“The Idea Of Writing Really Quickly, For Free, Offends Me”

April 26, 2013 in Books, Excerpts | Permalink

I love George Saunders and his deeply funny, deeply moving short stories, and he’s a wonderful journalist as well (like here and here). His fiction has a high-risk style, a seemingly unrestrained combo of Raymond Carver and Groucho Marx, and while I always fear he’ll go over the top completely, like, say, Kurt Vonnegut did with Slapstick, Saunders keeps maturing, deepening. His most recent collection, Tenth of December, is wonderful overall, and “The Semplica-Girls Diaries” is one of the best things he’s ever written, satire that is so sad and humane. Saunders was just interviewed about his computer desktop, of all things, by Ben Johncock for the Guardian. An excerpt:

“Twitter is a deliberate abstention. Somehow I hate the idea of there always being, in the back of my mind, this little voice saying: ‘Oh, I should tweet about this.’ Which knowing me, I know there would be. I’m sure some people can do it in a fun and healthy way, but I don’t think I could. Plus, it’s kind of funny – I’ve spent my whole life learning to write very slowly, for maximum expressiveness, and for money. So the idea of writing really quickly, for free, offends me. Also, one of the simplify-life things I’m doing is to try to just write fiction, period. There was a time there a few years back where, and screenplays, and travel journalism so on – just trying to keep the juices flowing and kick open some new doors. These, in turn, led to a period of sort of higher public exposure – TV appearances here in the US and some quasi-pundit-like moments. To be honest, this made me feel kind of queasy. I’m not that good on my feet and I found that I really craved the feeling of deep focus and integrity that comes with writing fiction day after day, in a sort of monastic way. So that’s what I’m trying to do now, as much as I can manage. And Twitter doesn’t figure into that.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 26, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"The worst part was the BLOOD."

“The worst part was the BLOOD.”

CRAIGSLIST HORROR STORY – $100 (Midtown West)

I just got up at five AM to clean a couch. I woke up in the middle of the night and eventually decided to just get up, because I could not stand the fact that the smell of urine, yes urine, was on that couch.

I got this couch off craigslist. Buyer beware! It might seem awkward but it might be a good idea to take a sniff of the couch you are going to buy. Or don’t buy a couch secondhand at all. I went to ikea today for the first time and saw a comparable couch for just a little more.

The urine was not even the worst part. The worst part was the BLOOD. Yes, blood. All over the cushion on the right part, and some on the left. I discovered this when I tried to remove the covers for washing. I was not able to get the covers off because the zipper is too close to the frame on the front right. The left cover I can’t get off either. I know they do come off because there is blood on the cushion, but the cover is white and with no blood on the inside. So the owner must have gotten them off for cleaning.

When I emailed him about it, he said maybe the blood was from a mover’s hand. (What? And the moving was another headache I won’t even get into) I don’t know how he could possibly own this couch and not know that the entire cushion was covered in BLOOD. And to my question about how exactly to get the cover off, because it is stuck on the bottom right, he replied obtusely “the covers come off for cleaning.” I feel like I am talking to a robot that just spits the same answer at you and only has one line to say. I sent him a clear explanation of the situation- did not even blame him for not telling me about the blood- and he just gives this line back.

I got this couch on Saturday morning and spent Saturday night cleaning it. I took a break (and let it dry) on Sunday but then woke up in the middle of the night and finally got up to clean the cover as it was, partially unzippered from the couch. I just put some dishwashing soap on a sponge and wiped it over. It absorbed into the microfiber and I dont even know how to rinse it out properly.

I’ve spent several hours now cleaning this disgusting couch and needless to say it wasn’t worth it. I want to warn people on craigslist not to make my mistake. Don’t let anyone rush you through a purchase, and thoroughly examine the item before buying! Don’t be too polite to ask questions. If at all in doubt, don’t buy it. And if at all possible just buy a new couch. There were couches at ikea for $149 and $200. They may not be the exact or ideal couch you want, but at least they will not be biohazards!!

Gen. Cassius Marcellus Clay, Liberator And Captor

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

General Cassius Marcellus Clay of Kentucky, profiled in these classic photographs, was a wonderful and terrible man, an abolitionist from a family of slave owners who went mental in his dotage, essentially imprisoning a very reluctant 15-year-old wife when he was in his eighties. He was also a politician, an expert duelist, a Yale graduate and so much more. From a report of the death of the nonagenarian in the July 23, 1903 New York Times:

“Gen. Cassius Marcellus was famous for such a multitude of daring deeds, political feats, and personal eccentricities that it is hard to choose any one act or characteristic more distinguished than the rest. As a duelist, always victorious, he was said to have been implicated in more encounters and to have killed more men than any fighter living. As a politician he was especially famous for his anti-slavery crusades in Kentucky, having become imbued with abolition principles while he was a student at Yale, despite the fact that his father was a wealthy slave owner. As a diplomat while Minister to Russia during and after the civil war, he took a prominent part in the negotiations that resulted in the annexation of Alaska.

The act of Gen. Clay’s life that has commanded most attention in recent years was his marriage to a fifteen-year-old peasant girl after he had reached his eighty-fourth birthday. In 1887, he had married his first wife, Miss Warfield, a member of an aristocratic family of slave holders, and years afterward when he had become an ardent disciple of Tolstoi, he came to the conclusion that he ought to wed a ‘daughter of the people.’ In November, 1894, he chose Dora Richardson, the daughter of a woman who had been a domestic for some time in his mansion at White Hall, near Lexington.

When the little girl became his wife, the General proceeded to employ a governess for her. She rebelled. Then he sent her to the same district school she had attended previously. The fact that he supplied her with the most beautiful French gowns and lavished money upon her, she did not consider compensations for the teasing she got at the hands of her fellow-pupils. In two months he had to take her back home, still uneducated. 

The old warrior’s eccentricities increased during his declining years, and after his latest marriage he thought little of anything except his dream that some ancient enemy was trying to murder him and his ‘peasant wife,’ as he called her. She, in spite of his kindnesses, kept running away from White Hall, and finally he decided he must get a divorce. This he did, charging her with abandonment. She soon married a worthless young mountaineer named Brock, who was once arrested for counterfeiting. Then the General began to plot to get her back, having already given a farm and house to her and her new husband, only to hear that Brock sold the property. At last Brock died, and a few months ago dispatches from Kentucky stated that the General was trying in vain to prevail upon his ‘child wife’ to return to him. She refused persistently, never having outgrown the dislike for the luxurious life with which he surrounded her and still preferring the simple country existence to which she was born.”

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“We Don’t Have The Language And The Concepts To Know How To Talk About Living In A World That Celebrates The End Of Work”

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There’s a small but lucrative industry made up of people who argue that technology is bad for us and we should stop it, as if these assertions and suggestions are useful. A much more sensible approach from Tom Foremski at ZDNet:

“We have at our disposal immense, irrepressible technologies of mass abundance, yet we constantly seek to muzzle them, to create sustainable economies that are only sustainable within the GDP metrics that made sense in the past.

It doesn’t add up, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s because we don’t have the language and the concepts to even begin to know how to talk about living in a world that celebrates the end of work, the fruits of thousands of years of progress.

Yet we insist that 7 billion people work, or else they are failures, failed societies, failed countries, failed economies. The Internet is helping to create a lot failed economies, it’s what it does best.

Our technologies overall, replace more jobs than they create, that’s why they are successful. Don’t look to Silicon Valley to create tens of milions of jobs, unless they are replacing hundreds of millions of jobs elsewhere. That’s what Washington DC and all other governments don’t understand about innovation.

We need a new way of understanding the future and coming to terms with it on its terms — and not those from our past way of thinking. That’s going to be hugely difficult but we need to start now. 

Predicting the future is easy, figuring out how we live in it is much harder.”

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“This Collage Of Physical Instruments Circles Around And Around Through The Foundation Of The World”

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

“A surreal, moving garden of repurposed photographic equipment.” (Image by Adam E. Moreira.)

Rust never sleeps, so it takes diligence to stave off decay–a decay that would set in rapidly if we were to ever disappear. In a dense city, the infrastructure is particularly fraught. One way New York monitors its mass transportation is with a Geometry Car. From Bldg Blog:

“it’s hard not to be captivated by the idea of some blindingly well-lit behemoth vehicle maneuvering around beneath the city at night, all lasers, mirrors, lenses, and prisms—a surreal, moving garden of repurposed photographic equipment and motion-capture technologies from different historical eras—scanning the geometry of the metropolis from below, down to thermal flaws in the very metal it passes over. Surrounded by overlapping holographs of infinite lines and tunnels, like the subway dreaming of itself, this collage of physical instruments circles around and around through the foundation of the world, a two-track mind, a mobile neurology thinking in well-measured bursts of strobe light.”

“Whatever The Value Of The Wisdom Of Crowds, It Isn’t Magic”

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of a New Yorker blog post by James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, about the epic fail of the Redditor throng during the Boston Massacre bombing manhunt:

“After Reddit’s attempt to find the Boston Marathon bombers turned into a major failure (for which Reddit’s general manager Erik Martin publicly apologized Monday), the over-all conclusion seems to be that the whole experiment was misguided from the start, and that the Redditors’ inability to identify the Tsarnaev brothers demonstrates the futility of using an online crowd of amateur sleuths to help with a criminal investigation. Or, as the Times’s Nick Bilton put it, ‘It looks as if the theory of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ doesn’t apply to terrorist manhunts.’

That proposition may be true. But Reddit’s failure isn’t evidence for it. To begin with, it’s a bit facile to frame this story as a competition between ‘the crowd’ and ‘the experts,’ since the official investigation wasn’t relying on a couple of experts, but rather had its own crowd at work, one made up, in Bilton’s words, of ‘thousands of local and federal officials.’ More important is that the Redditors faced a simple, but insuperable, obstacle when it came to identifying the Tsarnaevs, namely that the two brothers were not, as far as I can tell, in any of the photographs that were widely available before Thursday morning. The footage that convinced investigators that the Tsarnaevs were prime suspects was the footage from the Lord & Taylor surveillance cameras, which hadn’t (and still hasn’t) been released to the public. This is an obvious point, but one that’s been overlooked: Reddit had no real chance of identifying the right suspects because it didn’t have access to the information that mattered. (Had the clip of the Tsarnaevs walking down Boylston Street been publicly available last Tuesday, I don’t think there’s any doubt Redditors would have flagged them as suspicious.) Whatever the value of the wisdom of crowds, it isn’t magic:you can’t ask the crowd to find someone that, in a sense, it’s never seen.”

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“Please Select An Item From Our Menu”

April 25, 2013 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Touchscreens replacing workers at fast-food restaurant drive-thru windows. Like the Automat without the charm.

“Once You Create These Databases Is It Very Easy To Fall Into Function Creep”

April 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

In a discussion about why facial-recognition software didn’t work in the case of the Boston Marathon bombers but will likely be able to verify identity in such instances in the near future, Andrew Leonard of Salon asks Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Alessandro Acquisti about the potential downsides to improving this technology. The first part of his answer doesn’t bother me so much since witnesses and reporters and juries are very flawed anyway, but the second part does. An excerpt:

“Question:

Looking forward, are there reasons why improved facial recognition should worry us?

Alessandro Acquisti:

I am concerned by the possibility for error. We may start to rely on these technologies and start making decisions based on them, but the accuracy they can give us will always be merely statistical: a probability that these two images are images of the same person. Maybe that is considered enough by someone on the Internet who will go after a person who turns out to be innocent. There’s also the problem of secondary usage of data. Once you create these databases is it very easy to fall into function creep — this data should be used only in very limited circumstances but people will hold on to it because it may be useful later on for some secondary purpose.”

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A Note From 1884 About An Old Sweetheart

April 24, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 9, 1884 New York Times:

“Chicago–The recent developments in the medical colleges in relation to grave robberies in the vicinity of Chicago have excited general attention which was not lessened to-day by the discovery of a new case which in one way is a strange commentary on the brutality of some of the students. The detectives to-day recovered from the Homeopathic Medical College the stolen corpse of Mrs. G.M. McConaughy, the young wife of a Nebraska attorney. She was the daughter of J.B. Craft, a merchant of Rochelle, and until her marriage a year ago, was the acknowledged belle of that town. She was 22 years old then, of very attractive personal appearance, and highly accomplished. She was a schoolmate of Newton J. Shinkle, one of the students now under arrest, and it is said he was at one time in love with her. Now he is in a cell charged with robbing the grave of his former sweetheart. A few weeks ago Mr. McConaughy and his wife left their home in Nebraska to visit the old folks in Rochelle. While there the young wife became a mother, but her life went out with the old year, and New Year’s Day she was buried in the cemetery in Rochelle.

The husband made daily visits to the grave, and on Monday discovered some evidences that it had been disturbed. Investigation showed that the coffin was there, but it was empty. It was learned that young Waterman, one of the students under arrest, visited Rochelle New Year’s morning, and returned that night with a Saratoga trunk. Shinkle came to Chicago the day following. The trunk was traced to the Homeopathic College, and the body was found in a perfect state of preservation and was promptly given up by the Faculty. The body was purchased for $35, Jan. 2. The remains were shipped back to Rochelle and buried. Shinkle rode to Chicago in the same car with the husband of the woman whose grave he had robbed.”

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“Smarter Driving Will Lead To More Driving”

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

In “The Future of Driving” at the New York Times Economix blog, economist Casey B. Mulligan argues that the automation of cars may deliver an unintended consequence (more driving, thus more fuel consumption), though having these much lighter automobiles would seemingly offset that drawback. The opening of Mulligan’s post:

“Driverless vehicles would be a windfall for households and businesses that acquire them but would probably increase traffic and nationwide fuel usage.

Google and other innovators are working on vehicles that someday might drive themselves with little or no attention from human passengers. The vehicles of the future will have fast, observant computers that automatically communicate position and road conditions with other vehicles on the road.

Driverless vehicles are expected to help children, the blind, the elderly and others who currently cannot safely drive themselves. Helped by their huge amounts of data and computing power, driverless cars are also purported to reduce traffic congestion and nationwide fuel consumption by driving smarter.

But smarter driving will lead to more driving, because smarter driving reduces the cost per mile of vehicle usage. The end result of additional driving could be more traffic and more aggregate fuel consumption.”

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“Detroit Is Probably The Most Important Design Project Ever Undertaken By Americans (After The Founding Itself)”

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

The opening of “Motor City Breakdown,” Jerry Herron’s new Design Observer essay about the fall of Detroit and what it means for the rest of America:

“Why can’t we just get over Detroit — by common agreement, the most bankrupt, abandoned, misbegotten enterprise ever designed by Americans, at least so far as cities go — ‘the country’s most startling example of modern urban collapse,’ as the New York Times put it? Maybe it’s the sheer scale of the catastrophe being perpetrated here. The Times was reporting on the latest census of 700,000 souls, down from 1 million a decade ago and 1.8 million in 1950. Hardly a week goes by without national headlines about the murder rate or economic meltdown or impending civic bankruptcy (the biggest in U.S. history), or the Big Three automaker bailout, the corruption of public officials, the dumbfounding ineptitude of the electorate. Then there are the ruins that cast Detroit as a post-industrial Acropolis or Pompeii (except our ruins are larger), and the caravans of filmmakers and journalists and gawkers who want to get one last look, say one last word before the whole thing finally collapses. With all those end-of-everything narratives, you’d think by now we would have really reached the end — of conceivable stories, or patience — the end of Detroit as the ‘set for some movie about the last hours of the Planet Earth.’ That crack, by James Howard Kunstler, came 20 years ago, yet the end-of-time tourists keep returning to the set, locals too, which leads to my question: Why can’t we just let go? 

Our preoccupation with Detroit is no accident. Americans are a designer people, a society of immigrants whose only common experience on this continent is the experience of coming from someplace else, willingly or otherwise. We have no shared origin, whether natives or newcomers. Instead we were born of ideas memorialized in the Declaration and Constitution. So we come naturally by our obsession with design, Detroit being probably the most important design project ever undertaken by Americans (after the Founding itself) — “the Silicon Valley of the Jazz Age,’ as Mark Binelli so aptly describes it, ‘a capitalist dream town of unrivaled innovation and bountiful reward.’ But here’s the tricky part. Is the spectacular — and spectacularly represented — failure of Detroit indicative of some larger design fault inherent in the very nature of American ideas, or is it simply a local one-off, an exception without deeper meaning?”

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Exclusive: CNN’s New Correspondent In Syria

April 24, 2013 in Fake, Humor | Permalink

It’s been a tough stretch at CNN: bad ratings, awful reporting about the Boston Marathon bombing and new network president Jeff Zucker saying that he wants to “broaden the definition of news,” while adding a lot of entertainment shows to the schedule. But at least CNN has an exciting new correspondent.

Hi, I'm Billy Eichner, from Billy on the Street, reporting from Syria for CNN.

I’m Billy Eichner, from Billy on the Street, reporting from outside the former American Embassy in Syria for CNN.

Assad is going to murder you, gays!

Assad is going to murder you, you gays!

The American homosexual is correct.

The American homosexual is correct.

For a dollar, who is

For a dollar, who has had more work done, Joan Rivers or Sarah Palin?

My children have died from typhoid and my husband was boiled in acid.

My children have died from a lack of potable water and my husband was boiled in acid.

Wrong, you moron. It was Sarah Palin.

Wrong, you moron. It was Sarah Palin.

For a dollar, what is the best way to destroy a hostage's genitals, ball-peen hammer or a pair of rusty pliers?

For a dollar, the best way to wreck a political prisoner’s genitals is by using a ball-peen hammer or rusty pliers?

I have been using a ball-peen hammer. but these rusty pliers sound interesting.

I have been using a ball-peen hammer. but these rusty pliers sound interesting.

That's right. You win a dollar.

Correct!. You win a dollar!

The American homosexual is correct.

Great. In Syria these days, a dollar will buy many pairs of rusty pliers.

Assad is going to murder you, gays!

Assad is going to murder you, you gays!

Jeff Zucker: I'm just trying to broaden the definition of what news is.

Jeff Zucker: I’m just trying to broaden the definition of news.

Rupert: Good job, Jeff.

Rupert: Good job, Jeff.

More fake crap that seemed funny at the time:

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"

“…so that we can perform an at home insemination.”

Sperm donor (Harlem / Morningside)

Me and my girlfriend are looking for someone to provide sperm so that we can perform an at home insemination. You would have to sign a contract signing over any parental rights. You would also have to have a full physical to make sure that you are healthy and to test your sperm count level. Lastly, you would feel out a questionnaire upon meeting so that we could know more about you. If interested, please email me telling me a little about yourself. I am paying $500 for each time that you produce sperm even if we don’t get pregnant. We are lookin for someone that resembles me. I am African American … Very light skinned.. I have light brown eyes. Athletic build. Of course I’m not looking for my male twin but someone in resemblance. 

Please feel free to send me a picture along with a little about yourself. I am paying $500. Thank you. Jay.

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“The Internet Is The Largest Experiment Involving Anarchy In History”

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

From Liz Gannes’ All Things D article about Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s new book about our technological future:

“Written with Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, The New Digital Age was released today. It’s dense, though readable, and floats between visions of a hologram-and-robot-enhanced future for the developed world, and scarily specific predictions of how dictators will get hold of technology and use it for evil.

‘The Internet is the largest experiment involving anarchy in history,’ Schmidt and Cohen write, as they forecast all sorts of ‘painful liminal periods’ while things like privacy, citizenship and reporting get figured out as the next five billion people come online, joining the two billion that already are.

Schmidt and Cohen are not going to spark a social movement or even an op-ed war, a la that other recent tech exec book, Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. But they did manage to write a surprisingly non-corporate book that talks about Twitter at least 10 times as much as it does about Google’s driverless cars.”

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Old Print Article: “Lombroso Tricked Again?” New York Times (1907)

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

"Lambroso thinks that these indications...prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime."

“Lambroso thinks that these indications prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime.”

Cesare Lombroso was a pioneering criminologist in the 19th century who helped establish the field, but his methods and assumptions were often somewhere south of bizarre. An excerpt about some of his quackery from an article in the August 4, 1907 New York Times:

“Paris–Prof. Cesare Lombroso, the well-known Italian criminologist, has written to Le Temps on behalf of Soleilland, the man under sentence of death in Paris for assaulting and murdering a little girl, the daughter of a couple with whom he was on friendly terms.

Lombroso calls attention to the peculiar shape of Soleilland’s right hand, the outer edge of which, instead of being slightly convex, is quite straight and forms a continuation of the line of the forearm. There is a wide gap between the third and fourth fingers, and the second and third are the same length. Instead of two oblique lines on the palm, there is only one straight line. All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand, as usually found in the lower apes, epileptics, idiots, and born criminals.

Lambroso thinks that these indications, taken in conjunction with the peculiar shape of the iris of Soleilland’s eye, prove that the prisoner is a degenerate and only slightly responsible for the crime. The professor suggests that President Fallieres ought to weigh the matter very carefully before ordering his execution.

"All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand."

“All these signs are peculiar to what is called in neuropathology the monkey hand, as usually found in the lower apes, epileptics, idiots, and born criminals.”

Unfortunately the weak point in Prof. Lombroso’s argument is that Bertillon, the head of the Police Anthropometrical Department, says that he has never photographed Soleilland’s hands, and it is extremely probable that the distinguished Italian is the victim of a practical joker.

This is not the first time. He had a similar mishap years ago. Lombroso asked Prince Roland Bonaparte to obtain photographs of hands of female criminals. Through a misunderstanding the Prince in applying to the Anthropometrical Department asked for photographs of the hands of workwomen. The photographs appeared a year later in a work by Lombroso, who described the hands as showing all kinds of criminal tendencies, whereas they really belonged to respectable, hardworking women employed at the Central Markets.

Since the Chamber of Deputies has disallowed the executioner’s salary, thus indirectly stopping capital punishment, thirty-four criminals have been sentenced to death and none of them has been guillotined. A marked recrudescence of crime has since occurred in Paris, with quite an epidemic of offenses against women and children. The Soleilland case has brought public feeling to a head, and now there is a strong demand for the revival of the death penalty.

Meanwhile, Soleilland’s spirits are reviving and he is telling his warders that when his sentence is commuted and he is sent out to New Caledonia or Guiana he hopes to settle down, lead a new life, and own a donkey cart.”

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“It’s Unprecedented In Medical Testing How Fast This Has Gone From Lab Research To Acceptance”

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

MIT’s Technology Review has just published its “10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013.” Included on the list is Prenatal DNA Sequencing, which has the potential for great good and also some ethical quandaries. An excerpt:

“Earlier this year Illumina, the maker of the world’s most widely used DNA sequencing machines, agreed to pay nearly half a billion dollars for Verinata, a startup in Redwood City, California, that has hardly any revenues. What Verinata does have is technology that can do something as ethically fraught as it is inevitable: sequence the DNA of a human fetus before birth.

Verinata is one of four U.S. companies already involved in a rapidly expanding market for prenatal DNA testing using Illumina’s sequencers. Their existing tests, all launched in the last 18 months, can detect Down syndrome from traces of fetal DNA found in a syringeful of the mother’s blood. Until now, detecting Down syndrome has meant grabbing fetal cells from the placenta or the amniotic fluid, procedures that carry a small risk of miscarriage.

The noninvasive screen is so much safer and easier that it’s become one of the most quickly adopted tests ever and an important new medical application for Illumina’s DNA sequencing instruments, which have so far been used mainly in research labs. In January, Illumina’s CEO, Jay Flatley, told investors that he expects the tests will eventually be offered to as many as two million women a year in the United States, representing half of all pregnancies—up from around 250,000 mothers, mostly older, who now undergo the invasive tests. ‘It’s unprecedented in medical testing how fast this has gone from lab research to acceptance,’ says Diana Bianchi, executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts University and the chief clinical advisor to Verinata. ‘It’s a huge impact for any technology in its first year.’

But this is likely to be just the start for prenatal DNA sequencing.”

“The Most Scared Customer Did Actually Shit Himself”

April 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

A British guy who is paid to dress as a zombie at events, chase the attendees and fall dead (and rise) after they shoot him with airsoft shotguns, just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

_______________________

Question:

What liberal arts degree did you study for?

Answer:

Liberal Arts? Very funny. Got into it more because of the firearms and shit.

_______________________

Question:

So do people shoot at you with blanks then you fall dead? Or what? It sounds intense.

Answer:

NPC staff get blanks, customers get tri-shot airsoft shotguns. We get shot, we die, we reanimate, and don’t stop coming.

_______________________

Question:

How long does one event usually take? Have you ever seen anyone ridiculously scared of you and what happened?

Answer:

Event is around 4 hours, and the most scared customer did actually shit himself.

_______________________

Question:

Do you ever go as a zombie for Halloween?

Answer:

Worked last Halloween, was Amy Winehouse (dead celeb themed event).

Question:

You know who did the best Amy Winehouse zombie? Amy Winehouse before she died.

 Answer:

Too right, too right

_______________________

Question:

UUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNGGGGGG UUUUUUUHHHHHHHH HMMMMMMMMMMM HUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH?

 Answer:

UUUUUUUURRRGGGGGG HNNNNNNNNG RAAAAAHHHHHHHH.

 

Shocker: President Obama Announces Resignation

April 23, 2013 in Fake, Humor | Permalink

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down your hand grenades and cheeseburgers for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

I

I ran for the highest office in the land in order to improve this country. But I’ve come to the conclusion that you violent half-wits deserve to continue sitting in your shit-filled diapers. So I am resigning.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

I have seen some horrors during my time as President of this deeply stupid country.

Social drinkers with odd tans.

Social drinkers with violent mood swings.

Senators with pretty lips who seem to have a lot of repressed energy.

Senators with delicate lips who seem to have a lot of repressed energy.

Women who've had sex with guns.

People who love their assault weapons so much that they might as well fuck them and give birth to their children.

Dipshits who don't realize that the fucking Joker is a character in a fucking movie.

Dipshits who are unaware that the Joker is a fucking character in a fucking movie.

And whatever this thing is.

And whatever this thing is.

It's me!

It’s me!

You white people have aged me horribly. I look like Dr. J's grandfather.

You fat stumblefucks have aged me horribly. I look like Dr. J’s grandfather.

You tell ’em, Pop-Pop.

My fellow Americans, if you could put down you bombs and assault weapons for just a minute, I have a few remarks to make.

In summation, I hate you all so much. In addition to resigning, I’m renouncing my American citizenship and moving to Kenya.

I knew it.

I knew it.

Farewell. Now you jackasses will get what you so richly deserve.

Now you jackasses will get what you so richly deserve.


More fake crap that seemed funny at the time:

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“Paracetamol Seems To Have Reduced The Fundamental Anxiety Participants Felt”

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

We tend to be more morally severe when we’re anxious, when we feel serious threat. But certain pharmaceuticals, even over-the-counter ones, can relieve stressful feelings. As we go forward, it will become easier and easier to do so. What will that mean for norms? From Nadira Faulmueller at Practical Ethics:

“In a now classical study people who objected to prostitution were asked to suggest a penalty for a woman arrested for prostitution. Participants who were led to reflect on their own mortality beforehand proposed a far higher bail than participants who thought about a less anxiety inducing topic. Such belief affirmation effects can also be evoked by psychologically disturbing experiences less severe than mortality salience. Hence, anxiety aroused by different situations can make our moral reactions more pronounced. 

Some days ago, an interesting study has been published in Psychological Science. The authors showed that the common over-the-counter pain reliever paracetamol counteracts the belief-affirming effect of anxiety. Participants who took a placebo showed the familiar response pattern in the ‘prostitution paradigm.’ They suggested a harsher penalty for the prostitute under mortality salience (a bail of around $450) compared to a control condition (around $300). Participants who took paracetamol, however, didn’t react on mortality salience. Independent of what they had reflected on before, they suggested the same penalty for the prostitute (around $300). Paracetamol seems to have reduced the fundamental anxiety participants felt due to the mortality salience manipulation, so they didn’t have to affirm their moral beliefs that strongly.”

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“Tip And I Don’t Often Share The Same Views”

April 22, 2013 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

William F. Buckley and Tip O’Neill reach across the aisle in 1988 to promote the U.S. Space Foundation. American space exploration lost course after the early 1970s, and it seems to only now be regaining momentum, thanks to a combination of public and private enterprises.

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“It Has Eyes, It Has Ears, It Has A Nervous System, It Has A Brain”

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

The Bullitt Center, a new Seattle office building opening today, Earth Day, is completely green and self-sustaining and automatically receives external data to help it operate in an optimal state. From Wendy Kaufman at NPR:

“‘In a building this size, any place else in Seattle it would have two elevators, and that’s what would face you as you walked in the front door. Here, the stairway is obvious and it’s attractive,’ says Denis Hayes, president and CEO of the foundation.

He explains there is an elevator, but it’s tucked away. The staircase encourages exercise and the concept saves money both in energy use and construction costs.

This is one of dozens of decisions and trade-offs that went into this building — a building Hayes describes as a living organism.

‘It has eyes, it has ears, it has a nervous system, it has a brain and it responds to its environment in a way that seeks to optimize things,’ he says.

He points across the street to a mini weather station. It sends data to the building so it can decide what it should do to maximize comfort and conserve energy.

Hayes says the building customizes windows and external shutter positions so natural lighting can be maximized to its potential and ‘give you day lighting at your desk.’

Just about everything in this building is off-the-shelf technology — from composting toilets to photovoltaic cells, which create electricity from sunlight, on the roof. But never before has all this technology been integrated into a single building quite this way.

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A Brief Note From 1867 About Flour Barrels

April 22, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the February 28, 1867 New York Times:

“Buffalo–Five dead bodies, two males, two females, and one newborn infant, were found by the Detective Police at the Grand Trunk Railroad depot this afternoon. They were shipped through the American Express Company for Ann Arbor, Mich. The bodies were packed  in flour barrels in a nude state, and had not been dead over a week. The bodies are now being cleansed of flour, and will be exposed for identification to-morrow morning. This city is wild with excitement to know whose relations have been thus desecrated by body snatchers.”

“The Planet Is Fine, The People Are Fucked”

April 22, 2013 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Even though I don’t care for nature and its constant state of murder and predation, I’m in favor of Earth Day in particular and environmentalism in general, believing that focus on alternative energy methods can reduce carbon emissions greatly–perhaps entirely. That might save you and I. But as George Carlin pointed out, we probably should rename this day since the Earth will be fucking fine without us. It would be even better. We’re the only ones we’re endangering with our profligate behavior. Let’s not be arrogant.

From Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the First Earth Day in 1970, footage of Paul Ehrlich, whose dire prediction of a “population bomb” that brought near-term famine, plague and thermonuclear war, proved incorrect. 

“Saving endangered species is just one more arrogant attempt by humans to control nature.”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

April 21, 2013 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

om999

Need sex tapes – $20 (nyc)

also looking for a clean in good working order v c r with its remote. its for an 86 year old man.

“Damn You, Polio!”

April 21, 2013 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I haven’t had a television for more than a year, so I will pose this question to you: Is there a single network TV show that’s told from the perspective of an African-American or Latino? And I don’t mean having a minority character cast in a show created from a white person’s viewpoint. Are there many programs like that on cable? Talk about writing off the 47%. It’s not just bad ethically, but it’s bad business.

Imagine what we’re missing.

But some happy news: The Eric Andre Show on Adult Swim, one of my favorite programs, has just been renewed for a second season. So there will gladly be another burst of anarchic, Dada cabaret from Andre and Hannibal Buress.

Click on video stills below to go to Adult Swim site and watch the shows.

Damn you, Polio!

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