Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

August 23, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

This week it became clear that America has a secret weapon it can send to Iraq to destroy ISIS.

I'll give you all a free mustache ride.

I’m giving all you guys free mustache rides.

  • Jarhead 2 has arrived nine years after the original film. Why?
  • Pandemics usually begin in crowded, unsanitary spaces.
  • 3D printed organs will be a reality, but when?
  • Father Yod began one of L.A.’s first health-food restaurants–and a cult.
  • John du Pont, focus of Foxcatcher, drowned others in his madness.
  • Google claims to have no specific business plan for driverless cars.
  • In his AMA, MIT physics professor Max Tegmark discusses advanced AI.
  • You may not want to be in the system, but you are. We all are.
  • Fat might not be the biggest threat in your diet.
  • A brief note from 1895 about dog food.

“Sometimes You Can’t Help But Be Depressed”

August 22, 2014 in Film, Videos | Permalink

Two more Robin Williams interviews, the first one with Dick Cavett in 1979, the second with David Frost in 1991. At the beginning of the Frost piece, the comic flawlessly recreates an early Shakespeare stand-up bit, “Two Dudes From Santa Monica.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 22, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Danielle Smith."

“Danielle Smith.”

Same name?!

This may sound like an odd request, but I’m participating in a scavenger hunt and need to find someone with the same name as me. Sooooooo, if your name is Danielle Smith and you don’t live in Illinois, would you be willing to send me a picture of your ID? You can block out all the personal information, I won’t be creepy or anything.

“The Crowded Encampments Were Ripe For Virulent Infection”

August 22, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In “How Plagues Really Work,” Wendy Orent’s new Aeon piece, she argues that the next pandemic won’t likely come from bird flu genes but from the crowded, inhospitable conditions of refugee camps or overwhelmed hospitals, where disease incubates. Considering how many war-torn areas there are in the world right now, that’s cause for concern. An excerpt which looks at an example from Ancient Greece:

“One mysterious ancient outbreak, the Great Plague of Athens, shows how deadly epidemics unroll in time. The Plague – said to have been caused by typhus, measles, small pox or Ebola, depending on whom you ask – exploded in Athens in the summer of 430 BCE, during the early days of the Peloponnesian War, a 27-year struggle between Athens and Sparta over hegemony in the Hellenic world. Pericles, the de facto leader of Athens, who pushed for war, developed a defensive strategy that proved fatal, to him and to as many as a third of Athenian citizens. He insisted on bringing all citizens – people who lived in the towns and rural areas outside the walled city – into Athens, leaving the rest of the city-state to be ravaged by the invading Spartans. The Athenian Long Walls ran down to the separate ports of Piraeus and Phaleron, each of which lay about four miles from the City of Athens proper. Thus sealed off, fronting only on the sea, Athenians could shelter safely, Pericles argued, until the Peloponnesian War was won.

The normal population of the city was around 150,000. Scholars estimate that 200,000 to 250,000 farmers and townsmen and their families came streaming in, bringing everything they could carry with them – down to the woodwork on their farmhouse walls. But Pericles had made no provision for the newcomers, who were used to their country manors, their quiet towns, their open fields. A few had homes or relatives within the walls. But most had nowhere to go, and huddled in stifling huts, or in tents flung up in the narrow spaces between the walls. The crowded encampments were ripe for virulent infection.

Physicians and attendants died quickly, and the only people who could care for the sick were survivors immune to further infection.”

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“An Algorithm Doesn’t Boast Any Particular Party Identification”

August 22, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

While Grover Norquist is baking his Libertarian ass at Burning Man, he’s simultaneously planning for Republicans to win back urban American by bogarting the Uber, riding the sharing economy to voting-booth victory. Of course, as Emily Badger pointed out last month in the Washington Post and Andrew Leonard expands on today in Salon, this economic disruption isn’t really staying within traditional Right and Left lanes. From Leonard’s piece:

“The semiotics of the announcement of David Plouffe’s hiring by Uber are fascinating. For example, consider how Plouffe used the word ‘inexorable’ in an interview with the New York Times.

‘We’re on an inexorable path of progress here,’ said Plouffe. Which translates as: Uber and the rest of Silicon Valley’s innovative disrupters are going to conquer us all in the long run, so we might as well just get used to it and stop throwing roadblocks in their way.

Beware! When a company with a name like ‘Uber’ is associated with ‘inexorable,’ resistance is obviously futile. And it’s worth recalling, this isn’t just about crushing existing taxi ‘cartels.’ Uber has made no secret of its ambitions to become a logistical hub that will compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx and Hertz, that will deliver groceries, as well as human beings, more efficiently than any other company. Uber’s algorithm is what’s inexorable. And an algorithm doesn’t boast any particular party identification: It’s just there to make consumers happy.

But fast on inexorability’s heels comes the issue of what the word ‘progressive’ really means. As Emily Badger reported, John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, supported Uber’s hire by saying that Plouffe will bring the same ‘progressive approach’ to campaigning for Uber as has been demonstrated by Colorado’s ’embrace of innovation and disruptive technology.’

When you pull your phone out of your pocket, click a couple of buttons, send a signal that bounces off a satellite, and a car-for-hire magically appears in front of you in a few minutes, it certainly feels like we are living in an age of technological progress. But the jury is still out on whether this kind of innovation is truly socially progressive. A society that puts consumers first has obvious disadvantages for workers.”

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“I Don’t Believe We Need To Be Obsessively Worried By A Hypothesized Existential Risk To Humanity”

August 22, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Because of philosopher Nick Bostrom’s new book, Superintelligence, the specter of AI enslaving or eliminating humans has been getting a lot of play lately. In a Guardian piece, UWE Bristol Professor Alan Winfield argues that we should be concerned but not that concerned. He doesn’t think we’re close to capable of building a Frankenstein monster that could write Frankenstein. Of course, machines might not need think like us to surpass us. The opening:

“The singularity – or, to give it its proper title, the technological singularity. It’s an idea that has taken on a life of its own; more of a life, I suspect, than what it predicts ever will. It’s a Thing for techno-utopians: wealthy middle-aged men who regard the singularity as their best chance of immortality. They are Singularitarians, some seemingly prepared to go to extremes to stay alive for long enough to benefit from a benevolent super-artificial intelligence – a man-made god that grants transcendence.

And it’s a thing for the doomsayers, the techno-dystopians. Apocalypsarians who are equally convinced that a super-intelligent AI will have no interest in curing cancer or old age, or ending poverty, but will – malevolently or maybe just accidentally – bring about the end of human civilisation as we know it. History and Hollywood are on their side. From the Golem to Frankenstein’s monster, Skynet and the Matrix, we are fascinated by the old story: man plays god and then things go horribly wrong.

The singularity is basically the idea that as soon as AI exceeds human intelligence, everything changes. There are two central planks to the hypothesis: one is that as soon as we succeed in building AI as smart as humans it rapidly reinvents itself to be even smarter, starting a chain reaction of smarter-AI inventing even-smarter-AI until even the smartest humans cannot possibly comprehend how it works. The other is that the future of humanity becomes in some sense out of control, from the moment of the singularity onwards.

So should we be worried or optimistic about the technological singularity? I think we should be a little worried – cautious and prepared may be a better way of putting it – and at the same time a little optimistic (that’s the part of me that would like to live in Iain M Banks’ The Culture. But I don’t believe we need to be obsessively worried by a hypothesised existential risk to humanity.”

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Old Print Article: “Man-Driven Plane Flies In Paris Test,” New York Times (1921)

August 22, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

A small plane powered for a matter of feet by a person on a bicycle is utterly useless in a practical sense, yet achingly beautiful to admire. From a July 10, 1921 New York Times article about French wheelman Gabriel Poulain, who was a pioneer in this odd endeavor:

“Paris–Gabriel Poulain, the French champion cyclist, succeeded this morning in the Bois de Boulogne in winning the Peugot prize of 10,000 francs for the flight of more than ten meters distance and one meter high in a man-driven airplane. In an ‘aviette,’ which is a bicycle with two wing planes, he four times flew the prescribed distance, his longest flight being more than twelve meters, or about the same number of yards.

Poulain for several years has been devoting himself to the solution of the problem of flight by the power of his own muscles and several times has come near winning a prize. This morning’s exhibition, however, was by far the most successful, a cyclist never before having been able to rise from the ground a sufficient height to enable him to cover more than six or seven meters.

For today’s attempt Poulain altered the angle of the small rear plane of his machine and it was this alteration, it seems, that solved the problem. 

Poulain made his attempt just after dawn on the smooth road at the entrance to the Longchamps race course. Several members of the Aero Club, donors of the prize and a large company of journalists and photographers were present. A square twenty meters each away was carefully measured off and chalked so as to mark the points at which the ‘aviette’ must rise one meter from the ground and that two flights must be made in opposite directions.

Rides Smoothly in Air

Poulain, who was confident that this time he was going to succeed, rode his machine at top speed toward the chalked square. As he entered it he released the clutch which throws the wing into proper position and at once the miniature biplane rose from the ground gracefully and steadily to a height of more than a meter. 

The flight was as steady as that of a motor-driven airplane and Poulain declared afterward that the motion was smoother than when traveling along the ground. When the judges measured the distance between the wheel marks on the chalk they found it lacked only two centimeters of being twelve meters.

Poulain’s flight in the opposite direction was not quite so successful, though he succeeded in covering eleven and a half meters. In landing he broke two spokes of the rear wheel.

M. Robert Peugeot declared the prize won, but Poulain wished to make further proof of the powers of his machine. After changing the wheel he started from positions chosen by the judges, and in each case he succeeded in covering the prize-winning distance. His longest flight was the last, of twelve meters thirty-two centimeters.

In order to cover so great a distance Poulain worked up to a speed of forty-five kilometers an hour on the ground. According to his own estimate, the muscular force required for flight is equal to three horse power. The total weight of the machine, with the wings, is seventeen kilogrammes, or about thirty-seven pounds, and the cyclist himself weighs seventy-four kilograms, or about 165  pounds.

After the flight Poulain declared that he intended to set at work at once on another plane, which, he believes, will enable him to fly 200 to 300 meters. On this machine he will make use of a propeller instead of depending, as he did today, simply on impetus.

Once in the air, Poulain says that not so much power is needed as for the take-off. He says the pedal-worked propeller will be strong enough to continue flight for a considerable distance without fatigue.”

“I Think That Robots And Entertainment Will Be Very Important In The Future”

August 22, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese and employer of Jobs and the Woz during their formative years, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow, with a couple at the beginning regarding the future intersection of business and technology. 

____________________

Question:

With the Atari you were at the cutting edge of technology back in the day. If you were starting today, as a technology entrepreneur, what technologies would you focus on?

Nolan Bushnell:

I think that robots and entertainment will be very important in the future. I’m also very interested in businesses that will be enabled by autonomous or auto-drive cars. There will also be an interesting intersection between computers and biology. Harder tech, but important, is nanotech i.e. micromachines.

____________________

Question:

What did you learn from trying the robot cafe concept — anything you’d like to bring back from it?

Nolan Bushnell:

I found that two-thirds of the population loved it and the last third hated it. Kids universally loved it, particularly ages 10-20. I think that adding games as well as automatic ordering will clearly be the fast food and the quick-casual structure of the future.

____________________

Question:

What’s the biggest lesson you learned at Atari or Chuck E. Cheese that you wish you had known before you started?

Nolan Bushnell:

Don’t sell to big Hollywood studios. Atari had an extraordinary corporate culture that was destroyed within 2 years of the sale. I think that Atari would still be important today if that sale hadn’t occurred.

____________________

Question:

Did Steve Jobs really stink that bad that he had to be relegated to work the night shift??

Nolan Bushnell:

Yeah. I knew that Jobs and Woz were fast friends and Woz worked days at HP. If I put Jobs on the night shift, I’d get two Steves for the price of one. A very good business proposition.

____________________

Question:

How do you think new tech like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass can improve, dare I say evolve how people are educated today?

Nolan Bushnell:

I think that any time you can make life and tech seamless, you have the opportunity to affect the brain. The immersion of the Oculus Rift can give you a real sense of the Battle of Hastings or life in Dickinsonian England. Seeing the circulatory system from the inside has to be a learning experience. Google glass giving you data inputs for later analysis from your lab results clearly is a step in the right direction. If telephone or television (or any examples) early on get it exactly wrong, so will some of these technologies. But then we’ll figure it out.•

 

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“Love Is A Reward, Not A Solution”

August 22, 2014 in Books, Videos | Permalink

In 1984, a youngish Oprah Winfrey talks to an oldish Norman Mailer about love. She tiptoes nicely around the knifing.

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“The Ambition Of The Simulation Illustrates How Serious The Tech Company Is At Developing Self-Driving Cars”

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

You would think Google would want its autonomous cars to drive every loop–jump through every hoop–to prove that its software is safe and shut up naysayers. But the search giant instead hopes to speed up the process, lobbying California to certify the robocars based on test drives that are computer simulations which don’t involve real roads. From Mark Harris at the Guardian:

“Google has built a ‘Matrix-style’ digital simulation of the entire Californian road system in which it is testing its self-driving cars – and is lobbying the state’s regulators to certify them based on virtual rather than real driving.

The extensive simulation – reminiscent of the virtual cities created for human captives in sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix – exists entirely inside computers at the company’s Mountain View location, and the cars have so far virtually ‘driven’ more than 4 million miles inside it, facing challenges just like those in the real world, such as lane-weaving motorists, wobbly cyclists and unpredictable pedestrians.

The ambition of the simulation illustrates how serious the tech company is at developing self-driving cars, an innovation that has been independently estimated as worth billions of pounds if widely implemented.

California’s regulations stipulate autonomous vehicles must be tested under ‘controlled conditions’ that mimic real-world driving as closely as possible. Usually, that has meant a private test track or temporarily closed public road.

But Ron Medford, Google’s safety director for the self-driving car programme, has been arguing that the computer simulation should be accepted instead. In a letter in early 2014 to California state officials, which the Guardian has obtained under freedom of information legislation, Medford wrote: ‘Computer simulations are actually more valuable, as they allow manufacturers to test their software under far more conditions and stresses than could possibly be achieved on a test track.’

He added: ‘Google wants to ensure that [the regulation] is interpreted to allow manufacturers to satisfy this requirement through computer-generated simulations.'”

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“We Probably Know Less Than 1% Of The Species Of Dinosaurs That Existed”

August 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

One quick exchange from an Ask Me Anything at Reddit with paleontologist Peter Larson that lends perspective on our poverty of knowledge about the deep past:

“Question:

Is there an estimate of what percentage of the fossil record we have? That is to say, of all the species that ever existed, how many have we found?

Peter Larson:

We probably know less than 1% of the species of dinosaurs that existed. If the entire population were to go out digging dinosaurs we might eventually reach a that 1% mark.”

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“The Prediction That Chinese Economic And Political Reform Would Go Hand In Hand Seems Not To Have Panned Out”

August 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

China remaining under authoritarian rule may be great for the environment. Seems odd, right? One of the government’s chief fears is that pollution caused by the nation’s hasty mass urbanization might lead to rebellion, so we’ll likely see large-scale green innovation until the situation is markedly improved. In the case of this one country, the world’s most populous, oppression may have an unintended positive consequence. Strange planet, isn’t it?

It’s still surprising that capitalism’s rise in China hasn’t been attended by a growth of democracy. From John Osburg’s Foreign Affairs review of the new book on the topic by Evan Osnos:

“Meanwhile, although growth has created a middle class of sorts and even an upper crust of very wealthy Chinese, neither group has followed the anticipated script. For the most part, the new middle class seems too preoccupied with the intense pressures of owning a home and raising a child in a hypercompetitive society to get involved in politics. As for the new rich, they have hardly pushed for a fairer and more representative government to protect their new prosperity. Instead, most of them have been co-opted by the Communist Party — or have simply emigrated to countries with more reliable legal systems. 

Perhaps most telling, today young Chinese across the socioeconomic spectrum exhibit almost none of the political fervor that led thousands of students to take to the streets in 1989. China’s educational system has fed the country’s youth a steady diet of patriot-ism to ward off rebellious thoughts. But such measures appear almost redundant, since many young Chinese seem more interested in buying iPhones and Louis Vuitton products than in fighting for democratic change. 

On the surface, then, the prediction that Chinese economic and political reform would go hand in hand seems not to have panned out. In truth, however, the story is more complicated. As Evan Osnos suggests in Age of Ambition, the optimistic view of China’s evolution wasn’t entirely wrong; it merely relied on a conception of politics too narrow to capture a number of subtle but profound shifts that have changed China in ways that are not always immediately visible. In his riveting profiles of entrepreneurs, journalists, artists, dissidents, and strivers, Osnos discovers the emergence in Chinese society of something even more fundamental than a desire for political representation: a search for dignity.”

 

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“Many Became Little More Than Roving Bands Of Thugs”

August 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Delancey Place has a passage from David Graeber’s great 2011 book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, about knights, who have been gifted with a sense of gallantry by history and literature that they were not due. An excerpt:

“It was … at the height of the fairs of Champagne and the Italian mer­chant empires, between 1160 and 1172, that the term ‘adventure’ be­gan to take on its contemporary meaning. The man most responsible for it was the French poet Chretien de Troyes, author of the famous Arthurian romances — most famous, perhaps, for being the first to tell the story of Sir Percival and the Holy Grail. The romances were a new sort of literature featuring a new sort of hero, the ‘knight-errant,’ a warrior who roamed the world in search of, precisely, ‘adventure’ — in the contemporary sense of the word: perilous challenges, love, trea­sure, and renown. Stories of knightly adventure quickly became enor­mously popular, Chretein was followed by innumerable imitators, and the central characters in the stories — Arthur and Guinevere, Lance­lot, Gawain, Percival, and the rest — became known to everyone, as they are still. This courtly ideal of the gallant knight, the quest, the joust, romance and adventure, remains central to our image of the Middle Ages.

The curious thing is that it bears almost no relation to reality. Nothing remotely like a real ‘knight-errant’ ever existed. ‘Knights’ had originally been a term for freelance warriors, drawn from the younger or, often, bastard sons of the minor nobility. Unable to in­herit, many were forced to band together to seek their fortunes. Many became little more than roving bands of thugs, in an endless pursuit of plunder — precisely the sort of people who made [the newly emerging class of] merchants’ lives so dangerous.”

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A Brief Note From 1895 About Dog Food

August 21, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 12, 1885 New York Times:

“Bellaire, Ohio–Frederick Glatzer and Frederick Summers are coal diggers and reside with their families up Indian Run, a few miles from this city. What has made them notorious is the fact that they are fond of dog meat, and on occasions when the average mortal buys a turkey to celebrate with, these people kill a dog and roast it. Glatzer’s wife has not been in the country very long, but during the time she has lived here the family has had several dog roasts, and have made them very enjoyable occasions, and on Christmas expect to have another, at which a number of relatives will be present.”

“The Traditional Relationship Between Labor And Technology Has Been A Positive, If Contentious, One”

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

Another reaction to the Pew Research Center report about labor and technology in the near-term, this one by Eric Reid at MSN Money, who focuses on one of the most essential questions: Will the Digital Age trump the patterns of the Industrial Age, whereby the rise of the machines lifted everyone, increasing production, creating new jobs and industries to replace the ones it disrupted? An excerpt:

“The traditional relationship between labor and technology has been a positive, if contentious, one. When new devices improve productivity, companies can maintain the same output with fewer people, so they lay some off. Although this leads to temporary unemployment, it also improves incomes for the remaining workers and management, who go out and spend their extra money. This creates jobs elsewhere, and the combined productivity of these new jobs along with the new technology means that the economy as a whole ends up both producing and consuming more overall.

In other words, the pie gets bigger and increases everyone’s slice with it. As Professor Donald Grimes, an economist with the University of Michigan, wrote:

‘Think of tractors and all of the other agricultural productivity gains. We are now producing far more output with a small fraction of the number of farmers that we used to have. Or of the productivity effect of the assembly line. And in terms of IT, think about how spreadsheet programs reduced the number of ‘book keepers.’ Or how the internet allowed people to buy their own airline tickets, thus eliminating lots of travel agency jobs.

‘In terms of the big picture these productivity gains raised the incomes of the people who continued to work in these professions, and/or made the owners of the machinery richer, or helped to make airline tickets cheaper. When people spent their extra money they created jobs in other industries and the people who lost their jobs were re-employed in new jobs. Over time these productivity gains raised our wages and our standard of living.’

This model makes two assumptions, however: First, that we all share in the profits of increasing productivity, and second, that laid-off workers will have other industries to move into. Both of these assumptions may be falling apart.”

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“We Now Live With The Ever-Gnawing Sensation That One’s Self Is Really Just One More Meat Unit”

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

Douglas Coupland starts off his latest Financial Times column with a stunning fact about Icelandic novels and then addresses how individuality has been swallowed by the shiny, disquieting machine we’ve built for ourselves, which is capable of quantifying and measuring everyone, constantly reminding us that we don’t measure up. The opening:

“Last summer in Reykjavik I learnt that one in 10 Icelanders will write a novel in their lifetime. This is impressive but I suppose the downside is that each novel only gets nine readers. In a weird way, our world is turning into a world of Icelandic novelists, except substitute ‘blog,’ ‘vlog’ or ‘website’ for ‘novel’ – and … there we are. A defining sentiment of our new era is that never before has being an individual been so easily broadcast, yet never before has individuality felt so ever-increasingly far away. Before the 21st century, we lived with the notion of one’s self as a noble citizen of the world, a lone soul whose life was a story written across a span of seven decades. Instead, we now live with the ever-gnawing sensation that one’s self is really just one more meat unit among seven billion other meat units.

This 21st-century crisis of individuality expresses itself in many ways. In Japan there is the phenomenon of the hikikomori. Your child grows up, leaves home and then, after a few years, returns home and never leaves his or her bedroom ever again. Ever. The rare hikikomori will venture out in the middle of the night to visit a local minimart but that’s it. In 2010, the Japanese government estimated there were 700,000 hikikomori in Japan. Yes, you read that correctly: almost three-quarters-of-a-million modern-day elective hermits back with mom and dad, and they are psychologically incapable of ever leaving. Ever.

I suspect what these young people are experiencing is what I term ‘atomophobia’ – the fear of feeling like an individual.”

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 21, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“I’ve been ripping shit up lately.”

“I’ve been ripping shit up lately.”

Changing my evil ways

I’ve been ripping shit up lately. Four or five hookers a week, $700 – $1200 per week on party favors, at least one swinger party a week, not taking my work seriously and now I’m left feeling spent. I’m about to do a complete turnaround. No one event made me sit down and say, “That’s enough! Time to act like an adult, find a girlfriend and follow the well traveled path,” but that’s kinda where I’m heading.

I’d like to hear from people who have made the transition. Was it tough? How did you deal with the routine of a less exciting existence? How did you deal with the actual intimacy? I’ve been functioning at a pretty high level (no pun intended) for a while. Maybe it’s tolerance or maybe somewhere deep inside, I knew that I was going to end this behavior. Being single with no children and making six figures is a trap sometimes.

“[He Was] The Captain Of A ‘Scout Ship’ From Venus That Had Landed On The Airstrip Abutting Van Tassel’s Property”

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

The first two excellent paragraphs of “Welcome to the Integratron,” Jody Rosen’s new T Magazine article about a large-scale “time-travel” contraption in the California desert that was purported to be ordered built in 1957 by Venusians:

“In the wee hours of Aug. 24, 1953, George Van Tassel, a 43-year-old former aviation engineer, was awakened by a man from outer space. Six years earlier, Van Tassel had moved with his family to Landers, Calif., a place of stark beauty and rainbow sunsets in the southeastern corner of the Mojave Desert, 40 desolate miles due north of Palm Springs. Van Tassel had the clean-cut look of a midcentury company man, and a résumé to match: He had worked for Lockheed and Douglas Aircraft, and for Howard Hughes’s aviation concern. But his spiritual leanings were esoteric. He settled in Landers because of its proximity to Giant Rock, an enormous seven-story-high desert boulder in whose shadow he would sit silently for hours at a stretch. He told friends that he went to Giant Rock to commune with the spirits of American Indians, who had regarded the boulder as sacred.

But on that night in 1953, Van Tassel’s visitor was not a Native American. He was, Van Tassel claimed, a Venusian: the captain of a ‘scout ship’ from Venus that had landed on the airstrip abutting Van Tassel’s property. The spaceman looked like a human, wore a gray one-piece bodysuit and spoke, Van Tassel told a television interviewer, ‘in the best English, equivalent to Ronald Colman’s.’ He informed Van Tassel that his name was Solganda and that he was 700 years old. (He looked no older than 28, Van Tassel said.) Van Tassel was ushered onto the spacecraft where he was told that Earthlings’ reliance on metal building materials was interfering with radio frequencies and disrupting interplanetary ‘thought transfers.’ Solganda also divulged a secret: a formula that Van Tassel could use to build a remarkable machine, a device that would generate electrostatic energy to suspend the laws of gravity, extend human life and facilitate high-speed time travel.”

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“I Think Superhuman AI In Our Lifetime Is Plausible”

August 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

MIT physics professor Max Tegmark just did a wide-ranging Ask Me Anything at Reddit, covering everything from future AI to the afterlife. A few exchanges follow.

__________________________

Question:

We haven’t been back to the moon in ages. We need to go back, right?

Max Tegmark:

If we want to go to Mars and beyond, going back to the Moon is the logical first step. I know it’s now as sexy (“been there, done that”), but it’s a great way to perfect required technologies and WAY easier.

__________________________

Question:

What do you think of the Alcubierre drive and Q-thrusters for interplanetary/interstellar travel? Do you think you will be able to buy a ticket to Mars within your lifetime?

Max Tegmark:

I’m betting against the Alcubierre drive but for the Mars ticket. I think the way to do Mars travel is to send people who volunteer to go on a one-way ticket, which is way cheaper. The current NASA obsession with bringing everyone back home safely makes it dramatically harder and costlier, and goes against the traditional spirit of exploration. I don’t think it will be that hard to find volunteers.

_________________________

Question:

Do you think there will an AI with consciousness in our lifetimes?

Max Tegmark:

I think superhuman AI in our lifetime is plausible – there’s certainly nothing in the laws of physics saying that intelligence requires carbon atoms.

_________________________

Question:

I have a question in connection with your recent statement saying that the “consciousness is the way information feels while it is being processed”. Soon enough some of our most advanced computers will have met all 4 requirements for a physical system to be conscious – in the light of the above, do you foresee any significant advances in the AI field within next 5-10 years?

Max Tegmark:

Yes, I foresee huge advances in AI during the coming decade. But we still don’t understand with confidence what makes an information-processing system feel conscious (have a subjective experience) as opposed to simply behaving as if it were conscious, and there’s great controversy here. For example, my neuroscientist friend and consciousness pioneer Giulio Tononi thinks that if you simulate me perfectly on a regular computer, I won’t be conscious, but rather a zombie whose behavior is indistinguishable from mine. I’m fascinated by these questions and look forward to doing further research on them.

_________________________

Question:

Is there an afterlife?

Max Tegmark:

I’m betting against it, unless you count getting uploaded/simulated, so I suggest living this life to the fullest!•

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Old Print Article: “Deadwood Described,” New York Times (1877)

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

“There is no such place anywhere.”

The infamous Wild West town of Deadwood was profiled in all its raffish, criminal, merciless glory in the the August 13, 1877 New York Times. An excerpt:

Deadwood is as lively as ever. It is a queer place. The man who ventured the remark that a fool and his money are soon parted must have had in his mind’s eye some such place as this. It is the sharpers’ paradise. The “tenderfoot” is here brought face to face with the ingenious bummer, the slick confidence man, the claim jumper, the land shark and the desperado, and he is a man of more than usual alertness who does not get ‘taken in’ somehow or other before he has been 24 hours in this sinful city. There is no such place anywhere. It shows up in its worst forms the ‘fast and flash’ American trait. A little over a year ago the site of this swarming camp was a part of the howling wilderness. To-day there are along the streets and up and down in the gulches, within a mile, over 10,000 people. Here is a city of 4,000 inhabitants, with a floating population of 2,000 more. About 1,500 houses and huts, and hundreds of tents up the hill-sides, an academy, church, two daily newspapers, four banks; 20 lawyers, physicians, dentists, artists; club-houses, theatres in full blast every night, the streets thronged with speculators, tramps, and bummers: gambling-hells open all day long, and ‘cappers’ on every corner watching for the next ‘victim’–such is a hasty glance at Deadwood. It is a place in which the few prey upon the many. You cannot buy anything for less than a quarter; your living costs you double what it would at Denver or Salt Lake City. You can’t step in any direction without facing some device for getting rid of your money. They have even got a “corner” on postage stamps and you must pay from a dime to a quarter for a three-cent stamp. It is no wonder that the thousands who come here with a few dollars in their pockets soon find themselves ‘dead broke’ and dependent upon the charity of the better class of people. It cannot be urged too strongly that poor men or men of small competence should stay away from Black Hills. It may not be out of the way for capitalists to come and look around; but let the poor man stay away. One of the business men here, seeing the condition of the hundreds who lay idle and penniless about the street, has the honesty to write to the Deadwood Times, for the benefit of ‘pilgrims,’ in which he says that the truth ought to be told. and the “tenderfeet” be advised to stay at home. I quote from his communication:

deadwodd890“There are thousands of men in the Hills who would be glad to work for their bread, or enough money to pay their way back home; but there is no employment for them. The placer claims are all taken up by the first comers, and the quartz leads are not yet sufficiently developed to require many laborers. I never saw so many sick-looking men in my life as I have seen in Deadwood. They come here without a cent in their pockets, expecting to gobble up gold by the bucketful, and they soon go away without a ‘flea in the ear.’ Now these pilgrims are not only fools in this ‘vain delusive world.’ They come here full of greedy expectation, but in 24 hours their gorgeous air castles have blown away into bubbles.”•

“My First Reaction Was One Of Being Rather Stunned By What Was Being Proposed”

August 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

All my condolences got to the family of photojournalist James Foley, who was executed by ISIS. What a brave and decent person he was, right down to the final harsh seconds of his life. If only all of us possessed such strength.

When you see such utter brutality of ISIS in Iraq, you’re reminded that such a group gained power only because we destabilized that region with a needless war, just one of the bad decisions we made in the wake of 9/11. Another was torture. We lowered ourselves to the level of our inhumane attackers. We never needed to carry out a holocaust to defeat Hitler, and we don’t have to turn ourselves into terrorists to overcome them. Let’s face it: The world has already overcome them, modernity rendering them merely a dangerous anachronism. We don’t need to head back to the 13th century ourselves to win this ever-shifting war.

One of the key figures in allowing waterboarding and renditions was CIA lawyer John Rizzo, who has written a book of his experiences, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA. He just sat for an interview with Spiegel’s Holger Stark. An excerpt:

“Spiegel:

Just days after 9/11, you also wrote up a list of possible covert actions. What did you suggest?

John Rizzo:

I actually wrote the first list the day of 9/11, literally two hours after the attack. Like everyone else, I was in a state of shock and bewilderment, but I knew that we were going to undertake counteractions that were unprecedented in my career. I scribbled down on my yellow legal pad conceivable options, including lethal operations against al-Qaida — not just the al-Qaida elements who carried out the 9/11 attack, but also those who would be planning future attacks. The list included, for the first time in the history of the CIA, a program to detain and interrogate senior al-Qaida leaders.

Spiegel:

Would you describe yourself as the architect of the renditions program through which suspected al-Qaida members were secretly kidnapped and abused?

John Rizzo:

I was certainly an architect of the interrogation program, even if I didn’t originally come up with it. I was the legal architect of the proposed list of techniques and played the lead role in obtaining legal approval for their use.

Spiegel: 

Who came up with the original idea?

John Rizzo:

Our people from the Counter Terrorism Center. One day they came to my office and listed all the enhanced interrogation techniques for me. I had never heard of waterboarding. Some techniques, such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation …

Spiegel:

… which kept those suspected by the CIA of terrorism awake for more than seven days non-stop …

John Rizzo:

… seemed harsh, even brutal to me. On the original list of proposed techniques was one which was even more chilling than waterboarding. It was never used.

Spiegel:

What technique was it?

John Rizzo: 

I’m not allowed to specify it; it is still classified. I had no preparation when the counterterrorism people came to me, and so my first reaction was one of being rather stunned by what was being proposed.”

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“Ross Hunts For Available Brands To Mine”

August 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Global box office explains why Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which underperformed in the U.S., warranted a sequel, but why on earth would there be a Jarhead 2 nine years after the original, with none of the original principals attached? Matt Patches of Grantland breaks down the strategy and economics of such a move, which is not so different than reviving a ghost brand of cereal. An excerpt:

“There are blunt and nuanced answers to the inevitable ‘Why!?’ The obvious: money. Less obvious: A potential to serve audiences hungry for stories with budget-sensible vehicles. That’s Glenn Ross’s prerogative. As general manager and executive vice-president of Universal 1440 Entertainment, the production arm of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Ross hunts for available brands to mine. It’s not unlike a typical movie studio, though Ross doesn’t have the time to work like the theatrical side. He works quickly and aggressively. He caters to fans and creates results. Judging from Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s history, he’s doing something right.

The officially sanctioned Jarhead sequel joins a swarm of thought-dead brands revived through cunning straight-to-DVD strategy. Universal Home Entertainment, which is releasing Jarhead 2: Field of Fire on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD platforms, has ‘non-theatrical’ (‘direct-to-DVD’ being the archaic term) production down to a science. The company releases five to seven titles a year. The annual slates are eclectic: In the past four years, Universal has released The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption,Saige Paints the Sky, Death Race 3: Inferno, Honey 2,Blue Crush 2, Curse of Chucky (the franchise’s sixth installment), and The Little Rascals Save the Day (a quasi-continuation of the studio’s 1994 remake). Competitive studios keep their own plates spinning, with Fox Home Entertainment (Marley & Me: The Puppy Years, Tooth Fairy 2, Flicka: Country Pride, Wrong Turn 5 & 6, and Joy Ride 3), Paramount Famous Productions (Mean Girls 2), and Warner Premiere (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective Jr.; House Party: Tonight’s the Night; and DC Comics’ animated output) producing new titles for streaming platforms and Redbox kiosks.

Ross looks at Jarhead 2 and sees an entirely new face to the non-theatrical business.”

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“Mainstream Adoption Of 3-D Printing In Medicine…Is About Two To Five Years Away”

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

Whether it’s kidneys or kidney beans, 3D printers have as much potential as anything to transform our world. But how close is the reality? From Lisa Fleisher at the Wall Street Journal:

“A 3-D printed pizza isn’t coming to a home kitchen near you anytime soon. But a personalized wedding cake topper? That could be commercially viable a lot quicker, says Gartner analyst Pete Basiliere.

The vision of printing your own food, gifts or shoes at home is at least five to 10 years away, analyst firm Gartner said in a report on 3-D printing released Tuesday, part of its annual tradition of trying to gauge how much of the talk around various technologies is real vs. hype. 3-D printing refers to a way of manufacturing things on the spot, commonly by spurting out layer upon layer of material such as plastic to forge something based on a digital design.

The most common and easiest use for 3-D printing is to create product models, which is about two years away from its peak usage, the report said. Mainstream adoption of 3-D printing in medicine — a rapidly advancing area that includes everything from actual organs to prosthetic limbs — is about two to five years away. But the technology just isn’t practical enough for everyday use at home, at least not yet, Basiliere said.”

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“Their Preferred Solution: A Complete Totalitarian Takeover Of The World, And Maybe The Universe, By A New Super-Intelligent Computer”

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

Reddit pointed me to a post at economist Robin Hansen’s blog, in which he engages in some extreme speculation. Hansen looks at how the trends of longer lifespans and accelerated social change may lead to a multi-generational disconnect, which has encouraged some futurists to suggest governance by totalitarian computer, or Fascism by algorithm. They think it inevitable anyway, so they want to try to commandeer this brave new world to some extent. I don’t think we get that option should the computer apocalypse occur. An excerpt:

“In history we have seen change not only in technology and environments, but also in habits, cultures, attitudes, and preferences. New generations often act not just like the same people thrust into new situations, but like new kinds of people with new attitudes and preferences. This has often intensified intergenerational conflicts; generations have argued not only about who should consume and control what, but also about which generational values should dominate.

So far, this sort of intergenerational value conflict has been limited due to the relatively mild value changes that have so far appeared within individual lifetimes. But at least two robust trends suggest the future will have more value change, and thus more conflict:

  1. Longer lifespans – Holding other things constant, the longer people live the more generations will overlap at any one time, and the more different will be their values.
  2. Faster change – Holding other things constant, a faster rate of economic and social change will likely induce values to change faster as people adapt to these social changes.
  3. Value plasticity – It may become easier for our descendants to change their values, all else equal. This might be via stronger ads and schools, or direct brain rewiring. (This trend seems less robust.)

These trends robustly suggest that toward the end of their lives future folk will more often look with disapproval at the attitudes and behaviors of younger generations, even as these older generations have a smaller proportional influence on the world. There will be more ‘Get off my lawn! Damn kids got no respect.’

The futurists who most worry about this problem tend to assume a worst possible case. (Supporting quotes below.) That is, without a regulatory solution we face the prospect of quickly sharing the world with daemon spawn of titanic power who share almost none of our values. Not only might they not like our kind of music, they might not like music. They might not even be conscious. One standard example is that they might want only to fill the universe with paperclips, and rip us apart to make more paperclip materials. Futurists’ key argument: the space of possible values is vast, with most points far from us.

This increased intergenerational conflict is the new problem that tempts some futurists today to consider a new regulatory solution. And their preferred solution: a complete totalitarian takeover of the world, and maybe the universe, by a new super-intelligent computer.

You heard that right.”

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“They Good-Naturedly Addressed Whether They’d Been Brainwashed”

August 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Father Yod had 14 wives, but it’s not polite to count.

Before he was an oddly named cult leader, Yod was James Edward Baker, a Marine and stuntman who in 1969 opened a Sunset Strip health-food restaurant, the Source, and founded a cult, the Source Family, a group of beautiful young people housed in a Los Angeles mansion. Oh, and he fronted an improvisational psychedelic band called YaHoWa 13. Yod was killed almost immediately after moving his improvised family to Hawaii, believing he could hang glide from a 1,000 foot peak even though he had no experience in the sport. 

I suppose it’s because the commune never blew up into any kind of Manson-ish mayhem that it’s looked back upon (from a distance) almost fondly. But insular societies are always just a couple of steps from madness. Of course, I guess you could say the same of nations, though it’s easier to find refuge in a larger world.

The opening of Steffie Nelson’s 2007 Los Angeles Times article about the guru and his group:

Earlier this summer, almost 100 psychedelic music fans, subculture aficionados, students of the occult and local literati climbed the flower-petal-strewn steps of publisher couple Jodi Wille and Adam Parfrey’s Silver Lake home for a salon celebrating the upcoming publication of The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWa 13 and the Source Family (Process), the definitive history of a mystical cult that thrived in Los Angeles between 1970 and 1974. The book’s author, Isis Aquarian (formerly Charlene Peters), had flown in from Hawaii, and Family members Omne, Magus, Electra and Orbit, all of whom are now in their 50s and 60s, had also come to share stories.

During a Q&A session, they good-naturedly addressed whether they’d been brainwashed (‘Absolutely!’ said Orbit, who now goes by David) and answered questions about Dionysm, the form of tantric sex they’d practiced.

‘I’m ready to join right now!’ announced one attendee, no doubt echoing the sentiments of many who wistfully longed for a time when Utopia was, if not entirely feasible, at least on the agenda.

Imagine your fantasy commune, the one you’d find only in the movies, where everyone is young and beautiful; the clothes are fabulous; the leader benign; and home is a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Chances are it probably looks a lot like the Source Family, whose 140 members “dropped out” right in the middle of Los Angeles. Led by a bearded, hunky, 6-foot-3 former war hero who called himself Father Yod and, later, YaHoWha, this vibrant group of men and women embarked on a wild social experiment, turning all their material possessions over to the group and supporting themselves serving gourmet vegetarian cuisine at their popular Sunset Strip restaurant, the Source. Living communally in a Los Feliz mansion owned by the Chandler family (former owners of this newspaper) and then in a house built by Catherine Deneuve, many of them formed polyamorous relationships; not surprisingly, the most extreme example was Father Yod, who took 14 “spiritual wives.”

Notwithstanding the group’s visible presence in Hollywood (brothers and sisters could often be seen strolling en masse down Sunset, Atlantean robes and hair a-flowing), extensive media coverage, and the catalog of music they recorded as YaHoWa 13 — legendary among connoisseurs of psychedelic rock — the Source story has remained untold for 30 years. This is partly because of a vow of secrecy taken by all members, but more likely it’s a reflection of their confusion and even shame about the communal experience, for which American society gave them only one place to file: in the freaky hippie bin.•

___________________________

The trailer for the 2013 documentary, The Source Family, available on Netflix:

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