“To Dorsey, The City Was An Engineering Problem”

October 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I saw Jack Dorsey on TV once and he could barely speak or make eye contact. He seemed like the last person who would enter politics, but he has those ambitions, hoping to someday win the NYC mayoralty. Dorsey essentially wants to do the opposite of a Silicon Valley secession–he wants its numbers-crunching technocracy to fan out over urban centers. There’s something to be said for technocrats, but as we have seen with Mayor Bloomberg’s blind spot for homeless people, they too can have agendas colored if not by politics then by their personal experiences and prejudices. From D.T. Max’s recent New Yorker profile of Dorsey, a passage in which the tech titan sees the city as an interface, a Sim City come to life:

“His plans do not lack ambition. For some time now, Dorsey has been saying that he would like one day to be the mayor of New York. It’s a curious goal for someone who has lived in California for eight years, who has no experience in public life, and for whom human contact is a challenge—it’s one thing to look after a friend’s child, another to kiss a stranger’s baby. He does a creditable job on television, but never seems fully comfortable. Two years ago, Dorsey interviewed President Obama, in the White House, for an event called the Twitter Town Hall; the Los Angeles Times described Dorsey as a ‘stiff, sweaty, and serious emcee.’

Last month, at a Square recruiting session at Columbia University, the first question the engineering students asked Dorsey was about the mayoralty. He assured them that no such move was imminent; he could make more of a difference for now in the software world. He praised Bloomberg’s ability to master and improve the various systems of the city. There was no mention of his effect on individual lives. To Dorsey, the city was an engineering problem: Bloomberg had improved the interface and, thus, the experience of being a New Yorker. The audience nodded, though. Dorsey spoke their language. He told me that being mayor would come with ‘a lot of constraints, but I do well with constraints.'”

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“It’s Fun To Be A Bad Boy, But It Has Costs”

October 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University is a neuroeconomist who studies the biology of good and evil. Here are a few exchanges from the Ask Me Anything he just did on Reddit.

_______________________

Question:

What’s the most interesting fact about the brain you can tell us?

Paul Zak:

Your brain is an economic system: it has goals to achieve and limited resources with which to reach them. As a result, you build up habits to save brain resources. This is why even though your roommate repeatedly asks you to not put your dirty laundry on the floor, you can’t break this habit easily. Because your brain is so expensive metabolically to run, it tries to run on low power most of the time. Your brain is lazy!

_______________________

Question:

Does your research compliment/strengthen the concepts of secular morality? If moral behavior isn’t mediated through God or religion…

Paul Zak:

My research shows we don’t need God or gov’t to be moral. Oxytocin is an evolutionary old mechanism that motivates social interactions and empathy. These are the ingredients for morality (we’ve test this in around 10K people over 10+ years a variety of ways). We are watching each other and penalize those who behave badly. But, a little God or gov’t might be good. These are “crowd sourced” guidelines for appropriate moral behavior–just in case you decided you didn’t like your spouse anymore, these sources say killing him/her is wrong almost always. These are useful because our moral intuitions (and oxytocin release) are affected by lots of factors that result in immoral behaviors. Like everything we do, they more we practice connecting to others, the easier and more likely it becomes.

_______________________

Question:

What are some influences someone’s cultural background have you noticed to affect their level of generosity/empathy?

Paul Zak:

Great question! Our brains prefer to do what we’re used to doing (to save energy). So, high trust countries like Norway tend to trust others more than when the same experiment is run in a low trust country like Bolivia. We have studied people who had severely traumatic childhoods and about 50% of them don’t have an intact oxytocin/empathy system. Lastly, those with “bad genes”, e.g. psychopaths, lack empathy and have inhibited oxytocin release. So: to release oxytocin and show empathy you need, roughly, good genes, good parents, and a safe environment to live in.

_______________________

Question:

What major behavior differences have you found between women and men and how they function in the work place based on their biochemistry?

Paul Zak:

This surprised me until I had tons of data to support it: in EVERY experiment we’ve run, on average women release more oxytocin than do men. Full stop. I think this is way women are generally nicer than men and better at connecting to others than men. Of course some men are supernice and great connectors. Except…sometimes in women the oxytocin/connection system is inhibited, e.g. by progesterone, and accentuated by estrogen. So, women typically nicer than men, but also more complicated than men. For workplace: I think key is diversity, have equal numbers of men and women throughout an organization (esp. at the top). I gave a TED talk in the biological diffs between men and women that you might enjoy.

_______________________

Question:

What ideas can I, as a super villain, extrapolate from your work to further my own efforts? Please note: I’m hoping for an answer other than ‘hug people’.

Paul Zak:

Super Villian ahoy! My book The Moral Molecule has a chapter called “Bad Boys”. Man, it’s fun to be a bad boy but it has costs, too (like early death!). Great super villians are full of testosterone, take risks, are aggressive, and seek to dominate others. I got new bad boy stripes recently by starting to skydive. All super villains need to fly. Some pics here. Or, take up some other extreme sport, I’ve heard that Krav Maga is pretty awesome. But, after you dominate someone you can still give them a hug….•

 

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“What Ties Those Two Seams Together? The Idea Of Techno-Utopian Spaces”

October 21, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In his speculative 1974 novel, Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach imagined an America disrupted by a West Coast secession led by environmentalists. Stanford’s Balaji Srinivasan has a different dream: a techno-utopia built in the aftermath of a Silicon Valley exit. Sounds terrifying. Google’s Larry Page has actually offered a soft-core version previously, suggesting we create physical space for conducting experimentation that is beyond laws or regulation. Equally scary. From Nick Statt at Cnet:

“Cupertino, Calif. — Balaji Srinivasan opened his Y Combinator startup school talk with a joke: Is the US the Microsoft of nations? The question was received warmly by the crowd of more than 1,700 and did in fact have a logical conclusion: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, were exactly what Bill Gates feared when he said in 1998 that two people in a garage working on something new was Microsoft’s biggest threat.

What ties those two seams together? The idea of techno-utopian spaces — new countries even — that could operate beyond the bureaucracy and inefficiency of government. It’s a decision that hinges on exiting the current system, as Srinivasan terms it from the realm of political science, instead of using one’s voice to reform from within, the very way Page and Brin decided to found their search giant instead of seek out ways in which the then-current tech titans could solve new problems.

Calling his radical-sounding proposal ‘Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit,’ Srinivasan thinks that these limitless spaces, popularly postulated by Page at this year’s Google I/O, are already being created, thanks to technology and a desire to exit. Ultimately, the Stanford lecturer and co-founder of Counsyl, a genetics startup, thinks Silicon Valley could lead the charge in exiting en masse because, eventually, ‘they are going to try and blame the economy on Silicon Valley.'”

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A Brief Note From 1909 About Twin Babies

October 21, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the April 9, 1909 New York Times:

“Pittsburgh, Penn.–Two deaths resulted from the arrival of twin babies in the home of William Hedinger, a farmer, aged 55 years, who lives at Boquet, a hamlet in Westmoreland County, just across from the Allegheny County line, while the mother is in a serious condition.

The twins arrived on Tuesday. Mrs. Martha Smith, the mother of Mrs. Hedinger, went to the Hedinger home to attend her daughter during her illness. She was very happy when a fine boy was born, when the nurse informed her that still another baby had arrived–this time a girl–Mrs. Smith became so excited that she dropped dead. The father was despondent when he learned of the twins and the death of his mother-in-law. Going to the barn yesterday afternoon, he ended his life by shooting himself through his head.”

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“How Do We Explain To A Broad Audience What Government Is Doing?”

October 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The first two questions from David Carr’s interview with ebay founder Pierre Omidyar, the latest Internet gazillionaire to try to understand the economics of Digital Age journalism, funding Glenn Greenwald’s new venture:

“David Carr:

You could be putting your time and money into a lot of things. Why news?

Pierre Omidyar: 

I’m a technologist by origin and by training, but I’m focused on philanthropy. One of the key areas was taking the lessons from technology and applying them to making the world better. And part of that interest really led me to government transparency and accountability: how do we explain to a broad audience what government is doing?

We’ve lived in Hawaii for about seven years and I saw a gap in coverage as newsrooms were merging — there was a real reduction in reporting capacity and so I felt it was critical to just build a newsroom that is exclusively focused on public affairs. I wanted to get my hands dirty learning what it’s like to work with journalists and editors day in and day out, to see how the sausage is made. Through that experience, I saw firsthand the impact that really good investigative stories have at every level and so this is the next step in a very long journey.

David Carr:

This next step seems focused on secrecy and transparency. What pulled you in that direction?

Pierre Omidyar: 

A number of things happened: Even before the Snowden leaks, we saw a number of what I would characterize as missteps by the Justice Department. We saw the Justice Department wiretap the A.P. newsroom. We saw [Fox News reporter James] Rosen being labeled as co-conspirator label in affidavits; we see the many leak prosecutions including the use of the Espionage Act. It alerted me to the fact that even in this great country of ours with this fantastic Constitution, there’s a real pressure against press freedoms that’s going on. Perhaps unintentionally in the hot pursuit of leakers and trying to protect secrets, we are really putting pressure on press freedom here. When you have mass surveillance, it’s impossible to meet the intent of the First Amendment because reporters can’t talk to sources because sources are afraid to talk.”

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“3.0 Is One That Can Debate And Reason”

October 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Watson is transitioning from Jeopardy champ to medical diagnostics and other tasks. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty is promising big things for the computer’s third iteration.

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“I Hope It’s Not Your Intention To Monopolize The Conversation”

October 21, 2013 in Books, Film, Videos | Permalink

Two videos of that wonderful Harpo Marx, the first comedian I adored. The initial one is a 1958 Person to Person “interview” a studio-bound Edward R. Murrow conducted via long distance with the mute comic and his talkative family in their Palm Springs home. The second is a 1961 appearance on the Today show to promote the release of his now-classic biography, Harpo Speaks!

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

October 20, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"This bear was waxed by my Great Aunt."

“This bear was waxed by my Great Aunt.”

Huge Black Bear Rug (real) – $2000 (Fairfield, CT)

Real Canadian Black Bear Rug. Was 440 lbs. Full thick coat, museum quality mounting by Jonas Brothers. Over 6 foot, this is a full size rug, lightly padded underneath with black felt trim edging. This bear’s BIG! 

AND, for you few whiny douchebags who insist on writing to tell me what a scumbag I must be….

This was NOT a nice bear…This was NOT Yogi da Bear…This bear was waxed by my Great Aunt, 25(?) years ago…(she was 85 at the time) after raiding her farm several times. It destroyed chicken coops, killed hens, it killed a goat that was tethered, it maimed and blinded the Labrador that tried to chase it off….Her cat ran over and stood on top of the dog after he was down to protect it, and the bear swatted the cat too….So Fuck off. He got his, and now he’s a rug….A big, soft, fat, thick, plush rug. GET OVER IT.

“I Said It Would Be A Disaster To Portray The Extraterrestrials”

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

Via the excellent Browser site comes this wonderful piece from 2001Italia which recalls how Stanley Kubrick struggled mightily with realizing alien life forms in his masterful sci-fi film. An excerpt:

“According to Arthur Clarke, it was the famous scientist Carl Sagan that, asked for a suggestion on the topic, proposed to hide the aliens altogether from the movie, during a meeting at Kubrick’s house in Manhattan, in 1965. Quoted from Clarke’s biography, here’s Sagan recounting the episode thirty years later:

They had no idea how to end the movie – that’s when they called me in to try to resolve a dispute. The key issue was how to portray extraterrestrials that would surely be encountered at the end when they go through the Star Gate. Kubrick was arguing that the extraterrestrials would look like humans with some slight differences, maybe à la Mr. Spock (Ed. note: like Clindar). And Arthur was arguing, quite properly on general evolutionary grounds, that they would look nothing like us. So I tried to adjudicate as they asked. I said it would be a disaster to portray the extraterrestrials. What ought to be done is to suggest them. I argued that the number of individually unlikely events in the evolutionary history of man was so great that nothing like us is ever likely to evolve anywhere else in the universe. I suggested that any explicit representation of an advanced extraterrestrial being was bound to have at least an element of falseness about it and that the best solution would be to suggest rather than explicitly to display the extraterrestrials. What struck me most is that they were in production (some of the special effects, at least) and still had no idea how the movie would end. Kubrick’s preference had one distinct advantage, an economic one: He could call up Central Casting and ask for twenty extraterrestrials. With a little makeup, he would have his problem solved. The alternative portrayal of extraterrestrials, whatever it was, was bound to be expensive.

… And that’s the quote from Arthur Clarke, commenting Sagan’s words:

A third of century later, I do not recall Stanley’s immediate reaction to this excellent advice, but after abortive efforts during the next couple of years to design convincing aliens, he accepted Carl’s solution.”

See also:

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Enemas Pres. McKinley Received After Being Shot

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

From a very detailed 1901 New York Times report about President McKinley’s failed medical treatments following the attempt on his life:

  1. A saline enema.
  2. One pint of saline enema.
  3. A saline enema.
  4. A saline enema with somatose.
  5. Enema of salt and somatose.
  6. A saline enema with somatose.
  7. Enema of sweet oil, soap and water.
  8. Enema of egg, whiskey and water.
  9. Enema with soap, water and ox-gall.

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“Whatever Happened To The Laptop Computer?”

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Every time I think that dreams are too outré and our predictions too aggressive, I remind myself of “The Executive Computer,” a 1985 New York Times article by Erik Sandberg-Diment which asserted that laptops were limited in appeal, that “the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets.” The opening:

“WHATEVER happened to the laptop computer? Two years ago, on my flight to Las Vegas for Comdex, the annual microcomputer trade show, every second or third passenger pulled out a portable, ostensibly to work, but more likely to demonstrate an ability to keep up with the latest fad. Last year, only a couple of these computers could be seen on the fold-down trays. This year, every one of them had been replaced by the more traditional mixed drink or beer.

Was the laptop dream an illusion, then? Or was the problem merely that the right combination of features for such lightweight computers had not yet materialized? The answer probably is a combination of both views. For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few.

The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.”

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“The Content Plan Is To Cover Three Buckets That Are About Equal In Size”

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

It’s  little worrisome that Nate Silver is joining the ESPN family, since that company just severed ties to Frontline over its excellent program (here and here) about NFL-related concussions. But he tells Hollywood Reporter scribe Erik Hayden that he doesn’t fear editorial interference. He also out lines what the new FiveThirtyEight blog will be. An excerpt:

“Silver’s blog, formerly hosted by The New York Times, was acquired in July by ESPN with the goal of developing it into a standalone site similar to Bill Simmons’ Grantland. He outlined the three primary coverage areas for the new FiveThirtyEight — politics, sports and economics — which will debut ;very early’ next year.

‘It’ll be no subscription fee, we hope you guys click on the banner ads or the sponsorships,’ the statistician explained. ‘The content plan is to cover three buckets that are about equal in size — one being kind of politics and political news, of course emphasizing elections still very heavily, one third being sports and one third being everything else put together. So with a special emphasis on economics, for example, maybe topics like education.'”

 

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“They’re Not Just Tools, But Members Of The Squad”

October 20, 2013 in Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Because our thumbs may get tired from droning everyone to death, robots with guns and grenades might soon be fighting alongside U.S. ground troops. Maybe within five years. From Allen McDuffee at Wired:

“Robots armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank missiles and even grenade launchers are marching, er, rolling ever closer to the battlefield now that they’ve shown they can actually hit what they’re supposed to.

Four robotics companies — HDT Robotics, iRobot, Northrop Grumman and QinetiQ — recently ran their M240 machine gun-armed robots through a live-fire demo at Fort Benning in what has been dubbed the ‘Robotic Rodeo.’ The point was to give the brass a chance to see just how viable such systems are.

The Army, which issued a favorable assessment of the technology last week, doesn’t see our armed robotic overlords as weapons taking the place of boots on the ground, but rather as combatants working alongside troops in the field.

‘They’re not just tools, but members of the squad. That’s the goal,’ Lt. Col. Willie Smith, chief of Unmanned Ground Vehicles at Fort Benning told Computerworld.“

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“[It] Reads Like L Ron Hubbard Had Drunken Sex One Night With Ayn Rand And Produced This Bastard Thought-Child”

October 20, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Outsider scientist and philosopher David Birnbaum–a jeweler to the super rich by day–believes he’s figured out the origins of the universe. Of course, he could be wrong. I mean, he’s probably wrong. Right? From Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian:

“The academics could be forgiven for never having heard of Summa Metaphysica’s author. But, in fact, he was far from unknown: David Birnbaum is a prominent figure in the New York jewel trade, a private seller of high-carat diamonds and other rare gems, with a clientele that has included celebrities – Goldie Hawn, James Gandolfini – but consists mainly of the anonymous super-rich. For some time now, aided by his wealth, Birnbaum has been on an altogether different mission: to convince the world he has made an astonishing breakthrough in philosophy. It is a quest that has seen him accused of ‘academic identity theft,’ epic levels of arrogance, and the unauthorised use of Harvard University’s trademarks. But it also raises fascinating questions. These days, only a tiny number of people understand enough theoretical physics, or advanced philosophy, to grasp what these disciplines tell us about reality at the deepest level. Is it still conceivable – as it was a century ago – that a gentleman amateur, with some financial resources, could make a real, revolutionary contribution to our understanding of the mysteries of the universe?

There is no shortage of people who would say no, at least in Birnbaum’s case. His work, said a commenter on the Chronicle’s website, ‘reads like L Ron Hubbard had drunken sex one night with Ayn Rand and produced this bastard thought-child.’ One scholar who became professionally involved with Birnbaum described the experience as ‘unsettling, unfortunate and, to my knowledge, unprecedented in academic circles.’ Another just called him ‘toxic.’

But then again – as Birnbaum pointed out to me, more than once, during the weeks I spent trying to figure out exactly what he was up to – just suppose that a scrappy, philosophically unqualified Jewish guy from Queens really had cracked the cosmic code, embarrassing the ivory-tower elites: well, isn’t this exactly the kind of defensive response you’d expect?”

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A Brief Note From 1903 About Schoolmates

October 19, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the March 23, 1903 New York Times:

“Findlay, Ohio–On his way from school eight-year-old Clarence Hummell, son of Mr. and Mrs. George Hummell of East Front Street, was captured by five schoolmates, forced to accompany them down the Blanchard River, outside the city limits, and there, in a secluded spot, was tied to a stake.

Preparations for his cremation were being made when the little fellow’s cries attracted the attention of men who were employed in the vicinity, and he was rescued by them. Young Hummell’s captors had witnessed the production of ‘Tracey,’ a play in which the hero was the outlaw, and in talking it over made plans for the capture of a victim and his burning at the stake.”

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

October 19, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

 

10 search-engine keyphrase searches bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. woman in the dunes film 1964
  2. pictures of the wendy’s girl’s legs
  3. president obama had placed her residence under electronic surveillance
  4. was timothy leary cryogenically frozen?
  5. when did macy’s department store sell airplanes?
  6. porn star harry reems
  7. interview with roger vadim and jane fonda
  8. colin cowherd is always wrong
  9. did joe namath and muhammad ali have a fight on tv?
  10. darwin’s dice have rolled badly for earth

 

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

October 19, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking the GOP defeat means no one can protect us from Obamacare death panels.

Drop trou, Fatty. My friend and I are going

Drop trou, Fatty. I’m here for your appendix.

But I already had it removed.

But I already had it removed.

I've got my orders.

I’ve got my orders.

Can I get drunk before the operation?

Can I get drunk before the operation?

Why not? I sure am.

Why not? I’m going to.

  • Denial about the NFL’s concussion problem runs deep.
  • Apple’s new VP will be of help with wearables.

“But Space Invaders Didn’t Always Generate Favorable Press”

October 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “The Space Invader,” Simon Parkin’s interesting New Yorker blog post about Tomohiro Nishikado, who created the quarter-sucking sensation in 1978:

“Space Invaders sold an unprecedented hundred thousand machines in Japan; Bally Midway, the game’s U.S. distributor, sold around sixty thousand units in 1979 alone. Today, with its jagged shapes and sine-wave squeals, the game is an icon of the industry’s formative days and the medium’s ongoing appeal: a simplistic rendering of fears that can be overcome with determination and a steady focus.

But Space Invaders didn’t always generate favorable press. In Japan, soon after the game’s release, a twelve-year-old boy held up a bank with a shotgun. He didn’t want notes, he told the clerk, just coins. Under interrogation, he admitted that he wanted the money to play Space Invaders. In England, in November, 1981, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy prostituted himself in a parking lot for two pounds. This was enough, he later quantified, for ten games of Space Invaders. Police in the South of England dubiously claimed that the Space Invaders obsession had ‘doubled housebreaking figures,’ while the Labour M.P. George Foulkes, fearing for the ‘glazed eyes’ of youngsters, lobbied to subject the game to local authority regulation in Parliament. The novelist Martin Amis wrote, in his 1982 ode Invasion of the Space Invaders, of a young actress he knew with injuries sustained in the arcade so severe that her index finger ‘looked like a piece of liver.'”

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“Think Of It As An Instrument People Can Use To Create Their Ideal Coffee Experience”

October 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

 

I have never met a Starbucks barista who wasn’t delightfully off in some way, but they’re all amazingly patient and hardworking people who wish to tell me about their childhoods in rural Oregon. Alas, they are people, so their days are numbered. In the long run, when the pain has diminished, it will be for the best. The opening of Christopher Mims’ Quartz article about automated caffeine:

Starbucks’ 95,000 baristas have a competitor. It doesn’t need sleep. It’s precise in a way that a human could never be. It requires no training. It can’t quit. It has memorized every one of its customers’ orders. There’s never a line for its perfectly turned-out drinks.

It doesn’t require health insurance.

Don’t think of it as the enemy of baristas, insists Kevin Nater, CEO of the company that has produced this technological marvel. Think of it as an instrument people can use to create their ideal coffee experience. Think of it as a cure for ‘out-of-home coffee drinkers’—Nater’s phrase—sick of an ‘inconsistent experience.’

Think of it as the future. Think of it as empowerment. Your coffee, your way, flawlessly, every time, no judgments. Four pumps of sugar-free vanilla syrup in a 16 oz. half-caff soy latte? Here it is, delivered to you precisely when your smartphone app said it would arrive, hot and fresh and indistinguishable from the last one you ordered.•

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“The Most Talked-About New Devices Are Wearable”

October 18, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Even people who want a Google Glass sort of eyewear will not use such a product until it stops being the creepiest thing you can put on in the morning. Perhaps that’s another reason why Apple just hired Angela Ahrendts from Burberry. From the Economist:

“A bigger job will be to ready Apple for the coming fusion of fashion and technology. The most talked-about new devices are wearable. Google’s Glass smuggles a smartphone into a pair of spectacles. Samsung’s Galaxy Gear squeezes some smartphone functions into a wristwatch. Apple is also keen to surf the wearable wave. An iWatch, which Apple may launch next year, would pull it towards Ms Ahrendts’s home turf, since it would compete with fashionable timepieces like Burberry’s.”

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Old Print Article: “Two Lizards Kill Girl,” New York Times (1910)

October 18, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The entire Ohio medical establishment was apparently drunk a century ago, which can be the only explanation for the following primordial nightmare of a story from the December 11, 1910 New York Times:

“Cleveland–A live lizard, six inches in length, and the head of another lizard were discovered in the stomach of Miss Lovie Herman, 19 years old, who died early Friday morning at her home.

Cleveland physicians and surgeons are interested in the case, and a number of them will attend the post-mortem examination to be held at Akron to-day. Miss Herman had been ill a year from a disease which puzzled many specialists. 

Last Monday the attending physician succeeded in bringing from the girl’s stomach the live lizard and the head of the second one, but too late to save her life.

The family formerly lived in Millersburg, Ohio, and drank water from a spring. It is supposed that the girl swallowed the lizard’s eggs while drinking, and that they hatched and killer her.”

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“I Suspect Comics Will Have Less Widespread Cultural Impact”

October 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jake Rossen of Mental Floss managed to snare a rare interview with Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson. In this excerpt, he discusses where the comic-strip form is now and where he thinks it will go:

“Question:

Where do you think the comic strip fits in today’s culture?

Bill Watterson:

Personally, I like paper and ink better than glowing pixels, but to each his own. Obviously the role of comics is changing very fast. On the one hand, I don’t think comics have ever been more widely accepted or taken as seriously as they are now. On the other hand, the mass media is disintegrating, and audiences are atomizing. I suspect comics will have less widespread cultural impact and make a lot less money. I’m old enough to find all this unsettling, but the world moves on. All the new media will inevitably change the look, function, and maybe even the purpose of comics, but comics are vibrant and versatile, so I think they’ll continue to find relevance one way or another. But they definitely won’t be the same as what I grew up with.”

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“Biology Is A Software Process”

October 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of Kate Lunau’s new Maclean’s interview with Ray Kurzweil, partner of Peter Diamandis at Singularity University:

“Question: 

You say we’re in the midst of a ‘grand transformation’ in the field of medicine. What do you see happening today?

Ray Kurzweil: 

Biology is a software process. Our bodies are made up of trillions of cells, each governed by this process. You and I are walking around with outdated software running in our bodies, which evolved in a very different era. We each have a fat insulin receptor gene that says, ‘Hold on to every calorie.’ That was a very good idea 10,000 years ago, when you worked all day to get a few calories; there were no refrigerators, so you stored them in your fat cells. I would like to tell my fat insulin receptor gene, ‘You don’t need to do that anymore,’ and indeed that was done at the Joslin Diabetes Center. They turned off this gene, and the [lab mice] ate ravenously and remained slim. They didn’t get diabetes; they didn’t get heart disease. They lived 20 per cent longer. They’re working with a drug company to bring that to market.

Life expectancy was 20 a thousand years ago; 37, 200 years ago. We’re now able to reprogram health and medicine as software, and that [pace is] going to continue to accelerate. We’re treating biology, and by extension health and medicine, as an information technology. Our intuition about how progress will unfold is linear, but information technology progresses exponentially, not linearly. My Android phone is literally several billion times more powerful, per dollar, than the computer I used when I was a student. And it’s also 100,000 times smaller. We’ll do both of those things again in 25 years. It’ll be a billion times more powerful, and will be the size of a blood cell.”

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“The Center Would Be Able To ‘Paint A Pretty Detailed Picture Of Someone’s Personal Life, Someone Who May Be Innocent”

October 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Oakland authorities are repurposing federal anti-terrorism money to create crime-fighting initiatives based on Big Data. The changes will be so subtle, you’ll hardly notice a thing. From Somini Sengupta at the New York Times:

“Libby Schaaf, an Oakland City Council member, said that because of the city’s high crime rate, ‘it’s our responsibility to take advantage of new tools that become available.’ She added, though, that the center would be able to ‘paint a pretty detailed picture of someone’s personal life, someone who may be innocent.’

For example, if two men were caught on camera at the port stealing goods and driving off in a black Honda sedan, Oakland authorities could look up where in the city the car had been in the last several weeks. That could include stoplights it drove past each morning and whether it regularly went to see Oakland A’s baseball games.

For law enforcement, data mining is a big step toward more complete intelligence gathering. The police have traditionally made arrests based on small bits of data — witness testimony, logs of license plate readers, footage from a surveillance camera perched above a bank machine. The new capacity to collect and sift through all that information gives the authorities a much broader view of the people they are investigating.

For the companies that make big data tools, projects like Oakland’s are a big business opportunity. Microsoft built the technology for the New York City program. I.B.M. has sold data-mining tools for Las Vegas and Memphis.”

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“For The Past 20 Years, American Politics Has Been Defined By Republican Revolt”

October 17, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Clinton was impeached and Kerry swiftboated and Obama deported (to Kenya, if figuratively), as the radical right came to disqualify as Other anyone who wasn’t one of them. The mainstream GOP (Gingrich, Rove, etc.) found the yahoos useful and embraced them until they couldn’t get their arms back. In “Radical Republicans” at Slate, Jacob Weisberg traces the descent into madness. The opening:

“For the past 20 years, American politics has been defined by Republican revolt. The right-wing radicalism that now worries the whole world first emerged in response to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. It’s not that Republicans were never extreme before that time. Challenges to the legitimacy of federal authority from the people who now identify as Republicans trace back to pro-slavery attempts at nullification and segregationist assertions of states’ rights. But it was 20 years ago that the Congressional wing of the GOP, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, adopted belligerent noncooperation as its defining stance.

It was Gingrich who turned bipartisanship from Washington’s greatest virtue to its most reviled vice. Under his leadership, congressional Republicans refused any quarter on Clinton health care reform and supplied no votes for the economic plan that spurred the long boom of the 1990s. In their new mode, Republicans refused to vote on presidential nominations and buried the White House in investigations and subpoenas. It was Gingrich who in 1995 invented the tactic of refusing to raise the debt ceiling as a cudgel to get Clinton to agree to outsize spending cuts. It was Gingrich who invented the tactic of shutting down the government for the same end.”

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