Speaking of futuristic modes of transit, here’s a brief video of the hovercraft known as the Aérotrain, which was developed in the 1960s and 1970s by French engineer Jean Bertin. From the Illiana Garden Rail Society: “Though novel for its time the Aérotrain never evolved into a regular rail service and its development ended in the late 1970′s. In France the tracks and infrastructure of the Aérotrain were torn down. At least two of the French test vehicles were destroyed by vandalism. In the United States the only prototype wasted away its useful life sitting idle outside of an Arizona aircraft museum.”
From David Letterman’s short-lived 1980 morning show, a bizarre appearance by Steve Martin, back when both comedians actually gave a crap. Back when the whole country gave a crap.
in a 1967 video, advertising exec James Nelson predicted the long-term future of the business–and much of our culture. From Matthew Creamer at Ad Age:
“The eerily spot-on moment you have to see is Mr. Nelson’s vision of a magazine whose content is wholly determined by the age, gender and interests of its reader and laser-beamed right to the home. The ads, too, are perfectly targeted.
Lifetime, the Magazine for You is laser-beamed to a device that prints out the content from under the kitchen sink, next to the garbage disposal. Each copy is unique and the subscription is noncancelable. Says Mr. Nelson in the film, ‘Only the ads that could reasonably appeal to the subscriber are included in his issue and if an advertiser wanted to reach only 28-year-old mothers of three children, boy-girl-boy, that was who they reached … there was 100% coverage and no waste circulation and no matter how the subscriber felt about it, noncancelable.’
It’s easy to see apps like Flipboard and concepts like the filter bubble, if not the whole digital-publishing world, bent on serving up content and ads that are less about the independent vision of an editorial team and more about divining what the reader will actually click on. So in this fun and tossed-off little clip, Mr. Nelson predicted the personalized, data-driven, on-demand future of digital media we’re dealing with today, even if he was, sadly, wrong about the lasers.
‘It was just a thought,’ said Mr. Nelson, when we asked the 91-year-old for his memories of the film. ‘I didn’t think anyone would actually do it.'”
Human DNA is only about about 1% different than that of a chimpanzee. If we encounter intelligent life from elsewhere in the universe and they’re 1% smarter than we are, they will probably view us as chimps. In this 12-minute, “fascinatingly disturbing” thought experiment, Neil deGrasse Tyson wonders if we’re just too dumb to figure out the biggest puzzles of the universe, whether those questions can only be answered by species brighter than we’ll ever be.
If it weren’t for Robert Reich, Rachel Maddow would be the most adorable communist in America. The MSNBC host just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.
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Question:
If you could go back in time and cover any news story in history as it unfolded, which would you pick?
Rachel Maddow:
Maybe the presidential election of 1800? A tie! Decided in Congress! Aaron Burr! All that weird campaigning they had never done before! I find electoral politics mostly enervating, but that one sounds like it would have been a blast.
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Question:
Is there anyone at another cable news channel that you really admire as a broadcaster?
Rachel Maddow:
I really like the way Shep Smith (at Fox News Channel) balances anchorman gravitas… with a willingness to put the artifice aside and acknowledge what it really going on. Some of us can pull off seeming like human beings on TV, some of us can pull off V.O.G. authority, but Shep is really very good at both. Better than anyone else, I think. Also, I’ve met him and he’s a nice person!
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Question:
Our family hung the Rolling Stone photo of you, shooting a Henry Big Boy rifle, on the front of our refrigerator. (We love you and we love repeater rifles.) Do you think the gun legislation and conversion currently brewing in the US would be more efficient if more liberals, who occasionally like to get their cowgirl on, came out of the closet? I really don’t see why the topic ends up being so right wing vs left wing. I feel like there should be much more overlap between the camps.
Rachel Maddow:
Two things: (1) I agree! I think this issue is way more polarized in politics than it is in real life. Gun appreciation, even gun enthusiasm (which I confess to in a small way!) is absolutely not inconsistent with a belief in rational gun-safety reform. It’s weird that we think of the political battle as gun-lovers versus gun-haters — do you know a single gun-lover (who doesn’t work in the political side of the gun movement) who thinks it makes sense for someone adjudicated mentally ill to be barred from buying a gun from a guy at a store, but allowed to buy a guy under a tent or at a convention center? Also, (2) would you please do me the favor of drawing a tiny little moustache on that picture on your fridge?
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Question:
What was it like meeting Howard Stern? That was a great interview; I bought your book afterward.
Rachel Maddow:
Thanks! I love Howard Stern. I was intimidated to meet him just in a fangirl kind of way. But also because I knew he would ask me questions about sex that would make me blush like a cardinal. Once I realized that I could just tell him “no, i’m not answering that!” — then it was just pure fun. That was one of the best interviews I have ever been part of.
I have never been on a cruise and hope to never go on one. Those ships are floating bacteria factories and if not entirely lawless, a lot less lawful than they should be. A former Senior Officer of a luxury cruise line just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. His introductory comments are below, followed by a few exchanges.
“Couple little known facts: The ship has a morgue. Officers mess can be 5 star dining, personal waiters and everything. Most of what you see on the love boat is total bullshit. Officers mess has beer available at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The laundry, mostly staffed with Chinese crew, had people who hadn’t seen the sun in a year. It’s really hard to get kicked off a ship, you have to fuck up royally. Only 2 things will get you booted. If you mess up the experience for a significant number of people, or create a safety hazard (like calling in a fake man overboard)”
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Question:
Were there any mysterious deaths on your lines? Do you believe that the cruise lines cover up deaths in order to avoid bad publicity?
Answer:
Renaissance was called a line for the newly weds and nearly deads. Frankly, few else could afford it. That said, we had deaths, and a tiny morgue. Heart attacks were not that uncommon either. You have to consider a few things. One, if some dies in a hotel, no one blames the hotel. If you die on a cruise ship, something mysterious must have happened. Second, the cruise ship while in International waters has no governing body or laws outside of the captain, and international maritime laws. What that means is, the captain is god, jury, and executioner on the vessel. I have not seen any cover-ups regarding deaths, but I certainly believe it happens. Frankly, knowing what I know I’m surprised more people don’t go missing. A cruise is the perfect way to vanish, or make someone vanish easily.
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Question:
Are you talking literally haven’t seen the sun for a year? There has to be some health consequences to spending a bunch of your life under deck.
Answer:
Question:
Whats the best part of being at sea for that long? To counter, what is the the hardest part?
Answer:
I saw the world. I saw monkeys snag a drink from the udder of a wandering cow in india, drank Cobra blood in thailand, went to Ephesus and visited the worlds oldest brothel, and had many lonely nights at sea. It was really hard on the long stretches, you get sea legs and are wobbly when you get in port. Being at sea means not having to deal with port issues, inspections, customs, loading of goods, unloading of trash, etc. It’s those lonely long nights of not wanting steak and lobster or free booze. The shimmer fades quickly when it’s your life.
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Question:
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Question:
When betting on Monkey Knife Fights – what do you look for?
All six episodes or Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, a series of 15-minute commentaries by the auteur on a variety of subjects, which ran on the BBC in 1955. Meandering, but off-the-cuff and fun. Each one features some of Welles’ drawing. I’ve embedded Episode 3: “The Police,” in which the host discusses intrusions into privacy by government and modernization.
Robert F. Kennedy, then a New York Senator, meeting with some bright and playful children on Wonderama in New York at the end of 1965. I interviewed RFK Jr. a few years back, and, wow, he hated me. Asked him if he thought the Kennedy name had become something of a hindrance politically because of all the scandals. He was not receptive to that question, went a little apeshit. Oh, well.
In the name of progress, DARPA and your good friends at Boston Dynamics, have improved the BigDog rough-terrain robot so that it can now fling cinder blocks. It’s for your protection. From the promotional copy: “BigDog handles heavy objects. The goal is to use the strength of the legs and torso to help power motions of the arm. This sort of dynamic, whole-body approach is routinely used by human athletes and animals, and will enhance the performance of advanced robots.”
When people buy a rare object, they’re also purchasing a narrative. Often, they’re mainly purchasing a narrative. So, say there’s a rare baseball card and a famous athlete acquires it and adds his cachet to the item. And then it’s discovered that the card he purchased was (perhaps) tampered with before he bought it to make it seem more mint. Does the card lose some of its value, hold it or even become more valuable because of the supposed ruse? What is it that is actually being bought or sold?
Alice Cooper, the picture of health, being interviewed by Tom Snyder in 1981. Cooper officially became a senior citizen earlier this month. Poor video quality.
Every time I hear American entrepreneurs warn that China will become the number one country in the world because of a lack of regulation which allows for unchecked growth, I remind myself that China is already first in one area: highest cancer rate on the planet. You certainly want nimble regulation, but you don’t want it to be entirely absent.
China has continued apace building its top-down insta-cities, throwing up towers at blinding speed, worrying about occupants later. From a recent CBC report by Adrienne Arsenault about the beautiful and barren Inner Mongolia metropolis of Ordos:
“Arriving at night in Ordos left us — here’s a shocker — in the dark. There was no problem with the electricity, but the skyline lacked the brightly lit high-rises that are the mark of a thriving city.
We drove down a snowy road from the gleaming and seemingly desolate Ordos airport in Inner Mongolia, along an empty highway past darkened building blocks and abandoned parking lots at vast malls.
We pulled into the hotel driveway at around 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. This is a city supposed to be able to house a million people. But stepping out of the car the only sound was the pinging of the crosswalk countdown timer across the road.
It actually echoed.
The hotel looked like something out of Las Vegas, and the reception when we arrived was oddly enthusiastic. The staff almost seemed surprised to see people wander through the door. It was as if they’d been all dressed up waiting for a very long time for someone to show up, and didn’t quite know what to do now that they had.
The lobby bar lights were quickly turned on and the piano started playing. By itself. There was no pianist in sight, just a computer program with a playlist that must have been set to’generic hotel lobby.’
Ghost cities, it seems, even have ghost pianists.
Daybreak shed an even stranger light on the city. Have you ever been in the computer simulation known as Second Life, where avatars fly around and through empty cities and buildings? Minus the flying part, Ordos is pretty much Second Life.
There are lovingly designed, but barren, museums and galleries. There are ambitious malls and wide boulevards, all largely deserted.“
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The Ordos Museum is in a shockingly beautiful area whose development was overseen by Ai Weiwei:
I normally don’t like assholes and have little patience for the fetishization of food, but I sort of like Anthony Bourdain. Maybe because he’s a really good writer or perhaps because he seems so conscious of his flaws. Anyhow, the foodie, who is known for saying stuff, just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few brief exchanges follow.
British academics are trying to stop the development and proliferation of robotic weaponry. I don’t like their chances. From the Guardian:
“A new global campaign to persuade nations to ban ‘killer robots’ before they reach the production stage is to be launched in the UK by a group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates.
Robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next step from unmanned drones, are already being worked on by scientists and will be available within the decade, said Dr Noel Sharkey, a leading robotics and artificial intelligence expert and professor at Sheffield University. He believes that development of the weapons is taking place in an effectively unregulated environment, with little attention being paid to moral implications and international law.
The Stop the Killer Robots campaign will be launched in April at the House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons.
‘These things are not science fiction; they are well into development,’ said Sharkey.”
When John DeLorean was speaking at this 1967 Pontiac dealer event, he was the model buttoned-down executive in a staid and steady industry. All he had to do was remain on the straight and narrow and he would be the golden boy forever. He was still following the constructs of who he thought he had to be. But there was something stirring inside, even if he wasn’t immediately sure what that was. DeLorean had yet to rebel and break away from his industry-and from his former self. He had yet to bet it all and lose it all. He had yet to become the truest expression of himself.
A 1991 clip of Conan O’Brien and Letterman’s early and great head writer Steve O’Donnell being interviewed by talk show royalty Dick Cavett. Conan was still a comedy writer, not a host, at the time.
Was I wrong to think that robots would eventually control monkeys? Time will tell, but in a Miguel Nicolelis TED Talk a monkey uses its brain to remotely control the actions of a robot.
A clip from the 1978 short, “Libra,” which imagined a 21st-century Libertarian space utopia, population 10,000, including its market-loving African-American leader. Just amazing.
Malcolm Gladwell lecturing at the University of Pennsylvania about how much proof we need before we decide something is dangerous. He draws analogies between the historical incidence of black-lung disease and contemporary threats.
The 3Doodler, the word’s firs 3D printing pen, has already been funded on Kickstarter. From its copy on that site: “It’s a pen that can draw in the air! 3Doodler is the 3D printing pen you can hold in your hand. Lift your imagination off the page! Have you ever just wished you could lift your pen off the paper and see your drawing become a real three dimensional object? Well now you can! 3Doodler is the world’s first and only 3D Printing Pen. Using ABS plastic (the material used by many 3D printers), 3Doodler draws in the air or on surfaces. It’s compact and easy to use, and requires no software or computers. You just plug it into a power socket and can start drawing anything within minutes”
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist. For the most part, a lone gunman is just that. But that doesn’t stop the fabulists. In the below video, James Earl Ray tells his story to Bill Boggs.
