Urban Studies

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“A High-Tech Alternative Appeared In 1909”

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

As recalled in a new Saturday Evening Post article by Jeff Nilsson, the first GPS for automobiles was commercially available in 1909, the year after the initial iteration of Henry Ford’s Model T. (Nick Paumgarten covered similar terrain in 2006 in the New Yorker.) An excerpt:

“As if this wasn’t enough discouragement, there was the challenge of navigating. Road signs were rare and often incorrect. Travelers were frequently reduced to driving from one roadside stranger to the next, gathering a few miles of directions at a time. The earliest road maps by Rand McNally were printed only after 1904.

Yet a high-tech alternative appeared in 1909: a real-time, on-board directional guide called the Jones Live Map. It was invented by J. W. Jones, who had also introduced the Jones Speedometer, the Jones Disc Phonograph Record, and the Jones Yobel —’the gentlemen’s automobile horn.

The idea was revolutionary. The Live Map was a small turntable device with a cable that attached to an automobile’s odometer. Before making their journeys, drivers would purchase paper discs with the route to their destination prescribed by The Touring Club of America.

At the beginning of the journey, the driver would place his journey’s disc to the Live Map’s turntable so that the journey’s starting point lined up with an arrow indicator on the glass cover. As the car began rolling, the turning odometer cable caused the map to rotate. The arrow would point to the driver’s changing position in the journey.

Each disc had up to 100 miles of travel details around its perimeter. If the journey was longer than 100 miles, the driver would replace the first disc with a second, or third part.”

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“Come On Over Here And Meet Some MGM People”

February 6, 2012 in Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Amazing footage from 1976 of a Mike Douglas talk show episode dedicated to That’s Entertainment, Part II. The host is joined by Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and seemingly every living legend of MGM fame.

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“The Prolific Composer Seems Oblivious To Furtive Glances From Nerdy Fans As He Dreams His Mathematical Scores”

February 6, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From Steven Trasher’s new Village Voice profile of composer Philip Glass, whose music is great and repetetive and great and repetitive and great:

“Yet despite his extensive uptown showcasing lately (his opera Satyagraha was at the Met and a live concert of his Koyaanisqatsi score was at Carnegie Hall within a week of each other last fall), Glass still has deep roots in the East Village. He has lived quite near the Voiceoffices for the past four decades. Many weekdays find him walking around the neighborhood and cutting a stoic, solitary profile; the prolific composer seems oblivious to furtive glances from nerdy fans as he dreams his mathematical scores.

Regardless of success, neither Glass’s life nor his music have ever abandoned their East Village sensibilities. He worked as a cab driver and furniture mover until he was in his early forties, and his identification (politically and artistically) has never left theidea of downtown (even though most of the struggling artists, drug addicts, and alcoholics who inhabited it when he arrived in the late ’60s largely have).

And when Occupy Wall Street confronted Satyagraha at Lincoln Center last December, he was happy to come out and give the General Assembly a ‘mic check.'”

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A bit of Glass from Koyaanisqatsi:

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“We All Rallied Around What Was Right And Acted As One”

February 6, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

It’s funny that some conservatives are upset about Chrysler’s “Halftime in America” Super Bowl ad, the best commercial of the night. Clint Eastwood, a Herman Cain-loving conservative himself, ambles around all Dirty Harry-ish in the spot, extolling the reversal of fortune that the U.S. auto industry has enjoyed, promising that America is headed back to greatness, and seemingly threatening to murder other countries with his bare hands. I suppose some right-wingers see it as tacit support of Obama.

But it is completely tacit. The commercial conveniently doesn’t mention that without the intervention of the government, the Detroit recovery would likely have never occurred. Those jobs probably would have been gone for good if people like the politicans Clint supports had gotten their way. Sometimes big government is good and sometimes it is not, and anyone who doesn’t realize that we need to figure out these things on a case-by-case basis is too ideological for their own good–and America’s.

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Old Print Article: “A Maniac In A Street Car,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

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

"The crazy tramp gave his name as Billie Patterson, a circus roustabout, but refused to assign any reason for his murderous assault on the passengers of the car."

The shared good of public transportation reduces costs and pollution and allows for social exchanges among a variety of people, but it also increases certain risks. What if a crazed roustabout with a butcher’s knife is your traveling companion? A report about just such a crazy street car trip from the April 17, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Chicago–A maniac made a desperate assault with a butcher’s knife on the passengers of a State Street car, near Sixteenth Street, about 1 o’clock this morning. Four men were badly cut, but no one was fatally wounded. The injured are Archie Patno, a saloon keeper, who received a cut six inches long extending from beneath his right ear around under his chin, and an ugly stab in the arm; Henry Patno, whose cheek was laid open to the bone and his upper lip cut off; Thomas Brennan, who was cut across the top of the head, and Ben Sweeney, who received a slight cut on the left forearm.

After a desperate struggle the madman was captured and the knife taken from him. At the station the crazy tramp gave his name as Billie Patterson, a circus roustabout, but refused to assign any reason for his murderous assault on the passengers of the car.

The street car had just crossed Sixteenth Street going north when Patterson jumped on the rear platform. With a howl like a Zulu warrior he drew a large butcher knife and made a lunge at the conductor, who saved himself by jumping from the car. Then the madman dashed into the car, in which were seated fifteen or twenty passengers. With one sweep he laid bare the cheek of Mr. Patno. In an instant every man was on his feet and there was a wild rush for the front door. In their haste to get the door open it was sprung and would only open about a foot. Through this narrow aperture three or four escaped. Meanwhile the maniac was wielding the knife with terrible effect. At length the conductor got his carhook and with a heavy blow on the fellow’s arm sent the knife spinning through a window. Patterson was then seized and the patrol wagon was called. Patterson looked as though he had been on a protracted spree, and it is believed he was suffering from delerium tremens at the time. When locked up at the station house he tore about and howled like a wild beast.”

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“She’s Into Changing Fast For Dates With Dr. Ken”

February 5, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Skipper has lupus just like Flannery O’Connor. She’ll likely die because Dr. Barbie and Dr. Ken are too busy with their courtship. They’re beautiful and irresponsible, with a dubious commitment to medicine. Enjoy your cocktails, assholes. Rest in peace, Skipper.

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“More People Live Alone Than At Any Other Time In History”

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

Hell is other people, wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, and have you seen us in the morning? Eew! The opening of “One’s a Crowd,” Eric Kleinberg’s New York Times Opinion piece about the ever-rising number of earthlings choosing to live alone:

“More people live alone than at any other time in history. In prosperous American cities — Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis — 40 percent or more of all households contain a single occupant. In Manhattan and in Washington, nearly one in two households are occupied by a single person.

By international standards, these numbers are surprising — surprisingly low. In Paris, the city of lovers, more than half of all households contain single people, and in socialist Stockholm, the rate tops 60 percent.

The decision to live alone is common in diverse cultures whenever it is economically feasible. Although Americans pride themselves on their self-reliance and culture of individualism, Germany, France and Britain have a greater proportion of one-person households than the United States, as does Japan. Three of the nations with the fastest-growing populations of single people — China, India and Brazil — are also among those with the fastest growing economies.

The mere thought of living alone once sparked anxiety, dread and visions of loneliness. But those images are dated. Now the most privileged people on earth use their resources to separate from one another, to buy privacy and personal space.

Living alone comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control and self-realization — all prized aspects of contemporary life.

It is less feared, too, for the crucial reason that living alone no longer suggests an isolated or less-social life. After interviewing more than 300 singletons (my term for people who live alone) during nearly a decade of research, I’ve concluded that living alone seems to encourage more, not less, social interaction.”

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“Jesus Is Trending Right Now”

February 5, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Louis CK, with his wonderful, wonderful mind, hating on Twitter.

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Isn’t That A More Righteous Use Of Gandhi’s Image Than Some Commercial Selling Cheap Computers At A High Human Cost?

February 5, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."--Mohandas Gandhi. Think Different.

Sometimes I think about this: Some people have so little food that they starve to death. I don’t mean that metaphorically. They literally lack enough food to keep their organs functioning properly. They develop distended bellies and are no more able to smile than a skeleton. Then they die. Other people have so much food that they read magazines about food. Food is readily available and they have to stop eating at some point, so they fetishize food so that they can keep “eating” even when they’re not. This might sound simplistic and sophomoric and maybe it is, but here’s the thing: Those people really are dying, painfully.

Mike Daisey has applied this thinking to consumer electronics. Some people are so poor that they literally die working in brutal conditions on assembly lines. Most don’t die, but you wouldn’t want their lives in a million years. Things are so bad that the Foxconn factory complex in China has had to place suicide nets outside its windows. Other people have so much accessibility to cheap electronics that the read magazines about consumer electronics on their consumer electronics. They have so much “food” that they fetishize it. And since we tend to calculate purchase price in dollars rather than human cost, no one puts a face on the misery. That’s the crux of Daisey’s monologue, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

I’ve already put up a couple of posts about Mike Daisey’s one-man show (here and here), but a follow-up feels necessary. The last post included a good bit from his work which was broadcast on This American Life. The radio show provided a post-performance rebuttal of sorts, which had very humane and progressive thinkers like Paul Krugman and Nick Kristof arguing that the horrid conditions of China’s Foxconn factory were better for the people there than no sweatshops at all. And they’re right: Always choose bad over worse.

But what if that isn’t the only choice? Foxconn has reached such a critical mass of production that Apple (and every other tech company) won’t move production elsewhere if a fairer treatment of workers resulted in slightly higher costs. Payroll is such a small piece of the final price of electronics anyhow. Almost all of it comes from R&D and profit taking.

Daisey isn’t going to back off, nor should we. If we absolutely demand that the workers at Foxconn are treated better, if we use our purchasing power to ensure this, it will happen. Maybe the products will be slightly more expensive and we’ll only have enough money to enjoy them and not enough to fetishize them, but isn’t that enough?

Isn’t that a more meaningful use of the “Think Different” phrase? Isn’t that a more righteous use of Gandhi’s image than some commercial selling cheap computers at a high human cost?

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

February 5, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"No jokes."

i have a very weird unusual desperate ?

where can i sell my soul to the devil?? or where can i meet a demon?? plz help want something from satan no jokes.. 

“I Think Persistence Pays Off”

February 5, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Legendary Vietnam War reporter George Esper just passed away at 79. He famously refused to be called back to the U.S. by the Associated Press so that he could stay and witness the Fall of Saigon. There’s sadly little of his work online. From the Washington Post:

“While he considered his coverage of the dramatic end of the 15-year Indochina conflict the high point in a 42-year career of deadline reporting, it was far from the only one. Esper was legendary for his dogged persistence in covering news in war and in peace.

‘You don’t want to be obnoxious and you don’t want to stalk people, but I think persistence pays off,’ Esper said in an interview in 2000.

So when he was assigned to write a story for the 20th anniversary of the 1970 shootings of four students by National Guardsmen at Kent State University and could find no phone number for the mother of one of the victims, Esper drove an hour through a snowstorm to knock on her door.

‘She just kind of waved me off, and she said, ‘We’re not giving any interviews.’ Just like that,’ Esper recalled. ‘I didn’t really push her. On the other hand, I didn’t turn around and leave. I just kind of stood there, wet with snow, dripping wet and cold, and I think she kind of took pity on me.’

Like so many others over the years, she opened up to Esper.”

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Fall of Saigon, 1975:

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“Crime Has Not Fallen In The United States—It’s Been Shifted”

February 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Raise the Crime Rate,” Christopher Glazek’s sharp and scathing n+1 think piece about America’s sprawling Prison Industrial Complex:

“Crime has not fallen in the United States—it’s been shifted. Just as Wall Street connived with regulators to transfer financial risk from spendthrift banks to careless home buyers, so have federal, state, and local legislatures succeeded in rerouting criminal risk away from urban centers and concentrating it in a proliferating web of hyperhells. The statistics touting the country’s crime-reduction miracle, when juxtaposed with those documenting the quantity of rape and assault that takes place each year within the correctional system, are exposed as not merely a lie, or even a damn lie—but as the single most shameful lie in American life.

From 1980 to 2007, the number of prisoners held in the United States quadrupled to 2.3 million, with an additional 5 million on probation or parole. What Ayn Rand once called the ‘freest, noblest country in the history of the world’ is now the most incarcerated, and the second-most incarcerated country in history, just barely edged out by Stalin’s Soviet Union. We’re used to hearing about the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots; we’re less accustomed to contemplating a more fundamental gap: the abyss that separates the fortunate majority, who control their own bodies, from the luckless minority, whose bodies are controlled, and defiled, by the state.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Play Your 45RPM Records Anyplace”

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

The music wanted to be portable, 1967.

A Note From 1885 About A Headless Chicken

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

"The chicken is now doing well."

Some good news for a change, courtesy of “Living Without a Head,” a brief piece from the January 11, 1885 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which originally appeared in the Wilson Echo of Kansas:

“A Barton County man has a living chicken without a head. Attempting to cut off a chicken’s head, the axe passed through the head of the chicken immediately in front of the ears, thus leaving a small portion of the brain attached to the neck. The chicken did not take this as an execution of his death warrant and got up and stood on his feet, to the astonishment of this would be executioner, who then contrived a plan to feed him by dropping food and drink into the thorax, which has so far proved a success. The chicken is now doing well.”

“It Is Also A Place Where Many People Come To Be Left Alone”

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

I’ve mentioned this before, but I don’t think anything in America should be prohibited if it’s only going to create a widespread black market among consenting adults. Regulated intelligently, sure, but not prohibited. That includes: drugs, guns, abortion, gambling and prostitution. (I limit this rule to America because a place like Japan seems to be fine with a lack of guns among its populace, so respect must be paid to cultural differences.)

The people of Pahrump, Nevada, go a step further, however. In this tiny unincorporated slice of Ron Paul country, the gun-loving locals are paranoid about police states and carry firearms everywhere, including government buildings. (Since the name of town is so odd, I challenge the locals to up the ante and rechristen it “Rifle Butt, Nevada.” That would do quite nicely.) Richard A. Oppel Jr. has a really good piece about Pahrump in the New York Times. An excerpt:

“This is the heart of Ron Paul country, the one county in Nevada that the 76-year-old congressman from Texas carried in the 2008 Republican caucuses, and a place that wears its libertarianism proudly.

It is also a place where many people come to be left alone. ‘There are a lot of people who hide in Pahrump,’ said Carl England Jr., who, as pastor of a Baptist church here and also proprietor of a local septic business, knows a lot about his neighbors.

Many people here have owned guns — even some, like Jerry Neese, who are scared of them — not necessarily for concerns about safety but to make a statement about living in a free country. ‘People believe in the rights they have, and want to show they believe in them,’ said Bonnie White, who owns Emmalee’s Guns and Emporium (named for her granddaughter) and sells 500 guns a year. ‘People will fight for their rights here.'”

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“Does Anyone Approve Of New York?”

February 2, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Frank Lloyd Wright, on Omnibus, being spectacularly wrong on three topics: skyscrapers in cities, population concentration and New York City’s future.

Wright as a metaphor for Simon and Garfunkel’s split, 1970:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

Pity me (Fairfield)

While you pity me I will be browsing through my extensive wine cellar, looking for the right wine for my wife and our girlfriend to enjoy while we get freaky later on. The only decision I have to make today is which bedroom (there are six) we will use tonight. Poor me, what a pity!!!

Fairfield really is one hell of a town.

1% with 9″

“What Did We Ever Do Before GPS?”

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

It makes sense that we use our brains to lay tracks in front of us as we encounter the unknown, a sort of superhighway of our own making, and one that we can call upon again and again in life. But what if such construction isn’t required of us? The opening of Julia Frankenstein’s New York Times Opinion piece, “Is GPS All in Our Head?“:

“It’s a question that probably every driver with a Garmin navigation device on her dashboard has asked herself at least once: What did we ever do before GPS? How did people find their way around, especially in places they’d never been before?

Like most questions asked in our tech-dependent era, these underestimate the power of the human mind. It is surprisingly good at developing ‘mental maps’ of an area, a skill new research shows can grow stronger with use. The question is, with disuse — say, by relying on a GPS device — can we lose the skill too?

The notion of a mental map isn’t new. In the 1940s, the psychologist Edward C. Tolman used rats in mazes to demonstrate that ‘learning consists not in stimulus-response connections but in the building up in the nervous system of sets which function like cognitive maps.’

This concept is widely accepted today. When exploring a new territory, we perceive landmarks along a route. By remembering their position and the spatial relations between the streets, locations and landmarks we pass, we are able to develop survey knowledge (stored in the mind like a mental map), which enables us to indicate directions, find shortcuts or detours — in short, to react and navigate comfortably.”

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Mousebot navigates maze:

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“Listen, Sugar, What’s The Most Important Thing A Boxer’s Gotta Have?”

February 2, 2012 in Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Gene Kelly performing some steps with boxer “Sugar” Ray Robinson on Omnibus, 1958.

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“Carnival Has Its Roots In A Small Company Set Up In The 1960s Which Had A Utopian Vision”

February 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “We’re All in the Same Boat–Aren’t We?” an excellent Adam Curtis BBC piece outlining the hidden history of the cruise-ship industry:

“I want to tell the story of the rise of the modern cruise ship industry from its beginning in the 1960s – how it promised to make a world of aristocratic luxury available to everyone in the west, but also the hidden story of how that promise was achieved.

In many cruise ships there are hundreds of workers from some of the poorest countries on earth who are paid minute amounts of actual wages – sometimes less than two dollars a day – to attend to the passengers’ needs.

Many of the ships’ workers can only get a living wage on the whim of the thousands of passengers above them – on the tips they choose to give them. And in the strange fun-world of the superliners the waiters, the cabin staff, the cooks and everyone else who serves, live in a state of continual vulnerability – unprotected by most of the employment laws that apply on land. Meanwhile many of the companies that own the vast ships pay practically no tax at all.

But it wasn’t always supposed to be like that.

The biggest company in the cruising world is the Carnival Corporation, based in Miami (the Costa Concordia is owned by one of their subsidiaries). Carnival has its roots in a small company set up in the 1960s which had a utopian vision that cruise liners could transform the world. One of its founders believed that the giant ships were machines that could help bring about a new era of world peace.

The liners would, he was convinced, unite the rich westerners and the poor from the ‘third world’ by bringing tourists to new and remote destinations. This would foster a new enlightened understanding of each other that would bring about equality and justice throughout the world.

But it didn’t turn out like that. And this is the story of what happened – and how the very opposite resulted.” (Thanks Browser.)

Read also:

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“Multiple Vehicles Can Fly As A Formation”

February 2, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“Nano-quadrotors”–or tiny drones–operating within a swarm, at the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. (Thanks Physorg.)

“How A Thing Looks Today Is As Important As It How It Works”

February 2, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“Design” is a fun 1969 pitch film that the legendary designer Saul Bass made for Bell Telephone when he was reimagining the company’s logo.

The great Kurtis Blow, 1980, Soul Train: “And Ma Bell sends you a whopping bill / With eighteen phone calls to Brazil.”

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Old Print Article: “Speech Of Monkeys,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1893)

February 1, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"He claimed also to be perfectly familiar with the languages of cats and dogs and to speak the languages of apes."

A real-life Doctor Dolittle, Frenchman Jules Richard talked to animals–and despised priests. An article about him from the July 21, 1893 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which was originally published in Popular Science Monthly:

“In 1857 Jules Richard had occasion to visit a sick friend in a hospital, where he made the acquaintance of an old official of the institution from the south of France, who was exceedingly fond of animals, his love of them being equaled only by his hatred of priests; he claimed also to be perfectly familiar with the languages of cats and dogs and to speak the languages of apes even better than the apes themselves. Jules Richard received the statement with an incredulous smile, whereupon the old man, whose pride was evidently touched by such skepticism, invited him to come the next morning to the zoological garden.

"He was exceedingly fond of animals, his love of them being equaled only by his hatred of priests."

‘I met him at the appointed time and place,’ says Mr. Richard, ‘and we went together to the monkeys’ cage, where he leaned on the outer railing and began to utter a succession of guttural sounds, which alphabetical signs are scarcely adequate to represent–kirruu, kirrikie, kuruki, kirikiu–repeated with slight variations and differences of accentuation. In a few minutes the whole company of monkeys, a dozen in number, assembled and sat in rows before him with their hands crossed in their laps or resting on their knees, laughing gesticulating and answering.’

The conversation continued for a full quarter of an hour to the intense delight of the monkeys, who took a lively part in it. As their interlocutor was about to go away they all became intensely excited, climbing up on the balustrade and uttering cries of lamentation. When he finally departed and disappeared more and more from their view they ran up to the top of the cage and, clinging to the frieze, made motions as if they were bidding him goodbye. It seemed, adds Mr. Richard, as though they wished to say. ‘We are sorry to part and hope to meet again, and if you can;t come do drop us a line!'”

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“Big Sur Is No Longer A Peaceful Haven For Serious Talent”

February 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1969, Hunter S. Thompson published  “It Ain’t Hardly That Way No More,” an account of gentrification washing over the bohemian California enclave of Big Sur, where he had lived at the beginning of his journalism career. The article’s opening:

“Will Liz Taylor change Big Sur?”

That was the question the San Francisco Examiner‘s society columnist asked the world recently, after she had scrambled, along with other minions of the West Coast press, to report the doings of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in California’s most famous “Bohemia,” a mountainous and sparsely populated stretch of coastline some 150 miles below San Francisco.

The occasion was the filming of a few scenes for a movie called The Sandpiper, starring Liz as a lady painter with a yen for rocky beaches and Dick as an offbeat beachcomber with a yen for lady painters. The scenes were shot here because Big Sur has some of the most spectacular scenery in America: booming surf, rocky beaches, and pine-topped mountains slanting straight to the sea.

In the years after World War II this rugged South Coast, as the oldtimers call it, got a valid reputation as a hideaway for artists, writers, and other creative types. Local history abounds with famous names. Henry Miller, author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, lived here for 19 years. The late Robinson Jeffers was Big Sur’s original poet laureate, and folk singer Joan Baez is still considered a local, although she recently moved to Carmel Highlands, a few miles north. Other famous residents have been Dennis Murphy, author of a best seller called The Sergeant, prize-winning poet Eric Barker, sculptor Benjamin Bufano, and photographer Wynn Bullock. Unfortunately, that era is just about ended. Big Sur is no longer a peaceful haven for serious talent, but a neurotic and dollar-conscious resort area.•

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“Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen”

February 1, 2012 in Politics, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I’m always posting clips from What’s My Line?, the 1950-67 quiz show in which a panel attempts to guess the identity of mystery guests. It’s incredibly addicting Youtube viewing because the program had an amazing roster of guests, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Brian Epstein to the last living witness of the Lincoln assassination. But the show on November 7, 1965 was particularly poignant, even though the celebrity guest was merely Joey Heatherton, who was best known for being breathy and blond.

That episode marks the final appearance of longtime panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, a New York newspaper columnist. A few hours after the live broadcast, Kilgallen overdosed on alcohol and barbiturates, dying alone in her apartment. The following morning her hairdresser discovered her lifeless body.

That would have been the end of the story, a drug-related death, an accident or, perhaps, suicide, except that Kilgallen had been an outspoken critic of the Warren Commission and had become a confidante of Jack Ruby. She promised publicly that she had information which would explode the commission’s findings about the JFK assassination and complained privately to friends that she believed she was under surveillance. In the wake of a shadowy murder of an American President, many wondered–some still do–if Kilgallen was silenced by foul play. My assumption is that her death was simple and sad, but the conspiracy theory speaks to the distrust people had for the government at the time.

The final guest, after Heatherton, is pioneering female sportswriter, Elinor Kaine. 

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