Ideas and technology and politics and journalism and history and humor and some other stuff.
10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:
Afflictor: Fearing that the White House has sent one of its fiercest kill list assassins to terminate Bob Woodward.
Bernstein’s next, bitches.
“He has claimed to Schepp and others that he is a prophet.”
Yet another story about a coconut importer who went mad and joined a cult which instructed him that he could commit any act he wished without repercussions if he just changed his name. Yes, that story again. The opening of an April 15, 1909 New York Times article:
“Decision was reserved yesterday by Supreme Court Justice Dowling on the application of Payne L. Kretzmer and Herman Obertubhessing for the appointment of a temporary receiver for the L. Schepp Company, large importers of cocoanuts. During the argument Charles. E. Rushmore, counsel for Leopold Schepp, the founder of the company and the principal defendant, said that the trouble in part was due to Kretzmer, who was formerly a Vice President of the Schepp Company, being a member of a cult which had for its principal doctrine the theory that persons could do anything they wanted to with impunity if they changed their names to suit their temperament.
As an example, Mr. Rushmore said that the plaintiff, Kretzmer, had changed his name from Louis to Payne since he had joined the cult and induced many of the employees of the company to act similarly. One employee who, according to Rushmore, had been induced by Kretzmer to change his name under the idea that he was immune from the consequences of anything he did, stole from the company after making the change, and as a consequence found himself a prisoner convicted in General Sessions.
To bear out this charge Mr. Rushmore filed with the court an affidavit by Leopold Schepp. It set forth that, while Kretzmer had previously ‘been a man of intelligence and of reasonable mind, within the last year and a half and at various other times he has claimed to Schepp and others that he is a prophet; that he is no common man, not a follower, but a leader; that he has the power to foretell the future and power to cure any person of any physical or mental ills.'”
Tags: Charles. E. Rushmore, Herman Obertubhessing, Leopold Schepp, Payne L. Kretzmer, Supreme Court Justice Dowling
Via the Browser, the opening of an excellent think piece by Georgia Tech engineering student Hunter Scott, which attempts to answer whether the ancient Romans could have built a digital computer:
“The Romans were undoubtedly master engineers. They were experts at civil engineering, building roads, improving sanitation, inventing Roman concrete, and constructing aqueducts that adhere to tolerances impressive even by today’s standards. Perhaps the best evidence of their aptitude is the fact that many of those structures still stand today, almost 2000 years later. They even began dabbling in technology vastly ahead of their time. Hero of Alexandria drew up plans for a rudimentary steam engine in his Spiritalia seu Pneumatica. He called it the aeolipile.
It didn’t work very well. However, by the late 3rd century AD, all essential parts for constructing a steam engine were known to Roman engineers: Hero’s steam power, the crank and connecting rod mechanism (in the Hierapolis sawmill), the cylinder and piston (in metal force pumps), non-return valves (in water pumps) and gearing (in water mills). That got me thinking: Could the Romans have built a digital computer using only the technology and manufacturing processes available to them?”
Tags: Hunter Scott
In the name of progress, DARPA and your good friends at Boston Dynamics, have improved the BigDog rough-terrain robot so that it can now fling cinder blocks. It’s for your protection. From the promotional copy: “BigDog handles heavy objects. The goal is to use the strength of the legs and torso to help power motions of the arm. This sort of dynamic, whole-body approach is routinely used by human athletes and animals, and will enhance the performance of advanced robots.”
“We may have a nice convo.”
Anyone have sweaty hands all the time? I do. If you do too I’d like to hear of your experience and we may have a nice convo. Thanks.
The crisp opening graph of Nathaniel Rich’s New York Times Magazine description of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, which I somehow have never visited on my trips to that city:
“Before New Orleans was called the Big Easy, it was known as the Wet Grave. The nickname referred both to the inundation of coffins when buried in the swampy ground, and to New Orleans’s standing during the 19th century as the nation’s filthiest, deadliest city. The cholera epidemic of 1832 killed more than 4,000 people in three weeks; it returned the next year to claim another thousand. The 1853 yellow-fever outbreak is among the deadliest epidemics ever to hit an American city; some 8,000 perished that summer alone. Diphtheria, typhoid and malaria were constant companions. It is therefore not surprising that America’s first licensed apothecary shop was established here in 1823, at 514 Chartres Street, blocks from America’s oldest pub.“
Tags: Nathaniel Rich
When people buy a rare object, they’re also purchasing a narrative. Often, they’re mainly purchasing a narrative. So, say there’s a rare baseball card and a famous athlete acquires it and adds his cachet to the item. And then it’s discovered that the card he purchased was (perhaps) tampered with before he bought it to make it seem more mint. Does the card lose some of its value, hold it or even become more valuable because of the supposed ruse? What is it that is actually being bought or sold?
Watch Nick and Colin Barnicle’s short film “Holy Grail: The T206 Honus Wagner” at Grantland.
Tags: Colin Barnicle, Honus Wagner, ick Barnicle
From Derek Thompson’s eye-opening Atlantic piece, which explains how air travel changed in America (for the better) when D.C. regulators stood down:
“If you want a two-word answer to why airfares have dropped so much since the 1970s, it’s this: Deregulation worked.
Before 1978, the airlines played by Washington’s rules. The government determined whether a new airline could fly to a certain city, charge a certain price, or even exist in the first place. With limited competition, airlines were guaranteed a profit, and they lavished flyers with expensive services paid with expensive airfares. The silver and cloth came at a predictable price: The vast majority of Americans couldn’t afford to fly, at all.
With prices skyrocketing during the energy crisis of the 1970s, an all-star team of senators and economists decided that Washington should get out of the business of coddling the airlines. Let’s hear from a young former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy named Stephen Breyer (oh, yeah, that Stephen Breyer) reviewing the free market case for letting airlines fly solo:
In California and Texas, where fares were unregulated, they were much lower. The San Francisco-Los Angeles fare was about half that on the comparable, regulated Boston-Washington route. And an intra-Texas airline boasted that the farmers who used to drive across the state could fly for even less money — and it would carry any chicken coops for free.
Three decades later, the lesson from Texas — if you deregulate the skies, ticket prices will fall — has been applied across the country. The democratization of the air is obvious enough from the frenetic bustle of every major U.S. airport. But the stats are mind-blowing, as well.
— In 1965, no more than 20 percent of Americans had ever flown in an airplane. By 2000, 50 percent of the country took at least one round-trip flight a year. The average was two round-trip tickets.
— The number of air passengers tripled between the 1970s and 2011.
— In 1974, it was illegal for an airline to charge less than $1,442 in inflation-adjusted dollars for a flight between New York City and Los Angeles. On Kayak, just now, I found one for $278.”
Tags: Derek Thompson
Long before commercial planes, helicopters and certainly drones, Julius Neubronner invented pigeon photography, attaching a small camera to carrier pigeons, capturing great aerial photography for postcards and such. From Alyssa Coppelman at Slate: “In 1907, the German apothecary (who ran his family’s business) invented pigeon photography as a means of tracking his carrier pigeons. One of his pigeons used for getting medicinal supplies more quickly (a sort of FedEx pigeon) had stayed away a month before returning to him. Looking to track the pigeon’s journeys, Neubronner did what any curious owner would do: He strapped a small, timed camera to the pigeon to track its future travels.”
I’ve used the artwork of Rick Guidice and Don Davis on this site in the past. They’re the artists NASA hired in the ’70s to create awe-inspiring representations of space colonies the department hoped to build. Veronique Greenwood’s new Discover article, “The Men Who Made Space Colonies Look Like Home,” explains how and why the artists came to create their far-flung work. An excerpt:
“In the mid-1970s, NASA began to give grants to a Princeton physics professor named Gerard O’Neill. O’Neill was convinced that building colonies that orbited the Earth was the best way to harvest the mineral riches of asteroids and provide a home for the burgeoning millions of Earth. The colonies would trail behind the moon, a location where they would not need to expend any fuel to stay aloft. On them would be vast manufactories of solar arrays that, released into space, would beam power back to Earth in the form of microwaves, justifying the colonies’ expense. For a few years, O’Neill’s ideas spread like wildfire through a certain set of forward-thinkers in science and the media.
In 1975, O’Neill spearheaded a ten-week-long study at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, working with engineers, social scientists, and other researchers, as well as architects, to see whether such structures were feasible. Their final report describes several possible colony types, such as the Bernal Sphere, in which the landscape is smeared across the interior of an enormous globe, and which generates its own gravity using centrifugal force. A cylindrical colony, in which a twenty-mile long tube was lined with human habitations, also made the cut, as did toroid colonies, shaped like immense hula hoops. With the extension of current engineering, the study participants concluded, it was possible that such things could be built and sustained as early as 1990.
Someone at NASA got in touch with Davis and Guidice, who had each worked on other illustrations for the agency in the past, about illustrating the report. Soon they were receiving sketches, technical specs, and explanations from O’Neill.”
Tags: Don Davis, Rick Guidice, Veronique Greenwood
Twins aren’t disconcerting only because we know that they can fool us at any moment substituting their sibling without our knowledge, but because they have someone who will always be closer to them than us no matter what. Well, that’s the stereotype, at least. An identical twin just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few exchanges follow.
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Answer:
Answer:
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Question:
We’re close but I have friends I’m much closer with. We don’t tell each other everything, and rarely talk about boys together, whereas I have friends I can tell anything to. However I know she will always be there for me, even though we constantly fight, while I don’t necessarily know that about my friends. I feel I will definitely be closer with my future spouse (I’m only 19!) and my children, but I will also have a very close relationship with her children as well. After all, they will have the same genetic makeup from my sister as my children will have from me.
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Question:
Do you have any other siblings? If so, do you feel like your relationship with them is different from that with your twin? Did your parents dress you in matching outfits when you were children?
Answer:
I have an older brother. One time he asked my mom where his twin was. We definitely have a different relationship, he’s an older brother who I feel, has always resented my twin and me deep down for having each other.
My mom didn’t want to dress us in matching outfits so she would buy us the same outfits in different colors. I always think its a bit sick when I see twins dressed exactly alike. Parents should encourage them to be unique!
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Question:
Two words: twin threesomes?
Answer:
Hahahaha, NO! We are very weird about boys and sex. We don’t talk to each other about boys or what we have done. It just seems…creepy.
3D printing is upon us, but scientists at MIT are already working on 4D, in which objects assemble themselves. From BBC: “At the TED conference in Los Angeles, architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbits showed how the process allows objects to self-assemble.
It could be used to install objects in hard-to-reach places such as underground water pipes, he suggested.
It might also herald an age of self-assembling furniture, said experts.”
Tags: Skylar Tibbits
From the July 21, 1907 New York Times:
“Atlantic City–Miss Ella Hall, a Georgia society belle, is the possessor of a pet chicken, which she brought all the way from her home in the South to the shore. The other day she created quite a sensation when she took the chicken in bathing with her, and in the way of a novelty she has the ‘Teddy Bear’ girl beaten. And the chicken seemed to enjoy the novelty of bathing. It cannot swim, of course, but the fair owner has taught it to be perfectly still when she places it in the water, and it floats as lightly as a cork.”
Tags: Miss Ella Hall
Parasitic energy harvesters are urbanites who tap into wasted, overflow energy and repurpose it. One German designer has come up with an invention to aid them. From Pop-Up City:
“Recently we found a stunning new invention in the field of parasite energy harvesting that we want you to know about. German designer Dennis Siegel created a small device that is able to harvest energy from electromagnetic fields and instantly recharge batteries (!).
Since electromagnetic fields are omnipresent, this small invention has a huge potential. Siegel explains that we are surrounded by electromagnetic fields which are the results of information transfer, or byproducts of electric equipment. Those fields can be found near power supplies of electronic devices like a coffee machine, a cellphone or an overhead wire. Many of those fields are very capacitive and can be harvested with coils and high frequency diodes. Siegel’s small harvesting device is able to tap into several electromagnetic fields to exploit them. The energy is stored in an ordinary battery. This way spoiled energy that flows around in the air can be ‘re-used’ easily.”
Tags: Dennis Siegel
“Undertones of strawberries.”
In ancient Mediterranean cultures its quite healthy and advised to use human urine as a natural ailment for a variety of illnesses and conditions.In the Western culture many of us turn in vain to antibiotics and other such remedies that truly do not promote health at it’s most natural source. Here, at Organic Pee and Me we are on a mission to restore what many do not know is a natural and preferred means of health and rejuvenation. For you pleasure we offer a variety of tastes,. We recommend you select the taste and nutrient profile that is most beneficial to you based on what may be lacking in your diet. You may select from:
Our quality – high. Our supply – fresh. Our prices – competitive.
Bottled right from the source. Naturally Organic.
If you want organic pee- come to me!
Prices negotiable.
“Our quality – high.”
Alice Cooper, the picture of health, being interviewed by Tom Snyder in 1981. Cooper officially became a senior citizen earlier this month. Poor video quality.
Tags: Tom Snyder
Ethicist William MacAskill’s new Quartz article recommends that those who want to aid the less fortunate should trade community organizing for Wall Street banking. Of course, a lot of things you might have to do in that career may lead to destroying the economy and creating more at-risk people. His piece’s opening:
“Few people think of finance as an ethical career choice. Top undergraduates who want to ‘make a difference’ are encouraged to forgo the allure of Wall Street and work in the charity sector. And many people in finance have a mid-career ethical crisis and switch to something fulfilling.
The intentions may be good, but is it really the best way to make a difference? I used to think so, but while researching ethical career choice, I concluded that it’s in fact better to earn a lot of money and donate a good chunk of it to the most cost-effective charities—a path that I call ‘earning to give.’ Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and the others who have taken the 50% Giving Pledge are the best-known examples. But you don’t have to be a billionaire. By making as much money as we can and donating to the best causes, we can each save hundreds of lives.”
Tags: William MacAskill
More about Jim Kor and the next iteration of his 3D-printed electric car, the Urbee, this time from Alexander George at Wired:
“To further remedy the issues caused by modern car-construction techniques, Kor used the design freedom of 3-D printing to combine a typical car’s multitude of parts into simple unibody shapes. For example, when he prints the car’s dashboard, he’ll make it with the ducts already attached without the need for joints and connecting parts. What would be dozens of pieces of plastic and metal end up being one piece of 3-D printed plastic.
‘The thesis we’re following is to take small parts from a big car and make them single large pieces,’ Kor says. By using one piece instead of many, the car loses weight and gets reduced rolling resistance, and with fewer spaces between parts, the Urbee ends up being exceptionally aerodynamic.’ How aerodynamic? The Urbee 2′s teardrop shape gives it just a 0.15 coefficient of drag.
Not all of the Urbee is printed plastic — the engine and base chassis will be metal, naturally. They’re still figuring out exactly who will make the hybrid engine, but the prototype will produce a maximum of 10 horsepower. Most of the driving – from zero to 40 mph – will be done by the 36-volt electric motor. When it gets up to highway speeds, the engine will tap the fuel tank to power a diesel engine.
But how safe is a 50-piece plastic body on a highway?
With three wheels and a curb weight of less than 1,200 pounds, it’s more motorcycle than passenger car.
‘We’re calling it race car safety,’ Kor says. ‘We want the car to pass the tech inspection required at Le Mans.'”
Tags: Alexander George, Jim Kor
“On his lands there live men and women of striking physique and charm of face.”
A wealthy Russian man founded a utopian farm in which beautiful people and only beautiful people were collected to be entered into arranged marriages in the hopes that perfection would be perpetuated. The opening of a September 18, 1904 New York Times article:
“Reshetnikoff, a wealthy distiller of Northeast Russia, is a man with a fad. He believes that the human race, by judicious mating, can be brought to a state of physical perfection, and on his great estate near Perm he is doing what he can to prove his theory. Just as extreme speed and symmetry is developed by the breeder of horses, or as the horticulturist brings his plants and the florist his blooms to the highest possible degree of usefulness and beauty, it is his aim to give to the world a type of men and women who shall be flawless in strength and shapeliness.
Throughout all Russia he is known as the ‘man with a beauty farm.’ He is giving his time to the demonstration of his chosen task without stint, and spending his money with a freedom which would in itself insure notice. More than that, he has already proved to a large degree that he is justified in the stand he has taken, for on his lands there live men and women of striking physique and charm of face.
As a matter of fact the end for which he is striving is one which would probably be speeded by the thinking people of the world by every means in their power if it were not for an obstacle which others believe to be insurmountable and which he affects to ignore. This obstacle is affection. Since order was evolved from chaos and the waste places of the earth were populated, reason has entered but little into the matching of man and maid. The strong have loved the weak and the ugly have won the hearts of the beautiful. Those who have watched the work undertaken by the Russian distiller take these things into consideration in refusing actively to undertake the propagation of his cult. They know the futility of the fight he is making.
“Deformed and diseased persons are not permitted to find a home on the estate.”
The eyes of Europe were recently centered on the Reshetnikoff estate by a remarkable marriage arranged by him–a marriage which marks the passing of at least one milestone in the journey toward perfection which he has undertaken for the unbuilding of humanity. The bride and the bridegroom were ‘nurslings’ of his beauty farm, the first couple, both of whom had sprung from unions arranged by him.
That the bride was as nearly the ideal of physical womanhood as could be found by the most extended search, and that the bridegroom was as strong and handsome as could be desired, was admitted by all who saw them. But that their offspring would meekly accept at maturity the men or women selected as best qualified for the perpetuation of their strength and comeliness was not so readily granted.
‘That is the weak link in M. Reshetnikoff’s chain,’ said a scientist who is deeply interested in the ideal the distiller has set out to achieve. ‘His labor is doomed to be lost. Suppose a boy is born of this marriage who represents all that the patron of the parents hopes for. When that boy grows to be a man he is just as apt as not to choose a little, lop-sided woman for a wife as he is to select the kind of mate M. Reshetnikoff would have him take, and the care and thought which were embodied in him would be thrown away. The marriage is fortuitous. That is all. As long as there are men and women they will choose for themselves. His dream is Utopia, impossible of fulfillment.’
The Russian distiller has for many years attracted to his estate handsome giants of both sexes by means of concessions of lands and valuable privileges. Further grants of land encouraged them to enter the state of matrimony. All expenses of marriages are paid, and an annuity is given of $15 for every child born. In the event that marriages are arranged by the distiller, and the parties selected refuse to carry out the arrangements, they are deported. Deformed and diseased persons are not permitted to find a home on the estate.”
Tags: Reshetnikoff
Every time I hear American entrepreneurs warn that China will become the number one country in the world because of a lack of regulation which allows for unchecked growth, I remind myself that China is already first in one area: highest cancer rate on the planet. You certainly want nimble regulation, but you don’t want it to be entirely absent.
China has continued apace building its top-down insta-cities, throwing up towers at blinding speed, worrying about occupants later. From a recent CBC report by Adrienne Arsenault about the beautiful and barren Inner Mongolia metropolis of Ordos:
“Arriving at night in Ordos left us — here’s a shocker — in the dark. There was no problem with the electricity, but the skyline lacked the brightly lit high-rises that are the mark of a thriving city.
We drove down a snowy road from the gleaming and seemingly desolate Ordos airport in Inner Mongolia, along an empty highway past darkened building blocks and abandoned parking lots at vast malls.
We pulled into the hotel driveway at around 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. This is a city supposed to be able to house a million people. But stepping out of the car the only sound was the pinging of the crosswalk countdown timer across the road.
It actually echoed.
The hotel looked like something out of Las Vegas, and the reception when we arrived was oddly enthusiastic. The staff almost seemed surprised to see people wander through the door. It was as if they’d been all dressed up waiting for a very long time for someone to show up, and didn’t quite know what to do now that they had.
The lobby bar lights were quickly turned on and the piano started playing. By itself. There was no pianist in sight, just a computer program with a playlist that must have been set to’generic hotel lobby.’
Ghost cities, it seems, even have ghost pianists.
Daybreak shed an even stranger light on the city. Have you ever been in the computer simulation known as Second Life, where avatars fly around and through empty cities and buildings? Minus the flying part, Ordos is pretty much Second Life.
There are lovingly designed, but barren, museums and galleries. There are ambitious malls and wide boulevards, all largely deserted.“
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The Ordos Museum is in a shockingly beautiful area whose development was overseen by Ai Weiwei:
Tags: Adrienne Arsenault, Ai Weiwei
Using a computer chip, Duke biologists reanimated the wings of a dead sparrow. From the BBC:
“With a budget of just $1500, Dr Anderson said the initial plan was to modify an existing motor from a remote-controlled airplane or car but they were all too large to fit inside the 18 gram bird, the size of an average house sparrow.
‘Our engineer built a linear motor from first principles, and then re-miniaturized it until we got something to fit.’
Once the motor was in place and the robot chip was programmed, the mounted bird was put in the wild along with a discreet sound system playing swamp sparrow calls to attract others.
The wing-waving robot lasted for two months but was regularly attacked, said Dr Anderson.
‘We had no back up – every day was a wish and a prayer that he survived the sixty trials,’ she added.
‘Eventually the head fell off and the wing stopped moving.'”
Tags: Rindy Anderson
I normally don’t like assholes and have little patience for the fetishization of food, but I sort of like Anthony Bourdain. Maybe because he’s a really good writer or perhaps because he seems so conscious of his flaws. Anyhow, the foodie, who is known for saying stuff, just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few brief exchanges follow.
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Question:
Anthony Bourdain:
Question:
Anthony Bourdain:
Tags: Anthony Bourdain, Bradley Cooper
Our mainstream culture is stupid, really stupid. We aren’t outraged that Paul Ryan voted against funds for Hurricane Sandy victims, but Beyonce lip-syncing sends us into a frenzy. If the Onion is going to apologize for a tasteless joke as if it were the Wall Street Journal, then the Twitterati mob rule has won. And that’s scary because the Twitterati is reactionary and idiotic.
For people out there who are too stupid to understand context, the writer of this joke does not think that a nine-year-old girl is really a cunt. He or she would never use that word to actually describe anyone in any real sense. The writer was saying something that was outrageously untrue and purposely inappropriate, tinged with the tone of gossipy Hollywood backbiting.
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__________________
Dear Readers,
On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.
No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.
The tweet was taken down within an hour of publication. We have instituted new and tighter Twitter procedures to ensure that this kind of mistake does not occur again.
In addition, we are taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.
Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better. All of us at The Onion are deeply sorry.
Sincerely,
Steve Hannah
CEO
The Onion
