Urban Studies

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“Sporting A Gold Star Of David Around His Neck And Another On His Pinky, Lindsey Zips Around Southern California In A Mercedes 450 SL”

August 10, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The world is ending, eventually.

One who sees the curtain coming down sooner than later is the Christian evangelist Hal Lindsey, co-author with Carole C. Carlson of the meshuganah 1970 bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth, which estimated 1988 as the Judgement Day. Missed by that much. Lindsey, who is still alive as are many of the rest of us, spends his dotage accusing President Obama of being “the Antichrist.” Whatever.

In 1979, when the batshit book had been made into a film–with Orson Welles picking up late-life wine-and-bullfight money for handling the narration–Lindsey was profiled in a People piece by Lucretia Marmon. The opening:

In 1938 Orson Welles terrified radio listeners with War of the Worlds, an imaginative report of a Martian invasion. Now Welles, as gloomy-voiced narrator of a film, The Late Great Planet Earth, out this fall, tells another frightening tale. This time it is a movie version of the end of the world, based on a scenario by evangelist-author Hal Lindsey. The script, claims Lindsey, really isn’t his. It’s all in the Scriptures.

Lindsey’s book Earth, published in 1970, has been translated into 31 languages and 10 million copies have been sold. The public also snapped up five subsequent Lindsey books on the same subject, running his sales total to over 14 million.

Thus Lindsey, 47, may now be the foremost modern-day Jeremiah. ‘If I had been writing 15 years ago I wouldn’t have had an audience,’ he concedes. ‘But a tremendous number of people are worried about the future. I’m just part of that phenomenon.’

Lindsey splices Bible prophecies of doom with contemporary signs. For instance, he says the Bible pinpoints Israel’s rebirth as a nation as the catalyst to Judgment Day, which will probably occur by 1988. The intervening years will see the emergence of a 10-nation confederacy (prophet Daniel’s dreadful 10-horned beast) or, as Lindsey sees it, the European Common Market. Eventually Russia (biblical Magog) will attack Israel and precipitate a global nuclear war. Only Jesus’ followers will be spared. Hence, Lindsey advises, “the only thing you need to understand is that God offers you in Jesus Christ a full pardon.”

Meanwhile, is Lindsey cowering in his fallout shelter? Not at all. Sporting a gold Star of David around his neck and another on his pinky (‘After all, Jesus was a Jew’), Lindsey zips around Southern California in a Mercedes 450 SL. He conducts services on the beach and indulges in his hobbies of photography and surfing.•

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“This was a prophet–a false prophet”:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 10, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"No minors and pets shall be present while we work."

“No minors and pets shall be present while we work.”

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“A lot of strangers are replying with their dicks in their hands.”

A Note From 1902 About The Medical System

August 8, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 12, 1902 New York Times:

“Phoenix, Ariz.–’Padre,’ a big medicine man of the Yuma Indians, who lives on a reservation near Yuma, Ariz., has been offered as a sacrifice to the spirit in accordance with the custom of his tribe and has expiated the sins of the tribe, which are held responsible for an epidemic of smallpox.

The medicine man learned several days ago of the intention of the Indians to sacrifice him, and fled to the mountains. Being half starved he returned to the Indian village and pleaded for mercy. He was bound hand and foot and conveyed by a squad of Indians to Mexico, where he was bound to a tree and tortured to death.

‘Padre’ had a warm place in the hearts of his tribesmen, but their customs required them to make a heavy sacrifice.”

“The League Is Acknowledging That Football Can Be Extremely Hazardous To Your Mental Health”

August 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

At Pacific-Standard, Steve Swayne predicts that brain damage caused by football will force the end of most American high school and college programs within 15 years. It’s difficult to imagine that the coup de grâce will be administered so swiftly, but class-action suits will likely proliferate as we proceed. One note: The editor who wrote the article’s subheading should realize that “futból” also has a nasty head-injury problem. From Swayne:

“I’m not the first to make these suggestions; in a 2012 story in Grantland, economists Kevin Grier and Tyler Cowen looked at historical models of businesses dying off and provided some illustrations about how America would look without football. And the NCAA’s recent announcement giving more autonomy to the biggest conference schools will, in my estimation, only accelerate the speed of the changes as colleges and universities re-evaluate their finances and mission and weigh the place of football to both.

Even if football’s demise doesn’t come to pass as starkly as I imagine and they outline, we all can see that the world of football is changing rapidly and dramatically. At first the NFL was a league of denial when it came to the connection between concussions and brain damage. Then, having been sued by former players, the league offered a limited settlement. Now, ‘the N.F.L. has made an open-ended commitment to pay cash awards to retired players who have dementia and other conditions linked to repeated head hits,’ according to the New York Times. In short, the league is acknowledging that football can be extremely hazardous to your mental health.

It’s why I believe institutions of learning are going to re-evaluate the place of football and other high-impact sports in their missions. And I believe this re-evaluation is coming sooner than any of us imagine.”

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“Today Famous Figures Endure The Galella Treatment On A Regular Basis”

August 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There was a time when paparazzi and stars were predator and prey, but it’s more complicated now.

Deals are struck, contracts signed, and a paparazzo is hired to “stalk” a star to assure a Q rating remains copacetic. Sometimes a tabloid photographer does get a scoop, an embarrassing one, but these are free-marketers, not muckrakers, and they’ll gladly sell the photos back to the celebrity if they’re willing to pay more than the press. The two sides are in predetermined cahoots or open to such an ad-hoc arrangement, the idea that famous people can’t get away with what they used to, overstated. Those who get caught with their pants down are mostly pols and celebs dense enough to text their own incriminating images to strangers.

Alex Mayyasi of Priceonomics acknowledges some of these points but has a different take. The opening:

Before John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the handsome, young president had a public image as a doting father and as the man who called Americans to public service. In his private life, he was a serial adulterer. Historians have all but confirmed Kennedy’s involvement with women ranging from Marilyn Monroe to two White House interns who skinny dipped in the presidential pool and flew on Air Force One so that, as Caitlin Flanagan puts it in The Atlantic, “the president could always get laid if there was any trouble scaring up local talent.”

If a current president acted like Kennedy, reporters from every paper would seize on rumors until his presidency ended in shame. But the early 1960s were a different time; the American public remained ignorant of Kennedy’s affairs because no one reported on them. In his biography of Kennedy, Robert Dallek writes that Kennedy “remained confident that the mainstream press would not publicize his womanizing.” Even more incredible than the press’s self-imposed censorship is Dallek’s observation that when gossip columns began speculating about JFK and Marilyn, he sent a friend and former journalist to “tell the editors… that it’s just not true.” Apparently it got results.

After the JFK assassination, Jackie Kennedy lived in New York. She remained in the public eye as a fashion icon and as the widow of the fallen president, but she harbored no great secrets. Nevertheless, a Bronx resident by the name of Ron Galella would not leave her alone. Galella followed Jackie Kennedy Onassis incessantly, snapping pictures of her around the city and leading the former first lady to go to court to win a (largely ineffective) restraining order against Galella. 

‘Today famous figures endure the Galella treatment on a regular basis. Galella is the progenitor of the modern paparazzo who takes pictures of celebrities “doing things,” as he puts it, which is now so common that photographers struggle to get a good picture of Brad Pitt grabbing takeout because so many other paparazzi are crowding him to get a shot.

The proliferation of media devoted to covering famous figures, omnipresent paparazzi, and a change in the culture of how we treat celebrities — from adoring them from a distance to seeking both familiarity and the exposure of all their secrets — has led to an increase in the price of fame. Whereas Kennedy could trust the press not to expose his affairs, modern celebrities must design their lifestyle around avoiding cameras whenever they eat out. Over time, the public has come to expect a certain amount of transparency around famous people’s personal lives. We are all paparazzi now.•

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“Newspapers Would Openly Solicit Companies For Paid Advertising Designed To Look Like Straight News”

August 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Not even during the second half of 20th-century America, when owning a print-media organ was tantamount to a license to mint money, did we see a brief, shining moment when native advertising was considered so unseemly that it simply couldn’t be done. Oh, it was done. Today’s foundering news industry’s penchant for more and bigger advertorials is merely a deeper embrace of a practice that’s always been. 

From Matt Novak’s Paleofuture riposte to John Oliver’s very funny piece about the separation of church and state:

“One of the most interesting articles on the history of advertisements disguised as news is probably Linda Lawson’s 1988 paper, ‘Advertisements Masquerading as News in Turn-of-the-Century American Periodicals.’

Lawson explains just how prevalent advertorials were over a century ago. Back then they were called ‘reading notices:’

One such marketing technique was the reading notice. Assuming that people would be more likely to read news stories and editorials than display advertisements, businesses began writing advertisements in the form of news copy. Newspaper and magazine editors agreed to print them for money. 

Lawson cites over a dozen specific cases of advertising content appearing as editorial at the turn of the 20th century, and meticulously documents the many fights over the ethics involved. Newspapers would openly solicit companies for paid advertising designed to look like straight news, demanding much higher rates than traditional ads. Lawson even describes an instance in 1886 when the New York Times asked for and received $1,200 from the Bell Telephone Company in exchange for positive coverage.

Not long after this minor scandal at the Times, New York’s newspaper of record became the harshest critic of accepting money for editorial coverage.”

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Old Print Articles: “A Transaction In Babies,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1891)

August 7, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The beauty of it is that there is a large stock to choose from."

“The beauty of it is that there is a large stock to choose from.”

Before every infant was required by law to be accounted for by public authorities, “baby farms,” unlicensed businesses where newborns, often the unwanted offspring of prostitutes, exchanged hands for a profit via shadowy doorstep adoptions, were prevalent. These babies were not often cared for well as they awaited “purchase,” and the ones who perished were usually buried surreptitiously on the grounds of the farms. It was a dark practice that led to numerous shocking scandals. One such adoption story which had an odd twist was covered in perplexingly upbeat fashion in the February 18, 1891 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

“What is known as the ‘baby farm’ is not an entirely modern institution. Nor has it escaped its share of criticism; but it serves one excellent purpose in supplying babies at small cost to lonely couples which Providence has not blessed with children. The beauty of it is that there is a large stock to choose from and it is just as easy to obtain a bouncing little girl, with the customary blue eyes and golden hair, as it is to acquire title to a rosy, roaring and frolicsome boy. It is with keen appreciation of these advantages that Mrs. Huber of Lorimer street, this city, negotiated for a baby warranted to give satisfaction and, having taken it home, succeeded in convincing her husband that the visitor was his son and heir. Mr. Huber appears to be one of those gentle, confiding creatures who are quite willing to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, and it is absolutely certain that he would still be celebrating his newly acquired dignity as a ‘parent’ had not an unlooked for incident disturbed the serenity of his repose.

angrybabyA few days after the appearance of the crowing youngster at the Lorimer street domicile, Mr. Huber was surprised to find his quarters invaded by strangers. There was a hack in front of the door, and upstairs, in his wife’s room, was a dashing young woman who, strange to say, made claim to Mr. Huber’s baby, and announced her intention to take it away with her, kindly promising, however, to leave another infant in its place. It is, of course, unnecessary to submit that Mr. Huber did not immediately recognize the young woman as the mother of his child, and after settling this point to his own satisfaction, came to the conclusion that he was harboring a lunatic. It was in vain that he appealed to Mrs. Huber. That estimable person, instead of becoming highly indignant at the unexpected turn of affairs, was disposed to accept the situation in a philosophical mood, and sat on the edge of the sofa closely studying the pattern of the carpet. Finally the truth was told, and Mr. Huber then had the pleasure of ascertaining that while Mrs. Watson Schermerhorn had changed her mind and wanted her baby back, Mrs. Kate Burke, polite and obliging as she was, was willing to let her baby be exchanged for it.

We do not believe that people will be disposed severely to blame the wife for the deception of which she was guilty, because her desire to be proud possessor of a prattling baby was really pathetic. It was the consuming passion of her life, for, as she innocently puts it, ‘there can be no happiness when there is no baby.’ But would it not have been advisable to consult the husband before surreptitiously introducing the stranger into the household?”

“Then Rand Paul — He’s Pearl Jam”

August 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Former MTV VJ Kennedy, no less an accident of modern free-market capitalism than the Kardashians, is given the first word in Robert Draper’s New York Times Magazine article, “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” Without thinking, as is her custom, the Fox political analyst unwittingly labels Sen. Rand Paul just right by identifying him as the “Pearl Jam” of the ideology. You know, because he’s overrated, his words are simplistic, and to paraphrase Portlandia, you liked him…in high school. 

Libertarianism can be useful as can most belief systems in certain cases, but the thought of extreme isolationism overseas and an utter lack of collectivism domestically is beyond plausibility for most American adults.

Of course, the piece could have just as easily asked if Liberalism’s moment has finally arrived, since decriminalizing drugs, reducing the prison population, curtailing government snooping and marriage equality (the latter of which seems to escape Paul’s enthusiasm for liberty) have long been planks of that ideology. But perhaps that wouldn’t have made for as catchy a feature-article angle. The opening:

“Let’s say Ron Paul is Nirvana,” said Kennedy, the television personality and former MTV host, by way of explaining the sort of politician who excites libertarians like herself. ‘Like, the coolest, most amazing thing to come along in years, and the songs are nebulous but somehow meaningful, and the lead singer kills himself to preserve the band’s legacy.

“Then Rand Paul — he’s Pearl Jam. Comes from the same place, the songs are really catchy, can really pack the stadiums, though it’s not quite Nirvana.

“Ted Cruz? He’s Stone Temple Pilots. Tries really hard to sound like Pearl Jam, never gonna sound like Nirvana. Really good voice, great staying power — but the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.”

I met Kennedy (a gabby 41-year-old whose actual name is Lisa Kennedy Montgomery) in Midtown Manhattan at Fox News headquarters, where she hosts a Fox Business Network program called The Independents. By cable TV standards, the show, which is shown four times a week, is jarringly nonpartisan, for the simple reason that she and her co-hosts — the Reason magazine editor in chief Matt Welch and the entrepreneur Kmele Foster — are openly contemptuous of both parties. Kennedy spent most of the Bill Clinton ‘90s as MTV’s most vocal Republican, but then she soured on the G.O.P., a political shift that solidified during the spending and warring and moralizing excesses of the George W. Bush years. Sometime after the elephant tattoo on her left hip ‘got infected and started looking more like a pig,’ Kennedy began thinking of herself as a libertarian instead. She, Welch and Foster take turns on the show bashing not only “Obamacare” but also the N.S.A., neoconservatives and social scolds. It’s not a hospitable forum for G.O.P. talking points. “There are some libertarian-leaning Republicans who are afraid to be on our show,” Kennedy told me. Libertarianism’s Nirvana, a k a the former congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, has been on The Independents more than once. But Pearl Jam — a k a Ron Paul’s son Rand, a one-term Republican senator who may well run for the presidency in 2016 — has yet to appear.

A few weeks after our conversation, I saw Kennedy onstage in a hotel ballroom, wearing purple spandex, gyrating to the soundtrack of Flashdance and hollering into a microphone, “Are you hungry for more liberty?”•

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“The Robocar Might Create Something Akin To A ‘Neighbourhood Elevator'”

August 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Brad Templeton, Google driverless-division consultant, has written a new essay addressing urban density in a time of robocars. An excerpt:

“In today’s cities, there is a ‘downtown’ but there are many other neighbourhood centers, based around an interesting urban street. On that street are shops, restaurants and more, and it is pleasant and productive to walk around them. Houses near these streets are highly valued, and within a block of the cool street real estate values soar. Real estate ads all advertise these places as ‘steps from…’ the cool street. These local centers are space a mile or so apart in medium density urban spaces, a bit more in suburban areas. For those who live more than about 10 minutes, the cool street is more distant, and a destination for walks rather than the place you live.

When you have skyscraper density, as in downtowns and most of Manhattan, there is much greater density of retail streets, and everybody is close to neighbourhood activity and shopping. You just step out of your unit and take the elevator down to be right in the thick of things — a very walkable space. But most cities consist of lots of land with packed single family homes and townhomes, or apartment blocks 2-3 stories high.

The robocar might create something akin to a ‘neighbourhood elevator.’ Imagine a house 3/4 of a mile from the local cool street. In the house is a button. You might press the button and go out. Not that long after you get to the curb, a small robocar pulls up. This is a simple, low-speed model that only goes 30mph. It doesn’t have seatbelts, and is tall and not very aerodynamic. You might just stand in it, rather than sit. You get in and it starts heading towards your neighbourhood center. If you like, you tell it a more specific destination along the street and it takes you there.”

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“Thirty-Three Containers Were Marked And Identified”

August 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some strange stories never seem to truly end. The Jonestown Massacre occurred in 1978, and the survivors will always carry scars (here and here), but some of the victims are likewise still trying to find peace. From the Associated Press:

“The cremated remains of nine victims of a 1978 mass cult murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, have turned up in a former funeral home in Delaware, officials said Thursday.

The state Division of Forensic Science has taken possession of the remains, discovered at the former Minus Funeral Home in Dover, and is working to make identifications and notify relatives, the agency and Dover police said in a statement.

The division last week responded to a request to check the former funeral home after 38 containers of remains were discovered inside. Thirty-three containers were marked and identified. They spanned a period from about 1970 to the 1990s and included the Jonestown remains.

Bodies of the massacre victims were brought after the deaths to Dover Air Force Base, home to the US military’s largest mortuary.”

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“New York City Was At One And The Same Time Both The Apex Of Western Culture And The Armpit Of The Western World”

August 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Who’s better than Luc Sante? No one, that’s who. The New Yorker editors can blow me off and not interview me when I contact them about jobs–and they do–but the Low Life writer should certainly have a perch at that publication. It’s less the New Yorker for him not being there.

The one time I interviewed Sante years ago, we talked about NYC during the 1970s and early 1980s, when he was making his bones here and was something of a bone-and-rag man, vying for valuables in the struggling city’s castoffs, each corner of Manhattan seeming to contain raw materials for the sharp-eyed alchemist: discarded LPs, dusty books, yellowed pamphlets from the distant past. Sante said to me, ruefully, of that time: “I thought it was prelude.” But the magic act soon vanished, as vital things like cheap tenement apartments went missing in a wave of real-estate deals and Wall Street hustles. Today, one in 25 New Yorkers is a millionaire, which is great as long as you’re not one of the 24. 

The man who “finds the point where poetry and history meet,” as Jim Jarmusch has said of his old pal, discussed his disappeared dream world in an email exchange with Stephen Johnson of the Believer. The opening:

“The Believer:

In the essay ‘My Lost City,’ you describe 1970s New York as a place of danger, authenticity, personality, and color—a city for outcasts.

Luc Sante:

All I know about 1970s New York City is that it’s where I grew up, and you always have an umbilical connection to the time and place of your growing up. It was cheap, didn’t have too many people in it, you could go to the movies or whatever on the spur of the moment, you could get by without working too much and especially without involving yourself in the corporate world. It was a wild, one-in-a-million conjunction of circumstances, a sort of black pearl of world history, when New York City was at one and the same time both the apex of Western culture and the armpit of the Western world. So you had to deal with junkies now and then—I would far rather deal with junkies than with lawyers or developers.

The Believer:

How can New York regain its personality? Or are we getting the city we deserve right now?

Luc Sante:

The city we have now is the one we deserve, the coagulation of money. I’m very pissed off because I love cities and yearn for them, and I can’t live in them now—and not just because I can’t afford to. My ideal city is more like the city (New York and Paris come to mind, but it sort of applies to all) that existed up to and including the 1930s, when different classes lived all together in the same neighborhoods, and most businesses of any sort were mom-and-pop, and people and things had a local identity. The sort of city where—I’ve just been reading Richard Cobb on 1930s Paris—a burglar, a banker, a taxi-driver, an academician, a modiste, and a pushcart vendor might all fetch up together in a corner banquette at the end of the night. That won’t happen again unless we have some major, catastrophic shakeup, like war (at home) or depression, and do we want either of those?”

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 6, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I am looking for a real vampire."

“I am looking for a real vampire.”

Looking – 22

Hello. My name is Sky and I am looking for a real vampire. Yes I’m serious and please do not respond if you’re not. I am 22 and have searched for years for this. I never have tried the web till now.

Now I am broadcasting my message all over the web. I am a Virgin saving myself for a vampire. I know how much they love that.

I can pay in blood and or money. In return I want to be one of you.

Thank you.

Regards,

Sky

A Brief Note From 1883 About A Cow Puncher

August 6, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 9, 1883 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Mobeetie (Texas) Panhandle–Jim Kelly, cow puncher, of Greer County, has been here for a few days. He is funning himself up a lot, and his contorting smile is frequent.”

“It Struck People As Unnatural”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a Vox post, Matthew Yglesias manages to get excited over time zones, a remnant of the railroad era. He suggests one global time to avoid confusion from a welter of zones that often don’t make sense. An excerpt about what a world would like like post-time zones:

“If the whole world used a single GMT-based time, schedules would still vary. In general most people would sleep when it’s dark out and work when it’s light out. So at 23:00, most of London would be at home or in bed and most of Los Angeles would be at the office. But of course London’s bartenders would probably be at work while some shift workers in LA would be grabbing a nap. The difference from today is that if you were putting together a London-LA conference call at 21:00 there’d be only one possible interpretation of the proposal. A flight that leaves New York at 14:00 and lands in Paris at 20:00 is a six-hour flight, with no need to keep track of time zones. If your appointment is in El Paso at 11:30 you don’t need to remember that it’s in a different time zone than the rest of Texas.

This has always been the underlying logic of the railroad time scheme — clockface times should be abstracted away from considerations of solar position. But the initial introduction of railroad time was controversial. It struck people as unnatural. Today, however, we are very accustomed to the idea that time zone boundaries should be bent for the sake of convenience and practicality. That means we should move to the most convenient and most practical time system of all — a single Earth Time for all of humanity.”

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“It Was The First Time Anyone Had Seen A Computer Like This”

August 6, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Wearable computing, as predicted by an IBM spot 17 years ago. From the commercial’s director, John Allen: “We did this piece for IBM in 1997 or so. It was the first time anyone had seen a computer like this, wearable, almost invisible, elegant and futuristic. In fact, we still haven’t seen anything like this. It was a prototype that had to be signed in and out every time it was transported.”

“This Is A Kind Of War With A Non-Human Enemy”

August 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The numbers tell us that there’ll likely be another global pandemic someday, the population density always demands it, but it won’t likely be the Ebola virus. That doesn’t mean it’s any less horrifying for the people suffering from it or those treating the patients. Richard Preston, an Ebola expert who’s written on the topic in his book, The Hot Zone, and in the New Yorker, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A trio of exchanges follow.

_______________________

Question:

Is any of the panic surrounding Ebola justified?

Richard Preston:

Not entirely justified. This is a kind of war with a non-human enemy. It is a fairly clever and very aggressive enemy. However, if you are in a jam it is never a good idea to panic. That’s how you lose. The doctors in Africa definitely are not panicking, they are just working 20 hours a day in the fight. And we sure don’t have to panic in the US, we’ve got a strong medical care system.

_______________________

Question:

How can the doctors and nurses prevent themselves from getting the virus as they help others?

Richard Preston:

They haven’t been able to fully protect themselves, doctors and nurses are dying. They’re wearing full protection biohazard suits, but the Ebola wards are just horrifying, 30 Ebola patients with one doctor and one nurse, both in space suits. Conditions are awful in those wards, we need more doctors and nurses – not even a space suit can totally protect you if the ward is really a mess.

_______________________

Question:

What do you think about this experimental serum that we heard about being used on Thursday? Something that is directly contributing to the two Americans’ recovery, or not necessarily the case?

Also, are there any common lasting effects among those that manage to live through Ebola? All I’ve heard about is some joint problems and whatnot, but I would’ve expected there to be much more severe aftereffects.

Richard Preston:

Good q’s – the antibody serum ZMAPP seems to be amazingly effective but we don’t know because it’s only been tried on the two patients. As for aftereffects, i interviewed Dr. Shem Musoke who nearly died of Marburg (close cousin of Ebola) and he told me it took him about a year to recover fully but now he was fine. It’s a crushing disease but if you survive you do recover.•

 

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Old Print Article: “Has Sold His Own Skeleton,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

August 5, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"“In school I soon learned to unjoint my head.”

“In school I soon learned to unjoint my head.”

A performer of sorts blessed with extreme double-jointedness was the subject of a profile in the May 11, 1890 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, in which he discussed a business arrangement that would not be completed until after his back had cracked for the final time. An excerpt:

“A freak in Barnum’s side show, who is in no sense of the word a fake, is Charles E. Hilliard. He dislocates his joints and replaces them at will to the great astonishment of the many visitors. The most eminent physicians in this and other countries have tried to solve the man’s peculiar gift, but all have failed and it remains as great a puzzle, to himself as well as others, as when he first discovered he could loosen himself, so to speak, without doing any harm or causing any pain. Mr. Hilliard is of medium height, lithe and graceful, and is possessed of his share of manly beauty. An Eagle reporter interviewed this stumbling block to science yesterday and drew from him a life history which is full on incident and novelty.

‘I was born at Martinsburg, W. Va.,’ he began, ‘on August 16, 1857. I grew up to a schooling age the same as any other child. One day–I remember it well–I climbed into an orchard from which little boys were supposed to be excluded, and catching sight of a dog, quickly jumped the fence into the roadway, turning my ankle when I struck the ground. It didn’t hurt any, so I kicked against the fence and snap it back into place again. I went home and scared my parents almost into hysterics by repeating my snap act, and they sent post haste for a doctor. He twisted me and hammered me, and found a lot of new places that could be broken without pain, finally giving up the puzzle with the consoling theory that there was a screw loose somewhere. In school I soon learned to unjoint my head and could write on the blackboard and look squarely at the school at the same time. I always cracked my ankles instead of snapping my fingers to attract the teacher’s attention, and if I found I was being beaten in a foot race I always managed to have a broken leg or twisted foot for ten, or fifteen, minutes as an excuse for having lost. When a bucket of coal was needed my wrist was always dislocated; during harvest time a dislocated knee came in very handy. I couldn’t carry water with a dislocated shoulder nor weed a garden with three broken fingers on each hand, so I managed to have things pretty easy during my childhood. As I grew older I found there were few joints in my body that I could not dislocate and it gradually got to worrying me. I consulted one doctor after another and one word, enigma, gives the result of all their investigations.

‘I now began to get used to being an exhibition through having so many doctors experimenting with me and resolved to accept one of the many offers that kept pouring in upon me to visit medical colleges, throughout this country and England, and after exhibiting for a time before surgeons and students at home, I took an engagement in the Royal College, in London, where they kept me for seven years and yet could tell no more when I left than when I entered. College work pays me the best, I get $150 a week at a college, but I have worked for $75 in a museum just because I wanted a change so much.

“He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

“He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

‘By the way I suppose you read in the newspapers a few years ago how I sold my bones. I had received various offers from half a dozen cranks scattered over the country from $1,000 to $4,000 for my body after death, but I paid no attention to them. Finally, one day while I was exhibiting at the Bellevue Hospital, Philadelphia, Dr. Doremus came up to me with a pleasant smile and the equally pleasant greeting of, ‘Well, Hilliard, how much for your bones to-day?’ ‘They’re $6,000 to-day,’ said I, laughing. ‘It’s a go,’ he answered, and the next day he sent me a check for that amount, and I signed a contract giving him my skeleton after death, but reserving the right to use it myself until death occurs.’

Mr. Hilliard has never known what it was to be ill, and is in perfect physical condition. He is married, well educated and a very pleasing conversationalist.”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 5, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Try not to break any laws."

“Try not to break any laws.”

How to have fun with pranks & tricks

In this book, you will find many ways to get even or revenge on someone, and the best revenge, is when they do not know it came from you!

Try not to break any laws, and the best revenge is always forgiveness, but if you don’t have that in your heart, and you want and eye for any eye, then read on!

ALSO:

You can learn to have fun training and understanding your dog. Learn why your dog does some of the crazy little things they do, and much more. You can get any one of 77 different dog breed books that you can get at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the ibookstore and more. You can get them as digital downloads for $2.99 to $4.99 each, and you can also get them as paperback books at Amazon for $12.99 each, and they a pretty nice gift also!

You can learn how to stop your dogs bad habit of barking if they have one, and you can learn how to stop them from trying to jump up on you and other people, and much more….

You can learn how to stop your dog from trying to run out the door and take off on you each time you open it, and learn how to stop your dogs bad habit of eating their own stools, and much more…

"You can learn how to stop your dog from trying to run out the door and take off."

“You can learn how to stop your dog from trying to run out the door and take off on you.”

 

“Water Is ‘The Big Elephant In The Room’ For Tech Companies”

August 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The bigger threat to a growing global population might not be food shortages but water scarcity. As more people in China and elsewhere take greater advantage of inventions of the Industrial and Computer Ages, the need for water acquisition grows.

A Financial Times series “A World Without Water,” begins today, in FT fashion, by examining how the lack of H2O affects corporations. While you would expect Coke to be apoplectic about potential shortfalls, technology companies are likewise concerned (or should be). An excerpt from Pilita Clark’s piece:

“Google, for example, declines to say how much it spent on a plant it has built at one of its data centres in the US state of Georgia, which enables it to use diverted sewer water to keep its servers cool. Nor has it disclosed how much it spends at a Belgian data centre that uses water from an industrial canal.

Joe Kava, the company’s head of data centre operations, has warned that water is ‘the big elephant in the room’ for tech companies, which can typically use hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day. ‘We’ve been focusing on power consumption and energy efficiency and that’s excellent,’ he said in 2009. ‘I think the next thing we need to turn our attention to is what do we do about the looming water crisis?’ As water becomes more scarce, data companies’ use of it could attract public scrutiny, he added, possibly resulting in regulations governing how much water they consume.

Google told the FT last week that its focus on water conservation means it now has a facility in Finland cooled entirely by seawater. It is also looking at using captured rainwater in South Carolina.

Regulation is a growing concern for many companies, which is a reason investors are starting to press for more disclosure about water risks.”

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“We’re In The Mad Max Stage Of The Media Business”

August 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Bill Keller, former New York Times executive editor, is spearheading the Marshall Project, a fledgling, non-profit news organization that covers criminal justice, something incredibly necessary with current U.S. drug policies, a too-large prison population and print outlets downsizing and capsizing. A quick exchange about the non-profit journalism model from an Ask Me Anything he and reporter Maurice Possley just conducted on Reddit:

“Question:

Many Future of News talking heads think that when news orgs become non-profit, they muddy the waters for everyone trying to find a new, sustainable financial model for doing the news.

Do you think the non-profit model is here to stay, or a temporary solution while journalists scramble for the next few years figuring out what works in for-profit?

Bill Keller:

Honest answer? Who the hell knows? We’re in the Mad Max stage of the media business. I expect some non-profits (meaning non-profit-on-purpose, as opposed to trying-unsuccessfully-to-be-profitable) will be around for a long time, as long as there are philanthropies and individuals who value quality journalism. After all, NPR seems to be pretty permanent, and it’s the ultimate non-profit news outlet.”

 

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A Brief Note From 1891 About A Novel Surgery

August 4, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 21, 1891 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Decatur, Ill. – A surgeon of this city has just completed a novel surgical operation. He removed part of four ribs of a cat and inserted them in the nose of a young lady, forming a perfect bridge for the nose. The bones of the nose had decayed and were removed. This is said to be the first operation of the kind known in the annals of surgery.”

“There Is Still A Sizable Part Of Helen Gurley Brown That Believes She Is Plain And Slightly Inadequate”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As a feminist, Helen Gurley Brown, Cosmopolitan’s legendary editor, was, how you say, complicated. A trailblazer in many ways–especially in regards to sex and single girls–she was also a workaholic seemingly afflicted by low-self esteem, serious body dysmorphia and massive insecurities. Brown sold women’s sexuality with the gusto of Guccione, if not with the same visual explicitness. She was a wave ahead of the feminists of her day, but also in some senses a step back. She may have had it all, but some of it was questionable. From Judy Bachrach’s 1982 People article about Brown:

“Her eyes are so demurely downcast she can scarcely raise them to acknowledge a compliment. ‘My outfit?’ she whispers at a noontime visitor to her Manhattan office, nervously fingering the Adolfo black knit that swathes her body. ‘Well, I suppose it’s all right. I mean it should be because these patterned stockings are from Geoffrey Beene. But then’—fingers clutch at her throat—’I don’t know. I mean Estée Lauder says these gold chains are out of style.’ The face grows distraught. ‘Oh, here I go again, criticizing myself when I get praise. Now why do I do that?’

The editor of Cosmopolitan does that because at 60—after a poor childhood in Arkansas, 23 years of obscurity as a secretary and ad agency copywriter in Los Angeles, as well as bouts with dermabrasion, massive dieting, massive exercising and massive success as a writer and movie biggie’s wife—there is still a sizable part of Helen Gurley Brown that believes she is plain and slightly inadequate. That her taut, 5’4″, 105-pound body still isn’t quite right. That the nose she once had (‘She keeps a photo of it in her files,’ says an ex-Cosmo staffer) might just be the real her. That her no-college education is deficient. That she is not merely tiny but, to use a favorite term, a ‘mouseburger.’

No matter. Helen’s 66-year-old husband and chief booster, David Brown, who co-produced The Sting, The Sugarland Express and Jaws I and II, says, ‘I think she’s a classical beauty.’ The editor’s friend, gossip columnist Liz Smith, observes, ‘Helen is a fanatic. The perfection of her body is a form of religious fanaticism. She saw herself as very unattractive and felt she could rise above it.’ Pause. ‘And she did.’

Smith notes that Helen will dine out with pals but have only ‘a Perrier and a horrifying little fish.’ She’ll not only pinch pennies, but has been known to take the untouched wine from a festive lunch table—and the balloons too. Why? Because like Cosmo’s two million readers and the fans of her first smash book, Sex and the Single Girl, and her current autobiographical/inspirational hit, Having it All, Brown knows she didn’t go from poverty to high priestess of passion simply through mouseburgering. She did it, she admits, through shrewd use of self-deprecation and lowered lids, through affairs both good and rotten that have involved married office colleagues (never rule out anyone, she writes, even the boss: ‘Why discriminate against him?”). But above all, she succeeded through devoted toil.

‘One of the things that binds Helen and David is their discipline for work,’ says Dick Zanuck, David’s partner in Zanuck/Brown Co. ‘They don’t have a lot outside their careers. She does not play canasta or lunch with the girls. He does not go fishing.’

Their sports are taking care of each other. Helen has been known to snatch the bread out of David’s mouth in restaurants to keep him at his trim 160 pounds. ‘I have been a terrific wife,’ she likes to say. Each morning, at their triplex on Manhattan’s Central Park West, she weighs David, then fixes his breakfast (bran muffins, juice, scrambled eggs or fish cakes or cereal). When he dares to make his own, she grouches, ‘You don’t like me today.’ She never lets him fret about her. Once, when she was scheduled in advance for a series of operations, she didn’t tell David until ‘the night before I went into the hospital.’ Why should he worry about her for three weeks?'”

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“Workers Start By Strapping Their Feet On To Foot Pads At The Base Of The Robot”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Someday the workers will mostly be robots, even the human ones. A South Korean shipbuilding firm is experimenting with encasing employees in exoskeleton suits that will allow them veritable superpowers. Just make sure to recharge your batteries. From Hal Hodson at New Scientist:

“AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.

It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, wants to take production to the next level by outfitting staff with robot exoskeletons that give them superhuman strength.

Gilwhoan Chu, the lead engineer for the firm’s research and development arm, says the pilot showed that the exoskeleton does help workers perform their tasks. His team is working to improve the prototypes so that they can go into regular use in the shipyard, where robots already run a large portion of a hugely complex assembly system.

The exoskeleton fits anyone between 160 and 185 centimetres tall. Workers do not feel the weight of its 28-kilogram frame of carbon, aluminium alloy and steel, as the suit supports itself and is engineered to follow the wearer’s movements. With a 3-hour battery life, the exoskeleton allows users to walk at a normal pace and, in its prototype form, it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

To don the exoskeleton, workers start by strapping their feet on to foot pads at the base of the robot.”

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“The Future Of The Car As Personal Transport Will Morph Into Time/Use Formats”

August 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Earlier this year, Jonathan Moore of Speedhunters did an excellent interview with artist and visual futurist Syd Mead, whose outré automobile designs which have enriched film (Blade Runner, most famously), print publications and imaginations for decades. An excerpt about the role of cars in a time when we’ve passed peak-auto:

Jonathan Moore:

With a declining interest in the car nowadays, the car as personal transport appears an ever more precarious economic prospect. Do you think that the car as a private but communal mode of transport is living on borrowed time? What’s coming next and how quickly will it arrive? Is it the ’sentient, super-evolved version of the horse’? And did you already sketch it in the ’60s?!’

Syd Mead:

The future of the car as personal transport will morph into time/use formats probably owned either by municipal agencies, a variation of corporate rental schemes and rotating mileage based lease by single lessees. With 50 percent of the world’s population living in cities, I predict that a lot of high-density core urban mobility will be by moving platforms, sidewalks, escalators and lift platforms as architectural enclosures become larger and more interconnected. The autonomous car is almost here already, making ‘call, ride and forget’ a real personal transport factor.

‘So-called mass transit is the automobile. Bus systems, light rail and combinations thereof are subject to unionized strikes, expensive staffing costs and maintenance of route fixtures and machinery. Dial in aggressive riders who ignore rules of civility and you have a worrisome vector in public transportation. I sketched and rendered the ‘electronic herd’ concept years ago, depicting MTU’s (Mobile Transit Units) traveling in a bunch, thus creating a high-density use of existing thoroughfare routing.

The private automobile as a personal possession will certainly survive, but as an increasingly expensive proposition for those who choose, like now, to own a vehicle that sits unused for various periods of time. We have four vehicles in our ‘stable’: an ’03 Sebring convertible, an ’09 Cadillac DTS and two collector cars, a 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser two-door with electric windows and the 1972 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop. Working at home, the two collector cars are operated maybe once every two weeks, the Sebring maybe once a month. The Cadillac is the most used daily driver and it has only 16,000 miles after almost five years of use.•

________________________________

“In effect, I was creating my own world”:

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Old Print Article: “Robots With Personality,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1929)

August 4, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“Who shall say into what these automatic salesmen will develop?”

Arkady Joseph “A.J.” Sack was decades ahead of his time in scheme if not execution. The Russian-born businessperson (and historian), who had an ardor for animatronics, announced in the late 1920s that he would open a chain of automated department stores, the first to be located in Manhattan, which would feature talking robots rather than salespeople. One human would oversee the entire operation, with the machines communicating information to customers about the 150 products offered, accepting payments and thanking shoppers for their business, giving carbon-based workers the day off every day. The shops never opened.

In the March 10, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Marcia Nardi wrote an article about Sack and his helpful hardware, though the story focuses more on the robots and their sociological effects (skipping merrily past the specter of mass unemployment), rather than going into detail about the stores. (You can learn more specifics about the proposed shops here and here.) Two excerpts from the long article.

__________________________

“Before this winter is out, America will have been invaded by a whole army of salesmen-robots which have been called ‘almost human automatons,’ and of which the Associated Press says: ‘They will do everything but slap the customer on the back and ask him how his family is.’

In other words now that the infant penny-in-the-slot machine, not unfamiliar to commuting subwayites, has reached maturity and adult robustness, the salesman-robot is about to take his place along with the radio and airplane as one of the marvels of the Twentieth Century.

The salesmen-robots have been devised by the Consolidated Automatic Merchandising Corporation and A.J. Sack, the chairman of the firm, looks forward to their debut into the business world with all the assurance of the Creator when he commanded Eve to spring forth from Adam’s Rib.

‘In America today,’ says Mr. Sack, ‘we look over the merchandise in our homes, through the advertising pages of newspapers and magazines. Even in our travels and pleasure excursions, we actually shop through the medium of posters and billboards. National advertising, grown to the dimensions of a billion dollar industry, sells us on hundreds of articles in advance of our seeing them.

‘Having been sold on an article because it is standardized and advertised, it is hardly logical or economical to have a human being perform the simple, mechanical operation of exchanging this article for money. An Automatic Merchandising Machine can perform this work at less expense and more promptly.'”

__________________________

“With the inquiries and orders on hand, there will probably be a million and a half robots at work before long–mechanical men that will not only give the public what it wants in the way of service but will also add a little human touch to their purely mechanical function by saying ‘Thank you’ and by repeating the slogan connected with the merchandise they offer.

These robots will not have human forms like the robots of Captain Roberts and Captain Richards and will bear less resemblance outwardly to their English brother and sister than to their sires, the weighing and postage stamp and bar of chocolate machines, and will have much in common with the restaurants where you don’t require the smile of a pretty waitress in order to get your lunch.

But even as the automobile and airplane must smile incredulously as they contemplate their own tintypes of 1908, who shall say into what these automatic salesmen will develop?

Inventors of the future will probably perfect these machines so that they will be able to do everything a man does, but most likely they will never be able to make robots think. That is where the robots fall down, but that is also where their success lies.

We no longer need the personality of glib-tongued salesmen to influence our choice in buying small commodities. He might just as well be a mechanical man of iron and steel with electricity in his veins instead of blood for all the need the customer now has of salesmanship abilities. In the same way people in many other industries and trades have been similarly reduced to mere automatons, and perhaps some day other robots beside the salesman type will be the means of releasing that horde of countless workers whose tedious machinelike jobs in our factories and offices and telephone exchanges often leave their minds too dull and inert for any real enjoyment of their free hours. 

‘Yes, these robots have an importance beyond their economic one,’ says Mr. Sack, ‘It is true, of course, that the discord between modern production and the old-fashioned methods of distribution originally prompted their invention and is responsible for their growing popularity. But it is an established fact that every step in the development of our machinery age means also, in the long run, a forward step in the development of our civilization and culture. The energy released through the application of machinery in production is already responsible for our higher standards of living, and for the development and appreciation of art, music and literature among broad masses of people. The substitution of mechanical slaves for human slaves will inevitably result in further development of cultural progress among those who will gradually be freed from the deadening monotony of a mechanical job.'”

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