Urban Studies

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“He Was Under The Deeply Misguided Impression That Rubbing One’s Face With Lemon Juice Rendered It Invisible To Video Cameras”

April 7, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"But I wore the juice." (Image by Paoletta S.)

Idiocy is annoying but repeated idiocy is galling beyond belief. Why don’t we learn from our mistakes? Why do we repeat them? Perhaps we’re too stupid to know that we’re stupid? Errol Morris looks at this conundrum on his Times blog in the extravagantly titled 2010 post, “The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is.” An excerpt:

“David Dunning, a Cornell professor of social psychology, was perusing the 1996 World Almanac.  In a section called “Offbeat News Stories” he found a tantalizingly brief account of a series of bank robberies committed in Pittsburgh the previous year.  From there, it was an easy matter to track the case to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, specifically to an article by Michael A. Fuoco:

ARREST IN BANK ROBBERY,
SUSPECT’S TV PICTURE SPURS TIPS

At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, bank robbery suspect McArthur Wheeler isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork.  So it was no surprise that he was recognized by informants, who tipped detectives to his whereabouts after his picture was telecast Wednesday night during the Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers Inc. segment of the 11 o’clock news.

At 12:10 a.m. yesterday, less than an hour after the broadcast, he was arrested at 202 S. Fairmont St., Lincoln-Lemington.  Wheeler, 45, of Versailles Street, McKeesport, was wanted in [connection with] bank robberies on Jan. 6 at the Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights and at the Mellon Bank in Swissvale. In both robberies, police said, Wheeler was accompanied by Clifton Earl Johnson, 43, who was arrested Jan. 12.

Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight.  What made the case peculiar is that he made no visible attempt at disguise.  The surveillance tapes were key to his arrest.  There he is with a gun, standing in front of a teller demanding money.  Yet, when arrested, Wheeler was completely disbelieving.  ‘But I wore the juice,’ he said.  Apparently, he was under the deeply misguided impression that rubbing one’s face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to video cameras.

In a follow-up article, Fuoco spoke to several Pittsburgh police detectives who had been involved in Wheeler’s arrest.  Commander Ronald Freeman assured Fuoco that Wheeler had not gone into ‘this thing’ blindly but had performed a variety of tests prior to the robbery.  Sergeant Wally Long provided additional details — ‘although Wheeler reported the lemon juice was burning his face and his eyes, and he was having trouble (seeing) and had to squint, he had tested the theory, and it seemed to work.’  He had snapped a Polaroid picture of himself and wasn’t anywhere to be found in the image.  It was like a version of Where’s Waldo with no Waldo.  Long tried to come up with an explanation of why there was no image on the Polaroid.  He came up with three possibilities:

(a) the film was bad;

(b) Wheeler hadn’t adjusted the camera correctly; or

(c) Wheeler had pointed the camera away from his face at the critical moment when he snapped the photo.

As Dunning read through the article, a thought washed over him, an epiphany.  If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity.”

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A Morris commercial for Miller beer:

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One-Minute Wisdom From Richard Feynman (1964)

April 7, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

At Cornell University. (Thanks Open Culture.)

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 7, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Chana." (Image by Geoffrey Gallaway.)

I NEED 50 CARTON NEW PORTS MADE IN CHANA (FLUSHING -)

I NEED 20 OF CARTON NEW PORTS MADE IN CHANA ASAP CALL ME JAY I GOT CASH ON HAND ……NO BULL SHIT QUEENS

 

William S. Burroughs Shooting Shakespeare (1995)

April 7, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“He’s dead, man.”

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Listeria: Definition Of Five “X” + “Y” + “Z” Words (1912)

April 7, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

X-ray.

Xanthippe: The irascible wife of the Greek philosopher, Socrates, and the type of the scolding wife. Allowance must be made for a woman whose husband brought home company for dinner and nothing else. She mourned sincerely for him at his death.

Yard: A standard measure of 36 inches, the word being derived from the Saxon gyrd, or rod. The yard was anciently regarded as the circumference of the body, but Henry I decided it should be the length of his arm.

Yawning: Deep inspiration of breath with widely opened mouth, a natural effort for nervous relief when exhausted.

"Y-M-C-A" (Image by Cod.)

Young, Brigham: The famous Mormon leader, and the head of the Latter Day Saints of Salt Lake City. He was the Governor of the Territory, a position from which he was removed by President Buchanan, but not convicted. At his death he had seventeen wives. He was originally a house-builder’s workman in New York State, but embraced Mormonism in 1831 and became first elder, then apostle, amid finally president in 1844, in succession to Joseph Smith.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Zenana: The portion of a dwelling in India where the female members of the family are kept, and to which strangers are not admitted.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

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“Yes, Women Workers Do Present Problems” (1944)

April 6, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

As women joined the workforce in droves during WWII, this jaw-dropping educational video was there to prepare bosses to handle these strange creatures. Oy vey. (Thanks Reddit.)

“I Told Mr. Tytell My Problem, And He Told Me He Certainly Could Fix It”

April 6, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Typewriter Man,” Ian Frazier’s 1997 Atlantic profile of Martin Kenneth Tytell, a manual keyboard whiz in an age when people had all but given up typing words in favor of processing them:

“The Manhattan Yellow Pages has so many listings under ‘Typewriters’ that you might think getting someone to fix a manual would not be hard. The repair places I called were agreeable enough at first; but as I described the problem (Fixing an e, for Pete’s sake! How tough can that be?), they began to hedge and temporize. They mentioned a scarcity of spare parts, and the difficulty of welding forged steel, and other problems, all apparently my own fault for not having foreseen. I took my typewriter various places to have it looked at, and brought it home again unrepaired. This went on for a while. Finally, approaching the end of the Yellow Pages listing, I found an entry for ‘TYTELL TYPWRTR CO.’ It advertised restorations of antiques, an on-premises machine shop, a huge inventory of manuals, and sixty-five years of experience and accumulated parts. The address was in lower Manhattan. I called the number, and a voice answered, ‘Martin Tytell.’ I told Mr. Tytell my problem, and he told me he certainly could fix it. I said I would bring the typewriter in next week. ‘You should bring it in as soon as possible,’ he advised. ‘I’m an old man.'”

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From the 2008 obituary for Tytell in the New York Times: “When he retired in 2000, Mr. Tytell had practiced his recently vanishing craft for 70 years. For most of that time, he rented, repaired, rebuilt, reconfigured and restored typewriters in a second-floor shop at 116 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, where a sign advertised ‘

When he retired in 2000, Mr. Tytell had practiced his recently vanishing craft for 70 years. For most of that time, he rented, repaired, rebuilt, reconfigured and restored typewriters in a second-floor shop at 116 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, where a sign advertised ‘Psychoanalysis for Your Typewriter.’

There, at the Tytell Typewriter Company, he often worked seven days a week wearing a white lab coat and a bow tie, catering to customers like the writers Dorothy Parker and Richard Condon, the newsmen David Brinkley and Harrison Salisbury, and the political opponents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson. Letters addressed only to ‘Mr. Typewriter, New York’ arrived there, too.

There, at the Tytell Typewriter Company, he often worked seven days a week wearing a white lab coat and a bow tie, catering to customers like the writers Dorothy Parker and Richard Condon, the newsmen David Brinkley and Harrison Salisbury, and the political opponents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson. Letters addressed only to ‘Mr. Typewriter, New York’ arrived there, too.”

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Seth Kinman’s Drinking Establishment (1889)

April 6, 2011 in Photography, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Bears and elk died so that Seth Kinman could decorate his California bar.

I already posted a story about the rugged nineteenth-century hunter and chair maker Seth Kinman. The classic 1889 photograph above is a look at the eccentric interior of his bar in Table Bluff, California, which filled with whiskey many a Humboldt County sawmill employee.

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Seth Kinman’s great great grandchildren display some of his memorabilia.

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Mask + Dancing + Partial Nudity + Senior Citizens

April 6, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Even during WWII, they didn’t know such horror.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 6, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Let's be honest - I am 30, and it needs to go."

Mr. T and A-Team memorabilia (West Village)

Ok, so my parents are moving out of their house and with that goes my 15 year collection of all things A-Team and Mr. T — this includes board games, figurines, cards, toys, collectibles and a variety of other Mr. T and A-Team stuff. All of it collected from flea markets, eBay and random stores. Strange, yes. However, lets be honest – I am 30, and it needs to go. Let me know if you are interested and I can give you more details through email on what is for sale and we can figure out a fair price.

 

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Robots Playing Soccer In Germany

April 6, 2011 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Impressive bots if not great soccer players. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

Listeria: Definition Of Five “U” + “V” + “W” Words (1912)

April 6, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ewe. (Image by Don Crowley.)

Umbilicus: The navel. During pregnancy a mass of vessels called placenta or afterbirth (as it is ejected after the birth of the child), is formed on the inner surface of the womb, and conveys the mother’s blood to the child by an artery in the umbilical cord which enters the child by the navel and maintains a circulation, the venous blood returning to the mother by another blood vessel. As soon as the child is born respiration establishes itself, the umbilical cord is cut (it contains no nerves) and the navel bandaged. Children born after seven months of pregnancy are capable of life. With animals the mother usually devours the afterbirth.

Vaudeville: A form of theatrical entertainment extremely popular in the United States and Europe. Large circuits of theatres are devoted to it, and a great number of small theatres showing moving pictures give vaudeville acts also. Vaudeville originated in France and described a short play; but the word in the United States has superseded the word “variety” as a means of indicating a theatrical show composed of various features. In vaudeville, the acts, each lasting from ten to thirty minutes, but mostly twenty minutes, are of all kinds; short plays, farces, operettas, protean plays. sketches, singers, teams of comedians who dance, sing and tell jokes, sister teams, all sorts of players on musical instruments; an endless number of athletic feats, such as bicycle riding, juggling, tight rope walking, skating, and bag punching; sleight-of-hand performers; performing animals; appearances of persons temporarily notorious; all kinds of spectacular and trick dancing; lightning changes of costume, lightning pictorial and plastic artists, thought-reading, hypnotism, in fact everything of any possible interest. As a form of amusement, it is not regarded highly, and is chiefly patronized by “the general public”–those looking for amusement only.

V-Neck.

Warfare in the Air: A subject which has developed to the point of international discussion, and by many it is prophesied that the next great war will see the aeroplane fleet an important adjunct of the opposing forces. By means of these commanders of hostile armies can inform themselves of each other’s movements, and shells dropped from an aeroplane can do most effective damage; whereas it is difficult for the enemy to secure an accurate range on an aeroplane because a shot “wild” in the air gives no indication of how far it went wild as on land or water. Besides an aeroplane only 1,000 feet in the air is an inconspicuous object and can only be hit by accident. Some progress toward warfare in the air has already been made. The Germans have done considerable work in perfecting aeroplane guns, but only practical experience will show their efficacy and aviators do not at present look for great results from them. Aerial warfare is the most uncertain of all developments; and the probabilities are that the very proportions to which the subject will advance will operate to put an end to international wars altogether.

W. (Image by Eric Draper.)

Werewolf: According to an Old World superstition, a human being changed into a wolf, but preserving its original intelligence. Numerous men charged in the Middle Ages with crimes were deemed of the Werewolf category. The superstition prevailed in many parts of Europe to a comparatively recent time, and some such belief is prevalent amongst the most savage races at the present day.

Windows: Originally apertures for the admission of the wind into dwellings, began to be made of glass and used only for the admission of light in very early times. There is evidence of glass windows having been used at Pompeii, but they did not become common in England before the twelfth century. A window tax was imposed in 1695, and again at later dates for special revenue purposes. As late as 1850, the sum of over $9,000,000 was obtained from the tax. It was repealed in 1851.

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Kitten, Towel On Head, Soaks In Bucket

April 6, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Banal and endless. Like a Warhol version of the Youtube kitty video.

Old Print Articles: Children Smoking, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1883-98)

April 5, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"If he was not smoking a cigarette, the smoke of which he inhaled, he had a quid of tobacco in his mouth, and sometimes he smoked and chewed at the same time.” (Image by Lewis Hine.)

There were laws in the nineteenth century prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to children under sixteen, but they weren’t often enforced. The results of this oversight were not pretty, as the following quintet of articles from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle demonstrates.

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“Cigarettes Did It” (August 3, 1889): “Insane through smoking cigarettes was the verdict reached by Justice Duffy at the Essex Market Police Court, New York, this morning in the case of Max Casserly, a pale faced youth, who was found wandering along Grand street, in that city, last night.

‘He smokes three packages of cigarettes a day,’ explained Policeman Cohen, who made the arrest.

‘Please, judge,’ stammered the prisoner, ‘give me a cigarette.’

‘You ought to get rattaned instead,’ said Justice Duffy, as he committed him for medical examination.”

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“Nicotine Poisoning” (September 7, 1883): “The death of William P. Morris, of this city at the age of 15, from nicotine poisoning ought to be a warning to the boys who take, as he did, to smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco before they have done growing or their constitution is able to resist the affects of narcotic poison. Whether tobacco be or not injurious, when used in moderation by full grown men, there can be no two opinions as to the vital injury it does to children. It is true the boy Morris smoked and chewed to excess and that when he once began to use tobacco it became an infatuation with him. If he was not smoking a cigarette, the smoke of which he inhaled, he had a quid of tobacco in his mouth, and sometimes he smoked and chewed at the same time.”

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“Death Caused By Cigarette Smoking” (December 14, 1887): “The death of John W. Quick, a 14-year-old lad, a victim of excessive cigarette smoking was investigated to-day by Coroner Ashbridge. A medical examination showed that death was accelerated by cerebral congestion due to narcotic poisoning the result of excessive cigarette smoking. Mrs. Quick had said that her son was an inveterate cigarette smoker and though she tried repeatedly to break him of the habit, she scarcely ever saw him without a cigarette in his mouth. A verdict in accordance with evidence was rendered.”

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“The Girl Smoked Cigarettes” (August 30, 1897): “Bertha Abel, the girl who was taken to the Bellevue Hospital, New York, Saturday in a fit of hysteria, during which she spoke of having smoked eighteen cigars a night, has not yet recovered from her fit. She is in the insane pavilion and under treatment. Dr. Robertson, who has charge of the insane pavilion cases, said he did not believe the girl smoked eighteen cigars a night. The girl is said to have smoked cigarettes.”

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“My First Smoke” (February 6, 1898): “One day while coming from school I met a boy who had a pack of cigarettes. He gave me one to smoke, while smoking it my sister saw me and she told my father. He did not whip me but he filled his big pipe full of tobacco and gave it to me to smoke. He told me if I did not smoke it he would whip me, but it made me awful sick and it seemed that everything was flying around and I had to hold on the back of my chair to keep from falling off. That was my first and last smoke.–George Peterson (aged 10 years old), 109 North Ninth Street.”

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“In The Morning The Elephant Had Suddenly Reappeared In The Town”

April 5, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Theodore Roosevelt, after bagging an elephant. Not even President Palin could get away with this today. (Image by Edward Van Altena.)

The Essayist posted a link to George Orwell’s classic 1936 essay, “Shooting an Elephant.” An excerpt:

“One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism–the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone ‘must.’ It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of ‘must’ is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.”

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“I Started Smoking Grass In 1933”

April 5, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Senior stoners. (Thanks Live Leak.)

The Apartment Building That Changed NYC

April 5, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The first building to overcome these sensitivities was Richard Morris Hunt’s Stuyvesant Apartments." (Image by John Singer Sargent.)

From “Sardine Life,” a smart essay in New York magazine by Justin Davidson about the evolution of apartment living in NYC, which was considered déclassé until one elegant building changed all that:

“The first building to overcome these sensitivities was Richard Morris Hunt’s Stuyvesant Apartments at 142 East 18th Street, a luxurious behemoth by 1870 standards. This structure defeated doubters with a two-pronged argument of aesthetics and pragmatism. The architecture oozed dignity: Five stories high and four lots wide, it had an imposing mass, an overweening mansard roof with yawning dormers, wrought-iron balconies, and ornamental columns. Even more persuasively, compared with the cost of building, furnishing, cleaning, and repairing a private home, all this respectability came as a bargain. Within a few years, the Times announced that a ‘domiciliary revolution’ had taken place: a happy epidemic of flats had beaten back a plague of sinister boardinghouses. Young couples could now afford a bright new place in town; families no longer needed to fan out to the villages that lay miles from Union Square. The change represented the triumph of pragmatism over prejudice. ‘Anglo Saxons,’ the Times reported, ‘are instinctively opposed to living under the same roof with other people, and it is doubtful if [that resistance] would have been overcome had not the earliest flats been of an elegant kind, in the best quarters of the town, and therefore, expensive and fashionable.’ The rich made the apartment safe for the middle class.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 5, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"A favorite of psychotic serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer."

Immense Chest Freezer – $150 (Stamford CT)

I am selling a Kenmore chest freezer because the wife and kids are out of the house (finally!). Though I eat mostly TV dinners, I don’t go through enough to need this puppy any longer.

This is an immense unit, 71″ wide, 36″ high and 27 1/2″ deep, which means about 28.5 cubic feet of usable interior space by my estimate. It’s about 20 years old and works great. This is exactly the sort of freezer that my grandma loved for storing all her groceries over the course of the winter, and it’s also a favorite of psychotic serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, who needed all that room to store multiple “experiments.”

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San Francisco Cable Car Ride (1906)

April 5, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A week before the earthquake. (Thanks Reddit.)

“In The Four Years Since He Began Selling Cigarettes, Mr. Warner Recalls Being Arrested 15 Times”

April 5, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Known to cause cancer. (Image by Geierunited.)

Lonnie Warner, a.k.a. Lonnie Loosie, is a genial entrepreneur who sells untaxed tobacco in Manhattan a full pack or a single coffin nail at a time, frequently getting arrested. Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times profiles the small businessman:

“In the four years since he began selling cigarettes, Mr. Warner recalls being arrested 15 times, generally on the charge of selling untaxed tobacco. He has been arrested so often that he can recognize 10 different plainclothes police officers, he claims. The ever-present risk of arrest makes working with partners valuable — ‘we have six eyes on this block,’ he explained.

Over many court appearances, Mr. Warner has made a favorable impression on the lawyers in Midtown Community Court, who know him as Lonnie Loosie and consider him better company than the typical misdemeanor defendant.

‘There are people who are known bad guys, and then there’s him,’ said Russell S. Novack, the Legal Aid lawyer who represents many of Midtown’s hustlers, prostitutes, shoplifters and public drunks. ‘He’s like the goodwill ambassador of Eighth Avenue. And when he comes into court, he says hello to everybody.'”

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Listeria: Definition Of “T” Words (1912)

April 5, 2011 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Tarantula: A large hairy kind of spider common in some parts of Italy, Southern California, Texas, and Mexico and other sub-tropical countries, and at one point thought to be poisonous and perhaps are occasionally so. Music was supposed to be the only cure for its sting, which superstition gave the Tarantula dance, an ancient Bacchanalian amusement. The Church banned it, and it was ascribed to the hateful spider.

Tattooing: The practice of pricking patterns or designs in the skin, with indelible pigments. It is in vogue among the brown and yellow races and sailors the world over. Among savages a matter of primitive taste and custom, or means of identification. It is a habit, says Lombroso, distinguishing the criminal type.

Taximeter: An ingenious contrivance by which the strictly legal fare chargeable for a cab journey is indicated. It is only recently that it has been adopted on a large scale in London and New York, although in Berlin and Paris it has been successfully working for many years. It is now in use extensively in this country both for motor cabs and ordinary cabs. It gives its name to the Taxicab, in which the number of wheel revolutions and consequently distance traveled and fare due, are automatically recorded on the dial of the taximeter, to avoid disputes.

Thugs: A secret organization of Indian fanatical assassins. They strangled their victims, and buried their bodies with a consecrated pick-axe, and set apart one-third of their plunder to the goddess Kali. These assassins were difficult to suppress, but vigorous measures ultimately, after twenty years’ effort, secured their extermination in about 1830.

Trance: An abnormal psychical state. In waking trance the thoughts are fixed on one subject, often religion, and other perception ceases. In trance coma and death trance pulsation, respiration and vitality appear to cease, all the nature being concentrated on interior thought or vision. It can be distinguished from death only by absence of decay and may last for weeks.

•Taken from the 1912 Standard Illustrated Book of Facts.

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Tattoos + Horns = Happiness

April 4, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Not really necessary to understand Spanish. (Thanks Reddit.)

“He Was Greeted By Policemen, Who Congratulated Him, Requested His Autograph, Then Handcuffed Him”

April 4, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

“The next day Willig met with Mayor Abraham Beame, who settled for a fine of $1.10—a penny for each of the tower’s 110 stories.”

From “The Only Way to Go Is Up,” Sam Moses’ 1977 Sports Illustrated profile of George Willig, a Queens toy designer and mountain climber known as the “Human Fly,” who scaled the South Tower of the the World Trade Center that year:

“At 10:05 a.m., 3 1/2 hours after he began, admittedly very excited by now, but not tired, Willig lifted himself over a ledge at the top and crawled, feet first, into an inspection hatch on the roof. He was none the worse for wear, except for blistered hands and insteps. He was greeted by policemen, who congratulated him, requested his autograph, then handcuffed him and served him with a summons for disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and scaling a building without a permit. In addition, it was announced that the city was going to sue Willig for $250,000 for the trouble and expense he had put it to. The next day Willig met with Mayor Abraham Beame, who settled for a fine of $1.10—a penny for each of the tower’s 110 stories. In return, Willig readily agreed not to reveal the details of his climbing apparatus, to forestall imitators from attempting similar climbs.

Of course, Willig was asked why he did it. He responded with the expected answer, the classic and clichéd ‘Because it’s there’—which at the time was the easiest way to reply to a simple question that in truth has such a complex answer. Another reply might have been what Louis Armstrong said when asked to define jazz, ‘If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’

Nonetheless, Thursday night, before he took his phone off the hook and went to bed at about 1 a.m., Willig tried again to answer the question. ‘A couple of times during the year I planned this climb I thought. ‘What the heck is in me that makes me want to do this?’ I guess it’s just a love of excitement and adventure, an appetite for action. Maybe it has a lot to do with asserting my life, just to myself—feeling more alive.

‘I did wonder, at times, if I should go through with it. But I never at all seriously considered not doing it, never from the first time I got the idea.'”

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Ray Kurzweil At The iLabs Singularity Summit

April 4, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Which was held in Italy. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)

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Annie Oakley, With Rifle, In Her Dotage (1922)

April 4, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

At age 62, Annie Oakley hit 100 clay targets from 16 yards.

This classic 1922 photograph shows legendary markswoman Annie Oakley, still a sure shot just four years before her death, as she displays a firearm given to her by Buffalo Bill. The image from the New York World-Telegram & Sun profiles the 62-year-old Oakley in the same year she suffered injuries in a bad automobile accident, which could have been fatal but only temporarily disarmed her. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle mistakenly pronounced her dead once in 1890. An excerpt from that false report:

“Annie Oakley, the champion woman rifle and wing shot of the world, died at Buenos Aires, South America, on Monday last of congestion of the lungs. At the age of 10 years she was accustomed to handle a light gun with great proficiency and soon obtained a reputation as being one of the best rifle shots, defeating most of the prominent shots in various matches. Just before her departure for Europe last year she joined the Fountain and Coney Island gun clubs in their shoots at Woodlawn Park, Gravesend L.I., and made many friends by her modest and unassuming manner.”

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Oakley, steady of eye and hand, in 1894:

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