“There Was A Panel Of Scientists On One Side Of The Studio, With Us On The Other”

September 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Maybe everyone except me knew about this? During the first moon walk, Pink Floyd was in studio at the BBC jamming along with the live televised event. From David Gilmour in the Guardian:

“We [Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.

The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I’ve never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead – it’s a nice, atmospheric, spacey, 12-bar blues.

I also remember at the time being in my flat in London, gazing up at the moon, and thinking, ‘There are actually people standing up there right now.’ It brought it home to me powerfully, that you could be looking up at the moon and there would be people standing on it.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

September 2, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Puppy mill, kitty mill, here kitty kitty.”

Nasty crazy lady (NY, NY & MASS)

I just got a new phone line in my house. I am getting phone calls from a woman who calls me obscene names, threatens to come beat my family up, sings and yells puppy mill, kitty mill, here kitty kitty. I have an elederly Mom and when the phone rings at 1:10 am, 2:15. am 4:55 am and all throughout the day I panic. No one has my new number yet. She calls from 8 different phone numbers in NJ, NY and Mass. Has anyone had this problem with this insane woman calling at all times of the day and night and does anyone know who she is? 

“Did Jesus Speak A Good Korean, Or Did It Have A Hebrew Accent?”

September 2, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who for some reason thought he was the messiah, just passed away at 92. In this 1972 video, he’s interviewed by wiseass conservative social critic Al Capp; they were both strong believers in couples getting married instead of shacking up.

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“Cowboys And Indians Alike Were In The Wrong Side Of The Barbed Wire Fence”

September 2, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “Realtechnik, Nausea and Technological Longing,” Venkat Rao’s recent blog post which neatly explains how new inventions, often simple ones, upend accepted orders:

“The story of barbed wire is one of the most instructive ones in the history of technology. The short version is this: barbed wire (developed between 1860 to 1873) helped close the American frontier, carved out the killing fields of World War I, and by spurring the development of the tank as a counter-weapon, created industrial-era land warfare. It also ended the age-old global conflict between pastoral nomads and settled agriculturalists (of animals, vegetables and minerals) and handed a decisive victory to the latter. Cowboys and Indians alike were on the wrong side of the barbed wire fence. Quite a record for a technology that had little deep science or engineering behind it.

Barbed wire is an example of a proximal-cause technology that eventually disturbed multiple human balances of powers, starting with the much-mythologized cowboys-versus-ranchers balance. When things finally stabilized, a new technological world order had emerged, organizing everything from butter to guns differently.  Barbed wire was not a disruptive innovation in the Clayton Christensen sense. It was something far bigger. Its introduction marked what Marshall McLuhan called a break boundary in technological evolution: a rapid, irreversible and wholesale undermining of a prevailing planet-wide technological equilibrium. So ironically, the ultimate boundary-maker of physical geography was a boundary breaker in technology history.”

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Old Print Article: “Ear Was Thrown Away By Medical Student,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1900)

September 2, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

“I obeyed a sudden impulse and taking my knife severed the left ear of the cadaver”

Keeping a severed human ear in your vest pocket and showing it off to your family and friends was just fine a century ago, provided you didn’t throw the ear in a gutter outside of a Baptist church. From the November 27, 1900 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The mystery surrounding the finding of a human ear on the east side of Marcy Avenue, between Madison Street and Putnam Avenue, and almost in the front of the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday, has been solved. The ear was cut from a cadaver in the dissecting room of the Cornell Medical College, corner of First Avenue and Twenty-eighth street, Manhattan, by Carol Nichols, a student of that college, some days ago. After carrying the grewsome little human fragment in his vest pocket as sort of a souvenir of his anatomical researches, he exhibited the severed ear to a number of his boy friends in the Sunday school of the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church on Sunday and then cast it away in the street when he left the church in the late afternoon.

Carol Nichols is 19 years old. He is a son of Dr. George Nichols of 306 Monroe Street, Brooklyn, and is prominent in church work at the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church. This is his first year in the Cornell Medical College. Young Nichols is worried over the publicity given to the finding of the human ear which he cut from the head of the corpse of a young girl which he was dissecting in the college.

The ear is still at the Coroner’s office in the Borough Hall and the authorities are puzzled as to what disposition will be made of it. Now that the mystery has been elucidated it is probable that the fragment will be disposed of.

When seen to-day at the Cornell Medical College and asked about the ear, Nichols was at first reluctant to tell what he knew concerning the fragment. Finally, however, he admitted that the ear had been thrown into the street by him. He said:

‘I was at work dissecting a body–that of a young woman–a few days ago. When I was about through with the work I obeyed a sudden impulse and taking my knife severed the left ear of the cadaver. The ear I treated with carbolic acid and then after I wrapped it up in a piece of oiled paper I put in my vest pocket, That night I took it home with me and showed it to my father and mother, afterward putting the ear back in my pocket again.

‘At Sunday school, I showed the ear to a number of my friends and classmates. They seemed to think it was funny I was carrying such a thing but didn’t seem at all timid when I showed it to them. When I left Sunday school and reached the street I decided I would get rid of the ear. I threw it into the street and the rain, which was falling fast at the time, washed the oiled paper away. I was surprised when I read in the paper an account of its discovery and thought that I would not say anything about it having been cut off and thrown away subsequently by me, because I did not want any publicity in the matter.

‘I have been afraid that there might be a law against throwing away a part of a human body in that way but I hope there will be nothing further said or done about the matter. The students very often carry home pieces of cadavers on which they are at work, sometimes to study them and then again merely to show them to their friends and have some fun with them.'”

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

September 1, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

 

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

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

September 1, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking Clint suspects that his toaster is stealing from him.

I only take what I need.

“China’s Like Heaven For Corruption. So Why Do They Have To Escape?”

August 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

A segment from an interview in Foreign Policy with tech-friendly Chinese artist and political dissisdent Ai Weiwei:

“Foreign Policy: In 1949, American writer E.B. White said in Here Is New York that New York was three cities: the city of the native, who gives it solidity and continuity; the city of the commuter, who comes to the city temporarily for business, and they give the city its restlessness. The third city is that of the immigrant, who came for the dream and stayed; this group gave New York its passion, its culture, and its art. You lived in New York for more than a decade, but it’s been almost 20 years since you left. Do you see any similarities between 1949 New York and Beijing today?

Ai Weiwei: Maybe it looks similar, but it’s completely different, because we are not in a democratic society and the resources and decision-making aren’t fairly distributed. So many officials are escaping China with huge amounts of money — shocking numbers, billions. Then you start to ask: Why can’t they stay? China’s like heaven for corruption. So why do they have to escape? Because the system will not protect them, because there are always political struggles here. They just take the money and leave.”

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Afflictor Nation: Great Britain Triumphs In August

August 31, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

Prince Harry: Carpet matches the drapes.

The Top 5 foreign countries that sent this blog the most visitors in August:

  1. Great Britain
  2. Australia 
  3. Germany
  4. Mexico
  5. Canada

“They’ll Be Rewriting What It Means To Be A City In The World”

August 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I’m wary of demographic predictions but the premise of Nate Berg’s new piece at the Atlantic, that the world’s least livable cities are growing the fastest, is really solid. What can these emerging but impoverished places learn from tidy, healthy metropolises like Vancouver and Melbourne? Not much, perhaps. An excerpt:

 that roughly 90 percent of the urbanization underway globally is taking place in developing cities like Dhaka and Lagos and in developing countries like Zimbabwe and Papua New Guinea. And between 2009 and 2050, the number of urban dwellers in these developing countries is expected to more than double, to 5.2 billion, according to the World Health Organization. That puts nearly 75 percent of the world’s expected 7 billion urbanites in cities in the developing world.

While Melbourne and Vienna and Vancouver will most certainly continue to grow and evolve, they won’t be undergoing the same speed and intensity of urbanization as cities in the developing world. And as these dramatically changing cities deal with these urban shifts in a very short time span, it is with an equally swift pace that they’ll be rewriting what it means to be a city in the world. The urbanity of London, gradually spreading over centuries, is being overshadowed by the instant skyscraper forests of burgeoning megacities in China and the massively dense urban cores of Dhaka and Lagos. The London model isn’t going anywhere, but the majority of the next major cities will develop more like Shenzhen or Kabul.”

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“The Team Decided That A Mic Would Not Reveal New Facts About Mars’s Habitability”

August 31, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Interesting question I hadn’t though of: Why is the Curiosity sending back visuals of Mars but no audio? An excerpt from the answer at Curiosity Watch:

“So why’s there no mic on board? That’s mainly because MSL is a scientific mission and has a clearly defined objective:

The overall scientific goal of the mission is to explore and quantitatively assess a local region on Mars’ surface as a potential habitat for life, past or present. 

Hence, every instrument has to work toward the overall scientific goal. Maybe there have been discussions about including a microphone in the early planning stages but the team decided that a mic would not reveal new facts about Mars’s habitability.

Also, spaceflight is extremely expensive and every extra gram costs money, so you only bring the things you really need.”

5 Things About Mitt Romney’s RNC Speech

August 31, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

Mitt Romney: Face smooth like baby’s ass.

  • Although the final night of the RNC was most notable for saving us all admission on The Expendables 14, and, perhaps, the last gasp of fake tough guys convincing Americans they know best, Mitt Romney tried to show his feminine side. He romanced the ladies in the audience with tales of his parents’ loving relationship. He said it all with honey in his voice. It was like watching Neil Diamond in 1978 (though Neil never wanted women to put an aspirin between their knees). And then he blew his cover at the end with his asinine mocking of attempts at reversing “rising oceans” and “healing the Earth” as if female voters–and most voters, actually–think the health of the planet is grist for an obnoxious punchline.
  • The line about Obama raising taxes on the middle class was patently false and there were other doozies, though Romney’s speech was nowhere close to Paul Ryan’s in terms of mendacity.
  • However, Romney’s idea that everyone in the country rallied around Obama after he became President was absurd. There is proof that the GOP gathered before he was inaugurated to plan obstructionist action. 
  • Romney spent far too much time polishing this speech to have not intended a double meaning with his “you need an American” line. It was another Birther jab. Sad stuff from a guy who claims to have pulled over to the side of the road and wept when Mormons undid their racist beliefs about African-Americans.
  • Not incredibly important, just an observation about double standards: Occasionally male politicians are called out for the cosmetic nature of their looks–Ronald Reagan’s hair color, John Kerry’s Botox–but women are always called out on such things. And even about their clothes. Can you imagine if a 65-year-old woman at the top of a ticket had a smoother face than her VP candidate, who was 42 and a health-and-fitness devotee? I’m assuming a few things would be said whether they’re true or not.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 31, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Screw Gates and Jobs for taking away the last vestiges of youth.”

Taking back Brooklyn (Can’t find my way home.)

Did you ever dry your clothes on a radiator, grow basil on your back porch, maybe float something down the gutter after a rainstorm. Have an egg cream made in front of you while spinning around on a stool. Buy 2 pieces of Bazooka w/ a penny. Going out to play like a bat outta Hell after Sat. morning cartoons, kicking the sawdust around the butcher shop floor. Maybe you carved your name into hot tar on a July afternoon, that’ll last forever. Filled a sock w/chalk to make some crazy designs in the street, or shot your brother w/ a pea shooter. Yeah I go back, but this ain’ t some trip down memory lane, read on. Come in when it gets dark, no way we’re playing ringelerio, and I’ll get caught. Buy a frozen custard off a truck that would be condemned today for carrying some sort of virus. Ever buy a Good Humor bar from some old drunk on a 1/2 bike 1/2 cooler on wheels. How about burning your tongue on a Buittoni Instant Pizza. TANG. I loved to spin a Whizzer top and stick it in my brothers hair, fucking hysterical. Sorry bro. Hey does your little back hurt from carrying that back pack. Shit you should have tried carrying that leather schoolbag you know, the one w/the flap latch, bigger than any briefcase you ever saw. Some lightweights had to use both hands and carry it in front of them they we’re easy to tip over in rubber goulashes in the slush for 6 blocks. Not uphill both ways but true nonethless. NEVER used an umbrella let alone one w/ a nike swoosh,you’d get your ass handed to you w/it.Black socks w/sneakers! Don’t ask. Yeah I go back, a little. I don’t wanna go to the 21st. century. Well maybe not all the way. Cellphone, check laptop check, Ipod check, social networking, check, hey it’s all I’ve got after being gone 9 yrs. Social networking was going to your aunt’s house w/ your parents for coffee. Eat at one set of grandparents home on Sunday then go over to your moms side of the family for coffee and cake. Vice versa next Sunday, lest anyone get upset. WE bought bagels @ night not @ 7:00 am with some $5 latte. Hurrry up and order you idiot. Yeah I’m gettin there stay w/me. Chinese take out? No way. We’d make the little fuckers serve us. They must have used every Chinese curse word in the book while they watched the mess they had to clean up being made right in front of them. Eat at a luncheonette? I have yet to taste a better burger fries and coke. Fuck McDonalds, Wetsons brought your shit out to your car, on a tray, on rollerskates. I recall the first time I was ridiculed for the clothes I wore or my sneakers. I knew things had changed for good and the rest of my innocense was gone too.You never had to think about that shit before 70/71. Yes my eyes are open. I see the 21st century got here like, what 12 /13 yrs ago. So much has happened in that time, yet so little .Yeah I’m talkig to you, the one waiting in line for the next Apple product. Screw Gates and Jobs for taking away the last vestiges of youth, my youth. No not Utes, those we’re guys like me who went to New Utrecht High. They took away our vinyl ALBUMS, and no a cd is not an ALBUM. Typewriters and books too! But what, you say vinyl is making a comeback, typing classes too. Books? Hey they can’t burn down any libraries, well not yet any way. Not for practical 21st century use but for fun , yes fun. Does anbody remember laughter? Now you little hip Brooklyn Appleites wanna go back to my youth and have fun? FUCK YOU! I won’t let you get away w/it. You’ll probably claim you invented it all. You think you know my Brooklyn? You NEVER will. Some of you assholes will live there your whole sorry exsistence and NEVER experience what I did from age 6 to 12. Yeah I go back …..and forth. Sure we had mob wives, but they kept their mouthes shut. They didn’t go on T V and beat each other w/Prada handbags after a bad Botox treatment. It was an honor if your old man was mobbed up. You were shown respect. Screw John Gotti 21st century mob man. He should have put it on a silver platter for the Russians . The F B I is loving those guys, NYET! But I do have hope for the future, for my grandkids. I will be there to tell them about those days for as long as they will listen. Hopefully they won”t think I’m some old fool. You? I don’t really care what you think. I’d love to take them to a church bazaar like the ones we used to have right out in the street. Yeah boys I’m still here. The same guy who used to hang out on the corner. Hopefully I’m a little older and wiser but even that doesn’t happen for everyone. But I am 51 now a little tired and I’m going home. I’m not taking my ball though. I was NEVER that fucking guy. Yeah I go back.

Well, Not Everyone Ages Like Betty White

August 30, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

Clint Eastwood: Help me find my shoes, sonny.

I’ll say nothing else except that, yes, Clint, Jon Voight is a great man.

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“Each Of You In Your Room Is In Touch With All That You Care For In The World”

August 30, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

E.M. Forster probably isn’t immediately associated with techno-dystopia, but that’s the subgenre of his 1909 short story, “The Machine Stops.” As the title suggests, the tale is concerned with our increasing reliance on technology. This video is the 1966 BBC adaptation.

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A Note From 1897 About A Late Millionaire

August 30, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 22,1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Portland, Ore.–The body of the late millionaire W.S. Ladd, which was stolen from the grave last Monday night, has been recovered, and Daniel G. Magone, a middle aged farmer living near Oregon City, and Charles Montgomery, a young man who also resides near there, are under arrest. The body was found practically in the same state in which it was when removed from the grave.”

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“It Was In Its Early Days, Dubbed A Truman Show For The Elderly And Sick”

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From a really interesting piece by Jon Henley in the Guardian about a self-contained, four-acre Dutch village for those suffering from dementia:

“Hogewey was, in its early days, dubbed a Truman Show for the elderly and sick, after the Jim Carrey film in which reality turned out to be the set of an elaborate TV show. The home is, admits Van Hal, ‘not completely normal. We pretend it is, but ultimately it is a nursing home, and these are people with severe dementia. Sometimes the illusion falls down; they’ll try to pay at the hairdresser’s, and realise they have no money, and become confused.

‘We can still do more. But in general, I think we get pretty close to normal. You don’t see people lying in their beds here. They’re up and about, doing things. They’re fitter. And they take less medication. I think maybe we’ve shown that even if it is cheaper to build the kind of care home neither you or I would ever want to live in, the kind of place where we’ve looked after people with dementia for the past 30 years or more, we perhaps shouldn’t be doing that any more.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Frustration Definitely Provokes Human Aggression”

August 30, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

A two-minute clip from “Human Aggression” by Stanley Milgram, author of the controversial 1962 “Obedience” social psychology experiment.

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“Animals Might Also Be Bioengineered To Better Suit Captivity”

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Jennifer Abassi’s short, new Discover piece about the mashup of zoos and futurism, which touches on vertical zoos in urban areas and more outré topics:

“Within decades, advances in sequencing genes from ancient tissue could allow scientists to clone extinct dodo birds, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths, says Jeffrey Yule, an evolutionary ecologist at Louisiana Tech University. Researchers in Asia and Europe are working to piece together DNA from mammoth tissue preserved in Siberian permafrost. Someday they might be able to insert it into an elephant egg to produce an embryo that a surrogate elephant would carry. It could fall to zoos to look after these animals.

Animals might also be bioengineered to better suit captivity, says John Fraser, former director of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Altering big cats, for example, to produce more endorphins might make them less aggressive. ‘We’ve spent a lot of time creating what look like barrier-less exhibits, but they still have barriers.'”

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2 Things About Paul Ryan’s Convention Speech

August 30, 2012 in Politics | Permalink

Paul Ryan: 6% body fat, 3% integrity. (Image by Gobonobo.)

  • The Rove-Gingrich playbook, which says you can get away with saying anything provided you code it in the right words, is dead. Maybe it’s because words mean less in the Internet Age or because media’s been disseminated and fact-checking is in the hands of the many. I know plenty of misinformation and conspiracies get legs on the Internet, but that is on the fringes, not in the mainstream of Presidential politics. The GOP hasn’t figured this out yet. They still think rhetoric can cover up who they really are. Sarah Palin was a terrible VP nominee not only because she’s inane and petty but because she set herself up as a fraud by standing up at the 2008 Republican Convention and introducing herself as a liar. Yes, it took a couple of weeks for her to be exposed, but then the backlash was brutal. Paul Ryan, likewise, lied into the camera so many times (while trying to couch his bullshit in the right phrases) that he will also be in for a bruising rebuttal. He wasn’t artful–he was deceitful, and he’s provided the Dems with many avenues of attack.
  • As out of touch as the GOP is, the television media is even worse. Lawrence O’Donnell and Michael Steele reaching across the aisle to agree that Ryan’s presentation was more important than his substance, as if they were analyzing the Nixon-Kennedy debates in 1960, revealed two people who have no idea that the world has changed dramatically recently. And to hear countless well-fed, insulated talkers crow about Ryan’s “youthful” musical taste and how it will appeal to young voters, is to have your mind boggled. No offense to Led Zeppelin, but I assumed Ryan chose one of their songs to play at the end of his speech in order to reassure seniors about Medicare. Ryan will no more attract young voters because of his age than Palin did women because of her gender. His appearance is young, but he’s spiritually been an old hack his whole career. And it’s been a long time since that kind of nonsense has rocked and rolled.

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The “Messiah” Holds Court In Los Angeles (1949)

August 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

I know there’ve been cults all throughout human history, but I tend to think of the ones that popped up in America after 1965. The classic 1949 photo above shows an earlier cult, a postwar sect established in Los Angeles known as the WKFL (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Love) Fountain of the World. Founded by inveterate jailbird Francis Herman Pencovic, who reinvented himself as the self-styled messiah Krishna Venta, the group had an apocalyptic edge and seemed to be an antecedent to the Manson Family. Penecovic was murdered in 1958 in a suicide bombing perpetrated by former members of the cult. From the International Cultic Studies Association:

“His name was Krishna Venta, and Monday, December 10, 2008, marked the 50th anniversary of his violent assassination, which all told ended ten lives.

Born Francis Pencovic in the San Francisco of 1911, Venta was an interesting candidate for messiah, having previously lived as burglar, thief, con artist, and shipyard timekeeper. This changed in 1946 when, following a stretch on a chain gang and a stint in the Army, Pencovic’s body (or so he claimed) became the host vessel for the ‘Christ Everlasting,’ an eternal spirit being who had not only died on the cross at Calvary 2,000 years earlier, but had commandeered to Earth from the planet Neophrates a convoy of rocket ships whose passengers included Adam and Eve.

But in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, insisted Venta, such ancient history was irrelevant. This time around, his Earthly mission was to gather the 144,000 Elect foretold in Revelation and deliver them from an apocalypse heretofore unseen by mankind.

To draw attention to this cause, Venta donned a monk’s robe, permanently discarded footwear, and thereafter forewent cutting both hair and beard.  In the Truman and Eisenhower eras, Venta, who frequently made headlines for both his luck at the dog track and his repeated arrests for failure to pay child support, cut a unique figure.  His message, however, could not have been more tailor-made for Cold War America.

Armageddon, prophesied Venta, would begin as an armed race war in the streets of America.”

Sister Audrey, 1958.

Krishna Venta, homesteading in Alaska, 1958.

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“The Audiences Become The Performer To A Large Extent”

August 29, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Glenn Gould, in 1969, predicting that new technologies would allow for the sampling, remixing and democratization of creativity. Perhaps we’re only at the beginning.

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“Some Researchers Say A Large Crowd Makes It Less Likely That An Individual Hero Will Step Up”

August 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Until now, I missed this recent and interesting WSJ piece by Sue Shellenbarger about the psychology of heroism. An excerpt:

“Certain traits make it more likely that a person will make a split-second decision to take a heroic risk. People who like to take charge of situations, who respond sympathetically to others, and who have a strong sense of moral and social responsibility are more likely to intervene than people who lack those traits, research shows. Heroes tend by nature to be hopeful, believing events will turn out well. They consciously try to keep fear from hampering their pursuit of goals, and they tend to block out the possibility of injury or material loss.

People who are otherwise good and caring may still shrink back in a crisis. Their responses depend partly on whether they perceive the situation as an emergency and whether they know how to help; someone who doesn’t know anything about electrical wiring probably won’t rush to save a person tangled in a power line. How you’re feeling that day makes a difference, too; ‘people who are in a good mood are more likely to help,’ says Julie M. Hupp, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University in Newark. Context also matters; some researchers say a large crowd makes it less likely that an individual hero will step up.”

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“The Chinese Urban Reckoning Will Be Even More Severe Than America’s”

August 29, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

China is building cities and skyscrapers faster than the West can, but it’s still thus far relying on the same-old intellectual templates: an auto-centric culture and Le Corbusier-style design. From Peter Calthorpe in Foreign Policy:

“The choices China makes in the years ahead will have an immense impact not only on the long-term viability, livability, and energy efficiency of its cities, but also on the health of the entire planet. Unfortunately, much of what China is building is based on outdated Western planning ideas that put its cars at the center of urban life, rather than its people. And the bill will be paid in the form of larger waistlines, reduced quality of life, and choking pollution and congestion. The Chinese may get fat and unhappy before they get rich.

Like the U.S. cities of the 1950s and ’60s, Chinese cities are working to accommodate the explosive growth of automobile travel by building highways, ring roads, and parking lots. But more than any other factor, the rise of the car and the growth of the national highway system hollowed out American cities after World War II. Urban professionals fled to their newly accessible palaces in the suburbs, leaving behind ghettos of poverty and dysfunction. As Jane Jacobs, the great American urbanist, lamented, ‘Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities.’

Only in the last few decades, as urban crime rates have plummeted and the suburbs have become just as congested as the downtowns of old, have Americans returned to revitalize their cities in large numbers, embracing mass transit, walkable communities, and street-level retail. But while America’s yuppies may now take ‘urban’ to mean a delightful new world of cool bars, Whole Foods stores, and bike paths, urbanization in China means something else entirely: gray skies, row after row of drab apartment blocks, and snarling traffic.

If anything, due to China’s high population density, the Chinese urban reckoning will be even more severe than America’s. “

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

August 29, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“Our issues aside, we’re awesome together.”

I love my wife, but I wonder (East Village)

So, yes, I know my wife loves me. And I love her. Incredibly. If you’re lucky, you find that one person that you want to share everything with. I can honestly say that everything I do would be better if my wife was there to share it with me. I dont think a love like that comes along very often.

Of course, Im a red blooded American man, and I love women. I love to look. I love to imagine. Friends say that my personality can be an asset to me hooking up with beautiful women, were I to decide to seek greener pastures. I dont consider myself a ‘good looking’ man. But I’m not a hideous C.H.U.D. either.

So, if Im so in love with my wife, and she’s so in love with me, why do I look? Cuz I’m a guy? Sure. Cuz whenever we fight, the word divorce is thrown out quite a bit. Yes. Sometimes I wonder if we were just meant to be really good friends, and maybe we veil our wants for divorce, so as not to admit it, even to ourselves. After all, there’s some pride that goes along with having a ‘successful’ marriage. We see our friends come and go, fight and separate, date and split up, and we feel we’ve got a good handle on how to keep a happy home.

The problems are two fold. On my end, I suffer from major depression, medicated but not controlled. My mood swings on a dime, happy to sad, content to yearning, pleased to angry. I go from normal to furious or suicidal at the drop of a hat. Thats me. Mr. Fucked Up Head.

On her end, she is sexually stunted and has zero self esteem. So, needless to say, I never get laid, and when I do, it’s very vanilla. I’m not looking to swing from the ceiling, but I like a woman with some confidence in her sexuality. This is sorely lacking. Which I think, more than anything else, is why I look. I wont have an affair. I dont think thats fair to my partner. I wouldnt like it, so I wont do it.

The worst of it is that I work with these really cute awesome women, and because I’m in a service industry, I’m constantly meeting new people, which include a lot of pretty ladies.

I guess, I’m afraid to take the plunge. To see whats out there. I’m afraid of not finding someone as compatible than my wife. Our issues aside, we’re awesome together. And I always said I’d only get married once. One time. I dont believe in divorce, but I’d respect the decision if thats what we came to. But I wont be walking down that aisle again, so not only do I have to find a pretty lady that I like, who will deal with my mental nonsense, my not so fair figure, who will accept me and love me unconditionally, as my wife does, but who doesnt want to be married.

Am I fooling myself? Should I just resign myself to 80% in the relationship? Is it worth it to try and throw it all away and start again, at 38?

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