Urban Studies

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“The Fast Trains And Self-Driving Cars Will Help The Airports”

September 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The recent book Aerotropolis argues that high-speed rail will increase, not decrease, air traffic. More people will simply use the trains to reach airports. A similar argument from Brad Templeton’s new Singularity Hub article about high-speed rail and driverless cars:

“The air travel industry is not going to sit still. The airlines aren’t going to just let their huge business on the California air corridor disappear to the trains the way the HSR authority hopes. These are private companies, and they will cut prices, and innovate to compete. They will find better solutions to the security nightmare that has taken away their edge, and they’ll produce innovative products we have yet to see. The reality is that good security is possible without requiring people arrive at airports an hour before departure, if we are driven to make it happen. And the trains may not remain immune from the same security needs forever.

On the green front, we already see Boeing’s new generation of carbon fiber planes operating with less fuel. New turboprops are quiet and much more efficient, and there is more to come.

The fast trains and self-driving cars will help the airports. Instead of HSR from downtown SF to downtown LA, why not take that same HSR just to the airport, and clear security while on the train to be dropped off close to the gate. Or imagine a self-driving car that picks you up on the tarmac as you walk off the plane and whisks you directly to your destination. Driven by competition, the airlines will find a way to take advantage of their huge speed advantage in the core part of the journey.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 6, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Make my day, pussies.”

I AM THE BIG MAN (BROOKLYN)

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

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“In Just Six Hours, The World’s Deserts Receive More Energy From The Sun Than Humans Consume In A Year”

September 6, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“We have proved the commercial profit of sun power in the tropics and have more particularly proved that after our stores of oil and coal are exhausted the human race can receive unlimited power from the rays of the sun.”–Frank Shuman, New York Times, 1916

Desertec, a European consortium, is trying to realize Shuman’s dream of a “sun engine,” attempting to turn the Sahara into a gigantic solar farm. From Leo Hickman’s recent article in the Guardian:

“Gerhard Knies, a German particle physicist, was the first person to estimate how much solar energy was required to meet humanity’s demand for electricity. In 1986, in direct response to the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he scribbled down some figures and arrived at the following remarkable conclusion: in just six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. If even a tiny fraction of this energy could be harnessed – an area of Saharan desert the size of Wales could, in theory, power the whole of Europe – Knies believed we could move beyond dirty and dangerous fuels for ever. Echoing Schuman’s own frustrations, Knies later asked whether ‘we are really, as a species, so stupid’ not to make better use of this resource. Over the next two decades, he worked – often alone – to drive this idea into public consciousness.

The culmination of his efforts is ‘Desertec,’ a largely German-led initiative that aims to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity by 2050 through a vast network of solar and wind farms stretching right across the Mena region and connecting to continental Europe via special high voltage, direct current transmission cables.”

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A Brief Note From 1890 About A Grocery Store

September 5, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the April 28, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“While a boy was cutting bananas from a bunch hanging in front of a Burlington, Vt., grocery store, a large tarantula sprang at him, striking him on the back of the neck. From the boy’s neck the insect leaped into a barrel half full of crackers. No one caring to meddle with such an ugly customer, at the suggestion of a policeman, the barrel was doused with kerosene and then carried into the street and set on fire.”

“You Need To Get Down Into These New Patterns, These Micro-Patterns”

September 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Esther Dyson has called for quantified communities, and others are working in the same direction. Computer scientist Sandy Pentland argues at Edge that Karl Marx and Adam Smith didn’t possess the proper information to be completely correct, but we now do:

“These Big Data issues are important, but there are bigger things afoot. As you move into a society driven by Big Data most of the ways we think about the world change in a rather dramatic way. For instance, Adam Smith and Karl Marx were wrong, or at least had only half the answers. Why? Because they talked about markets and classes, but those are aggregates. They’re averages.

While it may be useful to reason about the averages, social phenomena are really made up of millions of small transactions between individuals. There are patterns in those individual transactions that are not just averages, they’re the things that are responsible for the flash crash and the Arab spring. You need to get down into these new patterns, these micro-patterns, because they don’t just average out to the classical way of understanding society. We’re entering a new era of social physics, where it’s the details of all the particles—the you and me—that actually determine the outcome. 

Reasoning about markets and classes may get you half of the way there, but it’s this new capability of looking at the details, which is only possible through Big Data, that will give us the other 50 percent of the story. We can potentially design companies, organizations, and societies that are more fair, stable and efficient as we get to really understand human physics at this fine-grain scale. This new computational social science offers incredible possibilities.”

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“So I Decided To Try A Sensory-Isolation Experiment”

September 4, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

John C. Lilly explaining his 1954 invention, the isolation tank, in a 1983 Omni interview:

“Omni:

Tell me the circumstances that led you to invent the first isolation tank.

John C. Lilly:

There was a problem in neurophysiology at the time: Is brain activity self-contained or not? One school of thought said the brain needed external stimulation or it would go to sleep–become unconscious–while the other school said, ‘No, there are automatic oscillators in the brain that keep it awake.’ So I decided to try a sensory-isolation experiment, building a tank to reduce external stimuli–auditory, visual, tactile, temperature–almost to nil. The tank is lightproof and soundproof. The water in the tank is kept at ninety-three to ninety-four degrees. So you can’t tell where the water ends and your body begins, and it’s neither hot nor cold. If the water were exactly body temperature, it couldn’t absorb your body’s heat loss, your body temperature would rise above one hundred six degrees, and you might die.

I discovered that the oscillator school of thought was right, that the brain does not go unconscious in the absence of sensory input. I’d sleep in the tank if I hadn’t had any sleep for a couple of nights, but more interesting things happen if you’re awake. You can have waking dreams, study your dreams, and, with the help of LSD-25 or a chemical agent I call vitamin K, you can experience alternate realities. You’re safe in the tank because you’re not walking around and falling down, or mutating your perception of external ‘reality.'”

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“The tank was unusual in that it was vertical and looked like an old boiler”:

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“Imagine Personal Flight As Intuitive As Riding A Bike”

September 4, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Aerofex in California is in the test phase of a new hovercraft vehicle. From the site copy: “Imagine personal flight as intuitive as riding a bike. Or transporting a small fleet of first-responder craft in the belly of a passenger transport. Think of the advantages of patrolling borders without first constructing roads. In pursuit of this vision, Aerofex is flying a proof-of-concept craft developed as a test-bed of manned and unmanned technologies.”

Old Print Article: “A Hideous Sect,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

September 4, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Gradually he widened his teachings to his little band until he openly advocated the drinking of blood for all diseases.”

A 19th-century American religious cult became convinced that drinking human blood was the way to cure all ills, as evidenced by this article in the January 27, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 4, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“The item is an answering machine, with the voice of the dead on it.”

Own the RAREST paranormal item (New York)

I offer a item so rare AND GENUINE that I felt New York was the best location to offer it at. I reside in Las Vegas, as does the item. The item is an answering machine, with the voice of the dead on it. This is no joke…it is real. My name is Kurt Mayne, and the entire story of this item (as well as some of my strange life) can be found by a you tube search of my name. The featurete is called Beyond The Strip. My financial woes put me in this position of offering something I swore I would never part with. Make me a offer I truly can not refuse. It MUST be a very serious offer…this is for the dicerning collector of the paranormal, or the macabre. STARTING BID..$5,000.

“Still, We Can Let Them Back In To Visit Family And Friends A Few Days A Year”

September 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Here’s a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek thought experiment from the Philosopher’s Beard aimed at solving the problem of wealth inequality in America. It’s ridiculous but is written with that blog’s customary dark wit and works like a piece of speculative fiction:

“Hence my modest proposal. We should first identify with some precision the category of what it seems reasonable to call rich i.e. those people whose capabilities for independence from and command over the rest of us crosses the threshold between enviable affluence and aristocratic privilege. That definition should be ‘absolutely relative’ rather than merely relative (e.g. we can’t just use the richest 1%, because there will always be a richest 1%). A good way to go might be to use some multiple of the median citizen’s wealth as a proxy for the distance from and power over ordinary citizens that defines problematic wealth. What that multiple should be is a matter for social scientists to investigate and democracies to debate, but, for the purposes of this discussion, let me suggest 30.

Exact numbers are tricky here because measuring wealth is highly subject to accounting definitions and methods. Another issue is that wealth defined in terms of net financial value of one’s assets depends on market conditions. For example, the assets of the middle-class are primarily their house and pensions, which have both been hit hard by the economic crisis; while the assets of the rich are primarily financial products, and thus prone to continuous fluctuations. In light of this, it might be best to set bands based on average data, and then revise them every few years to take account of long term trends. But for reference, the median American household’s wealth is presently around $120,000 (having declined 35% over the crisis), suggesting a cut-off of $3.5 million. (For context, $5.5 million is the present entry point to America’s richest 0.1%.) On the other side of the Atlantic, the slightly less unequal UK apparently has a median wealth of £200,000, suggesting a rather more generous wealth allowance of £6 million.

Then, when anyone in our society lands in the category of the problematic rich we should say, as at the end of a cheesy TV gameshow, ‘Congratulations, you won the economy game! Well done.’ And then we should offer them a choice: give it up (hold a potlatch, give it to Oxfam, their favourite art musuem foundation, or whatever) or cash out their winnings and depart our society forever, leaving their citizenship at the door on their way out. Since the rich are, um, rich, they have all the means they need to make a new life for themselves elsewhere, and perhaps even inveigle their way into citizenship in a country that is less picky than we are. So I’m sure they’ll do just fine. Still, we can let them back in to visit family and friends a few days a year – there’s no need to be vindictive.”

“The Solution Is To Take The Best Of Yourself And Put It In A Robot”

September 3, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Artist-scientist Patrick Tresset considers (very deeply) the meaning of robotics.

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“It’s The Year 2020 And Newlyweds Tom And Sara Are Expecting Their First Child”

September 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

At IEEE Spectrum, Dan Siewiorek of Carnegie Mellon imagines the future of smartphones. Timelines are notoriously difficult to predict, but he suggests nothing outlandish. The opening:

“It’s the year 2020 and newlyweds Tom and Sara are expecting their first child. Along with selecting the latest high-tech stroller, picking out a crib, and decorating the nursery, they download the ‘NewBorn’ application suite to their universal communicator; they’re using what we’ll call a SmartPhone 20.0. Before the due date, they take the phone on a tour of the house, letting the phone’s sensors and machine-learning algorithms create light and sound ‘fingerprints’ for each room.

When they settle Tom Jr. down for his first nap at home, they place the SmartPhone 20.0 in his crib. Understanding that the crib is where the baby sleeps, the SmartPhone activates its sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) application and uses its built-in microphone, accelerometers, and other sensors to monitor little Tommy’s heartbeat and respiration. The “Baby Position” app analyzes the live video stream to ensure that Tommy does not flip over onto his stomach—a position that the medical journals still report contributes to SIDS. Of course, best practices in child rearing seem to change quickly, but Tom and Sara aren’t too worried about that because the NewBorn application suite updates itself with the latest medical findings. To lull Tommy to sleep, the SmartPhone 20.0 plays music, testing out a variety of selections and learning by observation which music is most soothing for this particular infant.

As a toddler, Tommy is very observant and has learned the combination on the gate to the swimming pool area. One day, while his parents have their backs turned, he starts working the lock. His SmartPhone ‘Guardian’ app recognizes what he is doing, sounds an alarm, disables the lock, and plays a video demonstrating what could happen if Tommy fell into the pool with no one else around. Not happy at being thwarted, Tommy throws a tantrum, and the Guardian app, noting his parents’ arrival, briefs them on the situation and suggests a time-out.” (Thanks Browser.)

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When function reached its limit, Bell Labs focused on modernizing form. The landline, nearing its last gasp, 1977:

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A Brief Note From 1896 About Free Love

September 3, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 19, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Some crazes are social in nature, but social laws are so fixed by custom that these usually only have a local run. When I was a lad in New York City, setting type, I fell in with a smart newspaperman who had set up a free love institution on the co-operative plan. A number of married couples went to live in the establishment, and they all traded wives and husbands. The notable fact about the affair was its outcome. After the trading had gone on for a year or two nearly all the original couples returned to their old relationships and became heartily ashamed of their departure from the orthodox marriage state.”

“Pretty Much Anyone Who Wishes To Compete…Takes Something To At Least Dull The Pain”

September 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s a good chance that you’re favorite baseball legend from an earlier, “cleaner” era used some sort of performance-enhancing drug, whatever was available at the time. From an interview at the Classical that Pete Beatty did with Villanova professor and baseball historian Mitchell Nathanson:

“The Classical: 

In your book, you talk about presenting ‘counter-stories’ to the anodyne, mostly cheerful history of baseball that MLB espouses—for every Black Sox scandal that teaches a canned moral, there’s a Hal Chase; for every PED bust, there are steroid-era records that will never be asterisked or erased. What do you think some of the counter-stories of the future might be for baseball, or some of the issues that will shape how we see the future history of the game?

Mitchell Nathanson: 

I think we’re in the midst of one right now: the Melky Cabrera ‘tainted’ batting title story. As it becomes more and more likely that he’ll win the NL batting title, there’s going to be an ever-increasing push to strip it from him by whatever means necessary in order to protect the ‘integrity of the game.’ Of course, this assumes that that PED story is a black-and-white one—involving ‘good guys’ like Andrew McCutchen and ‘bad guys’ like Melky Cabrera. The truth is that everyone and everything is shrouded in gray. I don’t know what McCutchen (or Derek Jeter for that matter) takes to enable him to hit consistently well over the course of a grueling season but I’m willing to wager that it’s more than milk and spinach. Those days are over (in fact, they never existed). The only difference between the so-called good guys and the bad ones is that the supplements taken by the alleged bad guys have been banned whereas the ones taken by the alleged good guys haven’t been—yet. Don’t forget that that bottle of Andro spotted in Mark McGwire’s locker in 1998 was purchased legally as a widely available ‘over the counter’ nutritional supplement. The truth is that pretty much anyone who wishes to compete—at the professional or even the amateur level—takes something to at least dull the pain enough to enable them to make it through nine innings or eighteen holes. Supplements are a growing fact of modern life and the lines between what is acceptable and what isn’t are blurred and only becoming blurrier by the day. This holds true, by the way, for the people who write, often sanctimoniously, about the game as well. I’m pretty sure that more than a few of the scribes calling on Bud Selig to do something, anything, to purge Cabrera’s name from the record book are meeting their daily late night deadlines with the help of a Five Hour Energy drink or something like it.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 2, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Puppy mill, kitty mill, here kitty kitty.”

Nasty crazy lady (NY, NY & MASS)

I just got a new phone line in my house. I am getting phone calls from a woman who calls me obscene names, threatens to come beat my family up, sings and yells puppy mill, kitty mill, here kitty kitty. I have an elederly Mom and when the phone rings at 1:10 am, 2:15. am 4:55 am and all throughout the day I panic. No one has my new number yet. She calls from 8 different phone numbers in NJ, NY and Mass. Has anyone had this problem with this insane woman calling at all times of the day and night and does anyone know who she is? 

“Did Jesus Speak A Good Korean, Or Did It Have A Hebrew Accent?”

September 2, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who for some reason thought he was the messiah, just passed away at 92. In this 1972 video, he’s interviewed by wiseass conservative social critic Al Capp; they were both strong believers in couples getting married instead of shacking up.

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“Cowboys And Indians Alike Were In The Wrong Side Of The Barbed Wire Fence”

September 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “Realtechnik, Nausea and Technological Longing,” Venkat Rao’s recent blog post which neatly explains how new inventions, often simple ones, upend accepted orders:

“The story of barbed wire is one of the most instructive ones in the history of technology. The short version is this: barbed wire (developed between 1860 to 1873) helped close the American frontier, carved out the killing fields of World War I, and by spurring the development of the tank as a counter-weapon, created industrial-era land warfare. It also ended the age-old global conflict between pastoral nomads and settled agriculturalists (of animals, vegetables and minerals) and handed a decisive victory to the latter. Cowboys and Indians alike were on the wrong side of the barbed wire fence. Quite a record for a technology that had little deep science or engineering behind it.

Barbed wire is an example of a proximal-cause technology that eventually disturbed multiple human balances of powers, starting with the much-mythologized cowboys-versus-ranchers balance. When things finally stabilized, a new technological world order had emerged, organizing everything from butter to guns differently.  Barbed wire was not a disruptive innovation in the Clayton Christensen sense. It was something far bigger. Its introduction marked what Marshall McLuhan called a break boundary in technological evolution: a rapid, irreversible and wholesale undermining of a prevailing planet-wide technological equilibrium. So ironically, the ultimate boundary-maker of physical geography was a boundary breaker in technology history.”

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Old Print Article: “Ear Was Thrown Away By Medical Student,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1900)

September 2, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“I obeyed a sudden impulse and taking my knife severed the left ear of the cadaver”

Keeping a severed human ear in your vest pocket and showing it off to your family and friends was just fine a century ago, provided you didn’t throw the ear in a gutter outside of a Baptist church. From the November 27, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The mystery surrounding the finding of a human ear on the east side of Marcy Avenue, between Madison Street and Putnam Avenue, and almost in the front of the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, has been solved. The ear was cut from a cadaver in the dissecting room of the Cornell Medical College, corner of First Avenue and Twenty-eighth street, Manhattan, by Carol Nichols, a student of that college, some days ago. After carrying the grewsome little human fragment in his vest pocket as sort of a souvenir of his anatomical researches, he exhibited the severed ear to a number of his boy friends in the Sunday school of the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday and then cast it away in the street when he left the church in the late afternoon.

Carol Nichols is 19 years old. He is a son of Dr. George Nichols of 306 Monroe Street, Brooklyn, and is prominent in church work at the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church. This is his first year in the Cornell Medical College. Young Nichols is worried over the publicity given to the finding of the human ear which he cut from the head of the corpse of a young girl which he was dissecting in the college.

The ear is still at the Coroner’s office in the Borough Hall and the authorities are puzzled as to what disposition will be made of it. Now that the mystery has been elucidated it is probable that the fragment will be disposed of.

When seen to-day at the Cornell Medical College and asked about the ear, Nichols was at first reluctant to tell what he knew concerning the fragment. Finally, however, he admitted that the ear had been thrown into the street by him. He said:

‘I was at work dissecting a body–that of a young woman–a few days ago. When I was about through with the work I obeyed a sudden impulse and taking my knife severed the left ear of the cadaver. The ear I treated with carbolic acid and then after I wrapped it up in a piece of oiled paper I put in my vest pocket, That night I took it home with me and showed it to my father and mother, afterward putting the ear back in my pocket again.

‘At Sunday school, I showed the ear to a number of my friends and classmates. They seemed to think it was funny I was carrying such a thing but didn’t seem at all timid when I showed it to them. When I left Sunday school and reached the street I decided I would get rid of the ear. I threw it into the street and the rain, which was falling fast at the time, washed the oiled paper away. I was surprised when I read in the paper an account of its discovery and thought that I would not say anything about it having been cut off and thrown away subsequently by me, because I did not want any publicity in the matter.

‘I have been afraid that there might be a law against throwing away a part of a human body in that way but I hope there will be nothing further said or done about the matter. The students very often carry home pieces of cadavers on which they are at work, sometimes to study them and then again merely to show them to their friends and have some fun with them.'”

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“China’s Like Heaven For Corruption. So Why Do They Have To Escape?”

August 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

A segment from an interview in Foreign Policy with tech-friendly Chinese artist and political dissisdent Ai Weiwei:

“Foreign Policy: In 1949, American writer E.B. White said in Here Is New York that New York was three cities: the city of the native, who gives it solidity and continuity; the city of the commuter, who comes to the city temporarily for business, and they give the city its restlessness. The third city is that of the immigrant, who came for the dream and stayed; this group gave New York its passion, its culture, and its art. You lived in New York for more than a decade, but it’s been almost 20 years since you left. Do you see any similarities between 1949 New York and Beijing today?

Ai Weiwei: Maybe it looks similar, but it’s completely different, because we are not in a democratic society and the resources and decision-making aren’t fairly distributed. So many officials are escaping China with huge amounts of money — shocking numbers, billions. Then you start to ask: Why can’t they stay? China’s like heaven for corruption. So why do they have to escape? Because the system will not protect them, because there are always political struggles here. They just take the money and leave.”

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“They’ll Be Rewriting What It Means To Be A City In The World”

August 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’m wary of demographic predictions but the premise of Nate Berg’s new piece at the Atlantic, that the world’s least livable cities are growing the fastest, is really solid. What can these emerging but impoverished places learn from tidy, healthy metropolises like Vancouver and Melbourne? Not much, perhaps. An excerpt:

 that roughly 90 percent of the urbanization underway globally is taking place in developing cities like Dhaka and Lagos and in developing countries like Zimbabwe and Papua New Guinea. And between 2009 and 2050, the number of urban dwellers in these developing countries is expected to more than double, to 5.2 billion, according to the World Health Organization. That puts nearly 75 percent of the world’s expected 7 billion urbanites in cities in the developing world.

While Melbourne and Vienna and Vancouver will most certainly continue to grow and evolve, they won’t be undergoing the same speed and intensity of urbanization as cities in the developing world. And as these dramatically changing cities deal with these urban shifts in a very short time span, it is with an equally swift pace that they’ll be rewriting what it means to be a city in the world. The urbanity of London, gradually spreading over centuries, is being overshadowed by the instant skyscraper forests of burgeoning megacities in China and the massively dense urban cores of Dhaka and Lagos. The London model isn’t going anywhere, but the majority of the next major cities will develop more like Shenzhen or Kabul.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 31, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Screw Gates and Jobs for taking away the last vestiges of youth.”

Taking back Brooklyn (Can’t find my way home.)

Did you ever dry your clothes on a radiator, grow basil on your back porch, maybe float something down the gutter after a rainstorm. Have an egg cream made in front of you while spinning around on a stool. Buy 2 pieces of Bazooka w/ a penny. Going out to play like a bat outta Hell after Sat. morning cartoons, kicking the sawdust around the butcher shop floor. Maybe you carved your name into hot tar on a July afternoon, that’ll last forever. Filled a sock w/chalk to make some crazy designs in the street, or shot your brother w/ a pea shooter. Yeah I go back, but this ain’ t some trip down memory lane, read on. Come in when it gets dark, no way we’re playing ringelerio, and I’ll get caught. Buy a frozen custard off a truck that would be condemned today for carrying some sort of virus. Ever buy a Good Humor bar from some old drunk on a 1/2 bike 1/2 cooler on wheels. How about burning your tongue on a Buittoni Instant Pizza. TANG. I loved to spin a Whizzer top and stick it in my brothers hair, fucking hysterical. Sorry bro. Hey does your little back hurt from carrying that back pack. Shit you should have tried carrying that leather schoolbag you know, the one w/the flap latch, bigger than any briefcase you ever saw. Some lightweights had to use both hands and carry it in front of them they we’re easy to tip over in rubber goulashes in the slush for 6 blocks. Not uphill both ways but true nonethless. NEVER used an umbrella let alone one w/ a nike swoosh,you’d get your ass handed to you w/it.Black socks w/sneakers! Don’t ask. Yeah I go back, a little. I don’t wanna go to the 21st. century. Well maybe not all the way. Cellphone, check laptop check, Ipod check, social networking, check, hey it’s all I’ve got after being gone 9 yrs. Social networking was going to your aunt’s house w/ your parents for coffee. Eat at one set of grandparents home on Sunday then go over to your moms side of the family for coffee and cake. Vice versa next Sunday, lest anyone get upset. WE bought bagels @ night not @ 7:00 am with some $5 latte. Hurrry up and order you idiot. Yeah I’m gettin there stay w/me. Chinese take out? No way. We’d make the little fuckers serve us. They must have used every Chinese curse word in the book while they watched the mess they had to clean up being made right in front of them. Eat at a luncheonette? I have yet to taste a better burger fries and coke. Fuck McDonalds, Wetsons brought your shit out to your car, on a tray, on rollerskates. I recall the first time I was ridiculed for the clothes I wore or my sneakers. I knew things had changed for good and the rest of my innocense was gone too.You never had to think about that shit before 70/71. Yes my eyes are open. I see the 21st century got here like, what 12 /13 yrs ago. So much has happened in that time, yet so little .Yeah I’m talkig to you, the one waiting in line for the next Apple product. Screw Gates and Jobs for taking away the last vestiges of youth, my youth. No not Utes, those we’re guys like me who went to New Utrecht High. They took away our vinyl ALBUMS, and no a cd is not an ALBUM. Typewriters and books too! But what, you say vinyl is making a comeback, typing classes too. Books? Hey they can’t burn down any libraries, well not yet any way. Not for practical 21st century use but for fun , yes fun. Does anbody remember laughter? Now you little hip Brooklyn Appleites wanna go back to my youth and have fun? FUCK YOU! I won’t let you get away w/it. You’ll probably claim you invented it all. You think you know my Brooklyn? You NEVER will. Some of you assholes will live there your whole sorry exsistence and NEVER experience what I did from age 6 to 12. Yeah I go back …..and forth. Sure we had mob wives, but they kept their mouthes shut. They didn’t go on T V and beat each other w/Prada handbags after a bad Botox treatment. It was an honor if your old man was mobbed up. You were shown respect. Screw John Gotti 21st century mob man. He should have put it on a silver platter for the Russians . The F B I is loving those guys, NYET! But I do have hope for the future, for my grandkids. I will be there to tell them about those days for as long as they will listen. Hopefully they won”t think I’m some old fool. You? I don’t really care what you think. I’d love to take them to a church bazaar like the ones we used to have right out in the street. Yeah boys I’m still here. The same guy who used to hang out on the corner. Hopefully I’m a little older and wiser but even that doesn’t happen for everyone. But I am 51 now a little tired and I’m going home. I’m not taking my ball though. I was NEVER that fucking guy. Yeah I go back.

“Each Of You In Your Room Is In Touch With All That You Care For In The World”

August 30, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

E.M. Forster probably isn’t immediately associated with techno-dystopia, but that’s the subgenre of his 1909 short story, “The Machine Stops.” As the title suggests, the tale is concerned with our increasing reliance on technology. This video is the 1966 BBC adaptation.

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A Note From 1897 About A Late Millionaire

August 30, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 22,1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Portland, Ore.–The body of the late millionaire W.S. Ladd, which was stolen from the grave last Monday night, has been recovered, and Daniel G. Magone, a middle aged farmer living near Oregon City, and Charles Montgomery, a young man who also resides near there, are under arrest. The body was found practically in the same state in which it was when removed from the grave.”

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“It Was In Its Early Days, Dubbed A Truman Show For The Elderly And Sick”

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a really interesting piece by Jon Henley in the Guardian about a self-contained, four-acre Dutch village for those suffering from dementia:

“Hogewey was, in its early days, dubbed a Truman Show for the elderly and sick, after the Jim Carrey film in which reality turned out to be the set of an elaborate TV show. The home is, admits Van Hal, ‘not completely normal. We pretend it is, but ultimately it is a nursing home, and these are people with severe dementia. Sometimes the illusion falls down; they’ll try to pay at the hairdresser’s, and realise they have no money, and become confused.

‘We can still do more. But in general, I think we get pretty close to normal. You don’t see people lying in their beds here. They’re up and about, doing things. They’re fitter. And they take less medication. I think maybe we’ve shown that even if it is cheaper to build the kind of care home neither you or I would ever want to live in, the kind of place where we’ve looked after people with dementia for the past 30 years or more, we perhaps shouldn’t be doing that any more.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Animals Might Also Be Bioengineered To Better Suit Captivity”

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Jennifer Abassi’s short, new Discover piece about the mashup of zoos and futurism, which touches on vertical zoos in urban areas and more outré topics:

“Within decades, advances in sequencing genes from ancient tissue could allow scientists to clone extinct dodo birds, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths, says Jeffrey Yule, an evolutionary ecologist at Louisiana Tech University. Researchers in Asia and Europe are working to piece together DNA from mammoth tissue preserved in Siberian permafrost. Someday they might be able to insert it into an elephant egg to produce an embryo that a surrogate elephant would carry. It could fall to zoos to look after these animals.

Animals might also be bioengineered to better suit captivity, says John Fraser, former director of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Altering big cats, for example, to produce more endorphins might make them less aggressive. ‘We’ve spent a lot of time creating what look like barrier-less exhibits, but they still have barriers.'”

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