Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

July 14, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking “American Idol” has found its new judge.

  • Crowds may be becoming less wise all the time.
  • Robots can now walk just like humans.

Old Print Article: “Threatened John L. Sullivan’s Life,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1889)

July 13, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

“You’re an old woman, anybody could lick you.”

John L. Sullivan, gloved boxing’s first heavyweight champion, made a fortune and ended up a broken-down charity case like so many great pugilists. He had a wild ride of living large, drinking hard, acting on stage, losing money, being sued, etc. And sometimes he wasn’t the source of the problems that plagued him. From the October 27 1889 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Boston, Mass.–‘I will kill John L. Sullivan,’ shouted Tommie Shea this afternoon. He was armed with a big revolver and had been drinking heavily. Instead of killing Sullivan, Shea lies at the City Hospital to-night with his throat cut from ear to ear by one of Sullivan’s companions and will probably die. Recently Liney Tracey, a Brooklyn boxer, who was a second for Sullivan in a fight with Kilrain, and who was booked for the champion’s latest proposed sparring tour, was talking with Shea. The latter had just been released form State Prison, having served three years for highway robbery.

Sullivan saw them, and, calling Tracy one side, said: ‘Keep away from that man, he’s a crook.’

Tracy very foolishly told Shea what Sullivan had said and Shea swore he would kill the champion as soon as he had opportunity.

Sullivan-Kilrain, 1889.

About 2 o’clock this afternoon Shea entered Sugarman’s pawn shop and bought a thirty-eight calibre bull dog revolver for $2.50.

Meeting friends later, he told them he had a revolver and what he intended to do. A policeman soon after induced Shea to give up the revolver. Shea left the officer, telling his friends he intended to buy another gun. Sullivan sat in a high chair in Hogarty’s barber shop at 4:30 o’clock this afternoon having his shoes polished when Shea entered and sat down in a chair for a shine. Then a wrangle of words began between the champion and the man in the chair. Remarks similar to this were made by Sullivan to Shea: ‘You’re an old woman, anybody could lick you.’

In the barber shop was Tommy Kelly, an ex-lightweight pugilist, who won his fame when he fought Siddons Mouse on an Island down the harbor some time ago. Kelly took a hand and a bloody hand it proved to be.

Kelly had been drinking. He seized one of the Italian’s razors, and, approaching Shea, drew it across his throat, cutting a gash from ear to ear. The blood flowed a stream and there was intense excitement in the little shop. Sullivan jumped from his seat, took the razor away from Kelly and kicked him out into the street. Shea was taken, weak from loss of blood, to the hospital, and late to-night the physicians declared him almost beyond hope of recovery. Kelly gave himself up to the police. So far he has made no statement as to his side of the case.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

July 13, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“I desperately want to eradicate or contain these mediocre talkers.”

HOW DO I AVOID SMALL TALK? (Midtown)

I’m introverted and get annoyed quickly with pseudo, trivial mundane conversations, I’ve been labelled antisocial etc, But I’m extremely talkative when I’m amongst my Professor or two philosophers I met recently around union square. So clearly I’m not anti-social, I simply don’t find small talk interesting. I have nothing against people’s personal socializing objectives, But it’s just doesn’t interest me. I’m not intelligent but I’m awe of information and solving problems and love reading and constantly educating myself.

I encounter these ‘Fountain Of Useless Information People’ constantly.

Please email me and tell me what polite steps i can take to avoid them. I desperately want to eradicate or contain these mediocre talkers that consume my time.

Alicia

West Village.

“I Went From Seamstress To National Symbol in 1955”

July 13, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Does everyone else know that Rosa Parks was on To Tell the Truth in 1980? I didn’t.

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“What We Require Now Is A New Framework For Thinking And Talking About The Economy”

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

From “The Machine and the Garden,” a smart New York Times Op-Ed piece by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer which suggests that the language we use to explain the economy is all wrong:

“Call it the ‘Machinebrain’ picture of the world: markets are perfectly efficient, humans perfectly rational, incentives perfectly clear and outcomes perfectly appropriate. From this a series of other truths necessarily follows: regulation and taxes are inherently regrettable because they impede the machine’s optimal workings. Government fiscal stimulus is wasteful. The rich by definition deserve to be so and the poor as well.

This self-enclosed metaphor is the gospel of market fundamentalists. But there is simply no evidence for it. Empirically, trickle-down economics has failed. Tax cuts for the rich have never once yielded more net revenue for the country. The 2008 crash and the Great Recession prove irrefutably how inefficient and irrational markets truly are.

What we require now is a new framework for thinking and talking about the economy, grounded in modern understandings of how things actually work. Economies, as social scientists now understand, aren’t simple, linear and predictable, but complex, nonlinear and ecosystemic. An economy isn’t a machine; it’s a garden. It can be fruitful if well tended, but will be overrun by noxious weeds if not.

In this new framework, which we call Gardenbrain, markets are not perfectly efficient but can be effective if well managed. Where Machinebrain posits that it’s every man for himself, Gardenbrain recognizes that we’re all better off when we’re all better off. Where Machinebrain treats radical inequality as purely the predictable result of unequally distributed talent and work ethic, Gardenbrain reveals it as equally the self-reinforcing and compounding result of unequally distributed opportunity.

Gardenbrain challenges many of today’s most conventional policy ideas.”

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“I, William M. Gaines, Am A Trash Dealer, But I Am Not Interested In The Usual Kind Of Trash”

July 13, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

William M. Gaines, publisher and impresario behind Mad magazine, on To Tell the Truth in 1970. He looked like a plate of spaghetti that fell on the floor.

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“He Urged A Single Vast City To Be Built On Top Of The Niagara Falls To House The Entire Population Of The United States of America”

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

I read somewhere recently that if all of contemporary America had the population density of Brooklyn, we would be able to fit everyone into New Hampshire. The rest of the country would grow wild and beautiful while New Hampshire would stink like a graveyard restroom. King C. Gillette, razor magnate and Utopian socialist, encouraged the design of something similar in the 1890s: a hyper-concentrated metropolis made of porcelain buildings. Never quite happened. From “Impossible Cities,” by Darran Anderson at 3:AM:

“The inventor of the safety razor, business magnate and socialist, King Camp Gillette had similarly ambitious plans, writing The Human Drift in which he urged a single vast city to be built on top of the Niagara Falls (powered naturally by hydro-electricity) to house the entire population of the United States of America. It would measure 135 miles by 45 and consist of cylindrical skyscrapers made from porcelain. Pre-empting Fritz Lang’s Expressionist dystopia by decades, its name would be Metropolis.”

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“They’re Currently Developing Or Testing Over 100 Synthetic Human Body Parts”

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

Some footage of bio-engineering research at the University of Utah in 1977, when it seemed like synthetics were the best bet for replacement organs and limbs. While better artificial extremities are now being manufactured all the time, the future looks brightest for carbon-based solutions, via computer-aided transplantation in the short run and 3-D printers a little further down the road.

“It May Be Time To Jettison The Notion That Robots In The Future Will Have Grippers Or Claw”

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

The ExoHand by Festo is a robot hand that’s worn like a glove. From David J. Hill at Singularity Hub: “It may be time to jettison the notion that robots in the future will have grippers or claws for hands. The German robotics company Festo recently unveiled the ExoHand, a sophisticated robotic hand that is capable of the fine motor skills that allows the human hand to have a delicate touch or perform complex manipulations.

The ExoHand comes in two forms: as the extremity of a robotic arm or a wearable exoskeleton glove. The system is designed so that the glove can aid assembly line workers performing repetitive tasks with their hands or be used for the remote manipulation of the robotic arm by a user wearing the glove.”

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A Note From 1897 About A Rat Trap Accident

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

From the June 22, 1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“William Young, a consulting engineer living at Brooklyn and Newkirk Avenues, had an experience with a patent rat trap at 7 o’clock last night that may cost him his eyesight. For some time past the Youngs have been troubled with rats and bought a trap that was highly recommended by a salesman. Last evening Mr. Young was explaining to his wife the workings of the trap, which he held close to his face. Suddenly there was a snap and a shout from Mr. Young. The spring had sprung and caught him on the eyelid. It required the assistance of Mrs. Young to release the trap, and it was then found that his eyelid had been torn. Surgeon Lewis of St. John’s Hospital spent an hour in endeavoring to save the unfortunate man’s sight.”

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“A Life In Which None Of These Possible Aspects Of Character Are Developed May Seem To Be A Life Strangely Barren”

July 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

From philosopher Susan Wolf’s seminal 1982 essay, “Moral Saints” (PDF download), an argument against giving until it hurts, a passage that could support evolutionary truth or rationalize bourgeois comfort–or do both:

“If the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry ot healing the sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the oboe, or improving his backhand. Although no one of the interests or tastes in the category containing these latter activities could be claimed to be a necessary element in a life well lived, a life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren.

The reasons why a moral saint cannot, in general, encourage the discovery and development of significant nonmoral interests and skills are not logical but practical reasons. There are, in addition, a class of nonmoral characteristics that a moral saint cannot encourage in himself for reasons that are not just practical. There is a more substantial tension between having any of these qualities unashamedly and being a moral saint. These qualities might be described as going against the moral grain. For example, a cynical or sarcastic wit, or a sense of humor that appreciates this kind of wit in others, requires that one take an attitude of resignation and pessimism toward the flaws and vices to be found in the world. A moral saint, on the other hand, has reason to take an attitude in opposition to this—he should try to look for the best in people, give them the benefit of the doubt as long as possible, try to improve regrettable situations as long as there is any hope of success. This suggests that, although a moral saint might well enjoy a good episode of Father Knows Best, he may not in good conscience be able to laugh at a Marx Brothers movie or enjoy a play by George Bernard Shaw.

An interest in something like gourmet cooking will be, for different reasons, difficult for a moral saint to rest easy with. For it seems to me that no plausible argument can justify the use of human resources involved in producing a pâté de canard en croute against possible alternative benificient ends to which these resources might be put. If there is a justification for the institution of haute cuisine, it is one which rests on the decision not to justify every activity against morally beneficial alternatives, and this is a decision a moral saint will never make. Presumably, an interest to high fashion or interior design will fare much the same, as will, very possibly, a cultivation of the finer arts as well.”

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“Termites Are Actually The Greatest Architects On Earth”

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

The swarm behavior of ants can be instructive to humans, but what about the design sense of termites? Can it aid roboticists? Will we live to see the day when millions of tiny bots build a structure from foundation to roof? A Reuters report about Harvard research on the topic.

 

“[They] Were The First Subscribers To The Telephone Herald“

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

These classic 1901 photographs show the Budapest offices of Telefon Hirmondo (or Telephone Herald), a newspaper service read via telephone to subscribers all over that city. Begun in 1893 by Transylvanian inventor Theodore Puskas–who died just a month after the service was launched–the Herald featured updated news all day and live music at night. It cost about two cents a day at the outset. At its height, the company had more than 15,000 subscribers and licensed similar setups in Italy and America. Local department stores, hotels and restaurants purchased several lines so that their customers could be hooked into flowing news and entertainment almost a century before Wi-Fi. The popularity of radio in the 1920s, however, made the telephone newspaper superfluous.

From an article about the U.S. iteration (in Newark, New Jersey) in the March 30, 1912 edition of Telephony:

While all the rest of the nation had to stop work and hang around the newspaper bulletin boards waiting in an agony of suspense for news from the Polo Grounds, in New York, last October, for half an hour, or perhaps thirty-three minutes, after the epoch-making innings there were ended, a privileged few in Newark, N. J., were able, while sitting in their own homes, to follow instantaneously, play by play, the demonstration of the fact that the Giants were next to the best baseball experts. These Newark folk who received news more promptly than that commodity had ever before been served in America were the first subscribers to the Telephone Herald, a newspaper which is independent of the Typographical Union and the Allied Printing Trades Council, for it is published over wires instead of upon paper. In other words, the subscriber does not read the Telephone Herald, but merely listens to it. He may listen to as much or as little of it as he likes; but whether he listens or not the Herald grinds on in one continuous edition from 8 o’clock in the morning until 10:30 o’clock in the evening. Its news is constantly on tap, like water or gas, for the small sum of $18 a year, or five cents a day. Additional news taps in one house are installed for $7 a year, or two cents a day. The Telephone Herald gets out a Sunday paper seven days a week with all the usual ‘magazine’ features, fiction, fashions, children’s stories and all the rest of it. Its one redeeming feature is that it has no comic supplement, thank Heaven!

In the evening the Herald ceases to be a newspaper and becomes an entertainer, furnishing a varied programme of instrumental music, songs, recitals, lectures or anything else that can be transmitted by wire.

While the telephone newspaper is a novelty on this side of the Atlantic one has been published regularly for eighteen years at Budapest, Hungary, under the name of Telefon Hirmondo.•


The schedule for the Newark version:

  • 8:00: Exact astronomical time.
  • 8:00-9:00: Weather, late telegrams, London exchange quotations; chief items of interest from the morning papers.
  • 9:00-9:45: Special sales at the various stores; social programs for the day.
  • 9:45-10:00: Local personals and small items.
  • 10:00-11:30: New York Stock Exchange quotations and market letter.
  • 11:30-12:00: New York miscellaneous items.
  • Noon: Exact astronomical time.
  • 12:00-12:30: Latest general news;naval, military and congressional notes.
  • 12:30-1:00: Midday New York Stock Exchange quotations.
  • 1:00-2:00: Repetition of the half day’s most interesting news.
  • 2:00-2:15: Foreign cable dispatches.
  • 2:15-2:30: Trenton and Washington items.
  • 2:30-2:45: Fashion notes and household hints.
  • 2:45-3:15: Sporting news; theatrical news.
  • 3:15-3:30: New York Stock Exchange closing quotations.
  • 3:30-5:00: Music, readings, lectures.
  • 5:00-6:00: Stories and talks for the children.
  • 8:00-10:30: Vaudeville, concert, opera.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

July 11, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

“I love her.”

I want to buy chloroform or ether (Nassau County)

I need someone to help me about getting Chloroform or Ether. I want make my girlfriend sleep deeply for me to go out…too controlling. I love her, all I want is to go out by myself. please help me out thanks.

“How Many Of You Have Gotten Behind The Wheel Of A Car When You Really Shouldn’t Have Been Driving?”

July 11, 2012 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Mechanical engineer Chris Gerdes at TED discussing robotic, driverless race cars. The human element will be lost.

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“The Second, And Much Bigger, Problem Is That The People Who Are Doing It Are Basically Morons”

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

Gallows, 1916, Brownsville, Texas.

The death penalty is incredibly unevenly distributed based on race, financial standing and gender. Some innocent people are put to death because the system (and the people who make up that system) are fallible. And the punitive measure hasn’t proven to reduce crime. But yet it remains a part of justice in many parts of the United States. From an article by Caspar Melville in the New Humanist, a passage with defense attorney Clive Stafford Smith about the use of DNA in convictions:

“But doesn’t DNA therefore provide a more reliable scientific tool? Sorry, but no. ‘It’s true that DNA testing is a real science, unlike hair analysis, and in laboratory settings it is very reliable,’ explains Stafford Smith. ‘But there are two big problems: first, instead of doing it in a pristine lab you are doing it in a grubby crime scene. The second, and much bigger, problem is that the people who are doing it are basically morons. Obviously I’m overstating, but not by much. People who become forensic technicians in a crime lab are just not the sharpest knives in the drawer. So if the odds of getting a false match scientifically are one in 10 million, but the odds of the nitwit in the lab mixing up the samples are one in ten, then the scientific odds are irrelevant. I can only say this – I’ve had three cases with DNA evidence presented at trial, and I know for a fact that each one had it wrong.'” (Thanks Browser.)

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“I’m Glad You’ve Got A Computer Being The Man That Makes The Decision”

July 11, 2012 in Science/Tech, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

While Muhammad Ali was exiled in his own country over his refusal to perform military service in Vietnam, he “boxed” retired great Rocky Marciano in a fictional contest that was decided by a computer. Dubbed the “Super Fight,” it took place in 1970. The fighters acted out the computer prognostications and the filmed result was released in theaters. Marciano summed up this moment of Singularity the best: “I’m glad you’ve got a computer being the man that makes the decision.” A piece of the film:

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Futuristic Family Telephone Booth From 1939

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

Thinking about phone booths reminds me of this image from the end of the 1930s. (It’s a part of the Larry Zim Collection at the Smithsonian.) It is simply captioned: “Two couples in a futuristic family telephone booth at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.” Some people thought that technology was going to get bigger, more expansive, but others knew we would end up putting everything on the head of a pin.

“The Hotspots Are Initially Coming To Ten Payphones”

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

Telephone Booth, Helen Levitt, 1982.

Telephone booths, those pre-mobile totems to obsolesence, are being repurposed in NYC. From Ryan Kim at Gigaom:

“Payphones, those relics of the pre-cellphone era, may just get a new lease on life in New York. The city is testing a pilot program in which it installs free Wi-Fi on select payphone kiosks.

The hotspots are initially coming to ten payphones in three of the boroughs and will be open to the public to access for free. Users just agree to the terms, visit the city’s tourism website and then they’re up and running. Currently, there are no ads on the service, but there could be in the future.”

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“Electronic Newspapers Are Already Available–Pushing The Button On A Handset Lets You Read ‘Pages’ Of News”

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

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing put up a fun post about Future Cities: Homes and Living into the 21st Century, a 1979 children’s book by Kenneth William Gatland and David Jefferis. It envisioned a brave new world, some of which has come to pass, though not yet the domestic robot that rolls into the living room with drinks. From the section “Computers in the Home”:

“The same computer revolution which has resulted in calculators and digital watches could, through the 1980s and ’90s, revolutionize people’s living habits.

Television is changing from a box to stare at into a useful two-way tool. Electronic newspapers are already available–pushing the button on a handset lets you read ‘pages’ of news, weather puzzles and quizzes.

TV-telephones should be a practical reality by the mid 1980s. Xerox copying over the telephone already exists. Combining the two could result in millions of office workers being able to work at home if they wish. There is little need to work in a central office if a computer can store records, copiers can send information from place to place and people can talk on TV-telephones.”

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“It Is A Monument Worthy Of Our Scientific Age, A True Monument Of Enlightenment And Of Peace”

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

A hammer can be a tool or a weapon depending on how you swing it, but we can’t depend on implements or technology to bring about peace. In dedicating the opening of the Niagara Falls hydroelectric power plant on January 12, 1897, Nikola Tesla, who was born 156 years ago today, rightly announced the following century as one of science but didn’t foresee the horrors that such a shift would make possible. His speech:

“We have many a monument of past ages; we have the palaces and pyramids, the temples of the Greek and the cathedrals of Christendom. In them is exemplified the power of men, the greatness of nations, the love of art and religious devotion. But the monument at Niagara has something of its own, more in accord with our present thoughts and tendencies. It is a monument worthy of our scientific age, a true monument of enlightenment and of peace. It signifies the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man, the discontinuance of barbarous methods, the relieving of millions from want and suffering.”

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A Note From 1879 About A Hunchback Daughter

July 10, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the June 16, 1879 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Mary Martin, the little hunchback who committed an assault upon her father, a week ago, with an ax, sat in Justice Semler’s court room this morning, in company with her mother. Both mother and daughter seemed to be deeply grieved, for they hung their heads and remained immovable to all that was going on about them. When the judge called the case, Mrs. Martin informed his Honor that her husband had withdrawn the complaint against his daughter. Mr. Martin was not in court. His wife said he was able to attend to his business and that the wound was a slight one. Justice Semler dismissed the case.”

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“I Like The Idea That You Will Bombard Me With Images From Reality”

July 10, 2012 in Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Slavoj Žižek, that holy fool, on stage reacting to an assortment of stimuli.

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“The Incidence Of Psychopathy In The Business World Is Four Times That Of The General Population”

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

Sandy Hingston’s Philadelphia magazine article “The Psychopath Test” examines the work of Penn criminologist Adrian Raine, who believes that psychopathy may be largely a function of biology and that we may soon be able to detect such inclinations in small children. It’s hard to think of an ethically thornier topic. Raine explains how “successful psychopaths,” who share some traits with their murderous brethren, make their way in the world. An excerpt:

“Successful psychopaths, Raine’s research showed, have some of the negative brain-structure ‘hits’ of unsuccessful ones, but exhibit enhanced executive function. They don’t show significant gray matter reduction in the prefrontal cortex. Raine thinks the better frontal-lobe functioning makes them smarter, and more sensitive to environmental cues that predict danger and capture.

It may also make them ideal capitalists. The incidence of psychopathy in the business world is four times that of the general population. Psychopaths are reckless; when placing bets, they wager more the more they lose. The behavioral brakes the rest of us have are missing. ‘Individuals with psychopathic traits,’ Raine’s study of successful psychopaths states, ‘enter the mainstream workforce and enjoy profitable careers … by lying, manipulating and discrediting their co-workers.’ Closing factories and eliminating thousands of jobs requires a certain lack of empathy. So does generating sub-zero mortgages, or suggesting that a wife falsely accuse her husband of child abuse in a custody trial.

Raine isn’t arguing that any one brain malformation or genetic abnormality guarantees ­psychopathy—but he believes science will eventually pin down what does. What his studies show now is predisposition—the inclination toward evil. It can be reinforced by having bad parents or eating a bad diet; it can be mitigated by a positive environment and good food (but not always—plenty of psychos grow up in normal, loving homes). There are reasons for his caution. ‘We have a history of misusing research in society,’ he says, mentioning the Tuskegee Experiment.”

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“The Crucial Thing Is That What Put English Where It Is Today Is Not Going To Be A Feature In The Future”

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

From a discussion at the Browser with language scholar Nicholas Ostler, a passage about what technology and geopolitics might mean to the dominion of English and the dying of languages:

“Ostler: As things stand at the moment, the forces that have put English where it is – which mostly had to do with global economic power, first of the British Empire and then the United States – have come to the point where they are being overtaken. The crucial thing is that what put English where it is today is not going to be a feature in the future, and one has to think how the world is going to react to that. There will be other dominant powers which have non-English languages associated with them, notably the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China.

At the same time, we have a crisis in all the ‘little guys’ in the world’s languages, where we seem to be losing them at a very fast rate – something like two a month. There are a lot of languages around, perhaps 6,000 or 7,000, but if we continue to lose two a month we are going to see about half the world’s languages disappear in the course of a century. There is time for things to change. One of the things which is changing is the way we are using our languages and, in particular, their involvement with technology. One of the more significant developments in technology at the moment is machine translation and other electronic means of getting access to what’s going on in languages other than your own. These technologies are going to become more significant and are already becoming available to people who own handheld devices. If you combine that technical fact with the undying human preference for using one’s own language, you are going to see people using this technology to avoid having to resort to foreign languages such as English.”

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