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“How Much Safer Would Driving Be If Robots Replaced Humans On The Roads?”

June 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When paying a bill online recently, I mistakenly entered one wrong letter in my password, and the system locked me out, thinking I was someone else trying to break into my account. I had to phone the company and speak to two tech people before I was re-allowed entry. Sometimes technology can read something innocent as something sinister and overreact in the name of safety.

They’ll be glitches, some unforeseen, when the road begins to crowd with autonomous cars, as there always are with any technological innovation, but on balance driving will be safer. The question is by how much. From Clare Cain Miller of the New York Times:

“How much safer would driving be if robots replaced humans on the roads?

It has been hard to estimate because fully autonomous cars are not yet available to test. Google says that its driverless cars have logged more than 700,000 miles without an accident caused by the car, and that its cars do not do unsafe things that people do, like sharply accelerating or braking.

But two studies by researchers at Virginia Tech — H. Clay Gabler, a professor of biomedical engineering, and Kristofer D. Kusano, a research associate — suggest how much safer robot cars might be. They found that even cars that are not fully autonomous but that automate some of the most dangerous aspects of driving could have as big an effect as seatbelts have had.

The studies, which were sponsored in part by Toyota Motor, analyzed the crashes, injuries and fatalities that could have been prevented by cars that alert drivers when they drift out of their lane or correct the car’s course, and those that sense an impending collision and automatically brake. They used a representative sample of real-world crashes nationwide and simulated what would have happened had the automation been in place.

They found that lane-departure warning systems would have prevented 30.3 percent of the crashes caused by lane drifting, and 25.8 percent of the injuries.”

Tags: Clare Cain Miller

“The Benefits And Profits Of The Future Will Go To Those Who Plan Ahead Now”

June 10, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In regards to the Boeing’s misbegotten SST jet which I just mentioned, this 1967 company promotional film was wrong about supersonic travel but right more broadly about the near-term future of commercial aviation.

“The supersonic jet will change everything you know about flying,” 1968:

A Note From 1910 About A Ranch-Bred Woman

June 10, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 6, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Pueblo, Colo.–Announcing that he was a ‘rip-snorting, roarin’ Texas steer,’ a man who later gave his name as John Jones at Police Headquarters, terrorized the women in a residence district yesterday afternoon, until one of them, a ranch-bred woman, accorded to the obstreperous ‘steer’ proper Western treatment by lassoing him with a clothes line and tying him to a waterplug where he was kept until the arrival of the police.”

Tags: John Jones

“The World Cup In Brazil Will Be The Biggest Media Event In History”

June 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

From “What Does Soccer Mean Today,” Ryan O’Hanlon’s Pacific Standard interview with writer Simon Kuper, an exchange about the effect of globalization on the world’s game, which has made interest somewhat shallower but much wider:

“Pacific Standard:

Some have said that this globalization has lessened the importance of the World Cup. Basically, anyone with an Internet connection can watch any game. And with club soccer, they’re watching better, more cohesive teams. Where do you see the World Cup fitting within all that?

Simon Kuper:

It’s still the most meaningful for players and for fans, so your career can be made in a minute. You score a brilliant goal or you score a terrible own goal at the World Cup, and that marks you for the rest of your life just because of the interest and the meaning that people attach to it is still much higher—even though all the things you say are true. What’s special about the World Cup—if you go back to before the World Cup in the U.S., very few Americans were interested, very few Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Indonesians, so really, the biggest countries in the world were excluded. And now each World Cup really is a World Cup, so in that sense it’s much more wider and deeper than it used to be. And I think that’s quite thrilling: The idea that when somebody plays, he’s watched by people literally all over the world. It’s the most uniting event in our planet’s history, given the increase in global communication. The World Cup in Brazil will be the biggest media event in history, judged by numbers of viewers and numbers of clicks, and there’s something majestic about that.”

Tags: Ryan O'Hanlon, Simon Kuper

“The City Has Become A Vast Pawnshop”

June 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Could a few entrepreneurs, even wildly successful ones like Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos, rescue an entire city from collapse? A new essay by Andrew Yang in Fast Company, “The Entrepreneurs Who Saved Seattle,” credits the Microsoft and Amazon founders almost wholly with Seattle’s renaissance. The openings of Yang’s article and “City of Despair,” the 1971 Economist piece he references, which interestingly demonstrates the downside of a company town.

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From “The Entrepreneurs Who Saved Seattle,” 2014:

“Today, Seattle is considered one of the most desirable places to live and work in the U.S. Amazon, Starbucks, Expedia, and other leading companies make their homes there.

But in 1979, Seattle was the last place you’d think to find a growth business. It had more in common with today’s Rust Belt than Silicon Valley–its economy centered on a declining manufacturing base and the lumber industry, both of which were shedding jobs. Starbucks was just a tiny local company with three stores serving standard-issue coffee. The Economist had labeled Seattle the ‘city of despair’ and a billboard appeared saying “Will the last person leaving Seattle–turn off the lights.’

So what changed? Two Seattle natives decided to move their 13-employee company there in 1979 from Albuquerque. The two natives were Bill Gates and Paul Allen. And the company was Microsoft.

Is it possible to ascribe Seattle’s entire economic trajectory to just one company? Well, today over 40,000 people work at Microsoft in the region, and 28,000 of them are highly paid engineers. Approximately 4,000 businesses have been started by Microsoft alumni, many of which are in the region. Just one of these companies, RealNetworks, employs 1,500 people. Expedia, originally a Microsoft spinoff, employs another 14,000. The Gates Foundation itself has another several hundred employees. The economist Enrico Moretti estimates that Microsoft’s growth has directly created 120,000 regional jobs for services workers with limited educations (cleaners, taxi drivers, carpenters, hairdressers, real estate agents, etc.) and another 80,000 jobs for workers with college degrees (teachers, nurses, doctors, architects).

The growth of Microsoft also influenced Jeff Bezos to locate Amazon there in 1994 when he was looking for a city with ample tech talent to build an e-commerce company. Today, about 17,000 of Amazon’s 51,000 employees live and work in the Seattle region. If Microsoft had not been there, Bezos could easily have migrated elsewhere.”

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From “City of Despair,” 1971:

“The country’s best buys in used cars, in secondhand television sets, in houses, are to be found in Seattle, Washington. The city has become a vast pawnshop, with families selling anything they can do without to get money to buy food and pay the rent. Even restaurant meals are a bargain: a two for the price of one is offered to customers in smart, half-empty eating places.

More than 100,000 people are out of work in the Seattle area, which many people think is the worst example of economic decline in any sector of America since the great depression 40 years ago. Unemployment in Seattle stands officially at 13.1 per cent of the labour force, more than double the national level, Unofficially the welfare workers closest to the people put it at twice that high.

The root of the problem lies in the economic dominance of the area by one giant corporation, the Boeing Company. Two years ago its sales of aircraft were booming but now Boeing is undergoing a continuing attrition of government and civilian contracts. The halt in the development of the SST, America’s projected Supersonic aircraft, was merely the latest of many blows. Boeing’s payroll of 106,000 two years ago is down to 40,000 and the company acknowledges that it will cut employment further this year, probably to 29,000. The decline would not ave been halted even if the Senate had voted this week to revive the SST.”

Tags: Andrew Yang, Bill Gates, Enrico Moretti, Jeff Bezos

“The Real Value And Insight Comes From The Data That These Devices Provide”

June 10, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A little more about the Internet of Things, that rough beast waiting to be born, from Luke Dormehl at the Guardian:

“What unites products as seemingly disparate as driverless cars and fitness-tracking wearables such as the Jawbone UP is their ability to collect data from, and on behalf of, their users.

‘When people talk about the Internet of Things, they tend to get hung up on the ‘things’ themselves,’ says Ian Foddering, chief technology officer and technical director at Cisco UK and Ireland. ‘Actually, the real value and insight comes from the data that these devices provide. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is possible in terms of data extraction. It’s a very exciting time.’

‘Data empowers us,’ says Renee Blodgett, vice president of marketing and strategy at Kolibree, the world’s first connected electric toothbrush (yes, really!). ‘For the first time, we have data on how we brush our teeth, where we brush our teeth and where we need to improve. Before now, we would only get that feedback from our dentist once a year when we have our annual cleaning. Now, we can get that feedback in real time.’

While marginal gains in toothbrushing might not sound like much, the overall point about the power of big data is certainly valid.”

Tags: Ian Foddering, Luke Dormehl, Renee Blodgett

“I’m Alive To The End”

June 10, 2014 in Books, Videos | Permalink

A piece of Henry Miller’s final interview, shortly before his death in 1980.

People aren’t so drawn to Miller because they agree with everything he wrote or did, but because he refused to accept the things handed him that made him unhappy in a time when it was very difficult to say “no.” That’s best expressed in the opening of The Tropic of Capricorn:

“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do me any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? Now and then a friend was converted: it was something to make me puke. I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

What was most annoying was that at first blush people usually took me to be good, to be kind, generous, loyal, faithful. Perhaps I did possess these virtues, but if so it was because I was indifferent: I could afford to be good, kind, generous, loyal, and so forth, since I was free of envy. Envy was the one thing I was never a victim of. I have never envied anybody or anything. On the contrary, I have only felt pity for everybody and everything.

From the very beginning I must have trained myself not to want anything too badly. From the very beginning I was independent, in a false way. I had need of nobody because I wanted to be free, free to do and to give only as my whims dictated. The moment anything was expected or demanded of me I balked. That was the form my independence took. I was corrupt, in other words, corrupt from the start. It’s as though my mother fed me a poison, and though I was weaned young the poison never left my system. Even when she weaned me it seemed that I was completely indifferent; most children rebel, or make a pretence of rebelling, but I didn’t give a damn. I was a philosopher when still in swaddling clothes. I was against life, on principle. What principle? The principle of futility. Everybody around me was struggling. I myself never made an effort. If I appeared to be making an effort it was only to please someone else; at bottom I didn’t give a rap. And if you can tell me why this should have been so I will deny it, because I was born with a cussed streak in me and nothing can eliminate it. I heard later, when I had grown up, that they had a hell of a time bringing me out of the womb. I can understand that perfectly. Why budge? Why come out of a nice warm place, a cosy retreat in which everything is offered you gratis? The earliest remembrance I have is of the cold, the snow and ice in the gutter, the frost on the window panes, the chill of the sweaty green walls in the kitchen. Why do people live in outlandish climates in the temperate zones, as they are miscalled? Because people are naturally idiots, naturally sluggards, naturally cowards. Until I was about ten years old I never realized that there were “warm” countries, places where you didn’t have to sweat for a living, nor shiver and pretend that it was tonic and exhilarating. Wherever there is cold there are people who work themselves to the bone and when they produce young they preach to the young the gospel of work – which is nothing, at bottom, but the doctrine of inertia. My people were entirely Nordic, which is to say idiots. Every wrong idea which has ever been expounded was theirs. Among them was the doctrine of cleanliness, to say nothing of righteousness. They were painfully clean. But inwardly they stank. Never once had they opened the door which leads to the soul; never once did they dream of taking a blind leap into the dark. After dinner the dishes were promptly washed and put in the closet; after the paper was read it was neatly folded and laid away on a shelf; after the clothes were washed they were ironed and folded and then tucked away in the drawers. Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.”

Tags: Henry Miller

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

ODD REQUEST!! Bring us a bottle to our hospital rooms – $20 (Murray Hill)

Listen, my buddy and I have been in Beth Israel dealing with some recovering from a bad accident. However, we’ve been here FOREVER, and have some time to go. We would love a nice drink at night while playing cards. Can anyone help us out? You would grab the cheapest bottle of Gin from a liquor store, then bring it up. Easiest $20 you can make!!

Old Print Article: “Berol, Mind Wizard, Dies; Cause Mystery,” New York Times (1914)

June 9, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Before computers became our “second brains,” there were stage performers paid well for displaying astonishing feats of memory. Such was the career of a Horatio Alger-esque immigrant from a century ago, Felix Berol, who allegedly retained hundreds of thousands of fascinating facts and used them to wow vaudeville crowds and teach memory retention via correspondence courses. From an article about his sudden death in the April 20, 1914 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (which doesn’t mention that Berol had willed his brain to the Philadelphia Medical Association):

“Felix Berol, ‘the man with 300,00 facts in his head,’ who was conceded to be one of the world’s greatest memory training experts, died suddenly at 2 a.m. today at his home, 609 Fairview Avenue, Ridgewood Heights.

Mr. Berol and his wife and his niece, Miss Ellie Kosch, returned from Coney Island shortly after midnight, and after a late supper he retired. Shortly before he died he called to his wife and complained of feeling ill, and suddenly collapsed in her arms.

Although heart disease is supposed to have been the cause of death, an autopsy will be performed by a coroner’s physician this afternoon to determine exactly what he died from.

The news of Mr. Berol’s death came as a shock to the members of the Central and Bedford branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association, where only a week ago he gave the first of a series of nine lectures on memory training. He was to have given the second lecture of the course at the Bedford Branch tonight, and at the Central Branch tomorrow night. Unless some former pupil who completed the course at the West Side Branch of the Y.M.C.A. undertakes the lectures, the course may be abandoned.

Mr. Berol attended the dance of the Young Women’s Christian Association at the Central Branch on Schermerhorn Street last Saturday night, and was then apparently in the best of health. He danced several times, and didn’t appear to be the least bit fatigued when he departed for his home early Sunday morning. It was his boast that he had never been sick a day in his life, and he attributed his good health to the fact that he constantly exercised his mind.

In addition to lecturing at the Y.M.C.A. branches, Mr. Berol was conducting a correspondence course through Funk & Wagnalls, the publishers, and had 2,500 pupils.

Mr. Berol was born in Berlin, Germany, on February 1, 1872. He got an education in the public schools of Berlin and came to this country when a boy. His mind was sluggish and dull, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could remember a fact. As a result, the best kind of job the young immigrant boy could land was washing dishes in a cheap restaurant.

One night, tired and sleepy, he sauntered into Cooper Union and picked up a book at random. It was Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, and, as he turned the pages, he was for the first time in his life interested in reading.

By reading Progress and Poverty, Berol’s whole career was changed. From then on, he thirsted for knowledge, and, realizing that his mentality was exceedingly dull and that he couldn’t remember anything he read, he started to hunt up books on memory. He haunted Cooper Union, the Astor Library and other libraries in his spare time, devouring everything pertaining to memory that he could lay his hands on. After months of hard work, he mastered the principles of the subject as laid down by teachers of memories. Within seven months he was able to perform astonishing feats of remembering and branched out in vaudeville as ‘Berol, the Mental Marvel, With 5,000 Facts in His Head.’ His success was instantaneous; he was booked as a headliner and commanded big salaries, which made a fortune for him.

At a big financial sacrifice, he abandoned the stage to devote his time to educational work in the teaching of his wonderful but simple memory training system.

Berol actually had 300,000 facts in his head, any one of which he could name in an instant. He could give exact dates of births and deaths of great men, the date of every battle in the history of the world, and the population of every city and town in the United States of more than 5,000, and thousands upon thousands of statistics.”•

Read also:

Jacques Inaudi, the man with two brains. (1901)

Tags: Ellie Kosch, Felic Berol, Marguerite Berol

“Injecting The Dolphins With LSD Was Not Something Lovatt Was In Favor Of”

June 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Even for the 1960s, neuroscientist and LSD experimenter John Lilly was far out there (see here and here and here). His interspecies communication research with dolphins for NASA gradually came to include providing the creatures with interspecies sex and psychedelic drugs. From Christopher Riley’s eye-popping Guardian article about Margaret Howe Lovatt, a young woman who lived with the dolphin named Peter until the project capsized:

“In the 1960s a small selection of neuroscientists like John Lilly were licensed to research LSD by the American government, convinced that the drug had medicinal qualities that could be used to treat mental-health patients. As part of this research, the drug was sometimes injected into animals and Lilly had been using it on his dolphins since 1964, curious about the effect it would have on them.

Much to Lilly’s annoyance, nothing happened. Despite his various attempts to get the dolphins to respond to the drug, it didn’t seem to have any effect on them, remembers Lovatt. ‘Different species react to different pharmaceuticals in different ways,’ explains the vet, Andy Williamson. ‘A tranquilliser made for horses might induce a state of excitement in a dog. Playing with pharmaceuticals is a tricky business to say the least.’

Injecting the dolphins with LSD was not something Lovatt was in favour of and she insisted that the drug was not given to Peter, which Lilly agreed to. But it was his lab, and they were his animals, she recalls. And as a young woman in her 20s she felt powerless to stop him giving LSD to the other two dolphins.

While Lilly’s experimentation with the drug continued, Lovatt persevered with Peter’s vocalisation lessons and grew steadily closer to him. ‘That relationship of having to be together sort of turned into really enjoying being together, and wanting to be together, and missing him when he wasn’t there,’ she reflects. ‘I did have a very close encounter with – I can’t even say a dolphin again – with Peter.’

By autumn 1966, Lilly’s interest in the speaking-dolphin experiment was dwindling. ‘It didn’t have the zing to it that LSD did at that time,’ recalls Lovatt of Lilly’s attitude towards her progress with Peter. ‘And in the end the zing won.'”

Tags: John C. Lilly, Margaret Howe Lovatt

“We’ll Fight Till We’re Dead Or We’re Free”

June 9, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some will always leave the culture, go off by themselves or in pairs or groups. They’ll disappear into their own heads, create their own reality. For most it’s benign, but not for all. There are those who don’t want to live parallel to the larger society and come to believe they can end it. The deeper they retreat, the harder it is to reemerge. Instead they sometimes explode back into their former world, as in the case of Jerad and Amanda Miller committing acts of domestic terrorism in Las Vegas. It reminds me of a piece of reportage by Denis Johnson.

The writer was paranoid about both the government and the anti-government militia movement in 1990s America when he wrote the chilling article “The Militia in Me,” which appears in his non-fiction collection, Seek. The violence of Ruby Ridge and Waco and the horrific Oklahoma City bombing had shocked the nation into realizing the terror within, so Johnson traveled the U.S. and Canada to find out how and why militias had come to be. Three brief excerpts from the piece.

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The people I talked with seemed to imply that the greatest threat to liberty came from a conspiracy, or several overlapping conspiracies, well known to everybody but me. As a framework for thought, this has its advantages. It’s quicker to call a thing a crime and ask Who did it? than to call it a failure and set about answering the question What happened?

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I’m one among many, part of a disparate–sometimes better spelled “desperate”–people, self-centered, shortsighted, stubborn, sentimental, richer than anybody’s ever been, trying to get along in the most cataclysmic century in human history. Many of us are troubled that somewhere, somehow, the system meant to keep us free has experienced a failure. A few believe that someone has committed the crime of sabotaging everything.

Failures need correction. Crimes cry out for punishment. Some ask: How do we fix it? Others: Who do we kill?

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They told me they made furniture out of antlers and drove around anywhere and everywhere, selling it. For the past month I’d been reading about the old days, missing them as if I had lived in them, and I said, “You sound like free Americans.”

“No,” the smaller man said and thereafter did all the talking, while the other, the blond driver changed my tire. “No American is free today.”

“Okay, I guess you’re right, but what do we do about that?”

“We fight till we are,” he said. “Till we’re free or we’re dead, one or the other.”

“Who’s going to do the fighting?”

“A whole lot of men. More than you’d imagine. We’ll fight till we’re dead or we’re free.”•

Tags: Amanda Miller, Jerad Miller

“Writing Is Cognitively Unnatural”

June 9, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Two brief excerpts from “Writing in the 21st Century,” a thought-provoking Edge piece about the nature of composition by Steven Pinker.

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“The first thing you should think about is the stance that you as a writer take when putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Writing is cognitively unnatural. In ordinary conversation, we’ve got another person across from us. We can monitor the other person’s facial expressions: Do they furrow their brow, or widen their eyes? We can respond when they break in and interrupt us. And unless you’re addressing a stranger you know the hearer’s background: whether they’re an adult or child, whether they’re an expert in your field or not. When you’re writing you have none of those advantages. You’re casting your bread onto the waters, hoping that this invisible and unknowable audience will catch your drift.

The first thing to do in writing well—before worrying about split infinitives—is what kind of situation you imagine yourself to be in. What are you simulating when you write, and you’re only pretending to use language in the ordinary way? That stance is the main thing that iw distinguishes clear vigorous writing from the mush we see in academese and medicalese and bureaucratese and corporatese.”

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“Poets and novelists often have a better feel for the language than the self-appointed guardians and the pop grammarians because for them language is a medium. It’s a way of conveying ideas and moods with sounds. The most gifted writers—the Virginia Woolfs and H.G. Wellses and George Bernard Shaws and Herman Melvilles—routinely used words and constructions that the guardians insist are incorrect. And of course avant-garde writers such as Burroughs and Kerouac, and poets pushing the envelope or expanding the expressive possibilities of the language, will deliberately flout even the genuine rules that most people obey. But even non-avant garde writers, writers in the traditional canon, write in ways that would be condemned as grammatical errors by many of the purists, sticklers and mavens. “

Tags: Steven Pinker

“I Never Had The Chance To Pry Off The Top Of His Head To See What Motivated Decisions Like This”

June 9, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Regardless of what actually killed him, Howard Hughes died of being Howard Hughes, eaten alive from the inside by neuroses. But that doesn’t mean he was alone at the feast. An autopsy suggested codeine and painkillers were among the culprits, and his personal physician, Dr. Wilbur Thain, whose brother-in-law Bill Gay was one of the executives angling for control of Hughes’ holdings, was treated like a precursor to Conrad Murray, though he was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.

From Dennis Breo’s 1979 People interview with Thain, who made the extremely dubious assertion that aspirin abuse claimed the man who was both disproportionately rich and poor:

Question:

Are you satisfied that Hughes received adequate medical attention?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

Everything possible was done to help Hughes in his final hours. At no time did the authors of Empire try to get in touch with me. Yet they say in the book that an aviator friend of Hughes called me in Logan, Utah two days before Hughes’ death and told me, “I don’t want to play doctor, but your patient is dying.” I am quoted as telling the guy to mind his own business, since I had to go to a party in the Bahamas. Well, the first word I actually got that Hughes was in trouble was about 9 p.m. April 4, 1976—the night before he died. I was in Miami at the time—not Utah. At about midnight I was called and told that Hughes had suddenly become very critical. I was stunned. I left Miami at 3:30 a.m., arriving in Acapulco at 8 a.m. April 5.

Question:

What was the first thing you did?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

Empire says the first thing I did was spend two hours shredding documents in Hughes’ rooftop suite at the Acapulco Princess. This is absolutely false. I walked straight into Hughes’ bedroom with my medical bag. He was unconscious and having multiple seizures. He looked like he was about to die. Other than one trip to the bathroom, I spent the next four hours with him.

Question:

Why did you then fly to Houston?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

The Mexican physician who had seen Hughes advised against trying to take him to a local medical center, so we spent two hours trying to find an oxygen tank that didn’t leak and preparing the aircraft to fly us to Houston. We left at noon. He died en route.

Question:

Was Howard Hughes psychotic?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

No, not at any time in his life. He was severely neurotic, yes. To be psychotic means to be out of touch with reality. Howard Hughes may have had some fanciful ideas, but he was not out of touch with reality. He was rational until the day he died.

Question:

Was Hughes an impossible patient?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

That’s a masterpiece of understatement. He wanted doctors around, but he didn’t want to see them unless he had to. He would allow no X-rays—I never saw an X-ray of Hughes until after he died—no blood tests, no physical exams. He understood his situation and chose to live the way he lived. Rather than listen to a doctor, he would fall asleep or say he couldn’t hear.

Question:

Is that why you didn’t accept his job offer after you got out of medical school?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

No, I just wanted to practice medicine on my own. I understand that Hughes was quite upset. I didn’t see him again for 21 years. He was 67 then. He had grown a beard, his hair was longer. He had some hearing loss partially due to his work around aircraft. That’s why he liked to use the telephone: It had an amplifier. He was very alert and well-informed. His toenails and fingernails were pretty long, but he had a case of onchyomycosis—a fungus disease of the nails which makes them thick and very sensitive. It hurt like hell to trim them. For whatever reason, he only sponge-bathed his body and hair.

Question:

What was the turning point?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

After his successful hip surgery in August of 1973 he chose never to walk again. Once—only once—he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom with help. That was the beginning of the end for him. I told him we’d even get him a cute little physical therapist. He said, “No, Wilbur, I’m too old for that.”

Question:

Why did he decide not to walk?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

I never had the chance to pry off the top of his head to see what motivated decisions like this. He would never get his teeth fixed, either. Worst damn mouth I ever saw. When they operated on his hip, the surgeons were afraid his teeth were so loose that one would fall into his lung and kill him!

Question:

What kinds of things did he talk about toward the end of his life?

Dr. Wilbur Thain:

The last year we would talk about the Hughes Institute medical projects and his earlier life. All the reporting on Hughes portrayed him as a robot. This man had real feelings. He talked one day about his parents, whom he loved very much, and his movies and his girls. He said he finally gave up stashing women around Hollywood because he got tired of having to talk to them. In our last conversation, he told me how much he still loved his ex-wife Jean Peters. But he was also always talking about things 10 years down the road. He was an optimist in that sense. If it hadn’t been for the kidney failure, Hughes might have lasted a lot longer.•

A 1976 Houston local news report on the death of Howard Hughes, whose demise was as shrouded in mystery as was much of his life.

Tags: Dennis Breo, Howard Hughes, Wilbur Thain

“Coppola Said He Sees A Future In Which Movies Will Be Presented ‘Live'”

June 8, 2014 in Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

I don’t see why movies wouldn’t get universal releases on all platforms once smartphones and other distribution channels have saturated the globe, and I can see films being more fluid creations with numerous remixes, but Francis Ford Coppola goes even further when thinking about the future of the medium. From David Robb at Deadline Hollywood:

Francis Ford Coppola can see the future of cinema, and it’s going to be “live,” like a digital play or a virtual opera. Speaking before an overflow crowd at the closing of the Producer Guild‘s Produced By conference, Coppola said he sees a future in which movies will be presented “live” to audiences all around the world at the same time.

With the digital revolution, he said, “movies no longer have to be set in stone and can be composed and interpreted for different audiences that come to see it. Film has always been a recorded medium, but live cinema remixes might be ’30 percent pre-recorded as the actors do it live. You can do anything and you can do it live.”•

Tags: David Robb, Francis Ford Coppola

“This Future Vehicle Is Not A Car, Not As We Know It Today”

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

From a blog post by Brad Templeton, consultant to Google’s driverless-car division, about the company’s recent wheel-less and brake-less autonomous prototype, which has been surprisingly mocked by some:

“I was not involved in the specifics of design of this vehicle, though I pushed hard as I could for something in this direction. Here’s why I think it’s the right decision.

First of all, this is a prototype. Only 100 of this design will be made, and there will be more iterations. Google is all about studying, learning and doing it again, and they can afford to. They want to know what people think of this, but are not scared if they underestimate it at first.

Secondly, this is what is known as a ‘Disruptive Technology.’ Disruptive technologies, as described in the Silicon Valley bible The Innovators Dilemma are technologies that seem crazy and inferior at first. They meet a new need, not well understood by the incumbent big companies. Those big companies don’t see it as a threat — until years later, they are closing their doors. Every time a disruptive technology takes over, very few of the established players make it through to the other side. This does not guarantee that Google will dominate or crush those companies, or that everything that looks silly eventually wins. But it is a well established pattern.

This vehicle does not look threatening — not to people on the street, and not to existing car companies and pundits who don’t get it. Oh, there are many people inside those car companies who do get it, but the companies are incapable of getting it in their bones. Even when their CEOs get it, they can’t steer the company 90 degrees — there are too many entrenched forces in any large company. The rare exception are founder-led companies (like Google and Facebook and formerly Apple and Microsoft) where if the founder gets it, he or she can force the company to get it.

Even large companies who read this blog post and understand it still won’t get it, not most of the time. I’ve talked to executives from big car companies. They have a century of being car companies, and knowing what the means. Google, Tesla and the coming upstarts don’t.

One reason I will eventually move away from my chosen name for the technology — robocar — along with the other popular names like ‘self-driving car’ is that this future vehicle is not a car, not as we know it today. It is no more a ‘driverless car’ than a modern automobile is a horseless carriage. 100 years ago, the only way they could think of the car was to notice that there was no horse. Today, all many people notice about robocars is that no human is driving. This is the thing that comes after the car.”

Tags: Brad Templeton

A Brief Note From 1911 About A Toothache

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

From the September 26, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Kalamazoo, Mich.–While pulling a tooth yesterday, Dr. Burr Bannister, one of the oldest dentists in Kalamazoo, was perhaps fatally injured. The patient turned to one side during the operation and tipped the chair over, pinning the doctor beneath it. One of the arms of the chair struck the dentist in the stomach, causing an internal hemorrhage.”

Tags: Dr. Burr Bannister

“If It Can Be Improved, Then These Robots, And Others Like Them, Might Stride Out Of Research Laboratories And Populate The World”

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

An excerpt from “The Robots Running This Way,” Will Knight’s long-form Technology Review article about Boston Dynamics, one of Google’s recently purchased robotics companies:

Many of the robots struggle to complete the tasks without malfunctioning, freezing up, or toppling over. Of all the challenges facing them, one of the most difficult, and potentially the most important to master, is simply walking over uneven, unsteady, or just cluttered ground. But the Atlas robots (several academic groups have entered versions of the Boston Dynamics machine) walk across such terrain with impressive confidence.

A couple of times each day, the crowd gets to see two other legged robots made by Boston Dynamics. In one demo, a four-legged machine about the size of a horse trots along the track carrying several large packs; it cleverly shuffles its feet to stay upright when momentarily unbalanced by a hefty kick from its operator. In another, a smaller, more agile four-legged machine revs up a loud diesel engine, then bounds maniacally along the racetrack like a big cat, quickly reaching almost 20 miles per hour.

The crowd, filled with robotics researchers from around the world and curious members of the public, gasps and applauds. But the walking and running technology found in the machines developed by Boston Dynamics is more than just dazzling. If it can be improved, then these robots, and others like them, might stride out of research laboratories and populate the world with smart mobile machines. That helps explain why a few days before the DARPA Challenge, Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google.•

Tags: Will Knight

“SpaceX Already Has The Lowest Launch Costs In The Industry”

June 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Critics of President Obama as a big-government champion certainly aren’t talking about about space exploration, which he seems content to leave to Elon Musk and other private market entities. There’s little doubt that Space X is more cost effective than NASA’s Space Launch System will be, but corporations can change course on projects based on economics, personnel and stock prices, whereas the government has to stay the course. Probably best to have a competition between public and private. That should be the new Space Race. From the Economist:

“SpaceX, the most successful of the private firms, is planning to build a super-heavy Falcon rocket of its own that would be even beefier than the SLS. If all goes to plan, the so-called Falcon XX could reach lunar orbit in the early 2020s and go on to Mars later in the decade, ten years ahead of the SLS. SpaceX already has the lowest launch costs in the industry. It is working on making its rockets reusable, which would cut prices even further. Some (admittedly speculative) estimates say that NASA could cut its costs by a factor of 25 or 50 by going with the Falcon XX rocket instead of the (non-reusable) SLS.

But this is not just an argument about money and jobs. The charitable interpretation of Congress’s plan is that it takes its inspiration from the greatness of the government-run Apollo programme. But Mr Musk is equally forceful when he says that ‘NASA’s most valuable role is to fund advanced science projects such as the Hubble space telescope or the Curiosity Mars rover—things that are valuable for humanity as a whole [and] where there’s not an obvious commercial transaction.’ The rest, in other words, including colonising Mars, Mr Musk’s ultimate aspiration, should be left to entrepreneurs.”

Tags: Barack Obama, Elon Musk

“London Wrote That He Wanted The Piggery To Be ‘The Delight Of All Pig-Men In The United States'”

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

From a Modern Farmer article by Tyler LeBlanc about the last decade of Jack London’s life, when he repaired to Sonoma to create a “futuristic farm”:

Of his innovations, arguably the most impressive was the pig palace, an ultra-sanitary piggery that could house 200 hogs yet be operated by a single person. The palace gave each sow her own “apartment” complete with a sun porch and an outdoor area to exercise. The suites were built around a main feeding structure, while a central valve allowed the sole operator to fill every trough in the building with drinking water.

London wrote that he wanted the piggery to be “the delight of all pig-men in the United States.” While it may not have brought about significant change in the industry – it is said to have cost an astounding $3,000 (equal to $70,000 now) to build — it was one of London’s greatest innovations, and, unfortunately, his last. He died the following year.•

Tags: Jack London, Tyler LeBlanc

“An Electric Heating Element Is Woven Into The Fabric”

June 8, 2014 in Science/Tech | Permalink

Putting up the post about Isadora Duncan’s death reminded me of an unusual 1934 ad I’d seen. It was for a scarf that could be heated electronically by your car battery as you drove, in the days before autos were temperature controlled.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 7, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“I have a terrible toothache.”

Help! Need some Antibiotics/Penicillin (Downtown Brooklyn)

Anyone know where I can get some antibiotics? Some bodegas sell them but I don’t know which. I am new to the area. I have a terrible toothache. Need help now til I can get to a dentist. Thanks!

“Some bodegas sell them.”

Old Print Article: “Body Of Isadora Duncan, Killed By Auto In France, Locked In Studio By Police,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1927)

June 7, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

“‘For the first time I am writing for money; now I am frightened that some quick accident might happen.”

Isadora Duncan never did learn to drive. Out for a car ride in France with a friend and a chauffeur who promised to teach her to operate an automobile, the free-spirited dancer was done in by her free-flowing scarf, which entangled in one of the motor car’s front wheels and yanked her into the next world. It was the end of a short life that felt like a long one. An Associated Press article that appeared in the September 15, 1927 Brooklyn Daily Eagle on the morning after Duncan’s sudden death:

“Nice, France (AP)–The body of Isadora Duncan, dancer, whose adventurous career terminated in an automobile tragedy here last night, was locked in her studio today. Police are guarding the door and will permit no one to enter until a Soviet consular official has signed the necessary papers allowing friends to take charge of the body.

Miss Duncan left no will, according to Mrs. Mary Desto Perks, British newspaper woman who was driving with the dancer when she met death. Mrs. Perks said that all the dancer’s friends would testify that she intended all her property go to her blind brother, Augustin. Although Miss Duncan was recently financially embarrassed, Mrs. Perks declared the royalties on her book of memoirs were expected to net many thousands of dollars. The draperies and pictures in the studio here were alone valued at $10,000.

Citizenship in Doubt

At an autopsy performed today the verdict of accidental death due to strangulation was returned.

The only identifying document found in the Nice apartment was a Soviet passport, and police in accordance with French laws notified the nearest Russian Consul, who is at Marseilles. He was asked to come to Nice by motor at once.

A search at the American consulate here failed to show whether Miss Duncan had claimed American citizenship since 1921.

Miss Duncan was killed last night as she was learning to drive her new car.

A silken scarf of red–the color of which she was fond, and which seems to have symbolized her radicalism–fluttered about the neck of the dancer as she sped along the Promenade des Angels. With her was a French chauffeur, who was going to teach her to drive, and Mrs. Perks.

Killed Instantly

“The idea of ‘interpretive’ dancing came to her.”

The end of the long scarf whipped over the side of the car, became entangled in the front wheel and jerked the dancer from her seat. The chauffeur jammed on the brakes and he and Mrs. Perks disengaged the scarf from the limp body. The drove frantically to the St. Roch Hospital, but in vain. The doctors said her neck was broken and that death must have been instantaneous.

At one time a stage idol, Miss Duncan had long devoted herself to the training of young dancers. Her affairs did not appear to prosper, and her Neuilly studio had to be sold to pay her debts.

Had Premonitions of Death

Of late she had given much of her time to writing memoirs of her career, from which she hoped great things. She seems to have had premonitions of her death as, in talking with a correspondent of the Associated Press on Tuesday, she said:

‘For the first time I am writing for money; now I am frightened that some quick accident might happen.’

_______

From a hesitant debut as a 15-year-old girl in California, Isadora Duncan’s dancing feet carried her across two continents to wealth, a certain degree of fame and a life crowded with adventure and tragedy.

Bare Legs Stirred Protests

Born in San Francisco in May, 1878, the daughter of Charles Duncan, a dancing teacher, she received early training in the art on which she was to leave an indelible impress.

The idea of ‘interpretive’ dancing came to her and she began to devise dance figures of her own. In development of her idea she discarded customary costumes, appearing in filmy attire and with bare legs, a daring innovation in those days and one which brought many protests.

One of her first successes in New York was a dance version of ‘Omar Khayyam,’ in which she interpreted the spirit of the classic poem while the verses were recited by Justin Huntly McCarthy.

She was teaching a class of children in the Hotel Windsor, New York, when the fire broke out on March 7, 1899, which leveled the structure. She saved every one of the pupils at the risk of her life.

In the same year she decided to go to Europe and made the trip with her mother and brothers on a cattleboat, the venture being financed with the aid of friends. Europe was quick to recognize a form of art in her dramatic dancing, and she established a ‘Temple of Art’ in Paris.

King Edward VII, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Ernst Haeckel, Gordon Craig and Rodin the sculptor were listed among the admirers.

In 1904, her first financial success came when she started a school of classical dancing in Berlin, where she trained the girls who came to be known as the Duncan Dancers, forerunners of many later dancing groups of this character.

The girls performed, as their teacher did, in flowing draperies and bare feet.

Back in Paris again, in 1913, she encountered opposition from the authorities when she appeared as a nude bacchante, and in order to continue her fetes without interruption she purchased a villa at Neuilly, where she gave her brilliant parties for nearly four years.

Two Children Drowned

“There tragedy overtook her.”

There tragedy overtook her. Her two children, Beatrice, 5, and Patrick, 2–she was never married and never revealed the name of their father–were drowned when the motorcar in which they were sitting plunged into the Seine River when it was cranked while in gear.

Of radical sympathies, her fortunes were adversely affected with the outbreak of the World War, and when the Russian revolution came in 1917 she immediately announced her adhesion to the Bolshevik cause. She went to Moscow some time later on the invitation of the Soviet Government to found a new school of dancing. Difficulties arose, and the plan was abandoned.

It was in Moscow that she married Sergei Yesenin, young Russian poet, in 1921. The next year she brought him to the United States and gave a series of dances. Later in Paris she announced that she had sent the young poet back to Russia, and eventually she divorced him, describing him as ‘really too impossible.’ He committed suicide in Russia in December, 1925.”

Tags: Auguste Rodin, Augustin Duncan, Beatrice Duncan, Charles Duncan, Deirdre Duncan, Ernst Haeckel, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Gordon Craig, Isadora Duncan, Justin Huntly McCarthy, King Edward VII, Mary Desto Perks, Patrick Duncan, Sergei Yesenin