“It’s Not Exactly A Vacation Spot”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Phil Plait at Slate pointing out the similarities and differences of our planet and Kepler-78b, the “another Earth” exoplanet discovered via space telescope:

“Kepler-78b, it turns out, has a mass of 1.7 times that of the Earth. That may sound like a lot, but remember, Kepler-78b is bigger, too. When you do the math, you find that its density is almost exactly the same as Earth’s!

This means Kepler-78b is most likely made of roughly the same stuff as Earth, and in roughly the same proportion. It may very well have a dense iron core and a lighter rocky mantle just as Earth does.

That’s amazing.

However, the resemblance ends there. With a daytime temperature in the thousands of degrees, the surface of the planet is almost certainly molten rock, so it’s not exactly a vacation spot. But it does show that the Earth is not a one-off planet; the Universe is quite capable of making Earth-sized planets that have the same physical characteristics as well.”

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“It’s Almost Two Hours Per Game!”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Sports | Permalink

Major League Baseball only makes a piece of its revenue from the World Series, so perhaps it’s time to take a little less network money to negotiate fewer commercial breaks and make the games of a more reasonable length. It also wouldn’t hurt if basic technology was introduced to enforce existing rules. Two things from the most recent chat by ESPN’s David Schoenfield follow (phrases made bold by me):

“David Schoenfield:

The biggest problem in the postseason is the length of the commercial breaks. We have a guy here who is keeping track of the time on commercials — it’s almost two hours per game!“

“Jeff (St Cloud):

The length of games this world series has been excruciating, and I fear replay will only make it worse. The fact that it’s the same subpar commentators every game doesn’t make it any easier to watch. If I was commissioner, I would make all reviews come from and be decided on by the league office, much like they do in the NHL. And add a pitch clock. The ratings aren’t down so massively because of the teams or markets, it’s because it takes more time and mental effort than a bad Monday Night Football game.”

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“We’re Spending Less Time In Near-Collision States”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Google believes its driverless cars are already safer than human drivers. Even if that’s currently too ambitious a statement, it’s really only a matter of time. From Tom Simonite at the Technology Review:

“Data gathered from Google’s self-driving Prius and Lexus cars shows that they are safer and smoother when steering themselves than when a human takes the wheel, according to the leader of Google’s autonomous-car project.

Chris Urmson made those claims today at a robotics conference in Santa Clara, California. He presented results from two studies of data from the hundreds of thousands of miles Google’s vehicles have logged on public roads in California and Nevada.

One of those analyses showed that when a human was behind the wheel, Google’s cars accelerated and braked significantly more sharply than they did when piloting themselves. Another showed that the cars’ software was much better at maintaining a safe distance from the vehicle ahead than the human drivers were.

‘We’re spending less time in near-collision states,’ said Urmson. ‘Our car is driving more smoothly and more safely than our trained professional drivers.'”

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“It Conjured A Vision, At Once Appealing And Threatening”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A news company as massive as the New York Times encompasses all things, all ideas–it contains multitudes, to paraphrase Walt Whitman. So, the paper of record could look silly in 1985 publishing a piece that predicted laptops would never really catch on but look brilliant three years earlier pretty much laying out the next several decades of our ever-increasingly digitized world, the triumphs and the fears. From “Study Says Technology Could Transform Society,” an article by Robert Reinhold in the June 14, 1982 edition:

“WASHINGTON— A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation and made public today speculates that by the end of this century electronic information technology will have transformed American home, business, manufacturing, school, family and political life.

The report suggests that one-way and two-way home information systems, called teletext and videotex, will penetrate deeply into daily life, with an effect on society as profound as those of the automobile and commercial television earlier in this century.

It conjured a vision, at once appealing and threatening, of a style of life defined and controlled by videotex terminals throughout the house.

As a consequence, the report envisioned this kind of American home by the year 1998: ‘Family life is not limited to meals, weekend outings, and once a-year vacations. Instead of being the glue that holds things together so that family members can do all those other things they’re expected to do – like work, school, and community gatherings -the family is the unit that does those other things, and the home is the place where they get done. Like the term ‘cottage industry,’ this view might seem to reflect a previous era when family trades were passed down from generation to generation, and children apprenticed to their parents. In the ‘electronic cottage,’ however, one electronic ‘tool kit’ can support many information production trades.’

The report warned that the new technology would raise difficult issues of privacy and control that will have to be addressed soon to ‘maximize its benefits and minimize its threats to society.'”

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“Between 14 And 20 Million Medicaid Recipients Would Lose Their Insurance”

October 30, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I thought Jon Stewart handled his recent interview with conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer better than most so-called real journalists would. He almost always outdoes them, of course. But there was one point he let slide that I wished he would have jumped on. Krauthammer’s disdain for what Obamacare will do to policy in the course of granting affordable insurance to tens of millions led him down a dead-end alley–and a familiar one at that.

First, he claimed that Republicans really do want health care for all Americans. That may be true for Krauthammer personally, but it certainly isn’t of members of his party with voting power in Washington. But it’s not likely that the talking head wants health care for all, either, since he followed up with his contention by using the Ryan budgets of an example of how more Americans could be insured. That’s just an outright lie. First an excerpt from Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic and then the Stewart-Krauthammer meeting.

“Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan. You remember those, right? Those proposals passed through the House with unanimous Republican support and were, in 2012, a basis of the Republican presidential platform. Those budgets called for dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans had swept into power and enacted such changes, according to projections prepared by Urban Institute scholars and published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance. And that doesn’t even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare’s expansions of the program. That’s another 10 to 17 million people.”

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A Brief Note From 1892 About A Barking Man

October 29, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 9, 1892 New York Times:

“Lynn, Mass.–John Anderson, a Swede, died this morning a terrible death. Three weeks ago he was bitten on the lip by a dog. The wound was not cauterized. Anderson was taken ill on Monday, and at once had a decided antipathy to water. Tuesday night he began frothing at the mouth and was unable to take food. About midnight he began barking and snarling like a dog and raved in delirium.

In his struggles he bit at his friends and tore the bedclothing to ribbons with his teeth. In his agony he gnawed the footboard and posts of the bed, his teeth sinking deep into the hard wood. He died in the greatest agony.

Consulting physicians pronounced death due to the effect of fright on his mind and its subsequent action on the heart.”

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“Their Concerns And Conversations Are Those Of Clever Children, ‘Class Brains,’ Acting Out A Yearbook Fantasy Of Adult Life”

October 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1979, Joan Didion wrote for an essay for the New York Review of Books about a trio of Woody Allen films–Manhattan, Annie Hall and Interiors–commenting that the filmmaker’s adult characters had taken on the qualities of adolescents, becoming consumed with their place in the world–charting their loves and losses–listing their faves and likes, as if writing in a school yearbook in the air. And this, of course, was long before social networks gave us the tools to completely realize such a thing–to become a global village that’s connected if not mature. The opening:

“Self-absorption is general, as is self-doubt. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be dressed in ‘real linen,’ cut by Calvin Klein to wrinkle, which implies real money. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be served the perfect vegetable terrine. It was a summer in which only have-nots wanted a cigarette or a vodka-and-tonic or a charcoal-broiled steak. It was a summer in which the more hopeful members of the society wanted roller skates, and stood in line to see Woody Allen’s Manhattan, a picture in which, toward the end, the Woody Allen character makes a list of reasons to stay alive. ‘Groucho Marx’ is one reason, and ‘Willie Mays’ is another. The second movement of Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. Louis Armstrong’s ‘Potato Head Blues.’ Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education. This list is modishly eclectic, a trace wry, definitely OK with real linen; and notable, as raisons d’être go, in that every experience it evokes is essentially passive. This list of Woody Allen’s is the ultimate consumer report, and the extent to which it has been quoted approvingly suggests a new class in America, a subworld of people rigid with apprehension that they will die wearing the wrong sneaker, naming the wrong symphony, preferring Madame Bovary. 

What is arresting about these recent ‘serious’ pictures of Woody Allen’s, about Annie Hall and Interiors as well as Manhattan, is not the way they work as pictures but the way they work with audiences. The people who go to see these pictures, who analyze them and write about them and argue the deeper implications in their texts and subtexts, seem to agree that the world onscreen pretty much mirrors the world as they know it. This is interesting, and rather astonishing, since the peculiar and hermetic self-regard in Annie Hall andInteriors and Manhattan would seem nothing with which large numbers of people would want to identify. The characters in these pictures are, at best, trying. They are morose. They have bad manners. They seem to take long walks and go to smart restaurants only to ask one another hard questions. ‘Are you serious about Tracy?’ the Michael Murphy character asks the Woody Allen character in Manhattan. ‘Are you still hung up on Yale?’ the Woody Allen character asks the Diane Keaton character. ‘I think I’m still in love with Yale,’ she confesses several scenes later. ‘You are?’ he counters, ‘or you think you are?’ All of the characters in Woody Allen pictures not only ask these questions but actually answer them, on camera, and then, usually in another restaurant, listen raptly to third-party analyses of their own questions and answers.

‘How come you guys got divorced?’ they ask each other with real interest, and, on a more rhetorical level, ‘why are you so hostile,’ and ‘why can’t you just once in a while consider my needs.’ (‘I’m sick of your needs’ is the way Diane Keaton answers this question in Interiors, one of the few lucid moments in the picture.)What does she say, these people ask incessantly, what does she say and what does he say and, finally, inevitably, ‘what does your analyst say.’ These people have, on certain subjects, extraordinary attention spans. When Natalie Gittelson of The New York Times Magazine recently asked Woody Allen how his own analysis was going after twenty-two years, he answered this way: ‘It’s very slow…but an hour a day, talking about your emotions, hopes, angers, disappointments, with someone who’s trained to evaluate this material—over a period of years, you’re bound to get more in touch with feelings than someone who makes no effort.’

Well, yes and (apparently) no. Over a period of twenty-two years ‘you’re bound’ only to get older, barring nasty surprises. This notion of oneself as a kind of continuing career—something to work at, work on, ‘make an effort’ for and subject to an hour a day of emotional Nautilus training, all in the interests not of attaining grace but of improving one’s ‘relationships’—is fairly recent in the world, at least in the world not inhabited entirely by adolescents. In fact the paradigm for the action in these recent Woody Allen movies is high school. The characters in Manhattan and Annie Hall and Interiors are, with one exception, presented as adults, as sentient men and women in the most productive years of their lives, but their concerns and conversations are those of clever children, ‘class brains,’ acting out a yearbook fantasy of adult life.”

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“The Indirect Toll, Though Harder To Measure, Was Greater”

October 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

It was a year ago today that several of my relatives, in harm’s way of Hurricane Sandy, literally ran for their lives, fanning out from flood zones into the darkness of a city that quickly came to resemble a necropolis. Their homes and many others have not yet been fully repaired, and, worse yet, the toll on their health was even more severe. Two members of my immediate family who were in the storm’s path nearly died in emergency rooms in the ten months after the ferocious storm, suffering from unusual bacterial illnesses that may have been caused by the flood waters or clean-up efforts. No one’s sure. Having spent nearly two months visiting hospitals, I can’t quite count the number of patients and medical personnel who told me they still hadn’t rebuilt their houses, hadn’t yet recovered their health, their wits. The storm doesn’t end when the winds and rains die down–that’s just the beginning. And I will never forget how Paul Ryan and others voted against Sandy relief as people desperately searched for help. How many of these people self-identify as Christians when campaigning?

From Amy Davidson at the New Yorker blog:

“Well over a hundred people were killed by the storm, and the indirect toll, though harder to measure, was greater. The mortality rate in that Coney Island nursing home, according to a new report from NY1, was higher in the weeks and months after Sandy than it had any right to be. Since the storm, evacuation maps have been redrawn, subway tunnels are still being repaired (after a heroic effort to reopen them in those first days), and New York is inching toward a discussion of what a world of climate change, with rising sea levels and more extreme weather, means for a metropolis built on one of the planet’s best natural harbors. But perhaps the greatest mistake would be to reminisce only about the ways that the storm created unity and division, rather than looking critically at how it interacted with the city’s persistent inequalities. There is a reason that the tale of two cities has been one of the motifs of this year’s mayoral campaign—and it has nothing to do with just where the lights went out.”

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“Steve Jobs Built The First 100 Apple 1 Computers At The Crist Drive Home”

October 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

You can hardly blame the town elders in Los Altos for designating Steve Jobs’ childhood home an historic resource. There’s tourism money in the short-term future. But for how many decades will Jobs be recalled and revered? Edwin Land was once just as big an icon. From Jason Green at the Mercury News:

“Steve Jobs built the first 100 Apple 1 computers at the Crist Drive home with help from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Patricia Jobs. The first 50 were sold to Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop in Mountain View for $500 each, according to the evaluation. The rest were assembled for their friends in the Homebrew Computer Club.

‘I’d get yelled at if I bent a prong,’ Patricia Jobs told The Daily News in an interview last month.

The original computers are now worth tens of thousands of dollars. One sold for $213,000 at an auction in 2010.

The home is also where Jobs courted some of his first investors, including Chuck Peddle of Commodore Computer and Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital, according to the evaluation.

The first partnership for Apple Computer Co. was signed on April 1, 1976, and nine months later the company was established and operations moved to nearby Cupertino.

‘These significant events took place at the subject property,’ Commissioner Sapna Marfatia wrote in the evaluation.”

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“It Was Quiet In The Dark, Cold Box In The Desert, Except For The Low Hum Of Machines”

October 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “Confessions of a Drone Warrior,” Matthew Power’s GQ article about Brandon Bryant, one of the first recruits into the new world of push-button war, a fighter pilot who never had to board the plane, and one who could barely see the carnage in the corner of a screen:

“From the darkness of a box in the Nevada desert, he watched as three men trudged down a dirt road in Afghanistan. The box was kept cold—precisely sixty-eight degrees—and the only light inside came from the glow of monitors. The air smelled spectrally of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. On his console, the image showed the midwinter landscape of eastern Afghanistan’s Kunar Province—a palette of browns and grays, fields cut to stubble, dark forests climbing the rocky foothills of the Hindu Kush. He zoomed the camera in on the suspected insurgents, each dressed in traditional shalwar kameez, long shirts and baggy pants. He knew nothing else about them: not their names, not their thoughts, not the thousand mundane and profound details of their lives.

He was told that they were carrying rifles on their shoulders, but for all he knew, they were shepherd’s staffs. Still, the directive from somewhere above, a mysterious chain of command that led straight to his headset, was clear: confirmed weapons. He switched from the visible spectrum—the muted grays and browns of ‘day-TV’—to the sharp contrast of infrared, and the insurgents’ heat signatures stood out ghostly white against the cool black earth. A safety observer loomed behind him to make sure the ‘weapon release’ was by the book. A long verbal checklist, his targeting laser locked on the two men walking in front. A countdown—three…two…one…—then the flat delivery of the phrase ‘missile off the rail.’ Seventy-five hundred miles away, a Hellfire flared to life, detached from its mount, and reached supersonic speed in seconds. 

It was quiet in the dark, cold box in the desert, except for the low hum of machines.

He kept the targeting laser trained on the two lead men and stared so intently that each individual pixel stood out, a glowing pointillist dot abstracted from the image it was meant to form. Time became almost ductile, the seconds stretched and slowed in a strange electronic limbo. As he watched the men walk, the one who had fallen behind seemed to hear something and broke into a run to catch up with the other two. Then, bright and silent as a camera flash, the screen lit up with white flame. 

Airman First Class Brandon Bryant stared at the scene, unblinking in the white-hot clarity of infrared. He recalls it even now, years later, burned into his memory like a photo negative: ‘The smoke clears, and there’s pieces of the two guys around the crater. And there’s this guy over here, and he’s missing his right leg above his knee. He’s holding it, and he’s rolling around, and the blood is squirting out of his leg, and it’s hitting the ground, and it’s hot. His blood is hot. But when it hits the ground, it starts to cool off; the pool cools fast. It took him a long time to die. I just watched him. I watched him become the same color as the ground he was lying on.’ “

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

October 29, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

My Life Story (Brooklyn)

The first 10 chapters of my life story.

A very unique tale about a depressed male obsessed with atheism and black women.

Send for more details.

“Now I Live An Absolutely Independent, Decentralized Method Of Living”

October 29, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some want to go off the grid, and architect/scavenger Michael Reynolds is there to help, with his “Earthships,’ fully self-sustaining, green homes in New Mexico that look like they were built on the wrong side of an apocalypse. Yet they have a great deal of charm, in addition to being beyond the reach of civilization. From an interview with Reynolds by Roc Morin at Vice:

“Vice:

How do Earthships change the lives of their inhabitants?

Michael Reynolds:

When you get in a situation where all of your utilities come directly to you from the sun, wind, and rain, it empowers you. So what if the economy crashes? So what if the politics don’t work out? People are still in charge of their lives. The biggest change that happens is that people become less dependent on the powers that be and more secure in their own being.

 Vice:

Is that what you had in mind in the early 70s when you first started?

Michael Reynolds:

No. I didn’t have a master plan. I just followed my nose, responding to one thing and then another. I wanted to make the buildings out of things we throw away rather than cutting down trees. Then I wanted to harvest my own water because water’s getting to be an issue all over the planet. I wanted to make my own power so I wouldn’t be vulnerable to power outages and reinforce the need for nuclear power plants. Then I started seeing that sewage was not being treated right anywhere on the planet, so I wanted to be responsible for my own. And I didn’t like the food that I purchased, even in health food stores. It’s still grown for money and has dyes and all kinds of chemicals in it, so I wanted to do my own food. One thing led to another, and now I live an absolutely independent, decentralized method of living.

 Vice:

Do you have a sense of why we make buildings the way we do? Why are straight lines the standard across the Western world?

Michael Reynolds:

The idea started out from the ease of producing hard-edged materials and shipping them. Every building you see is a square box. But look at nature—a wasp nest or a beaver dam. It feels a lot better on your mind to be in a soft organic building than it does to be in a hard-edged, industrial-type building.”

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“People Are Going To Haunted Houses To Be In The Movie”

October 29, 2013 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Movies want to escape the theaters and everyone, in one way or another, is a star now. Watching films on iPhones might seem to make Nora Desmond an even greater prophet, but if the pictures have gotten even smaller, they’re everywhere today, being captured by cameras you can barely see–some that you can’t see at all. We still like to watch, but it’s not enough–we want to be seen, we want to be in the movie. We’ve finally stormed the gates. Now what?

From an Economist article about the new wave of big-budget haunted houses in the U.S.:

“In order to get the most boo for their buck, haunters use the latest technology. Where there is competition—there are at least half a dozen haunts in New York City alone—the standards are high. Hollywood special effects and animatronic ghouls are common. But warm-blooded labour, mostly in the form of actors, is often the biggest cost.

A web of regulations, fire- and crowd-related, can make life hellish for potential fearmongers. The (enormous) haunt of Frau Mueller was given a boost when regulators laid a competitor to rest. The frau herself was nearly sent to an early grave—the haunt was approved a day before opening, and only after a path was cut down the middle for safety.

Even if they are not all grim reapers of profit, haunters have a passion for their work. Steve Kopelman, who produces haunts across the country, wanted to make movies when he was younger. Now, he says, people are going to haunted houses to be in the movie. Indeed, Hollywood is getting in on the act. Mr Kopelman is co-producing a haunt near Los Angeles with Rob Zombie, a director of scary films.”

“A Superstar Of The Beat Age Prepares To Meet His Public”

October 29, 2013 in Videos | Permalink

About 12 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage of David Bowie during his 1973 Ziggy Stardust tour.

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“Why Not Follow The Consumers’ Desire To Watch Things When They Want?”

October 28, 2013 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

About a dozen years ago, I wrote a piece online in which I predicted that eventually all films would have a “pan release,” that they would be available the day they open on all screens–theaters, TV, computers. It didn’t make sense to me to limit it. Why not reach for every distribution channel? I can tell you every person I spoke to who read that article told me that I was wrong and that it would never, ever happen, that the economics would not allow it. But Netflix is trying to disrupt Hollywood in just that way right now. From Peter Kafka at All Things D:

“During the company’s earnings call last week, content boss Ted Sarandos said the company was interested in breaking into movies, and that investors should ‘keep [their] mind wide open to what those films would be and what they would look like.’

This weekend, Sarandos got more explicit. In a speech hosted by Film Independent, the nonprofit behind the indie film Spirit Awards, Sarandos said Netflix could start delivering new movies to its subscribers by doing the same thing it has done with its original TV shows, and becoming a first-run distributor.

‘What we’re trying to do for TV, the model should extend pretty nicely to movies. Meaning, why not premiere movies on Netflix, the same day they’re opening in theaters? And not little movies — there’s a lot of ways, and lot of people to do that [already]. Why not big movies? Why not follow the consumers’ desire to watch things when they want?’

Good logic. And hard to imagine how that will work.

But presumably that’s Sarandos’s point — Netflix wants to show that it can do it, at least once, and put pressure on the rest of Hollywood to change.”

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“Many Are Beginning To See A Solution In A Little Black Box That Fits Neatly By The Dashboard Of Your Car”

October 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you want to complain about having to help foot the bill for other people’s health insurance in a universal system, you probably should not be overweight or a smoker or sedentary or involved in any other risky behaviors. Otherwise other people who are healthier will be helping to subsidize the care you will need. Likewise, those who don’t drive help pay the way for those who do, pitching in for infrastructure they don’t use. A collective is never completely even in every way, but it’s how we get things done. It’s the greater good.

But technology is making it easier for us to assess individual cost. A company called True Mileage enables states to install a box in every automobile that measures mileage. Those who drive the most will be taxed the highest. The opening of a Los Angeles Times story by Evan Halper about Washington State enacting such a plan:

“Washington — As America’s road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America’s major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Unionis deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can’t agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.”

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A Brief Note From 1899 About Childish Fanatics

October 28, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the March 26, 1899 New York Times:

“In New York City about 1832, a period of ‘great awakening’ that begat Mormonism and many other sects–among them one in Kentucky, whose members, in order to win heaven by making themselves as little children, used to crawl on their hands and knees in church, play marbles, trundle hoops, and otherwise manifest their infantile madness.”

“The Nearest Power Line Is Over 20 Miles Away”

October 28, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

As going off the grid gets increasingly difficult, it becomes a more cherished dream. One family, Dan and Sheila and son, who took the plunge seven years ago, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit about the reality of such a commitment. A few exchanges follow.

_________________________

Question:

What made you go off-grid?

Answer:

We are from Back East and our goal was always to go off the grid, away from highly populated areas, and “live the good life”. We worked our butts of for 20 years to get here.

_________________________

Question:

What was the hardest adjustment in moving away from civilization?

Answer:

Planning food for months at a time. We can’t just go shopping any time we want, since the closest grocery store (notice I didn’t say “supermarket”) is 50 miles away.

_________________________

Question:

How “off the governmental” grid are you. How do you go about paying taxes, federal, etc.

Do you keep up with your state issued ID? Things of that nature?

Answer:

We pay our property taxes and all other taxes that we are required to do.

This being Catron County, the local government is quite non-invasive. This was once the getaway of Geronimo and his band, and Butch Cassidy and his gang, and there really isn’t much required other than “live and live,” or what we call here “the fence policy”. That is, what you do on your side of the fence is your business.

_________________________

Question:

You mention that you don’t have a car, and I was wondering what the benefit of this is other than a gesture. It seems to me that having a car provides an important option in a crisis, even if you don’t use it frivolously.

Answer:

One of the local ranchers here has lots of horses, they are always in the area, we only need to take a halter and a saddle over to one of them and we have a ride. Not having a vehicle is not the best way to go but it is what we needed to do to make this possible.

_________________________

Question:

Medical emergencies aside, how would you deal with chronic illness out there?

Answer:

This is a real concern for me as I consider moving forward – I have Crohn’s Disease, and I’m in remission which means it’s not a crisis, but I still do need to take a lot of medicine daily, and follow up with doctors/ blood work with some regularity. Would your lifestyle be able to accommodate something like this? I realize getting Crohn’s is unlikely, but as you guys get older, it’s not unreasonable to expect some problems may arise.

When we moved here I weighed 300lbs, I now weigh around 175lbs, I can say this the life will get you in shape of kill you. Around this time of day I cut wood with my son who is 22yo, I’m 60. We cut wood with a two man saw 72″ type and this will get you in shape quick.. When I first started using it I thought I would die, now in all honesty I must say that I love using it. Looking at the 8 cords of wood hand cut by myself and my son is very rewarding. I understand about cronic diseases my brother has Crohn’s disease also. But for my self my only cronic problem is a knee replacement when I was in the army over 40 years ago….. it slows me down a bit but I refuse to let it be a hindrance.

_________________________

Question:

How “off the grid” can you be if you’ve got a website?

Answer:

Very, the nearest power line is over 20 miles away, no phone cell or LL and a very quiet place to be….. we have solar and use satellite internet.•

“In Reality, Such Choices Are Extremely Rare”

October 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Brad Templeton, who is a consultant to Google on its development of driverless cars thinks that thought-experiment the Trolley Problem being applied to robocars has more value as a philosophical exercise than in practical application. While these ethical quandaries certainly do exist, computer-aided driving will be much safer and the net result will be far fewer accidents and fatalities. From his post:

“Often this is mapped into the robocar world by considering a car which is forced to run over somebody, and has to choose who to run over. Choices suggested include deciding between:

  • One person and two
  • A child and an adult
  • A person and a dog
  • A person without right-of-way vs others who have it
  • A deer vs. adding risk by swerving around it into the oncoming lane
  • The occupant or owner of the car vs. a bystander on the street
  • The destruction of an empty car vs. injury to a person who should not be on the road, but is.

I don’t want to pretend that this isn’t an interesting moral area, and it will indeed affect the law, liability and public perception. And at some point, programmers will evaluate these scenarios in their efforts. What I reject is the suggestion that this is high on the list of important issues and questions. I think it’s high on the list of questions that are interesting for philosophical debate, but that’s not the same as reality.

In reality, such choices are extremely rare. How often have you had to make such a decision, or heard of somebody making one? Ideal handling of such situations is difficult to decide, but there are many other issues to decide as well.

Secondly, in the rare situations where a human encounters such a moral dilemma, that person does not sit there and have an inner philosophical dialog on which is the most moral choice. Rather, they will go with a quick gut reaction, which is based on their character and their past thinking on such situations.”

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“Use All Your Well-Learned Politesse Or I’ll Lay Your Soul To Waste”

October 27, 2013 in Books, Videos | Permalink

A very raw Rolling Stones performance of “Sympathy for the Devil” on a David Frost show in 1968. I’ve never read any books about the Stones so I always wondered if this song was inspired by Rasputin’s legend or if Mick Jagger had read Blaise Cendrars’ novel Moravagine, which has a similar storyline. But it actually sprang from Baudelaire and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. I’m definitely in the minority, but I like Moravagine more than The Master and Margarita. The former cuts me to the core.

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“You Are Not Only What You Eat, You Are What You Are Thinking About Eating”

October 27, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Google is chiefly interested in accurately answering your requests because your questions have monetary potential, with predictive powers labeling you someone who likely is (or likely to become) a vegan or a yoga enthusiast, or, perhaps, a criminal. And so much the better if Big Data can figure this out before your first salad or downward dog or burglary. You aren’t just what you do but what the algorithms say you are likely to do. So, now, questions are treated like answers. From Sue Halpern in the New York Review of Books:

“The social Web celebrated, rewarded, routinized, and normalized this kind of living out loud, all the while anesthetizing many of its participants. Although they likely knew that these disclosures were funding the new information economy, they didn’t especially care. As John Naughton points out in his sleek history From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: What You Really Need to Know About the Internet:

Everything you do in cyberspace leaves a trail, including the ‘clickstream’ that represents the list of websites you have visited, and anyone who has access to that trail will get to know an awful lot about you. They’ll have a pretty good idea, for example, of who your friends are, what your interests are (including your political views if you express them through online activity), what you like doing online, what you download, read, buy and sell.

In other words, you are not only what you eat, you are what you are thinking about eating, and where you’ve eaten, and what you think about what you ate, and who you ate it with, and what you did after dinner and before dinner and if you’ll go back to that restaurant or use that recipe again and if you are dieting and considering buying a Wi-Fi bathroom scale or getting bariatric surgery—and you are all these things not only to yourself but to any number of other people, including neighbors, colleagues, friends, marketers, and National Security Agency contractors, to name just a few.”

 

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

October 27, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Effective, discreet.”

Take Control of Your Home – 47 year-old man for hire

My specialty is reigning in unruly roommates and adult children who refuse to obey the rules or grow up. Effective, discreet. Initial consultation free.

Old Print Article: “Perpetual Motion And A Gun,” New York Times (1895)

October 27, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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“He is afraid that capitalists who advanced the money will steal the design..”

The elusive dream of perpetual motion drove an inventor and his backers to an armed standoff, as evidenced by an article in the June 20, 1895 New York Times. The story:

“Newark, N.J.–There is trouble here between stockholders of the Universal Industrial Power Company, a corporation organized to furnish capital for manufacturing a machine for producing perpetual motion, and Michael Patrona, the inventor.

As a result of the trouble Patrona is now guarding with a shot gun the little shop where he claims to have the invention almost complete. He is afraid, he says, that capitalists who advanced the money will steal the design.

Patrona is an Italian and came to this country less than a year ago. Through Civela & Ceste of New-York he was introduced to capitalists  here, among them Newark’s richest Italians. H represented to them that he had discovered the secret of perpetual motion.

The result of these representatives was the organization and incorporation of the Universal Industrial Power Company. Money was advanced from time to time to pay for castings, machinery, and other supplies, and also for $1 a day which Patrona was allowed while working on the machine. Thus far $8,000 has been advanced.

Patrona called a few days ago for more funds to put the machine together, claiming that all the parts were finished. The stockholders objected to putting up any more money until they had evidence of the success  of Patrona’s labors. He refused this request on the ground that he might be robbed of his invention, on which he had been laboring for years. He assured the stockholders, however, that this would be the last call for funds.

The stockholders were just as obstinate as Patrona. As a result he has armed himself with a shotgun, and stands guard at the entrance to the building which holds what he calls his great invention.

Counsel for both sides will try to effect a compromise.”

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“The Mind Is A Very Unusual Piece Of Software”

October 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From “The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think,” James Somers’ new Atlantic article about Douglas Hofstadter’s ongoing work in the field of AI which is meant to go many meters past Siri or Watson:

“For the past 30 years, most of them spent in an old house just northwest of the Indiana University campus, he and his graduate students have been picking up the slack: trying to figure out how our thinking works, by writing computer programs that think.

Their operating premise is simple: the mind is a very unusual piece of software, and the best way to understand how a piece of software works is to write it yourself. Computers are flexible enough to model the strange evolved convolutions of our thought, and yet responsive only to precise instructions. So if the endeavor succeeds, it will be a double victory: we will finally come to know the exact mechanics of our selves—and we’ll have made intelligent machines.”

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“Anyone Who Ever Had A Heart / They Wouldn’t Turn Around And Break It”

October 27, 2013 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Years ago I was working in a place in Manhattan that was demonstrating a virtual-reality helmet. Lou Reed came in to try it and sat in the chair and had the Darth Vader-ish object placed over his head by the woman supervising the demo. He waited a beat and said, “Now what happens? Does someone pull my cock?” Rest in peace, Lou Reed.

Here’s my favorite Reed performance on tape, a 1974 version of “Sweet Jane” from Paris. Jane had a pretty exciting life for a clerk.

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