“The Obesity Epidemic Is More About Irresponsible Business Practices Than Irresponsible People”

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

If the lithe Wendy’s Girl actually ate at Wendy’s with any frequency, she would be overweight and unhealthy. There are very large corporations determined to sell us as much cheap, lousy food as possible, strategizing how to best trigger our impulsive behaviors and undermine sound diets. On this topic, Deborah Cohen, RAND Corporation scientist and author of A Big Fat Crisis, conducted an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few excerpts.

_______________________

Question:

Do you think that “big is beautiful” and “plus size models” encourage obesity rather than discourage?

Deborah Cohen:

No, I don’t think this encourages obesity. It is a way to cope with the current situation of high rates of obesity, but it fails to point out the true causes of the epidemic. What we need to do is the shatter the myth that body size has anything to do with moral character. The fact is that the obesity epidemic is more about irresponsible business practices than irresponsible people.

Question:

You state that the “obesity epidemic is more about irresponsible business practices than irresponsible people”, and I agree that many businesses promote unhealthy attitudes. However, at the end of the day, what about personal responsibility? Shouldn’t we focus on strengthening the will power versus removing the temptation?

Deborah Cohen:

Over the past few decades many people have tried to strengthen their willpower and have invested billion is the diet industry. Yet few are successful. That’s because willpower is limited and fatigues like a muscle. Willpower is also a genetic trait and most people cannot improve their capacity for self-control. Some studies have followed people over 40 years and they found that the children who lacked self-control at age 4 still had low levels of self control compared to their peers at age 44. That’s why most New Year’s resolutions fail. We want to improve, yet the biggest barrier to controlling food intake is the environment. We can’t change people’s genes, but we can change business practices.

_______________________

Question:

Your book recommends that the government limit “the amount and choice of food items supermarkets would be allowed to sell to individual customers,” according to the Boston Globe. Americans would march in the streets if that law was implemented (at least until we got winded). How do you see ideas like yours not ending the careers of any politician who proposes them?

Deborah Cohen:

The Boston Globe reviewer misunderstood. What I recommend are limits on impulse marketing strategies, by which I mean not placing candy at the cash register or chips and sodas on the end-of-aisle displays. I recommend putting items that increase the risk of chronic diseases in places like the middle of an aisle on the bottom shelf, so those who want to buy them can still do so, and people who want to avoid them will be able to. Lots of people want candy-free check out aisles, but most supermarkets prefer to tempt people and manufacturers pay them for this shelf space.

_______________________

Question:

Do you think anything needs to be done about the relentless airings of fast food commercials on television? The only ones that don’t make me hungry are the Hardee’s commercials where scantily clad super models pretend to eat burgers larger than their heads.

 Deborah Cohen:

Yes, I think that instead of banning these commercials we should have counter-advertising that points out how these commercials are duping us. It worked for tobacco control and I believe it would be successful to control obesity. Under the Fairness Doctrine, TV stations were mandated to provide free air time for anti-tobacco ads if the stations were airing pro-tobacco ads. The tobacco companies wised up and stopped showing tobacco ads so there was no more free air time for counter ads.

_______________________

Question:

I have personally never been sold on the “fat gene” idea. We almost never saw fat people until the second half of the 20th century when it became common; previously it was only the very wealthy that could even get fat. Nowadays with cheap fatty food available for all it just makes sense that people can get big fast. Now obviously some people have better metabolism than others, but the idea that someone can claim they’re fat because of their genes always seems like a cop out for someone that loves fast food and no working out.

Not having read your book, can you reinforce our counter my claim that genetics does not play a large role in weight gain/health?

Deborah Cohen:

You are right! Obesity rates doubled between 1980 and 2000, a time period too short for genetics to play a role. The increase in obesity, I believe, is solely due to the change in the food environment. As I argue in my book, our country has been turned into a food swamp, inundating us with too much food, too much food advertising, and easy, convenient access to calories 24/7.

_______________________

Question:

What do you think of a South Beach-type diet for long-term weight control?

Deborah Cohen:

Most diets work if you can follow them. The problem is that most people cannot stay on a diet because they are continually undermined by all the cues that tempt people to eat more than they need. People are wired to feel hungry when they see or smell tempting food. If humans were like cars, and could only fill up a limited tank when it was empty, we would not have survived over the millenia. Dieting in and of itself can backfire for some people and lead them to gain more weight than if they hadn’t been on a diet in the first place. That’s because once we try to forget about food, that’s all we can think of. We become even more sensitive to food cues and if we are stressed, we can find ourselves binging. Willpower fatigues like a muscle, and most of us face limits in our capacity for self-control.•

Tags:

“Men Will Already Have Begun An Orgy Of Machinification”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Moore’s Law won’t apply to anything–even integrated circuits–forever. And it doesn’t apply to many things at all. Growth has its spurts, but other things get in the way: entropy, priorities, politics, etc. So I think the near-term questions regarding machines aren’t about transhumanism and other such lofty ones but rather more practical considerations. You know, like a highly automated society creating new jobs and 3-D printers making the manufacturing of firearms uncontrollable and undetectable. In a Commentary broadside, David Gelernter, that brilliant and perplexing thinker, takes aim at the approach of today’s technologists and what he sees as their lack of commitment to humanism. An excerpt about Ray Kurzweil:

“The voice most strongly associated with what I’ve termed roboticism is that of Ray Kurzweil, a leading technologist and inventor. The Kurzweil Cult teaches that, given the strong and ever-increasing pace of technological progress and change, a fateful crossover point is approaching. He calls this point the ‘singularity.’ After the year 2045 (mark your calendars!), machine intelligence will dominate human intelligence to the extent that men will no longer understand machines any more than potato chips understand mathematical topology. Men will already have begun an orgy of machinification—implanting chips in their bodies and brains, and fine-tuning their own and their children’s genetic material. Kurzweil believes in ‘transhumanism,’ the merging of men and machines. He believes human immortality is just around the corner. He works for Google.

Whether he knows it or not, Kurzweil believes in and longs for the death of mankind. Because if things work out as he predicts, there will still be life on Earth, but no human life. To predict that a man who lives forever and is built mainly of semiconductors is still a man is like predicting that a man with stainless steel skin, a small nuclear reactor for a stomach, and an IQ of 10,000 would still be a man. In fact we have no idea what he would be.

Each change in him might be defended as an improvement, but man as we know him is the top growth on a tall tree in a large forest: His kinship with his parents and ancestors and mankind at large, the experience of seeing his own reflection in human history and his fellow man—those things are the crucial part of who he is. If you make him grossly different, he is lost, with no reflection anywhere he looks. If you make lots of people grossly different, they are all lost together—cut adrift from their forebears, from human history and human experience. Of course we do know that whatever these creatures are, untransformed men will be unable to keep up with them. Their superhuman intelligence and strength will extinguish mankind as we know it, or reduce men to slaves or dogs. To wish for such a development is to play dice with the universe.” (Thanks Browser.)

Tags: ,

“Yet For All The Blood Spilled — Of 4,488 Military Men And Women To Be Precise — There’s No Good Reason Why”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I recall during the greatest heat of the war in Iraq seeing TV interviews with one parent after another of a dead American soldier, saying that they didn’t want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq because that meant their child would have died for no reason. It would have been a cruel thing to tell them that their loved one was lost for no reason regardless, that a surge wasn’t going to mean anything in Iraq in the long run, that it was just meant to help the White House save face. Perhaps because more weren’t willing to say the truth aloud–or maybe because not too many would listen anyhow–the same thing kept happening to other soldiers and their parents. And, of course, we hardly ever heard from the family of the perhaps 100,000 Iraqi dead. 

From “Tell Me Again, Why Did My Friends Die In Iraq?” a pained, exasperated Business Insider piece by USMC veteran Paul Szoldra:

“The invasion of Iraq was predicated on the notion of ridding the Hussein regime of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ of course. But in 2004, the game was changed to counterinsurgency — ridding the world of “the terrorists.”

And we sure were successful. Until the U.S. pulled out, American soldiers and Marines certainly killed their fair share of terrorists, insurgents, bad guys, and the like. They in turn, killed plenty of us.

Yet for all the blood spilled — of 4,488 military men and women to be precise — there’s no good reason why.

The proof of how pointless the entire endeavour was — if you even needed more — came Friday morning, with a report from Liz Sly in the Washington Post.

‘At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,’ a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety told Sly. ‘The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.’

Fallujah has fallen, and the same scenario is about to happen in the even-larger city of Ramadi.

It shouldn’t be such a surprise the place my friends fought for is falling back into civil war. I shouldn’t be surprised when the same thing happens in Afghanistan. But it still is, because I don’t want it to happen.”

Tags: , ,

“We Met On A Street And Got Into An Argument Where Foolishly, At My Young Age, I Challenged Him To A Debate”

January 6, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

From Scott Feinberg’s Hollywood Reporter Q&A with Ahmed Kathrada, Robben Island prisonmate of Nelson Mandela for 26 years and friend and fellow anti-Apartheid activist for decades longer:

“Question:

Wasn’t it when the Indian Congress and the African National Congress first started interacting that you first met Nelson Mandela?

Ahmed Kathrada:

Yes. I was already in the Indian Youth Congress at the time. I met him through his university colleagues, who were Indians whom I knew. He used to frequent their place and that is where I met him in 1946, 68 years ago.

Question:

What were your first impressions of him?

Ahmed Kathrada:

My abiding impression of him, which lasted all my life, was his ability to relate to me as an equal, so much so that the questions he asked me made me feel so comfortable that I could go back to school and boast to my friends that I met a university student who treated me the way he did. That is how I remembered him all my life. He had an ability to treat everybody as equals.

Question:

Is it true, though, that when you two first met, you initially sort of challenged him a little bit? You wanted to debate him, didn’t you?

Ahmed Kathrada:

Yes. That was the one and the only argument we had. I’m 11 years his junior and it was on a question of a strike that was jointly organized by the Indian Congress, the Communist Party and the ANC. He belonged to the ANC Youth League, and the Youth League was not racist but it was against cooperation with the Communist Party or with other liberation organizations. We met on a street and got into an argument where foolishly, at my young age, I challenged him to a debate, and that led to a little argument. But that was all history and we teased each other all the years on Robben Island because the strike which they opposed was successful, but unfortunately eighty people were killed in that strike. And, of course, that led to a closer relationship between Mr. Mandela, the ANC Youth League and the other organizations. That was the genesis, I would say, of the Youth League changing its views from non-cooperation with other organizations to one of cooperation.”

Tags: ,

“It’s Better Known To Us As An Electronic Brain”

January 6, 2014 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Mathematician Janet Norman from the Foster Wheeler company appearing on I’ve Got a Secret in the 1950s to play computer music with the aid of a Bendix G-15.

Tags:

“Fewer People Want To Actually Attend The Games”

January 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1979, J.G. Ballard believed the future was shifting from mobile to home-based, especially the way we entertain ourselves. That’s happened, largely. Going to the game is not so important now because there are so many ways for the game to come to us. From Kevin Clark and Jonathan Clegg in the WSJ: 

“The NFL enters the first round of playoff games this weekend with soaring television ratings, billions of dollars in network TV contracts in their pocket and a nation of football fans who can’t wait to hop on their couch and watch a weekend of games.

The league has never been a more popular viewing option. There’s just one problem: Fewer people want to actually attend the games.

In the latest evidence that the sports in-home viewing experience has possibly trumped the in-stadium one, ticket sales were slow for the first week of the National Football League’s marquee stretch of games.

Three teams hosting games this weekend asked the league for extensions to sell more tickets for the games to avoid a television blackout in local markets, which is imposed by NFL policy if a game isn’t sold out. The teams, the Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts and Cincinnati Bengals, needed large corporate assistance to ensure the sellouts.”

_________________________________________

Walter Cronkite in 1967: “We could watch a football game.”

Tags:

Old Print Article: “The Story Of Bronson Alcott’s ‘New Eden'” New York Times (1915)

January 5, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“The use of animal manures to fertilize the land was considered by Alcott to be ‘disgusting in the extreme.'”

In 1843, Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa May’s dad and a Transcendentalist and suffragist and abolitionist and animal rights activist, founded the commune known as “Fruitlands” in Massachusetts. He and a bevy of fellow non-farmers planned a small society that was to be safe alike for humans and animals–oh, and for John Palmer, a bearded man who refused to shave much to the consternation of the locals. It was to be a paradise of enlightenment and veganism a century before that latter word was even coined; but much like Brook Farm, it was a crashing financial failure and a dream soon abandoned. From an article in the July 25, 1915 New York Times:

“Alcott got his idea of the new Eden while visiting a group of English mystics headed by James Pierrepoint Greaves, a pupil of Pestalozzi, who had established a school according to the Concord philosopher’s teachings in Surrey, calling the place Alcott House. It was at this school that he met Charles Lane and H.C. Wright, and seems to have been fascinated by both men. Indeed, he writes home of the latter: ‘I am already knit to him with more than human ties, and must take him with me to America …or else abide here with him.’ Both returned with Alcott, and both joined him in establishing the New Eden. …

The scheme of life that underlay Fruitlands was simple. No ‘flesh,’ as the members called meat, was to be eaten. This prohibition included every animal product, such as milk, eggs, honey, butter, cheese. Moreover, they were to raise or to exchange for what could be raised in the neighborhood, all they used in a material way. No sugar, tea or coffee, neither silk nor wool for garments, were allowed. Linen was to be their raiment, for cotton, too, was tabooed. Tunics and trousers or brown liner clothed them fitly.

Not one of their number except Palmer seems to have had any notion of how to farm. Also, as Lane explains in a letter, ‘we are impressed with the conviction that by a faithful reliance on the Spirit which actuates us, we are sure of attaining to clear revelations of daily practical duties as they are to be daily done for us,’ wherefore no plan of work was laid out, and the various philosophers would wander vaguely about the fields, when the spirit hinted, sowing and digging, in some cases going over the same plot which one had scattered with clover seed to sow it again with rye, oats or barley. Two mulberry trees planted by them were put so close to the house that they almost heaved it free of its foundation in later years, though this misfortune was one that the community itself did not have to suffer.

Fruitlands_in_1915The use of animal manures to fertilize the land was considered by Alcott to be ‘disgusting in the extreme,’ and was therefore prohibited. The idea was to plow under the growing green crops to achieve the required richness. The drawback to this being the difficulty of harvesting anything for themselves. But this did not as yet trouble them. What did trouble them was the unaccustomed toil with the spade, for they did not believe in using enslaved beasts to work for them, broke their backs and tore their hands. A compromise was achieved, and Old Palmer went off for a yoke of oxen to do the plowing. One of these proved to be a cow, and Palmer, to the horror of the rest, was seen to indulge in that creature’s yield of milk. He had, as he expressed it, ‘to be let down easy.’

There seem to have been other more spiritual concessions to this demand for an easier rule. The bread of the community was unbolted flour. In order to make it more palatable, Mr. Alcott, with something approximating humor, was accustomed to form the loaves ‘into the shapes of animals and other pleasing figures.’ Water was the sole drink, but it was invariably spoken of as their ‘beverage,’ probably with the same hope of making it appear more desirable. As for the meals, they are always spoken of as ‘chaste,’ the intercourse between the members at Fruitlands was ‘social communion,’ and sleep was a ‘report to sweet repose.’ If there is a power in words, and true sustenance, Fruitlands made the most of it.

Old Palmer’s life was one long fight to keep his beard, an appendage which Fruitlands alone, at the epoch, regarded with equanimity. In spite of the rage with which people generally regarded beards in those days, Palmer believed in them, and his life was a splendid assertion of this belief. Through all sorts of vicissitudes he hung on to that beard. Going to Boston he would be followed by hooting crowds. Men would spring out on him in his native Fitchburg from doorways, and endeavor to tear the offending thing from his face, but he could defend it, and did. Then he would be hauled to court for assault and battery, a fine imposed, on refusal to pay which Palmer would be sentenced to jail. There he remained at one time for over a year, part of it in solitary confinement. The jailers actually tried to shave him there, but the old man put up so fierce a fight that they desisted. Once the minister refused him Holy Communion, whereupon he strode to the altar and took the cup himself, asserting with flashing eyes that he ‘loved his Jesus as well as or better than any one else present.’ When at last he died he had his bearded face carved on his tombstone. where it may still be seen. When Fruitlands failed it was Palmer who bought the place, and there he carried on a queer sort of community of his own for more than twenty years.”

 

Tags: , , ,

“Who Knows What Form The End Of Humanity Will Take?”

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

The opening of “Is Life a Ponzi Scheme?” Mark Johnston’s Boston Review piece about how to learn to stop worrying and love–or at least stop fixating on–the bomb, or whatever else it is that wipes out humanity:

“Who knows what form the end of humanity will take? Will it come by extraterrestrial invasion, or by the erosion of the ozone layer, or by a large asteroid impacting the earth, or by mass starvation during a long nuclear winter, or by a bacterium running amok in the post-antibiotic age, or by a nomadic black hole sucking up everything in its path as it wanders toward us, or by a gamma ray burst from any one of the host of supernovas destined to occur within three thousand light years of the earth, or by the eruption of the massive volcano that now sits, waiting, under Yellowstone National Park? Or will it be as the apocalyptic literature of Judaism and Christianity describes it, with the last days consisting of the terrifying separation of the sheep from the goats? Even if humanity somehow avoids all this, and even if we escape the solar system before the inevitable heat death of the sun, eventually the universe will come to consist of a subatomic soup so thin that nothing recognizably human will be able to exist.

So we are doomed. There is no way around it. The hope is that doom is far enough away for humanity to flourish individually and collectively. The lights will eventually go out; the issue is just how brightly they will burn in the interim.

Here ignorance is not exactly bliss, but it is helpful.”

Tags:

The Best Book I Read In 2013 Was…

January 5, 2014 in Books, Science/Tech, Sports | Permalink

…The Sports Gene by David Epstein. 

The SI writer looks at the role of genetics in sports, never discounting the hard work athletes do, but making a strong case that you probably have to be born with the “right parents” if you want to be a superstar at highly competitive athletics. 

So many topics are considered in this compact 290-page book, including how genetic mutations, race, region, poverty, disease, PEDs, customs and culture determine the development of the elite athlete. It really looks at the question from every angle imaginable.

In doing so, the volume directly defeats foolish narratives we like to attach to sports, even one doozy perpetrated by the magazine Epstein works for, a jaw-dropping 2010 article that asserted that Bulls center Joakim Noah, one of the most ridiculously lucky people on the planet in the sports gene pool, a near seven-footer with a tremendous wingspan and a tennis-champion father, was somehow not “gifted” and had to overcome his “lack of talent” with a “strong will.” The display copy for the story actually read: “Bulls center Joakim Noah doesn’t have the incandescent talent of his NBA brethren. But he brings to the game an equally powerful gift.” Um, really???

Also covered is the idea that someday (probably not soon) we’ll be able to test babies to see if they have the genetic makeup to be great athletes and to guide them into sports that favor explosiveness or stamina depending on whether they will develop more fast-twitch or slow-twitch muscle. That, of course, leads the mind to wonder how such tests would work if expanded beyond sports: Would newborn Robert Zimmerman (later to be known as Bob Dylan) be persuaded from music because he didn’t have the gene for a great singing voice?

Epstein’s book is a brilliant and probing work that’s given me enough ideas to return to for years and years.

And now my ears will bleed even more when people lazily refer to the “10,000-hour rule” as if that standard fits everyone who achieves mastery in some field. Sure, practice is good, but it’s not everything.•

Tags:

“Rewatching The Show Today Is A Curious Experience”

January 5, 2014 in Excerpts | Permalink

Jerry Seinfeld, continuing his endless, ostentatious victory lap, hosts the ambulatory Internet talk show, Comedian in Cars Getting Coffee, which features caffeinated cut-ups in souped-up sedans. As much as I love comedy and generally enjoy the program, there’s something about it that bothers me. I mean, in addition to the fact that the guests are almost always white males. (Tina Fey, a guest this season, is rumored to have a vagina, but so far she’s only flashed us the tits.) No, what’s disquieting to me about the show is that I don’t like seeing comics when they’re not doing comedy. They’re often not very interesting. In Seinfeldian terms, there’s a reason why the comic book is called Superman and not Clark Kent. Stripped of their powers, these people are a lot like you and I, but even worse. When the show works on a higher level, however, as it does in the Michael Richards episode and the one with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, it’s special. 

Perhaps there’s another reason the program is such an odd thing: the wasteful, careless ethos of the Seinfeld sitcom feels strange in a time of so much financial struggle. From Oliver Burkeman at the Guardian:

“A competing theory for Seinfeld’s low profile since 1998 is that his comedy belongs squarely to the 90s – an era of economic plenty, before 9/11, before widespread anxiety about climate change, when the bottomless self-absorption of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer felt excusable. Rewatching the show today is a curious experience. The haircuts are terrible, obviously. But the much-hyped focus on ‘nothing’ – on overblown conflicts with doormen, restaurateurs and so on – feels familiar: it’s central to many of the shows that count Seinfeld as a major influence, from Arrested Development to The Office to Curb Your Enthusiasm. (The latter’s success fuelled yet another theory about Seinfeld’s post-90s career: that Larry David had been the genius behind the sitcom all along.) What stands out, in those old Seinfelds, is the weird callousness: a total lack of concern with anyone other than the central foursome, unmatched even by Larry David’s character in Curb, or David Brent, or the South Park kids. When George’s fiancee dies, poisoned by the glue in the cheap wedding invitations he’d insisted on buying, his pure relief is certainly funny, and in keeping with the famous motto of the show’s writers: ‘No hugging, no learning.’ But it’s also more pathologically egocentric than anything you’d encounter, in a comedic context, on TV today.”

Tags: , ,

This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

January 5, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

 

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

  1. coma film 1978
  2. man who famously sold his mustache
  3. people selling their skeletons before they die
  4. how much should a blow job cost?
  5. film version of alvin toffler’s future shift
  6. are we underestimating the risk of human extinction?
  7. information about spider sabich
  8. early computer baseball leagues
  9. george lincoln rockwell alex haley interview
  10. burial of siamese twins eng and chang

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

January 4, 2014 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking this was the week when we could have used advice from someone who has experience with a lot of snow.

Afflictor: Thinking this was the week when we could have used advice from someone who has experience dealing with a lot of snow.

  • Silicon Valley is competing with academia and Wall Street for economics PhDs.
  • Bruce Schneier is more concerned about surveillance than cyber crime.
  • Chris Ware worries about memories processed through smart phones.
  • Luc Sante considers the meaning of Inside Llewyn Davis.
  • Gary Marcus questions the likelihood of human-ish AI.
  • A brief note from 1891 about a widower.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

January 3, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I'm fine with broken legs, smashed skull."

“I’m fine with broken legs, smashed skull.”

Animals, wild game (Carroll Gardens)

I am interested in any and all dead wild animals in decent condition.

If you hunt, or live in a place where you often see roadkill, it’s easy to throw it in a freezer and later bring it to the city. I would like whole animals, but also have interest in unwanted parts- heads, organs, pelts, trimmed fat, scrap meat, carcasses, etc…

In exchange I can provide you with money or some kind of service or trade. I can also butcher/process animals and give you the parts you want and keep whatever is left.

Animals I want: Deer, rabbit, squirrel, mouse, muskrat, chipmunk, turtle, raccoon, beaver, hare, bear, coyote, fox, fish, grouse, wild turkey, other birds, turtle, frog… probably any animal. As long as it came from the wilderness. No subway rats, apartment mice, house cats, etc.

What I consider decent condition:

Relatively fresh-some smell or a small rotting area is okay, my standards are lower than many.

Relatively in-tact–I’m fine with broken legs, smashed skull… anything really as long as the animal is not completely exploded.

Additionally, I am interested in any surplus food or plant like edible weeds, wild/sour apples, and black walnuts.

If you are able to do this, or know someone who might be up for it, please contact me. Thanks.

“This Is Very Different From How We Used To Die In The United States”

January 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s a price to pay for living longer: Diseases that never had time to grow within us in the past now reach “maturity.” In our favor, though, fewer people perish now due to the birth of twins. From “How We Used to Die,” a post at Priceonomics:

“They say that nothing is certain but death and taxes, but how we die is far from certain. What kills us these days? By a wide margin, cancer and heart disease. This is very different from how we used to die in the United States.

In a study by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers compared causes of death from the past hundred years. They found that, in 1900, while heart disease and cancer were still major killers, they were less lethal than a host of other ailments. Pneumonia/influenza, tuberculosis, and gastrointestinal infections each claimed more lives per 100,000 people than did heart disease. On average, more people died by accident than by cancer.”

“Deep Learning Has Been Applied To Language Understanding, But The Results Are Feeble So Far”

January 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I don’t anticipate human-level AI at any time in the near future if at all. Silicon does some things incredibly well and so does carbon, but they’re not necessarily the same things. Even when they both successfully tackle the same problem successfully, it’s executed differently. For instance: Machines haven’t started writing great film reviews but instead use algorithms that help people choose movies. It’s a different process–and a different experience. 

I would guess that if machines are to ever to truly understand in a human way, it will be because there’s been a synthesis of biology and technology and not because the latter has “learned” the ways of the former. In a New Yorker blog  item, NYU psychologist Gary Marcus offers a riposte to the recent New York Times article which strongly suggested we’re at the dawn of a new age of human-like smart machines. An excerpt:

“There have been real innovations, like driverless cars, that may soon become commercially available. Neuromorphic engineering and deep learning are genuinely exciting, but whether they will really produce human-level A.I. is unclear—especially, as I have written before, when it comes to challenging problems like understanding natural language.

The brainlike I.B.M. system that the Times mentioned on Sunday has never, to my knowledge, been applied to language, or any other complex form of learning. Deep learning has been applied to language understanding, but the results are feeble so far. Among publicly available systems, the best is probably a Stanford project, called Deeply Moving, that applies deep learning to the task of understanding movie reviews. The cool part is that you can try it for yourself, cutting and pasting text from a movie review and immediately seeing the program’s analysis; you even teach it to improve. The less cool thing is that the deep-learning system doesn’t really understand anything.

It can’t, say, paraphrase a review or mention something the reviewer liked, things you’d expect of an intelligent sixth-grader. About the only thing the system can do is so-called sentiment analysis, reducing a review to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down judgment. And even there it falls short; after typing in ‘better than Cats!’ (which the system correctly interpreted as positive), the first thing I tested was a Rotten Tomatoes excerpt of a review of the last movie I saw, American Hustle: ‘A sloppy, miscast, hammed up, overlong, overloud story that still sends you out of the theater on a cloud of rapture.’ The deep-learning system couldn’t tell me that the review was ironic, or that the reviewer thought the whole was more than the sum of the parts. It told me only, inaccurately, that the review was very negative. When I sent the demo to my collaborator, Ernest Davis, his luck was no better than mine. Ernie tried ‘This is not a book to be ignored’ and ‘No one interested in the subject can afford to ignore this book.’ The first came out as negative, the second neutral. If Deeply Moving is the best A.I. has to offer, true A.I.—of the sort that can read a newspaper as well as a human can—is a long way away.”

Tags: ,

“What Would You Say Are The Top 3 Most Important Battles In The Known History Of Man?”

January 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Colonel (Retired) Peter Mansoor, who served under Colonel David Petraeus during the surge in Iraq and has been an outspoken critic of Donald Rumsfeld, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. Two exchanges below, one about history and one the future.

___________________

Question:

What would you say are the top 3 most important battles in the known history of man?

Colonel Mansoor:

Tough question, since there are at least a dozen that significantly impacted the course of history. But here are three:

  • Salamis (480 BC) – The Athenian navy defeats the Persians at sea, turning back the Persian invasion of Western Europe. What would our world look like today without Greek civilization?
  • Saratoga (1777) – The American victory over the British brought France and Spain into the war against Britain, and globalized what had been a regional conflict. The world today would look a lot different had the British defeated the colonists.
  • Moscow (1941) – The Red Army turns back Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union and turns WWII into a two front struggle in Europe that Germany had no hope of winning from that point onward. The world today would be a dark place indeed had the Wehrmacht succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union.

___________________

Question:

What do you think the next big evolution in warfare will be (apart from drones)?

Colonel Mansoor:

Drones are actually part of an ongoing trend that will impact war dramatically in the future – robotics. We will witness that evolution on the ground as well as in the air. If you look at drones, as advanced as they might seem, we are actually at the point where nascent air forces were in 1916 during WWI. Aircraft were first used for reconnaissance, then someone figured out how to drop bombs from them, then fighter aircraft were developed to attain air superiority, then aircraft were used for transport and strategic bombing. The same evolution will occur with drones, and we are at the leading edge of that evolution.

Robotic ground vehicles will also be developed in the future, as well as exo-skeletal suits that will dramatically improve the capabilities of infantrymen. It sounds like sci-fi, but it will happen.•

Tags:

A Brief Note From 1897 About An Approximation

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

From the March 8, 1897 New York Times:

“GUADALAJARA, Mexico–Jesus Campeche, thought to be the oldest man on earth, died on Friday, and, according to his affirmation and other testimony, he was 154 years old. He said he was born in Spain in 1742 and came to this country when he was twenty-four years old. He was living with his great-great-grandson and had copies of the church register at Valladolid, Spain, showing the date of his birth and baptism. According to these papers, he was born Dec. 12, 1742. He related incidents which occurred in the last century, showing that he had told the truth or had stored his mind well with the happenings of that time.

A priest in the church which he attended, who is now eighty-four years old, says he remembers Campeche as being an old man when he was a little boy.”

Tags:

“As Morozov Watched The Cyber-Utopian Fad Grow, His Distrust Of It Began To Harden”

January 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Critic Evgeny Morozov rightly thinks we should distrust brands like Google and Facebook, but we should probably also save some skepticism for his brand: the techno town crier, the self-styled cassandra, the one who sees the Google Glass as half empty. He makes his way in the world by telling us that if the sky isn’t falling then it’s at least not as high as we think. And when someone raises money and esteem from a consistent stance, we probably should question the rigidity of the pose. His articles range from the marvelous to the meh, though that isn’t surprising for a 29-year-old writing at a breakneck pace. I like him; I question him.

From a new profile of Morozov by Michael Meyer in the Columbia Journalism Review:

“As Morozov watched the cyber-utopian fad grow, his distrust of it began to harden into a cyber-pessimism that could at times be just as dogmatic. After leaving Transitions, Morozov eventually ended up as a fellow at OSF (a funder of Transitions), which brought him to New York in August 2008. The following year Morozov gave—wait for it—a TED talk in Oxford called, ‘How the Net Aids Dictatorships.’ This was sort of a coming-out party for Evgeny the skeptic, and an important step in turning that skepticism into a brand. It’s another video worth watching and quite a contrast to his enthusing about crowdsourcing just two years before. In the video, he stands in the middle of the stage wearing a wrinkled blue shirt open at the neck. There is a humble, self-effacing air about him, as if he barely expects to be listened to. His only gesture is to move his hands up and down, often in unison, as he emphasizes his points about how all the digital tools and ideas the audience is so excited about are enabling surveillance and targeting of dissidents by thugs and autocrats worldwide.

“Evgeny becomes attached to particular ideas that he believes, for the good of the thinking public, need to be debunked,” says OSF’s Benardo. He compares Morozov to social critics like Karl Kraus and Dwight MacDonald, professional buzzkills who “felt almost divinely anointed” in their efforts to tear down false hopes and received wisdom.”

Tags: ,

“We’re Bastards To The World And They’re Bastards To Us”

January 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ambitious or just myopic Attorney Generals or District Attorneys sometimes shine too bright a light on a scary but small faction of criminals, forcing the public attention in the wrong direction. Such was the case in California in 1966 when a shocking report of a crime made the Hell’s Angels public enemy no. 1. Hunter S. Thompson elucidated the disproportionate attention the motorcycle gang was receiving in an article that year in the Nation, before feeding the myth himself with a book about the unholy rollers. An excerpt:

“After two weeks of intensive dealings with the Hell’s Angels phenomenon, both in print and in person, I’m convinced the net result of the general howl and publicity has been to obscure and avoid the real issues by invoking a savage conspiracy of bogeymen and conning the public into thinking all will be ‘business as usual’ once this fearsome snake is scotched, as it surely will be by hard and ready minions of the Establishment.

Meanwhile, according to Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch’s own figures, California’s true crime picture makes the Hell’s Angels look like a gang of petty jack rollers. The police count 463 Hell’s Angels: 205 around L.A. and 233 in the San Francisco-Oakland area. I don’t know about L.A. but the real figures for the Bay Area are thirty or so in Oakland and exactly eleven–with one facing expulsion–in San Francisco. This disparity makes it hard to accept other police statistics. The dubious package also shows convictions on 1,023 misdemeanor counts and 151 felonies–primarily vehicle theft, burglary and assault. This is for all years and all alleged members.

California’s overall figures for 1963 list 1,116 homicides, 12,448 aggravated assaults, 6,257 sex offenses, and 24,532 burglaries. In 1962, the state listed 4,121 traffic deaths, up from 3,839 in 1961. Drug arrest figures for 1964 showed a 101 percent increase in juvenile marijuana arrests over 1963, and a recent back-page story in the San Francisco Examiner said, ‘The venereal disease rate among [the city’s] teen-agers from 15-19 has more than doubled in the past four years.’ Even allowing for the annual population jump, juvenile arrests in all categories are rising by 10 per cent or more each year.

Against this background, would it make any difference to the safety and peace of mind of the average Californian if every motorcycle outlaw in the state (all 901, according to the state) were garroted within twenty-four hours? This is not to say that a group like the Hell’s Angels has no meaning. The generally bizarre flavor of their offenses and their insistence on identifying themselves make good copy, but usually overwhelm–in print, at least–the unnerving truth that they represent, in colorful microcosm, what is quietly and anonymously growing all around us every day of the week.

‘We’re bastards to the world and they’re bastards to us,’ one of the Oakland Angels told a Newsweek reporter. ‘When you walk into a place where people can see you, you want to look as repulsive and repugnant as possible. We are complete social outcasts–outsiders against society.’

A lot of this is a pose, but anyone who believes that’s all it is has been on thin ice since the death of Jay Gatsby. The vast majority of motorcycle outlaws are uneducated, unskilled men between 20 and 30, and most have no credentials except a police record. So at the root of their sad stance is a lot more than a wistful yearning for acceptance in a world they never made; their real motivation is an instinctive certainty as to what the score really is. They are out of the ball game and they know it–and that is their meaning; for unlike most losers in today’s society, the Hell’s Angels not only know but spitefully proclaim exactly where they stand.”

_________________________________

A year later, Sonny Barger terrorizes Thompson:

Tags: ,

“The Data’s Just So Awesome. It’s An Economist’s Dream.”

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

It’s not surprise, I suppose, that top tech companies have economics departments of their own, hoping to carve behavioral patterns into data mountains. From a Bloomberg article by Aki Ito about Silicon Valley competing with academia, government and Wall Street for newly minted PhDs:

“It’s this real-world impact that drew economist Michael Bailey to Menlo Park, California-based Facebook in 2012. Managers across the social-networking company come to his team of data scientists with various problems, and Bailey’s group runs experiments to find solutions.

Their goal is to have the findings be used to make the social-networking site a better platform for both advertisers and the now more than 1 billion users worldwide, he said.

Bailey said he didn’t even consider a career outside academia until Facebook asked him to join full-time after a stint there as a research intern. Even then, he was unsure: the point of enduring five grueling years of graduate school was to become a professor. Only after he returned to Stanford to complete his dissertation did he realize life in Silicon Valley was the better choice for him.

‘The pace is just so much faster here and I’m much happier solving a lot of different problems than focusing on one problem for seven years,’ said Bailey, 30.

Besides, he says, ‘the data’s just so awesome. It’s an economist’s dream.’

The rise of the Internet company economist can be traced to Hal Varian, who started consulting with Google in 2002 as a UC Berkeley professor. He became the company’s chief economist in 2007 and has helped hone the design of the company’s search advertising auctions, central to the $50 billion business.

Other experts in microeconomics have since made similar moves. Preston McAfee joined Yahoo! Inc.’s research arm in 2007 and left for Google in 2012. Susan Athey, then a professor at Harvard and now at Stanford, started consulting for Microsoft in 2007. Patrick Bajari has led Amazon’s team of economists since 2010.”

Tags: ,

“This Chicken’s Beak Was Cut Off, Causing It Intense Pain Until Its Death”

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

Are there any butcher shops in major American cities that still have dead animals hanging in the window? That used to be de rigueur, but suffering and death are bad for business; it’s better to focus on the finished product and disappear all the unpleasantness. The opening of “The Case for Ethical Warning Labels on Meat,” from Thomas Rodham Wells at the Philosopher’s Beard:

“Like cigarettes, meat and dairy packaging should include no nonsense factual warnings about the negative consequences of one’s consumption choices. Just as with cigarettes, there is a strong case that exercising one’s sovereign right to free choice on personal matters requires that people be adequately informed about the significant negative implications of their choices by someone other than the manufacturer that wants them to buy the product. In this case the significant consequences relate to living up to one’s ethical values rather than safe-guarding one’s prudential interests in long-term health. But the principle is the same.

Ethical warning labels would inform consumers of the physical and mental suffering involved in producing the animal products they are considering buying. I envisage labels like this:

This chicken’s beak was cut off, causing it intense pain until its death

and

This cow’s babies were taken away and killed to keep it producing milk.

Servers of cooked animal products, from lowly hot-dog stands to the fanciest restaurants, would also have to include these ethical warnings prominently on their menus.”

Tags:

“He Reached Out And Took A Few Pills From The Candy Dish In The Middle Of the Coffee Table”

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

Drugs have always been for polite people, too, though the packaging is often nicer. Prescriptions written on clean, white sheets of paper dispense pain killers with alarming regularity now, but it’s always been one high or another. From “White-Collar Pill Party,” Bruce Jackson’s 1966 Atlantic article:

Think for a moment: how many people do you know who cannot stop stuffing themselves without an amphetamine and who cannot go to sleep without a barbiturate (over nine billion of those produced last year) or make it through a workday without a sequence of tranquilizers? And what about those six million alcoholics, who daily ingest quantities of what is, by sheer force of numbers, the most addicting drug in America?

The publicity goes to the junkies, lately to the college kids, but these account for only a small portion of the American drug problem. Far more worrisome are the millions of people who have become dependent on commercial drugs. The junkie knows he is hooked; the housewife on amphetamine and the businessman on meprobamate hardly ever realize what has gone wrong.

Sometimes the pill-takers meet other pill-takers, and an odd thing happens: instead of using the drug to cope with the world, they begin to use their time to take drugs. Taking drugs becomes something to do. When this stage is reached, the drug-taking pattern broadens: the user takes a wider variety of drugs with increasing frequency. For want of a better term, one might call it the white collar drug scene.

I first learned about it during a party in Chicago last winter, and the best way to introduce you will be to tell you something about that evening, the people I met, what I think was happening.

There were about a dozen people in the room, and over the noise from the record player scraps of conversation came through:

“Now the Desbutal, if you take it with this stuff, has a peculiar effect, contraindication, at least it did for me. You let me know if you … “

“I don’t have one legitimate prescription, Harry, not one! Can you imagine that?” “I’ll get you some tomorrow, dear.”

“… and this pharmacist on Fifth will sell you all the leapers [amphetamines] you can carry—just like that. Right off the street. I don’t think he’d know a prescription if it bit him.” “As long as he can read the labels, what the hell.”

“You know, a funny thing happened to me. I got this green and yellow capsule, and I looked it up in the Book, and it wasn’t anything I’d been using, and I thought, great! It’s not something I’ve built a tolerance to. And I took it. A couple of them. And you know what happened? Nothing! That’s what happened, not a goddamned thing.”

The Book—the Physicians’ Desk Reference, which lists the composition and effects of almost all commercial pharmaceuticals produced in this country—passes back and forth, and two or three people at a time look up the contents and possible values of a drug one of them has just discovered or heard about or acquired or taken. The Book is the pillhead’s Yellow Pages: you look up the effect you want (“Sympathomimetics” or “Cerebral Stimulants,” for example), and it tells you the magic columns. The pillheads swap stories of kicks and sound like professional chemists discussing recent developments; others listen, then examine the PDR to see if the drug discussed really could do that.

Eddie, the host, a painter who has received some recognition, had been awake three or four days, he was not exactly sure. He consumes between 150 and 200 milligrams of amphetamine a day, needs a large part of that to stay awake, even when he has slipped a night’s sleep in somewhere. The dose would cause most people some difficulty; the familiar diet pill, a capsule of Dexamyl or Eskatrol, which makes the new user edgy and overenergetic and slightly insomniac the first few days, contains only 10 or 15 milligrams of amphetamine. But amphetamine is one of the few central nervous system stimulants to which one can develop a tolerance, and over the months and years Ed and his friends have built up massive tolerances and dependencies. “Leapers aren’t so hard to give up,” he told me. “I mean, I sleep almost constantly when I’m off, but you get over that. But everything is so damned boring without the pills.”

I asked him if he knew many amphetamine users who have given up the pills.

“For good?”

I nodded.

“I haven’t known anybody that’s given it up for good.” He reached out and took a few pills from the candy dish in the middle of the coffee table, then washed them down with some Coke.•

Tags:

Old Print Article: “Dis Debar Founds A New Cult Here,” New York Times (1909)

January 1, 2014 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“After a number of escapades in her early career here she ended up in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for a short term.”

The Swami Laura Horos was a Kentucky-born religious swindler of regal countenance, innumerable aliases and great talent, known as a medium who created short-lived sects aimed at separating the devout from their dollars, often selling “spiritual paintings” of little value for exorbitant fees. A serial bride, her husbands were likewise scammers or the unfortunately scammed, and she was frequently arrested in New York City and other points in America. She faced her most serious criminal trial, however, in England in 1901, when she and one of her spouses were charged with (and found guilty of) fraud and rape. Her vagabond life continued when she was released from custody in 1906. A New York Times article in the August 26, 1909 edition covers her return to the city, as she practiced her dark art under the name Ann O’Delia Dis Debar. An excerpt about her career, as it were:

“…Ann O’Delia Dis Debar has been in the papers for years. When she came to New York some thirty-eight years ago she was a handsome young woman, who claimed to be Princess Edith, Countess of Landsfelt, daughter of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, and Lola Montez. Others say she was the daughter of a Kentucky school teacher named Salomon. 

After a number of escapades in her early career here she ended up in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for a short term. She married Paul Noel Massant, who died soon after; then she turned up in Baltimore. She married Gen. Joseph Dis Debar, and soon afterward was giving spiritualistic séances.

It was about 1885 that she met Luther R. Marsh in this city. He was a wealthy and distinguished lawyer, who had studied law in Daniel Webster’s office. He came entirely under her influence. She gave séances in his Madison Avenue house, which he gave to her, and then bought many paintings which she claimed had been made by spirits. His friends took up his case, had Ann O’Delia Dis Debar indicted, and made her disgorge some some of Mr. Marsh’s property. She spent some time on Blackwell’s Island in 1888. 

After her release she went to Europe, returned to Chicago, where she was known as Vera P. Ava and Ida Veed-Ya, and was sent to Joliet Penitentiary for two years. When she got out she married her third husband, William J. McGowan, who had considerable money. He died soon afterward.

In 1899, she was in New Orleans with Theodore Jackson, whose wife she professed to be. They were driven out of New Orleans and turned up in Florida next. Later they were heard of in Africa doing a religious turn under the name of Helena and Horos. In London, in 1901, her husband was charged with luring young girls into a new cult. He was sent to prison for fifteen years and Dis Debar for seven years. She was turned out on parole in August, 1906, and immediately decamped. For this Scotland Yard is looking for her.

Next she descended upon Michigan at the head of a new cult called the ‘House of Israel,’ or the ‘Flying Rollers.’ Then David Mckay became her secretary. She called herself Elinor L. Mason.

She and Mackay disappeared in 1907 after her identity became suspected and neither had been heard from since up to yesterday. It was learned that they have been working quietly in New Jersey and New York.

The Detective Bureau would like to know where Dis Debar is right now.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

January 1, 2014 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

Kidney and I.D. for sale – $2500

Im in need of money and willing to sell my kidney-$6500 (non smoker and non drinker) or i.d.-$2500 (social security card and birth certificate).


“I’m Chasing One Of Britain’s Hottest Properties”

January 1, 2014 in Science/Tech, Sports, Videos | Permalink

Here’s a 1971 episode of the British version of This Is Your Life, which features soccer legend George Best, who was in his prime, a remarkable athlete who looked like a member of Led Zeppelin, a swashbuckling playboy envied by all. But he was already dying–he’d been dying almost from the beginning. Like his mother who is seen in this program, Best was an inveterate alcoholic who wrecked his career and himself at an early age. He had it all, except what he needed most, whatever that was. It was a miracle that he made it to 59. Was it nurture or nature? 

We never know what’s inside of somebody else–sometimes even inside of ourselves. Of course, that’s not only true in the negative sense. People can unfold in beautiful and surprising ways also. And why do some people keep growing, changing, evolving? Again: Is it nature or nurture? Probably something innate that may need to be unlocked by experience.

Tags:

« Older entries § Newer entries »