“This Is Like A Freaking Dream, I Love It, I, Wow…”

May 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Dubai, 1993.

From “The New Mecca,” George Saunders 2005 GQ article about Dubai before the worldwide recession slowed down (somewhat) that next-level nation-state’s otherworldly development if not its outlandish dreams:

IN WHICH I FALL IN LOVE WITH A FAKE TOWN

From the air, Dubai looked something like Dallas circa 1985: a vast expanse of one- or two-story white boxes, punctuated by clusters of freakish skyscrapers. (An Indian kid shouted, “Dad, looks like a microchip!”) Driving in from the airport, you’re struck by the usual first-night-in-new-country exotica (“There’s a Harley-Davidson dealership—right in the Middle East!“), and the skyscraper clusters were, okay, odd looking (like four or five architects had staged a weird-off, with unlimited funds)—but all in all, it was, you know, a city. And I wondered what all the fuss was about.

Then I got to my hotel.

The Madinat Jumeirah is, near as I can figure, a superresort consisting of three, or possibly six, luxury sub-hotels and two, or maybe three, clusters of luxury villas, spread out over about forty acres, or for all I know it was twelve sub-hotels and nine luxury-villa clusters—I really couldn’t tell, so seamless and extravagant and confusing was all the luxury. The Madinat is themed to resemble an ancient Arabian village. But to say the Madinat is themed doesn’t begin to express the intensity and opulence and areal extent of the theming. The site is crisscrossed by 2.3 miles of fake creeks, trolled night and day by dozens of fake Arabian water taxis (abras) piloted by what I can only describe as fake Arabs because, though dressed like old-timey Arabs, they are actually young, smiling, sweet-hearted guys from Nepal or Kenya or the Philippines, who speak terrific English as they pilot the soundless electrical abras through this lush, created Arabia, looking for someone to take back to the lobby, or to the largest outdoor pool in the Middle East, or over to Trader Vic’s, which is also themed and looks something like a mysterious ancient Casbah inexplicably filled with beautiful contemporary people.

And so, though my first response to elaborate Theming is often irony (Who did this? And why? Look at that modern exit sign over that eighteenth-century bedstead. Haw!), what I found during my stay at the Madinat is that irony is actually my first response to tepid, lame Theming. In the belly of radical Theming, my first response was to want to stay forever, bring my family over, set up shop in my hut-evoking villa, and never go home again.

Because the truth is, it’s beautiful. The air is perfumed, you hear fountains, the tinkling of bells, distant chanted prayers, and when the (real) Arabian moon comes up, yellow and attenuated, over a (fake) Arabian wind tower, you feel you are a resident of some ancient city—or rather, some ancient city if you had dreamed the ancient city, and the ancient city had been purged of all disease, death, and corruption, and you were a Founder/Elder of that city, much beloved by your Citizens, the Staff.

Wandering around one night, a little lost, I came to the realization that verisimilitude and pleasure are not causally related. How is this ‘fake’? This is real flowing water, the date and palm trees are real, the smell of incense and rose water is real. The staggering effect of the immense scale of one particular crosswalk—which joins two hotels together and is, if you can imagine this, a four-story ornate crosswalk that looks like it should have 10,000 cheering Imperial Troops clustered under it and an enigmatic young Princess waving from one of its arabesquey windows—that effect is real. You feel it in your gut and your legs. It makes you feel happy and heroic and a little breathless, in love anew with the world and its possibilities. You have somehow entered the landscape of a dream, the Platonic realization of the idea of Ancient Village—but there are real smells here, and when, a little dazzled, you mutter to yourself (“This is like a freaking dream, I love it, I, wow…”), you don’t wake up, but instead a smiling Filipino kid comes up and asks if you’d like a drink.

On the flight over, I watched an interview with an employee of Jumeirah International, the company that manages the Madinat. Even though he saw it going up himself, he said, he feels it is an ancient place every time he enters and finds it hard to believe that, three years ago, it was all just sand.•

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“Mr. Skinner Has Done His Best To Take Us Down The Road To Hell”

May 21, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

William F. Buckley and B.F. Skinner, in Illinois in 1971, discussing behaviorism and freedom.

See also:

Buckley and Skinner discuss moral devlopment. (1973)

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A Brief Note From 1873 About A Manure Wagon

May 21, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

From the May 23, 1873 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“Andrew Brady, of Flatbush, was knocked down and run over yesterday, by a manure wagon, owned by C.C. Cowenhoven, of Canarsie, and the wheels crushed the ribs on his right side, injuring him badly. He was found lying on the Flatbush road by Roundsman Penfold and Officer Murphy of the Twelfth Precinct Police who conveyed him to the hospital.”

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“Gambling On Soccer Online Now Resembles The Stock Market”

May 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Because of the staggering salaries of top players, you wouldn’t think of soccer as ripe for match-fixing, but recent scandals seem to be just the beginning of the game’s unraveling. From Brett Forrest of ESPN: The Magazine:

“THE WORLD’S MOST popular game is also its most corrupt, with investigations into match fixing ongoing in more than 25 countries. Here’s a mere sampling of events since the beginning of last year: Operation Last Bet rocked the Italian Football Federation, with 22 clubs and 52 players awaiting trial for fixing matches; the Zimbabwe Football Association banned 80 players from its national-team selection due to similar accusations; Lu Jun, the first Chinese referee of a World Cup match, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for taking more than $128,000 in bribes to fix outcomes in the Chinese Super League; prosecutors charged 57 people with match fixing in the South Korean K-League, four of whom later died in suspected suicides; the team director of second-division Hungarian club REAC Budapest jumped off a building after six of his players were arrested for fixing games; and in an under-21 friendly, Turkmenistan reportedly beat Maldives 3-2 in a ‘ghost match’ — neither country knew about the contest because it never actually happened, yet bookmakers still took action and fixers still profited.

Soccer match fixing has become a massive worldwide crime, on par with drug trafficking, prostitution and the trade in illegal weapons. As in those criminal enterprises, the match-fixing industry has been driven by opportunistic greed. According to Interpol figures, sports betting has ballooned into a $1 trillion industry, 70 percent of which is gambled on soccer. The explosive growth reflects the rise of online gambling, which has turned local bookies into global merchants, flooded by money from every continent. Asian bookmakers alone see a $2 billion weekly turnover, according to Eaton. ‘It’s now one huge liquid market,’ says David Forrest, an economics professor at the University of Salford in Manchester, England, who specializes in the study of sports gambling. ‘Liquidity is the friend of the fixer. You can put down big bets without notice and without changing the odds against yourself.’

For the soccer gambler, the buffet of betting options is endless. FIFA recognizes 208 soccer federations, each governing its country’s professional leagues and national teams, which are split into several age groups. The total number of pro and national soccer teams worldwide far exceeds 10,000. On sbobet.com, one of the largest legal books in Southeast Asia, a gambler can bet on dozens of matches daily, from the English Premier League to the Indonesian Super League to the Ukrainian youth championships. And the betting options climb exponentially when you consider the dramatic upsurge in real-time propositional bets. Gambling on soccer online now resembles the stock market, with constant fluctuations and instantaneous arbitrage.”

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“If You Put This Extreme Value On The Life Of An Astronaut…Then You Never Fly”

May 21, 2012 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Astronauts were always, to some degree, considered expendable modern gladiators. Astronautical engineer Robert Zubrin lays out in plain terms the high cost of taking extraordinary measures to safeguard their lives.

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“It Was A Good Idea, But It Was Just Several Decades Too Early”

May 21, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

John Sculley, the man who fired Jobs and oversaw the development of Newton, is interviewed by the Guardian about cloud computing, especially about health care in the age of the cloud. But he took a minute to explain why he thought the Newton digital assistant failed:

“Speaking of connected devices, might one of the flaws in the Newton have been it lack of connectivity – something that now exists through mobile broadband? Sculley has, of course, had a long time to reflect on this.

‘Well, I think the idea [of Newton] was right, it was just 20 years ahead of its time. So actually, a lot of people were able to see where the industry’s going, the hardest part is to figure out when it’s going to happen.

‘In the case of the PDA, the idea was right – that the content and communication and computing were going to converge – but I think we greatly underestimated that we needed broadband, that we need far more powerful devices, that we needed something a lot more powerful in the background which we now know as ‘cloud’ to be able to handle the tremendous amount of data, and connecting people up through social networking. So it was a good idea, but it was just several decades too early.'”

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The instructional video that came with the Newton:

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“And I Mean, Uh…My Dreams Are Sort Of Different”

May 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

From 1981’s My Dinner with Andre, a debate about technology, the comfort and numbness it brings, and how it subtly changes who we are:

Wally:

Last summer Debbie and I were given an electric blanket. I can tell you it is just such a marvelous advance over our old way of life. And it’s just great. But it is quite different from not having an electric blanket. And I sometimes sort of wonder, What is it doing to me? And I mean, I sort of feel that I’m not sleeping quite in the same way.

Andre:

No, you wouldn’t be.

Wally: 

And I mean, uh…my dreams are sort of different. And I feel a little bit different when I get up in the morning.

Andre: 

I wouldn’t put an electric blanket on for anything. First, I might be worried that I’d get electrocuted. No, I don’t trust technology. But I mean the main thing Wally is that I think that that kind of comfort just separates you from reality in a very direct way.

Wally: 

You mean…

Andre: 

I mean if you don’t have that electric blanket, and you’re apartment is cold, and you need to put on another blanket or go into the closet and pile up coats on top of the blanket you have, well then you know it’s cold, and that sets up a link of things. You have compassion for the person–well, is the person next to you cold? Are there other people in the world cold? What a cold night! I like the cold, my god, I never realized. I don’t want a blanket. It’s fun being cold. I can snuggle up against you even more because it’s cold–all sorts of things occur to you. Turn on that electric blanket and it’s like taking a tranquilizer, it’s like being lobotomized by watching television. I think you enter the dream world again. What does it do to us, Wally, living in an environment where something as massive as the seasons or winter or cold don’t in any way effect us? I mean, we’re animals, after all. I mean, what does that mean? I think that means that instead of living under the sun and the moon and the sky and the stars, we’re living in a fantasy world of our own making.”•

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 20, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I also have 2 cases of antivenom just in case of snakebite."

Black Mamba Snake Super Exotic/RARE – $3300 (Jersey City)

Selling my adult Black mamba. Very healthy and well over 8 ft long. Typically eats live food, sometimes roadkill. Super active but also super dangerous. She is one of the most poisonous snakes in the world but I like living on the edge. I also have 2 cases of antivenom just in case of snakebite. Must be an experienced snake handler with all necessary paperworks.

“As If It Were The Year 2001”

May 20, 2012 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

The promotional trailer for Peter Whitehead’s1967 film about The Pink Floyd, Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London. Yes, that’s Allen Ginsberg’s voice.

“Obama, West Believes, Has Not Been Willing To Listen And Evolve”

May 20, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

“I think at this point he’s obsessed with being on Mount Rushmore.” (Image by Lbertman.)

Cornell West is critical of President Obama in a new Financial Times interview, for a myriad of reasons. I think when all is done health-care reform, should it survive the Supreme Court, will have a monumental positive effect on wealth distribution and equity in this country. It will do more for Americans than all his critics combined have done. It’s like people dismiss the value of 30 million Americans suddenly having accessibility to health care as insignificant. An excerpt from the West piece:

“I ask him if he is hopeful that a second term for Obama will be more fruitful, once freed from the political tyranny of re-election to the White House. He is not optimistic. ‘I think at this point he’s obsessed with being on Mount Rushmore, he wants to be a great figure in the pantheon of American presidents.’ he says.

Obama, West believes, has not been willing to listen and evolve – he should have been listening to progressive economists such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Sylvia Ann Hewlett – in the way that Abraham Lincoln listened and changed his views on slavery. ‘If you’re thinking about Mount Rushmore, you’re thinking about your legacy, your legacy, your legacy. Puh-lease.’

I suggest that part of the reason so many have been disappointed with Obama is that their expectations were unattainably high, and also because his supporters, especially liberals, projected their hopes on to him with little regard for his innate pragmatism. West admits this but says Obama is partly to blame. ‘When you mobilize the legacy of Martin [Luther] King and put a bust of Martin King in the Oval Office, people elevate their hopes. Martin King is not just every brother,’ he says. ‘It’s like a novelist being obsessed with Tolstoy or Proust and then he ends up writing short stories that can barely get into some middlebrow magazine. Hey, you got our hopes up man! I was expecting Proust or Tolstoy, instead it would barely get in Newsweek.‘”

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“Everything Will End In 2048 For Most Of The People On Earth”

May 20, 2012 in Urban Studies | Permalink

I go to a Starbucks in Brooklyn most Saturdays to get some reading done and answer emails, and there’s always this same group of people at one table: mostly senior citizens and a few younger people who are involved in some sort of Tea Party-ish Birther group that files countless lawsuits trying to prove President Obama’s birth certificate is false. They loudly discuss their next step, talk to like-minded others on their cell phones, so there’s no way to miss it. They are always unfailingly polite to everyone.

I find it depressing and just try to ignore it, but one of them, the ringleader, an old guy who is 6′ 6″ and 300 pounds and has a gentle face, noticed a book I was holding as I was walking out this week. It was a science book that had a vaguely conspiratorial title, though it wasn’t that kind of book. He asked me about it, was obviously highly intelligent and just absolutely batshit crazy. But he was clearly functional enough to be hounding the legal system continually. People wonder why Obama can’t find middle ground with some who oppose him, but the common ground has been erased from the maps in their heads. Here’s what he said:

“You know, there’s no more space program today because there is going to be a solar nexus in 2048 and the Earth and Mars and the moon are going to be destroyed at the surface. Scientists know because they’ve found particulates from the sun on all three already. There are secret cities being built beneath the Earth so that the Selected Ones will be able to survive. But that’s why we’re not trying to go to Mars. There’s no reason to go. That’s why the pyramids were built, because of the solar nexus. The Egyptians knew. There’s a book about it. I’m friends with the author. During the 1960s, there was an observatory built within the Cheyenne Mountains so that scientists could chart the sunspots. I visited there. Anyhow, everything will end in 2048 for most of the people on Earth. There are those who know about it.”

A Note From 1850 About A French Aeronaut

May 20, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink


From the September 28, 1850 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The Bordeaux papers contain the details of the death of Lieut. Gale, the aeronaut. He ascended upon the back of a pony, and at a short distance from the city, made a successful descent. The pony was detached and, while he was in the act of exhausting the remaining gas, his anchor gave way, and the balloon, being relieved of its chief weight, rose suddenly. A tree, by which the anchor held, snapped, and the shock upset the car. The lieutenant clung to the ropes, and in this state was carried a mile and a quarter, when he dropped, either with the balloon, or before it fell. His dead body, with all the limbs broken, was found in a wood. He has left a wife and eight children. He was engaged for twelve nights, at £90 each, free of expense. It is said that the Prefect of the Police intends to prohibit all balloon ascents out of the usual mode of performance.”

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

May 19, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink


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

Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

May 19, 2012 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Glad to see that Time magazine has a double issue this week.

  • Barbara Walters is right about Megan McCain, but…
  • Louis C.K. is still murdering homeless people and stuff.
  • Berezniki, built atop a mine and prone to sinkholes, is constantly monitored.
  • Dogs may have helped humans outlast Neanderthals.

2 Recent Films I Liked Now On Home Video

May 18, 2012 in Film | Permalink

Shame
Steve McQueen’s brilliant 2011 drama is upsetting, unpleasant and even revolting, but it’s also subtly hopeful. It imagines a Western world in which not every antisocial behavior is meant to be celebrated, commodified, exploited, packaged, marketed and sold. Perhaps that’s still possible..

Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful suit in New York City whose fancy clothes can’t cover, at least not for long, the damaged sexuality within. Prostitutes, one-night stands, Internet porn and disposable income allow Brandon to live out his every fantasy, but he’s not having any fun. He feels no satisfaction–just desperation. His computers are filled with viruses and his head with guilt.

Complicating matters is the presence of his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a cabaret singer who’s similarly fucked up, who has unexpectedly come to live with him having nowhere else to go. It’s not so much that she drinks nonstop or sleeps with his creepy, married boss that bothers him, but that he is forced to stare into the mirror image of himself. And perhaps that she has greater understanding of who they are. “We’re not bad people,” she tells him. “We just came from a bad place.” Brandon knows she’s right but is helpless to change course, his spree growing ever worse.

Doesn’t it seem sometimes that Monica Lewinsky was the last American to have shame? Didn’t it hurt more than help her? Haven’t celebutantes with sex tapes profited handsomely from boldface indiscretions ever since? There must be some middle ground between people being fitted with scarlet letters and rewarded for blue films. In the world view of McQueen and co-writer Abi Morgan, there is still room for the moderating forces of emotion, a possibility that we can use bad feelings to make ourselves better. Watch trailer.

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My Perestroika
Robin Hessman’s uncommonly perceptive film documents the experience of a group of Russian schoolmates who came of age at the outset of Perestroika and Glasnost, that stunning period between Brezhnev’s folly and Putin’s sham, when the former Soviet Union was suddenly a cultural and political void to be filled by the will of its citizens. 

It was a heady time, but the shift left these now-middle-aged Muscovites on the other side of an odd historical chasm, having had all of the “truths” of their childhood carried away in a tidal wave of reform. Their past has been disappeared and they are forever strangers in their own home.

One of the principals, now a schoolteacher who knows the disconnect deeply, explains how difficult it is to explain collectivism and other remnants of the past to modern students with cell phones and other swag. “One of the hardest things,” she says, “is how to explain Soviet history to children.”

Equally difficult is for some of the children of Gorbachev and Coca-Cola to comprehend how their brethren can rewire themselves from communism to capitalism without missing a beat. As one explains: “What’s in their heads? I mean, how did it work in their brains that they were able to shift like that? For me, that’s a mystery.” Watch trailer.

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Thoughts about other recent films now on home video:

 

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Evelyn Nesbit, Before The Murder, Sleeping Peacefully (1901)

May 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

This classic (and unintentionally prophetic) photo, taken by Rudolph Eickemeyer, profiles chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit atop a fearsome bearskin rug when she was not yet either famous or infamous. Five years later the love triangle of Nesbit, husband Harry K. Thaw and architect Stanford White came to a tragic end on the roof of Madison Square Garden. The ensuing media sensation cannot be overstated. In a 1907 New York Times article, Mrs. Evelyn Florence Nesbit Holman recalls the odd and chilly nuptuals that took place on April 4, 1905 between her daughter and the sadistic and batshit crazy Thaw:

“I was not consulted about the marriage. We did not know that a marriage had been arranged until my husband and I were asked to go to the home of the Reverend Dr. McEwan. This was one hour before the ceremony. All the arrangements had been carried out by Mr. J. Dennison Lyon, Mr. Thaw’s banker. Mr. Lyon had the marriage license clerk at the clergyman’s house. It was necessary that the mother sign an application for a license, for my daughter was a minor. This I readily and cheerfully did. I was glad that Mr. Thaw was man enough to give her his name. 

“We were shown into the drawing room. No one greeted us or spoke to us. Mrs. William Thaw came in, accompanied by her son, Josiah, and another witness. The clergyman was there. No salutations were exchanged. Florence and Mr. Thaw entered. The ceremony ended, they and the rest immediately left the room. No words of farewell were said. I went into the hall and encountered one of the witnesses, a woman. I asked to see my daughter. ‘I will see if I can find her,’ she replied. She went away and did not return.

“Mrs. William Thaw came into the hallway. I told her I wished to see Florence. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she said, and turned away.

“The clergyman was the next to whom I appealed. ‘I don’t know anything about her,’ he responded, passing by me. I have never seen my daughter since.”

Read also:

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“Nearly 250,000 Animals Were Systematically Irradiated”

May 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From “Secret Soviet Cities,” a BLDG BLOG post about covert Cold War burgs and the outré medical experiments that were conducted within their invisible walls:

“Just last week, Nature looked at Soviet-era experiments in these closed cities, where ‘nearly 250,000 animals were systematically irradiated’ as part of a larger medical effort ‘to understand how radiation damages tissues and causes diseases such as cancer.’ 

In an article that is otherwise more medical than it is urban or architectural, we nonetheless read of a mission to the formerly closed city of Ozersk in order to rescue this medical evidence from the urban ruins: ‘After a long flight, a three-hour drive and a lengthy security clearance, a small group of ageing scientists led the delegation to an abandoned house with a gaping roof and broken windows. Glass slides and laboratory notebooks lay strewn on the floors of some offices. But other, heated rooms held wooden cases stacked with slides and wax blocks in plastic bags.’ These slides and wax blocks ‘provide a resource that could not be recreated today,’ Nature suggests, ‘for both funding and ethical reasons.’ 

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the idea of medical researchers helicoptering into the ruins of a formerly secret city in order to locate medical samples of fatally irradiated mutant animals is a pretty incredible premise for a future film.”

“Is There One Thing That Stands Out That Hurt The Most?”

May 18, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

In 1988, his dreams dashed and reputation destroyed, John DeLorean was living in Manhattan, now a born-again Christian, still believing he would get another chance. He granted a rare interview to a local TV station from his old stomping grounds in Detroit. Funny to see him strolling through Central Park.

More DeLorean posts:

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Old Print Articles: “A Modern Jonah,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1891)

May 18, 2012 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Finally the whale swam away dragging the two boats away with him."

Perhaps an 1890s sailor was truly swallowed alive by a whale and lived to tell about it, or perhaps, more likely, the editors from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle had truly swallowed lots of alcohol. From that newspaper’s July 12, 1891 edition:

“The whaling vessel Star of the East arrived here yesterday, after a cruise of the two years and a half in the South Atlantic waters. She had on board a man who is a veritable Jonah, having existed in a whale’s belly thirty-six hours.

The man’s statement is vouched for by the captain and crew of the vessel, and today he is an object of great curiosity among the sailors. The man’s name is James Bartley and he hails from New Bedford, where he was born thirty-eight years ago. He had made two voyages from this port on the Star of the East, and notwithstanding his exciting experience during his last trip he says that he will ship for another voyage as soon as an opportunity to do so offers itself.

The strange story told by him is, in substance, as follows:

Last February the Star of the East was in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands searching for whales, which were very scarce. One morning the lookout sighted a whale about three miles away on the starboard quarter. Two boats were manned and put chase to the prey.

In a short time one of the boats was near enough to enable the harpooner to send a spear into the whale, which proved to be an exceedingly large one. With the shaft in his side the animal sounded and then sped away, dragging the boat after him with terrible speed. He swam straight away about five miles, when he turned and came back almost directly toward the spot where he had been harpooned. The second boat waited for him, and when but a short distance away from him he arose to the surface. As soon as his back showed above the surface of the water the harpooner in the second boat drove another spear into him. The pain apparently crazed the whale, for it thrashed about fearfully, and it was feared the boat would be swamped and the crews drowned. Finally the whale swam away dragging the two boats away with him. He went about three miles and sounded or sank, and his whereabouts could not be exactly told. The lines attached to the harpoons were slack and the harpooners began to slowly draw them in and coil them in the tubs. As soon as they were tautened the whale arose to the surface and beat about his tail in the maddest fashion. The boats attempted to get beyond the reach of the animal, which was apparently in its death agonies, and one of them succeeded, but the other was less fortunate. The whale struck it with his nose and upset it. The men were thrown itno the water and before the crew of the other boat could pick them up one man was drowned and James Bartley had disappeared.

When the whale had become quiet from exhaustion the waters were searched for Bartley, but he could not be found, and under the impression that he had been struck by the whale’s tail and sunk to the bottom, the survivors rowed back to the ship. The whale was dead and in a few hours the great body was lying by the ship’s side and the men were busy with axes and spades cutting through the flesh to secure the fat. They worked all day and a part of the night. They resumed operations the next forenoon, and were soon down to the stomach, which was to be hoisted to the deck. The workmen were startled while laboring to clear it and to fasten the chain about it to discover something doubled up in it that gave spasmodic signs of life.

"He was placed in the captain’s quarters, where he remained two weeks a raving lunatic."

The vast pouch was hoisted to the deck and cut open, and inside was found the missing sailor doubled up and unconscious. He was laid out on the deck and treated to a bath of sea water, which soon revived him, but his mind was not clear and he was placed in the captain’s quarters, where he remained two weeks a raving lunatic. He was carefully treated by the captain and officers of the ship and he finally began to get possession of his senses. At the end of the third week he had entirely recovered from the shock and resumed his duties. The skin on the face and hands of Bartley has never recovered its natural appearance. It is yellow and wrinkled and looks like old parchment. The health of the man does not seem to have been affected by his terrible experience; he is in splendid spirits and apparently fully enjoys all the blessings of life that come his way.”

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“They Believed Their Gods Gave Them The City”

May 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From an interview at 3:A.M. with P.D. Smith, author of City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age, a passage about the way views of urban life have evolved:

“3:AM: There is a certain, largely religious, strand of thought that connects cities with evil, and the pastoral or rural with innocence and morality. One can see it now in the idea of middle America, opposed to the coastal cities, and one can also see it in Victorian proponents of city reform. Why do you think this strand of thought exists, and how does it affect cities?

P.D. Smith: The idea of the ‘sin city’, of Sodom and Gomorrah, is certainly a strand in Judeo-Christian thought. It’s interesting to note that the first city builders in Mesopotamia did not long for some lost Garden of Eden, a bucolic Golden Age. Instead they believed their gods gave them the city. It was their home and where they were meant to be. But, yes, Augustine condemned the City of Man and directed people’s gaze towards the City of God. These ideas have been very influential. In the US, long before gangsta rap the city was associated with crime, violence and moral corruption. The city, with all its attendant social problems, was seen as a reminder of the Old World. The New World was meant to be a land of opportunity, of wilderness and far horizons, not Dickensian slums and urban crime. These ideas feed a deep distrust of cities in America. It surfaces in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, where Travis Bickle condemns New York’s crime: ‘This city here is like an open sewer, you know, it’s full of filth and scum.’ It’s a rich subject both in the US and in Britain. In fact, it’s something I would like to explore in another book.”

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“Whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal”:

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“Have You Written An Absolute Lollapalooza Of A Bestseller?”

May 17, 2012 in Books, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

One more post about Jacqueline Susann and then I promise I’ll stop. This 1967 appearance by Susann on What’s My Line? isn’t particularly riveting, even though it was made in the wake of her jaw-dropping success as a debut novelist with Valley of the Dolls. What’s amusing is the cultural earthquake quietly occurring during this short segment. This brainy program had just been cancelled, a victim of a country’s changing mores. Susann was representative of a new America, a post-Pill society, one that was leaving literate panel shows in its wake. The “barbarians” had crashed the gate. It might seem like the trashy author’s rise and the classy show’s demise was a sad commentary on our nation, but it was really a sign of an improving America, one that was more open, more democratic, more inclusive and more honest. Sometimes I get weary of our in-your-face culture, but I’ll always opt for oversharing instead of no sharing, for too much information rather than not enough.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

May 17, 2012 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

I miss living in NYC! :) (Somewhere in the USA)

Some great times I had there….got so much ass it was unreal! Women, men, couples….GREAT SEX! Where I live now, everyone is married at 23 and kids by 25 :(

“Because Gated Communities Usually Have Their Own Water Supply, Sewage Disposition, They Are Actually Parasitic On The City”

May 17, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Urban planner Rahul Mehrotra, in a New York Times conversation with Neha Thirani, talking about gated communities, a dark side of the development in India that’s being fueled by global capital:

“At the micro level our biggest concern is going to be that of the immense polarization that is occurring in our built environment. The between what we call slums or the informal city and large-scale infrastructure and global architecture is going to set up enormous social tensions in our society. Global capital is landing in our cities and bullying its way physically to create a presence and a polarization which will be hard to reverse and resolve as we go on unless we address this issue very quickly.

What results from that polarization are conditions like gated communities, whether they are vertical gated communities or communities at the edge of the city. Because gated communities usually have their own water supply, sewage disposition, they are actually parasitic on the city because they don’t give to the city. They exclude the city but engage with the city on their own terms, and so it’s not a two way kind of exchange.”

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“Change Was Going To Accelerate And The Speed Of Change Could Induce Disorientation”

May 17, 2012 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of a 1994 New Scientist interview with well-compensated prognosticator Alvin Toffler, still best known for his incredibly popular 1970 book, Future Shock:

“What led you to write Future Shock? While covering Congress, it occurred to us that big technological and social changes were occurring in the United States, but that the political system seemed totally blind to their existence. Between 1955 and 1960, the birth control pill was introduced, television became universalized [sic], commercial jet travel came into being and a whole raft of other technological events occurred. Having spent several years watching the political process, we came away feeling that 99 per cent of what politicians do is keep systems running that were laid in place by previous generations of politicians.

Our ideas came together in 1965 in an article called ‘The future as a way of life,’ which argued that change was going to accelerate and that the speed of change could induce disorientation in lots of people. We coined the phrase ‘future shock’ as an analogy to the concept of culture shock. With future shock you stay in one place but your own culture changes so rapidly that it has the same disorienting effect as going to another culture.

Were you surprised by the reaction to the book? I think that it touched a nerve. Remember we were coming out of the Sixties, countries were being torn apart, change was almost out of control for a period. It touched a nerve, it gave a language, it introduced a metaphor that people could use to describe their own experience.

Looking back to 1970 when the book came out, how would you have done it differently? The great weakness was the book wasn’t radical enough, although everybody said it was a very radical book. The reason for that is that we introduced the concept of the general crisis of industrialism. Marx had talked about the general crisis of capitalism and the argument of the left was always that capitalism would collapse upon itself and socialism would triumph. We argued that both capitalism and socialism would collapse eventually because both were the offspring of industrial civilization, and that we were on the edge of a new way of life, a new civilization. Had we understood more deeply the consequences of that idea we would not have accepted as naively as we did the forecasts of the economists. If you think that economists are arrogant now, in the Sixties they were really riding high. They claimed we would never have another recession, and the reason was that we understand how the economy works, and ‘all we have to do is fine-tune it” as one economist told us. We were young and naive and we bought that notion. We should have anticipated that the revolution we were talking about would have hit the economy in a much deeper way.”

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“What We Need Is Not Just Another Technological Revolution”

May 17, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A thesis statement from the recent Global Future 2045 Congress in Moscow.

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