“They Became America’s First Genetically Engineered Pets”

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

We modify ourselves for aesthetic pleasure, but should we do so with our pets? The answer may be dubious, but it’s sort of beside the point because it’s happening and it will become commonplace. We’ve only just begun playing with genes. The opening of “Beauteous Beasts,” Emily Anthes’ new Aeon essay about manipulating DNA to make pets more presentable: 

“Among the reeds and roots of India’s flooded rice paddies lives a small, freshwater fish. It is covered, face to fin, in horizontal black-and-white stripes, giving the minnow its name: the zebrafish. The fish are striking — and hardy — which has made them popular pets. Over the decades, the fish have spread beyond the shallow, silty waters of the Indian subcontinent to show off their racing stripes in living rooms around the world.

But today, these fish — at least, the original, black-and-white model popular among generations of aquarium keepers — are beginning to seem like relics from a simpler, bygone era. Thanks to biotechnology, the zebrafish has gotten a modern, Technicolor upgrade. By plucking pieces of DNA from jellyfish, sea coral and sea anemones, and popping them into the tiny, tropical fish, biologists have created zebrafish that glow in electric shades of red, orange, green, blue, and purple. In late 2003, a small Texas company called Yorktown Technologies began selling these animals, which they dubbed GloFish. They became America’s first genetically engineered pets.

GloFish are now available at pet stores throughout 49 American states (all but California), selling for $5 or $6 a pop. Two years ago, I bought six of them, along with a special tank designed to bring out their vibrant colours. I was enchanted, watching the fish dart around the aquarium in a neon blaze. But I also found myself confronting some thorny ethical and philosophical questions.”

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“They Were Taken In By A Woman, Who Read Of Their Plight In A Newspaper—But Threw Them Out After Learning Of Their Fondness For Nudity”

March 25, 2013 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

The ending of Mike Nichols’ film version of The Graduate was an ambiguous, not happy, one. A young idealistic couple on the run–but where to? And would they soon run out? For Charles Webb, the author of the novel the film was based on, and his wife, Eve, life has also been quixotic and difficult, as you might imagine it would be for devoted nudists who continually give away all their money. The author and his mate (who eventually shaved her head and changed her name to “Fred”), were profiled in a 1988 People article. The opening:

“It was an image that captured the rebellious spirit of a generation: Dustin Hoffman pounding frantically on the church window, shattering the sounds of silence with his primal scream, “Elaine!” But the 1967 blockbuster The Graduate did not quite end at the exhilarating moment when Benjamin Braddock broke up the wedding of Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, carrying her off to reckless freedom and true love. In the final frames, as Ben and Elaine stole away on a bus, their tentative smiles seemed to ask, ‘What next?’

Imagine this scenario: Benjamin and Elaine get divorced but never live apart. Remaining true to their unconventional principles, they squander whatever money comes their way. Arriving at middle age, they don’t settle for sipping cynicism on the sofa. Instead, we find the idealistic pair huddled in the back of a battered VW bus—their only home—down to their last few hundred bucks. 

That just about sums up the fate of author Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate, and his own Elaine, who now calls herself Fred. Maybe Ben—and Charles—should have gotten into plastics. ‘It’s hard to say how we got to this point,’ says Webb, 49, as he sits in a Bethel, Conn., diner. His features marked by a perpetual frown, he can barely conceal his anxiety over their situation yet seems equally incapable of discussing it. Fred, 48, although concerned about winter’s approach, remains hopeful. ‘What we need now is a place to settle,’ she says. ‘Then Charles can get back to work.’

Webb, after all, was once a literary rising star who published The Graduate, his first book, at age 24 in 1963. During the next 15 years, Webb says, he made almost $150,000 from that and five other books, including the $20,000 he received for film rights to The Graduate. ‘All of that seemed like a lot to us 10, 20 years ago,’ says Webb. ‘But money was never important to us.’ Fred agrees. ‘In fact,’ she says, ‘we have given away just about everything we owned.’ That includes two houses, a Rauschenberg drawing and a Warhol print—all donated to nonprofit organizations. For the past 10 years, Charles and Fred have subsisted on diminishing royalties from paperback sales of The Graduate, which now amount to about $2,500 a year. 

Since the couple pulled up stakes in Southern California and arrived in Massachusetts last July with their mutt, Mrs. R. (named, of course, for the story’s Mrs. Robinson), and a few thousand dollars in savings, the fates have not been kind to the Webbs. First, they had hoped to settle in Williamstown, home of Charles’s alma mater, Williams College, where he planned to begin writing a sequel to The Graduate. Unable to find a place they could afford, they were taken in by a woman in Bethel, Conn., who read of their plight in a newspaper—but threw them out after learning of their fondness for nudity.”

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“I Never Knew I Was Part Of A Cult Till I Got Out”

March 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

The reason why cults and other mind-control systems seek out the young isn’t only because they’re energetic and lack familial responsibilities, but because they’re “impressionable.” What does that mean? When we’re not yet formed, when we haven’t had enough repetition of thought to set ourselves, ideas can be pushed into our brains–and pushed out–more readily than later in life. And as deprogrammers can tell us, once something does become deeply ingrained at that age, it’s a chore changing a mind. That’s why you see otherwise intelligent teens become Manson Family members or an American Taliban. It’s not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of experience. And that applies whether it’s a cult based on religion or sex or anything else, because it’s all about power. 

From “The Master,” Marc Fisher’s painstaking and painful exploration of the Horace Mann sex-abuse scandal, a passage about one of the victims of a charismatic teacher who maintained control over some of his students even when they grew into adults, assembling them in a country house to be his makeshift ‘family”:

“The other original owner of the house, the bond trader, who spoke on the condition that he not be named, said that he first encountered Berman in tenth grade, when his relationship with his parents was crumbling. ‘I didn’t know it, but I was looking for someone like Berman, who had authority, who was a leader,’ he says. ‘In a school that made everyone think he was special, this was the hardest guy to have approve of you. I needed somebody to talk to and he offered himself as a counsellor.’

Like the other boys, he was invited to Berman’s apartment, in eleventh grade. ‘We didn’t think of ourselves as gay, and I never was, though I engaged in homosexual activities, obviously,’ the bond trader says. Berman would describe the sex as a natural part of the teacher-student relationship, dating back to ancient Greece. ‘We might spend a night and then go home to our parents, and other kids would come in,’ he says. ‘He took great pleasure in stealing kids from the parents he hated.’

The trader also says that, while he lived at Satis House, Berman kept him on a restricted diet, to hold his weight at about twenty-five pounds below the level at which he had played football in college. In the early years of their relationship, he says, Berman regularly beat him with a belt buckle. Berman wrote to me that this wasn’t true: ‘I do not recall ever striking anyone with a belt buckle; I guess I’d remember if I had. (Excellent idea, though.)’

After four years at Satis House, the trader left, and he has spent the subsequent decades trying to figure out why he stayed so long. ‘There was always the threat of excommunication, lack of approval, castigation,’ he told me. ‘We weren’t even allowed not to like the food he made—and it was awful. And there was always alcohol, lots of it. You drank one woolie and you were relatively pliable after that. I never knew I was part of a cult till I got out.'”

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“The Biorobotics Lab Is Something Of A Specialist In Robotic Snakes”

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

From Wired UK, a report about a Carnegie Mellon robotic snake that can perch itself on poles and branches: “The Biorobotics Lab is something of a specialist in robotic snakes. Given a snake’s lack of limbs, feet and any additional appendages, their unique take on propulsion is an ideal one to replicate in robots designed to explore hard-to-reach locations. “These highly articulated devices can coordinate their internal degrees of freedom to perform a variety of locomotion capabilities that go beyond the capabilities of conventional wheeled and the recently-developed legged robots,” reads the lab’s site. ‘The true power of these devices is that they are versatile, achieving behaviors not limited to crawling, climbing, and swimming.'”

“Smith Envisioned ‘A Changing Of The Guard Within The Media'”

March 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a Tim Adams’ Guardian profile of the ever-humble Shane Smith of Vice fame, a passage that looks into the shockingly big-money operation of the formerly upstart media company, which recently garnered major attention for turning Dennis Rodman into a pierced and tatted diplomat of sorts:

“Vice has come an awful long way from its origins as a free and underground music magazine in Smith’s native Montreal 20 years ago. He created it with a couple of friends – having persuaded the city fathers to let them take over an earnest community title called the Voice. In the two decades since Vice dropped its middle ‘o’ it has grown from being a ‘hipsters’ bible,’ given away on street corners and in record stores, to a global brand with offices in 34 countries. The high-traffic online and documentary film incarnations of the Vice sensibility are about to spawn a 24-hour terrestrial news channel available in 18 countries. A documentary series in partnership with august HBO will include the Rodman and McAfee films. There is also a record label and an ad agency, Virtue, which numbers Nike and Dell among its clients. Announcing some of those departures at an industry event in Abu Dhabi last year, Smith envisioned ‘a changing of the guard within the media,’ and announced his ambition for Vice to become both the largest online media network in the world and ‘the voice of the angry youth.’

To back up this fighting talk, Spike Jonze, the disruptive intelligence behind the film Being John Malkovich and the Jackass franchise, was recently installed as creative director. Two years ago a consortium that included Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP advertising group, and Tom Freston, founder of MTV, invested a reported $50m in Vice media. Since the company purchased Vice.com (formerly a porn site) the same year, revenues have doubled to a reported $200m in 2012, on which insiders suggest an unverified 20 per cent profit margin. Smith talks of 3,000 contributors, though the official payroll is about 850. The average age of a Vice journalist is 25, but scanning the screen-staring ranks of the magazine’s newsroom that seems on the high side. It is easy to see why, on his visit here, Rupert Murdoch might suddenly have felt all of his 82 years.“

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“Parents Should Choose Those Genes Or Choose Those States Which Will Promote A Better Life For The Child”

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

From a debate called “Making Better Babies,” a passage in which Oxford ethicist Julian Savulescu argues that is not just an option but an obligation that we genetically modify our descendants:

“So if we accept that we should treat diseases and use genetics to prevent disease in our offspring, my argument is that we should also value those traits and the genetic contributions to those traits which affect how well our lives and our children’s lives will go.

Now I have in the past controversially argued that we have a moral obligation to do this. Currently it’s legally impermissible to select these sorts of traits in Australia, and I think this is profoundly wrong. However, more strongly not only do I think that people should be able to do it, they should do it.

Why do I say that? Well, if I said to you, people should protect their children from disease, it’s uncontroversial. But if disease is only important because it makes our children’s lives worse, so too parents should choose those genes or choose those states which will promote a better life for the child. 

We have many obligations. We have an obligation to provide good diet and education to our children, to stop climate change, to alleviate global poverty. We have obligations to ourselves and our families. We have many competing obligations. One of those obligations is to try to ensure that our children have the best lives possible and the best advantage when they start life.” (Thanks Practical Ethics.)

 

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“They, After All, Had Previously Determined That He Would Not Get A Vasectomy”

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

Rob Walker, who wrote some of the best New York Times Magazine articles of recent years (like this one and this one), has a new piece in the Atlantic about a man who decided to sell shares not in a company but in himself, giving crowdsourcing a human face. The opening:

“Mike Merrill was thinking of pumping up his workout regimen with mixed-martial-arts classes and boxing lessons. The scheme would involve seven and a half hours a week at various gyms—a big commitment. So he put the matter before his 160 shareholders. They, after all, had previously determined that he would not get a vasectomy, that he would register as a Republican, and that he and the woman he’d been dating could enter into a three-month ‘Relationship Agreement.’

From microfinance to crowd-funding, tools that rely on the support of large groups have grown familiar, bordering on overexposed. Merrill’s approach to harvesting the power of the marketplace, however, is singular: he has essentially sold shares in his own life. Which raises two questions: Why on Earth would somebody offer others the right to vote on his basic life decisions? And, even more inexplicably, why would anybody pay for that right?”

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“In Armenia, Learning To Play The Grand Game Of Strategy In School Is Mandatory For Children”

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

Instruction in chess in now mandatory for third and fourth graders in Armenia the same way that obesity and texting are in American schools. From Al Jazeera:

“Yerevan, Armenia – Little Susie Hunanyan attended her favourite class in school last week, and it wasn’t drawing, crafts or sport. The seven-year-old sat studiously through an hour of chess lessons.

In Armenia, learning to play the grand game of strategy in school is mandatory for children – the only country in the world that makes chess compulsory – and the initiative has paid dividends. Armenia, a Caucasus country with a population of just three million, is a chess powerhouse. …

The chess initiative is not only meant to scout young talent but also build a better society. Armen Ashotyan, Armenia’s education minister, told Al Jazeera the project is aimed at fostering creative thinking.

‘Chess develops various skills – leadership capacities, decision-making, strategic planning, logical thinking and responsibility,’ Ashotyan said. ‘We are building these traits in our youngsters. The future of the world depends on such creative leaders who have the capacity to make the right decisions, as well as the character to take responsibility for wrong decisions.’“

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

I Need Investment Help! GOLD & DIAMONDS – $2000000 (Make $5 Million WITH ME!)

INVEST $2 MILLION WITH ME. We can do this in steps if you can commit the money available.

Minimize risk and make you a crapload of money.

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Im in Los Angeles… This is worth your moment in time!

“He Has Made An Artificial Nose He Expects To Transplant Later This Year”

March 24, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The opening of Gautam Naik’s new Wall Street Journal article about replacement human body parts created in vitro:

“MADRID—Reaching into a stainless steel tray, Francisco Fernandez-Aviles lifted up a gray, rubbery mass the size of a fat fist.

It was a human cadaver heart that had been bathed in industrial detergents until its original cells had been washed away and all that was left was what scientists call the scaffold.

Next, said Dr. Aviles, ‘We need to make the heart come alive.’

Inside a warren of rooms buried in the basement of Gregorio Marañón hospital here, Dr. Aviles and his team are at the sharpest edge of the bioengineering revolution that has turned the science-fiction dream of building replacement parts for the human body into a reality.

Since a laboratory in North Carolina made a bladder in 1996, scientists have built increasingly more complex organs. There have been five windpipe replacements so far. A London researcher, Alex Seifalian, has transplanted lab-grown tear ducts and an artery into patients. He has made an artificial nose he expects to transplant later this year in a man who lost his nose to skin cancer.”

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“She Was As Popular As Any Of The Activists Against The Vietnam War”

March 24, 2013 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

I often wonder this: What better prepares us for life, a loving and encouraging childhood or one that is more challenging? Do an inordinate number of slings and arrows in youth give us survival strategies we would otherwise lack? Does a warm and protective childhood shield us permanently no matter what we face later in life? It varies, I’m sure.

Joan Baez grew up in a Quaker family with a physicist father, being introduced to college campuses and interesting cities all around the world, being nurtured and developed. But did that prepare her for the Bob Dylans of the world, who lacked her kindness? Did that make her feel like she could put the world on her shoulders, a weight that no one can bear?

In this 1979 video, she discusses human rights in Vietnam with William F. Buckley.

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A Brief Note From 1909 About Medicinal Cheese

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

From the October 24, 1909 New York Times:

“Denver–Limburger cheese is the principal ingredient of a cancer cure which Philip Schuch Jr., a local chemist, says he has discovered.

Following the death of his mother 11 years ago from cancer, Schuch began an investigation of the cause and growth of cancers, during which, he asserts, he discovered that the basic germs of cancer are similar to those of leprosy and consumption. He spent several months in the leper colony in Venezuela studying the disease.

Schuch’s cure consists of a thorough cleansing of the affected parts with liquor of quicklime and sweet milk, in equal parts, and then the application of poultices of pulped fresh Swiss or Limburger cheese, moistened with glycerine. Although no test of this has been made, Schuch says that theoretically the formula should cure mild cases of leprosy.”

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“All They Do Is Hate”

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

In a customarily cogent and paranoid post, the BBC’s Adam Curtis blogs about what he calls the “fake objectivity” that obscures where the real power in society rests. An excerpt about H.L. Hunt, a wing-nut Texas oilman whose view of journalism presaged Fox News by many decades:

“The first is an odd story – with a very strange character at its heart. It is about how in the 1950s the richest man in the world, an oil billionaire in Texas, invented a new form of television journalism. It pretended to be objective and balanced but in fact it was hard core right-wing propaganda. It was way ahead of its time because, in its fake neutrality, it prefigured the rise of the ultraconservative right-wing media of the 1990s – like Fox News, with its copyrighted slogan, ‘Fair and Balanced.’

The billionaire was called H. L. Hunt – Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. He made his fortune in the early 1930s by getting hold of one of the biggest oil fields in America – in the pine forests of East Texas. He was a ruthless, driven man and from early on he became absolutely convinced that he had superhuman qualities that made him different from other humans.

From the 1920s onwards Hunt was a bigamist. He married two women and raised two families that were oblivious of each other. He told his second wife, Frania, that he was called Major Franklyn Hunt. There was a rocky moment when his picture was on the front page of all the Texas papers because of his spectacular oil deal. Frania asked Hunt if that was him – he told her no, that it was his uncle who had been so clever.

Hunt was part of a group of extreme right-wing oil men in Texas who had enormous influence because of their wealth. There is a brilliant book written about this group – The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough. Burrough describes how they had first risen up in the 1930s because they loathed President Roosevelt – ‘a nigger-loving communist,’ as one oil man called him. They were convinced that Roosevelt’s New Deal was really run by Jews and communists – or ‘social vermin’ as they politely put it.

A Texas congressman called Sam Rayburn summed up this group of right-wing oil men. ‘All they do is hate’ – he said.

After the Second World War H L Hunt did two things. He added another, third, family to his bigamist’s collection. And he also turned to the new medium of television to promote his ultraconservative views.”

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“We Have The Pigs Of The Mass Media Who Manipulate Information”

March 24, 2013 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver was sadly not wearing his Penis Pants when he sat down in 1969 with William F. Buckley to discuss the Man and the Pigs and other handy generalizations. At the 3:28 mark.

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

March 23, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink


10 search-engine phrases sending traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. videocracy 2009 movie about silvio berlusconi
  2. lenny bruce society is sick
  3. photos of ham the astrochimp in 1961
  4. would justice scalia have supported slavery?
  5. bobby riggs on 60 minutes
  6. brooklyn family that eats horses
  7. was leroy neiman a good artist?
  8. donald trump is a horrible man
  9. tina fey uncrossing her legs
  10. which airline sold reservations for moon trips in 1968?

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

March 23, 2013 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking that even though it makes no sense, Jerry Sandusky may be only the second most hated man to appear on the Today show this week.

Afflictor: Thinking that even though it makes absolutely no sense, Jerry Sandusky may not be the most hated man to appear on the Today show this week.

  • Jonathan Chait discusses politics (of course) in an Ask Me Anything.

“Horse-Sized Ducks Are Out Of The Question—Mechanical Problems. A Horse That Quacks, Maybe.”

March 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Catalog editor who knew what the Digital Age would bring decades before it arrived, is today heavily invested in the de-extinction movement. He just did an excellent Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

________________________

Question:

What species do you think would be the most valuable to bring back and why?

Stewart Brand:

“Most valuable” is an essential question, evolving as we speak. For some it would mean “most loved” or “most missed.” The ivory-billed woodpecker ranks high there. I’m interested in “most ecologically enriching.” That often means “keystone species” or “ecosystem engineer.” High ranked there is the woolly mammoth, maker of the “mammoth steppe” in the far north. Also the passenger pigeon, who enriched the entire eastern deciduous forest.

________________________

Question:

What proportion of these species will face a major habitat problem when they’re brought back? I imagine that at least a few will be back under display-only circumstances.

Stewart Brand:

Thanks for this question, because it comes up a lot, usually in Tragic mode—“The poor passenger pigeons will suffer because their old habitat is gone!” In most cases habitat for revived species will as good as ever or much improved from when they went extinct. The eastern woodlands have grown back ferociously since the late 1800s, when they were most deforested and the passenger pigeon was hunted to death. The north Atlantic has plenty of fish for the great auk, when it returns. Woolly mammoths will relish the boreal forests of the north, and commence turning them back into more biodiverse grasslands.

________________________

Question:

What will you do with the animals once you bring them back to life? Put them in the wild? Zoo?

Stewart Brand:

The sequence is: lab, zoo, wild. You need the zoo for captive-breeding to generate a large enough population, with enough genetic variability, to be able to prosper in the wild. The tricky bit is that zoos are cushy for animals compared to the wild. Managing a toughening-up boot camp for lazy passenger pigeons will be interesting. “Listen up, bird. This is a falcon. He is not your friend.”

________________________

Question:

What are the possible negative effects from your research? Has anyone/any group expressed concern regarding possible negative outcomes?

(Not looking for negatives, just wondering. I’m personally stoked about the research you all have been doing!)

Stewart Brand:

I think one valid negative is the question of whether species-revival technology can be used for species-creation. Suppose someone wants to create a duck-sized horse, for example. Or a one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater. Norms will emerge, I suppose. 

I should add that horse-sized ducks are out of the question—mechanical problems. A horse that quacks, maybe.

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Old Print Article: “Women Wreck Drug Stores,” New York Times (1901)

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

"Followers of Dowie, the faith cure leader, adopted the tactics of Mrs. Carrie Nation yesterday and wrecked a number of drug stores."

“Followers of Dowie, the faith cure leader, adopted the tactics of Mrs. Carrie Nation yesterday and wrecked a number of drug stores.”

Two fanatics who gained fame (and infamy) in the late 1800s, the ax-wielding Prohibitionist Carrie Nation and the batshit crazy Illinois faith healer John Alexander Dowie, were bitter rivals and had a heated confrontation during the latter’s combustible revival meetings at Madison Square Garden in 1903. But that didn’t stop a few of Dowie’s tens of thousands of loyalists from copying the any-means-necessary methods of Nation, who was known for walking into saloons and smashing their contents into shards with her trusty blade. But what the Dowieites hated far more than liquor was medicine and their efforts against science can be seen in an article in the February 7, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

“Chicago–Crying out that drugs were the agents of the devil, a half-dozen women, followers of Dowie, the faith cure leader, adopted the tactics of Mrs. Carrie Nation yesterday and wrecked a number of drug stores on the West Side. In some instances there were hand to hand fights with druggists.

Armed as they were with pitchforks, umbrellas and canes, the women came out the victors in nearly every encounter and succeeded in destroying property wherever they went. 

The women went in a well organized band, were of middle age and well dressed. Most of them wore automobile coats, under which they concealed their implements of destruction while on the street. After leaving a drug store they invariably sang ‘Praise Be the Lord,’ or ‘Zion Forever.’ Policemen saw them, but attached no significance to their actions and no arrests were made.

The first place visited was Charles G. Foucek’s drug store, at Eighteenth Street and Centre Avenue. Calling the proprietor to the front of the store the crusaders upbraided him for dealing in traffics of the devil. Then one of the women, who seemed to be a leader, asked: ‘Don’t you know that all the ills of human kind can be cured by prayer?’

‘I an not aware of the fact, if such is the case,’ said the druggist.

‘Hurrah for Dowie,’ shouted the woman. At that her companions drew canes and umbrellas from beneath their long cloaks and began to strike at the druggist’s head. He dodged the blows and took refuge behind the prescription case. Then the women turned their attention to the shelves and show cases and began to strike right and left. The besiegers were finally driven off with buckets of water.

Other drug stores in the same neighborhood, belonging to B. Lillienthal, Leo L. Maranzek, Herman Limerman and O. Shapiro, were also wrecked by the crusaders, the same tactics being used. The women finally separated, after being driven from one of the stores at the point of a revolver.”

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“This Is A Revolution Not Unlike The Early Days Of Computing”

March 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The military contractor Lockheed Martin is speeding ahead into the world of quantum computing, which packs the potential to rewrite the rules of what such machines can do. From Quentin Hardy in the New York Times:

“Ray Johnson, Lockheed’s chief technical officer, said his company would use the quantum computer to create and test complex radar, space and aircraft systems. It could be possible, for example, to tell instantly how the millions of lines of software running a network of satellites would react to a solar burst or a pulse from a nuclear explosion — something that can now take weeks, if ever, to determine.

‘This is a revolution not unlike the early days of computing,’ he said. ‘It is a transformation in the way computers are thought about.’ Many others could find applications for D-Wave’s computers. Cancer researchers see a potential to move rapidly through vast amounts of genetic data. The technology could also be used to determine the behavior of proteins in the human genome, a bigger and tougher problem than sequencing the genome. Researchers at Google have worked with D-Wave on using quantum computers to recognize cars and landmarks, a critical step in managing self-driving vehicles.

Quantum computing is so much faster than traditional computing because of the unusual properties of particles at the smallest level. Instead of the precision of ones and zeros that have been used to represent data since the earliest days of computers, quantum computing relies on the fact that subatomic particles inhabit a range of states. Different relationships among the particles may coexist, as well. Those probable states can be narrowed to determine an optimal outcome among a near-infinitude of possibilities, which allows certain types of problems to be solved rapidly.”

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“Do You Ever Feel Like Giving Up Training And Living A More Relaxed, Normal Life?”

March 22, 2013 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

Figure skater Peggy Fleming was rewarded for her gold medal at the 1968 Olympics by getting to visit Joe Namath’s short-lived talk show the following year, enduring the host’s fu manchu and bell-bottoms and Paul Anka’s attempts at singing. Namath was actually a capable interviewer and conducted more natural and engaging conversations than the large majority of today’s late-night hosts. Dick Schapp plays the affable sidekick.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"

“I can think of really good hiding places.”

Why is it so hard for murderers to get rid of bodies? (I can think of really good hiding places)

So why don’t murderers think it through and hide bodies better?

Makes no sense to me. 

Even mobsters don’t do it right. They get caught decades later from these old murders they did at the start of their careers.

“He Engages More Or Less Matter-Of-Factly In Nonstop Booze, Drugs, Sex, TV And Porn”

March 21, 2013 in Books, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Bret Easton Ellis, popular and reviled for having penned Less Than Zero, a dreadful novel not for its scenes of unimpeded immorality but for its sheer incompetence, visited William F. Buckley in 1985, while he was still a junior at Bennington. Here’s the first five minutes of the show, which features Buckley’s customary long introduction of his guest and a couple of questions of fellow young writer Fernanda Eberstadt, though sadly no Ellis commentary.

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“I Wanted To Share With You A Look At Their Work On Creating Alternatives To Meat And Eggs”

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

The opening of Bill Gates’ self-published multimedia, slide-show piece, “The Future of Food,” in which the technologist and philanthropist is encouraged by in vitro alternatives to protein-rich meals:

“Meat consumption worldwide has doubled in the last 20 years, and it is expected to double again by 2050. This is happening in large part because economies are growing and people can afford more meat. That’s all good news. But raising meat takes a great deal of land and water and has a substantial environmental impact. Put simply, there’s no way to produce enough meat for 9 billion people. Yet we can’t ask everyone to become vegetarians. We need more options for producing meat without depleting our resources.

Over the past few years I’ve come across a few companies that are doing pioneering work on innovations that give a glimpse into possible solutions. To be sure, it’s still very early, but the work these companies are doing makes me optimistic. I wanted to share with you a look at their work on creating alternatives to meat and eggs that are just as healthful, are produced more sustainably, and taste great.”

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“Watergate Practically Became A Copyrighted Story Of Bernstein And Woodward”

March 21, 2013 in Politics, Videos | Permalink

In a rare moment when he wasn’t watching porno, William F. Buckley spoke with Watergate heroes Bob Woodward (a so-so writer with his own credibility gap) and Carl Bernstein (a brilliant reporter and suspect human being). From 1974.

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“Sawdust And Wood Pulp Are Converted Into Sugary Foods”

March 21, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

In a 1950 Popular Mechanics article, Waldemar Kaempffert predicted what American life would be like in the year 2000. From a passage about the kitchen and living room of the future:

“This expansion of the frozen-food industry and the changing gastronomic habits of the nation have made it necessary to install in every home the electronic industrial stove which came out of World War II. Jane Dobson has one of these electronic stoves. In eight seconds a half-grilled frozen steak is thawed; in two minutes more it is ready to serve. It never takes Jane Dobson more than half an hour to prepare what Tottenville considers an elaborate meal of several courses.

Some of the food that Jane Dobson buys is what we miscall ‘synthetic.’ In the middle of the 20th century statisticians were predicting that the world would starve to death because the population was increasing more rapidly than the food supply. By 2000, a vast amount of research has been conducted to exploit principles that were embryonic in the first quarter of the 20th century. Thus sawdust and wood pulp are converted into sugary foods. Discarded paper table ‘linen’ and rayon underwear are bought by chemical factories to be converted into candy.

Of course the Dobsons have a television set. But it is connected with the telephones as well as with the radio receiver, so that when Joe Dobson and a friend in a distant city talk over the telephone they also see each other. Businessmen have television conferences. Each man is surrounded by half a dozen television screens on which he sees those taking part in the discussion. Documents are held up for examination; samples of goods are displayed. In fact, Jane Dobson does much of her shopping by television. Department stores obligingly hold up for her inspection bolts of fabric or show her new styles of clothing.”

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