Us Better Than We Understand Ourselves”

September 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You might think roboticist Hans Moravec has been playing with wires and dials too long when he talks about Artificial Intelligence being able to manipulate humans by the middle of this century, but he was absolutely right about Roombas and bomb-defusing bots–actually, his timeline was conservative. From a 1997 interview he did with NOVA about the first four generations of robots:

“NOVA: 

Can you envision a robot understanding the psychology of a terrorist better than a human being?

Hans Moravec:

Well, ultimately. Now we’re talking 40 or 50 years from now, when we have these fourth generation machines and their successors, which I think ultimately will be better than human beings, in every possible way. But, the two abilities that are probably the hardest for robots to match, because they’re the things that we do the best, that have been life or death matters for us for most of our evolution, are, one, interacting with the physical world. You know, we’ve had to find our food and avoid our predators and deal with things on a moment to moment basis. So manipulation, perception, mobility – that’s one area. And the other area is social interaction. Because we’ve lived in tribes forever and we’ve had to be able to judge the intent and probable behavior of the other members of our tribe to get along. So the kind of social intuition we have is very powerful and probably uses close to the full processing power of our brain—the equivalent of a hundred trillion calculations per second—plus a lot of very special knowledge, some of which is hard-wired, some of which we learned growing up. This is probably where robots catch up last. But, once they do catch up, then they keep on going. I think there will come a time when robots will understand us better than we understand ourselves, or understand each other. And, you can even imagine the time in the more distant future when robots will be able to host a very detailed simulation of what’s going on in our brains and be able to manipulate us. 

NOVA: 

Wow.”

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See also:

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“This Vehicle Is No Toy”

September 12, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Palestinian cabbie builds Gaza’s first electric vehicle using recycled parts.

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“The Land They Were Looking At Has No Infrastructure At All—It’s Just Desert”

September 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I put up a post in May about CITE, the insta-ghost town to be built in Hobbs, New Mexico. The billion-dollar project, planned by Pegasus Holdings was to simulate a city that could hold (but wouldn’t hold) 35,000 people and be a testing ground for all sorts of technological innovations. But land acquisition and other factors has proven difficult, and the project seems more and more merely a pipe dream and a press release. It’s just hard to build a ghost town these days. From Wren Abbott in the Santa Fe Reporter:

“Part of Pegasus’ vision for CITE includes testing of driverless cars, but the company has yet to announce a partnership with the country’s forerunner in that industry, Google, Inc.. Google is already testing its cars in California, with drivers sitting behind the wheel to intervene in case of emergency. Legislation passed in Nevada allows Google to do the same thing there.

Pegasus’ plan also seems to now include power generation, despite the significant obstacles it would have faced with an alternate location it considered for CITE. If Pegasus had chosen a site near Las Cruces, the city would have had to build $40 million of infrastructure in order to begin alternative energy production, [Las Cruces Mayor Ken} Miyagishima says.

‘The land they were looking at has no infrastructure at all—it’s just desert,’ Miyagishima says. ‘It would have taken awhile to get infrastructure out there.'”

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“Everyone Seems To Think The Word Revolution Means Violence”

September 11, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Speaking of Jane Fonda, she called for an overthrow of the American capitalist system in 1970. But Jane, a well-regulated free market is the best way to spread wealth and information!

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A Brief Note From 1892 About A Good Beating

September 11, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the March 13, 1892 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Joseph Williams of Fiftieth Street in this city, and Joseph Driscoll of 7 Washington Street, New York, got into a row in a New Street pool room Friday afternoon. They began by calling each other names and then went out into the street to fight it out. Joe Ellingsworth, the prize fighter, urged them on, but he got disgusted with their lack of courage and gave them both a good beating.”

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Recently Published On NYC’s Craigslist

September 10, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Go Andy!” (Image by Carine06.)

Need a date for US Open Final? I’m sexy! – $1 (Midtown)

So you scored these amazing tennis tickets, but if you really want to impress your friends and clients you’ll need a lady on your arm…. And while I realize this shameless Craig’s List posting is evidence to the contrary, I’m actually a well-educated, classy (but not too classy) lady who will make an amusing date for the final. Did you hear about the Prince Harry scandal? I was there. He answered “Need a Date to Cirque du Soleil…” …and look how much fun he ended up having. I’ll even play along with whatever story you have about how we met. Harvard? Done. “Ripley’s Believe it Or Not” induction ceremony for largest penis? Done. Photos are available on request. Send me an email, your name, and a promise that you’re not going to put me in your dungeon or make a suit from my skin. Go Andy!

Old Print Article: “Startling Snake Story,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1882)

September 10, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“This convinced her that what she long suspected was true–she had a snake in her stomach.”

A 19th-century widow went a long way to avoid going on a diet, as recorded in a Chicago Tribune article that was republished in the October 29, 1882 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Chicago–If a man were to assert in all seriousness that he had a real, live, hungry snake in his stomach he would be set down at once as having not a snake in his stomach but several in his boots. Nevertheless there is a woman at No. 610 South Canal Street, Mrs. Caroline Seber, who is so firmly convinced she is harboring a large reptile within her anatomy that any one hearing her remarkable story is almost forced too accept it as true. 

A Tribune reporter called on Mrs. Seber last evening and was entertained for an hour or more of her recital of the experiences to which that snake subjected her. Mrs. Seber proved to be a woman about 42 years old, very neatly attired, with a smiling face and a pleasant voice. The story was a very long one, and was told so fast as to be absolutely astounding. But then, as it afterward appeared, she has been rehearsing it for about a dozen years. She was born in Prussia. When about 14 years old she began to feel peculiar sensations in her stomach, but reached no conclusion as to the cause. Two years later she distinguished herself by displaying a ponderous appetite, which had never left her but has continued to increase. Still she was at a loss to find a cause for it all. She came to America when 21 years old, and direct to Chicago, where she married Mr. Seber.

“What did you feed the snake this evening for dinner?”

About a year after the marriage she was lying on the lounge one day, when she distinctly felt something crawl from one side of her stomach to the other. This convinced her that what she long suspected was true–she had a snake in her stomach. She consulted physicians who assured her that the snake existed only in her imagination. As it did not bother her much except to constantly increase her appetite, she made no attempt to evict the slimy tenant. Time passed on, her appetite increased, and also the size of her corsets, and, finally, twelve years ago her husband died, leaving her with four children, one of them a cripple, and the snake to provide for. The snake continued growing larger and more ravenous, biting viciously at the walls of her stomach whenever a meal was missed. She again consulted the physicians and visited every hospital in the city, asking for an operation to relieve her of a snake.

The physicians laughed at her and treated her for tapeworm. On several occasions she fasted for four days, with a view to discouraging the supposed tapeworm and inducing it to come out. But all to no purpose. The snake during the fast tortured her almost beyond endurance and would never come up any higher than the breastbone. Finally four years ago she got Dr. Mitchell to consent to perform an operation. She went to Hahnemann Hospital and was put under the influence of ether. She was cut slightly in three different places on the abdomen, the incisions being immediately sewn up again. But in the meantime one of  the students had prepared a basinful of snakes and lizards, and when Mrs. Seber came from under the influence of the drugs she was shown the miniature aquarium and told the specimens were contributed by her. She discovered the fraud at once, but concluded to make no fuss about it.

In September, she got Dr. Etheridge interested in her case, and after many consultations, that gentleman arranged to perform the desired operation on Sunday morning at the Michael Reese Hospital. The reporter promised to be on hand, and then he began questioning Mrs. Seber:

‘What food does the snake most fancy?’

‘Well, it takes beefsteak and milk, and is particularly fond  of beef broth flavored with celery. For fish it has no use at all.’

‘How much does it eat a day on average?’

‘I eat four pounds of meat every day, drink three quarts of milk and a little tea and coffee.”

‘Did you ever try getting it drunk?’

‘No, because I don’t like liquor.’

‘What did you feed the snake this evening for dinner?’

‘I gave it twenty-seven cents worth of ham just before you came in. I’m afraid I will not live much longer even if the operation is successful, because the snake has bitten me up too much inside.'”

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“Every Time He Plays, He’s Confronted With Inarguable Evidence Of Success Or Failure”

September 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

By virtue of the money they make, most pundits are detached from reality and fairly useless. They misread the tea leaves and their talk disappears into the void. No one really keeps score, they live to talk another day and little is learned. From Aaron Swartz at Raw Thought, an excerpt from his essay about our reluctance to face reality and our failings:

“If you want to understand experts, you need to start by finding them. So the psychologists who wanted to understand ‘expert performance’ began by testing alleged experts, to see how good they really were.

In some fields it was easy: in chess, for example, great players can reliably beat amateurs. But in other fields, it was much, much harder.

Take punditry. In his giant 20-year study of expert forecasting, Philip Tetlock found that someone who merely predicted ‘everything will stay the same’ would be right more often than most professional pundits. Or take therapy. Numerous studies have found an hour with a random stranger is just as good as an hour with a professional therapist. In one study, for example, sessions with untrained university professors helped neurotic college students just as much as sessions with professional therapists. (This isn’t to say that therapy isn’t helpful — the same studies suggest it is — it’s just that what’s helpful is talking over your problems for an hour, not anything about the therapist.)

As you might expect, pundits and therapists aren’t fans of these studies. The pundits try to weasel out of them. As Tetlock writes; ‘The trick is to attach so many qualifiers to your vague predictions that you will be well positioned to explain pretty much whatever happens. China will fissure into regional fiefdoms, but only if the Chinese leadership fails to manage certain trade-offs deftly, and only if global economic growth stalls for a protracted period, and only if…’The therapists like to point to all the troubled people they’ve helped with their sophisticated techniques (avoiding the question of whether someone unsophisticated could have helped even more). What neither group can do is point to clear evidence that what they do works.

Compare them to the chess grandmaster. If you try to tell the chess grandmaster that he’s no better than a random college professor, he can easily play a professor and prove you wrong. Every time he plays, he’s confronted with inarguable evidence of success or failure. But therapists can often feel like they’re helping — they just led their client to a breakthrough about their childhood — when they’re actually not making any difference.”

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“These Machines Will Kill The Bad Kind Of Weeds”

September 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Perhaps weedbots will soon be busy in your garden, doing the work now done by herbicides. From Klint Finley at TechCrunch:

“Blue River is designing weed elimination robots for agriculture. No, the company’s not making marijuana crop destructobots — these machines will kill the bad kind of weeds that farmers would otherwise use chemicals, or a legion of weed pullers, to destroy. Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla claims that Blue River’s technology can reduce herbicide use in the U.S. by 250 million pounds a year.

Blue River was founded by Stanford alumni Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden. To make it work, the team has done extensive development of machine vision algorithms for recognizing different types of plants. It’s one of the most ambitious applications of machine vision I’ve seen.”

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“What’s Left Is … Investing In Ourselves. Even If We’re Not Such A Good Bet.”

September 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s not that I don’t believe in charter schools–I just don’t believe in them in the hands of today’s conservatives. It seems a scheme to not teach evolution or to decrease educational opportunities for minorities. Of course, there are some thinkers who believe public education in America should be dissolved because it’s a remnant of the Industrial Age. But it’d be helpful if such people–all college graduates–actually knew what we would be put in its place. 

In her Newsweek piece, Megan McArdle (graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and University of Chicago) isn’t questioning the existence of K-12 but rather wondering if college for the masses has failed. An excerpt:

“That debate matters a lot, because while the value of an education can be very high, the value of a credential is strictly limited. If students are gaining real, valuable skills in school, then putting more students into college will increase the productive capacity of firms and the economy—a net gain for everyone. Credentials, meanwhile, are a zero-sum game. They don’t create value; they just reallocate it, in the same way that rising home values serve to ration slots in good public schools. If employers have mostly been using college degrees to weed out the inept and the unmotivated, then getting more people into college simply means more competition for a limited number of well-paying jobs. And in the current environment, that means a lot of people borrowing money for jobs they won’t get.

But we keep buying because after two decades prudent Americans who want a little financial security don’t have much left. Lifetime employment, and the pensions that went with it, have now joined outhouses, hitching posts, and rotary-dial telephones as something that wide-eyed children may hear about from their grandparents but will never see for themselves. The fabulous stock-market returns that promised an alternative form of protection proved even less durable. At least we have the house, weary Americans told each other, and the luckier ones still do, as they are reminded every time their shaking hand writes out another check for a mortgage that’s worth more than the home that secures it. What’s left is … investing in ourselves. Even if we’re not such a good bet.”

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“She Gave Me Your Philosophy About Nudism In Magazines”

September 10, 2012 in Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim visit Merv Griffin in 1967, before she was Barbarella or Hanoi Jane or lots of other stuff.

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“My Experiences With Disaster Have All Been Situational”

September 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A segment from a Reddit Ask Me Anything with a female doomsday prepper:

“Question:

Do you have something specific you’re prepping for?

And with that question in mind, you talked mostly about food preparation and a bit about land. How are you prepping for what, if anything, you’re specifically expecting? Meaning, if you expect a nuclear attack, you would plan a bunker I assume. So how are you fitting out your house?

 Female Doomsday Prepper:

Nothing in particular, my experiences with disaster have all been situational — I walked to another cubicle just before a bomb went off so I wasn’t at my desk when the window shattered over where I was sitting, I was in the Holland Tunnel when the first plane hit on 9/11 then in Port Authority when the second hit, all because I had missed my departing flight earlier that weekend — both events were out of my control but I will admit that the bomb blast helped get my ass in gear so when 9/11 happened I was much better prepared.

With that in mind I think disaster/doom preparedness is really about what you can prepare for. I can prepare for hurricanes, disease and unrest so that’s what I work on. Disease epidemiology has always been a fascination of mine so a lot of my prep focus is related to pandemics. Thus I stockpile medical supplies and medicine, I also grow a lot of herbs — I think botanic pharmacology is essential.

I would love a decontamination area so I am working on adding a stylish outdoor shower next to my barn. I am building a fire pit that can double as a spot to burn clothing. When I have the chance I collect linens and sort them into packs for ease of use. I do have an electric fence that encircles part of my property, the goal is to completely enclose the property next summer with a nice fence. Small boundaries are the key at this point, I don’t need a bunker.

I do have a generator, rain barrels, and a concrete basement cistern. We have a well for water, propane for stove/dryer and oil for our heating — including a water heater. Our oil tank is inside the basement so in the event of a fuel shortage we can protect what we have.

For the future, I ‘made’ one of my guys go through Photovoltaic training so we can start planning our off-grid power supply — high on our list but it is only as the budget allows. There’s security in the works but I don’t want to spend too much time on things I have yet to acquire.”

“These Houses Are The Shells Of Prematurely Stunted Hopes, Laced With Traces Of Bitterness And Regret”

September 9, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

I was reading Chloe Schama’s New Republic piece about the return of the haunted house as a “character” in modern literature, though the spooky homes are in a different form. During the age of foreclosure, the houses aren’t even often completed–the ghosts are the homes themselves, nothing within them. And what’s scarier really: things abandoned when half-built or fully built? I’d say the former.

With completion comes possibility–for good as well as bad. Every new Frankenstein is frightening, whether it be electricity, the telephone or the Internet, because it will upend certain parts of our lives. But with these upsetting inventions come progress. Without their completion, no “monsters” are unloosed, but we are stunted and stifled. The half-built is stillborn. From Schama’s article:

“What makes the new literary haunted house different is that dreams dry up more quickly, sometimes before they even take root. Modernity means speed, even when it comes to malevolent spirits. These houses are the shells of prematurely stunted hopes, laced with traces of bitterness and regret. Perhaps at no other moment in America’s history have so many of our towns and cities been filled with these kinds of structures, and pulp has put them convincingly on the page.”

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“Some Lawyers Built Their Careers By Defending Animals”

September 9, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In recent years, wild animals have attacked humans in increasing numbers in America, owing to the keeping of exotic pets by people inspired by Animal Planet. In the Middle Ages, offending beasts were often put on trial and given a public hearing. Seriously. From Drew Nelles at Maisonneuve:

“As outlined in E.P. Evans’ comprehensive 1906 work The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, there were two kinds of animal trials during the Middle Ages: criminal proceedings against domestic creatures accused of individual crimes, and ecclesiastical tribunals to prosecute whole groups of vermin. The latter targeted animals like mice, locusts, weevils and caterpillars for such transgressions as ruining harvests or eating food stores. (Crimes against propriety could also incur the church’s wrath; a German pastor once anathematized local sparrows after their ‘scandalous unchastity’ interrupted a sermon.) The animals were typically tried, en masse and in absentia, and issued a date by which they had to leave town or face the unspecified disapproval of the righteous. Needless to say, the results of such ultimatums were mixed.

Ever the opportunists, some lawyers built their careers by defending animals. A sixteenth-century French jurist named Bartholomew Chassenée made his name as the counsel to some rats who were accused, in an ecclesiastical trial in Autun, of decimating the area’s barley crops. Rats being rats, Chassenée could hardly rely on his clients’ sympathetic qualities to get them off the hook. So, like numerous lawyers before and since, he built his argument on technicalities: the defendants couldn’t be expected to appear in court, as Evans says, ‘owing to the unwearied vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 9, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“LOL.”

Used panties pregnant – $20 (Staten Island )

Do you love used panties? Do you find pregnant women sexy? If yes then email me, lol, I’m 7 months along and im selling my used panties. Please only serious emails.

“Uh Oh, Big Trouble, Big Trouble”

September 9, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Phil Spector, crazy even in 1965, “amuses” Merv Griffin, Richard Pryor, et al.

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A Brief Note From 1895 About A Camel Ride

September 9, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the August 26, 1895 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Atlantic City, N.J.–The zenith of the most glorious season Atlantic City has ever seen was reached here Sunday when the population reached the quarter million mark. A New York woman in bloomers, riding astride a camel in the Streets of Cairo, was the sensation of the day. She caused considerable interest and amusement.”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 7, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Intelligent, athletic stud.”

Better (Fairfield)

Life has it’s ups and downs, crying about the downs will get you nowhere. Real men stay up through the downs! It’s called intestinal fortitude or guts and that’s why I have…

  • Private jets
  • Long black limousines
  • Rolex watches 
  • 9 cars
  • Alligator shoes, my newest pair were on sale for $3,800
  • Only the finest looking women (for my wife and I)
  • The biggest house on the biggest side of town

Intelligent, athletic stud

Custom made from head to toe

You’re looking at the man!

“A Question Remains: How Will Driverless Cars Defend Themselves?”

September 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of David Hambling’s new Popular Mechanics piece about safeguarding driverless cars from theft and diversionary tactics in a future world in which unmanned delivery trucks and drones become ubiquitous:

“In a few years’ time, once we get used to the idea of Google’s self-driving cars, it’s conceivable that autonomous trucks will take over the delivery industry. But while a driverless vehicle might bring with it big advantages, such as being less prone to accidents than a big rig with a road-weary driver behind the wheel, a question remains: How will driverless cars defend themselves? 

David Mascarenas, a researcher who studies cyber-physical systems at Los Alamos National Lab, says that as more robots venture out on their own, their creators are already struggling with how to protect them. During an exercise in Narragansett Bay, R.I., this summer, the U.S. Navy had to warn off at least one individual attempting to grab a miniature robot sub. In June, Cockrell School of Engineering assistant professor Todd Humphreys showed how drones could be decoyed into landing in the wrong place by deceiving their GPS. Mascarenas’s own involvement started with protecting expensive structural sensors now being placed on bridges to monitor their condition.”

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“The Public School System Is Designed To Produce A Workforce For An Economy That Will Not Be There”

September 7, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Alvin Toffler of Future Shock fame, called for the dismantling of the U.S. public-education system in a 2007 interview at Edutopia. A couple of excerpts follow.

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Edutopia:

You’ve been writing about our educational system for decades. What’s the most pressing need in public education right now?

Alvin Toffler:

Shut down the public education system.

Edutopia:

That’s pretty radical.

Alvin Toffler:

I’m roughly quoting Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who said, “We don’t need to reform the system; we need to replace the system.”

Edutopia:

Why not just readjust what we have in place now? Do we really need to start from the ground up?

Alvin Toffler:

We should be thinking from the ground up. That’s different from changing everything. However, we first have to understand how we got the education system that we now have. Teachers are wonderful, and there are hundreds of thousands of them who are creative and terrific, but they are operating in a system that is completely out of time. It is a system designed to produce industrial workers.

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Alvin Toffler:

The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we’re stealing the kids’ future.

Do I have all the answers for how to replace it? No. But it seems to me that before we can get serious about creating an appropriate education system for the world that’s coming and that these kids will have to operate within, we have to ask some really fundamental questions.

And some of these questions are scary. For example: Should education be compulsory? And, if so, for who? Why does everybody have to start at age five? Maybe some kids should start at age eight and work fast. Or vice versa. Why is everything massified in the system, rather than individualized in the system? New technologies make possible customization in a way that the old system — everybody reading the same textbook at the same time — did not offer.

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“Do You Instruct In Something Akin To Physical Culture?”

September 7, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Charles Atlas wasn’t just a pioneer in bodybuilding in America but also in print advertising. Here is at 64 on a 1956 episode of What’s My Line? He named his son “Hercules,” by the way.

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A Brief Note From 1902 About A Sore Throat

September 6, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the October 9, 1902 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Cleveland–Frank Buettner, a well known contractor of this city, died early to-day as the result of an operation performed to remove a set of false teeth which it was supposed he had swallowed while asleep Monday night. Just as his esophagus had been opened its entire length a relative of Buettner’s rushed into the operating room with the missing set of teeth, which had been found in Buettner’s bed. It was then learned that Buettner was suffering from acute laryngitis. The pain in his throat led him to believe he had swallowed his teeth.”

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