“It Achieved An Efficiency Of 2,824 Miles Per Gallon”

May 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Two innovations that would disrupt markets, improve consumer experience and cause a great deal of unemployment. They are necessary improvements and they will hurt.

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Being able to get thousands of miles per gallon in cars would be the greatest triumph ever for environmentalism. Not close to reaching the market, however. From Belinda Lanks at Businessweek:

“A three-wheeled, teardrop-shaped car has won Shell’s (RDSA) Eco-marathon Americas competition, a yearly contest that pits teams of students against each other in a race to build energy-efficient vehicles.

The winning group, from Université Laval in Quebec, overcame technical setbacks, including excess friction short circuits, to achieve an efficiency of 2,824 miles per gallon. To put that in perspective, the prototype could travel from New York to Los Angeles on less than a gallon of fuel. And that figure is still well below the 3,587 miles per gallon the same school achieved last year. (Université Laval has won five out of the last six Shell competitions.)”

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Fancy soaps, shampoos and cosmetics have always been a hustle. Soon you can have a supply at the ready whenever you like, for a relative pittance. From Alyson Shontell at Business Insider:

“Grace Choi was at Harvard Business School when she decided to disrupt the beauty industry. She did a little research and realized that beauty brands create and then majorly mark up their products by mixing lots of colors.

‘The makeup industry makes a whole lot of money on a whole lot of bulls—,’ Choi said at TechCrunch Disrupt this week. ‘They charge a huge premium on something that tech provides for free. That one thing is color.’

By that, she means color printers are available to everyone, and the ink they have is the same as the ink that makeup companies use in their products. She says the ink is FDA-approved.

Choi created a mini home printer, Mink, that will retail for $300 and allow anyone to print makeup by ripping the color code off color photos on the internet.”

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“The First Amendment Is Just For Perverts”

May 6, 2014 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Audio from two old-school UCLA talks by comedians.

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On February 8, 1966, just six months before his fatal overdose, Lenny Bruce gave a rambling talk on campus, hitting on all the large topics he loved: law, church, state and free speech. He got off to a slow start, distracted as he was at the time with his own ongoing legal issues, but before finishing he’d argued with biting wit that churches were like fast-food franchises, science and technology polluted the justice system, Catholic rituals protected child molesters and “a country can only be strong by knowing about the bad things.”

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Long before she was a self-centered Republican lady worried about buying and selling as much crap as possible, Joan Rivers was a great stand-up. (And despite any personal unpleasantness and crassness, she still is.) On November 15, 1972, Rivers did a Q&A with the students, being brazenly honest on varied topics (feminism, Bill Cosby, talk shows, etc. ) and asking rhetorically, “If I was normal, would I be doing comedy?” Very funny stuff.

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A Brief Note From 1910 About An Overreaction

May 5, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the April 30, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Indianapolis–Because she had made a mistake in giving a report to a census enumerator and feared arrest, Mrs. Julia V. Chilton, 41 years old, committed suicide yesterday by hanging herself at her home. A note left by the woman read:

‘My Dear Loving Husband: This is all my own fault, not yours, as I made a mistake with the census man. I did not mean to–you are innocent in every way. Tell everyone good-by.

Your Loving Wife,

Julia V. Chilton.’

According to a neighbor, Mrs. Chilton said she had misinformed the enumerator as to the company with which her husband was connected.”

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“Sad To Say, There’s Method In Their Fraudulence”

May 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Paul Krugman is concerned that the Affordable Care Act has been damaged by a concerted conservative effort to defame it with lies. I wonder if this will end up being a long-term concern. The greatest benefit, I think, of a decentralized media is that while politicized bullshit still works, it has a pretty short shelf life. The Republican playbook, in which coded language could sway the masses, doesn’t have much of a lasting impact in the Information Age. That’s not to say that the GOP won’t do well in midterm elections–that’s usually the way for the party out of the Oval Office. But Obamacare isn’t going away, and the Republicans are going to have a steep uphill climb in the next national election. From Krugman’s “Inventing a Failure“:

“Now comes the latest claim — that many of the people who signed up for insurance aren’t actually paying their premiums. Obviously this claim is part of a continuing pattern. It also, however, involves a change in tactics. Previous attacks on Obamacare were pretty much fact-free; this time the claim was backed by an actual survey purporting to show that a third of enrollees hadn’t paid their first premium.

But the survey was rigged. (Are you surprised?) It asked insurers how many enrollees had paid their first premium; it ignored the fact that the first premium wasn’t even due for the millions of people who signed up for insurance after March 15.

And the fact that the survey was so transparently rigged is a smoking gun, proving that the attacks on Obamacare aren’t just bogus; they’re deliberately bogus. The staffers who set up that survey knew enough about the numbers to skew them, which meant that they have to have known that Obamacare is actually doing O.K.

So why are Republicans doing this? Sad to say, there’s method in their fraudulence.

First of all, it fires up the base. After this latest exercise in deception, we can be fairly sure that Republican leaders know perfectly well that Obamacare has failed to fail. But the party faithful don’t. Like anyone who writes about these issues, I get vast amounts of mail from people who know, just know, that insurance premiums are skyrocketing, that far more people have lost insurance because of Obummercare than have gained it, that all the horror stories are real, and that anyone who says otherwise is just a liberal shill.

Beyond that, the constant harping on alleged failure works as innuendo even if each individual claim collapses in the face of evidence. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans know that more than eight million people enrolled in health exchanges; but it also found a majority of respondents believing that this was below expectations, and that the law was working badly.”

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“This May Be Your Last Chance Ever To Live The Dream”

May 5, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

A 1983 California ad offering DeLoreans at the closeout price of $18,895.

“If You Would Like To Know Whether Saddam Hussein Has The Atomic Bomb, Just Ask One Of These Men”

May 5, 2014 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

American neocons were fixing to invade Iraq for a long spell, and Saddam Hussein often made things easy on them. In the dozen years after this 1991 To Tell the Truth episode, which featured electronics executive Jerry Kowalski, who is said to have foiled a Hussein plot to achieve atomic-weapon capacity, we went to war with the country twice, the second one waged under false pretenses which cost so many lives, a trillion dollars and our country’s reputation. In the lead up to Dubya’s folly, the right’s saber-rattling was enabled by Washington Democrats and poor reportage by largely liberal publications like the New York Times and the New Yorker. It was a widespread and profound failure of government, media, and of course, the rest of us.

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“Aging Is Just Another Disease”

May 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Gerontologist/optimist Aubrey de Grey believes someone alive in 2014 will live to 1000 years old, and I bet it ends up being Donald Sterling. He’ll be 850 years old with a 600-year-old mistress because he likes them much, much younger.

Technology may be that close to (largely) defeating death or de Grey may see the future as almost being here when it’s still in the far distance. From Charlotte Allen at the Weekly Standard:

“The British-born de Grey, with a doctorate in biology from Cambridge, is also the single most colorful figure in the living-forever movement, where colorful figures generously abound. “I look as though I’m in my 30s,” he informed me after we settled, first into a cluttered conference room dominated by an enormous scribbled-over whiteboard, and then into a low-ceilinged lounge whose mélange of hard-bounce chairs and sofas looks as though it was scrounged from sidewalk discards. And maybe he does look that young, but it’s hard to tell, because his waist-length, waterfall-style beard​—​a de Grey trademark​—​gives him the look of an extremely spry Methuselah, who, according to the Bible, made it only to 969 years. De Grey is actually of the phenotype Ageless British Eccentric: English Rose cheeks, piercing blue eyes, and someone-please-make-him-a-sandwich slenderness; his tomato-red shirt and gray slacks hang from angular shoulders and legs. Bony frames that verge on gauntness are a hallmark of the living-forever movement, most of whose members hew to severe dietary restrictions in order to prolong their lives while they wait for science to catch up with death. De Grey, by contrast, claims to eat whatever he likes and also to drink massive quantities of carb-loaded English ale, working it all off by punting on the River Cam in the four months a year he spends doing research back at Cambridge. (During the rest of the year he lives in Los Gatos, a picturesque Victorian town in the Santa Cruz Mountains 14 miles southeast of Mountain View.)

De Grey subscribes to the reigning theory of the live-forever movement: that aging, the process by which living things ultimately wear themselves out and die, isn’t an inevitable part of the human condition. Instead, aging is just another disease, not really different in kind from any of the other serious ailments, such as heart failure or cancer, that kill us. And as with other diseases, de Grey believes that aging has a cure or series of cures that scientists will eventually discover. ‘Aging is a side effect of being alive,’ he said during our interview. ‘The human body is exactly the same as a car or an airplane. It’s a machine, and any machine, if you run it, will effect changes on itself that require repairs. Living systems have a great deal of capacity for self-repair, but over time some of those changes only accumulate very slowly, so we don’t notice them until we are very old.'”

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“The Ability To Recognize Faces Has Long Been A Benchmark For Artificial Intelligence”

May 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You’re most likely already in the system, and it’s too late to opt out. All those profile photos, Instagrams and selfies aren’t just poses but also proof. You’ll never be a stranger again. Never. From Luke Dormehl’s Guardian article about facial recognition:

“This summer, Facebook will present a paper at a computer vision conference revealing how it has created a tool almost as accurate as the human brain when it comes to saying whether two photographs show the same person – regardless of changes in lighting and camera angles. A human being will get the answer correct 97.53% of the time; Facebook’s new technology scores an impressive 97.25%. ‘We closely approach human performance,’ says Yaniv Taigman, a member of its AI team.

Since the ability to recognise faces has long been a benchmark for artificial intelligence, developments such as Facebook’s ‘DeepFace’ technology (yes, that’s what it called it) raise big questions about the power of today’s facial recognition tools and what these mean for the future.

Facebook is not the only tech company interested in facial recognition. A patent published by Apple in March shows how the Cupertino company has investigated the possibility of using facial recognition as a security measure for unlocking its devices – identifying yourself to your iPhone could one day be as easy as snapping a quick selfie.

Google’s deepest dive into facial recognition is its Google Glass headsets. Thanks to the camera built into each device, the headsets would seem to be tailormade for recognising the people around you. That’s exactly what third-party developers thought as well, since almost as soon as the technology was announced, apps such as NameTag began springing up. NameTag’s idea was simple: that whenever you start a new conversation with a stranger, your Google Glass headset takes a photo of them and then uses this to check the person’s online profile. Whether they share your interest in Werner Herzog films, or happen to be a convicted sex offender, nothing will escape your gaze. ‘With NameTag, your photo shares you,’ the app’s site reads. ‘Don’t be a stranger.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 5, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Selling Pubic Hair Collection – $4

NOT A SCAM! I have been collecting my pubic hair in a mason jar for the last 14 years in the hopes that it might someday be used for something. My wife wants me to get rid of it because she thinks it’s disgusting but I don’t just want to throw it away and waste all my work. So for any artsy people out there that could like, make art with it or whatever, this is for you! However, preference will be given to people who will use it for HUMANITARIAN AID; I was thinking there’s gotta be someone out there that could like, knit a wig for kids with cancer out of it or something. For a decade and a half of work, the price tag is a steal. DO NOT CONTACT IF YOU’RE GOING TO DO WEIRD SEX STUFF WITH IT. I don’t really know what that would be exactly but don’t even think about it, and don’t lie and say something else when really you are gonna do sex things with it because I’M VERY GOOD AT PICKING OUT LIARS. Interesting trades are also accepted.

Old Print Article: “A Hot Race,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1882)

May 4, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

First Madison Square Garden, 1879-1890.

First Madison Square Garden, 1879-1890.

When the world was slower, much slower, a quick gait could bring in a huge gate. Such was the case with pedestrianism, a sensation before automobiles were king of the roads, in which competitors would race-walk cross-country or do ceaseless laps around a track in an arena before bleary-eyed spectators who would spend up to a week mesmerized by the exhibition of slow-twitch muscle fiber. An excerpt from a report in the March 4, 1882 Brooklyn Daily Eagle about one such six-day contest, a cross between a footrace and a dance marathon, before a large Madison Square Garden audience that alternately yelled and yawned:

Popular interest in the race of the champions touched its highest point to-day. The opening of the last day of the walk was witnessed by over two thousand spectators. Fully one-half of these had lingered in Madison Square Garden all night. Drowsy and unkempt, with grimy faces and dusty apparel, they shivered behind their upturned coat collars, determined to see the battle out. The management’s order of ‘no return checks’ had far more unpleasant significance for them than hours of discomfort in the barnlike building. The permanent lodger in a six days’ match usually makes his bed upon a coal box, in a grocery wagon or beneath the roof of the police lodging room. Accordingly, it is his habit to come to the garden at the beginning of a race and remain for a full week, or until he is removed by the employees to make way for some more profitable customers. This contest had its full share of these persistent individuals. Beside them, many sporting men remained until almost daybreak, attracted by the enormous scores rolled up by the pedestrians and speculations as to what they would do in the way of the beating of the record. It was conceded that Hazael and Fitzgerald would surpass all previous performances. Hazael’s wonderful work was generally regarded as the marvel of the match.

When Hazael, the Londoner of astonishing prowess, retired from the track at 11:37 last night, he had rolled up the enormous record of 540 miles in 120 hours. To his enthusiastic handlers in walker’s row he complained of feeling tired and sleepy. His limbs were sound and apparently tireless as steel. He partook heartily of nourishment and then, throwing himself on his couch, caught a few cat naps. At 1:49:20 he bounded out of his flower covered alcove, and once more took up the thread of his travels. His rest of two hours and twelve minutes had greatly improved him. He had been sponged and rubbed, and grinned all over his quaint face at his enormous score. That he was yet full of vigor and energy was apparent from the work he immediately entered upon. He had not walked more than half a lap when he gave a preliminary wobble. Then he clasped his hands over his ears, pulled his head down until his slender neck was well craned, and shot over the yellow pathway at a rattling pace. The sleepy watcher pricked up their ears at the shout which greeted this performance, and a fusillade of handclapping shook the garden. Fitzgerald was jogging over the tanbark at this time, sharply working to draw nearer to the Englishman’s figures on the scoring sheets. He accelerated his speed as the Londoner resumed the task before him. Within a few minutes both men were running like reindeer. It is doubtful they could have made better time if a pack of famished wolves had been at their heels. Volley after volley of applause thundered after them from the spectators. The runners kept close together. Between the hours of 2 and 8 o’clock this morning, so swift was their movements, that each man had added six miles and seven laps to his score or within one lap of seven miles. The struggle became so intense that the spectators began to realize that something unusual was in progress. A stir was apparent all over the vast interior and wearied humanity pushed itself to the rail to see what was going on.•

 

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“Man Was Matter…The Spirit Gone, Man Was Garbage”

May 4, 2014 in Books, Videos | Permalink

Before we lay to rest (perhaps) the Great American Novel–as unwieldy and confounding and beautiful as the land it came from–let us recall a time when such a book could capture the zeitgeist, wrestle it to the ground and influence even those who hadn’t read it. Joseph Heller was the author of such a novel in 1961 (Catch–22, of course), and even though I’m partial to Something Happened, I recognize how Yossarian and company crashed the culture. Stuff like this cut through the bullshit of war’s anonymity and reminded that it was a personal affront:

“They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered. “They’re trying to kill everyone.”
“And what difference does that make?”

On April 8, 1970, Heller, middle-aged hero to the young, lectured on the UCLA campus. He talked poorly of Governor Ronald Reagan and highly of King Lear. He also read 22′s Snowden death scene. Audio only embedded below.

“There Are No Fundamental Limits To What Can Be Achieved”

May 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Stephen Hawking thinks Artificial Intelligence might be the worst thing ever, unless, of course, it’s the best. (Perhaps it could be both?) Hawking certainly wouldn’t be alive without it. A lot of us wouldn’t be. From the physicist’s cautionary tale in the Independent:

“Artificial-intelligence (AI) research is now progressing rapidly. Recent landmarks such as self-driving cars, a computer winning at Jeopardy! and the digital personal assistants Siri, Google Now and Cortana are merely symptoms of an IT arms race fuelled by unprecedented investments and building on an increasingly mature theoretical foundation. Such achievements will probably pale against what the coming decades will bring.

The potential benefits are huge; everything that civilisation has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools that AI may provide, but the eradication of war, disease, and poverty would be high on anyone’s list. Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history.

Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks. In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets; the UN and Human Rights Watch have advocated a treaty banning such weapons. In the medium term, as emphasised by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Second Machine Age, AI may transform our economy to bring both great wealth and great dislocation.

Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved.”

 

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“The Last Frontier Is In Our Heads”

May 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Sometimes notions about Japan can be generalized too much, but it would be tough to argue that the population isn’t graying, nationalistic and homogenous. Further, its economic and diplomatic position in the world is uneasy, in part because of the rise of an open and ambitious China. Two exchanges from Hiroki Manabe’s new Asahi Shimbun interview with Joseph Caron, the former Canadian ambassador to Japan.

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“Question:

Do you have any recommendations for Japan in regards to dealing with China?

Joseph Caron:

This is where I see interesting parallels between Canada and Japan, even though the situations are very different. Canada was created in 1867, and Japan’s Meiji Restoration was in 1868. At almost the same time, we in Canada were faced with a continental country emerging from civil war and considering taking over the continent, while Japan had opened to an international environment that promised opportunity and threats.

Many Canadians did not like the idea of being closely associated with the U.S., because they themselves, their parents or grandparents were from Britain. Most Canadians even then lived within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border, so we had to find ways to adjust. It was a real struggle.

Similarly, Japan needs to find ways to adjust to its international situation with China. Japan, South Korea and every other country in the region has to contend with China. Japan is struggling with this reality. What we are seeing in China is what we saw from the United States from the 1880s through the 1920s. There are parallels in the kind of challenges Japan is facing.”

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“Question:

Why do you think young Japanese today are reluctant to go abroad?

Joseph Caron:

When I was in China I spoke at universities in both English and French, and I was blown away by the quality of the students I encountered. The students could clearly ask good questions in either English or French. In the same way, the next generation of Japanese have to become truly cosmopolitan.

Even though Japan has 127 million people, its population is shrinking, so the next generation is going to need greater skills and become truly international. The last frontier is in our heads. And one thing that can be done to bridge that final frontier is to have more Japanese students go abroad, and for more international students to go to Japan.”

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“He Expressed A Willingness To Take A Discount”

May 4, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

When I read the recent Businessweek profile of Boston Red Sox owner John Henry, it reminded me of something that drives me a little batty. In January, Sox pitcher Jon Lester said that he would take a “hometown discount” to remain with the team rather than trying to get fair market value. That’s a phrase your hear sometimes that overjoys many fans and sportswriters because the player is making a sacrifice for the organization, and by extension, the fans. But it’s ridiculous and bad economics.

Why exactly would Lester give a billionaire like Henry a hometown discount? If it’s in the player’s best interests to accept a lesser contract earlier because of fear of injury, so be it. But he should never take a “discount” to accommodate an owner. That’s just silly. If Henry doesn’t want to pay market value, that’s fine, it’s his decision, but he shouldn’t be given corporate welfare from a player any more than team owners should have their stadiums paid for in part by taxpayers. This isn’t 1904 and it’s not the Boston Beaneaters: Billionaires should have to navigate the free market like everyone else. From ESPN in January:

“Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester, who is eligible for free agency after the 2014 season, emphatically stated Thursday that his desire is to remain with Boston, and he expressed a willingness to take a discount in order to do so.

‘These guys are my No. 1 priority,’ Lester said during media availability at the Boston Baseball Writers’ Association of America awards dinner. ‘I want to be here ’til they rip this jersey off my back.

Lester said he not only expects to have to take a discount in order to sign an extension with the team, but he is willing to do so.

‘It’s like Pedey [Dustin Pedroia, Red Sox second baseman]. He left a lot of money on the table to stay here. That’s what he wanted to do. I understand that. That’s my choice, that’s his choice.'”

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10 Recent Huffington Post Headlines

May 4, 2014 in Humor, Misc. | Permalink

bette

  • That Time Bette Davis Patted Ron Howard On The Ass
  • Man Lets Elderly Woman Stuck In Elevator Sit On Him In Act Of Chair-ity
  • What Is The ‘Laguna Beach’ Cast Up To Now?
  • To The Stranger Who Ruined My Son’s Day
  • Donald Popadick Accused Of Indecent Act In Park
  • Believe It Or Not, Reese Witherspoon’s Real Name Is Not Reese Witherspoon
  • Man With World’s Biggest Penis: Exact Size ‘Depends On The Weather’
  • ’90s ‘Psychic’ Hotline Star Ms. Cleo Is Gay ‘As A Two Dollar Bill’
  • Police: Tossed Toilet Bowl Kills Fan
  • 5 Things You Never Knew About Your Toothbrush

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

May 4, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

 

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

  1. donald trump celebrity apprentice
  2. google throat tattoo
  3. computer for adding bowling scores from the 1970s
  4. should performance-enhancing drugs be legal?
  5. cities on earth that are like mars
  6. george plimpton article about playing football
  7. 1940s new yorker article about norman mailer
  8. dorothy stratten and paul snider murder
  9. tom lehrer song about NASA nazi
  10. computers in ernest callenbach’s ecotopia

 

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

May 3, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

This week, the sovereignty of two great entities was under attack.

This week, the independence of two great entities was threatened.

Theirs...

...and his.

  • Thomas Piketty believes the relative postwar equality was an exception.
  • Qataris are fabulously rich as well as overweight and unhappy.
  • Al Feldstein, who just passed away, edited Mad in its glory years
  • A brief note from 1921 about a romance.

 

A Brief Note From 1910 About A Weary Stork

May 2, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the December 14, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Richmond, Ind.–The twenty-eighth child has arrived at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Jason Bonner at New Castle, Ind. Twenty-one of the children are living. Mr. Bonner is 49 years old and his wife is four years his junior.”

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“You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You”

May 2, 2014 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Posting the audio of Timothy Leary’s UCLA talk reminded me of D.A. Pennebaker’s 1964 short doc about the guru’s wedding to fashion model Nena von Schlebrügge at the Hitchcock House, which was attended by Diane Arbus, Charles Mingus, Monti Rock III and other luminaries. The marriage lasted slightly longer than the 12-minute film. The bride is a fascinating person in her own right, although she’s probably best known today as Uma Thurman’s mom.

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“This First American Psychedelic Movement Began With An Anonymous Article Published In 1874”

May 2, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Speaking of William James tripping at Harvard, here’s the opening of “The Nitrous Oxide Philosopher,” Dmitri Tymoczko’s 1996 Atlantic article about the philosopher’s experiments in alternate states of consciousness:

“He has short hair and a long brown beard. He is wearing a three-piece suit. One imagines him slumped over his desk, giggling helplessly. Pushed to one side is an apparatus out of a junior-high science experiment: a beaker containing some ammonium nitrate, a few inches of tubing, a cloth bag. Under one hand is a piece of paper, on which he has written, ‘That sounds like nonsense but it is pure on sense!’ He giggles a little more. The writing trails away. He holds his forehead in both hands. He is stoned. He is William James, the American psychologist and philosopher. And for the first time he feels that he is understanding religious mysticism.

The psychedelia of the 1960s was foreshadowed by events in the waning years of the nineteenth century. This first American psychedelic movement began with an anonymous article published in 1874 in The Atlantic Monthly. The article, which was in fact written by James, reviewed The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy, a pamphlet arguing that the secrets of religion and philosophy were to be found in the rush of nitrous oxide intoxication. Inspired by this thought, James experimented with the drug, experiencing extraordinary revelations that he immediately committed to paper.

What’s mistake but a kind of take?
What’s nausea but a kind of -ausea?
Sober, drunk, -unk , astonishment. . . .
Agreement–disagreement!!
Emotion–motion!!! . . .
Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!
Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
It escapes, it escapes!
But–
What escapes, WHAT escapes?

This experience, which in James’s words involved ‘the strongest emotion’ he had ever had, remained with him throughout his life. “

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“There Is Now An Almost Ceaseless Murmuring About The Future Of Narrative Prose”

May 2, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The novel will be different, but it will be. And, no, it won’t again have the cultural primacy it once did–enjoyed by the minority but able to hold sway over the masses–but nothing in the culture will truly have primacy. It’s a free-for-all now. In most ways, that’s better. From Will Self’s Guardian article, “The Novel Is Dead (This Time It’s for Real)“:

“Literary critics – themselves a dying breed, a cause for considerable schadenfreude on the part of novelists – make all sorts of mistakes, but some of the most egregious ones result from an inability to think outside of the papery prison within which they conduct their lives’ work. They consider the codex. They are – in Marshall McLuhan’s memorable phrase – the possessors of Gutenberg minds.

There is now an almost ceaseless murmuring about the future of narrative prose. Most of it is at once Panglossian and melioristic: yes, experts assert, there’s no disputing the impact of digitised text on the whole culture of the codex; fewer paper books are being sold, newspapers fold, bookshops continue to close, libraries as well. But … but, well, there’s still no substitute for the experience of close reading as we’ve come to understand and appreciate it – the capacity to imagine entire worlds from parsing a few lines of text; the ability to achieve deep and meditative levels of absorption in others’ psyches. This circling of the wagons comes with a number of public-spirited campaigns: children are given free books; book bags are distributed with slogans on them urging readers to put books in them; books are hymned for their physical attributes – their heft, their appearance, their smell – as if they were the bodily correlates of all those Gutenberg minds, which, of course, they are.

The seeming realists among the Gutenbergers say such things as: well, clearly, books are going to become a minority technology, but the beau livre will survive. The populist Gutenbergers prate on about how digital texts linked to social media will allow readers to take part in a public conversation. What none of the Gutenbergers are able to countenance, because it is quite literally – for once the intensifier is justified – out of their minds, is that the advent of digital media is not simply destructive of the codex, but of the Gutenberg mind itself. There is one question alone that you must ask yourself in order to establish whether the serious novel will still retain cultural primacy and centrality in another 20 years. This is the question: if you accept that by then the vast majority of text will be read in digital form on devices linked to the web, do you also believe that those readers will voluntarily choose to disable that connectivity? If your answer to this is no, then the death of the novel is sealed out of your own mouth.”

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“Beloved Robots, You’ve Got To Drop Out”

May 2, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Audio only of Timothy Leary giving his “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” speech and doing a Q&A at UCLA on January 18, 1967. Addressed, among other subjects, by the guru and future software mogul: William James’ nitrous oxide parties at Harvard, DNA code and the importance of bare feet.

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“It Is Not A Country’s Natural Resources But Its Capabilities To Generate More Productive Technologies That Determine Its Prosperity”

May 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Economist Ha-Joon Chang, who’s authored the first title of the new Pelican imprint, explains the importance of anchovies and guano and technology, in a Financial Times diary post. An excerpt:

“Despite its small size, the anchovy is arguably the most important fish in the world. It is eaten in large quantities everywhere and in so many different ways: raw (a delicacy in some parts of Korea); dried (in Korea and Japan); cured (around the Mediterranean); fried (all over Asia, including India, Indonesia, and Korea); as fermented sauce (not just in Korea, Vietnam, or Thailand but also in ancient Rome – garum); and even drunk (all over the world, through the Worcester sauce in a Bloody Mary). Impressive though the culinary role it has played in so many different cultures may be, the anchovy’s economic role used to be even greater – at least in Peru.

In the mid-19th century, Peru had an economic boom based on the export of guano, namely, desiccated seabird droppings, deposited over thousands of years by cormorants and boobies, whose main food source was the anchovies migrating along the Pacific coast of South America. Rich in nitrate and phosphorous, guano was a highly prized fertiliser. It was also a key ingredient in the manufacture of gunpowder. This was a time when Europe and North America needed both fertiliser and gunpowder in large quantities.

Unfortunately, the guano boom came to an abrupt end in the early 20th century, when German scientist Fritz Haber, inventor of poison gases used in the first world war, developed a method of isolating nitrogen from the air to make ammonia, using high-voltage electricity. With this invention, the mass production of artificial fertiliser became possible, deposing guano from its throne in the fertiliser kingdom. The price of guano fell and Peru’s export earnings plummeted, dealing a huge blow to the economy.

The Peruvian story shows that it is not a country’s natural resources but its capabilities to generate more productive technologies that determine its prosperity; your natural resources may become far less valuable if others invent synthetic substitutes. Such technological capabilities are almost always acquired through industrialisation, which is why few countries have remained rich in the long run without successful industrialisation.”

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Old Print Article: “Mother Of Four Admits Role Of ‘Swapped’ Wife,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1942)

May 1, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Spouse swapping have been around forever, and according to an article in the November 10, 1942 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, it didn’t miss the World War II era. From a piece about two New Jersey couples that were hot for each other for a time:

“Elizabeth–Advisory Master John G. Matthews today heard, with surprise that verged on horror, how a couple of friendly neighbors living in the same house in Metuchen ‘swapped’ wives from April, 1941, until the end of the year.

The story was unfolded in papers filed by Mrs. Gladys Jensen of 288 Main St., Metuchen, in divorce proceedings brought by her husband, Siegfried, now of Raritan Township.

The Jensens were married in 1928 and have four children ranging from 7 to 13. According to Mrs. Jensen’s affidavit, they shared a private house with the Howard E. Caswells at 680 Main St., Metuchen. In April 1941, a fire in the neighborhood awoke both families and the couples watched the blaze being put out. Then, according to Mrs. Jensen, ‘some one’ suggested an exchange of wives.

Court Denounces ‘Paganism’

Mrs. Jensen said that ‘after some hesitation, all parties agreed’ and the exchange took place four times that week and twice a week thereafter until the end of December. Then, she said, she had an argument with Caswell and the swapping ended, although the two couples continued to live in the same house until last March.

‘This is the sort of paganism one might expect to read about in the early history of Rome,’ said the advisory master. He ordered Jensen to pay $16 a week alimony pending trial of his divorce action on Nov. 21. 

The Caswells had meanwhile been divorced, and the court ordered that suit reopened and directed attorneys in both cases to appear before him.”

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“Enter A Word As It Sounds–And Get The Correct Spelling”

May 1, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

It’s difficult to fathom that relatively recently, the spellcheck function wasn’t ubiquitous–intrusive, even–and there was actually a market for a product like this one in 1989.

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