“Why Does China’s Ruling Single Party Still Call Themselves Communist When They Are So Clearly Anything But?”

April 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Shanghai during WWII.

Shanghai during WWII.

NPR Shanghai correspondent Frank Langfitt just did an excellent Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

How “free and open” does the regular Chinese citizen feel? I remember talking to some older Chinese people who had immigrated to Canada who were still a little worried about being openly critical about the Chinese government. In other words, do regular citizens feel safe in being able to speak openly about government policy and issues or is there still a feeling of paranoia?

Frank Langfitt:

With friends and even strangers Chinese are much more open with their political views than they were a generation ago. On a 20 minute taxi ride in Shanghai, you can get a very thoughtful deconstruction of Chinese politics and the party. But if you take out your tape recorder, everything changes.

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Question:

What kinds of things do regular Chinese citizens think about the USA that isn’t correct?

Frank Langfitt:

Chinese know America much better than we know China and their knowledge is improving. One question i get a lot of in recent years is will the U.S. and China go to war. There is a fear that a conflict between China and Japan over the islands in the East China Sea will draw in the U.S. I’ve found this sort of talk really unsettling and revealing about how some ordinary Chinese sea the geopolitics of their country’s rise.

Question:

Do you think, China and Japan will go to a war of some type?

Frank Langfitt:

i really hope not. it would be a disaster. #2 and #3 economies at war in north asia. And #1 economy has defense treaty with #3. Yikes.

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Question:

What is the most disgusting thing you have seen in China (I heard kids take shit directly on the street)?

Frank Langfitt:

Not sure what is most disgusting thing i’ve seen, but kids do relieve themselves on the streets sometimes and this has become a really interesting phenomenon. As more Chinese travel, occasionally this will happen on a subway outside the country, say Hong Kong or Taiwan and it goes viral and creates a big controversy inside and outside the country.

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Question:

How bad is the smog really? Have you had to do a lot to adjust to it?

Frank Langfitt:

It depends on where you are. Beijing is at times not habitable for creatures with lungs. there is no way to exaggerate conditions there. Shanghai is much better, largely because we are on the East China Sea and the winds clear out the smog. We have lots of blue sky days and all the glass and steel shimmers and the city looks great. Back in December, though, we had terrible air and we stayed inside the apartment for four days and just blasted the air filters.

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Question:

Why does China’s ruling single party still call themselves Communist when they are so clearly anything but? They still have Mao on bank notes, yet their modern society is an ongoing contradiction of the values he espoused. How do everyday Chinese people and the elites reconcile their hypercapitalist current system with their “communist” party government?

Frank Langfitt:

Great, great question. The Communist Party knows it is not Communist, but can’t dump the name because it is key to its legitimacy. There is a story — perhaps apocryphal — in which the former premier Zhu Rongji asked an American politician what was the one thing the Communist Party could do to change its image in the eyes of Americans. The politician said: “change the name.” Zhu shook his head and said they just couldn’t do that. Chinese people are supremely pragmatic, much to their credit, and they are happy to take advantage of a capitalist-style economy that helps them improve their lives and are less hung up on what things are called.•

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“It Has Transformed Itself Into An Invisible State Within A State”

April 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Edward Snowden’s participation in a recent dog-and-pony show about government surveillance with Vladimir Putin confirms what has long been apparent: He’s not the most astute fellow who thinks things through in advance of his actions. Russia under Putin isn’t just a place that spies on journalists but one where they mysteriously wind up dead. But even if Snowden is his own worst enemy, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s an enemy of the state. In his new Foreign Affairs piece, “Live and Let Leak,” Jack Shafer acknowledges that whistleblowers can be dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as a government not held to account by them. An excerpt:

“With little or no public input, the U.S. government has kidnapped suspected terrorists, established secret prisons, performed ‘enhanced’ interrogations, tortured prisoners, and carried out targeted killings. After the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden pilfered hundreds of thousands of documents from the NSA’s computers and released them to journalists last summer, the public learned of additional and potentially dodgy secret government programs: warrantless wiretaps, the weakening of public encryption software, the collection and warehousing of metadata from phones and e-mail accounts, and the interception of raw Internet communications.

The secrecy machine was originally designed to keep the United States’ foes at bay. But in the process, it has transformed itself into an invisible state within a state. Forever discovering new frontiers to patrol, as the Snowden files indicate, the machine molts its skin each season to grow ever larger and more powerful, encountering little resistance from the courts or Congress.”

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“The Idea Of Nuclear-Powered Spaceships Has Never Gone Away”

April 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Freeman Dyson and his fellow scientists behind the 1950s Project Orion space-exploration plans had an ambitious timeline for their atomic rockets: Mars by 1965 and Saturn by 1970. But their dreams were dashed, collateral damage of non-proliferation Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963. But is it merely a dream deferred? The opening of Richard Hollingham’s new BBC article on the topic:

“Project Orion has to be the most audacious, dangerous and downright absurd space programme ever funded by the US taxpayer. This 1950s design involved exploding nuclear bombs behind a spacecraft the size of the Empire State Building to propel it through space. The Orion’s engine would generate enormous amounts of energy – and with it lethal doses of radiation.

Plans suggested the spacecraft could take off from Earth and travel to Mars and back in just three months. The quickest flight using conventional rockets and the right planetary alignment is 18 months.

There were obvious challenges – from irradiating the crew and the launch site, to the disruption caused by the electromagnetic pulse, plus the dangers of a catastrophic nuclear accident taking out a sizable portion of the US. But the plan was, nevertheless, given serious consideration. Project Orion was conceived when atmospheric nuclear tests were commonplace and the power of the atom promised us all a bright new tomorrow. Or oblivion. Life was simpler then.

In the early 1960s, common sense prevailed and the project was abandoned, but the idea of nuclear-powered spaceships has never gone away. In fact there are several in the cold depths of space right now.”

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“First time we tried it, the thing took off like a bat out of hell”:

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Old Print Article: “Widen Search For Brother Of Dead Recluse,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1947)

April 23, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Homer

Homer Collyer, 1939.

Langley

Langley Collyer, 1946.

One person can lose his mind, but nothing is madder than a couple. 

Two people can encourage each other to health and prosperity, but they can also nurture mutual insanity, creating a madhouse behind close doors, replacing bedroom mirrors with the funhouse kind. No living quarters in New York City history were likely crazier than the Fifth Avenue hoarder heaven that the reclusive brothers Homer and Langley Collyer called home sweet home. It contained, among many–many–other things, 240,000 pounds of garbage, 18,000 books, 17 grand pianos, eight live cats, three dressmaking dummies and two very damaged brothers. 

The following is a March 22, 1947 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about the demise of the Collyers, published after the police had found Homer’s lifeless body seated in a chair but 18 days before they realized that Langley was just ten feet away, dead and buried under some of his favorite things:

“The junk-filled mansion of the mysterious Collyer brothers in Harlem today was boarded up following the discovery of the body of Homer Collyer but his brother Langley was nowhere to be found.

Homer’s body was found yesterday by police on the second-story brownstone house at 2078 5th Ave. The blind and paralyzed septuagenarian was found in a sitting-up position after a neighbor phoned police.

How anyone ever got in or out of the mansion, reported to be the repository of a fortune in cash, was a mystery to police. They found their way barred at every opening by piles of newspapers, tin cans and other assorted junk.

Walls of Junk

Patrolman William Parker of the 122nd St. station finally got in through a second-story window after a ladder was thrown up. He had to clear away a solid wall of newspapers, however, before worming his way into the house.

The body of the dead recluse was taken out in a khaki bag to the morgue where an autopsy will probably be made today. John R. McMullen, the Collyers’ attorney, said burial will take place in Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn. He was confident Langley would get in touch with him.

William Rodriquo of 1 W. 127th St., Manhattan, a Democratic co-captain in the 9th A.D. and friend of the Collyers, insisted that Langley was in a little room on the third floor of the house. But Inspector Joseph Goldstein, who ordered the place boarded up, said if Langley were around he would have come out.”

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2 Thoughts On Media-Related Things

April 22, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

  • The Huffington Post recently tried to pull a fast one once again in regards to its past behavior as a platform for anti-immunization zealots. Jenny McCarthy’s main outlet for her nonsense back in the day was, yes, the Huffington Post. It’s great that HuffPo came to its senses after receiving an avalanche of criticism, but the site actually had the chutzpah to recently publish a story about how McCarthy is being accused of trying to whitewash her past opposition to inoculations, while ignoring that the site has likewise disappeared its own involvement. I’m not blaming Arianna Huffington herself for this because I don’t know how much control over the property she maintains at this point, but the site as a whole is culpable. It’s not the first time I’ve criticized HuffPo for such behavior. Sadly, it won’t likely be the last.
  • Malcolm Gladwell’s continued blind spot for the serial liar Jonah Lehrer is perplexing. I don’t believe in throwing away a human being who’s screwed up, even repeatedly, and I hope the disgraced journalist and neuroscientist is receiving therapy to try and locate the source of his bizarre behavior and become a more well-adjusted person, but he should not be anywhere near journalism, even in a blog form. Gladwell should know better at this point than to further encourage Lehrer in a field he clearly has shown he lacks the ethics for, especially since the publication he most embarrassed was Gladwell’s employer, the New Yorker, becoming, as far as we know, the only plagiarist and fabricator of the David Remnick era. Gladwell actually sent out this tweet last week: ‘Jonah Lehrer is back with a new blog. It is well worth reading. Welcome back Jonah.” Yikes. How can someone as smart as Gladwell continue to do something so foolish?•

“I Could Also Call My Competition Nabokov”

April 22, 2014 in Books, Videos | Permalink

Priggish Canadian interviewer Barbara Frum and pills-and-vulvae novelist Jacqueline Susann insult and irritate each other during the mid-1960s.

“They Have Further Developed A New Technique To Aim A High-Energy Laser Beam Into Clouds To Make It Rain”

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

Charles Hatfield, 1915.

Charles Hatfield, rainmaker, 1915.

Of the things humans still can’t do, making it rain is one of the more perplexing. We should be able to manage that by now, right? You would think making nuclear power and traveling to the moon would be tougher. We finally may be making progress in this area. From Kurzweil AI:

“Researchers at the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics & Photonics and the University of Arizona have further developed a new technique to aim a high-energy laser beam into clouds to make it rain or trigger lightning.

The solution: surround the beam with a second beam to act as an energy reservoir, sustaining the central beam to greater distances than previously possible. The secondary ‘dress’ beam refuels and helps prevent the dissipation of the high-intensity primary beam, which on its own would break down quickly.

A report on the project, ‘Externally refueled optical filaments,’ was recently published in Nature Photonics.

Water condensation and lightning activity in clouds are linked to large amounts of static charged particles. Stimulating those particles with the right kind of laser holds the key to possibly one day summoning a shower when and where it is needed.”

“Who Should Declare When An Individual Is Dead?”

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

Thanks to the wonderful Browser, I came across one of the three best pieces I’ve read so far this year (along with this one and this one), Roger Highfield’s eye-opening Mosaic article “The Mind Readers,” which focuses on the life that lingers beneath the surface when humans are rendered into a vegetative state. A passage:

“Half a century ago, if your heart stopped beating you could be pronounced dead even though you may have been entirely conscious as the doctor sent you to the morgue. This, in all likelihood, accounts for notorious accounts through history of those who ‘came back from the dead’. As a corollary, those who were fearful of being buried alive were spurred on to develop ‘safety coffins’ equipped with feeding tubes and bells. As recently as 2011, a council in the Malatya province of central Turkey announced it had built a morgue with a warning system and refrigerator doors that could be opened from the inside.

What do we mean by ‘dead’? And who should declare when an individual is dead? A priest? A lawyer? A doctor? A machine? [Adrian] Owen discussed these issues at a symposium in Brazil with the Dalai Lama and says he was surprised to find that they both agreed strongly on one point: we need to create an ethical framework for science that is based on secular, rather than religious, views; science alone should define what we mean by death.Near death experience

The problem is that the scientific definition of ‘death’ remains as unresolved as the definition of ‘consciousness’. Much confusion is sowed by the term ‘clinical death’, the cessation of blood circulation and breathing. Even though this is reversible, the term is often used by mind–body dualists who cling to the belief that a soul (or self) can persist separately from the body. Today, however, being alive is no longer linked to having a beating heart, explains Owen. If I have an artificial heart, am I dead? If you are on a life-support machine, are you dead? Is a failure to sustain independent life a reasonable definition of death? No, otherwise we would all be ‘dead’ in the nine months before birth.

The issue becomes murkier when we consider those trapped in the twilight worlds between normal life and death – from those who slip in and out of awareness, who are trapped in a ‘minimally conscious state’, to those who are severely impaired in a vegetative state or a coma. These patients first appeared in the wake of the development of the artificial respirator during the 1950s in Denmark, an invention that redefined the end of life in terms of the idea of brain death and created the specialty of intensive care, in which unresponsive and comatose patients who seemed unable to wake up again were written off as ‘vegetables’ or ‘jellyfish’. As is always the case when treating patients, definitions are critical: understanding the chances of recovery, the benefits of treatments and so on all depend on a precise diagnosis.”

“The Delivery Robot Is A Much Easier Problem Than The Self-Delivering Taxi”

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

Brad Templeton, a consultant to Google’s driverless-car division, explaining why he thinks delivery robots, which will transport goods and not people, shouldn’t be governed by the same restrictions as autonomous cars:

“Delivery robots are world-changing. While they won’t and can’t carry people, they will change retailing, logistics, the supply chain, and even going to the airport in huge ways. By offering very quick delivery of every type of physical goods — less than 30 minutes — at a very low price (a few pennies a mile) and on the schedule of the recipient, they will disrupt the supply chain of everything. Others, including Amazon, are working on doing this by flying drone, but for delivery of heavier items and efficient delivery, the ground is the way to go.

While making fully unmanned vehicles is more challenging than ones supervised by their passenger, the delivery robot is a much easier problem than the self-delivering taxi for many reasons:

  • It can’t kill its cargo, and thus needs no crumple zones, airbags or other passive internal safety.
  • It still must not hurt people on the street, but its cargo is not impatient, and it can go more slowly to stay safer. It can also pull to the side frequently to let people pass if needed.
  • It doesn’t have to travel the quickest route, and so it can limit itself to low-speed streets it knows are safer.
  • It needs no windshield or wheel, and can be small, light and very inexpensive.

A typical deliverbot might look like little more than a suitcase sized box on 3 or 4 wheels. It would have sensors, of course, but little more inside than batteries and a small electric motor. It probably will be covered in padding or pre-inflated airbags, to assure it does the least damage possible if it does hit somebody or something. At a weight of under 100lbs, with a speed of only 25 km/h and balloon padding all around, it probably couldn’t kill you even if it hit you head on (though that would still hurt quite a bit.)

The point is that this is an easier problem, and so we might see development of it before we see full-on taxis for people.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

Employment (all NJ)

forget working, working is for poor people. be a vagabond, jump on a freight train, and get out of dodge, leave jersey, be a hobo type of individual, think like a child, dream of far away places, get a job on a tramp steamer heading for the south seas, stop at tropical islands, explore. hunt for treasure, you just need enough money for food and shelter. live in the south seas, food is free, weather beautiful, guys and gals gorgeous, you can catch fish, hunt wild pig and goat, fruit is free, plenty of island to roam and settle down. anyone can do this.

“Technology Moves Much Faster Than Regulations”

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

David J. Cord, who wrote the book on Nokia’s collapse (quite literally), just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit about all things mobile. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What do you think is the future in mobile?

David J. Cord:

A new disruption will happen within about five years, maybe much sooner. Historically, a disruption occurs whenever the next generation of mobile technologies becomes fairly widespread. 4G is just starting to take off.

I think the next disruption could be wearable devices. But not Google Glass. Glass comes from Google’s existing business – primarily communication, search and location-based services. By definition, the disruption will come from out of the blue. It will either be a new player in the industry or a startup. But it won’t be Google, and it won’t be Apple or Samsung.

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Question:

Will we see a big improvement on mobile phone battery life any time soon?

David J. Cord:

No. The demands for power are increasing faster than battery technologies. I know there are some potentially big improvements that are being worked on, but it is difficult to commercialise them and make them financially viable. I suspect over the next few years battery life will either stay stagnant or even get worse.

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Question:

Are you able to discuss the privacy implications of the newest mobile devices – tracking by GPS, Google Glass and facial recognition software – and how you see that evolving?

I’m a Luddite with a flip phone who won’t go near anyone wearing Google Glass if I can avoid it.

David J. Cord:

Tracking is becoming all-pervasive, and the very concept of privacy is morphing into something entirely different. In some ways, this is brought about by the consumer: younger kids are much more willing to share extremely private information to their friends and the world at large. Meanwhile, technology is collecting more and more information.

One industry expert explained to me how pictures posted online could be used, and it was quite disquieting. Geotagging, information about time and place and habits are all collected.

Technology moves much faster than regulations, so it will be some time before we become used to the current state of privacy and what is allowed and what is not allowed. It will take public debate.

Question:

I dislike what the NSA is doing, but what the big consumer marketing companies are gathering on everybody is terrifying.

I won’t touch Facebook or Twitter, I go to great lengths to keep my information off Google (Google my real name in any permutation and nothing accurate will come up, thank God), but I feel like it’s a losing battle. Who wants to live in a glass fishbowl? <sigh>

David J. Cord:

There is a balance to consider. Do you want to be able to interact freely online? Do you need to use online communications for your job? Then you have to be willing to give up some privacy. Is privacy more important? Then you have to be willing to give up some ease of using online communications.

Everyone needs to decide what is more important for them.

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Question:

Do you think one day we will have phones / devices implemented into our bodies? Take Google Glass for example, and place the entire device in your head.

David J. Cord:

Yes, but it probably won’t be common as soon as some of the futurologists think. There are a lot of hurdles that need to be jumped first. There are technological challenges, as well as societal, health and regulatory. For instance, would this be considered a medical device and need FDA approval? It depends upon what it does, and what the regulators think it does.•

 

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A Note From 1885 About A Zoologist’s Appetite

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

From the August 30, 1885 New York Times:

FRANK BUCKLAND‘S LARDER–This queer fancy which exercised the genius of the cooks of his latter days, began very early. Already at Winchester squirrel pie and mice cooked in butter were looked upon as real dainties, while Frank Buckland has left it on record that ‘a roast field mouse–not a house mouse–is a splendid bonne bouche for a hungry boy: it eats like a lark.’ Very likely this is so; that house mice are not to be recommended I can myself testify as the result of certain experiments which were made at Eton some five-and-thirty years ago. But roast field mouse and squirrel pie were very commonplace viands compared with what was to follow. Christchurch, for instance, was to see a very grisly meal in the shape of a dish of panther chops. The panther at the Surrey Zoological Gardens had died, and the curator, who was a friend of Buckland’s sent him notice of the melancholy fact. Says Frank, ‘I wrote up at once to tell him to send me down some chops. It had, however, been buried a couple of days, but I got them to dig it up and send me some. It was not very good.”

 

“Some People Would Rather Tell Themselves Fables Of Inevitable Doom Rather Than Tackling The Harder Problem”

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

Do we fetishize an endgame because it’s easier than making the future work? Is it less a burden to await the final nail in the coffin than to treat the patient? From “The Comforts of Dystopia,” a Jacobin article by Peter Frase, author of “Four Futures” and other speculations:

“While we live in a world that abounds in utopian potential, the realization of that potential depends on the outcome of political struggle. A rich elite that wants to preserve its privileges will do everything possible to ensure that we don’t reach a world of leisure and abundance, even if such a world is materially possible.

But one of the things I’ve struggled with as a writer is the tendency of my more speculative writing to mine a streak of apocalyptic quiescence on the radical left. To me, the story I’m telling is all about hope and agency: the future is here, it’s unevenly distributed, and only through struggle will we get it distributed properly. I suppose it’s no surprise, though, after decades in retreat, that some people would rather tell themselves fables of inevitable doom rather than tackling the harder problem of figuring out how we can collectively walk down the path to paradise.

So of the four futures I described, the one that I think is both the most hopeful and most interesting — the one I call ‘communism’ — is the least discussed. Instead, it’s exterminism, the mixture of ecological constraints, automation, and murderous elites, that seems to stick in peoples’ brains, with the anti-Star Trek dystopia of intellectual property rentiers running a close second.

But strip away the utopian and Marxist framework, and all you have is a grim dismissal of the possibility of egalitarian politics. You get something like this, from Noah Smith, which echoes my account of exterminism but updates it to our present drone-obsessed times. For a lot of isolated intellectual writer types, it can be perversely reassuring to think that achieving a better world is not just difficult, but actually impossible.”

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“The Software Estimates The Probability That An Inmate Will Relapse”

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

One really easy way to reduce the American penitentiary population would be to decriminalize drugs except for instancess in which someone has sold them to minors. Legalize the less-dangerous ones (marijuana) and sentence pushers to workfare and users to out-patient rehab and education for harder ones (heroin).

Even if that unlikely scenario were to play out, the prisons would still be too crowded and parole would remain a problem. If incarceration is meant to keep offenders from recommiting crimes and not merely as a punitive measure, how do we know which convicts to release and when? Parole has long been an inexact science, but perhaps Big Data can help. Perhaps. An excerpt from the Economist:

“Help may be at hand, in the form of ‘risk-assessment’ software, which crunches data to estimate the likelihood a prisoner will re-offend. Such software tends to increase the proportion of applicants who are granted parole while also reducing the proportion who re-offend. Two such programmes, LSI-R and LS/CMI, appear to reduce parolee recidivism by about 15%. Developed by Multi-Health Systems, a Canadian firm, they were used to assess 775,000 parole applications in America in 2012. Four-fifths of parole boards now use similar technology, says Joan Petersilia of Stanford University.

The data that matter include the prisoner’s age at first arrest, his education, the nature of his crime, his behaviour in prison, his friends’ criminal records, the results of psychometric tests and even the sobriety of his mother while he was in the womb. The software estimates the probability that an inmate will relapse by comparing his profile with many others. The American version of LS/CMI, for example, holds data on 135,000 (and counting) parolees.

It is better to be guided by software than one’s gut, says Olivia Craven, head of the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole. Donna Sytek of the New Hampshire Parole Board agrees. Unaided, parole board members rely too much on their personal experiences and make inconsistent decisions, she says.“

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“Its ‘Muscles’ Are Constantly Working”

April 21, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

From Tim Moynihan at Wired, a description of the third iteration of Honda’s Asimo robot:

“ASIMO has sensors everywhere: Force sensors in its fingers to make sure it’s not crushing things, sensors in its waist that help it climb up and down stairs, image sensors in its eyeballs help it gauge its environment and make decisions. It takes a lot of battery power to drive this complex humanoid: A 13-pound lithium-ion cell that takes three hours to charge.

That battery is stashed in ASIMO’s ‘backpack,’ and it can power about 40 minutes of continuous walking, according to Shigemi. When ASIMO senses it’s running low, it automatically seeks out its charging station and plugs itself in.

But even when ASIMO is still and silent, its ‘muscles’ are constantly working.”

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“Will Las Vegas Remain A Boom Town In The 21st Century?”

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

Speaking of disreputable acts in Las Vegas, there’s the continued attempt to suburbanize that desert city. Fancy casino fountains don’t threaten its future–the lawns do. It’s enough to drive a person underground. From John M. Glionna in the Los Angeles Times:

“Officials say Las Vegas uses only 80% of its Colorado River allotment and is banking the rest for the future. But critics say that even if the city taps all of its entitled water, that amount would still not be enough to meet its needs in a prolonged drought. And after years of recession, building is starting to come back here, leaving many to ask: Where are all these new residents going to get their water?

‘How foolish can you be? It’s the same fatal error being repeated all over the Southwest — there is no new water,’ said Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and coauthor of two reports about dwindling Western water resources. His research concluded that without massive cutbacks in water use, Lake Mead had a 50% chance of deteriorating to ‘dead pool’ by 2036. That’s the level at which the reservoir’s surface drops beneath Las Vegas’ lowest water intake.

Yet casinos and developers continue to push growth, and critics say lawmakers often seem to lack the willpower to draw the line. ‘Will Las Vegas remain a boom town in the 21st century? The city wants to appear confident but it’s a place built on illusion and luck,’ said Emily Green, an environmental journalist who writes about water issues on her blog, Chance of Rain.

‘When it comes to water,’ she added, ‘those aren’t very good guiding principles.’

The real water hog is not people, many say, but grass: About 70% of Las Vegas water goes to lawns, public parks and golf courses. A rebate program has already ripped out 168 million square feet of grass, enough to lay an 18-inch-wide roll of sod about 85% of the way around the Earth.

But is Las Vegas ready to ban grass entirely? ‘Well, at that point you’re seriously impacting quality of life. We’re not being complacent. We’re just not ready for draconian cuts,’ said [J.C.] Davis, the spokesman for the water authority.”

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“They Were Told They Had Managed To Offend The Audience At The Annual Adult-Film Awards”

April 21, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

David Foster Wallace wrote a great description of the nicotine-and-sandpaper comedian Bobby Slayton, who once descended on Las Vegas to host the Adult Film Awards, the Oscars of oral: “A gravelly-voiced Dice Clay knockoff who kept introducing every female performer as ‘the woman I’m going to cut my dick off for,’ and who astounded all the marginal print journalists in attendance with both his unfunniness and his resemblance to every apartment-complex coke dealer we’d ever met.”

As disreputable as Slayton may have seemed, he was one-upped by the toilet-mouthed ventriloquist act, Otto and George, when it headlined the grindhouse gala, actually managing to upset a roomful of people best known for performing deep throats and double penetrations. Otto Petersen, the fleshy half of the act, just passed away. His New York Times obituary was written by Margalit Fox, whose copy is steadfastly one of the great joys of reading the publication. An excerpt:

Popular with audiences and widely admired by other comics, Mr. Petersen was often described as soft-spoken in private life. But he was no match, he often said, for the strong-willed, forked-tongue George, whose caustic, profanity-laced outbursts rained down on a spate of targets, not least of all Mr. Petersen himself.

No subject was sacred, and George’s myriad observations could range over matters sexual, scatological, urological, gastroenterological, racial, bestial, theological and homicidal. None will be quoted here.

Mr. Petersen’s act was so scurrilous that it once proved too much for a historically thick-skinned crowd.

“They were told they had managed to offend the audience at the annual adult-film awards — the porno-world equivalent to the Academy Awards — in Las Vegas,” The Montreal Gazette reported in 2010. “Otto and George had twice served as hosts, but weren’t asked back by the insulted and suddenly squeamish organizers.•

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Old Print Article: “New York Applauds The Talking Picture,” New York Times (1913)

April 21, 2014 in Film, Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A non-projection version of the Kinetophone that presaged the theater type. It was referred to as a “peep show.”

A 1912 Edison publicity still of a home version of the Kinetophone.

A 1912 Edison publicity still of a home version of the Kinetophone.

One persistent problem for Thomas Edison was the development of the talking picture. He thought he had the answer in 1913, when he exhibited a projection version of his Kinetophone in New York City to much acclaim. But it was still just another phonograph record-based model that had to be synced to the images by an operator, Unfortunately, these employees generally had butterfingers, and the new sensation soon lost its lustre. Before the close of the following year, all the Kinetophone images and sound masters were destroyed in a warehouse fire. True talkies would have to wait. A New York Times article about the initial exhibition, which touched on the technical issues to come:

After Thomas A. Edison had invented the motion picture and the talking machine he dreamed of talking pictures, and the next morning he went to work again. For several years hints came from the Edison laboratory that the Kinetophone was in the process of development. Finally Edison spoke of his invention as a thing accomplished and yesterday, for the first time on any stage, the “Kinetophone” was on the bill at four of the Keith Theatres, the Colonial, the Alhambra, the Union Square, and the Fifth Avenue. To judge from the little gasps of astonishment and the chorus of “Ain’t that something wonderful?” that could be heard on all sides the Kinetophone is a success.

The problem involved was fairly simple. Mr. Edison was looking for perfect synchronization of record and film. The difficulty was to have a record sufficiently sensitive to receive the sounds from the lips of actors who would still be free to move about in front of the camera instead of being obliged to roar into the horn of a phonograph. But the difficulties have been overcome and the kinetoscope is actually in vaudeville and highly regarded there.

The first number of the exhibit was a descriptive lecture. The screen showed a man in one of those terribly stuffy, early eighties rooms that motion-picture folk seem to affect. He talked enthusiastically about the invention, and as his lips moved the words sounded from the big machine behind the screen. Gesture and speech made the thing startlingly real. He broke a plate, blew a whistle, dropped a weight. The sounds were perfect. Then he brought on a pianist, violinist, and soprano, and “The Last Rose of Summer” was never listened to with more fascinated attention. Finally the scope of kinetophone powers was further illustrated by a bugler’s apoplectic efforts, and the barking of some perfect collies.

The second number was a minstrel show with orchestra, soloists, end men, and interlocutor, large as life and quite as noisy. It brought down the respective houses but the real sensation of the day was scored quite unintentionally by the operator of the machine at the Union Square Theatre last evening. He inadvertently set the picture some ten or twelve seconds ahead of his sounds, and the result was amazing. The interlocutor, who, by a coincidence, wore a peculiarly defiant and offended expression, would rise pompously, his lips would move, he would bow and sit down. Then his speech would float out over the audience. It would be an announcement of the next song, and before it was all spoken the singer would be on his feet with his mouth expanded in fervent but soundless song.

This diverted the audience vastly, but the outbursts of laughter would come when the singer would close his lips, smile in a contented manner, bow, notes were still ringing clear. The audience, however, knew what happened, and the mishap did not serve to lessen their tribute of real wonder at Edison’s intent.•

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“Today The Capitalists Have To Learn From You”

April 21, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Here’s a good rule: If you’re interviewing someone who holds sway over the life and death of others, don’t do it unless you’re free to ask them pertinent, probing questions. Otherwise monsters can be made to seem moderate. Case in point: In 1934, Joseph Stalin, one of the most evil bastards ever, was given the velvet glove treatment by none other than H.G. Wells, who enjoyed conversing with other great men. I’m not saying that Wells could have known everything about Stalin’s terror, but he should have known enough. While it’s interesting from an historical perspective because of the principals, it’s also disquieting for its lack of discernment. The opening of the discussion, which has been republished in the New Statesman:

“Wells:

I am very much obliged to you, Mr Stalin, for agreeing to see me. I was in the United States recently. I had a long conversation with President Roosevelt and tried to ascertain what his leading ideas were. Now I have come to ask you what you are doing to change the world . . .

Stalin:

Not so very much.

Wells:

I wander around the world as a common man and, as a common man, observe what is going on around me.

Stalin:

Important public men like yourself are not ‘common men.’ Of course, history alone can show how important this or that public man has been; at all events, you do not look at the world as a ‘common man.’

Wells:

I am not pretending humility. What I mean is that I try to see the world through the eyes of the common man, and not as a party politician or a responsible administrator. My visit to the United States excited my mind. The old financial world is collapsing; the economic life of the country is being reorganised on new lines.

Lenin said: ‘We must learn to do business,’ learn this from the capitalists. Today the capitalists have to learn from you, to grasp the spirit of Socialism. It seems to me that what is taking place in the United States is a profound reorganisation, the creation of planned, that is, Socialist, economy. You and Roosevelt begin from two different starting points. But is there not a relation in ideas, a kinship of ideas, between Moscow and Washington?

In Washington I was struck by the same thing I see going on here; they are building offices, they are creating a number of state regulation bodies, they are organising a long-needed civil service. Their need, like yours, is directive ability.”

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“When It Is Shown On TV, Will It Be A Movie Or TV?”

April 20, 2014 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Marshall McLuhan and artist and ace typographer Harley Parker enjoyed a bull session in 1967′s “Picnic in Space,” a 28-minute experiment informed by Warhol, Lichtenstein and Godard.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"Then, murder again."

“Then, murder again.”

Hermit Crab Habitat and accessories – $15 (Park Slope)

We are clearly not good people. I mean, we have excellent intentions. And we all know what that paves. We were gifted 2 hermit crabs by a departing do-gooder friend. We decided to do right by them and upgrade their home to a hermie castle. And they lived well for a time, basking in the glory of our love and their crabiness.

But things would take a dark turn in the castle. Shell-envy was in the air, and there was a murder. It was a sad reckoning, shattering our idyllic existence and bringing home the harsh truth of life in the wild. We pardoned the murderer, thinking we could rehabilitate him. Or outsmart him. We bought him a new companion, one several times his size. After a brief “getting to know you” period, things settled down and we seemed to be back in our happy place.

Then, murder again. That little crab is a goddamn ninja. I don’t know how he did it, taking out that huge crab. It would be like me taking out that dude from Troy, where Brad Pitt jumps and stabs him in the neck. Only I’m not Achilles.

At that point, we weren’t going to invest in any more sacrificial crabs, er, roommates. So the ninja was in solitary, a fitting punishment. But then he passed recently, of boredom or guilt, we’ll never know.

Come take our guilt and items off our hands.

 

“Both Companies Have A Vital Interest In Speeding Up The Process Of Getting Those 5 Billion Souls Online”

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

From a Guardian article by John Naughton, a passage speculating on the recent gamesmanship of Google and Facebook, both of which aren’t merely interested in drones that deliver goods but ones that can deliver the Internet itself:

“The Google boys have decided that advanced robotics, machine-learning, distributed sensors and digital mapping are going to be the essential ingredients of a combinatorial future, and they are determined to be the dominant force in that.

As far as the high-altitude drones are concerned, Google and Facebook are on exactly the same wavelength. Since internet access in the industrialised world is now effectively a done deal, all of the future growth is going to come from the remaining 5 billion people on the planet who do not yet have a proper internet connection. Both companies have a vital interest in speeding up the process of getting those 5 billion souls online, for the simple reason that the more people who use the internet the greater their revenues will be. And they see high-altitude drones as the means to that profitable end.”

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“Compact Consumer Computers Have Quietly Entered The Household”

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

An article I found in a 1970 Life magazine is probably the earliest profile I’ve ever read of an average American family (well, a relatively affluent one) having a networked home computer. An added bonus is that it was written by Michael Shamberg, a guerilla filmmaker and journalist who has gone on to produce some crazy documentaries and Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. The opening:

“Computers for the home have been envisioned by science-fiction writers and engineers ever since a huge, unwieldy prototype was developed 25 years ago. The whole futuristic age the prophesied, with an omnipotent electronic monster named Horace in every living room, is still a long way from realization, but compact consumer computers have quietly entered the household. While the market hardly rivals TV sets or refrigerators, the computer-as-home-appliance is now more than just a toy for the wealthy or a mysterious instrument for technical specialists.

Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, Pa., have discovered their obedient machine can perform a large variety of useful functions. Dr. Rodman originally brought it home for medical research, but then his family found it could plan mortgage payments, help out with homework, even play with the children. Although the cost is still high, computers like theirs have come within possible reach of a two-car family budget. A small, self-contained model is available for $8,000, complete. The Rodmans’ computer system, called time-sharing, uses a Teletype terminal connected to a big central unit via telephone. It costs $110 a month rent, plus $7.50 per hour of use.

The Rodmans’ computer is no anthropomorphic robot that can accomplish physical feats. It cannot flip the light switch, monitor the thermostat or do the cooking. Rather, it is a sophisticated mental appendage with a capacity for problem-solving that is limited only by the family’s imagination. Neither Dr. Rodman nor his family had ever operated, much less programmed, a computer before a terminal was installed in their home last August. Since then they have assigned it so many chores that Mrs. Rodman says, half seriously, ‘It’s really become a member of the family.’

‘For me, the main physical effect of having a computer at home is that I’m able to spend a lot more time with my family,’ says Dr. Rodman, who is a lung specialist on the faculty of Temple University medical school in Philadelphia. ‘For all of us the real impact is mental. Programming a computer is like thinking in a foreign language. It forces you to approach problems with a high degree of logic. Because we always have a computer handy, we turn to it with problems we never would have thought of doing on one before.'”

 

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A Brief Note From 1913 About A Reunion

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

From the February 5, 1913 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Santa Cruz, Cal.–Survivors of the pioneer band of ‘Death Valley Argonauts,’ who crossed the desert into California sixty-three years ago, held a reunion here yesterday at the home of Mrs. James W. Brier, one of the party now 99 years of age. Thirty-six of the band of 200, who drank ox blood to quench their thirst in the arid salt sink were present–every living member but one.

Old records of the trip, passed around at the banquet table, showed that the ‘Jayhawkers,’ as they called themselves. left Galesburg, Ill., April 5, 1849. The party was the first to explore Death Valley.”

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10 Recent Huffington Post Headlines

April 20, 2014 in Humor, Misc. | Permalink

  • What Really Happens When Women Wax Their ‘Stache
  • You’ve Been Taking Your Shirt Off Wrong This Whole Time
  • Male Police Officer Goes Undercover As Amish Woman
  • Yes, The Secret Service Would Shoot Mr. Met
  • Jon Stewart Made Elizabeth Warren Puke
  • This ‘Pizzacake’ Is Either The Holy Grail Of Meals Or Total Food Blasphemy
  • Student: Professor Found Out I Stripped And Lowered My Grades
  • College Soccer Player Severely ‘Allergic’ To Her Own Sweat
  • The Answers To Every Question You’ve Never Asked About Marshmallow Peeps
  • Does Penis Size Matter? Here’s An Answer

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