“If Climate Change Is Not Only Inevitable But Already Underway, How Are We To Live With It?”

May 26, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I dreamt once of an Earth grown too hot, but is it just a dream? If the climate changes, then so does everything. From Thomas Jones in the London Review of Books:

“The facts, rehearsed so often, for so long and to so little effect, nonetheless bear repeating. The greenhouse effect was first hypothesised in 1824 by Joseph Fourier – though his analogy was the bell jar rather than the greenhouse – and proved experimentally by John Tyndall in 1859. In the 19th century it could be seen as unambiguously a good thing: if carbon dioxide and other trace gases didn’t trap heat in the atmosphere, the earth wouldn’t be warm enough to support life as we know it. But there is now far more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there has been at any point in the last 800,000 years (we know this because researchers have analysed air bubbles trapped in the ice in Greenland and Antarctica: the deeper you go, the older the bubbles). The concentration has increased from nearly 320 parts per million (high, but not unprecedented) in 1960 to more than 390 ppm today, 30 per cent higher than any previous peak, largely as a result of human activity. Not even the most fervent climate change denier can argue with the fact that burning carbon produces carbon dioxide: before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were 280 ppm. Since 1850, more than 360 billion tonnes of fossil fuels have gone up in smoke. Average global temperatures have risen accordingly, for the last quarter century pretty much in line with the predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its first assessment report (1990). Almost every year since 1988, when the IPCC was established, has been the hottest ever recorded. The most optimistic projection, which governments are nominally committed to (that’s to say, the signatories of the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 agreed it would be nice), is that the average global temperature will rise no more than 2ºC by the end of the century. Sea level has risen 6 cm since 1990. The IPCC’s fourth assessment report (2007) projected that it would rise between 18 and 59 cm by 2100. According to a more recent study, it could be anything from 33 to 132 cm.

The question of how to prevent climate change – we’re way past that point now – has morphed into the question of how to slow it down. There’s no shortage of theoretical answers about the best way to pump fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or suck more of them out, or lower the temperature by other means. (Another week, another book about climate change: the mood optative, the structure evangelical; threats of doom followed by promises of salvation, punctuated by warnings against false prophets.) And yet carbon emissions, temperatures, sea level and the frequency of extreme weather events just keep on going up. Which leads to another, perhaps even more urgent question: if climate change is not only inevitable but already underway, how are we to live with it?”

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“It’s Pretty Safe To Say This Is A Far-Out Premise”

May 26, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of predictions about the urban future from Benjamin Plackett at the Connectivist:

“Future cities will be downloadable

The Internet can be a democratizing force. Social media gave a voice to the Arab spring protesters and made accessing information a consumer’s market. Alastair Parvin, an architect from the U.K., says the Web will do the same for the construction world. Thanks to the increasing capabilities of broadband, ‘we’re moving into a future where the factory is everywhere, and that means the design team is everyone,’ he says. Parvin co-founded a company called WikiHouse, which offers free CAD files to anyone with a 3D printer looking to build a home on a tight budget. The 3-D printer produces the home’s structural components, which Parvin says the user can then assemble ‘without formal construction skills or power tools.’

Future cities will live underwater

This is perhaps one of the more radical predictions for the future of the urban environment: a sea-scraper. Its designer, Sarly Adre Bin Sarkum, a Malaysian architect, won a special mention from eVolvo Magazine for its entry into the magazine’s annual skyscrapers competition. The design iIt’s essentially a floating, self-sufficient tower building, its top just peeking out above the water’s surface. Wave power would supposedly power the underwater city, while the rooftop would provide a place to farm food. It’s pretty safe to say this is a far-out premise, and there are no plans to build anything like the sea-scraper anytime soon, but it’s certainly set tongues a-wagging.”

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

May 26, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink


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

  1. exit through the gift shop 2010 documentary
  2. who wrote that charlie rose is a handsome and agreeable robot?
  3. can you survive on a cactus diet?
  4. karlheinz stockhausen it is a mistake to consider all humans equal
  5. merv griffin interviewing steve wozniak
  6. russian cosmonauts experiencing monotony in space
  7. amandabynes@gmail.com
  8. andy warhol eating burger king
  9. wendy’s owner dave thomas’ actual daughter
  10. if the sun dies oriana fallaci

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

May 25, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking American tabloid culture finally came to a fitting conclusion this week when Amada Bynes' flying bong...

Afflictor: Thinking American tabloid culture finally came to a fitting conclusion in Manhattan this week when Amanda Bynes’ flying bong…

... struck Anthony Weiner across the face.

… coldcocked a campaigning Anthony Weiner.

Heh heh. He said "cocked."

Heh heh. He said “cocked.”

  • George Packer writes of the things he likes about the contemporary U.S.

“That Breakdown Would Suggest That Americans Are Mostly Obsessed With Teenagers And Dystopias”

May 24, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I understand the value of marginalia, but I hate you very much if you write in books. It may be a moot point as paper morphs into pixels, and the printed books that remain will be too costly to deface. But the act of reader comments hasn’t ended in the e-book age, just morphed. Amazon keeps track of the most-highlighted Kindle phrases. The act of discovering an individual’s scratchings in used books has become a set of collective data.

The opening of Noreen Malone’s New Republic article which sifts through our favorite passages to find meaning:

“One of the great small pleasures of used books is the occasional marginalia of a previous owner. You learn a tiny bit about that anonymous soul by seeing the passages she underlined, or tidily double-underlined, or exclamation-pointed, or starred madly and messily. You begin to worry about the girl who found so much to mark in To The Lighthouse, or fall in love, a little bit, with the person who found all the funniest parts of Catch 22. (It is another type of intimacy entirely to borrow a book from someone you know, and to discover what he found worth picking up a pen for.) 

This experience would seem to be lost as reading becomes ever more digital—ebook sales rose more than 44 percent last year—but that’s not entirely the case. Amazon keeps track of which passages Kindle readers highlight most, which means the company can offer a new version of the old serendipitous experience. Only this one is data-driven: The company also keeps a running list of the most highlighted Kindle passages of all time. Instead of a cozy tete-a-tete with the idiosyncratic mind of a stranger, you get the reading equivalent of a giant rave, a warehouse pulsing with usually private emotions turned into shared public expressions. It’s a glimpse into our collective, most interior, and most embarrassing preoccupations. 

The most immediately noticeable thing about the list is how Hunger Games-heavy it is. Nineteen of the top 25 most-highlighted passages are written by Suzanne Collins, who is not exactly known for a glittering prose style. That breakdown would suggest that Americans are mostly obsessed with teenagers and dystopias, which, while not entirely untrue, is also useful reminder that this is a numbers game. Bestsellers will naturally have the greatest number of underlines, and there are certain kinds of bestsellers that are more likely to be read digitally. These include books aimed at teenagers that a massive number of adults have embraced (potentially embarrassing), books in the public domain (free), and self-help books (potentially embarrassing). Taken together, they suggest that your average Kindle reader is a creature caught in permanent adolescence, but yearning to improve. Oh, and he’s cheap.”

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“This Is This Week’s Sign That The 21st Century Is Upon Us”

May 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sears, the retailer originally paired with Roebuck, existed initially in its own sort of cloud: the mail-order one. But it became encumbered by physical real estate, running until it was crushed by brick and mortar, by the era itself. Now it returns to the cloud in another form: data centers. The opening of a brief post at the Atlantic by Alex Madrigal:

“Sears! Once the catalog king, then an eminent brick-and-mortar retailer, and now, perhaps, a real-estate holding company that leases out space for computers that power the cloud.

Data Center Knowledge reported today that Sears had created a new unit — Ubiquity Critical Environments — to look into repurposing its shuttered stores as datacenters, starting with this one in Chicago.

Yes, this is this week’s sign that the 21st century is upon us.”

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“China’s Army Nonetheless Stages A Glorious Counterattack By Deploying Levitating Tanks”

May 24, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Fantasies tell us a lot about a person or a people, but there’s danger in taking them too literally. They’re fantasies not just because we can’t or aren’t allowed to live them, but often because we don’t actually want them realized. They do bear watching, however, since when the bad ones are put into action, horrors can occur.

The opening of a Foreign Policy article about a new wave of scary Chinese military fantasy novels:

“It is the year 2049. China’s economic development has so disturbed the world’s other major powers that the United States, Japan, and Russia form an alliance and invade China. Fierce battles break out on the plains of northeast China, where Japanese troops and U.S. fighter jets besiege Chinese infantry. Caught by surprise, China’s army nonetheless stages a glorious counterattack by deploying levitating tanks, and employing a strategy based on lessons learned from the Anti-Japanese War and the Resist America War (better known in the West as WWII and the Korean War, respectively). 

Such is the plot of The Last Counterattack, a serial novel published on Blood and Iron Reading, a Chinese military literature website. In one of the latest installments, published on May 2, U.S. government-sponsored hackers have infiltrated the Chinese military’s network and accidently launched a Chinese nuclear missile directed at the United States. The anonymous author’s online profile says he is a former colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and currently a staff officer in charge of operations and reconnaissance in the 12th Armored Division at China’s 21st Army Group. Going by the online pseudonym ‘the Old Staff Officer,’ he told FP in an interview conducted over the Chinese messaging service QQ that he ‘enjoys the feeling of letting [his] imagination fly.’ But Li, as I’ll call him, believes that what he’s writing may actually come to pass. In an April blog post, he explained his thinking for the book: [The world besieges China and attacks it from all sides. Is this possible? Yes!’

There are thousands of Chinese war fantasy novels on the Internet — too sensitive to be published in book form, they circulate on blogs, and websites like Blood and Iron Reading. Most languish, but the more popular ones get read millions of times. As a rising China struggles to define its military aspirations, and as the country’s vast propaganda apparatus encourages citizens to define their version of President Xi Jinping’s vague slogan ‘Chinese Dream,’ these military fantasy novels provide insight into what Chinese people’s war dreams look like.”

“In An Empty Universe, Would Time Exist?”

May 24, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Some scientific explanations are so beautiful that they just have to be true. Except maybe some of them are not. Confusing physics and poetry can be dangerous.

Time is an illusion we’ve always been told, but perhaps it isn’t so. From James Gleick’s New York Review of Books piece about Lee Smolin’s just-published book on the topic:

“In an empty universe, would time exist?

No, it would not. Time is the measure of change; if nothing changes, time has no meaning.

Would space exist, in the absence of any matter or energy? Newton would have said yes: space would be empty.

For Smolin, the key to salvaging time turns out to be eliminating space. Whereas time is a fundamental property of nature, space, he believes, is an emergent property. It is like temperature: apparent, measurable, but actually a consequence of something deeper and invisible—in the case of temperature, the microscopic motion of ensembles of molecules. Temperature is an average of their energy. It is always an approximation, and therefore, in a way, an illusion. So it is with space for Smolin: ‘Space, at the quantum-mechanical level, is not fundamental at all but emergent from a deeper order’—an order, as we will see, of connections, relationships. He also believes that quantum mechanics itself, with all its puzzles and paradoxes (“cats that are both alive and dead, an infinitude of simultaneously existing universes”), will turn out to be an approximation of a deeper theory.

For space, the deeper reality is a network of relationships. Things are related to other things; they are connected, and it is the relationships that define space rather than the other way around. This is a venerable notion: Smolin traces the idea of a relational world back to Newton’s great rival, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: ‘Space is nothing else, but That Order or Relation; and is nothing at all without Bodies, but the Possibility of placing them.’ Nothing useful came of that, while Newton’s contrary view—that space exists independently of the objects it contains—made a revolution in the ability of science to predict and control the world. But the relational theory has some enduring appeal; some scientists and philosophers such as Smolin have been trying to revive it.

Nowadays, the Internet—like the telegraph a century before—is commonly said to ‘annihilate’ space. It does this by making neighbors of the most distant nodes in a network that transcends physical dimension. Instead of six degrees of separation, we have billions of degrees of connectedness. As Smolin puts it:

We live in a world in which technology has trumped the limitations inherent in living in a low-dimensional space…. From a cell-phone perspective, we live in 2.5-billion-dimensional space, in which very nearly all our fellow humans are our nearest neighbors.

The Internet, of course, has done the same thing. The space separating us has been dissolved by a network of connections.

So maybe it’s easier now for us to see how things really are. This is what Smolin believes: that time is fundamental but space an illusion; ‘that the real relationships that form the world are a dynamical network’; and that the network itself, along with everything on it, can and must evolve over time.”

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“The First Time You Sit Down And Start Your Meditation, You’ll Think, This Is So Simple”

May 24, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

By the way: Merv Griffin, who was a meditator, was taught TM by his frequent tennis partner Clint Eastwood. So he told Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1975.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 24, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“Would sell them for much less.”

IVF Frozen Donor Eggs (Newark, DE)

I am a IVF patient in PA who bought six frozen donor eggs from a reputable agency. I no longer need them as I became pregnant on my own. I invested over $15,000 in them and would sell them for much less. They are safely stored at my doctor’s clinic in Newark, DE but I can ship them to your clinic at any time. I have all of the donor information (Caucasian, blue eyes, brown hair, health info etc.) and will provide copies of the signed contract for their purchase. I hope someone can use them for an IVF cycle. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me. Thank you and good luck with your IVF journey.

"Caucasian, blue eyes, brown hair."

“Caucasian, blue eyes, brown hair.”

“I’m A Meditator”

May 23, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

So-called spiritual guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was very good at keeping his legs crossed except when Mia Farrow was around, visits Merv Griffin for the first time in 1975. Merv is the one on your left.

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“What Is Good, And Bad, About America Is Better, And Worse, In Its Most Populous State”

May 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

From James Fallows’ new Atlantic article about Gov. Jerry Brown 2.0, a passage about how California is America writ large, better and worse than ever:

“As for the problems Brown and his state are wrestling with, they are America’s problems—but worse. Here we leave the governor for a moment to consider the environment he is working in, which is both emblematic of and surprisingly different from America as a whole.

You can go too far with the idea that California shows how all of America will look a few years from now. The state’s population is already more heavily Hispanic than the U.S. population might ever be: Hispanics, at nearly 40 percent, are about to overtake California’s ‘non-Hispanic white’ percentage to become the largest ethnic group in the state. (Nationwide, Hispanics are about 17 percent of the population.) Relative to the country as a whole, Asians also make up a larger share of California’s population—­roughly 15 percent of the state, versus about 8 percent of the country—while blacks and whites represent smaller shares. (California is about 40 percent white and 6 percent black, versus 63 percent and 12 percent, respectively, for the United States.) Largely because of these demographic shifts, the Republican Party, which a generation ago relied on California as the largest element of its Sunbelt base, now barely bothers to mount statewide races except those self-financed by political-novice millionaires like Meg Whitman, who lost badly to Brown in 2010, and Carly Fiorina, who lost badly to Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate that same year. In 2012, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney by 3 million votes in California—and by only 2 million more in the other 49 states combined. In both houses of the state legislature the Democrats have, for now, a two-thirds ‘supermajority’ that allows them to prevail even against California’s version of the filibuster. ‘The Republicans appear to have no power,’ Jerry Brown told me. ‘Some of them are nice people, but they aren’t needed for any votes [in the legislature], and they don’t participate.’

In other ways tangible and subjective, California is an outlier. Its median income is much higher than America’s—but so is its unemployment rate. Its prison system is large and fantastically expensive. Two of its sizable cities (Stockton and San Bernardino) have filed for bankruptcy. And it has myriad other problems. Still, California is usefully representative of the country in one very important way. What is good, and bad, about America is better, and worse, in its most populous state.”

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A Brief Note From 1898 About A Lucky Man

May 23, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 3, 1898 New York Times:

“Sioux City, Iowa–Loaded with wealth, but deserted and starving, John Rochel, once a well-known manufacturer in Sioux City, perished last April on the trail between Dawson City and Alaskan points. The news of his death reached here in a letter to his widow, written by Richard Hendrickson, from Seattle, under date of March 24.

The details of Rochel’s death are meagre, but from what can be gleaned it appears that he was returning from the mines, after disposing of a valuable claim. His party was short of provisions, and as Rochel, who was quite an old man, delayed the march, it was decided to abandon him. Rochel had been engaged here in the manufacture of brick, but was tempted from home by the stories of immense wealth in Alaska. From all accounts he was among the luckiest of the miners at Dawson City, but was unable to bring his winnings back to civilization. His body will be brought here for burial.”

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“American Consumers Will Sign Up In Droves, Regardless Of The Privacy Implications”

May 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the future, the expensive cars being abandoned will likely be driverless. Privacy concerns won’t slow down the software, because trying to control your information in this era is as futile as trying to control what comes out of a 3D printer. From Timothy B. Lee at the Washington Post:

“Self-driving cars will make it easier for the authorities to track you everywhere you go. But the benefits of self-driving cars are likely to be so enormous that American consumers will sign up in droves, regardless of the privacy implications.

We know this because American consumers have already enthusiastically adopted a technology that allows the government to track their every movement: the cellphone. To complete incoming calls, your cellphone company needs to know where you are at all times. A few brave souls have rejected the technology on privacy grounds, but most have signed up without giving it a second thought.

The story will be much the same for self-driving cars.”

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“Thousands Of The Finest Automobiles Ever Made Are Now Being Abandoned Every Year”

May 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, a report from the unfortunately named Messy Nessy Chic about an unusual sign of the economic meltdown in Dubai–expensive ghost vehicles:

“If you’ve ever been to Dubai or anywhere in the United Arab Emirates, you will have noticed they have a serious car culture out there, with a particular preference for the latest and greatest in high-end super cars. But like the rest of the world, Dubai has fallen on hard times. Once the hub of the oil economy and the centre of a booming property market, foreigners, mostly British, invested in the red hot market. Newly wealthy ex-pats bought the lastest Italian and German sports cars to compliment their millionaire lifestyles– and then the global economic crisis came along and burst everybody’s bubble.

Thousands of the finest automobiles ever made are now being abandoned every year since Dubai’s financial meltdown, left by expatriates and locals alike who flee in a hurry because they face crippling debts. With big loans to repay to the banks (unpaid debt or even bouncing a cheque is a criminal offence in Dubai), the panicked car owners make their way to the airport at top speeds and leave their vehicles in the car park, hopping on the next flight out of there, never to return.”

A Reading List Curated By George Saunders

May 23, 2013 in Books | Permalink

The only brick-and-mortar bookstore I go to anymore is the Strand in Manhattan. The shop’s website is unreliable as hell when it comes to letting you know what volumes are in stock in the store, but it has an amazing amount of really good books, and you can save some bucks if you’re a smart shopper. The Strand asks different writers to a curate a shelf (a table, actually) of their favorite works. The following is a list of George Saunders’ 56 selections. What’s the most surprising choice? Bright Lights, Big City, maybe?

  • The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose by Alice Munro
  • Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • Sakhalin Island (Alma Classics) by Anton Chekhov
  • Airships by Barry Hannah
  • Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus
  • I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
  • Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
  • Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writing of Daniil Kharms by Daniil Kharms
  • Twilight of the Superheroes: Stories by Deborah Eisenberg
  • Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
  • In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
  • Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes
  • Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
  • Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz
  • A Collection of Essays by George Orwell
  • Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein
  • The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx by Groucho Marx
  • The Bridegroom by Ha Jin
  • Loving/Living/Party Going by Henry Green
  • Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya
  • 1920 Diary by Isaac Babel
  • The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel
  • A Sportsman’s Notebook by Ivan Turgenev
  • Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac
  • Dubliners by James Joyce 
  • Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
  • Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects by Kerry Brougher
  • Dos Passos: U.S.A., 42nd Parallel, 1919, Big Money by John Dos Passos
  • A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
  • Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
  • Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
  • Hadji Murat (Vintage Classics) by Leo Tolstoy
  • Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
  • Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
  • One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko by Mike Royko
  • A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
  • Dead Souls (Wordsworth Classics) by Nikolai Gogol
  • Collected Tales by Nikolai Gogol
  • Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by Patrik Ourednik 
  • Cathedral by Raymond Carver
  • Collected Stories of Richard Yates by Richard Yates 
  • All the King’s Men (Restored Edition) by Robert Penn Warren
  • Children of Light by Robert Stone
  • Living End by Stanley Elkin
  • The Coast of Chicago by Stuart Dybek
  • The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
  • The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff
  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
  • I Will Bear Witness, 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years by Victor Klemperer 
  • Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin
  • Ironweed by William Kennedy
  • The Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn

 

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Old Print Article: “Man-Driven Plane Flies In Paris Test,” New York Times (1921)

May 23, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

A small plane powered for a matter of feet by a person on a bicycle is utterly useless in a practical sense, yet achingly beautiful to admire, perhaps because of the near-futility of the effort. From a July 10, 1921 New York Times article about French wheelman Gabriel Poulain, who was a pioneer in this odd endeavor:

“Paris–Gabriel Poulain, the French champion cyclist, succeeded this morning in the Bois de Boulogne in winning the Peugot prize of 10,000 francs for the flight of more than ten meters distance and one meter high in a man-driven airplane. In an ‘aviette,’ which is a bicycle with two wing planes, he four times flew the prescribed distance, his longest flight being more than twelve meters, or about the same number of yards.

Poulain for several years has been devoting himself to the solution of the problem of flight by the power of his own muscles and several times has come near winning a prize. This morning’s exhibition, however, was by far the most successful, a cyclist never before having been able to rise from the ground a sufficient height to enable him to cover more than six or seven meters.

For today’s attempt Poulain altered the angle of the small rear plane of his machine and it was this alteration, it seems, that solved the problem. 

Poulain made his attempt just after dawn on the smooth road at the entrance to the Longchamps race course. Several members of the Aero Club, donors of the prize and a large company of journalists and photographers were present. A square twenty meters each away was carefully measured off and chalked so as to mark the points at which the ‘aviette’ must rise one meter from the ground and that two flights must be made in opposite directions.

Rides Smoothly in Air

Poulain, who was confident that this time he was going to succeed, rode his machine at top speed toward the chalked square. As he entered it he released the clutch which throws the wing into proper position and at once the miniature biplane rose from the ground gracefully and steadily to a height of more than a meter. 

The flight was as steady as that of a motor-driven airplane and Poulain declared afterward that the motion was smoother than when traveling along the ground. When the judges measured the distance between the wheel marks on the chalk they found it lacked only two centimeters of being twelve meters.

Poulain’s flight in the opposite direction was not quite so successful, though he succeeded in covering eleven and a half meters. In landing he broke two spokes of the rear wheel.

M. Robert Peugeot declared the prize won, but Poulain wished to make further proof of the powers of his machine. After changing the wheel he started from positions chosen by the judges, and in each case he succeeded in covering the prize-winning distance. His longest flight was the last, of twelve meters thirty-two centimeters.

In order to cover so great a distance Poulain worked up to a speed of forty-five kilometers an hour on the ground. According to his own estimate, the muscular force required for flight is equal to three horse power. The total weight of the machine, with the wings, is seventeen kilogrammes, or about thirty-seven pounds, and the cyclist himself weighs seventy-four kilograms, or about 165  pounds.

After the flight Poulain declared that he intended to set at work at once on another plane, which, he believes, will enable him to fly 200 to 300 meters. On this machine he will make use of a propeller instead of depending, as he did today, simply on impetus.

Once in the air, Poulain says that not so much power is needed as for the take-off. He says the pedal-worked propeller will be strong enough to continue flight for a considerable distance without fatigue.”

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“In The Genetic Supermarket Parents Are Free To Make Decisions About Which Genes To Select For Their Children”

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

From a post and podcast about human enhancement at Practical Ethics, a comment by Australian bioethicist Chris Gyngell about the world to come:

“In the near future parents may be able to directly alter the genetic make-up of their children using genetic engineering technologies (GETs). A popular model that has been proposed for regulating access to GETs is the ‘genetic supermarket.’ In the genetic supermarket parents are free to make decisions about which genes to select for their children with little state interference. One possible consequence of the genetic supermarket is that ‘collective action problems’ will arise. The combined result of individuals using the market to pursue self-interested gains may have a negative effect on society as a whole, and on future generations. n this paper Gyngell asks whether GETs targeting height, innate immunity, and certain cognitive traits would lead to collective action problems if available in the genetic supermarket. he argues that that the widespread availability of GETs targeting height are unlikely to lead to genuine collective action problems, but that those targeting innate immunity and aspects of our cognition, could.”

“Google Employees Gave More Than 97% Of Their Political Donations To Obama”

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

I’ve probably mentioned before that I love Steven Johnson’s book about Victorian Era epidemiology The Ghost Map. At Medium, the author pushes back against some points George Packer makes in his just-published New Yorker article (gated here) about Silicon Valley’s reach into politics. An excerpt:

“The first assumption, cited half a dozen times in the piece, is that the default political framework of the Valley is libertarian. When I was writing Future Perfect—which makes a cameo in Packer’s piece—I spent quite a few pages clarifying that while the new ‘peer progressive‘ worldview shared some superficial characteristics with Randian libertarianism, it was in actuality fundamentally different. Yes, people who work in the tech sector today (particularly around the web and social media) believe in the power of decentralized systems and less hierarchical forms of organization. But that does not mean they are greed-is-good market fundamentalists. For starters, almost all of them recognize that their industry itself arose out of government funding (see ARPANET), and some of the most celebrated achievements of the digital culture (open source software, Wikipedia) involve commons-based collaboration with no conventional definition of private property whatsoever. It’s precisely because we lack a new vocabulary to describe this worldview that we end up lumping the tech sector together in the libertarian camp.

You can see this confusion most clearly in a series of datapoints that go amazingly unmentioned in Packer’s piece: namely, the election returns from last fall’s presidential race. As Nate Silver observed in a detailed postmortem on Northern California votes, Obama won Santa Clara county by 42% — more than ten times his margin nationally, and more than twice his margin in the rest of liberal California. (While San Francisco and Oakland have long been hotbeds of progressivism, Reagan won Santa Clara by double digits in both of his successful campaigns.) You would think such a dramatic swing to the left would at least warrant a mention in Packer’s piece, but from reading it, an outsider might reasonably assume that the Valley was a Republican stronghold—a vast army of Koch brothers with hoodies.

The numbers are even more stark when you look at campaign finance. According to Silver’s analysis, Google employees gave more than 97% of their political donations to Obama, with comparable percentages at Apple and eBay as well. If libertarianism is so rampant in Silicon Valley, why are they voting for higher taxes and funding a big government liberal by such overwhelming numbers?” (Thanks Browser.)

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“It Seems That You Highlighted The ‘Recent’ Rise Of American Libertarianism And Juxtaposed It With True Anarchism”

May 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Film, Politics, Videos | Permalink

Richard Linklater made Slacker, one of my favorite films, and spoke highly of George W. Bush, one of my least-favorite politicians. And until this very moment I forgot that I interviewed him years ago and he was a really forthright and honest subject. Linklater just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

In Slacker, it seems that you highlighted the “recent” rise of American Libertarianism and juxtaposed it with true anarchism (the Ron Paul ad and the old man being robbed). What side to you fall on, or were you trying to highlight the pros and cons of each philosophy?

Richard Linklater:

Glad you picked up on the nod to Ron Paul in Slacker. I’m with the Libertarian ideology on the freedom front… but I’m kind of a safety net guy, too — don’t like ideologies when they result in cruelty. There is a way in our world, given all of our resources, to have both.

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 Question:

What do you think about the “childization” of movies these days? It seems that Hollywood marketing has successfully turned us all into children. Do you think we are as dumb as the movies we watch, or are we playing dumb in order to enjoy what is commercially available to us?

Richard Linklater:

A good question. A real chicken or egg situation. But as long as people keep going, the films you seem to be alluding to will certainly keep coming. At any moment there are a lot of options available for those who want to look a little deeper into the cinematic landscape.

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Question:

Many of your films focus on time. Each film in the Before Trilogy takes place in the year you filmed it. Tape is all in real time. You have been filming Boyhood for over 10 years to properly age the main actors. What films influenced your unique cinematic perception of time?

Richard Linklater:

Hard to say what films. The ability to manipulate time is such a unique property to cinema. I spend more time thinking about how it affects narrative.

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Question:

What does Keanu Reeves smell like?

Richard Linklater:

I’m pretty sure he smells like Keanu Reeves, if you’re lucky enough to get that close!

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Question:

Have you ever had a lucid dream? Can you share the details?

Richard Linklater:

Yes. I’ve just realized I’m in one right now.•

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Sorry I Haven’t Posted Anything Yet Today

May 22, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

Was working off a connection that was dead or dying. I’ll put up some posts now. You know, stuff about machines killing you, people selling their eyeballs on Craigslist, crap that happened 150 years ago that can’t possibly have any effect on your life, reliably Lefty politics, and satire that only Larry Flynt could appreciate.

We have a great deal on right eyeballs today.

We have a great deal on right eyeballs today.

 

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 22, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“I can help you out.”

have “adult” items you need to get rid of? (norwalk)

i can help you out,,,, i am the porn remover, simply stated i come by before your sale and get rid of those magazine,,,dvds..books ect… that you really just cannot toss out on the curb or display or sell in a tag/garage sale … if the collection is quality i will pay you cash for the mags/books etc. contact me and i will call you right back…

“He Proclaims Himself As The Messiah”

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

For whatever reason, the Vatican is commemorating the 41st anniversary of the attack on Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture, which was vandalized by hammer-wielding madman Laszlo Toth, who believed he was Christ. From Reuters: 

The statue is so lifelike that a viewer can almost feel the curls of the dead Christ’s hair and the softness of the Madonna’s lips.

The veins in Christ’s muscular arms seem to be still holding blood. The folds in the Madonna’s veil seem made of muslin rather than marble.

When art historian Giorgio Vasari saw the statue in 1550 he wrote in his book about the lives of artists.

“It is a miracle that a rock, which before was without form, can take on such perfection that even nature sometimes struggles to create in the flesh.”

After the attack, some art historians and restorers wanted the statue to remain as it was damaged as a sign of the violent times. Others said it should be restored but with clear marks delineating the damaged parts as a historical testament.

The Vatican instead decided on what is known as an “integral restoration,” one that would not leave any traces of the intervention visible to the naked eye.

“With any other statue, leaving the wounds (of the attack) visible, however painful, could have been tolerated,” said Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums.

“But not with the Pieta, not this miracle of art,” he said.•

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Fuzzy footage of the attack, and some of the restoration.

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“I Had To Borrow Money From My Accountant”

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

Mike Fleming Jr. has a really insightful interview with Steven Soderbergh at Deadline Hollywood. Among other things, the discussion covers the spiraling costs of launching a blockbuster film, which actually should have grown cheaper with so many new viral ways to reach audiences. I’ll guess the culprits are entrenched interests and insufficient data. An excerpt:

“Deadline Hollywood:

On global summer tentpoles, studios routinely use $125 million as the given in the mathematical theorem of what it costs to launch these films. Is there no way to bring down that massive number?  

Steven Soderbergh:

I know they’ve tried to figure this out because it’s killing them, but I haven’t seen a Nate Silver-like systemic analysis of what an ad dollar does, exactly.

Deadline Hollywood:

TV spends seem very inefficient for their high cost.

Steven Soderbergh:

Yeah, but nobody wants to be the first to challenge that, which is weird to me because it would be groundbreaking for somebody to be the one who goes, ‘I’m capping this at $15 million.’ They’re afraid, and yet they lose all the time, doing the thing they always do. It’s an extreme brand of loss aversion. It’s just frustrating because the trickle-down effect is, creatively, things are getting narrower. We did one bold thing on Magic Mike. I had this conversation with Danny Feldman at Warner Bros, when I asked things like, ‘On a $25 million spend, what does that last $8 million get you?” He says, ‘We don’t really know.’ But Danny said, and I’m sure people all over town who love this will be screaming, but Danny said, “I’ve never seen any evidence that outdoor does anything. How would you guys feel if we did no outdoor and took that $3 million and put it into more spots.” And we said, “Great.” We didn’t do any outdoor, at all.

Deadline Hollywood: 

It doesn’t seem to have hurt you at all. Didn’t you and Channing Tatum finance that movie by not taking your fees to become an investor like Todd Phillips did in The Hangover?

Steven Soderbergh:

I don’t know what Todd did exactly, but Channing and I split the negative 50-50. When he called me two years ago and said was I interested, I said there was only one way. You and I are going to pay for it, we’re not talking to anybody else, and we’re in preproduction tomorrow because we have to start shooting the day after Labor Day because that’s the slot that I’ve got and you’ve got. I flew to Cannes four weeks later and sold enough territories to cover us. Cash was coming out of our pocket, but at least on paper we were somewhat covered. That’s how we did it.

Deadline Hollywood:

Todd Phillips made one of the great director paydays on The Hangover. Is Magic Mike the most you’ve ever made on a film?

Steven Soderbergh: 

It will be, I think. It certainly ought to be.

Deadline Hollywood: 

What does that say about taking entrepreneurial risk when the business is shifting like it is?

Steven Soderbergh: 

It’s hard for me to use this as an example people should follow. I knew that as ideas go that this was Halley’s Comet. I just knew Channing in a stripper movie, that’s gold. I wouldn’t do that all the time. I had to borrow money from my accountant in the last month of post. To hold up my end, it took everything I had.”

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“You Gotta Thank The Lord, Right?”

May 21, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

This is the greatest TV footage ever not just because I’m an atheist but because I’m a big fan of awkwardness, when the truth pushes through a veneer of so-called civility, which is often nothing more than pandering.

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