“I’m Not Yet In Top-Notch Condition”

December 14, 2012 in Sports, Videos | Permalink

I worshiped Muhammad Ali when I was a child, and I never watched boxing again after he began to slur his speech. There’s a great and heartbreaking Albert Maysles documentary about Ali preparing for his 1980 fight with Larry Holmes–a match that never should have been made. Ali was old, slow and already showing signs of Parkinson’s syndrome, and he was marched into the ring against the best heavyweight in the world at that time. There are moments in the doc (which isn’t online, but is sometimes replayed on ESPN Classics) in which Ali tries to convince himself that he’ll find some way to outwit Holmes–and time itself. But the reflexes and bounce were gone and soon the mystique would be as well. The fight was a travesty and anyone who profiteered from the destruction of a great champion should have had their licenses revoked.

Here a sluggish Ali does the pre-fight promotional shuffle with Merv Griffin:

A piece of Muhammad & Larry:

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A Brief Note From 1894 About A Sleepwalker

December 14, 2012 in Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 12, 1894 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“John Hoffmeyer, 45 years old, walked out of the sixth story window of the Garfield lodging house, 48 New Bowery, this morning. He was killed. Hoffmeyer was a cook in a cheap restaurant in the Bowery. For a year he has occupied a room in the Garfield house for which he paid 15 cents a night. Since his childhood the man has been a sleepwalker. Many times he was found in the middle of the night wandering through the hallways of the lodging house, fast asleep. He often said that some day he would be killed in his nocturnal wanderings.”

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Even More Proof That Donald Trump Is A Moron

December 14, 2012 in Fake, Humor | Permalink

Donald Trump: Stretching the truth and his belt.

Donald Trump, who once lost an argument to a soda machine, is neither bright nor honest. We know that he misuses words to suit his own needs. Recently he tweeted about Penn Jillette and used the word “begged.”

______________________________

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump

I let @pennjillette come back on the record 13th season of ‘All Star’@CelebApprentice after he relentlessly begged me to–good t.v.

______________________________

The actual conversation.

 

"Penn, I need you to be on "Celebrity Apprentice" again this year."

“Penn, I need you to be on Celebrity Apprentice again this year.”

"I'm going to be busy that month spraying my genitals with mace."

“I wish I could, but I’m going to be busy that month spraying my genitals with mace.”

"It's going to be a big season. You'll be competing against Phyllis Diller's bones and the bassist from Quiet Riot."."

“It’s going to be a big season. You’ll be competing against Phyllis Diller’s bones and the bassist from Quiet Riot.”

"But my blind penis won't be able to see any of it."

“But my blind penis won’t be able to see any of it.”

"If you agree to be on the show, I'll introduce you to some of the women from my beauty pageants."

“If you agree to be on the show, I’ll introduce you to some of the women from my beauty pageants.”

"But I'm married.."

“But I’m married with children.”

"Your point being?"

“Your point being?”

"Listen, your show is horrendous and you're horrendous, but I've got a book to sell, so okay."

“Listen, your show is horrendous and you’re horrendous, but I’ve got a new book to sell, so okay.”

"Stop begging, Penn."

“Stop begging, Penn.”

Buy Penn Jillette’s Everyday Is An Atheist Holiday at Amazon and all fine booksellers.

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Hi Jolly, Sans Camel, With Bride (App. 1880)

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Jordanian camel driver Hadji Ali was, in 1856, one of the few in his profession hired by the U.S. Army to create a caravan of humped beasts in the Southwest, delivering much-needed supplies. His name was bastardized by accident, and he was rechristened “Hi Jolly.” The camels, quite literally, delivered, but the War Between the States ended the program’s funding. Hi Jolly tried to make a go of it on his own, starting a camel-centric freight-delivery business, but it didn’t last long. He subsequently released his few remaining charges into the Arizona desert, where one is alleged to have frightened a young Douglas MacArthur. In the above classic photograph, the pack leader poses with bride Gertrudis Serna. By this point he had chosen the name “Philip Tedro” for himself, seemingly unaware that “Hi Jolly” was the greatest name ever. From Examiner.com:

“The story begins in 1855 when the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, started tossing ideas around as to how to establish and supply a route from Camp Verde, Texas, to Fort Defiance (a.k.a. Roop’s Fort), California. After exploring his options, the future Confederate President ultimately opted for camels. Once Congress had appropriated $30,000 for the effort, the USS Supply promptly shipped 33 animals from the Middle East to Texas.

By doubling the load managed by traditional beasts of burden, eating off the land and demanding minimal water, the camels were a hit. Yes, the new kids on the block made quite a splash and their ungainly appearance put the existing pack animals on edge. In fact, due to the general avoidance shown by raider’s horses, caravans were consequently safer than wagon trails.

However, the introduction of a foreign and little-known species was not all fun and games. The craggy southwestern terrain was a far cry from the camel’s native, comparatively silken sands and they were perpetually plagued by rocks painfully wedging themselves between their toes. Moreover, the ability to deal with a biting, spitting creature characterized by its cantankerous disposition was not to be found among local talent. Experienced handlers were deemed essential and the federal government thus employed a handful of camel professionals.

The leader of the pack, so to speak, was a Mr. Hadji Ali whose name was quickly transformed to ‘Hi Jolly” by heavy-tongued residents. Mr. Jolly, therefore, led a wildly successful operation for the next several years. The venture was so successful that some 40 more camels were added to the lineup.

When the project lost funding in favor of the Civil War and the ensuing Reconstruction, it ceased to be a reality.”

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“Testing Kenshiro’s Spine Part”

December 13, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Headless robot, courtesy of Japanese researchers, which replicates human muscle movement. The walking function is eh, but the bending knee motion is quite good. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)

“Bedbugs Are The Herpes Of Furniture”

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

A fully-employed man who regularly Dumpster dives to get free food and other goods just did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few excerpts follow.

__________________________________

Question:

No offense, man, whatever creams your twinkie, and I’m certainly not above liberating things that are still good and the owner has lost eye contact, but damn, just reading this thread makes me all creepy-crawley and itchy.

Answer:

It’s not for everyone. I can understand that. There’s lots of things others do that I accept of them but would never do myself.Do keep in mind I have enough experience to stay clean, safe, and productive while diving. It’s not as though I stick my head in waste, I carefully pick up packaged lettuce with a grabber tool, place it in a sealed bag, take it home, wash off the exterior of the bag, inspect it for tears, and wash the contents again before using it.Really is it that much more disgusting than the thought of animals in the fields where the produce grows, covering it in pesticides, strangers picking it up and putting it in reused wooden boxes, sitting in the back of semi container used for any mystery purpose in the past, getting put on the shelf by store employees, and having who-knows-how-many customers manhandle that apple and put it back on the stack?

Being in a metal box outside which is full of other healthy produce hardly seems an issue by comparison. If you disagree, I can accept that.

__________________________________

Question:

Living in New York, the bedbug thing is really what has stopped me in my tracks when recovering used furniture. The other thing is our rat population is so large, I’d be terrified of eating something that potentially has animal feces on it. I’m interested on hearing an expanded take on that.

Answer:

I can understand that. If I were in New York, especially NYC, I would be deterred as well. I am fortunate to live somewhere I only occasionally see raccoons, who keep their distance. Bedbugs aren’t common here. Even so I don’t want to be the black swan who gets a bedbug infestation, and so I never recover fabric furniture. I’m very, very cautious of wood furniture as well and try not to let it indoors. Bedbugs are the herpes of furniture.I only eat fully packaged food products to be more certain that they are sanitary. Just in case, I also recook (not just reheat) pizzas and other hot product. For bottle of juice I check them for bloating, and if clear I put them in warm bleach-water in the sink to disinfect the exterior and then let then air dry. For produce, even though its bagged I wash it really really well. I figure there’s nothing in the bin any worse than was on the farm workers hands, the box truck, the grocery store shelf, or my crisper drawer.

__________________________________

Question:

Do you have a family? Wife and kids or close to parents and siblings? Do they dumpster dive as well? How do they feel about that?

Answer:

I am married, and we go diving together most of the time. It’s nice to have one person in the car, and the other run out to scout a dumpster before bothering to park.

Her parents also dumpster dive, but not as adventurously as we do. What is nice is that they live about 2 hours away, and we visit we can exchange scores. We get lots of juice and no bread, they get lots of bread and no juice, so we make sure to bring some trade whenever we go over, and vice-versa.

My parents know and don’t mind, but they also don’t really talk about it and I know they wouldn’t appreciate me serving them dived foods. I cook them conventionally obtained foods when they visit. I’ll admit it has crossed my mind to make them an all dumpster meal and surprise them with the reveal after desert…but I decided I like their Christmas gifts too much to risk it.

“Let’s See What He’s Got Up His Sleeve For Us This Time”

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

People in show business are labeled “genius” if they’re able to complete a sudoku slightly faster than Stephen Baldwin. But Ricky Jay is the real deal, a deeply brilliant person who can accomplish amazing things with his brain despite the deterioration of some basic neurological functions. A clip of the magus, actor and scholar appearing with Merv Griffin in 1983, and then an excerpt from Mark Singer’s great 1993 New Yorker profile, “Secrets of Magus.”

“Jay has an anomalous memory, extraordinarily retentive but riddled with hard-to-account-for gaps. ‘I’m becoming quite worried about my memory,’ he said not long ago. ‘New information doesn’t stay. I wonder if it’s the NutraSweet.’ As a child, he read avidly and could summon the title and the author of every book that had passed through his hands. Now he gets lost driving in his own neighborhood, where he has lived for several years—he has no idea how many. He once had a summer job tending bar and doing magic at a place called the Royal Palm, in Ithaca, New York. On a bet, he accepted a mnemonic challenge from a group of friendly patrons. A numbered list of a hundred arbitrary objects was drawn up: No. 3 was ‘paintbrush,’ No. 18 was ‘plush ottoman,’ No. 25 was ‘roaring lion,’ and so on. ‘Ricky! Sixty-five!’ someone would demand, and he had ten seconds to respond correctly or lose a buck. He always won, and, to this day, still would. He is capable of leaving the house wearing his suit jacket but forgetting his pants. He can recite verbatim the rapid-fire spiel he delivered a quarter of a century ago, when he was briefly employed as a carnival barker: ‘See the magician; the fire ‘manipulator’; the girl with the yellow e-e-elastic tissue. See Adam and Eve, boy and girl, brother and sister, all in one, one of the world’s three living ‘morphrodites.’ And the e-e-electrode lady . . .’ He can quote verse after verse of nineteenth-century Cockney rhyming slang. He says he cannot remember what age he was when his family moved from Brooklyn to the New Jersey suburbs. He cannot recall the year he entered college or the year he left. ‘If you ask me for specific dates, we’re in trouble,’ he says.”

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“The Emaciated Figure Strikes One With Terror”

December 13, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There are enough real monsters in the world, but we invent more, projecting our fears and loathing onto others, hoping to destroy these feelings, to be rid of them. And this act of projection itself often leads to monstrous results. In the 1800s, the bloody coughs of tuberculosis so frightened people that a parasitic creature was roused from his daytime slumber. From Abigail Tucker’s Smithsonian article “The Great New England Vampire Panic,” a passage about a New Hampshire family that succumbed to the dreaded illness one member after another:

“People dreaded the disease without understanding it. Though Robert Koch had identified the tuberculosis bac­terium in 1882, news of the discovery did not penetrate rural areas for some time, and even if it had, drug treatments wouldn’t become available until the 1940s. The year Lena died, one physician blamed tuberculosis on ‘drunkenness, and want among the poor.’ Nineteenth-century cures included drinking brown sugar dissolved in water and frequent horseback riding. ‘If they were being honest,’ Bell says, ‘the medical establishment would have said, ‘There’s nothing we can do, and it’s in the hands of God.’’

The Brown family, living on the eastern edge of town, probably on a modest homestead of 30 or 40 stony acres, began to succumb to the disease in December 1882. Lena’s mother, Mary Eliza, was the first. Lena’s sister, Mary Olive, a 20-year-old dressmaker, died the next year. A tender obituary from a local newspaper hints at what she endured: ‘The last few hours she lived was of great suffering, yet her faith was firm and she was ready for the change.’ The whole town turned out for her funeral, and sang ‘One Sweetly Solemn Thought,’ a hymn that Mary Olive herself had selected.

"The neighbors asked to exhume the bodies, in order to check for fresh blood in their hearts.”

“The neighbors asked to exhume the bodies, in order to check for fresh blood in their hearts.”

Within a few years, Lena’s brother Edwin—a store clerk whom one newspaper columnist described as ‘a big, husky young man’—sickened too, and left for Colorado Springs hoping that the climate would improve his health.

Lena, who was just a child when her mother and sister died, didn’t fall ill until nearly a decade after they were buried. Her tuberculosis was the ‘galloping’ kind, which meant that she might have been infected but remained asymptomatic for years, only to fade fast after showing the first signs of the disease. A doctor attended her in ‘her last illness,’ a newspaper said, and ‘informed her father that further medical aid was useless.’ Her January 1892 obituary was much terser than her sister’s: ‘Miss Lena Brown, who has been suffering from consumption, died Sunday morning.’

As Lena was on her deathbed, her brother was, after a brief remission, taking a turn for the worse. Edwin had returned to Exeter from the Colorado resorts ‘in a dying condition,’ according to one account. ‘If the good wishes and prayers of his many friends could be realized, friend Eddie would speedily be restored to perfect health,’ another newspaper wrote.

But some neighbors, likely fearful for their own health, weren’t content with prayers. Several approached George Brown, the children’s father, and offered an alternative take on the recent tragedies: Perhaps an unseen diabolical force was preying on his family. It could be that one of the three Brown women wasn’t dead after all, instead secretly feasting ‘on the living tissue and blood of Edwin,’ as the Providence Journal later summarized. If the offending corpse—the Journal uses the term ‘vampire’ in some stories but the locals seemed not to—was discovered and destroyed, then Edwin would recover. The neighbors asked to exhume the bodies, in order to check for fresh blood in their hearts.”

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“Strong, Yet Only Half As Thick As The Cellophane Around A Pack Of Cigarettes”

December 13, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

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For eight years during the 1960s, a Mylar ball nicknamed Echo floated in the stratosphere, becoming the first working satellite in space. This 1960 film tells the tale of its initial communication relay.

“There Is No Evidence That Criminality Is Passed Down Through The Genes. It’s A Fiction.”

December 12, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

The Browser has an excellent Five Books Interview with psychology professor Susan Gelman on the topic of essentialism, or the way we categorize people and things we encounter based on biases we believe to be facts. One of Gelman’s choices is William March’s novel, The Bad Seed, which allows her to address the idea of so-called inherited evil. An excerpt:

Question:

Let’s go on to The Bad Seed, a 1954 thriller about a little girl who turns out to be a serial killer.

Susan Gelman:

I love this book. I have to confess that in high school I had the lead in a play that we put on of The Bad Seed. I was the evil girl. So I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time. It’s really essentialism personified. What makes it essentialism is that this girl, who outwardly seems very sweet and innocent, in actuality is bad to the core. So there’s this appearance/reality distinction that is a big piece of essentialism. Also, the reason that she’s evil is that she was born that way – it was passed down from her grandmother. Her grandmother was a serial killer who got executed. The serial killer’s daughter was a very young child at the time. She was adopted and didn’t even remember any of this in more than the vaguest way. She was a perfectly fine person: The evil skipped a generation, and it was her own daughter who turned out to be this bad seed. The idea is that your moral character can be in-born. This little girl was raised in a wonderful environment, but that had no effect. That the evil is passed down from generation to generation is a very essentialist idea. It was actually controversial. If you read some reviews when the book came out, some of the reviewers really objected to that aspect.

Question:

What’s your view?

Susan Gelman:

As far as I understand it, there is no evidence that criminality is passed down through the genes. It’s a fiction, but it’s one that resonates with people. This is not supposed to be a work of science fiction. It works well for the plot of the book: The mother feels guilty for passing this along to her daughter. In some ways she feels her daughter is not at fault, because she doesn’t know any better. This is just the way she was born. What’s interesting to me is that that’s considered a plausible underlying theme that a reader can perfectly well accept. It’s a nice illustration of the common-sense aspect of essentialism.”

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“The Car Can Drop You At The Front Door To The Building You Work At And Then It Goes And Parks Itself”

December 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Miguel Helft’s new Fortune interview with Google CEO Larry Page, an exchange about self-driving cars:

“Fortune:

When you’re thinking about the next bet you’re going to make, how do you pick?

Larry Page:

That’s something we’ve been thinking about a lot. Unfortunately, there’s not a perfect science to that. Partly I feel that Google is in uncharted territory in the sense that I don’t think there’s an example from history I can take and say: “Why don’t we just do that?” We’re at a pretty big scale. We’re doing a lot of different things. We want to be a different kind of company. We’d like to have more of a social component in what we do. We like people to be happy with the products they’re using. We like our employees to be happy about working here.

Sorry, back to your main question: Choosing what to do. We want to do things that will motivate the most amazing people in the world to want to work on them. You look at self-driving cars. You know a lot of people die, and there’s a lot of wasted labor. The better transportation you have, the more choice in jobs. And that’s social good. That’s probably an economic good. I like it when we’re picking problems like that: big things where technology can have a really big impact. And we’re pretty sure we can do it. And whatever the technology investment we need to do that, it’s not going to be that huge compared to the payoff.

Fortune:

What else would change [in a world with self-driving cars]? Would we not have streetlights? Would the cities be different? Do you have a vision for what could happen?

Larry Page:

It’s very hard to predict entirely. I think that, you know, one of the issues we face here is parking. I’m getting quotes [for] the cost for us to build a parking lot structure [of] $40,000 per space. It’s all concrete and steel. Do you really want to use all your concrete and steel to build parking lots? It seems pretty stupid. If we have automated cars, or even if we have some fraction of automated cars, we’ll save hundreds of millions of dollars on parking, just at Google. When you think about your experience, the car can drop you at the front door to the building you work at and then it goes and parks itself. Whenever you need it, your phone notices that you’re walking out of the building, and your car’s there immediately by the time you get downstairs.”

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“Revolution Of Sport Tire”

December 12, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Concept automotive tires that will be available, perhaps, in the future.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 12, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"

“So I can have a statue made of him when I open my restaurant.”

In memory of Telly Savalas T-shirts – $20 (Chinatown / Lit Italy)

I am a TV character actor, I worked for Telly for 15yrs, the greatest actor I ever worked for and am selling t-shirts with his picture and my picture together. So I can have a statue made of him when I open my restaurant. Christmas is here so let’s not forget this beautiful actor so please help me, The price is $20.00. We take money orders and credit cards no cash.

sm,medium,large,extra lg

Red,White,green,black

COME GET YOUR SHIRTS NOW!!

 

“It Is Strange To See Pop Musicians With Sitars”

December 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Videos | Permalink

Ravi Shankar just passed away at 92. Here he teaches George Harrison the sitar, which the Beatle used most famously on “Within You, Without You.”

Old Print Article: “Fat Men Dance,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1890)

December 12, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“It was hard to realize how many fat men make Coney Island a home until last night brought them out.”

Unfortunately for the men of comical bulk who attended a dance given by the Fat Men’s Association of Coney Island in 1890, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle sent a complete wiseass to cover the social event. An excerpt from the August 1 issue of that year:

“Buschman’s Dancing Pavilion at West Brighton bulged out at the sides and the island shook as if suffering from the chill of an earthquake, for the Fat Men’s Association of Coney Island held their annual ball last night, and when large fractions of 25,000 pounds waft themselves over a ball room floor to gentle cadence something has got to give a little bit. It was hard to realize how many fat men make Coney Island a home until last night brought them out. A fundamental rule of the Fat Men’s Association is that no member shall weigh less than 200 pounds and those who weigh 199 gnash their teeth and sit outside the gate. The scales from the coal yard were shifted up for the purpose of proving who was entitled to the pigs which were awarded as prizes to the heavy weights, and it was a wise precaution.

"Seven pigs, twelve ducks and other minor prizes were awarded"

“Seven pigs, twelve ducks and other minor prizes were awarded for proficiency in waltzing, roller skating and weighing.”

When the guests were assembled Ward McAllister Taggart, in the only dress suit on the Island, stood at the entrance and aired his 230 pounds with evident pride. President William Rockwell, the Adonis of the Bowery, smiled disdainfully as he passed in carrying 249 pounds. Treasurer Henry Popper, who is too fat to run away with the money, puts on airs with 284 pounds to his credit. When Special Officer McGinnis wandered around there was a perceptible widening in the cracks along the walls, for McGinnis tips the scales at 399.

A litter of handsome pigs was waiting to be awarded to the men according to their weight, and the contestants took mental notes of their opponents with varying degrees of satisfaction, until Andy Cullen, of Jersey City, came along and made the heaviest of those already there look like consumptives in the last stages of decline.

The only trouble that occurred during the evening was when Special Officer Billy Smith endeavored to steal a pig. The reception committee sat on him one at a time and they gathered up his remains for the inquest. Seven pigs, twelve ducks and other minor prizes were awarded for proficiency in waltzing, roller skating and weighing. The floor groaned under the weight, and it was a satisfaction to know that there was no cellar under it.”

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“He Was Charged With Sending Four Docile Girls And A Hairy Male Acolyte Off To Slaughter Strangers”

December 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

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Those who feared (envied, perhaps) the new freedoms enjoyed by the young people of the 1960s found their counterargument in Charles Manson, a pathetic slip of a man who somehow fashioned himself into a poisonous pied piper capable of leading children to their demise. In the White Album, Joan Didion wrote about the crimes in the broader context of the wide-open Los Angeles of the era, where rumors of horrible occurrences had previously been spoken of only in hushed tones. “Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable,” she wrote, the words bleeding out like a threat. In the aftermath of the horrendous 1969 mass murder carried out by the former bright-eyed children of the Manson Family, Life magazine made the ringleader its cover subject and published a long article by Paul O’Neil about Manson and his minions. The opening:

“Long-haired, bearded little Charlie Manson so disturbed the American millions last week–when he was charged with sending four docile girls and a hairy male acolyte off to slaughter strangers in two Los Angeles houses last August–that the victims of his blithe and gory crimes seemed suddenly to have played secondary roles in the final brutal moments of their own lives. The Los Angeles killings struck innumerable Americans as an inexplicable controversion of everything they wanted to believe about the society and their children–and made Charles Manson seem to be the very encapsulation of truth about revolt and violence by the young.

What failure of the human condition could produce a Charlie Manson? What possible aspects of such a creature’s example could induce sweet-faced young women and a polite Texas college boy to acts of such numbing cruelty–even though they might have abandoned the social and political precepts of their elders like so many other beaded and bell-bottomed mother’s children in 1969? Some of the answers seemed simple enough if one weighed Charlie Manson on the ancient scales of human venality. He attracted and controlled his women through flattery, fear and sexual attention and by loftily granting them a sort of sisterhood of exploitation–methods used by every pimp in history. He sensed something old as tribal blood ritual which most of us deny in ourselves–that humans can feel enormous fulfillment and enormous relief in the act of killing other humans if some medicine man applauds and condones the deed. But Charlie was able to attune his time-encrusted concepts of villainy to the childish yearnings of hippie converts–to their weaknesses, their catchwords, their fragmentary sense of religion and their enchantment with drugs and idleness–and to immerse them in his own ego and idiotic visions of the apocalypse.”

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“There Are Tests That Could Be Done To Begin To Work Out Whether We Are In Fact Real”

December 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

dws

Technologists are planning to explore whether our universe is merely a simulation created by a futuristic supercomputer, which raises the question: Are supercomputers in the future out of their fucking minds? In America, Dancing with the Stars, which features bad dancing and no stars, is the number one television show. Fuck you, future, and fuck you, too, supercomputers. From Matthew Finnegan at TechEye:

“US scientists are attempting to find out whether all of humanity is currently living a Matrix-style computer simulation being run on supercomputers of the future.

According to researchers at the University of Washington, there are tests that could be done to begin to work out whether we are in fact real, or merely a simulation created by a futuristic android on its lunch break.

Currently, computer simulations are decades away from creating even a primitive working model of the universe. In fact, scientists are able to accurately model only a 100 trillionth of a metre, with work to create a model of a full human being still out of reach.

By looking for underlying patterns, physicists believe that it may be possible to work out if we are existing in a computer created universe, created many years in the future.  Looking at constraints imposed on simulations by limited resources could show signs that we are mere bit-part players in a Matrix-style film plot.”

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“Our Vision Is That No One Is Killed Or Injured In A New Volvo By 2020”

December 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

There have been articles since 2008 reporting that Volvo is manufacturing a driverless, crash-proof car. Significantly, the planned date for the vehicle to reach the market has never been kicked up the road from 2020, so either the automaker is continually fooling itself or production is still on target. More about the so-called “no-death cars” from Ray Massey at the Daily Mail:

“Car giant Volvo is developing ‘no death’ cars that drive themselves and are impossible to crash – ready for launch in showrooms within eight years.

The computerised vehicles will  be fitted with high-tech sensors and will ‘refuse to be steered’ into other objects.

Volvo says they will be  on sale to customers by 2020, but that some of the life-saving technology will be incorporated into its vehicles even earlier – from 2014 – it says.

Volvo’s head of government affairs Anders Eugensson said: ‘Our vision is that no one is killed or injured in a new Volvo by 2020.’

It is part of the race by leading car manufacturers including Volvo, Ford Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Vauxhall and even Google to build fully automomous ‘Robo-cars’ that can drive themselves – like the one which actor Will Smith drove in the sci-fi movie ‘I, Robot.’

The biggest hurdle is not the technology which is largely developed – but public acceptance of it and and issues of who would be liable if a crashproof car did actually crash: the driver or the manufacturer?

Volvo’s Mr Eugensson said;’We have tested prototypes on thousands of miles of test drives on public roads in Spain and on the company’s test track in western Sweden.

‘The car of the future will be like the farmer’s horse.’

‘The farmer can steer the horse and carriage but if he falls asleep the horse will refuse to walk into a tree or off a cliff.’”

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“This Is The First Time I’ve Ever Had Hare”

December 11, 2012 in Videos | Permalink

Rivaling dinner with Andre and breakfast with Blassie: William S. Burroughs and Andy Warhol eat rabbit in 1980. (Thanks Biblioklept.)

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“The Product Molds To The Anatomy”

December 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From DARPA, a release about a foam that essentially freezes severe internal injuries so that trauma victims can be moved safely to hospitals: “DARPA launched its Wound Stasis System program in 2010 in the hopes of finding a technological solution that could mitigate damage from internal hemorrhaging. The program sought to identify a biological mechanism that could discriminate between wounded and healthy tissue, and bind to the wounded tissue. As the program evolved, an even better solution emerged: Wound Stasis performer Arsenal Medical, Inc. developed a foam-based product that can control hemorrhaging in a patient’s intact abdominal cavity for at least one hour, based on swine injury model data. The foam is designed to be administered on the battlefield by a combat medic, and is easily removable by doctors during surgical intervention at an appropriate facility, as demonstrated in testing.”

“Her Book, Reworked From Her Lapsed Dissertation, Is So Saccharine And Idolatrous That It Can Only Be Tolerated With An Insulin Injection”

December 11, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Why, exactly, do we need heroes? I don’t mean children, but adult Americans who should know better. Sure, others can inspire us, but can that inspiration come only if we’ve whitewashed their negatives, if we’ve turned them into pretty lies? Do we scrub their sins to remove our own? Why not just admit that we’re all pretty flawed? Ronald Reagan wasn’t really a cowboy and neither are you or I. Tear down the statues, all of them.

From Frank Rich’s New York magazine excoriation of Petraeus, Broadwell and our deep need to manufacture heroes from substandard materials:

“None of Petraeus’s recent history would matter were it not completely at odds with everything we knew about him prior to Election Day. As you go back through the many profiles that proliferated once he was center stage in Iraq, you hear mainly of his exacting scholarliness, his push-up contests and five-mile runs with his bros in the press corps, and his straight-arrow personal style. Some of the praise heaped on Petraeus was written by the same journalists and pundits who promoted the Iraq misadventure in the first place and saw in the cool intellectual general and his surge a tool for rehabilitating both their own tarnished reputations and the disastrous, gratuitous war that had recklessly diverted American resources from the actual post-9/11 threat in Afghanistan. In truth, Petraeus didn’t redeem the Iraq fiasco. What the surge did accomplish, as a trustworthy soldier-scholar, Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, recently noted, was to allow the United States to ‘extricate itself from Iraq without having to acknowledge abject failure.’ Petraeus’s subsequent tour of duty in Afghanistan, a sudden assignment after the resignation of Stanley McChrystal, and his fourteen-month tenure as CIA director accomplished far less. Finally, we are starting to learn why.

The general’s distracting adventures among the Real Housewives of Tampa on the home front were in the public domain, reported in the local press for anyone who wanted to look. No one in the national media bothered until sex and a catfight between Broadwell and Kelley entered the story. Also hiding in plain sight, and also ignored, was Broadwell’s own curious rise in the same media-think-tank Establishment that was glorifying Petraeus. All In was not actually written by Broadwell but by a Washington Post editor. A faux author, Broadwell was also a faux counterinsurgency expert: Though an Army officer, she had never been posted in a combat zone, and though she had enrolled in a doctoral program at Harvard’s Kennedy School (where she first networked with Petraeus), she had been asked to leave because of substandard course work.

Her book, reworked from her lapsed dissertation, is so saccharine and idolatrous that it can only be tolerated with an insulin injection. Nonetheless, All In attracted a roster of ecstatic blurbs, still visible on the book’s Amazon page, from two Pulitzer Prize winners and boldfaced names at NBC News, CNN, the Brookings Institution, and Foreign Affairs. (The prize entry is from Tom Brokaw, describing Petraeus as ‘one of the most important Americans of our time, in or out of uniform.’) Sure enough, this degree of celebrity networking helped propel Broadwell into a career as a television talking head and public speaker. She paraded her dubious expertise before such august organizations as the Aspen Institute, the Concordia Summit, and the United States Chamber of Commerce—sometimes sharing the program with Bill Clinton, John McCain, and Obama Cabinet members. Like Petraeus’s other efforts to court and stroke the press, his targeted deployment of Broadwell, his most determined and devoted personal publicist, to nearly every corridor of media power helps explain how the myth of his public persona was scrupulously enforced even after his days living large in Tampa. Broadwell was so effective at insinuating herself and her message into rarefied echelons of the military-media-political complex that we should be grateful that her only causes were herself and Petraeus. She would have been a killer foreign mole.”

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A Brief Note From 1858 About A Family Dinner

December 11, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the January 12, 1858 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“A most atrocious murder was committed at Poolville, four miles from Hamilton, N.Y., last Sunday. Jared Comstock and his wife, aged over seventy years, were the victims. Their son was the murderer; he has been for some time insane. At about eight o’clock on Sunday evening he killed his father by knocking him down with an axe; and his mother was killed with a skillet. He then cut their hearts out, and cut one of the bodies in pieces, and roasted the other on the stove, eating a portion of it. He intended to have killed his sister, but fortunately she escaped. The murderer is in custody and has confessed to the act.” 

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“Replacement-Limb Technology Is Expected By The Panel To Be Prevalent”

December 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From an article at RT about the National Intelligence Council’s just-released predictions for life in 2030, none of which seem very far-fetched:

“No matter who is calling the shots, though, the NIC seems to think that a generation down the line will be a damn exciting time to be a human being. ‘People may choose to enhance their physical selves as they do with cosmetic surgery today’ in 2030, they predict, at which point the replacement-limb technology is expected by the panel to be prevalent.

‘Future retinal eye implants could enable night vision, and neuro-enhancements could provide superior memory recall or speed of thought,’ the report adds. ‘Brain-machine interfaces could provide ‘superhuman’ abilities, enhancing strength and speed, as well as providing functions not previously available.'”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 10, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Psychics convince FBI’s Gaucho Kruger that a child they call ‘blond boy’ will kill many important people.”

Looking to sell the following un-produced screenplays

Looking to sell the following un-produced screenplays ($1M or production credit) Please let me know if you are interested

BLOND BOY AND THE PSYCHICS – Psychics convince FBI’s Gaucho Kruger that a child they call “blond boy” will kill many important people. Their tips drag Gaucho through ridicule but he finally captures the mother, a disenchanted former CIA operative. 94 pages. WGAw_1129814

THE PROSTITUTES – All goes awry for former child prostitutes bent on freeing as many brothel children as possible with blackmail proceeds when a radical youth convinces their leader to go after the army. When the dirt settles, most are dead but they prevail. 90 pages. WGAw_1129815

GOLDEN EGG GOOSE (ATLANTIDE) – Refugees from planet Atlantide fight to find a baby lost 18 years ago. She is now a lonely woman struggling with her ability to make wishes come true. 102 pages. WGAw_1129816 (keyword: extraterestrial)

THE PINK SHOW (SOUQUITOUR) – SARA GANES is a stand up comic about to get her shot at her own talk show if she can survive her mother’s loving attacks for 3 more days. Her mother is a vicious past life rival who has destroyed her, life after life. 93 pages. WGAw_1112025

THE BELOVED (THE SHEIK) – Former CIA operative UMBERTO POTTI abandoned his wife precisely to protect her from his work only to have her become a target when he kidnaps the Sheik of a Parisian mosque. 99 pages. WGA #1030163

“A Blinking Light Or Auditory Warning That Triggers As The Shock Is Prepared”

December 10, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Eric Limer at Gizmodo, a report about just-patented futuristic handcuffs that can administer shocks or sedatives (holy crap!):

“The recent patent application from Scottsdale Inventions LLC shows what seems to be a pretty well developed prototype of handcuffs that will shock the wearer into submission. The patent also allows for a blinking light or auditory warning that triggers as the shock is prepared, presumably to warn the wearer to CALM DOWN. The shocks could come for any number of reasons—too much movement, movement outside a radius, or under order of the cuff’s owner—and the cuffs would also contain EKG/ECG sensors to keep from shocking detainees a little too silly (i.e. to death).

That’s not even where it ends though, because there’s additional language describing how the cuffs could actually administer a substance ‘to achieve any desired result’ via needles or gas. It could be anything from medication to sedatives to irritants, to who knows what else.”

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