“All The Radio Stations Play Ebola Songs”

October 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

While the number of U.S. citizens who’ve died on American soil from Ebola remains constant, Liberia is truly in the grips of a deadly epidemic. It’s a horror of human suffering and loss and must be surreal for a nation that was starting to rise up economically. Marcus DiPaola, a freelance journalist who just returned from reporting in Liberia, did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit about this modern plague. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

Are people optimistic that Ebola will be defeated?

Marcus DiPaola:

Optimistic is… not the right word. They’re expecting it to be defeated. You gotta realize how much public knowledge there is about the outbreak here. NO ONE is shaking hands. NO ONE is touching each other. All the radio stations play Ebola songs.

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Question:

Is it as bad as the media is making it out to be?

Marcus DiPaola:

I am a member of the media, and I think it’s pretty damn bad.

Locals treat every dead body with suspicion now, a crowd gathered in Central Monrovia as an alleged thief jumped into the river in Monrovia and died. Bystanders say he was not a suspected Ebola case, but many people are unwilling to take the risk associated with pulling out the body. As a result, the Liberian Red Cross Ebola burial team was called and arrived in hazmat suits and collect the body.

Cellcom Liberia, one of the country’s largest cell phone providers, has a worker checking temperatures before shoppers are even allowed to enter Cellcom Liberia’s parking lot. The worker writes down the temperature on a name tag, which is then checked by security guards after entering the parking lot, then again as they line up to enter the store, then again checked at the door to the store.

Many restaurants, hotels, banks, and stores have hand washing stations installed, and require you to wash your hands before entering. Some businesses’ attempts at requiring hand-washing fall short of their goals, as many of the buckets contain water with no soap available, or chlorine mixed into the water.

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Question:

Do you personally think things will continue to escalate? Or does it seem like things are more under control than the American media is making them out to be?

Marcus DiPaola:

No, I think things are escalating right now– the burial teams are working flat out and there are about 10 of them. I think the numbers are being under-reported, especially from the Liberian government.

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Question:

Should America be worried about Ebola?

Marcus DiPaola:

Yes. But not in the way you might think… it’s going to keep coming here, I have no doubt of it, but I’m willing to bet we’ll never see a full-blown outbreak. The experts I was with made it clear to me that you really really really have to work at it to get it as a non-caretaker. You have to touch bodily fluids. Fomites can theoretically do it, but everyone there kinda didn’t really worry about that, and they’ve been doing this since March.•

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“The Goal Is To Gather An Unprecedented Set Of Ambient Data”

October 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Chicago plans to make many of its streetlights “smart,” capable of recording data almost continuously, helping to moderate the flow of auto and pedestrian traffic and other currently fixed processes, something which will be standard on all American streets before long. From Liz Stinson at Wired:

“There you are, standing on a street corner surrounded by a mob of people waiting for the walk signal. In front of you, a single car gets the green light. Again. For all the talk of smart cities, they can be infuriatingly dumb at times. But imagine if your city could monitor the flow of pedestrians and optimize its traffic signals for walkers, not drivers? That’s exactly what Chicago is looking to do.

Later this fall, the Windy City will install a network of 40 sensor nodes on light poles at the University of Chicago, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory. The goal is to eventually expand the system to 1,000 sensors (enough to cover the Chicago Loop) over the next few years. Spearheaded by the University of Chicago’s Urban Center for Computational Data, it’s called the Array of Thingsinitiative, and the goal is to gather an unprecedented set of ambient data to help government officials and residents understand how their city ticks so they can make it a happier, healthier, and smarter place to live.

Every 15 seconds these sensors will gather information like temperature, humidity, carbon monoxide, vibrations, light, and sound—pretty standard stuff.”

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A Brief Note From 1913 About A Woodchopper

October 20, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 24, 1913 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Iowa City, Iowa — A woodchopper working near a cemetery here yesterday found the bones of two human legs imbedded in a tree he had just felled. Forestry students from the State University, who examined the bones, said that they probably have been there for at least thirty years. It is thought that medical students at the university placed the bones there.”

“The Breathtaking Implications Of The Research Are Also Becoming Clear”

October 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not having a television makes it easier to live outside the idiot broadcast and cable news culture populated by loudmouths like Sean Hannity, who looks like the equipment manager of a lacrosse team that’s been suspended for hazing, and Chuck Fucking Todd, who announced that the President’s administration was “over” when there were still three full years to go. The important work continues apace despite what that sputtering Van Dyke says. The opening of “Obama’s Moonshot Probes the Space Inside Our Skulls,” Anjana Ahuja’s Financial Times piece:

“Every president needs a blockbuster science project to crown his time in the White House. While John Kennedy reached for the stars, Barack Obama decided to reach for the synapses. A year on from his pledge to unravel the secrets of the human brain, researchers are beginning to spell out how they will tackle this challenge.

The breathtaking implications of the research are also becoming clear; within a generation science may acquire the power to predict a person’s future capacities and possibly determine their life chances. The central idea of Mr Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative is to understand how the human brain choreographs all the astonishing feats it pulls off. It is the seat of learning and the organ of memory. It generates our character and identity, and influences our behaviour. It is our brains, more than anything else, that make us who we are today – and shape who we will become.

But that neural versatility acts as a veil. How does the squidgy, three-pound lump between your ears – filled with nerve cells (neurons) firing tiny impulses of electricity across junctions called synapses – accomplish such a wide array of functions? Research grants announced this month shed light on how Mr Obama’s vaunted cerebral exploration will proceed. One avenue will be to catalogue the differences between healthy neurons and diseased ones. This will spur research into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which cast a shadow over ageing societies.”

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“The Crowd Itself Became The Expert, And The Experts Became Part Of The Crowd”

October 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Walter Isaacson is thought, with some validity, as a proponent of the Great Man Theory, which is why Steve Jobs, with no shortage of hubris, asked him to be his biographer. Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin and me, he thought. Jobs, who deserves massive recognition for the cleverness of his creations, was also known as a guy who sometimes took credit for the work of others, and he sold his author some lines. Bright guy that he is, though, Isaacson knows the new technologies and their applications have many parents, and he’s cast his net wider in The Innovators. An excerpt from his just-published book, via The Daily Beast, in which he describes the evolution of Wikipedia’s hive mind:

“One month after Wikipedia’s launch, it had a thousand articles, approximately seventy times the number that Nupedia had after a full year. By September 2001, after eight months in existence, it had ten thousand articles. That month, when the September 11 attacks occurred, Wikipedia showed its nimbleness and usefulness; contribu­tors scrambled to create new pieces on such topics as the World Trade Center and its architect. A year after that, the article total reached forty thousand, more than were in the World Book that [Jimmy] Wales’s mother had bought. By March 2003 the number of articles in the English-language edition had reached 100,000, with close to five hundred ac­tive editors working almost every day. At that point, Wales decided to shut Nupedia down.

By then [Larry] Sanger had been gone for a year. Wales had let him go. They had increasingly clashed on fundamental issues, such as Sanger’s desire to give more deference to experts and scholars. In Wales’s view, ‘people who expect deference because they have a Ph.D. and don’t want to deal with ordinary people tend to be annoying.’ Sanger felt, to the contrary, that it was the nonacademic masses who tended to be annoying. ‘As a community, Wikipedia lacks the habit or tra­dition of respect for expertise,’ he wrote in a New Year’s Eve 2004 manifesto that was one of many attacks he leveled after he left. ‘A policy that I attempted to institute in Wikipedia’s first year, but for which I did not muster adequate support, was the policy of respect­ing and deferring politely to experts.’ Sanger’s elitism was rejected not only by Wales but by the Wikipedia community. ‘Consequently, nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid ed­iting Wikipedia,’ Sanger lamented.

Sanger turned out to be wrong. The uncredentialed crowd did not run off the experts. Instead the crowd itself became the expert, and the experts became part of the crowd. Early in Wikipedia’s devel­opment, I was researching a book about Albert Einstein and I noticed that the Wikipedia entry on him claimed that he had traveled to Al­bania in 1935 so that King Zog could help him escape the Nazis by getting him a visa to the United States. This was completely untrue, even though the passage included citations to obscure Albanian websites where this was proudly proclaimed, usually based on some third-hand series of recollections about what someone’s uncle once said a friend had told him. Using both my real name and a Wikipedia han­dle, I deleted the assertion from the article, only to watch it reappear. On the discussion page, I provided sources for where Einstein actu­ally was during the time in question (Princeton) and what passport he was using (Swiss). But tenacious Albanian partisans kept reinserting the claim. The Einstein-in-Albania tug-of-war lasted weeks. I became worried that the obstinacy of a few passionate advocates could under­mine Wikipedia’s reliance on the wisdom of crowds. But after a while, the edit wars ended, and the article no longer had Einstein going to Albania. At first I didn’t credit that success to the wisdom of crowds, since the push for a fix had come from me and not from the crowd. Then I realized that I, like thousands of others, was in fact a part of the crowd, occasionally adding a tiny bit to its wisdom.”

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“Does Amazon Really Have Robber-Baron-Type Market Power? When It Comes To Books, Definitely.”

October 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Following up on Franklin Foer’s New Republic call to arms about Amazon’s price-setting power, here’s an excerpt from Paul Krugman’s balanced look in the New York Times at the robber baron of books:

“Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely. Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book sales, with a market share comparable to Standard Oil’s share of the refined oil market when it was broken up in 1911. Even if you look at total book sales, Amazon is by far the largest player.

So far Amazon has not tried to exploit consumers. In fact, it has systematically kept prices low, to reinforce its dominance. What it has done, instead, is use its market power to put a squeeze on publishers, in effect driving down the prices it pays for books — hence the fight with Hachette. In economics jargon, Amazon is not, at least so far, acting like a monopolist, a dominant seller with the power to raise prices. Instead, it is acting as a monopsonist, a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down.

And on that front its power is really immense — in fact, even greater than the market share numbers indicate. Book sales depend crucially on buzz and word of mouth (which is why authors are often sent on grueling book tours); you buy a book because you’ve heard about it, because other people are reading it, because it’s a topic of conversation, because it’s made the best-seller list. And what Amazon possesses is the power to kill the buzz. It’s definitely possible, with some extra effort, to buy a book you’ve heard about even if Amazon doesn’t carry it — but if Amazon doesn’t carry that book, you’re much less likely to hear about it in the first place.

So can we trust Amazon not to abuse that power?”

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“There Is A Strong Possibility That Although They Speak Of Ruling The World With Love, They Will Simply Vanish”

October 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

During the insane time in California in the 1960s and early 1970s, when motorcycle gangs dropped LSD and a psychedelic pop band named itself “The Peanut Butter Conspiracy,” Joan Didion was the poet laureate of the Lost Children of the West Coast, runaways who’d run smack into a strange moment in America when all the clocks were broken. But Renata Adler also took a pretty fair shot at that title with her 1967 New Yorker article “Fly Trans-Love Airways” (gated), collected in her subsequent book Toward a Radical Middle, which examined the tensions between hippie kids and law enforcement on the Sunset Strip. A passage in which the journalist tried to make sense of it all:

Some middle-hairs who were previously uncommitted made their choice–and thereby made more acute a division that had already existed between them. At Palisades High School, in a high-income suburb of Los Angeles, members of the football team shaved their heads by way of counter-protest to the incursions of the longhairs. The longhairs, meanwhile, withdrew from the competitive life of what they refer to as the Yahoos–sports, grades, class elections, popularity contests–to devote themselves to music, poetry, and contemplation. It is not unlikely that a prosperous, more automated economy will make it possible for this split to persist into adult life: the Yahoos, an essentially military model, occupying jobs; the longhairs, on an artistic model, devising ways of spending leisure time. At the moment, however, there is a growing fringe of waifs, vaguely committed to a moral drift that emerged for them from the confrontations on the Strip and from the general climate of the events. The drift is Love; and the word, as it is now used among the teen-agers of California (and as it appears in the lyrics of their songs), embodies dreams of sexual liberation, sweetness, peace on earth, equality–and, strangely, drugs.

The way drugs came into Love seems to be this: As the waifs abandoned the social mystique of their elders (work, repression, the power struggle), they looked for new magic and new mysteries. And the prophets of chemical insight, who claimed the same devotion to Love and the same lack of interest to the power struggle as the waifs, were only too glad to supply them. Allen Ginsberg, in an article entitled “Renaissance or Die,” which appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press (a local New Left newspaper) last December, urged that “…everybody who hears my voice, directly or indirectly, try the chemical LSD at least once, every man, woman, and child American in good health over the age of fourteen.” Richard Alpert (the former psychedelic teammate of Timothy Leary), in an article in Oracle (a newspaper of the hallucinogenic set), promised, “In about seven or eight years the psychedelic population of the United States will be able to vote anybody into office they want to, right?” The new waifs, who, like many others in an age of ambiguities, are drawn to any expression of certainty or confidence, any semblance of vitality or inner happiness, have, under pressure and on the strength of such promises, gradually dropped out, in the Leary sense, to the point where they are economically unfit, devoutly bent on powerlessness, and where they can be used. They are used by the Left and the drug cultists to swell their ranks. They are used by the politicians of the Right to attack the Left. And they used by their more conventional peers just to brighten the landscape and slow down the race a little. The waifs drift about the centers of longhair activism, proselytizing for LSD and Methedrine (with arguments only slightly more extreme than the ones liberals use on behalf of fluoridation), and there is a strong possibility that although they speak of ruling the world with Love, they will simply vanish, like the children of the Children’s Crusade, leaving just a trace of color and gentleness in their wake.•

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

October 20, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

BLACK SQUIRRELS WANTED

I am looking for black squirrels. I need them alive, so calling me with locations of dead squirrels on the road really doesn’t help. I would like them to run around in my woods. I am willing to pay for them. Thanks.

Old Print Article: “Doyle Describes Heaven,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1922)

October 19, 2014 in Books, Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Brilliant writer though he was, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was gullible to lots of complete bullshit, mostly centered around spiritualist shenanigans, even believing frenemy Harry Houdini was doomed to an early death due to his skepticism. In an article in the April 10, 1922 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes explained his vision of the afterlife, which he believed to be a childless place where a man could trade in his wife for a new model.

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“What Can We Learn Of Moral Value From The Ants?”

October 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The opening of Dwight Garner’s lively New York Times Book Review piece about the latest volume, a career summation of sorts, by Edward O. Wilson, a biologist who has watched his aunts ants have sex:

“The best natural scientists, when they aren’t busy filling us with awe, are busy reminding us how small and pointless we are.’Stephen Hawking has called humankind ‘just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star.’ The biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson, in his new book, which is modestly titled The Meaning of Human Existence, puts our pygmy planet in a different context.

‘Let me offer a metaphor,’ he says. ‘Earth relates to the universe as the second segment of the left antenna of an aphid sitting on a flower petal in a garden in Teaneck, N.J., for a few hours this afternoon.’ The Jersey aspect of that put-down really drives in the nail.

Mr. Wilson’s slim new book is a valedictory work. The author, now 85 and retired from Harvard for nearly two decades, chews over issues that have long concentrated his mind: the environment; the biological basis of our behavior; the necessity of science and humanities finding common cause; the way religion poisons almost everything; and the things we can learn from ants, about which Mr. Wilson is the world’s leading expert.

Mr. Wilson remains very clever on ants. Among the questions he is most asked, he says, is: ‘What can we learn of moral value from the ants?’ His response is pretty direct: ‘Nothing. Nothing at all can be learned from ants that our species should even consider imitating.’

He explains that while female ants do all the work, the pitiful males are merely ‘robot flying sexual missiles’ with huge genitalia. (This is not worth imitating?) During battle, they eat their injured. ‘Where we send our young men to war,’ Mr. Wilson writes, ‘ants send their old ladies.’ Ants: moral idiots.

The sections about ants remind you what a lively writer Mr. Wilson can be. This two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction stands above the crowd of biology writers the way John le Carré stands above spy writers. He’s wise, learned, wicked, vivid, oracular.”

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“It’s Only A Matter Of Time Until The Movie Theater Industry Has To Adjust Or Fall Behind”

October 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

We don’t go to World’s Fairs anymore, because they come to us, playing on the screens in our shirt pockets. Something is lost in that transition, but a lot is gained, too. While I think movie and TV camera work has suffered severely in our binge-watching, small-screen culture, there’s no denying that the Hollywood distribution paradigm is dated, a dinosaur. It doesn’t resemble at all the way people live now, with the ubiquity of portability, and one way or another it will change. From Kevin Smith (no, not that one) of Elite Daily: 

“Going to the movies has become an expensive outing rather than just a fun past time. Across the country, but especially in New York City, moviegoers (who aren’t budget-conscious) can expect to spend upwards of $30 on just a ticket and snacks.

Long gone are the days when you could go and see a new movie cheaply. The quality and frequency of movies are another issue all together, but they, too, are adding to the many challenges that plague the movie theater industry.

Which explains why both the technology and movie theater industries were completely turned on their heads a few weeks ago after movie-streaming champion Netflix announced plans to release its first-ever original movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend.

The distribution deal, in partnership with the Weinstein Company, will allow the film to release online at the same time it’s released in theaters on August 28, 2015.

It’s the first of many movies Netflix has planned to premiere both on its site and in theaters. The move is a clear reflection that the ability to stream content on-demand is exactly what consumers want. Netflix’s original movie plans are similar to what it’s already done, taking the traditional model of primetime television with its catalog of original series.

As online-streaming services continue to rise in popularity, it’s only a matter of time until the movie theater industry has to adjust or fall behind.”

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“They Will Do To Human Drivers What The Horseless Carriage Did To The Horse And Buggy”

October 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

While I’m clearly excited (and concerned) about autonomous cars, I think the shock of this new technology, something that wasn’t even discussed much in the general population just five years ago, has caused some to believe the future is now or tomorrow at least. It will likely take longer, and we’re probably in for a long run of robocars and traditional ones sharing lane space. In a new piece, Vivek Wadhwa of Venturebeat disagrees. The opening:

“My prediction is that in fewer than 15 years, we will be debating whether human beings should be allowed to drive on highways.

After all, we are prone to road rage; rush headlong into traffic jams; break rules; get distracted; and crash into each other. That is why our automobiles need tank-like bumper bars and military-grade crumple zones. And it is why we need speed limits and traffic police.

Self-driving cars won’t have our limitations. They will prevent tens of thousands of fatalities every year and better our lifestyles. They will do to human drivers what the horseless carriage did to the horse and buggy.

Tesla’s announcement of an autopilot feature in its next-generation Model S takes us much closer to this future. Yes, there are still technical and logistical hurdles; some academics believe it will take decades for robotic cars to learn to navigate the complexities of the ‘urban jungle;’ and policy makers are undecided about the rules and regulations.

But just as Tesla produced an electric vehicle that I liken to a spaceship that travels on land, so too will it keep adding software upgrades until its autopilot doesn’t need a human operator at the steering wheel. I expect this to happen within a decade — despite the obstacles. I have already placed an order for the new model so that I can be part of this evolution.”

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“The Computer Solidly Supports The Way Cook Says Baseball Should Be Played”

October 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

Long before Moneyball, Earnshaw Cook was, in Frank Deford’s words, the “scholar-heretic” of baseball, a statistician who proved the game’s strategy was backwards. Many of his innovations are common knowledge in the sport today (e.g., sacrifice bunts are usually unproductive), though others are still strangely not implemented. For instance: If you’re in a pivotal post-season game played under National League rules, why not use a relief pitcher who matches up well with the opposing lineup at the beginning of the game, and then pinch hit for him the first time he’s to bat so that you get an extra plate appearance by a good hitter? Then you can insert your “starting” pitcher. Makes sense. Many other of the stat man’s strategies have been disproven, but his underlying message that the sport was being played more from tradition than wisdom was correct.

Deford profiled Cook in Sports Illustrated for the first time in 1964, and while that piece doesn’t seem to be online, here’s the opening of his 1972 portrait, “It Ain’t Necessarily So, and Never Was,” which ran just prior to the publication of Cook’s Percentage Baseball and the Computer, when the numbers whiz went digital:

For more than a decade Earnshaw Cook, a retired Baltimore metallurgist, has been trying to convince baseball’s bosses that playing the sacred percentages is, to be blunt, dumb baseball. In 1964 Cook brought out a 345-page book, Percentage Baseball, that was full of charts, curves, tables and complicated formulas that sometimes went on for the better part of a page. The book dared to suggest that either: a) baseball is not using the best possible odds on the field, or b) mathematics is a fake.

Nothing has happened since to convince Cook that ‘a’ is wrong and ‘b’ is right. ‘As in the world around us,’ he says, ‘baseball offers a completely balanced, highly complicated statistical system, demonstrably controlled in all its interactions of play by the random operations of the laws of chance. As such, it becomes a fascinating illustration of a process readily susceptible to reliable mathematical analysis. Baseball also furnishes a classic example of the utter contempt of its unsophisticated protagonists for the scientific method.’

That last sentence is Cook’s way of saying that the national pastime thinks he is as nutty as a fruitcake. Since 1964 nobody has dared test out his conclusions even in, say, a winter rookie league. Oh yes, the managers in 1964 were named: Berra, Bauer, Pesky, Lopez, Tebbetts, Dressen, Hodges, Lopat, Rigney, Mele, Kennedy, Hutchinson, Craft, Alston, Bragan, Stengel, Murtaugh, Keane, Mauch and Dark. They all stayed faithful to the memory of Connie Mack—but only Alston is still managing at the same major league shop.

Cook has had some nibbles from the baseball Establishment. The Houston Astros approached him shortly after his book came out and inquired if he thought he could apply his figures in such a way that he could make judgments about minor league prospects. Cook said he would try. He checked the player records Houston sent him, and said that his evaluation indicated the two best prospects were named Jim Wynn and Rusty Staub. This was not bad figuring, as Wynn and Staub are probably still the two best players ever to wear Houston uniforms, but Cook never heard from the Astros again. He also got feelers from the Cubs and Phillies, but nothing came of those.

Ignored, Cook went back to his numbers, and this April his second volume on the subject, Percentage Baseball and the Computer, is scheduled for publication. Basically, it is 207 pages of computer proof that everything he wrote eight years ago was qualitatively correct. Well, not quite everything. The computer has found that Cook’s percentage lineup—with the best hitter leading off, the second best batting second, etc.—is, over a season, 12 runs less effective than the traditional lineup.

Otherwise the computer solidly supports the way Cook says baseball should be played.•

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“Every Now And Then An individual Or Group Makes A Leap That Seems Almost Like Time Travelling”

October 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Innovation, that word which is appropriate sparingly but ascribed constantly, is truly the proper description for the work of inventor Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, a one-woman Jobs and Woz. As Steven Johnson points out in his latest book, How We Got to Now, excerpted in a Financial Times article, new inventions usually are born to many parents working within the same base of knowledge, but the Victorian duo thought completely outside of the box, leaping a full century ahead of everyone else with their ideas about computers. From the FT:

“Most important innovations – in modern times at least – arrive in clusters of simultaneous discovery. The conceptual and technological pieces come together to make a certain idea imaginable – artificial refrigeration, say, or the lightbulb – and around the world people work on the problem, and usually approach it with the same fundamental assumptions about how it can be solved.

Thomas Edison and his peers may have disagreed about the importance of the vacuum or the carbon filament in inventing the electric lightbulb, but none of them was working on an LED. As the writer Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, has observed, the predominance of simultaneous, multiple invention in the historical record has interesting implications for the philosophy of history and science: to what extent is the sequence of invention set in stone by the basic laws of physics or information or the biological and chemical constraints of the environment?

If simultaneous invention is the rule, what about the exceptions? What about Babbage and Lovelace, who were a century ahead of just about every other human on the planet? Most innovation happens in the present tense of possibility, working with tools and concepts that are available in that time. But every now and then an individual or group makes a leap that seems almost like time travelling. What allows them to see past the boundaries of the adjacent possible, when their contemporaries fail to do so? That may be the greatest mystery of all.”

 

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A Note From 1913 About A Peculiar Operation

October 18, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the March 14, 1913 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Rutland, Vt. — George C.  Chalmers, president of the Rutland Business Men’s Association, underwent a peculiar operation here for the removal of a button from his nose. He has been in poor health for some time and recently came to believe that the nasal trouble, with which he was afflicted, might be due to a button which he had pushed into his nose when he was a child, fifty-four years ago. He told a physician of the circumstance and the latter agreed that the button was the root of the trouble. Upon removal, the button was found to have become so encrusted that it had increased from a quarter-inch to an inch in diameter.”

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10 Recent Huffington Post Headlines

October 18, 2014 in Humor, Misc. | Permalink

  • Nurse Accused Of Killing 38 Patients She Found Annoying
  • Why I Bared It All At A Nude Beach With My 75-Year-Old Mother
  • Would You Take Poop Pills If You Knew They’d Save Your Life?
  • Mom Tells Columnist Her Son Masturbates During Hockey Games
  • Patient Woke Up From Colonoscopy Wearing Pink Panties: Lawsuit
  • Man Stops Subway Doors With His Probably Fake Penis Bulge
  • After ‘The Mindy Project’ Anal Sex Scene, What Should Consent Look Like On TV?
  • Used Condoms Hanging On NYC Subway Might Be A Prank, Still Gross
  • Unsuspecting Woman Finds 3-Inch Leech Living In Nose (PHOTO)
  • Sex In The Ocean Sucks In Worst Way Imaginable

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

October 18, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

 

10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. does justice antonin scalia really believe in the devil?
  2. scott carpenter the astronaut who nearly died in space
  3. computerized workers as fast-food restaurants
  4. alvin toffler’s thoughts on genetic engineering
  5. how dangerous is terrorism?
  6. jerzy kosinski in the 1970s
  7. google outsourcing memories
  8. hunter s thompson writing about the hell’s angels
  9. jg ballard predicting the technological future
  10. the most important military battles in history

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

October 18, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

This week, the number of U.S. citizens who’ve died from the Ebola virus on American soil held steady.

  • Bill Gates reviews Thomas Piketty’s surprise bestseller.
  • Glenn Close grew up in a right-wing, anti-intellectual cult.
  • Wavy Gravy, Woodstock hippie, did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit.

“The Middle Level Has Been Cut Out”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Granted the lower end of Hollywood pay is still relative wealth to most folks, but it’s worth noting that even show business, like much of our economy, has a growing income disparity. At the upper stratosphere, the big money still exists for some (but not all) star actors and directors, but the mid-level creative person has been all but squeezed out of existence. You take what you are offered or it is offered to someone else. From an article on the new normal of movie-industry salaries by the Hollywood Reporter:

“How bad is the decline in actor salaries over the past decade? Despite the huge sums still being raked in by such superstars as Robert Downey Jr. (his $75 million comes from his 7 percent, first-dollar slice of Iron Man 3, as well as his $12 million HTC endorsement deal) and Sandra Bullock (a 15 percent, first-dollar deal on Gravity and about $10 million more for her summer hit The Heat), most actors are feeling a definite squeeze, especially those in the middle.

‘If you’re [a big star], you’re getting well paid,’ says one top agent, ‘but the middle level has been cut out.’ Sometimes with a hacksaw. Leonardo DiCaprio made $25 million (including bonuses) forThe Wolf of Wall Street, while co-star Jonah Hill got paid $60,000. Granted, that’s an extreme example — Hill offered to do the part for scale (and got an Oscar nomination for his trouble). …

‘The middle range doesn’t exist anymore,’ one studio executive says of the current financial landscape for feature film directors. ‘Either you’re paying for a modern master, or you’re paying a lot less. The days of paying $3 million or $4 million, knowing they’re just doing the job, that doesn’t exist.’

The going rate for modern masters? Between $7 million and $10 million for auteurs like Paul Greengrass and Ridley Scott, more if the film is considered a tentpole. Christopher Nolan is said to have made $20 million against 20 percent of gross for Interstellar. Backend is otherwise rare these days for the non-A-list.

On the other end of the scale, emerging directors can expect $250,000 to $500,000 for their first big studio feature, but there are exceptions (one European auteur was said to have recently have been paid $1 million for his first Hollywood blockbuster).”

“The Killer Cardigan Is Not Connected With Religious Belief He Points Out”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Magical thinking is not limited to the religious, as the secular likewise often imbue objects with some degree of sentience, as psychologist Bruce Hood points out in a Wired UK piece by Katie Collins. The opening:

“‘I’m a collector; I collect unusual things,’ says University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood speaking at WIRED2014 in London. He asks the audience if they would wear a beautiful cashmere cardigan that he had collected, that was freshly washed and that was once owned by a famous individual. Many raise their hands, but they slink down again when Hood says the cardigan belonged to the serial killer Fred West.

It is not true — in fact the cardigan is one of Hood’s own — but he is making a point: many people hold the belief that a piece of clothing that has come into close contact with a serial killer has somehow been contaminated by the immoral acts committed by its owner. ‘That is what I call supernatural,’ he says. Hood is interested in why we are prepared to believe the unbelievable. The killer cardigan is not connected with religious belief he points out, but that doesn’t stop the majority of people feeling that there’s a hidden property in the clothing that would stop them wearing it.

Hood explains that this is a phenomenon known in psychology as ‘essentialism.’ ‘This is what I’m obsessed with at the moment,’ he says. It is an idea that can be traced back to the days of Plato and that is based on the concept that people can have a strong emotional connections to objects; that they can be imbibed with an ‘essence.'”

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“They Think Of Themselves As Online Companies — Yet They Mostly Operate In The Offline World”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The anarchic experiment that is the Internet has been viewed with a mixture of awe and fear, but as that unbridled energy careers back into our physical world–something that will happen more and more–the old guard and the new wave are unsurprisingly at odds. A little more on the Sharing Economy, from Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times:

“THE regulatory woes seem to be never ending for the newest wave of tech start-ups — the on-demand apps that connect people who need something (a driver, a house cleaner, a grocery shopper) with people who want to do the job.

On Thursday, the New York State attorney general said most Airbnb listings in the city violated zoning and other laws. Officials in California and Pennsylvania recently warned car services like Uber and Lyft that they might be unlawful. And workers’ rights advocates have questioned whether the people who provide these services should receive benefits, spurred by recent reports that some Homejoy house cleaners are homeless.

Why have these companies run into so many problems? Part of the reason is that they think of themselves as online companies — yet they mostly operate in the offline world.

They subscribe to three core business principles that have become a religion in Silicon Valley: Serve as a middleman, employ as few people as possible and automate everything. Those tenets have worked wonders on the web at companies like Google and Twitter. But as the new, on-demand companies are learning, they are not necessarily compatible with the real world.”

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“Republicans Are Suddenly Asking Very Democratic Questions About What Federal Government Can Do To Improve Public Health”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A good way to guard against an epidemic in America would be to extend the Affordable Care Act to all citizens, to make it truly universal. But Ebola has flipped the script at the midterm elections, with government-hating Republicans who fought Obamacare and planned to use it as a rallying cry despite its early successes, now decrying the government’s lack of intervention. From Gary Silverman at the Financial Times:

“Republicans are suddenly asking very Democratic questions about what federal government can do to improve public health. Bloomberg News even reported that members of the appropriations committees in the Republican House and Democratic Senate are working on ways to throw more money at the problem. This would be done by increasing anti-Ebola spending in a bill aimed at keeping the government operating after December 11.

Yet the newfound Republican faith in the federal solutions has been accompanied by a hardening of hearts when it comes to the man behind Obamacare.

Conservatives are seizing on the spread of Ebola as evidence of the president’s unreliability – linking it to the advances of Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, management deficiencies at the Secret Service and the arrival of illegal immigrants from Mexico.”

 

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“We Might Not Be The Life That Sneaks Through”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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The human species may survive the Anthropocene but likely not very well. Myopia has been as much a villain as any, as humans seem to have a default mode that focuses us on short-term needs rather than long-term survival. Does instant gratification eventually give way to staving off extinction? From Tom Chivers at the Telegraph:

“Not all scientists agree that the ‘Anthropocene’ term is helpful. [Climate scientist Tim] Lenton says it points to a real phenomenon, and the distinction in the stratigraphic record will be crystal clear to future geologists, but ‘gut instinct is to be careful about our hubris as a species, about seeing ourselves as hugely powerful and important.’

None the less, he says, ‘we have had a huge impact on the planet and we predict that impact escalating. We are a very unusual animal in having these effects on the globe. Life, such as cyanobacteria, has changed the atmosphere before, but animals usually don’t.’

‘The Great Oxygenation led to Snowball Earth, and almost the total extinction of life. At each of these mass extinctions, some life has sneaked through, but it might not happen every time, and even if it does we might not be the life that sneaks through.’

But the ‘Anthropocene’ need not, necessarily, be a synonym for human-caused global catastrophe. We have reasons to believe that we could be that life which sneaks through. ‘We are very good at telling apocalyptic stories, and there is science behind them,’ says Lenton. ‘But we’re an ingenious species.’

Lynas and Lenton agree we can’t go back to a pre-industrial age ‘that would lead to a mass extinction of humans,’ says Lynas. But technologies – nuclear power, carbon capture, efficient recycling of raw materials – could allow us to enjoy a modern lifestyle even with a population of billions. The trick is, says Lenton, to use our species’ foresight. ‘We have to decide on the sort of world we want, and to design the Anthropocene we want.'”

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Old Print Article: “Ancient Dinosaur Eggs Have Been Found,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1923)

October 17, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A century ago, Gobi Desert dwellers didn’t desire dinosaur eggs for their historical value but for their utility, often fashioning from them jewelry or other trinkets to wear or trade. In 1923, a motorcar-powered expedition, which numbered naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews as one of its leaders, was the first to ever secure the prehistoric eggs and bring them back to America. It was a sensation, of course. Chapman, a showman at heart who was not immune to utility himself, parlayed the jaw-dropping find into international celebrity, the directorship of the American Museum of Natural History and a young trophy wife. It’s conjectured by some that he was the model for Indiana Jones, but most likely that character is a composite of numerous explorers. A couple years after his dino-egg windfall, the scientist returned to the Gobi and purchased an armful of shells from a Mongolian villager for a bar of soap (see caption of fourth photo from top). One odd thing about the October 29, 1923 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article below, which heralded Chapman’s discovery, is its surprise that dinosaurs laid eggs. It doesn’t mention what the prevailing theory had been.

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“Airbnb Is Already Too Popular To Dislodge Completely”

October 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

No shocker that NYC landlords with large holdings in popular Manhattan neighborhoods are illegally exploiting Airbnb, though the city is pretty much turning a blind eye to individual residents on the wrong side of zoning laws. For better or worse, the Sharing Economy is a thing now and will continue to be. From David Streitfeld in the New York Times:

“The housing broker and its imitators, like the taxi service Uber and its clones, have been prompting upheaval just about everywhere they go.

Admirers say these stars of the so-called sharing economy are breaking up monopolies that have grown greedy and lazy. They are empowering individuals. Critics say that the start-ups are unsavory efforts to avoid regulation and taxes, and that the very term ‘sharing economy’ is ridiculous.

In some contentious spots, like San Francisco, where the local government endorsed a plan last week to essentially legalize Airbnb, a resolution may be in sight. But in New York, where real estate is often viewed as a blood sport, the battle is only deepening.

Mr. Schneiderman and city regulators will also announce Thursday a joint enforcement initiative to shut down illegal hotels. Various regulators will investigate violations of building and safety codes and tax regulations.

‘Anyone operating an illegal hotel should be on notice that the state and city will take aggressive enforcement actions in this area,’ said Mr. Schneiderman. ‘A slick advertising campaign doesn’t change the fact that this is illegal activity.’

He was careful, however, to speak of ‘illegal hotels’ rather than ‘illegal rentals.’ Airbnb is already too popular to dislodge completely, no matter what the housing laws say. It also delights travelers, who get a cheaper and usually more interesting place to stay.”

‘Most of our hosts are regular New Yorkers, and the overwhelming majority live outside of Manhattan,’ Mr. Papas said.

As for the 72 percent of listings that Mr. Schneiderman said were illegal, {Airbnb spokesperson Nick] Papas said it was hard to tell what was going on.”

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