Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

March 1, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking that Paula Deen was trying to improve her image when she said that she doesn't think she's any more special than that tall butler at the White House.

Trying to repair her image, Paula Deen said this week she doesn’t think she’s better than any American, including that tall butler who works at the White House.

  • As Cosmos reboots, a look back at the original host, Carl Sagan.
  • Harold Ramis, best screenwriter of his generation, passed away.

“Today The Idea, If Not Quite The Practice, Of Living In Space Is Coming Back Into Fashion”

February 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The greatest thing about colonies on Mars? No taxes. It’s even better than the Cayman Islands. Mitt Romney could yet be President. Seriously, a lot of megarich people have their heads in the sky, seeing space living as both a sound investment and a bold adventure. As Elon Musk says: “I’d like to die on Mars, just not on impact.” The opening of John Sunyer’s well-written Financial Times article about private wealth reheating the Space Race:

“Here we are more than a decade into the 21st century and we’re still not there. To be a child of the 1960s and 1970s was to daydream not only about travelling in space but also about settling there, indefinitely. National space agencies planned inflatable lunar cities. Space was where we were all going to live and work – Moon bases and hotels, everything in Stanley Kubrick’s futuristic 2001: A Space Odyssey. This was the era of the space race and of humanity’s first orbiting residences.

To young people today this is old news: they know that the Americans went to the Moon, just as they know the Romans built straight roads. Manned space flight lost its glamour; Nasa lost its way, its ambition severely weakened by funding cuts; and we gave up on the idea that living in space was the next step in humankind’s evolution. As Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon, tells me: ‘After the Apollo lunar missions, America lost its love of space – there was no concentrated follow-up and we didn’t have any clear objectives.’

Still, not all hope is lost for wide-eyed space cadets. Today the idea, if not quite the practice, of living in space is coming back into fashion. If the 20th century space race was about the might of the US government, the space race today is about something that could be even more powerful – private wealth.”

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“We Can Easily Spot Prejudice In Others, But We’re Oblivious To Our Own”

February 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

It’s no surprise that once President Obama adopted Heritage Foundation ideas for his signature health-care legislation that conservatives turned on policies that originated with them. A great deal of political bias–or any kind of prejudice–comes from a seemingly natural, perhaps evolutionary, inclination to favor who and what reminds us of ourselves. Even a degree of self-knowledge doesn’t seem to mitigate this tendency. Everything, including the jury system, is compromised by such urges. The opening of “What, Me Biased?” by Tom Jacobs at Pacific-Standard:

“Pretty much all of us are prone to ‘bias blindness.’ We can easily spot prejudice in others, but we’re oblivious to our own, insisting on our impartiality in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary.

Newly published research suggests this problem is actually worse than we thought. It finds that even when people use an evaluation strategy they concede is biased, they continue to insist their judgments are objective.

‘Recognizing one’s bias is a critical first step in trying to correct for it,’ writes a research team led by Emily Pronin and Katherine Hansen of Princeton University. ‘These experiments make clear how difficult that first step can be to reach.'”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

February 28, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

younger for older men – 29 (Suffolk)

We are a younger couple (age: 29). i need an old man to fuck my girl. U must be over the age of 45 and can host in Suffolk or pay for room.

 

“What If I Told You That You Could Read The Massive Book In Less Than Five Hours?”

February 28, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

350 words per minute.

I’m pretty sure I don’t want to read 350 words per minute (as displayed above) let alone a 1000, but it’s possible to do with little effort if you use a mobile app like Spritz which presents books to your eyes not a page at a time but one rapid-fire word after another. From Williams Pelegrin at Digital Trends:

“If you ever wanted to read A Game of Thrones, odds are you were put off by the sheer number of pages each book in the series contains. For example, it is 819 pages worth of reading. Especially if you’re a slow reader, that doesn’t sound like a very fun number of pages. What if I told you that you could read the massive book in less than five hours? Spritz allows you to do just that.

In ‘Stealth Mode’ for roughly three years, Spritz enables people to read words as they appear one at a time, in rapid succession. With Spritz, you can read anywhere from 250 to 1,000 words per minute.”

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Steve Allen, in 1979, selling the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics course:

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Old Print Article: “How Harrison Found His Father’s Body,” New York Times (1910)

February 28, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“Benjamin Harrison appeared to be especially affected.”

Well, this is rather macabre. A decade prior to his Presidency, in 1878, Benjamin Harrison investigated a number of Ohio medical colleges in search of the stolen corpse of a deceased family friend, and came face to face with his own freshly fallen father. It’s likely the jaw-dropping tale is true as that state was known in those years for the brisk business conducted by so-called resurrectionists, who were often in cahoots with academics in need of cadavers. The full story from the March 13, 1910 New York Times:

“One of the strangest, and at the same time the most gruesome stories that ever reached a newspaper office was told by H.E. Krehbiel, the musical critic, the other night. Though it reached a newspaper office and has been known to a few persons in the twenty years succeeding, it was not printed when the incidents happened, because those concerned took the precaution of narrating them in confidence. Here it is, however, as Mr. Krehbiel tells it, long after those most intimately concerned are dead:

‘Many years ago I was at work one afternoon in the offices of a Cincinnati newspaper when Benjamin Harrison, afterward President of the United States, and his brother came into the office and began a long conversation with the city editor. They spoke in low tones, which did not reach beyond the desk where they were sitting.

‘After nearly half an hour had elapsed the city editor called me over to him and introduced me to the two gentlemen, both of whom seemed to be laboring under strong emotion. Benjamin Harrison appeared to be especially affected. This did not surprise me very much, as I was aware that they had only buried their father, to whom they were both devotedly attached, a few days before. The city editor instructed me to take down their story, giving me also explicitly to understand that, whereas, I was to listen to all they had to say, I was to write no more, and the paper was to print no more than they should decide.

‘Now,’ continued Mr. Krehbiel, ‘this is what Benjamin Harrison told me. A few days before the death of his father, the husband of a dear old German woman who lived near their farm also died and was duly buried. When he came from the East to attend his own father’s obsequies this old woman went to him in great distress and told him that the grave of her husband had been opened and his body stolen. Those were the days of body snatchers or ‘resurrectionists,’ before the State had made provision for subjects for medical colleges.

‘Mr Harrison went on to say that his old German friend’s distress was so intense that he and his brother had themselves undertaken a search for the body in Cincinnati. This search had occupied them two days and had just ended.

“‘We swore out a search warrant and took a constable with us,’ said Mr. Harrison. ‘One by one we have been to every medical school in the City of Cincinnati. It was a terrible ordeal for us, especially as our own grief was fresh and poignant. We kept up the search without inkling, clue or result, until we had visited every medical school in Cincinnati except one.

“‘The last one was the Ohio State Medical College. We went over there more as a formality than anything else. With search warrant and constable we were enabled there, as elsewhere, to have everything opened to us. We found nothing.

“‘Just as we were about to leave the college the constable noted a shaft such as is used in apartment houses. Down this shaft hung the ropes of a hoist. The constable went up to the ropes of a hoist and took hold of the taut rope. He turned to me sharply, saying that there was a weight on the hoist. I told him to pull it up. He did so.

“‘Attached to the rope by a hook was the body of my own father. They had known at the colleges whose the body was. They had taken this fiendishly ingenious method of moving it from floor to floor as we in our search had moved from one floor to another.’

‘This,’ said Mr. Krehbiel, ‘is the story in Benjamin Harrison’s own words just as he gave it to me.'”

 

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“Projecting Evolutionary Change May Not Be Beyond Our Reach”

February 28, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Data is opportunity, and biological information processed by computational models may even be able to forecast some evolutionary courses. From William Herkewitz in Popular Mechanics:

“With the flu, every year is a rapid arms race. Countless numbers of viruses are pushed to mutate and spread over and over again, transforming until they can finally evade the human antibodies that have built up to fight off their predecessors. This shifting landscape poses a particular problem for the people in charge of reformulating the annual flu vaccine. How do you prepare for the onslaught of a virus that doesn’t exist yet?

Two computational biologists have just unveiled the first computer model that forecasts the yearly changes in the worldwide populations of flu viruses. As they report today in Nature, their model will have immediate impact in the development of flu vaccines—and proves that in some cases, projecting evolutionary change may not be beyond our reach.

‘We don’t actually predict new mutations in the flu virus,’ says Marta Luksza, one of the scientists at Columbia University, ‘Our model only considers the rise and fall of families of closely related viruses.’ Still, the computer model has proven that it can with 93 percent accuracy predict which families will harbor the most widespread viruses in the upcoming year.”

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“That’s Essentially The End Of Life As We Know It On The Planet”

February 27, 2014 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The guest on a very good episode of Russ Roberts’ EconTalk this week was Cornell economist Robert Frank. One highlight late in the show was a debate about smoking bans. The host, a non-smoker, argued against them, while the guest, who began smoking as a teenager, spoke for them. I go along with smoking bans not because it makes me deeply sad whenever I see someone with a cigarette (though it does), but because employees in, say, bars shouldn’t be prone to secondhand smoke. And while they have the freedom to not work in such an environment, that right is limited by opportunity. I’ll pay more to supplement health insurance for smokers, but I don’t want my health or anyone else’s to be compromised by a smoker’s behavior. That’s why I’m not in favor of a ban on large sodas. While people who down gigantic sugary drinks are harming themselves and costing us more in healthcare, you’re going to catch diabetes from them. Education is the best way to reverse that problem.

The other highlight, though that’s admittedly an odd word choice given the dire subject, was Frank’s chillingly straightforward description of climate models in response to a question about a carbon tax. The whole planet is essentially a chain smoker. An excerpt:

“If you read the climate science literature, though, I think there’s less ambiguity here than many believe. The science is inexact; that’s the first thing that the climate scientists themselves will stress. They have no idea really where this is going exactly. What we know, though, is that every estimate that’s come in has been dramatically more pessimistic than the one from a year ago. And the best simulation model that we have, the MIT Global Climate Simulation Model, in a recent set of simulations estimated that by the end of this century, by 2095, not even quite the end of the century, there is a 1 in 10 chance that we are going to see an increase of average global temperature by more than 12 degrees Fahrenheit. And if that happened, 1 in 10, the model is uncertain, so it could be 1 in 5, it could be 1 in 3, it could be 1 in 20–we don’t know–but let’s take their estimate at face value, 1 in 10, then we get 12 degrees increase. All the permafrost melts; all the methane, the billions of tons of methane are released into the atmosphere, each ton 50 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. That’s essentially the end of life as we know it on the planet.”

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“This Has A Huge Impact Beyond Tesla”

February 27, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Elon Musk apparently grew a little flustered recently during a Tesla earnings call when he was asked almost to the exclusion of everything else about his plans to build Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery factory. But he’d better get used to it because the work’s implications go far beyond electric cars and could be repurposed into virtually every other industry. From Alan Ohnsman at Businessweek:

“Tesla has dubbed the project the ‘gigafactory,’ and it would make Musk a force in both U.S. manufacturing and electric power. The plant he envisions would have more capacity than any other to make lithium-ion batteries.

‘This has a huge impact beyond Tesla,’ said Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘It gives enormous legitimacy to battery production and the future of the electric car because that lies in the battery. It’s high stakes, high technology.’

Tesla plans an investment of $4 billion to $5 billion by 2020 and will fund about $2 billion of the total, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a presentation on its website. The convertible bond offering could grow to $1.84 billion, according to a separate statement.”

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“As Long As The Second-Hand Clothing Industry Thrives, Africa’s Economy Is Unlikely To Improve”

February 27, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

A good portion of the clothes charitable Americans place in drop boxes provided by the Salvation Army and other non-profits winds up being resold in sub-Saharan Africa. That provides impoverished people in that region with ultra-cheap clothes, but it also might be stymieing garment industries in those nations. An unintended consequence, sure, though perhaps taking away this market would have unforeseen consequences as well. We should give, but give as intelligently as possible. Give now to help with immediate needs, while working to incentivize future markets. From Shannon Whitehead at Medium:

“People will argue that the second-hand clothing industry in Africa is booming. And, on the surface, it is — over one-third of Sub-Saharan Africans wear second-hand. The reality, though, is that for as long as the second-hand clothing industry thrives, Africa’s economy is unlikely to improve.

According to Professor Garth Frazer from the University of Toronto, no country has ever achieved a sustainable per capita national income (at a level associated with a developing economy) without also achieving a clothing-manufacturing workforce that employs at least 1 percent of the population.

Over the years, certain African nations have attempted to ban or restrict the influx of Western clothing imports. In an effort to give existing industries a chance and to maintain traditional culture, countries such as South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria have tried to implement regulation. While it’s done some good for those countries, it hasn’t provided a solution.

Simply put, as long as we, the consumer, continue to buy and discard at our current rate, there will be a market for our wasted fashion.”

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“It Provides The Highest Degree Of User Interaction To Track Your Oral Care Habits”

February 27, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Bacteria in your mouth has a direct path to your heart, but technology also wants a way to your beloved chest muscle. The opening of Samuel Gibbs’ new Guardian article about a bluetooth toothbrush:

“Oral B’s new app controlled Bluetooth 4.0 toothbrush makes sure you brush your teeth properly, lets your dentist peek at your brushing habits and personalises your brushing.

The toothbrush connects to the free Oral B app for the iPhone and Android, and will track your every brush stroke, collect data and chart your progress while giving you real-time guidance on how to get the job done faster and better.

‘It provides the highest degree of user interaction to track your oral care habits to help improve your oral health, and we believe it will have significant impact on the future of personal oral care, providing data-based solutions for oral health, and making the relationship between dental professionals and patients a more collaborative one,’ said Wayne Randall, global vice president of Oral Care at Procter and Gamble.

The smart bathroom

Oral B sees the connected toothbrush, launched as part of Mobile World Congress’s Connected City exhibition, as the next evolution of the smart bathroom.”

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A Brief Note From 1904 About Neighbors

February 26, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the November 9, 1904 New York Times:

“EVANSTON, Wyo.–Mrs. Leon Demars, shot in a duel with her neighbor, Mrs. Nancy Richards, is dead. Several times the women had come to blows, and each had warned the other that the next time would be with guns.

Mrs. Demars went to Mrs. Richards’s ranch, near Fort Bridger, and upon being ordered away, displayed a big revolver.

Mrs. Richards drew a pistol, and at the second shot Mrs. Demars fell with a bullet in her breast, but kept on firing, emptying the revolver. Mrs. Richards also fired six shots.

Both are wives of ranchers. They are thirty years old.”

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“Peek’s Abnormal Brain Wiring Certainly Came At A Cost”

February 26, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Understanding consciousness is the “hard problem” because the human brain is such a mystery, and that’s if we’re talking about an average model. Savant brains are even tougher nuts to crack, with their clear paths to long-term memory, which makes for amazing gifts and a difficultly in grasping everyday skills. And without comprehending the basics and variations of brain function, without solving the mysteries therein, can we truly understand humans, let alone create significant AI?

The opening of “Where Do Savant Skills Come From?” Scott Barry Kaufman’s Scientific American post:

“There’s a scene in the 1988 movie Rain Man in which Raymond Babbitt (played by Dustin Hoffman) recites a waitress’s phone number. Naturally the waitress is shocked. Instead of mental telepathy, Raymond had memorized the entire telephone book and instantly recognized the name on her nametag.

Hoffman’s character was heavily influenced by the life of Kim Peek, a real memory savant who recently passed away. Peek was born without a corpus callosum, the fibers that connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain. He was also born missing parts of the cerebellum, which is important for motor control and the learning of complex, well-rehearsed routines.

When Peek was 9 months old, a doctor recommended he be institutionalized due to his severe mental disability. By the age of 6, when Peek had already memorized the first eight volumes of the family encyclopedia, another doctor recommended a lobotomy. By 14, Peek completed a high school curriculum.

Peek’s abnormal brain wiring certainly came at a cost. Though he was able to immediately move new information from short-term memory to long-term memory, there wasn’t much processing going on in between. His adult fluid reasoning ability and verbal comprehension skills were on par with a child of 5, and he could barely understand the meaning in proverbs or metaphors. He also suffered deficits in the area of self-care: he couldn’t dress himself or brush his teeth without assistance.

But what Peek lacked in brain connections and conceptual cognitive functioning, he more than made up for in memory.“

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“This Is Depressing Stuff. It’s Also A Glimpse Of The Future.”

February 26, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

As a species, we’re a disaster for other living things on Earth, and, perhaps, ultimately, for ourselves as well.

Even those of us who are vegan are bad news for our non-human neighbors because you don’t need a gun or a slaughterhouse to do plenty of damage. Like the body, the planet is resilient, and species have always disappeared by the multitude, but how much is too much? The opening of “Killing Machines” an Economist review of New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History:

“BLEAK headlines abound about species on the brink. Monarch butterflies in Mexico are struggling. So are starfish in America, vultures in South Asia and coral reefs everywhere.

This is depressing stuff. It’s also a glimpse of the future. As the climate warms, catastrophe looms. Yet it is oddly pleasurable to read Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, which offers a ramble through mass extinctions, present and past. Five such episodes in the past 450m years have wiped out plant and animal life on huge scales. A sixth appears to be upon us.

Ms Kolbert, who writes for the New Yorker, uses case studies to document the crisis. Setting out for Panama to investigate a vanishing species of frog, she learns that amphibians are the world’s most imperilled class of animal. Close to her home in New England, a fast-spreading fungus has left bat corpses strewn through caves. On a tiny island off Australia’s coast, she laments the degradation of the Great Barrier Reef by ocean acidification, sometimes known as global warming’s ‘evil twin.’

A new geological epoch may have arrived. Some scientists have dubbed it the ‘Anthropocene’ after its human perpetrators.”

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“The sixth extinction is being caused by an invasive species”:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

February 26, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I would rather not compromise my dignity,"

“I would rather not compromise my dignity,”

Kidney 4 Sale (Manhattan)

Young, healthy, non-smoker, athletic (jogger, tennis), educated (Bachelor of Science in Marketing), blood type A woman is looking to share my kidney with an individual/family who really needs it. I am not willing to travel outside of the continental US to have surgery. The job market has been unsympathetic to me and at this point its either sell a kidney or compromise my dignity. I would rather not compromise my dignity. Besides, I would be helping to save someone’s life.

“It Might Not Have Been A Hallucination That I Experienced”

February 26, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Like Michel Siffre, who embedded himself in caverns and glaciers decades ago to test the human limits in isolation in advance of Apollo missions, journalist Kate Greene spent four months training in the exquisite malaise of a simulated NASA Mars mission in Hawaii, lying in wait–for what?–near the silent mouth of a volcano. It was so much like sleep that dreams–or something like them–began. The opening of “Planet Boredom,” Greene’s Aeon article about her experience:

“What follows is an account of an instance where I, a person of relatively sound mind and body, could not believe the evidence before my own eyes. It might not have been a hallucination that I experienced, but it was surely a great jolt of consciousness. The scene: I’m in my closet-sized cabin, inside a white dome built to house a crew of six for four months as part of an isolation experiment. As a crew, we are working and living as ‘explorers’ stationed on the surface of ‘Mars’. Our colony is lifelike and NASA-funded, but it is situated in a place quite a bit closer to home, on a remote slope of a Hawai’ian volcano.

It’s only a couple weeks before we are to be released, and I’m sitting on my bed with my laptop, sorting data from a sleep study I’ve been conducting on myself and my crewmates for the past three months. My cabin door is open. From the corner of my eye, I see a stranger walk into the washroom a few meters away. It’s odd, I think, for a stranger to be here. Our doors are not locked during the day, but our habitat is positioned in an isolated area, at a high elevation, far away from paved roads and pedestrians. The sight of an unfamiliar person nonchalantly using our facilities is enough to jack up my senses to high alert.

I watch as the stranger goes into the washroom and splashes water on his face. Do I know him? Why can’t I tell? If he is an intruder, why is he here? And what will he do when he’s done freshening up and sees me staring at him? I have three male crewmates and the man washing his face looks like none of them. Our crew commander shaves his head while this man has thick brown hair, slicked back. Another crewmate almost always wears buttoned-up long-sleeved shirts. The stranger is in a baggy black T-shirt. My third male crewmate is larger than the unfamiliar man and has curly red hair and a beard. This man is clean-shaven.

Finally, the stranger steps out of the bathroom and confronts me. ‘What,’ he says, less a question, more a bark. His voice kicks me to reality. It’s Simon, our red-headed engineer who has evidently shorn his beard and lost more weight over the mission than I had previously noticed.

Still, my heart is racing and a surge of blood warms me from earlobe to fingertip. ‘I didn’t know who you were,’ I say. He nods and gives a slight smile. We both laugh uneasily at the absurd thought of an intruder. It’s almost too impossible for us to imagine.

And it was shortly thereafter, as the tail end of my terror entwined with the emergent joy of relief, that I notice I hadn’t felt anything so strongly in months. I had been living in a kind of torpor.”

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“A Hungarian Team Has Created The First Drones That Can Fly As A Coordinated Flock”

February 26, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Two new reports about drone development, which can aid in shipping goods–or things that aren’t so good.

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From “Autonomous Drones Flock Like Birds,” by Ed Young at Nature:

“A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.

Experiment with distant quasar light could solve free-will loophole in quantum theory

More humane method needed for euthanizing lab fish

Microbial genes become useful forensic tool

The aircraft, called quadcopters because they have four rotors, navigate using signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, communicate their positions to one another via radio and compute their own flight plans. They were created by a team of scientists led by Tamás Vicsek, a physicist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

‘This is remarkable work,’ says Iain Couzin, who studies collective animal behaviour at Princeton University in New Jersey. ‘It is the first outdoor demonstration of how biologically inspired rules can be used to create resilient yet dynamic flocks. [It suggests] we will be able to achieve large, coordinated robot flocks much sooner than many would have anticipated.'”

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From “Rolls-Royce Drone Ships Challenge $375 Billion Industry: Freight,” by Isaac Arnsdorf at Bloomberg:

“In an age of aerial drones and driver-less cars, Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc is designing unmanned cargo ships.

Rolls-Royce’s Blue Ocean development team has set up a virtual-reality prototype at its office in Alesund, Norway, that simulates 360-degree views from a vessel’s bridge. Eventually, the London-based manufacturer of engines and turbines says, captains on dry land will use similar control centers to command hundreds of crewless ships.

Drone ships would be safer, cheaper and less polluting for the $375 billion shipping industry that carries 90 percent of world trade, Rolls-Royce says.”

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Old Print Article: “Mind Reader Seymour’s Entombment,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1893)

February 25, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax."

“The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax.”

An Illinois mind reader planned in 1893 to have himself buried alive where he would remain while a crop grew above him. He would then emerge unscathed. There are easier ways to kill yourself. From an article in the August 7th edition in that year’s Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Hillsboro, Ill.–The mind reader, A.J. Seymour, is generally known in Illinois and his proposed attempt to be buried and remain in the ground while a crop of barley is grown on his grave creates interest in this state. Dr. E.C. Dunn of Rockford has been selected by Seymour as manager. Dr. Dunn says: ‘There is no question that this feat can be performed. I have seen it performed successfully three times in India, at Allahabad, Delhi and Benares. For several days Seymour will be fed upon a diet of fat and heat producing food. He will then throw himself into a cataleptic state. Their lungs will be filled with pure air to their fullest capacity and the tongue placed back and partially down the throat in such a manner as to completely close the aperture to the lungs. The nose, eyes and ears will be hermetically sealed with wax. After parafine has been spread over the entire body, to close the pores, it will be ready for burial. The body will be put in an extra large casket. This will be placed inside another and both  will be perforated, in order that if any poisonous gases exude from the body they may make their escape and be absorbed by the soil. The interment is to be made in a clay soil.’”

“Although I Regret The Unnecessary Killing Of Dogs And Cats, I Don’t Think That Should Be Your Main Focus”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts | Permalink

I don’t look at Gawker very much anymore, unless, of course, the site has an interview with moral philosopher Peter Singer and allows him to do an Ask Me Anything with readers. Singer is the author of the great book Practical Ethics and has sharp and controversial opinions about animal rights and charitable giving, among other topics. Beginning March 1, the Princeton professor is offering a MOOC ethics course. Below are excerpts from the post by Hamilton Nolan in which Singer answers a couple of Gawker questions and a couple from readers.

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Gawker:

What are the implications of your thoughts on charity for the arts? It seems that your position tends to cause outrage among fans of the arts who think that you’re not counting the arts as a real charity.

Peter Singer:

I’m not saying the arts are not a real charity, I’m just saying that in the world as it is, it’s not a charity that I would give the highest priority to. I think it’s great for people to promote and encourage the arts. But I do think you have to look at the world we live in. And if we could get out of the situation where we have a billion people living in extreme poverty, if we could meet basic needs… and provide some minimal education and health care and so on, then I think would be the time to say, “Yeah, let’s help to promote the arts.” But I just don’t think that the differences you make by donating to a museum or an art gallery really compare to the differences you make by donating to the charities that fight global poverty.

Gawker:

Sometimes you’re perceived as not having gratitude for charitable donations from the rich, i.e., saying someone like Bill Gates could donate more money. Is there a role for gratitude in your ethics?

Peter Singer:

Sure. I think there’s a place for—I’m not sure gratitude is quite the right word—I would say rather appreciation and recognition are what we should give to Bill Gates. And it’s true that Bill Gates and Melinda Gates could give more, but I don’t spend a lot of time saying that or criticizing them, because I think what they’re doing is fantastic. I think they have made a huge difference to the world, they’ve saved millions of lives, they’ve set an example of what wealthy people can be doing. They’re not saints or angels, but nor am I.

________________

Reader Question:

What can we do as a species to stop the needless and endless slaughter of dogs/cats in America?

Peter Singer:

Look, I like dogs and cats too, but the numbers matter… in the US, nearly 10 BILLION animals – chickens, pigs, cows – are slaughtered for food each year, and that’s completely unnecessary too, plus they mostly have MUCH worse living conditions than dogs and cats. That’s why, although I regret the unnecessary killing of dogs and cats, I don’t think that should be your main focus – and if you are actively participating in the slaughter of chickens, pigs and cows by eating them, you really have no basis to object to the killing of dogs and cats.

Reader Question:

What would you say is a more valuable use of time: Working for a huge corporation for the sake of making as much money as you can so you can give it to or finance your own charity of your choice, or leaving the corporate world and taking on a life of relative poverty devoted to directly helping those in need, like becoming a nun or something? Are one of those inherently more valuable, less harmful, or a better use of time and energy in your opinion?

Peter Singer:

Depends.. on the corporation and what it is doing, and whether you can have any influence on that.. also on whether you will be able to maintain your giving despite being part of a culture that doesn’t give a lot… But there are good arguments for saying that “earning to give” can, in the right circumstances, be the most effective thing one can do. See www.80000hours.org for more discussion.

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“Just How Demanding Do We Want Our Technologies To Be?”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Timothy Wu writes really thoughtful posts about technology for the New Yorker’s “Elements” blog that I enjoy reading even though I usually disagree with them philosophically. Case in point: His latest piece questions whether the ease of technology will weaken us. I agree that certain abilities disappear without focus and repetition, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Some tools are intended to teach and others just to provide utility. (And I think both kinds will exist as long as we exist.) I don’t think our minds aren’t meant to naturally handle a fixed set of immutable tasks but to continually evolve past them into more significant challenges. I remember hearing senior citizens complain about digital watches when I was a child. “Kids today don’t even know how to tell time,” they’d say. Most of those children grew up to be much more sophisticated thinkers than their elders. Perhaps pocket watches or wind-up wrist models looked classier and provided more aesthetic satisfaction, but it’s good we had the option to move past them. Evolution will always lead us to new tools and our challenges will change, but I think finding challenges is hardwired into us. The opening of Wu’s piece:

“In the history of marketing, there’s a classic tale that centers on the humble cake mix. During the nineteen-fifties, there were differences of opinion over how ‘instant’ powdered cake mixes should be, and, in particular, over whether adding an egg ought to be part of the process. The first cake mixes, invented in the nineteen-thirties, merely required water, and some people argued that this approach, the easiest, was best. But others thought bakers would want to do more. Urged on by marketing psychologists, Betty Crocker herself began to instruct housewives to ‘add water, and two of your own fresh eggs.’

The cake-mix debate may be dated, but its central question remains: Just how demanding do we want our technologies to be? It is a question faced by the designers of nearly every tool, from tablet computers to kitchen appliances. A dominant if often unexamined logic favors making everything as easy as possible. Innovators like Alan Kay and Steve Jobs are celebrated for making previously daunting technologies usable by anyone. It may be hard to argue with easy, yet, as the add-an-egg saga suggests, there’s something deeper going on here.

The choice between demanding and easy technologies may be crucial to what we have called technological evolution.”

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“These Are Issues That Fundamentally Affect Peoples’ Lives”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

After Hurricane Sandy devastated so many people in Queens and on Staten Island in 2012, the federal government gave New York City millions to help rebuild the houses of the newly homeless (and those remaining in barely livable, damaged homes). Mayor Bloomberg set up a program called Build It Back, staffed offices with workers, and for the next 15 months not a single home was rebuilt by the program as people in need, people still struggling along in shelters, were stonewalled. NOT A SINGLE HOME. The Rapid Repair project which restored electrical and boiler service was a good use of money, but Build It Back has been a fiasco.

You read about this colossal failure in the local newspapers sometimes, but not much. It’s been treated as a minor subplot. What I have noticed is that a lot of newsprint has been devoted to nitpicking newly inaugurated Bill de Blasio over small matters since he got into office. Perhaps that’s just locals being wary of what’s unfamiliar or maybe some moneyed interests are worried about tax increases. Perhaps it’s a little of both.

No one knows yet if de Blasio will be a good mayor or not, but he did make a solid (if obvious) call in replacing the failed official in charge of the Build It Back program. Perhaps some people can still get help. From “De Blasio and the Motorcade Sideshow,” a Sally Goldenberg article in Capital:

“When a CNN reporter asked him Monday whether he believes the press is treating him unfairly, de Blasio began by saying he can ‘take the heat,’ then criticized reporters for focusing on ‘sideshows,’ instead of announcements about Hurricane Sandy rebuilding, and his court fight to keep open Long Island College Hospital. (The LICH story was covered widely, despite the detail flap.)

‘These are issues that fundamentally affect peoples’ lives and I think that’s where the public debate should reside,’ he said. ‘And I think too much of the time debate veers away into, you know, sideshows.'”

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“Some Elected Officials Ask How Far Scientists Plan To Go In Their Efforts To Engineer Humans”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sooner or later–and probably sooner–genetic engineering in humans is going to be a reality, despite fears of such things. Especially since a lot of those fears are dubious. Science and technology are imperfect, but so is nature. If we can avoid congenital disease or defect, we should. And, yes, there will be a temptation to abuse these advances as there always are, but you can’t hold back progress for that reason. For all the thousands of people who’ve been helped by science to become parents, isn’t it worth it to put up with the occasional Octomom? From a New York Times article by Sabrina Tavernise about the intersection of genetic therapy and human fertility:

“Such genetic methods have been controversial in the United States, where critics and some elected officials ask how far scientists plan to go in their efforts to engineer humans, and question whether such methods might create other problems later on.

‘Every time we get a little closer to genetic tinkering to promote health — that’s exciting and scary,’ said Dr. Alan Copperman, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. ‘People are afraid it will turn into a dystopian brave new world.’

He added that the current meeting and discussion was an attempt at ‘putting together a framework for us to prepare for this genetic revolution.’

‘The most exciting part, scientifically,’ he said, ‘is to be able to prevent or fix an error in the genetic machinery.'”

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“It Was As If He Were A Thing — A Thing That Pleased Me”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

As difficult as it is to comprehend the horror that slavery ever existed at all, it really stuns that it still exists now. The opening of a Priceonomics blog post by Zachary Crockett about the Mauritanian slave trade:

“Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane received his first slave when he was seven years old. It was the afternoon of his circumcision — his right of passage into early manhood — and he had the liberty to pick any gift imaginable. ‘It was as if I were picking out a toy,’ he recalls. ‘It was as if he were a thing — a thing that pleased me.’

With the point of a finger, Abdel selected a small boy with almond eyes and skin the color of coal to be his slave until death.

Abdel is a resident of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in western North Africa, where this is commonplace. In fact, Mauritania has the highest proportional population of slaves in the world: as many as 680,000 of the country’s 3.4 million people — 20% of the population — are considered ‘property.'”

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2 Things About Alec Baldwin’s “Retirement”

February 25, 2014 in Excerpts, Videos | Permalink

How fortunate would we be if Alec Baldwin really did just act and not appear in public otherwise, as he promised in an article in New York magazine? He’s so gifted at acting and such a dipshit at everything else in life that it would be the best situation all around. We wouldn’t have to listen to his barking ego anymore, and he could spend more time with his wife. But Governor Baldwin will be back. He needs us because he needs someone to hate besides himself.

Two amusing things from the article:

  • In one passage, Baldwin reveals that during the run-up to Orphans’ opening night, he told the play’s director, Dan Sullivan, that he would have to choose between him and Shia LaBeouf. No third, more-appetizing option, like drinking a mixture of Clorox and blood, was offered.
  • I do, however, salute Baldwin for his cruel one-liner about Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of Morning Joe, the unceasingly insipid MSNBC wake-up program which features a chucklehead for a host and a parade of plagiarizers, mediocrities and well-compensated hacks for guests. Mika, an opponent of twerking, seems to have been chosen to sit beside Scarborough so that her befuddlement would make him appear adequate, the way a hemophiliac makes someone with a broken foot seem fortunate. From Baldwin:

“Morning Joe was boring. Scarborough is neither eloquent nor funny. And merely cranky doesn’t always work well in the morning. Mika B. is the Margaret Dumont of cable news.”

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A Brief Note From 1892 About A Good Laugh

February 24, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the September 4, 1892 New York Times:

“St. Paul, Minn.–Miss Josie Letson of Minneapolis has been lying at the point of death at the Northwestern Hospital for the last six weeks, but because of a remarkable surgical operation, will recover. She had been taking nothing but liquid food for over a year and had become so weak she could not raise her head.

As a last resort, physicians, by the use of a stethoscope, located an obstruction in the aesophagus about two inches below the clavicle, or collar bone. Miss Nelson was given no anesthetic and an incision was made on the left side of the neck about 4 1/2 inches in length.

The doctors dissected down to the aesophoaus, opened it, ad there found two teeth pointed downward, firmly inserted in the interior walls of the aesophagus. They almost entirely obstructed the passage.

Miss Nelson said six years ago, while in a fit of laughter, she swallowed the two teeth, which were then attached to a triangular piece of rubber in her gums.”

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