“Real Eroticism Is Never Explicit”

June 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Videos | Permalink

Helmut Newton’s sexual fantasies may have differed from yours and mine, but he certainly had a singular vision. This 1989 documentary about his work, Frames From The Edge, was directed by Adrian Maben, who was also behind the 1972 concert film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

The opening of Newton’s 2004 New York Times obituary by Suzy Menkes: 

“Helmut Newton, the master photographer of sexual perversity and the founding father of androgynous imagery, died Friday at 83 in a way that he might have scripted in his narrative fashion photographs: from an accident in his Cadillac at Chateau Marmont, the star-studded Hollywood hotel. He was wintering there as usual, with his wife of 55 years, June, known as the photographer Alice Springs.

Newton’s penchant in equal measure for glamour and sexual depravity — women crouching in horse saddles and designer boots or maids provocatively available as in a Jean Genet movie — made him the most powerful and most copied fashion photographer of the 20th century. He refracted through his lens the sexual and feminist revolutions, making his women appear as sex objects, yet in control of their destiny.

Alternately scandalizing and titillating, Newton picked up sobriquets like the ‘king of kink’ and the ’35mm Marquis de Sade.’ Yet his work, like his character and his background, was far more complex than appeared in his best-known glossy images from Vogue in the 1960’s or the Yves Saint Laurent image of a woman loitering in a dark alley in a mannish pantsuit — matched to a naked version taken for the photographer’s personal album.”

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Old Print Articles: “Nikola Tesla, Father Of Radio, Who Hated It,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1943)

June 23, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Nikola Tesla outlived a good deal of his fame, and he didn’t even make it to 140. Perhaps the greatest “electrician” ever, the one who knew a century ago that there would be drones and mobile phones, a man who dreamed so differently that he seemingly fell to Earth, Tesla’s scientific goals grew more outsize as he aged. He even announced in 1933, at age 76, that he would live at least 64 more years because he slept only once a year, for five or six hours, supplementing this rest with an hour-long nap now and again. 

When he died in Manhattan an octogenarian, he wasn’t forgotten, but the lights had dimmed because his ambitions had grown so far beyond comprehension, and because he didn’t have a coterie of associates to burnish his reputation. His obituary in the January 3, 1943 Brooklyn Daily Eagle was relegated to page 11, despite his front-cover, above-the-fold mind. The story:

“Nikola Tesla, 86, the electrical genius who discovered the fundamental principle of modern radio, was found dead in his room at the Hotel New Yorker, Manhattan, last night.

Tesla never married. He had always lived alone, and the hotel management did not believe he had any near-relatives.

Despite his more than 700 inventions, he was not wealthy. He cared little for money, and so long as he could experiment he was happy.

Thought Radio a Nuisance

He was the first to conceive an effective method of utilizing alternating current, and in 1888 patented the induction motor, which converted electrical energy into mechanical energy more effectively and economically than by direct current. Among his other principal inventions were arc lighting, and the Tesla coil.

‘The radio, I know I’m its father, but I don’t like it,’ he once said. ‘I just don’t like it. It’s a nuisance. I never listen to it. The radio is a distraction and keeps you from concentrating. There are too many distractions in this life for quality of thought, and it’s quality of thought, not quantity, that counts.’

Evidently, he did a lot of thinking that never materialized. It was his custom on his birthday–July 10–to announce to reporters the shape of things to come.

On his 76th birthday, he announced: ‘The transmission of energy to another planet is only a matter of engineering. I have solved the problem so well I don’t regard it as doubtful.’

Told of ‘Death Beam’

When he was 78 he announced he had perfected a ‘death beam’ that would bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy planes 250 miles from a nation’s borders and make millions of soldiers fall dead in their tracks. His beam, he said, would make war impossible.

Tesla was born at Smiljan, Croatia, when it was a part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He came to the United States in 1884, became a citizen and an associate of Thomas A. Edison. Later he established the Tesla Laboratory in New York and devoted himself to research.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"Have a Wonderful day."

“There is nothing illegal about this.”

tipsters wanted… – $20 (ny ny)

Do you know a way or have info that will put cash in your pocket but you yourself dont have the experience to do it yourself or whatever reason, well why not make 20 percent or more simply by letting us do the work, your job is to simply give the instructions…you can walk away easily with 50 grand more or less depending what the job is worth…there is nothing illegal about this…people point out jobs every day and get a commision. Have a wonderful day.

“Will Antitrust Authorities Eventually Come To Scrutinize Amazon And Its Market Power?”

June 22, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

A passage from Steve Coll’s New York Review of Books piece about Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, a title bout Amazon strongarming publishers, which was recently caught in the crossfire of Jeff Bezos’ battle with Hachette:

“Jeff Bezos’s conceit is that Amazon is merely an instrument of an inevitable digital disruption in the book industry, that the company is clearing away the rust and cobwebs created by inefficient analog-era ‘gatekeepers’—i.e., editors, diverse small publishers, independent bookstores, and the writers this system has long supported. In Bezos’s implied argument, Amazon’s catalytic ‘creative destruction,’ in the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase, will clarify who will prosper in an unstoppably faster, more interconnected economy.

‘Amazon is not happening to book selling,’ Bezos once told Charlie Rose. ‘The future is happening to book selling.’ Yet the more Amazon uses its vertically integrated corporate power to squeeze publishers who are also competitors, the more Bezos’s claim looks like a smokescreen. And the more Amazon uses coercion and retaliation as means of negotiation, the more it looks to be restraining competition.

Toward the end of his account, Stone asks the essential question: ‘Will antitrust authorities eventually come to scrutinize Amazon and its market power?’ His answer: ‘Yes, I believe that is likely.’ It is ‘clear that Amazon has helped damage or destroy competitors small and large,’ in Stone’s judgment.”

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“This Is Not The First Time That A U.K. Government Has Looked To Robots To Boost The Economy”

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

Thirty years after trying and failing to turn the UK into a hub for robotics, technologists and politicians are having another go at it. From Amir Mizroch in the Wall Street Journal:

“For the past 18 months, everyone who is anyone in the U.K.’s robotics sector has been hard at work on making sure everything goes according to plan, drawing up a strategy paper to determine the future of intelligent, autonomous machines—AKA robots— in Britain.

A final version of the document, written by the 20 experts of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Special Interest Group (RAS-SIG), is to be officially unveiled by Science Minister David Willets on July 1.

According to interviews with two members of the interest group, an external consultant, and a summary of earlier drafts, the strategy rests on several key pillars.  Legislators will make the U.K. the world’s most welcoming place for robotics research, testing and development. It won’t be just about creating robots, but also about creating standards and regulations that allow for easier testing of autonomous machines. Areas of industry will be created to tackle some of the country’s most challenging problems, like the decommissioning of nuclear sites, opening up farming productivity, and robotic monitoring of sewage pipes and offshore gas and oil rigs.

Government will deploy robots to build schools, roads and hospitals, and care for the elderly. It will help fund robotics research at schools and universities to raise the number of people who can make and work with robots.  New technologies that improve the ability of humans to control multiple robots simultaneously will be highlighted. Culturally, there will be an emphasis on explaining that automation does not cost people their jobs, but actually creates more opportunities and opens possibilities.

This is not the first time that a U.K. government has looked to robots to boost the economy. Mired in recession, the Thatcher government launched a campaign in 1985 to increase the number of robots in industry. According to the British Automation and Robot Association, in 1982 only 100 robots out of 439 installed in the country were built by U.K. engineers. Most of the robots were installed in the auto industry sector. Thirty years later, the number of new robots working in the U.K. in 2012 alone was 2,447—none of them were manufactured in the U.K.“

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“I Don’t Know That People Are Going To Be Printing Guns Around The World”

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

From Shane Hickey’s Guardian article about Chuck Hull, father of 3D printing, who says he isn’t sure if people will use the machines to make guns, which they most assuredly will:

“When Hull originally came up with his invention, he told his wife that it would take between 25 and 30 years before the technology would find its way into the home. That prediction proved correct as the realistic prospect of widespread commercial 3D printers has only emerged in recent years.

The possibilities appear endless – from home-printed food and pharmaceuticals to suggestions that pictures of ceramics will be able to be taken in shops and then recreated using plans downloaded from the internet.

Hull, an unassuming man who has 93 patents to his name in the US and 20 in Europe, says he is ‘humbled’ by the possibilities but stops short of predicting what his technology could eventually deliver, although he is confident printers could soon be in every home.

‘It’s nice to get some recognition, it was a lot of hard work but other than that I just keep working,’ he said last week in Berlin, where he received a European Inventor Award.

Controversy has arisen with the possibility that guns will be able to be produced using 3D printing, again using blueprints downloaded from the internet. A group called Defense Distributed last year successfully tested a 3D printed gun in Texas. Hull said: ‘My first thought is that people messing with that – I hope they don’t hurt themselves. Building and testing guns of that nature could be dangerous. I think the people doing that were trying to make a point.

‘I don’t know that people are going to be printing guns around the world but in any case our company, we are not the government or the police agencies. It is more their business and all technology, the governments and the police have to be aware [of], it is not just 3D printing.'”

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“I’ve Never Worked With People Before”

June 22, 2014 in Books, Videos | Permalink

Carson McCullers being interviewed (pretty poorly) on a ship in 1956. Mostly discusses the stage version of A Member of the Wedding.

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“Viewers Would Record Their Opinions By Marking Computer Cards, Which They Would Mail To Regional Tabulating Centers”

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

In 1969, computer-processing magnate Ross Perot had a McLuhan-ish dream: an electronic town hall in which interactive television and computer punch cards would allow the masses, rather than elected officials, to decide key American policies. In 1992, he held fast to this goal–one that was perhaps more democratic than any society could survive–when he bankrolled his own populist third-party Presidential campaign. The opening of “Perot’s Vision: Consensus By Computer,” a New York Times article from that year by the late Michael Kelly:

WASHINGTON, June 5— Twenty-three years ago, Ross Perot had a simple idea.

The nation was splintered by the great and painful issues of the day. There had been years of disorder and disunity, and lately, terrible riots in Los Angeles and other cities. People talked of an America in crisis. The Government seemed to many to be ineffectual and out of touch.

What this country needed, Mr. Perot thought, was a good, long talk with itself.

The information age was dawning, and Mr. Perot, then building what would become one of the world’s largest computer-processing companies, saw in its glow the answer to everything. One Hour, One Issue

Every week, Mr. Perot proposed, the television networks would broadcast an hourlong program in which one issue would be discussed. Viewers would record their opinions by marking computer cards, which they would mail to regional tabulating centers. Consensus would be reached, and the leaders would know what the people wanted.

Mr. Perot gave his idea a name that draped the old dream of pure democracy with the glossy promise of technology: ‘the electronic town hall.’

Today, Mr. Perot’s idea, essentially unchanged from 1969, is at the core of his ‘We the People’ drive for the Presidency, and of his theory for governing.

It forms the basis of Mr. Perot’s pitch, in which he presents himself, not as a politician running for President, but as a patriot willing to be drafted ‘as a servant of the people’ to take on the ‘dirty, thankless’ job of rescuing America from ‘the Establishment,’ and running it.

In set speeches and interviews, the Texas billionaire describes the electronic town hall as the principal tool of governance in a Perot Presidency, and he makes grand claims: ‘If we ever put the people back in charge of this country and make sure they understand the issues, you’ll see the White House and Congress, like a ballet, pirouetting around the stage getting it done in unison.’

Although Mr. Perot has repeatedly said he would not try to use the electronic town hall as a direct decision-making body, he has on other occasions suggested placing a startling degree of power in the hands of the television audience.

He has proposed at least twice — in an interview with David Frost broadcast on April 24 and in a March 18 speech at the National Press Club — passing a constitutional amendment that would strip Congress of its authority to levy taxes, and place that power directly in the hands of the people, in a debate and referendum orchestrated through an electronic town hall.•

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“Andre Recalled That They Mostly Talked About Cricket”

June 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

This Open Culture post about Samuel Beckett driving a young Andre the Giant to school nearly made my brain may explode. An excerpt:

“In 1958, when 12-year-old André’s acromegaly prevented him from taking the school bus, the author of Waiting for Godot, whom he knew as his dad’s card buddy and neighbor in rural Moulien, France, volunteered for transport duty. It was a standing gig, with no other passengers. André recalled that they mostly talked about cricket, but surely they discussed other topics, too, right? Right!?”

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A Brief Note From 1911 About New Eyelids

June 21, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the September 27, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Kansas City–The eyelids of Rev. Joseph Hohe, rector of the Catholic Church near Bucyrus, Kansas, which were burned off when a lamp exploded in his hands, have been replaced by new ones constructed from pieces of skin cut from the priest’s arms and grafted onto the stumps of his lids, over which he has almost complete muscular control. The operation was performed in a local hospital.”

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10 Recent Huffington Post Headlines

June 21, 2014 in Humor, Misc. | Permalink

  • Your Guide To Which Teams Are Having Sex At The World Cup
  • Artificial Vaginas Are On The Way
  • The Sex Lube Olympics Look Long And Hard
  • Americans Unsure How Jewish Rick Perry Is
  • Are We Experiencing The Decline Of Robert Pattinson?
  • Everything You Need To Know About Reheating Leftovers
  • Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Rosacea
  • 17 Surprising Things You CAN Put In The Dishwasher
  • Why Using Toilet Seat Liners Is Basically Pointless
  • Boy Finds Mummified Corpse Hanging In Home

 

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

June 21, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

 

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

  1. who jerked off a dolphin?
  2. j. paul getty commercial for e.f. hutton
  3. was philip k. dick a volunteer drug counselor?
  4. nena von schlebrügge marrying timothy leary
  5. andes crash survivors cannibal camp
  6. interview with thomas mann
  7. peter diamandis immortality
  8. psychologist susan gelman discussing essentialism
  9. sex club for straight couples
  10. al globus designs of futuristic space colonies

 

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

June 21, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

This week, Pope Francis excommunicated all gang members...

This week, Pope Francis excommunicated all gang members…

...except for one.

…except for one.

He's too dreamy.

He’s too dreamy.

  • Economists see the future of our technological world in sharp contrast.

 

“When He Writes A Novel, He Writes A Best-Seller”

June 20, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film | Permalink

Erich Segal was smart and successful, but he didn’t always mix the two. A Yale classics professor with a taste for Hollywood, he wrote Love Story, the novel and screenplay, and was met with runaway success in both mediums for his tale of young love doomed by cruel biology, despite the coffee-mug-ready writing and Boomer narcissism. (Or perhaps because of those blights.) While I don’t think it says anything good about us that every American generation seems to need its story of a pristine girl claimed by cancer–The Fault in Our Stars being the current one–the trope is amazingly resilient.

The opening of a 1970 Life article about Segal as he was nearing apotheosis in the popular culture:

“He looks almost too wispy to walk the 26 miles of the annual Boston Marathon, much less run all that way, even with a six-time Playboy fold-out waiting to greet him at the finish line. But Erich Segal doesn’t fool around. When he runs, he runs 26 miles (once a year, anyway–10 miles a day, other days), when he teaches classics he teaches at Yale (and gets top ratings from both colleagues and students), when he writes a novel he writes a best-seller. Love Story was published by Harper & Row in February and quickly hit the list. With his customary thoroughness Segal was ready: he had simultaneously written a screenplay of the story, and promptly sold it for $100,000. A bachelor (‘with intermittent qualms’), Segal has spent his 32 years juggling so many careers that it worries his friends. Even before Love Story he numbered among his accomplishments a scholarly translation of Plautus and part credit for the script of Yellow Submarine. At this rate, if his wind holds out, he may even win the Boston Marathon.

Love Story is Professor Segal’s first try at fiction, and when on publication day two months ago his editor at Harper & Row called up and said simply, ‘It broke,’ Segal remembers wondering whether he was talking about his neck or his sanity.”

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“The Prediction Of The Theory Would Be That Apple Won’t Succeed With The iPhone”

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

My main objection to the 10,000-hour rule is that it cherry-picks particular pieces of research that provide a nice round number for a narrative attempting to make sharp an old saw (“Practice Makes Perfect”). It tells a macro story that doesn’t gibe with the micro, trying to pitch a camping tent over an entire city, stretching the fabric beyond its capacity for coverage.

The cult of Disruption is not dissimilar in how it goes about building its case. In the business world and beyond, radical innovation and its ability to replenish is revered, sometimes to a jaw-dropping extent. In one of my favorite non-fiction articles of the year, “The Disruption Machine,” Jill Lepore of the New Yorker takes apart the bible behind the idea, Clayton M. Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma, which like the 10,000-hour rule, builds its case very selectively and not necessarily accurately. An excerpt:

“The theory of disruption is meant to be predictive. On March 10, 2000, Christensen launched a $3.8-million Disruptive Growth Fund, which he managed with Neil Eisner, a broker in St. Louis. Christensen drew on his theory to select stocks. Less than a year later, the fund was quietly liquidated: during a stretch of time when the Nasdaq lost fifty per cent of its value, the Disruptive Growth Fund lost sixty-four per cent. In 2007, Christensen told Business Week that ‘the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won’t succeed with the iPhone,’ adding, ‘History speaks pretty loudly on that.’ In its first five years, the iPhone generated a hundred and fifty billion dollars of revenue. In the preface to the 2011 edition of The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen reports that, since the book’s publication, in 1997, ‘the theory of disruption continues to yield predictions that are quite accurate.’ This is less because people have used his model to make accurate predictions about things that haven’t happened yet than because disruption has been sold as advice, and because much that happened between 1997 and 2011 looks, in retrospect, disruptive. Disruptive innovation can reliably be seen only after the fact. History speaks loudly, apparently, only when you can make it say what you want it to say. The popular incarnation of the theory tends to disavow history altogether. ‘Predicting the future based on the past is like betting on a football team simply because it won the Super Bowl a decade ago,’ Josh Linkner writes in The Road to Reinvention. His first principle: ‘Let go of the past.’ It has nothing to tell you. But, unless you already believe in disruption, many of the successes that have been labelled disruptive innovation look like something else, and many of the failures that are often seen to have resulted from failing to embrace disruptive innovation look like bad management.

Christensen has compared the theory of disruptive innovation to a theory of nature: the theory of evolution. But among the many differences between disruption and evolution is that the advocates of disruption have an affinity for circular arguments. If an established company doesn’t disrupt, it will fail, and if it fails it must be because it didn’t disrupt. When a startup fails, that’s a success, since epidemic failure is a hallmark of disruptive innovation.”

 

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“Ideally, Helpful Organisms Would Eat Things We Don’t Need”

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

From Susannah Locke’s Vox primer about synthetic biology, which could be both really great and really messy, a few potential uses of these new cellular designs:

“Medicine: Synthetic biology might one day let scientists program cells to precisely detect and kill cancer cells. Or perhaps program cells to self-assemble into spare organs for transplants. Some scientists are already using partially synthetic organisms to manufacture drugs that are otherwise impractical to make.

Food and fragrances: In theory, new techniques could allow researchers to design yeast to make the perfect beer or wine. Or create food in the lab more efficiently than growing it on land. ‘We can design better and healthier proteins than we get from nature,’ biologist and entrepreneur Craig Venter told the New York Times.

Already, synthetic biology companies are selling orange and grapefruit flavorings produced by yeast. And the company Evolva makes yeast-generated artificial vanilla flavoring and is working on better tasting sugar substitutes.

Energy and environment: Another possibility is that synthetic biologists could program cells to produce usable fuel. For example, Exxon Mobile has a partnership with Synthetic Genomics (co-founded by Craig Venter) to research fuel from algae. Ideally, helpful organisms would eat things we don’t need, like non-edible plant matter. Even more ideally, they’d eat the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that’s warming the planet. Or toxic waste or oil from oil spills.

The weird stuff: How about some microbes that live on your skin to prevent you from getting oily and smelly? How about some other ones that secrete the perfume of your choice? How about some that quickly break down cholesterol so it won’t clog people’s arteries?”

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“For The First Time, The Free Will Of A Living Animal Was Taken Over By An External Machine”

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

In his Guardian defense of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Slavoj Žižek takes things to extremes, as is he is wont to do. An excerpt:

“In a country such as China the limitations of freedom are clear to everyone, with no illusions about it. In the US, however, formal freedoms are guaranteed, so that most individuals experience their lives as free and are not even aware of the extent to which they are controlled by state mechanisms. Whistleblowers do something much more important than stating the obvious by way of denouncing the openly oppressive regimes: they render public the unfreedom that underlies the very situation in which we experience ourselves as free.

Back in May 2002, it was reported that scientists at New York University had attached a computer chip able to transmit elementary signals directly to a rat’s brain – enabling scientists to control the rat’s movements by means of a steering mechanism, as used in a remote-controlled toy car. For the first time, the free will of a living animal was taken over by an external machine.

How did the unfortunate rat experience its movements, which were effectively decided from outside? Was it totally unaware that its movements were being steered? Maybe therein lies the difference between Chinese citizens and us, free citizens of western, liberal countries: the Chinese human rats are at least aware they are controlled, while we are the stupid rats strolling around unaware of how our movements are monitored.”

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“The Cars Themselves Were Regarded As Cheap, Not Very Reliable, Oddballs”

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

From the always fun Delanceyplace, a description of Japan’s initially bumpy entry into the American auto market in the 1950s, from Daniel Yergin’s The Quest:

“An odd and unfamiliar car might have been seen fleetingly on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the late 1950s. It was Toyota’s Toyopet S30 Crown, the first Japanese car to be brought officially to the United States. In Tokyo, Toyopets were used as taxis. But in the United States the Toyopet did not get off to a good start; the first two could not even get over the hills around Los Angeles. It is said that the first car delivered in San Francisco died on the first hill it encountered on the way to inspection. An auto dealer in that city drove it 180 times in reverse around the public library in an effort to promote it, but to no avail. The Toyopet, priced at $1,999, was anything but a hit. Over a four-year period, a total of 1,913 were sold. Other Japanese automakers also started exporting to the United States, but the numbers sold remained exceedingly modest, and the cars themselves were regarded as cheap, not very reliable, oddballs, and starter cars (lacking the vim and panache of what was then the hot import, the Volkswagen Beetle).”

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“Kasem Was The Voice Of A Less Algorithmic Time”

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

Viewed from inside the airtight world of Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, you can almost understand why the host famously melted down for having to do a “goddamn death dedication” after coming out of a “fucking uptempo record.” You see, Casey’s syndicated parallel United States was meant to be a respite from the real and often-confusing society we actually live in, a place where no unsettling sounds could be heard, a program that could turn every living room into a panic room, a sanctuary safer even than the green room at the Charlie Rose show. As the channels decentralized and multiplied, and the vernacular grew franker, he steadfastly refused to say the word “sex” on the radio or play versions of rap records that contained the N-word. And even as the very medium that made him famous collapsed, with digital killing both the radio and video star, Kasem fought to keep the barbarians of the new normal at the gate. From Alex Pappademas’ excellent Grantland postmortem of the man who only counted backwards:

“In 1989, Casey and Jean Kasem entertained Nikki Finke — then a sharp-toothed, young Los Angeles Times reporter — in their seven-room Beverly Wilshire Hotel apartment, from which the Kasems were organizing a housing-crisis march. ‘The boss sits in a marbled-to-the-max kitchen,’ Finke wrote. ‘The boss’s wife toils in a satin moire-draped dressing room. The publicists make phone calls from the exercise gym. And the typists pound their keyboards on a priceless buffet table that seats 12.’ Later, Kasem is described as ‘more likely to be listening to a speech by Malcolm X on his cassette player than music by Miami Sound Machine.’

It’s hard to square the image of Kasem edutaining himself via the words of Brother Malcolm with, say, the story — mentioned in this Washington Post obit  — about Kasem agreeing to change his show’s chart methodology in the early ’90s in order to mollify affiliates who wanted nothing to do with hip-hop even as it became a commercial force. Kasem began basing his list on airplay data from the country’s biggest Top 40 stations rather than the sales chart in Billboard; it was probably a choice he was forced to make, but the truth was he had never sounded entirely comfortable back-announcing ‘O.P.P.’ or ‘Rump Shaker.’ You can only hurdle so many generation gaps before your ankles start to give out.

Still, Kasem provided a point of entry to the bewildering world of popular music for a lot of people, and young people in particular, who went on to love music more than he ever did. He was one of the least rock-criticky people who ever played records for a living, but he undoubtedly turned countless people into rock critics, trainspotters, trivia banks, and maintainers of eccentrically ordered personal Hot 100s. What we’re mourning when we mourn him, beyond that, is the passing of a time when a ranked list of popular songs still seemed capable of revealing something about what songs actual people actually liked.

In the time it took me to read one Billboard.com article about Casey Kasem’s now-widow throwing meat at her stepchildren, I watched Jason Derulo’s ‘Wiggle’ dethrone Ed Sheeran’s ‘Afire Love’ onBillboard’s Twitter-powered ‘Trending 140’ chart, which ranks ‘the fastest moving songs shared on Twitter in the U.S., measured by acceleration over the past hour.’ Now that paying money for recordings has become the jury duty of pop-music appreciation, we measure twitches of interest, flicks of the eye, spambot-team efficacy. Kasem was the voice of a less algorithmic time, and that’s a hard thing not to feel a pang about — whether you have kids, or pets, or neither.”

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“The U.S. Is Still Catching Up From Missing The World Cup From 1950 To 1990”

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

In his Priceonomics essay, “Why Are Some Countries Good at Soccer?” Alex Mayyasi lays out some of the reasons why the U.S. doesn’t have a pretty record at the beautiful game without touching on the most obvious one: Our best athletes lack financial incentive to commit to the sport. Imagine our team if Lebron James and Billy Hamilton and Calvin Johnson played only soccer from when they were young. That’s what would happen if they were raised in countries where that sport is king, but it’s not the case in America, where more immediate monetary rewards come from other athletics. While a soccer salary in Europe can be stratospheric, there’s a lot of distance a talented American youth athlete would have to travel, figuratively as well as literally, to secure one. Their odds for winning the lottery are better if they concentrate on sports that are popular domestically. From Mayyasi:

“Current U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann has cited the lack of soccer culture in the United States as an obstacle, saying that ‘One thing is certain: The American kids need hundreds and even thousands more hours to play.’ FiveThirtyEight recently reviewed the work of Stefan Szymanski, author of Soccernomics, which found that the best predictor of a country’s success in the World Cup is the number of games the national team had played. According to Szymanski, this means the U.S. men’s national team not only has less experience, but it has missed out on adapting strategy from the rest of the world by playing significantly fewer games — the U.S. is still catching up from missing the World Cup from 1950 to 1990.

After all, the thesis of the 10,000 hour rule, as debated by psychologists, is not merely that masters need lots of practice, but that the type of practice matters. Klinsmann, the U.S. head coach, has placed  on recruiting Americans who play in European leagues and face ‘the best competition in the world on a daily basis instead of only a few games every few years,’ as is the case for MLS players on the World Cup team.

Similarly, aspects of the U.S. youth soccer system seems to keep young players from engaging in ‘deliberate practice’ as much as their peers elsewhere. In America, young players compete in dozens and even hundreds of games every year — games that crowd out time that European youths spend practicing skills and fundamentals. ‘It’s counterproductive to learning,’ John Hackworth, the former under-17 national team coach, tells the New York Times, ‘and the No. 1 worst thing we do.’ And while foreign teams prioritize development by giving star players extra attention and allowing them to play with older and better players, the American focus on winning and the team keeps youth soccer in America from shaping future stars of the national team.”

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A Brief Note From 1926 About A Wild Woman

June 19, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the July 10, 1926 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Angleton, Tex.–A ‘wild woman,’ unclad and with blonde hair reaching to her waist, who is reported to have been seen in the brushy bottomlands of Lineville Creek, in Brazoria County, was sought unsuccessfully today by a searching party of several hundred men. A pack of bloodhounds was taken to the scene by Sheriff Frank Crews.

The ‘wild woman,’ subject of ridiculed rumor for several weeks, was accepted as a reality yesterday when a man from Misema, a village in the bottoms, reported that a woman suddenly leaped from brush through which he was walking and ran into heavier undergrowth nearer the creek. Footprints made by a woman’s bare feet were found at the spot designated by the man, but rain had obliterated the remainder of her trail.”

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“It’s Almost Like Ancient Ruins”

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

Suburban American malls, ghost towns of the Digital Age, brick and mortars sacrificed at the altar of progress, were the way we lived until we just stopped. We’re far more efficient now, but what was lost in the transition? From David Uberti at the Guardian:

“It is hard to believe there has ever been any life in this place. Shattered glass crunches under Seph Lawless’s feet as he strides through its dreary corridors. Overhead lights attached to ripped-out electrical wires hang suspended in the stale air and fading wallpaper peels off the walls like dead skin.

Lawless sidesteps debris as he passes from plot to plot in this retail graveyard called Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio. The shopping centre closed in 2008, and its largest retailers, which had tried to make it as standalone stores, emptied out by the end of last year. When Lawless stops to overlook a two-storey opening near the mall’s once-bustling core, only an occasional drop of water, dribbling through missing ceiling tiles, breaks the silence.

‘You came, you shopped, you dressed nice – you went to the mall. That’s what people did,’ says Lawless, a pseudonymous photographer who grew up in a suburb of nearby Cleveland. “It was very consumer-driven and kind of had an ugly side, but there was something beautiful about it. There was something there.”

Gazing down at the motionless escalators, dead plants and empty benches below, he adds: ‘It’s still beautiful, though. It’s almost like ancient ruins.’

Dying shopping malls are speckled across the United States, often in middle-class suburbs wrestling with socioeconomic shifts.”

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“Our Best Bet For Avoiding Catastrophic Global Warming Is To Wean Ourselves Off Of Fossil Fuels—Altogether—By 2050”

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

The opening of Brian Merchant’s Vice Motherboard article which argues that the industries most in need of creative destruction have thus far largely been impervious to it:

“Right now, a few decades-old technologies are not-so-slowly but surely consigning the planet to burn—and to melt—and gas-powered cars and coal-fired power plants lead the pack. As the chief contributors to planetary warming, there may never have been technologies in such dire need of ‘disruption’, to deploy the buzzword of our times, ever before.

Yet a new energy report from BP shows that our reliance on the ancient energy tech—’modern’ coal power was developed in the 1880s, and the combustion engine rose to prominence in the decades that followed—is only continuing to rise, at the precise moment we need to phase it out. Coal consumption grew to its largest market share since 1970 last year. Oil remains the world’s leading fuel.

As such, we don’t just need to build newer and improved energy technologies—which we have, in the way of solar, wind, geothermal, etc—we desperately need to subject the old ones to Schumpeter-style creative destruction. The latest critical analysis of climate science says our best bet for avoiding catastrophic global warming is to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels—altogether—by 2050. In other words, we can’t just settle for creating new cleantech; we really, really need it to displace the old. Asap. We need to disrupt.

Yes, disrupt.”

“I Only Wish There Was A Risk Of Boredom In My Present Situation”

June 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Anyone who leaks information about war crimes is useful, but did it have to be Julian Assange? Yeesh. Part Ellsberg and part Polanski, he’s retreated for the past two years from international law to the safe haven of Ecuador’s embassy, a veritable house arrest of his own design, dodging sex-crime charges. Assange just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What is your opinion on Edward Snowden? 

Julian Assange:

Edward Snowden performed an intelligent and heroic act. I and others had been calling for exactly this act for years (you can read about that here) co-ordinated his asylum. Our Sarah Harrison kept him secure in his path out of Hong Kong and spent 40 days making sure he was OK in Moscow’s airport. Just last week I co-launched a new international organisation, the Courage Foundation in Berlin. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire and many other great people are involved. 

__________________________

Question:

If you had a chance to do this all again, would you, and what changes would you make?

Julian Assange:

Again – definitely; we only live once and every day spent living your principles is a day at liberty. It is clear that history is on our side. Most of our difficult decisions are constrained by resource limits, not ideas. But I was ignorant about the extent of Sweden’s geopolitical reliance with the United States and to some extent the structure of UK society.

__________________________

Question:

In regards to President Obama you were recently quoted as saying, “You must surely, now, start to reflect on what your legacy will be.” How do you think history will remember you, and how do you feel about that?

Julian Assange:

For presidents it is important, but for the rest of us it is more important to get things done and see your legacy in the world. We’re doing well in the more academic or comprehensive histories and outside the worst aspects of the English speaking mainstream press. Smears don’t have much staying power on their own because they deviate from the foundations of reality (what actually happened). They require constant energy from our opponents to keep going. The truth has a habit of reasserting itself.

__________________________

Question:

Hi Julian, I have 2 questions.

First, what do you do to stop yourself going mental with boredom? From my understanding, you cannot leave the embassy or you’ll be arrested, so you’ve basically placed yourself under house arrest. What are you day to day activities?

Second, (and I don’t mean this to sound inflammatory), why did you start a website to leak classified information? Surely you can understand that many things kept confidential are for the reasons of national security, and releasing secret documents puts lives and international relations at risk?

Julian Assange:

1) I only wish there was a risk of boredom in my present situation. Besides being the centre of a pitched, prolonged diplomatic standoff, along with a police encirclement of the building I am in and the attendant surveillance and government investigations against myself and my staff, I am in one of the most populous cities in Europe, and everyone knows my exact location. People visit me nearly every day. I also continue to direct a small multinational organisation, WikiLeaks, which is a serious logistical and occupational endeavour. I barely have time to sleep, let alone become bored.

2) Confidential government documents we have published disclose evidence of war crimes, criminal back-room dealings and sundry abuses. That alone legitimates our publications, and that principally motivates our work. Secrecy was never intended to enable criminality in the highest offices of state. Secrecy is, yes, sometimes necessary, but healthy democracies understand that secrecy is the exception, not the rule. “National security” pretexts for secrecy are routinely used by powerful officials, but seldom justified. If we accept these terms of propaganda, strong national security journalism becomes impossible. Our publications have never jeopardized the “national security” of any nation. When secrecy is a cover-all for endemic official criminality, I suggest to you, it bespeaks a strange set of priorities to ask journalists to justify their own existence.•

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“The Stamp Was Claimed By His Wife As A ‘Deathbed Gift’ From Her Husband Who Had Previously Disowned Her”

June 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you’re interested in a brief history of the one-cent stamp from 1856 that sold for $9.5 million yesterday at Sotheby’s, here’s an excerpt from a Life article about it when it was auctioned off that year for $280,000:

“The one-center was printed in February of the year as an emergency measure when the crown colony of British Guiana found itself suddenly short of proper printed stamps. Fearing its rough appearance would encourage forgeries, postal officials initialed each stamp sold. The initials ‘E.D.W.’ scribbled on the left indicate that Mr. E.D. Wright, an assistant postmaster, was the first man to sell the world’s most valuable stamp, which is postmarked ‘Demerara, Ap. 4, 1856.’

After having been used, most likely, as postage for a newspaper, the stamp surfaced in 1872 when a Demerara schoolboy named L. Vernon Vaughan found it while rummaging through an attic. Vaughan got six shillings for it from Neil R. McKinnon and used the proceeds to buy more brightly colored stamps.

Six years later, McKinnon sold his entire collection for $528 to Thomas Ridpath of Liverpool, who extracted the one-cent and peddled it for $744 to the world’s leading stamp collector, Count Philipp la Renotière von Ferrary, an Austrian nobleman living in France. The French government confiscated his collection as World War I reparations and auctioned off the one-cent in 1923. An agent reportedly representing King George V of England bid furiously, but at $32,5000 lost to Arthur Hind, an American tapestry manufacturer. After Hind’s death in 1933, the stamp was claimed by his wife as a ‘deathbed gift’ from her husband who had previously disowned her for alleged infidelities. She sold it in 1940 for the unheard-of price of almost $45,000 to Fred T. Small, an Australian living in America. Small kept the fact that he owned the stamp a secret and never even told his wife of the treasure he owned until after he made his 700% profit on the recent sale.

The one-cent British Guiana’s ‘provenance’ or historical pedigree has added incalculably to its value.”

 

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