Urban Studies

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“They’re Pure Security Theater”

April 19, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s not silly on the order of trying to color code terrorism as we did in the wake of 9/11, but metal detectors installed at stadiums by Major League Baseball the season after the Boston Marathon bombing, aren’t likely to do much good. Bruce Schneier, security expert in matters both online and off, writes of the new measure at the Washington Post. The opening:

Fans attending Major League Baseball games are being greeted in a new way this year: with metal detectors at the ballparks. Touted as a counterterrorism measure, they’re nothing of the sort. They’re pure security theater: They look good without doing anything to make us safer. We’re stuck with them because of a combination of buck passing, CYA thinking and fear.

As a security measure, the new devices are laughable. The ballpark metal detectors are much more lax than the ones at an airport checkpoint. They aren’t very sensitive — people with phones and keys in their pockets are sailing through — and there are no X-ray machines. Bags get the same cursory search they’ve gotten for years. And fans wanting to avoid the detectors can opt for a “light pat-down search” instead.

There’s no evidence that this new measure makes anyone safer. A halfway competent ticketholder would have no trouble sneaking a gun into the stadium. For that matter, a bomb exploded at a crowded checkpoint would be no less deadly than one exploded in the stands. These measures will, at best, be effective at stopping the random baseball fan who’s carrying a gun or knife into the stadium. That may be a good idea, but unless there’s been a recent spate of fan shootings and stabbings at baseball games — and there hasn’t — this is a whole lot of time and money being spent to combat an imaginary threat.•

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“Wealth Has Accumulated And Society Has Decayed”

April 19, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Last week, I read Freeman Dyson’s 1997 book, Imagined Worlds, and I wanted to present one excerpt which seems more salient now than when it was written (although that pertains to a lot of the volume). The scientist assailed the way technology was destabilizing society and creating income inequality. That process has only accelerated since.

Two things about the excerpt below:

  1. Dyson did not realize how quickly computing power would become relatively affordable.
  2. That affordability hasn’t mitigated homelessness or income gaps in America.

The passage:

Today science has once again turned good into evil. This time the evil is not a war, but a civilian technology that systematically widens the gulf between rich and poor, deprives uneducated young people of jobs, and leaves large numbers of young mothers and children hopeless and homeless. The evil is to be seen in many places around the world, especially in the great cities of North and South America. When one walks through the streets of New York after dark during the Christmas season, one sees the widening gulf at its starkest. The brightly lit shop windows are filled with high-tech electronic toys for the children of the rich, and a few yards away, the dark corners of subway entrances are filled with the dim outlines of derelict human beings that the new technology has left behind. In every large American city such contrasts have become a part of everyday life.

When I arrived in America fifty years ago, rich and poor people were less estranged and less afraid of one another, the feeling of belonging to a community was stronger, the rich had fewer locks on their doors, and the poor had roofs over their heads. Since those days, wealth has accumulated and society has decayed. It is as Haldane said, “The tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man, whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes evil at its source.”

My scientist friends may justly protest that the calamities of American society are caused by drugs, or by guns, or by racial intolerance, or by illiteracy, or by bad schools, or by broken families, rather than by science. It is true that the immediate causes of social disintegration are moral and economic rather than technical. But science must bear a larger share of responsibility for these evils than the majority of scientists are willing to admit.•

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“If We’re Going To Wait For Capitalism To Disappear, People Are Going To Wait Along Time”

April 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fresh from his Reddit Ask Me Anything, moral philosopher Peter Singer discusses his new book about altruism in a Gawker Q&A conducted by Hamilton Nolan, a consistently intelligent and passionate voice on the New York media scene. Among other topics, the two discuss the continued viability of capitalism and the validity of revolutions predicated on income inequality. An excerpt:

Gawker:

Can capitalism solve these problems, ultimately? Is capitalism equipped to address human poverty in the long run?

Peter Singer:

I don’t think capitalism alone is going to solve the problems, but capitalism supplemented by enough concerned individuals who would both donate some of their resources and lobby governments to prevent some of the possible abuses of capitalism, I think that could deal with the problem of poverty. If we’re going to wait for capitalism to disappear, people are going to wait a long time. I think most of them will be dead before that happens. So I don’t think that’s the right approach. We have to try to do things within the framework we have.

Gawker:

With the U.S. presidential election coming up, do you have any endorsements? Any issues you’d like to see get attention?

Peter Singer:

I don’t know that any candidate wants my endorsement! I certainly think that America’s aid to the global poor is shamefully low, and most Americans have no idea how low it is. All the surveys that ask Americans “How much of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid?” they come back with a median figure of 15%. And if you ask them what they think would be the right level, they’re somewhere between 5-10%. And the actual level, of course, is 1%… The other big issue is climate change. Climate change needs to come up. That’s one of the critical moral challenges we face in this century.

Gawker:

Economic inequality has become a big part of the political conversation in America. How does that tie into the poverty and altruism issues you’re writing about?

Peter Singer:

I agree that inequality in America is a problem, but I think that what a lot of Americans don’t realize is that if you look at the picture globally, they’re the top 1%. Not all Americans, but if you’re $52,000 a year, that puts you in the top 1% globally. So if people think it’s bad that there’s this top 1% in the United States, they should think it’s much worse that there is this much steeper inequality.•

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“They Get Paid In The Feeling Of Floating In The Vast Virtual Connectivity”

April 17, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Every day hundreds of millions of us work for free for Facebook and Twitter and the like, producing tons of content without getting paid. The Mark Zuckerbergs are the ones who collect the cash while we get the attention we crave, our egos stroked while our pockets picked. Creative companies have often operated on a similar principle, offering freedom of expression in lieu of a good paycheck, but the new social-media firms and the tools that enable them have completely erased remuneration from the equation. Facebook would be the largest sweatshop in the world, except that even those factory laborers get paid a nominal amount.

In “The Smartphone Society,” a sprawling Jacobin article about our beloved, ubiquitous “hand machines,” Nicole Aschoff speaks to the way these new tools have reordered labor. An excerpt:

The expansion and reproduction of capital is dependent on the development of these new commodities, many of which emerge from capital’s incessant drive to enclose new spheres of social life for profit, or as political economist Massimo De Angelis says, to “put [these spheres] to work for [capital’s] priorities and drives.”

The smartphone is central to this process. It provides a physical mechanism to allow constant access to our digital selves and opens a nearly uncharted frontier of commodification.

Individuals don’t get paid in wages for creating and maintaining digital selves — they get paid in the satisfaction of participating in rituals, and the control afforded them over their social interactions. They get paid in the feeling of floating in the vast virtual connectivity, even as their hand machines mediate social bonds, helping people imagine togetherness while keeping them separate as distinct productive entities. The voluntary nature of these new rituals does not make them any less important, or less profitable for capital.

[Harry] Braverman said that “the capitalist finds in [the] infinitely malleable character of human labor the essential resource for the expansion of his capital.” The last thirty years of innovation demonstrate the truth of this statement, and the phone has emerged as one of the primary mechanisms to activate, access, and channel the malleability of human labor.

Smartphones ensure that we are producing for more and more of our waking lives. They erase the boundary between work and leisure. Employers now have nearly unlimited access to their employees, and increasingly, holding even a low-paid, precarious job hinges on the ability to be always available and ready to work. At the same time, smartphones provide people constant mobile access to the digital commons and its gauzy ethos of connectivity, but only in exchange for their digital selves.

Smartphones blur the line between production and consumption, between the social and the economic, between the pre-capitalist and the capitalist, ensuring that whether one uses their phone for work or pleasure, the outcome is increasingly the same — profit for capitalists.•

Old Print Article: “The Old Pony Express,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1908)

April 16, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Pony_Express_Map_William_Henry_Jackson

William “Bill” Cates.

A Google Doodle just marked the 155th anniversary of the Pony Express, a hoof-bound American mail-delivery service that brought messages and news from Missouri westward in 1860-61, the days just before the transcontinental telegraph. The system especially helped link the rest of America to California, a state which had grown in importance in the previous decade, owing to the population explosion brought about by the gold rush.

It was not an easy gig, as riders faced Indian attacks, harsh elements and the slings and arrows of nature, and there was none of this be all you can be crap. One ad read: Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. One who took up the challenge was William “Bill” Cates, a self-described “young fellow, craving excitement.” He was one of the last surviving members when he was profiled in the July 29, 1908 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

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“Death Has Never Made Any Sense To Me”

April 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

No one with stock options would want to die, so Silicon Valley technologists are earnestly pursuing radical life-extension methods–even immortality. I mock, but I also wish them well and hope there are eventual results. However, anyone professing that successful head transplantations and hundreds-year lifespans are on the horizon is sort of overpromising. Theoretically not impossible but nowhere near ready. From Charlotte Lytton’s Daily Beast piece about the fountain of youth’s new splash:

If a successful, life-extending surgery does arise—and prove successful—its implications would be revolutionary. After announcing his intentions to carry out the procedure several months ago, [head-transplant enthusiast Sergio] Canavero was inundated with volunteers offering themselves up for the project—a testament to how prevalent the notion of extending one’s life really is.

Canavero’s ideology is one keenly shared by Silicon Valley hedge fund manager, Joon Yun, founder of the Palo Alto Longevity Prize. A $1 million reward for those who can successfully “hack the code of life and cure aging,” Yun is hoping to find scientists able to extend the lives of mice by 50 percent, which he believes will be demonstrative in efforts to push the human life span beyond its current U.S. average of 78.7 years.

While Yun’s efforts might resemble a Death Becomes Her-esque bid to uncover an elixir of eternal youth, he is not the first wealthy businessman to make a serious financial donation to the prevention of aging. Peter Thiel, one of PayPal’s co-founders, has donated millions to researchers leading the charge, while Larry Ellison, who co-founded computer hardware company Oracle, has given some $430 million to the cause. “Death has never made any sense to me,” says Ellison.

The government used to fund two-thirds of medical research, with private backers accounting for the other 33 percent of studies, but that ratio has now been flipped, with the major cash injections supplied by entrepreneurs with life-prolonging pet projects far surpassing money pumped in by the state. Some of the ideas being explored by Thiel-backed researchers include technology that can cool human organs at a high speed, allowing them to be preserved long term, and using stem cells to grow bone replacements for broken ones. One more involves analyzing molecular and cell damage throughout our lifetimes in a bid to better understand how we might rejuvenate deteriorating bodies.•

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“The Sources Of News Have Become Narrower”

April 16, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In an interview with Seung-yoon Lee of Byline, Noam Chomsky expresses his belief that the foundering of the traditional news and the democratization of the media hasn’t really changed for the better the public dialogue. Perhaps. Income inequality, for instance, has only gotten worse since the media came into the hands of the masses, though that also has to do with myriad other issues. But we won’t be leading the conversation as long as people are satisfied with bread and Kardashians.

As for Chomsky saying he learns about what’s happening in Ukraine or Syria by reading the New York Times, Associated Press and British press rather than by looking at social media and search engines, I would only suggest his news-reading habits are vastly different than the majority. It doesn’t mean he’s wrong, but he’s likely an outlier. 

Two exchanges follow, one about the state of modern media and the other about Charlie Hebdo.

____________________________

Seung-yoon Lee:

Twenty-seven years ago, you wrote in Manufacturing Consent that the primary role of the mass media in Western democratic societies is to mobilise public support for the elite interests that lead the government and the private sector. However, a lot has happened since then. Most notably, one could argue that the Internet has radically decentralised power and eroded the power of traditional media, and has also given rise to citizen journalism. News from Ferguson, for instance, emerged on Twitter before it was picked up by media organisations. Has the internet made your ‘Propaganda Model’ irrelevant? 

Noam Chomsky:

Actually, we have an updated version of the book which appeared about 10 years ago with a preface in which we discuss this question. And I think I can speak for my co-author, you can read the introduction, but we felt that if there have been changes, then this is one of them. There are other [changes], such as the decline in the number of independent print media, which is quite striking.

As far as we can see, the basic analysis is essentially unchanged. It’s true that the internet does provide opportunities that were not easily available before, so instead of having to go to the library to do research, you can just open up your computer. You can certainly release information more easily and also distribute different information from many sources, and that offers opportunities and deficiencies. But fundamentally, the system hasn’t changed very much. 

Seuny-yoon Lee:

Emily Bell, Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, said the following in her recent speech at Oxford: “News spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley.” Nearly all content now is published on social platforms, and it’s not Rupert Murdoch but Google’s Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who have much more say in how news is created and disseminated. Are they “manufacturing consent” like their counterparts in so-called ‘legacy’ media?

Noam Chomsky:

Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the general statement. Say, right now, if I want to find out what’s going on in Ukraine or Syria or Washington, I read the New York Times, other national newspapers, I look at the Associated Press wires, I read the British press, and so on. I don’t look at Twitter because it doesn’t tell me anything. It tells me people’s opinions about lots of things, but very briefly and necessarily superficially, and it doesn’t have the core news. And I think it’s the opposite of what you quoted – the sources of news have become narrower.•

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Seung-yoon Lee:

Also, regarding the specific incident of Charlie Hebdo, do you think the cartoonists lacked responsibility?

Noam Chomsky:

Yes, I think they were kind of acting in this case like spoiled adolescents, but that doesn’t justify killing them. I mean, I could say the same about a great deal that appears in the press. I think it’s quite irresponsible often. For example, when the press in the United States and England supported the worst crime of this century, the invasion of Iraq, that was way more irresponsible than what Charlie Hebdo did. It led to the destruction of Iraq and the spread of the sectarian conflict that’s tearing the region to shreds. It was a really major crime. Aggression is the supreme international crime under international law. Insofar as the press supported that, that was deeply irresponsible, but I don’t think the press should be shut down.•

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“These Results Also Suggest That Climate Engineering Could Not Offer A Long-Term Solution”

April 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Science is providing hard evidence to support what is a pretty obvious guess: Geoengineering our way out of climate change might not work and would have unintended consequences. It still might end up being our only chance. From Simon Redfern’s BBC report about the European Geosciences Union General Assembly:

It is not at all obvious what the other consequences of global geoengineering approaches might be. For example, Patrick Applegate from Pennsylvania State University, reported that solar radiation management may yet fail to prevent sea-level rise from melting ice sheets, which respond on much longer time scales than the temperature effects of solar shielding.

Aside from being ineffective in stemming sea-level rise, solar radiation management – according to results from Jerry Tjiputra at Bergen University – would lead to increased ocean acidification in the North Atlantic.

These results also suggest that climate engineering could not offer a long-term solution, with the world eventually being in the same place, by 2200, as it would reach without any geoengineering interventions.

Asked whether he believed solar radiation management would be deployed, Prof [Ken] Caldeira responded: “A lot has to do with how bad climate change will end up being. Humans are quite adaptable as a species.

“On the other hand, projections for summers in the tropics suggest almost every summer will be hotter than the hottest summer yet on record, associated with crop failures. There is the possibility that there would be widespread crop failures in the tropics in the summer.

“The only thing a politician can do to start the planet cooling is solar geoengineering. If a catastrophic outcome does occur, the pressure to deploy a scheme could be overwhelming.•

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“iRobot Is Designing A Robotic Mower”

April 16, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Lawns are pretty to look at but dubious environmentally and imprisoning socially. As long as we have them, however, it’s no surprise the makers of Roomba would like to extend their robot helpers to the out of doors as automatic mowers–lawnbots. The problem is that the proposed system would make it difficult for astronomers to conduct their work with ginormous radio telescopes. From Davey Alba at Wired:

WHO CAN HATE a Roomba? Astronomers, that’s who.

The robotic vacuums we all know and love ensure we don’t have to clean our own homes ourselves to get them spotless. (God forbid.) Now, the Roomba’s maker, iRobot, wants to do for lawn care what it did for vacuuming. According to filings with the FCC spotted by IEEE Spectrum, iRobot is designing a robotic mower—news that should elate lazy people the world over.

But one group is really, really unhappy about this boon to the slothful: Astronomers. Some of them are so upset, in fact, that their objections might put the kibosh on the whole thing. How could this be? In a scenario that sounds straight out of the Golden Age of scifi, it all comes down to robots versus telescopes, and how they all communicate.•

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“Imagine You’ve Just Returned From Half-Hour Space Flight From London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires”

April 15, 2015 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The kitchen of 1985, as predicted in 1964: fast-growing indoor gardens, self-sufficient power supply, closed-circuit televisions, automated cleaning, etc. The above photo is an Avedon from Harper’s Bazaar of the ’60s.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 15, 2015 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

O-negative blood

I have O-negative blood willing to sell. 34age 5/9ht 155wt. Active and healthy life style.

“They Allow You To Do Things In Fundamentally Different And Better Ways”

April 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In freestyle chess and in factories alike, carbon and silicon make for a great combination–it’s win-win. But in the long run (and perhaps not even too long from now), if humans or robots are going to be ejected from the workforce, which is more likely to go? From Matt McFarland at the Washington Post, a report about YuMi, your new coworker:

YuMi was designed to require about the same amount of space as a human worker, so it can easily slide into roles alongside humans in factories. YuMi is safe enough that ABB chief executive Ulrich Spiesshofer encouraged German chancellor Angela Merkel to put her finger in YuMi’s grip at an event Monday.

These companies see a huge opportunity in manufacturing to grow their businesses. A Boston Consulting Group report from earlier this year found that only 10 percent of manufacturing tasks are automated.

They say they have strong interest from China’s massive manufacturing sector. One of Rethink Robotics’ clients in China loses 25 percent of its workforce a month. That churn rate requires it to constantly retain workers, which hampers its efficiency.

“We will get to a point in time, whether it’s five years from now or 10 year from now, where you will not be a successful manufacturer if you do not have collaborative robots in your environment,” said Jim Lawton, chief product and marketing officer at Rethink Robotics. “They allow you to do things in fundamentally different and better ways.” …

The robotic elephant in the room is this: What happens to employment? Won’t jobs be swept away by the tide of automation?

“If you look at the countries with the highest level of robotization and automation, these are the countries with the lowest unemployment rates in the world,” Spiesshofer said. “Germany, Japan and South Korea have the highest robotization and the lowest unemployment rates. So for me, a smart application of a robot is a job security measure, it’s a job creation machine, if you do it right. The combination between human beings and robots to add additional jobs rather than destroy them.”•

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A Brief Note From 1902 About A Whipped Man

April 15, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 23, 1902 Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

“We Continue To Cling To A Model That Doesn’t Support This Kind Of Revolutionary Progress”

April 15, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Reconciling free-market capitalism and a highly automated society is one of the great challenges we’re likely to face in the near future. In a Medium essay, Sean Lester doesn’t believe reconciliation is possible. An excerpt:

To summarize, we’re automating the SHIT out of work right now with simple AI and robotics. With technological progress being exponential as it is (stop thinking linearly you dufus) robots you MAY hear about as being wacky and impractical and expensive today will be cheaper, faster, and better than your average human tomorrow. With AI advancements, even creative work is at risk (as the above video will explain). Even outside the more sci-fi sounding stuff, there’s a growing trend for companies with a fraction of the employees of their competition rivaling and crushing them. The examples thrown around a lot are the handful of people at Instagram today versus the many thousands of yesterday’s Kodak — or the Ubers and Lyfts rivaling taxi companies and other forms of public transport.

Which is dumb as hell. Work is being eliminated because corporations want to cut costs, not because they want a future where humans don’t have to get up and go to pointless jobs every day for diminishing wages only to not be able to cover their expenses or pay off their college loans. However, what worries me is that in the face of overwhelming evidence that we’re eliminating work on a very short timeline (shorter than the average person imagines or is prepared for) the conversation is never “We did it fellas. Time to pack up, we finally killed work!” No, that isn’t what people are saying. People are saying, “WHAT ABOUT THE JOBS!?” because we continue to cling to a model that doesn’t support this kind of revolutionary progress. The fact I can’t start writing an article that criticizes this failing of capitalism at all without fearing knee-jerk reactions by dogmatic capitalists is the problem. We can’t even begin having a conversation about it, because to propose a criticism of a thing is similar to saying “Hey tribe, I’m in THIS tribe now, fuck you!” This isn’t about being on this side or that side, though. This is about looking objectively at the reality standing in front of us and confronting it honestly.•

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“How Shall The New Environment Be Programmed Now That We Have Become So Involved With Each Other?”

April 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Two passages from Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, which wondered about the new reality for privacy, connectedness, printed matter and jobs.

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From The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory of Effects:

How much do you make? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Are you now or have you ever been…? I have here before me…Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions–the patterns of mechanistic technologies–are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval by the electrically computerized dossier bank–that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early “mistakes.” We have already reached a point where remedial control, born out of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted. How shall the new environment be programmed now that we have become so involved with each other, now that all of us have become the unwitting work force for social change? What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?•

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From Jane Howard’s 1966 Life magazine article, “Oracle of the Electric Age“:

No people in the history of humanity, McLuhan insists, ever faced demands as grueling as those that confront us. We are witnessing simultaneously the end of what he calls the Mechanical, or Gutenberg, Era, dominated by movable type and later mechanical forms, and the birth pangs of the new and entirely different Electric Age, which he sometimes calls the Age of Circuitry, or of Information. As his books The Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media explain, the change is the most traumatic since the transition 9,000 years ago, from the paleolithic culture to the neolithic, from hunting to agriculture.

The change, says McLuhan, is making movable type obsolete and with it books, newspapers, magazines–in fact all kinds of printed matter, including the sentence you are now reading. We will also have to junk the by-products of the Gutenberg invention which, says, McLuhan, have created our culture’s visual, literary, detached, linear approach to life. This dooms a lot more linear by-products than you might think, including railways, clotheslines, stocking seams, the grid system in city planning and stag lines at dances. Even points of view must go–”because it’s no longer possible to take a fixed position for more than a single moment.” So must jobs, which are fragmentary in nature and do not suit the new age in which people crave roles with depth involvement.•

Old Print Article: “The Horrible Jameson Affair,” New York Times (1890)

April 14, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"This is a present from a white man who desires to see her eaten."

“This is a present from a white man who desires to see her eaten.”

In 1890, James S. Jameson, heir to the famed whiskey-distilling family’s wealth, was accused of a crime that was singular and sinister even by the standards of colonialism. Syrian translator Assad Farran testified that the peripatetic explorer paid African natives a number of handkerchiefs to kill and cannibalize a small girl. Jameson, it was alleged, desired to not only witness the heinous acts but to sketch them. From an article the November 14, 1890 New York Times:

London — The Times publishes the full text of Assad Farran’s affidavit. After describing Barttelot’s cruelties, it deals with the Jameson cannibal affair in Ribakiba.

Jameson expressed to Tippoo’s interpreter curiosity to witness cannibalism. Tippoo consulted with the chiefs and told Jameson he had better purchase a slave. James asked the price and paid six handkerchiefs.

A man returned a few minutes after with a ten-year-old girl. Tippoo and the chiefs ordered the girl to be taken to the native huts. Jameson himself, Selim, Masondie, and Farhani, Jameson’s servant, presented to him by Tippoo, and many others followed.

The man who had brought the girl said to the cannibals: “This is a present from a white man who desires to see her eaten.”

“The girl was tied to a tree,” says Farran, “the natives sharpening their knives the while. One of them stabbed her twice in the belly.

“She did not scream, but knew what would happen, looking to the right and left for help. When stabbed she fell dead. The natives cut pieces from her body.

“Jameson in the meantime made rough sketches of the horrible scenes. Then we all returned to the child’s house. Jameson afterward went to his tent, where he finished his sketches in water colors.

“There were six of them, all neatly done. The first sketch was of the girl as she was led to the tree. The second showed her stabbed, with the blood gushing from the wounds. The third showed her dissected. The fourth, fifth, and sixth showed men carrying off the various parts of the body.

“Jameson showed these and many other sketches to all the chiefs.”•

“The Robotic Arms And Hands Are Capable Of Grasping Utensils”

April 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Iron chefs may truly be made from metal if Moley Robotics brings its AI cook to the market in 2017 as planned. The idea is that you call in your order on a smartphone and the machine at home can make any of 2,000 recipes (though so far it’s only perfected one: crab bisque). Who knows if the company’s robot will be ready for the kitchen in two years and if the price can really initially be kept to a not-so-modest $15,000, but this is the general direction many restaurants (and perhaps homes) are headed. From Megan Gibson at Time:

Moley, which was founded by computer scientist Mark Oleynik, has partnered with the London-based Shadow Robot Company, which developed the kitchen’s hands. Twenty motors, two dozen joints and 129 sensors are used in order to mimic the movements of human hands. The robotic arms and hands are capable of grasping utensils, pots, dishes and various bottles of ingredients. Olyenik says that the robot hands are also capable of powering through cooking tasks quickly, though they’ve been designed to move quite slowly, so as not to alarm anyone watching it work.

Sadly for vegetarians, like Shadow Robot’s managing director Rich Walker, crab bisque is the only dish the robot is currently able to make. However, the company plans to build a digital library of 2,000 recipes before the kitchen is available to the wider public. Moley ambitiously aims to scale the robot chef for mass production and begin selling them as early as 2017. The robotic chef, complete with a purpose-built kitchen, including an oven, hob, dishwasher and sink, will cost £10,000 (around $15,000). Yet that price point will depend on a relatively high demand for the kitchen and it’s still unclear how large the market is for such a product at the moment.•

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“It has created what it claims is the first robot chef.”

The kitchen of the future as presented by Walter Cronkite in 1967.

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“To Maintain The Right To Be Tax-Exempt, Religions Must Fulfill Certain Requirements”

April 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Alex Gibney details the backlash he, Lawrence Wright and others have faced from the Church of Scientology over the book and film versions of Going Clear and questions the organization’s tax-exempt status. An excerpt:

The church maintains that its activities are protected by the 1st Amendment as religious practices. Partially on that basis, the church convinced the Internal Revenue Service in 1993 that Scientology should be tax-exempt and that all donations to the church should be tax-deductible. (The film shows that the church’s method of “convincing” the IRS featured lawsuits and vilification of its agents.)

In the past, critics of the church have called for its tax exemption to be revoked because it is not a “real religion.” I agree that tax-exemption isn’t merited, but not for that reason. The Church of Scientology has a distinct belief system which, despite its somewhat strange cosmology — mocked by the TV show “South Park” and many others — is not essentially more strange than, say, the idea of a virgin birth. Scientologists are entitled to believe what they want to believe. And the IRS website makes it clear that anyone is entitled to start a religion at any time without seeking IRS permission. To maintain the right to be tax-exempt, however, religions must fulfill certain requirements for charitable organizations. For example, they may not “serve the private interests of any individual” and/or “the organization’s purposes and activities may not be illegal or violate fundamental public policy.”

On these points alone, it is hard to see why Americans should subsidize Scientology through its tax-exemption.•

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“Is There Any Chance That A Post-Apocalyptic Society Could Reboot A Technological Civilization?”

April 14, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

What if the wheels fell completely off, an apocalypse of some sort rained down upon us, and we had to start again sans fossil fuels? Could we rebuild a technologically advanced society without crude and coal? Could alternative energy power a new industrialized world?

In his Aeon essay, “Out of the Ashes,” astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell tries to the answer these questions and doesn’t come away completely reassured. Two interesting potential solutions: charcoal and wood gases. The opening:

Imagine that the world as we know it ends tomorrow. There’s a global catastrophe: a pandemic virus, an asteroid strike, or perhaps a nuclear holocaust. The vast majority of the human race perishes. Our civilisation collapses. The post-apocalyptic survivors find themselves in a devastated world of decaying, deserted cities and roving gangs of bandits looting and taking by force.

Bad as things sound, that’s not the end for humanity. We bounce back. Sooner or later, peace and order emerge again, just as they have time and again through history. Stable communities take shape. They begin the agonising process of rebuilding their technological base from scratch. But here’s the question: how far could such a society rebuild? Is there any chance, for instance, that a post-apocalyptic society could reboot a technological civilisation?

Let’s make the basis of this thought experiment a little more specific. Today, we have already consumed the most easily drainable crude oil and, particularly in Britain, much of the shallowest, most readily mined deposits of coal. Fossil fuels are central to the organisation of modern industrial society, just as they were central to its development. Those, by the way, are distinct roles: even if we could somehow do without fossil fuels now (which we can’t, quite), it’s a different question whether we could have got to where we are without ever having had them.

So, would a society starting over on a planet stripped of its fossil fuel deposits have the chance to progress through its own Industrial Revolution? Or to phrase it another way, what might have happened if, for whatever reason, the Earth had never acquired its extensive underground deposits of coal and oil in the first place? Would our progress necessarily have halted in the 18th century, in a pre-industrial state?

It’s easy to underestimate our current dependence on fossil fuels.•

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“His Pneumatic Features And Eerie Complexion Could Seem Repellent”

April 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We don’t know we’re ridiculous, so it hurts when someone points it out.

That harsh realization, however, is seldom enough to claim a life. Perhaps Dr. Fredric Brandt, the dermatologist to the stars known as the “Baron of Botox,” was really so deeply wounded by Martin Short’s cutting Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt caricature of his Bond villain otherworldliness that it pushed him to suicide, but it was likely more complicated. Dr. Brandt had long suffered from bouts of depression (perhaps stemming from his orphaned childhood or some biochemical origin) and was said to be no stranger to loneliness. He probably wanted to fix himself on the inside where it hurt, but he had to settle for working on his face, trying to force his lips upward into a smile. From the Economist:

He liked to call himself a sculptor of faces. But he did not cut or chisel. That was the work of the plastic surgeons who had pioneered beauty treatment, sawing away outsize noses and tightening withered skin over unforgiving cheekbones, via a general anaesthetic, scars and bruising. He did not criticise his sawbones colleagues, but he thought his own countenance showed that the needle worked better than the knife. Visitors sceptical of his strangely smooth skin would be invited to check behind his ears for the telltale signs of a facelift.

Some thought his strange appearance exemplified the cost of battling the years. His pneumatic features and eerie complexion could seem repellent: an alien doctor from a visiting starship, perhaps. Others thought his wispy blond hair and fair skin might be a sign of Scandinavian roots. He laughed at that: he was a Jewish orphan whose parents had run a confectionery shop in Newark; his appearance was a triumph, just like his career.

Critics muttered that the “Skincare Svengali”, (as Vogue dubbed him, appreciatively), was engaged in a nightmarish science project, making a fortune from human weakness. Better, surely to grow old gracefully and naturally. But his patients saw it differently. They wanted to feel better about themselves, to remember the people they had been—and to stay competetive in a society that prizes only youthful beauty. Laurin Sydney, a television journalist, said he helped her extend her career 18 years after her “sell-by date”. Madonna told the New York Times: “If I have nice skin, I owe a lot to him.”•

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A Brief Note From 1920 About Hangmen’s Wages

April 13, 2015 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 9, 1920 New York Times:

LONDON – England’s public executioners, the hangmen, want their pay increased, and their claim has been presented to the House of Commons by a member of that body. Augustine Hailwood inquired whether the Government knew that it was paying the executioners no more than in pre-war days. A Government representative replied that the matter would receive consideration. 

The hangmen recently were deprived of the privilege of taking away the rope with which the criminal was hanged. This reduced one of the sources of their revenue, as the rope could be sold to curiosity collectors.•

“Until 2008, Cubans Were Banned From Buying Their Own Computers”

April 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Computers, let alone smartphones, are anything but ubiquitous in Cuba, so it would seem Airbnb would have an impossible task setting up shop. Not so. There was a preexisting infrastructure the company tapped into once the embargo was lifted. From Sarah Kessler at Fast Company:

Airbnb had previously blocked would-be Cuban hosts from listing on its site. Now, it was about to become legal for them to do so.

The hurdles were not small: In 2011, the country’s National Statistics Office and theInternational Telecommunication Union estimated that about 22% of Cubans have Internet access, but that included people who only had access to a government-controlled Intranet. Until 2008, Cubans were banned from buying their own computers. Meanwhile, having a bank account is uncommon. “It’s not just that people prefer cash,” says [Baruch Professor Ted] Henken, “It’s almost the only way. People don’t trust anything else, at least not yet.”

Thankfully for Airbnb, however, it didn’t have to start from scratch. It simply tapped into an existing network of middlemen.

The company partnered with a handful of what it describes as “Internet cafes for hosting” that were already facilitating bookings online. These small businesses already had connections with most of the homes for rent on the island, and already charged them a fee for management services. Now they will handle Airbnb listings. Even for hosts who have bank accounts, Airbnb needs to work with intermediaries to deposit funds into their accounts. For the many hosts without access to bank accounts, it partnered with third parties who, in some cases, will deliver cash to their doorsteps (Henken says Airbnb is likely using an established money transfer service to handle payments to unbanked hosts, Airbnb declined specify who’s providing the service for them). All of these are informal partnerships.

Airbnb taught these middlemen how to use the website, and helped them add information. “Maybe they didn’t have high-quality photographs in their homes,” Airbnb’s [Molly] Turner says. “Maybe their availability was written on paper and not kept online anywhere. Our team did a lot of work behind the scenes talking to hosts and making sure that the information was up to date and current.”•

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“It’s The ‘Biggest Thing’ Going ‘Since At Least The Hoover Dam'”

April 13, 2015 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Chemical reactions, unlike silicon chips, are unmoved by Moore’s Law. That’s why battery improvement is frustratingly slow. Perhaps Elon Musk’s gigafactory in the Reno desert will move the stubborn arrow somewhat.

The Nevada city has its own reasons for going into business with the Tesla founder. Famous for its boom-or-bust cycles and caught up in the latter end of that bargain since the collapse of the housing market, Reno is hoping to become a Silicon Valley outpost, using taxes to subsidize the factory at the rate of $190,000 per job it will create. It’s yet another gamble in the city’s history of wagers. From Jonathan O’Connell at the Washington Post:

The Tesla deal is one of the nation’s top economic development prizes in a decade. In Nevada, one lawmaker told Reuters, it’s the “biggest thing” going “since at least the Hoover Dam.” Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) and state lawmakers project that over 20 years it will create 20,000 jobs and generate $100 billion for the state, which suffered in the recession.

But the agreement also comes at a time when economists and academics are questioning the wisdom of making big-ticket bets on single companies.

For all the promises of jobs and growth, Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk, says the company isn’t likely to be profitable until 2020, when he hopes to sell 500,000 cars a year. Tesla reported last week that it sold a record 10,030 cars in the first quarter.

The match of America’s buzzy electric carmaker with a town whose best-known industry features weathered casinos would be less stark if Northern Nevada was already a hotbed of engineering or advanced manufacturing.

It is not. …

Reno’s biography is one of booms and busts: silver-mining in the 1850s, divorces a half-century later, casinos beginning in the 1930s and housing during the real estate bubble, fueled by cheap land and easy mortgages.

Nevada was dragged low by the housing crash and recession, leading to an unemployment rate of 13.7 percent late in 2010, four points above the national average. As of January it still had the highest joblessness rate of any state, at 7.1 percent.

The arrival of the stock market darling has created optimism among locals that Reno could be an outpost of Silicon Valley, anchored by Lake Tahoe and the Burning Man festival. The median price of a single-family home is one-third that of the Bay Area. It boasts more than 300 days of sunshine, and locals brag about hitting the slopes nearby 30 minutes after work. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak recently tweeted about his ride through the mountains to Reno — in a Tesla, of course.•

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Old Print Article: “Succi Breaks His Fast,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

April 12, 2015 in Books, Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

I stumbled onto Franz Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist” at a young age and thought it the greatest thing ever and still sort of do.

What I didn’t realize at the time, however, was that there actually were professional fasters. These were entertainers, not political protesters, who went on long hunger strikes to amaze ticket buyers at dime museums with the art of self-abnegation. The popularity of the “sport” pretty much ended in the early twentieth century, though today’s online “performance eating” is a variation of the old theme.

Giovanni Succi, who was often referred to as “the little Italian” in newsprint, was one of the most celebrated practitioners. In “Succi’s Long Fast,” a New York Times article dated November 6, 1890, the 38-year-old entertainer announced his intention to starve himself for a personal record of 45 days at Koster & Bial’s music hall/beer garden in Manhattan. Succi would be on display 24 hours a day as his body wasted; student volunteers from Bellevue Medical College would minister to his needs. Below is a piece from the December 21, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle about the end of the act, when Succi stopped skipping meals.•

“Kana Was A Wiccan, Feminist Attorney, And I Was Clearly The First Black Person She Knew”

April 12, 2015 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Bylined at Gawker to a writer named Teller Red is “My Time Living in a New York City Commune,” an account of modern-day collective life in the nation’s most vibrant urban center. These communes have always existed in NYC despite being thought of as more rural or small-town entities situated where real estate is cheaper. The need for togetherness and structure overcomes the inhospitable market factors, at least for a while. An excerpt:

Kana was a Wiccan, feminist attorney, and I was clearly the first black person she knew. Over the three plus years we spent as housemates, we battled often, our mutual defenses and stereotypes clashing, but our respect and friendship became stronger. She had zero problem speaking truth to power, and took pride in her ability to solve problems.

“You know that’s why you’re always fighting, right?” I told her once as she stirred her coffee in our kitchen. “Because you feel useless if you aren’t a savior, so you create shit to fix.” It wasn’t the equivalent of her swooping in to rescue me from, and later school me about, known community predators, but she confessed it made her think about her reputation around the houses as something of a troublemaker.

Perhaps it was her consideration of this possibility that kept her mostly silent the one day I needed her to challenge authority most. It started because I’d baked a cake to bring to dinner one night, sliced it, then ventured to the bathroom before heading across the street to the dining room. When I exited the bathroom, Tina—a community vet who was new to our particular house—was at the stove cooking, and half the cake was gone. I knew no one could have eaten it that quickly (she had!), so I laughed and asked, “Ok, who hid half the cake?” Tina’s face instantly matched her box-red hair as she took the plate the cake was on, dumped it in the trash, and stormed out, yelling that she was about to get my ass kicked out.

The community had few official rules, but no violence or “non-negotiable negativity” were tolerated. People could be as loopy as they wanted, but if called on something that infringed on someone else’s comfort, they had to be open to discussing and resolving it. These concepts neatly underscored another community must: commitment to non-judgment. I saw this concept beautifully mastered and modeled by a few in the core group (the 20 or so members who committed to share their finances, and were responsible for planning the day-to-day running of the community). They really were able to separate an act from a person’s value, something I’d never witnessed or experienced. It was the example that helped me navigate through the many times an otherwise decent person made a spectacularly stupid or racist comment. It was difficult for me to suspend personal judgment when I felt someone was so clearly fucking wrong, but being the recipient of the unconditional positive regard some of them showed me was profoundly moving, and it remains a gift I strive to give in all my relationships. On this day, it was Tina’s behavior that was least in line with the rules, so I was hardly worried when our exchange became the subject of a community session to discuss and resolve the cake-trashing incident.

The meeting was presided over by Tato, a Napoleanic core member who remains, to this day, the most arrogant, condescending asshole I’ve ever met in my life.•

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