Urban Studies

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“What Is Happening In Ferguson Is Exactly What Opponents Of The Rise In Military-Style Policing Across America Have Long Feared”

August 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014.

Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014.

The Iraq War is one that keeps on giving–grief–and not only overseas. The fog of that war has clouded American neighborhoods as the weapons and tools used by soldiers there have come home to roost in a neighborhood near you. Militarized police forces have drones and AR-15s, a dubious dividend, and every officer can be a Robocop now. It’s overkill that leads to actual killing, especially when the ugliness of racism shows its teeth.

Some of these arms and armor might have happened eventually anyhow in our high-tech society, but the often-misguided War on Terror has rebounded furiously back at us with weaponry the way the mission to the moon brought us memory foam and freeze-dried food. We’re all on the moon now. A brief excerpt from Sadhbh Walshe in the Guardian:

“What is happening in Ferguson is exactly what opponents of the rise in military-style policing across America have long feared: when the feds arm white local cops with weapons of war and their superiors encourage them not to just play dress-up but to use their new war toys, it is inevitable that ordinary citizens – especially citizens of color – will get treated as the enemy. As we’ve seen in Ferguson, when military might comes to Main Street, ‘hands-up, don’t shoot‘ quickly turns into a quasi-declaration of war on a grieving community.

How the hell do we stop equipping and training suburban cops as warriors?”

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“This Was Harold Robbins’s Less-Than-Subtle Signal For The Orgy To Begin”

August 14, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

A writer who doesn’t do research isn’t worth a damn. Harold Robbins, he did research. From a 2007 Daily Mail article about the author working at his craft:

Under the beady eyes of the host, the party began with a little gentle socialising.

His hand-picked guests – as always, more women than men – then moved on to the next stage: marijuana, inhibition-loosening sedatives and cocaine.

When everyone seemed suitably relaxed, he started stroking a woman’s hair, moving his hands slowly downwards onto her body.

This was Harold Robbins’s less-than-subtle signal for the orgy to begin.

Soon, people were ripping off their clothes, piling into his vast, champagne-coloured bedroom and losing themselves in a pile of writhing bodies.

As they cavorted, heads would occasionally pop up to check out the view in the mirrored ceiling.

As the mastermind of these popular Beverly Hills parties, the best-selling novelist always selected the participants himself – each of whom had to be stunningly good-looking, famous or well-endowed.
His second wife, Grace, used to say that she never knew where he found them.

“I had never met any of them before, or ever would again,” she said.•

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“The Middle Is Moving To The Bottom”

August 14, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of entries from one argument in the new Pew Research Center report, “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Labor,” which tries to divine how automation will alter the workforce by 2025. 

_________________________

Argument #2: The consequences for income inequality will be profound

For those who expect AI and robotics to significantly displace human employment, these displacements seem certain to lead to an increase in income inequality, a continued hollowing out of the middle class, and even riots, social unrest, and/or the creation of a permanent, unemployable “underclass.”

Justin Reich, a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said, “Robots and AI will increasingly replace routine kinds of work—even the complex routines performed by artisans, factory workers, lawyers, and accountants. There will be a labor market in the service sector for non-routine tasks that can be performed interchangeably by just about anyone—and these will not pay a living wage—and there will be some new opportunities created for complex non-routine work, but the gains at this top of the labor market will not be offset by losses in the middle and gains of terrible jobs at the bottom. I’m not sure that jobs will disappear altogether, though that seems possible, but the jobs that are left will be lower paying and less secure than those that exist now. The middle is moving to the bottom.”

Stowe Boyd, lead researcher at GigaOM Research, said, “As just one aspect of the rise of robots and AI, widespread use of autonomous cars and trucks will be the immediate end of taxi drivers and truck drivers; truck driver is the number-one occupation for men in the U.S.. Just as importantly, autonomous cars will radically decrease car ownership, which will impact the automotive industry. Perhaps 70% of cars in urban areas would go away. Autonomous robots and systems could impact up to 50% of jobs, according to recent analysis by Frey and Osborne at Oxford, leaving only jobs that require the ‘application of heuristics’ or creativity…An increasing proportion of the world’s population will be outside of the world of work—either living on the dole, or benefiting from the dramatically decreased costs of goods to eke out a subsistence lifestyle. The central question of 2025 will be: What are people for in a world that does not need their labor, and where only a minority are needed to guide the ‘bot-based economy?”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 14, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Very profitable and...

“Very profitable and…

Investor wanted – $30000 (Midtown East)

Investor wanted, looking to open an escort agency in NYC.
Have owned and ran several in the past and know every cell in this type of business.
I will agree to run it for a period of 3 years.
All profits would be a 50/50 split.
I would open and run it with all the work involved.
Not looking for someone to help me run it, the investor would remain only an investor.
Profits range monthly in the amounts of $15,000 to $25,000 each.
100% legal and very profitable.
Again only looking for an investor.
It would take $30,000 to open (no less).
It will take a period of 3 weeks to open from start to finish.
Looking to open right now (winter season very busy).
ONLY serious investors need respond that want to meet, discuss, and move forward.

Very profitable and very legal.
I will respond very prompt to call and text or email.

...very legal."

…very legal.”

“If San Francisco Had The Same Population Density As Manhattan, It Could Be Home To Around 3 Million Residents Instead Of Its Current 800,000”

August 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’ve read that if New Hampshire had the same population density as Brooklyn, every American could live in the state. In a Priceonomics post about San Francisco devoting more than 2% of its land to golf courses when it’s so squeezed for space that burying the dead within city limits isn’t permitted, Alex Mayyasi spells out how sparse the population is and why:

“To the extent that the surprising prevalence of golf courses in San Francisco has relevance to the city’s debates over gentrification, it’s likely as a reminder that the city’s small, constrained size — a commonly cited culprit for high rent prices — is not to blame. If San Francisco had the same population density as Manhattan, it could be home to around 3 million residents instead of its current 800,000. But in order to protect San Francisco from change, its residents have consistently voted for zoning laws that prevent developers from building taller commercial and residential buildings — even downtown. Similarly, a great public transport system could allow people to enjoy San Francisco’s employment opportunities and cultural capital while living outside the city limits, but the Bay Area Transport system has not ‘had a significant upgrade in San Francisco since 1976.‘“

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“I Modeled Tracy After My Conception Of The Ideal American Sherlock Holmes”

August 13, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

It’s odd that Dick Tracy, a strip loaded with forensics and retrofuturism, hasn’t translated into our gadget-happy world which loves crime-scene entertainments and cartoon-driven blockbusters. Here’s the strip’s creator, Chester Gould, who penned its panels from 1931 to 1977, on To Tell the Truth in 1965.

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A Brief Note From 1885 About A Headless Chicken

August 13, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 11, 1885 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a story 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.”

“Why Then Has It Taken So Long To Discover The Sun?”

August 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The New Republic has republished “The Billion-Dollar Fight Over Who Owns the Sun,” a 1975 article by Peter Barnes about the city of Santa Clara working to ensure our brightest star would be a public utility. The opening:

“The city of Santa Clara lies 50 miles south of San Francisco in a robustly sunny valley. As in much of California, rain is concentrated in the winter months, leaving nearly 300 days a year of clear skies. Until now no one paid much attention to the economic value of all that sunshine. But things are changing. By July the city will have completed a new recreation building that will draw about 80 percent of its heating and cooling energy from solar collectors mounted on the roof. After that the city itself will plunge into the solar energy business. ‘What we see is a city-owned solar utility,’ says City Manager Donald Von Raesfeld. ‘The city will finance and install solar heating and cooling systems in new buildings. Consumers will pay a monthly fee to cover amortization and maintenance of the solar units. This will be done on a nonprofit basis, with the capital raised through municipal bonds.’

Santa Clara isn’t alone in its effort to convert sunshine into useful energy. A recent survey listed 68 US buildings, either completed or near completion, that are getting some or all of their energy from the sun. Dozens of corporations are involved in solar research. The federal government is pouring millions of dollars into solar research and development projects. And while the big commitment of government and industry is still to fossil fuels and nuclear fission, energy from the sun is no longer dismissed as farfetched or far off. According to a Westinghouse study funded by the National Science Foundation, solar heating and cooling of buildings will be economically competitive in most parts of the country by 1985-90, and are already almost competitive in sunny regions like California and Florida. By the end of the century, says the NSF, the sun could provide more than one-third of the energy we use to heat and cool buildings, plus 20 to 30 percent of our electricity needs. It could dramatically reduce peak demands for electricity—mainly for summer air-conditioning — and conserve fossil fuels for petro-chemical uses for which there are no ready substitutes. Congress is equally enthused. Last year it passed five laws dealing wholly or partly with solar energy research, spreading money somewhat chaotically among the NSF, NASA, HUD and a new energy research and development agency.

The attractions of solar energy are apparent. It doesn’t pollute or otherwise damage the environment. It creates no dangerous waste products such as plutonium. It won’t run out for a few billion years. It can’t be embargoed by Arabs or anyone else. It’s virtually inflation proof once the basic set-up costs are met, and would wondrously improve our balance of payments. The technology involved, while still not perfected, is much less complex than nuclear technology. And of all energy sources the sun is the least amenable to control by cartel-like energy industry.

Why then has it taken so long to discover the sun? One reason is that the energy contained in sunshine is diffuse and fickle compared to the concentrated energy found in fossil fuels. As long as fossil fuels were plentiful and fairly easy to get at, it was considerably more profitable to collect and sell these stored forms of solar energy than to capture the sun’s current energy emissions. Another reason is the massive commitment of dollars and scientists the US made after World War II to the development of nuclear energy, a commitment that in retrospect appears to have derived at least partly from guilt over having unleashed the atom for destructive purposes, (‘If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago,’ chemist George Porter has observed,) Solar energy is finally looking attractive because fossil fuels are no longer cheap, and because the drawbacks of nuclear fission—its hazards, huge capital costs, and low gains in net energy terms (it takes enormous amounts of energy to build reactors and prepare their fuel)—are now more widely appreciated.”

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“Some Of The Revelations Attributed To Snowden May Not In Fact Have Come From Him But From Another Leaker”

August 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Information may not want to be free from a financial standpoint, but it does want to be unfettered, with centralized, controlled data no longer a possibility in this connected age. That’s the reality made clear by the Edward Snowden leaks, even if his NSA revelations weren’t exactly a shocker to anyone with open eyes. In many cases this new normal will be a good thing and in some a bad one. But no legislation will really stop it.

Further complicating matters is that most Americans don’t seem to mind if their government snoops on them in the (supposed) name of protecting them. In these scary times, they want a big brother, even if it’s Big Brother.

From “The Most Wanted Man in the World,” James Bamford’s Wired cover article, a passage about a possible second leaker, which is likely though Snowden neither confirms nor denies:

“And there’s another prospect that further complicates matters: Some of the revelations attributed to Snowden may not in fact have come from him but from another leaker spilling secrets under Snowden’s name. Snowden himself adamantly refuses to address this possibility on the record. But independent of my visit to Snowden, I was given unrestricted access to his cache of documents in various locations. And going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find some of the documents that have made their way into public view, leading me to conclude that there must be a second leaker somewhere. I’m not alone in reaching that conclusion. Both Greenwald and security expert Bruce Schneier—who have had extensive access to the cache—have publicly stated that they believe another whistle-blower is releasing secret documents to the media.

In fact, on the first day of my Moscow interview with Snowden, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel comes out with a long story about the NSA’s operations in Germany and its cooperation with the German intelligence agency, BND. Among the documents the magazine releases is a top-secret ‘Memorandum of Agreement’ between the NSA and the BND from 2002. ‘It is not from Snowden’s material,’ the magazine notes.

Some have even raised doubts about whether the infamous revelation that the NSA was tapping German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, long attributed to Snowden, came from his trough. At the time of that revelation, Der Spiegel simply attributed the information to Snowden and other unnamed sources. If other leakers exist within the NSA, it would be more than another nightmare for the agency—it would underscore its inability to control its own information and might indicate that Snowden’s rogue protest of government overreach has inspired others within the intelligence community. ‘They still haven’t fixed their problems,’ Snowden says. ‘They still have negligent auditing, they still have things going for a walk, and they have no idea where they’re coming from and they have no idea where they’re going. And if that’s the case, how can we as the public trust the NSA with all of our information, with all of our private records, the permanent record of our lives?'”

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“I Would Be Willing To Make A Very Strong Commitment That It Could Be Done In 15 Years”

August 13, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the earlier post about Freeman Dyson’s outré dreams for space colonization, I mentioned he thought too restrained the planetary-settlement plans of fellow Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. Here’s a bit from a 1975 interview Stewart Brand conducted with O’Neill on the topic:

“Stewart Brand::

What would it take for you to become a fulltime space colonizer?

Gerard O’Neill:

Well, if the president came to me and said, ‘Here is X-billion dollars, we’re going to go ahead with the thing and we want you to be involved with it.’ That would sure fetch me.

Stewart Brand:

Suppose NASA said ‘Here’s 5 years of personal salary to administer the growth of this program?’

Gerard O’Neill:

That’s not enough. I have a deep suspicion of governments, and really – although I’m not politically active-I know enough about politics to be very suspicious of it; I think I would have to see a really substantial committed kind of program going. I don’t mean at the spending level of billions of dollars, but I’d like to see something where there’s a very solid commitment to continue in the same sense as there was in the Apollo program.

Stewart Brand:

Of the level of Kennedy saying, ‘We’re going to be on the Moon in this decade’ For some politician to make this go, he’s going to have to say ‘by the year so-and so.’ What year is that?

Gerard O’Neill:

Arthur Kantrowitz, the president of AFCO-Everett was out visiting us a few days ago. He happens to be quite enthusiastic about this work, and he says that his answer for things of that kind is to say, ‘You’ll have the result ten years after you’ve stopped laughing,’ which is I think, a pretty good answer. The most responsible answer I could give is to say that if I really had the responsibility for getting it done by a certain time and the authority to do it in what I would consider the right way, then I would be willing to make a very strong commitment that it could be done in 15 years from time-zero. Whatever that time-zero is.

Stewart Brand:

This is Model One with an extra-territorial population of what?

Gerard O’Neill: 

Yes, Model One. Roughly 10,000 people. If you look at the growth rates that you could get from that first one, then you’d probably be talking about a quarter of a million people by the year 2,000. Because you’ll be going up very fast after you get the first beachhead.

Stewart Brand:

And your graph I saw in Washington suggested a net population decrease on the planet’s surface by…

Gerard O’Neill:

I think the turn-over there is about 2018. Now that was based – first of all, I don’t make it as a prediction – it was indicated as a technical possibility, and it was based on a time-zero of essentially now, which is certainly unrealistic politically, and a completion date of 13 years, so that would put Model One in place by 1988. Maybe you could even do it from now, technically, but it’s probably more reasonable to say 13-20 years from a time of decision.

Stewart Brand:

Do you think there’s no way to get the toothpaste back in the tube at this point…. that the idea is inevitable?

Gerard O’Neill:

There are other possibilities. Civilization could tear itself apart with energy shortages, population pressures, and running out of materials. Everything could become much more militaristic, and the whole world might get to be more of an armed camp. Things of this kind might just not be done because no nation would dare to divert that much money away from military efforts. or without war, it could be that the world will become poor, to the point where it can’t afford to try things like this.

Of course, if neither of those possibilities occurs, then I do think there is some sort of inevitability about it. With that, of course, you can’t associate a time-scale. It could be a long time.

Stewart Brand:

Who resists the idea in any large way? If anyone.

Gerard O’Neill:

Well there was a while when I thought that elderly and famous professors of physics were the greatest opponents. . . In fact of all the mail I’ve gotten only about 1% has been in opposition to it.

Stewart Brand:

And what’s your short roster of planetary problems that will be solved by this particular technique? Energy, population. . .

Gerard O’Neill:

Well, yes, but by phrasing the question in that way it’s difficult for me to answer except with a prediction or promise, and that’s something that no decent scientist likes to make. I think it’s very wrong to assume that something like this is going to promise happiness to all people, because people manage to make themselves unhappy in almost any circumstances.”

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 13, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Ninja looking for help meeting woman (Chinatown/Little Italy)

I am a Ninja. I work professional in Japan for prominent family near 40 years and they railroad me. I now live with friend in Manhattan. I will teach you all ancient arts and show my tools and disguised clothing. You will become a Ninja. In return for becoming Ninja you may help me meet good friendly local woman for friendship.

"They railroad me."

“They railroad me.”

“A Team Of Young Cyberspace Entrepreneurs Celebrated What Was Apparently The First Retail Transaction On The Internet”

August 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A Marketwatch article by Ariana Tobin pointed me to the New York Times’ 1993 coverage of the first online retail purchase–a Sting CD. Here’s the opening of that piece, “Attention Shoppers: Internet Is Open,” by Peter H. Lewis:

“At noon yesterday, Phil Brandenberger of Philadelphia went shopping for a compact audio disk, paid for it with his credit card and made history.

Moments later, the champagne corks were popping in a small two-story frame house in Nashua, N.H. There, a team of young cyberspace entrepreneurs celebrated what was apparently the first retail transaction on the Internet using a readily available version of powerful data encryption software designed to guarantee privacy.

Experts have long seen such iron-clad security as a necessary first step before commercial transactions can become common on the Internet, the global computer network.

From his work station in Philadelphia, Mr. Brandenburger logged onto the computer in Nashua, and used a secret code to send his Visa credit card number to pay $12.48, plus shipping costs, for the compact disk Ten Summoners’ Tales by the rock musician Sting.

‘Even if the N.S.A. was listening in, they couldn’t get his credit card number,’ said Daniel M. Kohn, the 21-year-old chief executive of the Net Market Company of Nashua, N.H., a new venture that is the equivalent of a shopping mall in cyberspace. Mr. Kohn was referring to the National Security Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that develops and breaks the complex algorithms that are used to keep the most secret electronic secrets secret.

Even bigger organizations working on rival systems yesterday called the achievement by the tiny Net Market a welcome first step.

‘It’s really clear that most companies want the security prior to doing major commitments to significant electronic commerce on the Internet,’ said Cathy Medich, executive director of Commercenet, a Government and industry organization based in Menlo Park, Calif., that hopes to establish standards for commercial transactions on the Internet and other networks.

The idea is to make such data communications immune to wiretaps, electronic eavesdropping and theft by scrambling the transmissions with a secret code — a security technique known as data encryption.”

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“It Was A Strange Kind Of Artificial Place”

August 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Kate Dailey at BBC, a recollection of the lifestyle of thousands U.S. citizens like John McCain who lived in the Panama Canal Zone, a stamp-sized America, yes, yet a dreamworld all its own:

“For almost 100 years, thousands of Americans lived a life of luxury in secluded tropical communities close to the Bay of Panama. Known as ‘Zonians,’ they maintained one of the world’s great engineering feats – the Panama Canal.

Established in 1903, the Panama Canal Zone constituted a home away from home for the Americans who built and maintained the Panama Canal and the workers who supported them.

The zone was an area of 533 square miles that ran the course of the canal and was controlled by the US. Families were given generous benefits, including subsidised housing, ample holiday time, well-stocked commissaries and attentive staff.

Its residents enjoyed the beautiful weather and more relaxed lifestyle of Panama, while also living in comfortable American-style housing, experiencing a top-notch American education and enjoying all the perks of US citizenship.

‘It was a strange kind of artificial place,’ says Michael Donoghue, author of Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone. His father travelled through the zone during World War Two, and compared it to ‘a small southern town transplanted into the middle of Central America.'”

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Old Print Article: “Valuables Found In The Mire,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1886)

August 12, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Dead babies a few years ago were not an uncommon occurrence.”

“Dead babies a few years ago were not an uncommon occurrence.”

Trash has always been full of treasure and those who won contracts to remove offal from districts of Brooklyn in the 1800s checked the refuse closely for riches before chucking it, because you never knew what was going to turn up. And it was no different in London. From the July 4, 1886 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“‘You would be surprised,’ sad a well known offal contractor to an Eagle reporter recently, ‘at the large number of valuables found in the city’s dumping grounds. Although the men in charge of the dumps deny that anything of value is ever found, I can vouch that they don’t always tell the truth. Miscellaneous articles, such as silver teaspoons, knives and forks, shoes and clothing, in good and bad condition, are picked up daily, but it frequently happens that gold watches and diamonds are among the valuables found. Dead babies a few years ago were not an uncommon occurrence. In the government grounds ten cents is charged for each load dumped. Articles of an unusual character are only found in the ashes and swill refuse. Ladies washing dishes will drop rings in the swill, and by the time they have missed them the swill will be on its way either to the dumping grounds or the piggeries. Diamonds, from earrings and rings, are lost in the same manner.

In London, the contract for examining ashes and swill is awarded to the highest bidder. The method employed by the contractor to ascertain whether any articles of value are contained in the rubbish is a novel one. The carts are dumped on a screen, which, after having become filled, is elevated into the air. A dozen men dressed in rubber suits, without pockets, are set to work on the screen. These men go over the ashes and the offal carefully, and in case anything valuable is found it is turned over at once to the contractor and superintendent. As the workers wear pocketless clothing they can secure nothing about their persons. After all the ashes have been thoroughly screened they are covered and a new lot examined.”

“As Well As The Internet Of Things, Autonomous Vehicles, Consumer 3D Printing And Wearable Computing Are All Innovations That Are Over-Hyped”

August 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Atop the list of overhyped technologies from a new Gartner report: the Internet of Things. Defining common standards is the main problem. Speech recognition, however, is now ready for the masses, the research argues. From Alex Hern at the Guardian:

“Initially, a new technology enters the public’s awareness with low expectations, which slowly rise as the potential becomes clear. Quantum computing, holographic displays and human augmentation are all at that period of the cycle, although the firm puts all three of them at well over 10 years from general use.

Eventually, expectations hit a peak, where the technology is predicted to solve almost every problem known to humanity. As well as the internet of things, autonomous vehicles, consumer 3D printing and wearable computing are all innovations that Gartner thinks are over-hyped at the moment.

Then comes what Gartner calls the ‘trough of disillusionment’: the period when the realisation hits on that the technology is never going to perform as well as its proponents hoped. Examples include gamification, augmented reality, and near-field communication.

Importantly, however, the tech doesn’t disappear from use, and continues to be refined throughout the trough of disillusionment. As the innovation finds its niche, it enters the ‘slope of enlightenment,’ where the public realises the actual potential of the product, as with enterprise 3D printing and gesture control.

Finally, the new technology hits the ‘plateau of productivity.’ It has become good enough to carry out its functions, and the period of hype is far enough in the past that people are willing to give it a second chance. For Gartner, speech recognition has hit that plateau, and is now ready for real world use.”

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“A Robot Was Cooking Up Burgers”

August 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

McDonald’s recently reported poor global sales, hurt mostly by dips in the United States and Asia, so perhaps health information and the reality of factory farming are starting to make a dent. But there’s a way on the horizon for fast-food franchises–and even slower-meal places–to save money: robotics. Employee-less service in a consumer environment is nothing new, but perhaps this time it’s real. From Jason Dorrier at Singularity Hub:

“I saw the future of work in a San Francisco garage two years ago. Or rather, I was in proximity to the future of work, but happened to be looking the other direction.

At the time, I was visiting a space startup building satellites behind a carport. But just behind them—a robot was cooking up burgers. The inventors of the burger device? Momentum Machines, and they’re serious about fast food productivity.

‘Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,’ cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas has said. ‘It’s meant to completely obviate them.’

The Momentum burger-bot isn’t remotely humanoid. You can forget visions ofFuturama’s Bender. It’s more of a burger assembly line. Ingredients are stored in automated containers along the line. Instead of pre-prepared veggies, cheese, and ground beef—the bot chars, slices, dices, and assembles it all fresh.

Why would talented engineers schooled at Berkeley, Stanford, UCSB, and USC with experience at Tesla and NASA bother with burger-bots? Robots are increasingly capable of jobs once thought the sole domain of humans—and that’s a huge opportunity.

Burger robots may improve consistency and sanitation, and they can knock out a rush like nobody’s business. Momentum’s robot can make a burger in 10 seconds (360/hr). Fast yes, but also superior quality. Because the restaurant is free to spend its savings on better ingredients, it can make gourmet burgers at fast food prices.

Or at least, that’s the idea.”

 

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“If This Is The Future…What Is Underway May Be A Kind Of Mercy Killing”

August 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Once valuable print properties at Time Inc. and Gannett and Tribune and elsewhere have been spun off from their parent companies, formerly favored children now grown awkward and cast aside. Weren’t they only recently beloved?

These and other print-based corporations hope to remake themselves as Buzzfeed or some other bullshit that works financially, but it’s unlikely. From David Carr at the New York Times:

“At Gannett newspapers, reader metrics will drive coverage and journalists will work with dashboards of data to guide reporting. After years of layoffs, many staff members were immediately told that they had to reapply for jobs when the split was announced. In an attempt to put some lipstick on an ugly pivot, Stefanie Murray, executive editor of The Tennessean, promised readers ‘an ambitious project to create the newsroom of the future, right here in Nashville. We are testing an exciting new structure that is geared toward building a dynamic, responsive newsroom.’ (Jim Romenesko, who blogs about the media industry, pointed out that Gannett also announced ‘the newsroom of the future’ in 2006.)

The Nashville Scene noted that readers had to wait only one day to find out what the news of the future looks like: a Page 1 article in The Tennessean about Kroger, a grocery store and a major advertiser, lowering its prices.

If this is the future — attention news shoppers, Hormel Chili is on sale in Aisle 5 — what is underway may be a kind of mercy killing.

So whose fault is it? No one’s. Nothing is wrong in a fundamental sense: A free-market economy is moving to reallocate capital to its more productive uses, which happens all the time. Ask Kodak. Or Blockbuster. Or the makers of personal computers. Just because the product being manufactured is news in print does not make it sacrosanct or immune to the natural order.“

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A Brief Note From 1890 About Lactose Intolerance

August 11, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the August 1, 1890 New York Times:

“Plainfield, N.J. – Mary Goldsmith, who died near Plainfield a day or two ago in consequence, it is supposed, of a too free drinking of milk, was a cook employed on Gen, Schwenck’s large dairy farm, Holly Grove, on the Park Avenue Road. She was a middle-aged woman and had been in Gen. Schwenck’s service for some time.

She became very fond of the fresh milk, and drank it warm as it came from the cows morning and evening. The family cannot say how much she drank a day, but they think she must have consumed three or four gallons. She grew stout, but seemed to be in perfect health till within a day or two of her death. Then she complained of pains around her heart. She finally suffered so much that she was forced to her bed, and died a few hours later.”

“In Theory, Hackers Could Infiltrate A Car’s Communication System To Control Its Physical Maneuvers”

August 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When I first started taking autonomous vehicles seriously four years ago, I had two hesitations about them even if the software could be worked out:

1) Would Americans, who have long loved the power of being kings of the road, surrender the wheel any sooner than they’d surrender their guns?

2) Couldn’t a hacker force 300 robocars on a Los Angeles freeway to simultaneously suddenly turn left when they weren’t supposed to?

I think number one has been answered in the affirmative, with driverless vehicles so incentivized financially that the majority of us will choose autonomous and use fleets of robocabs, perhaps sacrificing not just the steering wheel but ownership of the whole car.

The answer to the second question is still in flux and likely always will be, with automakers and software developers needing to stay a mile ahead of the hackers. From Danny Yadron at the Wall Street Journal:

“Tesla is one of the only household corporate names with an official presence this year at Def Con, an annual security conference held in Las Vegas, where attendees try to hack the hotel elevators and press room. The company is here courting hackers who can help it find holes in the software that controls its cars. It’s looking to hire 20 to 30 security researchers from Def Con alone, Ms. Paget says. Moreover, hackers who report bugs to Tesla get a platinum-colored ‘challenge coin.’ If they show up at a Tesla factory and give the security team a heads-up, they get a free tour.

Tesla’s presence at Def Con points to a growing concern among automakers: As they connect vehicles to the Internet, bad guys could find a way in.

In one presentation this week, two researchers showed how some cars, such as Chrysler Group’s 2014 Jeep Cherokee, have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication systems on the same network as their brakes or automatic parallel parking programs. In theory, hackers could infiltrate a car’s communication system to control its physical maneuvers, said Charlie Miller, one of the researchers who has hacked cars in the past.”

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“Who Could Oppose ‘Smarter’ Sentencing?”

August 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Here’s a scary development from our big-data reality: predictive sentencing for defendants based on statistics which suggest future-crime risk. The actual offense committed is only part of the equation, with much thornier things, like race and class, considered. It’s often referred to as “smart sentencing,” but you might not agree if you happen to fit into the wrong statistical quadrant. It’s math run amok. From Sonja B. Starr at the New York Times:

“ANN ARBOR, Mich. — IN a recent letter to the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized the growing trend of evidence-based sentencing, in which courts use data-driven predictions of defendants’ future crime risk to shape sentences. Mr. Holder is swimming against a powerful current. At least 20 states have implemented this practice, including some that require risk scores to be considered in every sentencing decision. Many more are considering it, as is Congress, in pending sentencing-reform bills.

Risk-assessment advocates say it’s a no-brainer: Who could oppose ‘smarter’ sentencing? But Mr. Holder is right to pick this fight. As currently used, the practice is deeply unfair, and almost certainly unconstitutional. It contravenes the principle that punishment should depend on what a defendant did, not on who he is or how much money he has.

The basic problem is that the risk scores are not based on the defendant’s crime. They are primarily or wholly based on prior characteristics: criminal history (a legitimate criterion), but also factors unrelated to conduct. Specifics vary across states, but common factors include unemployment, marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background, including family members’ criminal history.”

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“I’d Put My Money On The Asteroids”

August 11, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The dominant idea in space colonization today is that we’ll fill up the moon or Mars in a large-scale settlement of 4D cities, try to make it approximate another Earth, with all the comforts of home. But while something with such familiarity may appeal to the masses, Freeman Dyson has long dreamed of exploration on the margins, of something stranger, more diffuse and, perhaps, more dangerous: He wants pioneers to grow vegetables on asteroids.

In a 1978 interview with Omni’s Monte Davis about artificial biodomes and smart clouds, the physicist stood in contrast to his fellow Princeton professor Gerard K. O’Neill, who envisioned massive, standardized space habitats. Regardless of which schemes are superior, Dyson presciently realized at the time that the future of space settlements might be powered by private interests, and in 2014 those entrepreneurs favor O’Neill’s view over his. An excerpt:

“Freeman Dyson:

I’ve done some historical research on the costs of the Mayflower’s voyage, and on the Mormon’s emigration to Utah, and I think it’s possible to go into space on a much smaller scale. A cost on the order of $40,000 per person would be the target to shoot for; in terms of real wages that would make it comparable to the colonization of America. Unless it’s brought down to that level, it not really interesting to me, because otherwise it would be a luxury that only governments could afford.

Omni:

Where would your Mayflower-style colonists go?

Freeman Dyson:

I’d put my money on the asteroids. Dandridge Cole and others suggested using a solar mirror to melt and hollow out an iron asteroid, and in O’Neill’s book his homesteaders build their own shells from the minerals available out there. I wouldn’t accept either of those as the most sensible course: I think you should find an asteroid which is not iron or nickel, but some kind of soil you could grow things in.

Omni:

What do you mean by soil?

Freeman Dyson:

Well, we have specimens of meteoritic mineral called carbonaceous chondrite, which looks like soil–it’s black, crumbly stuff containing a good deal of water; it has enough carbon, nitrogen, oxygen so that there’s some hope you could grow vegetables in it, and it’s soft enough to dig without using dynamite.

Omni:

So you think it would be worth looking for an asteroid like that rather than trying to transform a raw stone or metal asteroid?

Freeman Dyson:

Yes, if it’s to be done on a pioneer basis, you’d jolly well better find a place where you can grow things right away. Otherwise it’s inevitably a much slower and more expensive job.

Omni:

Is the sunlight at a distance adequate to grow plants?

Freeman Dyson:

I think so. Plants are very flexible in their requirements, you know, and they could be genetically altered if it’s needed. After all, a lot of things grow very well even in England…

Omni:

What about colonizing the moon? Too much gravity?

Freeman Dyson:

That…and it’s simply too close to home. Too easy for the tax man to find you. And choosing a place to go is not just a question of freight charges. There have always been minorities who valued their differences and their independence enough to make very great sacrifices, and it seems obvious to me that it’s going to happen again.

Omni:

So you think we may not go in for the big O’Neill-type colonies after all?

Freeman Dyson: 

We may not, but others may. I was in Russia two years ago for a conference on telescopes, and all that anyone there wanted to hear about was O’Neill’s ideas. They knew that he and I were both at Princeton, and assumed I could tell them everything about space colonies. The point is that in Russia, they have very little of our current mistrust of technology on the grand scale–in fact, it fits very well with their ideas about our relationship to nature. Thousands of engineers working on a giant framework floating in space, that’s a picture that excited them very much. I wouldn’t be surprised if they choose that.

If they do, the historical analogy becomes very strong: the Russians play the role of Spanish colonies in the New World, and people like me are more like the English, with smaller, scattered, decentralized colonies. Of course, it took the English much longer to get going, but when we did go we did a better job.”

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“We’ve Never Successfully Predicted Any Emerging Infection Or Pandemic Before It Happens”

August 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When I mentioned that I didn’t think that Ebola virus would become a pandemic–though it’s certainly horrible for those who have it–that’s because the next big thing will likely catch us unawares. We’ll have to spend time figuring out what it is and how to deal with it. That will allow the threat to spread, give it time to take hold. If enough people become carriers before we truly know what hit us, that’s when we see mass suffering on a global scale. For all the terror of Ebola, it’s already “announced” itself.

One exchange from “How to Survive the Next Plague,” Joanna Rothkopf’s Salon interview with epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Morse:

“Salon:

Moving into the theoretical future, what kinds of emerging viruses could we see? How well are we prepared to handle a virus that comes as a surprise?

Dr. Stephen Morse:

It’s always easier to prepare for the known, especially when you have warning from somebody else experiencing it and suffering through it. People always ask me which emerging viruses do I worry the most about, and I always say the ones we haven’t found yet, because we’re least prepared for that. If they show infectious signs, like a seizure or severe flu-like illness — these all start like flu-like illnesses and sort of rapidly get worse — hopefully in North American and Western Europe we would all have the awareness to take the appropriate infection control precautions and, as we do with Ebola, treat the patient symptomatically, give them the best supportive treatment until hopefully they get better or whatever.

Obviously we would be trying to identify the virus in the laboratory. There are some more generic ways to do that now with sequencing, and there are some broad-based techniques that will identify even some viruses of known families but which are themselves unknown. But as for the precautions, I think they would generally be fairly similar. These are fairly generic and that’s the good news: that people are careful and take basically similar precautions as they would for SARS or Ebola and try to find out what the patient has.

I have no idea, truthfully. We’ve never successfully predicted any emerging infection or pandemic before it happens — that is, before it actually started to appear in humans. And even with influenza, every prediction we’ve made about the next influenza pandemic has been wrong. So I’m always very cautious about making predictions, but I think many of the generic things you do at the beginning would be useful.

As for the public health systems? I think certainly that’s an area that is stretched pretty thin. New York City is excellent and they work very hard. Even they would tell you that they’re understaffed and many other places have even less. One of the issues in Africa, of course, is the lack of real public health infrastructure in many countries. Not much information sharing across those borders, although the people and the microbes cross the borders quite regularly.”

 

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“Memory Is At The Foundation Of Humanity”

August 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As an outsider, I’ve never understood UK privacy laws, which are supposed to be more stringent than America’s free-market melee, yet seem to have absolutely no impact on how tabloids can tarnish the reputation of whomever they please. These rules seem to have done little good in protecting “memory.”

Of course, in a globalized world, when information can travel across borders instantly, there’s little practicality in attempting to be “forgotten,” even though the exposure sometimes pains us. As a very private person, I wish it were different. It’s not.

Maybe I feel that way because I’m from the U.S., or maybe it’s because I’m pragmatic about privacy in the wake of the tools we’ve developed–and the ones that will come soon enough.

Julia Powles of the Guardian has a very different take. The opening of her article:

“Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has a particular cultural and economic perspective on free speech – reflected in comments made both by him and by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Free speech is undoubtedly a cornerstone of freedom, but it cannot always be fought or guarded in the court of public opinion; the free market of ideas.

To Wales, bad speech is defeated by more speech. Such a solution does not guarantee a defence to the weak and the marginalised. Here, in particular, the human rights that benefit all of us serve a fundamental purpose.

In the UK – where a serious legal commitment to human rights is wavering – we cannot afford to be loose with terminology. Wales refers, inaccurately, to ‘history as a human right,’ to ‘the right to remember,’ to ‘the right to truth.’

Of course, memory is at the foundation of humanity. Memory builds truth, truth brings justice, and justice brings peace. These are the fundamental pillars of human society.

Within these pillars, the right to privacy and, in Europe, the right to personal data, are embedded, harmonised, legally-recognised human rights.

And so we come to the hard sociopolitical problem at the heart of the so-called ‘right to be forgotten.’ It is not about the search engines, online services, Google, or Wikipedia. It is about the value humanity ascribes to them as purveyors of ‘truth,’ of ‘history,’ and of ‘memory.’

It is about confronting what they really are.”

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“If You Can Deliver Groceries, Why Not Deliver Health Care As Well?”

August 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If Silicon Valley and Alley are now the preeminent Dream Factories, it makes sense that tech start-ups are identified by pithy, cross-pollination pitches worthy of Hollywood blockbusters, so Pager, a service that delivers medical professionals to your doorstep when beckoned by a smartphone, is, of course, “Uber for doctors.” A couple of exchanges from Sarah Kliff’s Vox interview with company founder Richard Baker:

“Sarah Kliff:

Can you tell a little bit about the theory behind Pager, and how it fits into the current system of how we deliver health care?

Richard Baker:

Pager began with the idea that health care needs to be delivered in a more efficient and convenient way. We do already have a connected world, with telemedicine, but Pager and its founders thought there could be a better way of delivering health care by actually delivering it to people. If you can deliver groceries, why not deliver health care as well? Why not have urgent care on wheels?

If a person is living alone — and 32 million Americans are — or if you have a child who is home with a nanny, why not bring a doctor to that individual?

Oscar Salazar [an original engineer behind Uber], Philip Eytan, and Gaspard de Dreuzy, are all technology entrepreneurs who thought if we could use technology to make it really simple for patients, it could work. And you can see the app has a lot of Uber finger prints all over it.

Sarah Kliff:

One of the things I find interesting about Pager is that, even though it uses new technology, its almost like a throw-back to an older era of medicine when doctors did lots of house calls. But house calls faded away as it became more convenient for doctors to see their patients in the office. What makes right now the right time to bring back the house call?

Richard Baker:

This is a bit of a ‘back to the future’ situation. My father was what at the time was called a GP, or general practitioner, and was doing house calls in the 1950s and 1960s. He liked it very very much. He got a great deal of satisfaction with the personal interaction. But it ultimately fell out of favor with specialization, and enormous pressure of having things done in the office.

I think at this point, doctors have evolved in what they think is important. This can potentially be more fulfilling than simply running an emergency room or through a very busy office practice. And this is also a supplement to their income. Even though doctors do tend to do very nicely, primary-care doctors may be interested in that.”

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Old Print Article: “Pill Dinners,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1899)

August 10, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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“A little thing that looks like a bean, but is really a whole mince pie, is swallowed.”

The only way to explain the following August 28, 1899 article is that either people in Indianapolis were taking their dinner in pill form or editors at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle were taking their lunch in liquid form. More likely the latter. An excerpt:

“Capsule banquets? Well, hardly! The idea of sitting around a table in company, taking pills and bursting into song, quip and jest and eloquence over a pellet! What are the scientists trying to do? Drive all the gayety out of the world? Such is the horrible possibility disclosed by way they dine in Indianapolis. It appears that in that city the public takes its steaks in capsules of concentrated beef–little capsules no bigger than a quinine pill. All that the hotel keeper has to furnish with it is a glass of water and a crumb of salt. Then they take a little powder which used to be a potato and toss that down, and if a regular table d’hote dinner as required a compressed tomato for salad and a little thing that looks like a bean, but is really a whole mince pie, is swallowed, and after that a demitasse follows of about the size of a homeopathic pill.

This kind of thing may do for Indianapolis and other Western cities where people are so busy making money and politics that they would forget to eat if they did not have their dinners in their pockets and have alarm clocks that went off warningly at the time to take them. But we can say to Indianapolis right now that she need not look for any outside endorsements of her persnickety practices. When we eat we do so not merely to sustain life, but because, when the right sort of victuals are afforded, it is fun to eat. We like to eat in company and bandy remarks across the table and up and down the length of it, and we like to wash down every course with colored liquids that look as if they were drawn from the jars and bottles that druggists keep in their windows, but are different. We are especially anxious as to those liquids. If in an emergency we consented to take our steaks in pellets and eat our soup dry in one tiny mouthful, are we supposed to take champagne and other mineral waters in a mustard spoon? Shall we quaff out Chateau Yquem and our Pontet Canet in single drops that would get lost between our tongue tips and our throats?

Why, the mere anxiety of keeping track of the potables in a dinner like that would offset all the possible pleasure to be had out of the banquet. Suppose a waiter were accidentally to stuff a couple of cases of Chablis into his vest pocket while he was gathering a service of fried chicken out of a pill box, and spill all the wine! Where would he then be and where would be the dinner? No sirs. We prefer to believe that stomachs were given to us in order to do work, and we do not thank the scientists who are trying to persuade us that all of our waking hours should be diverted from dinner and refreshments and devoted to labor and Lofty Thought. If this is all that science intends to do for us, down with science! Meantime, let us keep putting down pudding and cocktails and a lot of other joys.”

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