“Where He Grew Up, He Could Only See A Few Bright Stars”

January 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A portrait of the scientist as a young child, from Carl Zimmer’s new profile of star astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson in Playboy:

“Tyson first saw the Milky Way when he was nine, projected across the ceiling of New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He thought it was a hoax. From the roof of the Skyview Apartments in the Bronx, where he grew up, he could only see a few bright stars. When Tyson turned eleven, a friend loaned him a pair of 7×35 binoculars. They weren’t powerful enough to reveal the Milky Way in the Bronx sky. But they did let him make out the craters on the moon. That was enough to convince him that the sky was worth looking at. 

He began to work his way up through a series of telescopes. For his twelfth birthday, he got a 2.4-inch refractor with three eyepieces and a solar projection screen. Dog walking earned him a five-foot-long Newtonian with an electric clock for tracking stars. Tyson would run an extension cord across the Skyview’s two-acre roof into a friend’s apartment window. Fairly often, someone would call the police. He charmed the cops with the rings of Saturn.

Tyson took classes at the Hayden Planetarium and then began to travel to darker places to look more closely at the heavens. In 1973, at age fourteen, he went to the Mojave Desert for an astronomy summer camp. Comet Kahoutek had appeared earlier in the year, and Tyson spent much of his time in the Mojave taking pictures of its long-tailed entry into the solar system. After a month he emerged from the desert, an astronomer to the bone.” (Thanks Longform.)

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“Comet Kahoutek is on its way” (at 6:30):

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“You Would Be Surprised To See On Their Suffering Faces A Beautiful Smile”

January 2, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Christopher Hitchens was no fan of Mother Teresa and her cult of suffering, and William F. Buckley seemed to have similar apprehensions in 1989.

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“The First iPhone Was Actually Dreamed Up In 1983”

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

From a post on Mashable by Zachary Sniderman, about Apple’s first attempt at a game-changing phone, in 1983, even before the introduction of the Macintosh:

“The first iPhone was actually dreamed up in 1983. Forget that silly old touchscreen, this iPhone was a landline with full, all-white handset and a built-in screen controlled with a stylus.

The phone was designed for Apple by Hartmut Esslinger, an influential designer who helped make the Apple IIc computer (Apple’s first “portable” computer) and later founded Frogdesign. The 1983 iPhone certainly fits in with Esslinger’s other designs for Apple. It also foreshadows the touchscreens of both the iPhone and iPad.”

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Esslinger, 2009:

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Old Print Article: “Japanese Shampooing–The Amma An Ugly But Efficient Woman,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1887)

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

"Only once have I yielded to their invitations to allow my body to be treated like a piece of dough."

One of the sensitive reporters at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle filed a piece in the December 25, 1887 edition about being rubbed down by a Japanese “shampooer” or “amma,” who was apparently not easy on the eyes. An excerpt:

“As I am sitting in my room there comes to my ears the sound of a shrill pipe, sounding not unlike a fife. The traveler in Japan, go where he may, almost invariably hears this sound at night, and will be told in answer to his inquiries that the performance is a professional shampooer or amma. Many of those people are blind, and at night pass up and down the streets, feeling their way with long sticks, which they hold in one hand, while with the other hand they play upon the bamboo pipe, which seems to notify the world of their presence.

The amma is not a shampooer in the American sense of the term. He does not confine the operations to the head and hair. He practices what is known by the French as the massage. His art consists of kneading all the muscles of the body and bringing them into play, and he is regarded as a useful functionary, second in person only to the physician as a healer of physical disorders. The art is not practiced only by men, but also by women, and at almost every inn where I have stopped among the first persons to proffer their services have been the ammas. Only once have I yielded to their invitations to allow my body to be treated like a piece of dough, and that was at Subasbirt, immediately after my descent from Fuji. Tired and aching from deep exertion of climbing the mountain, the suggestion of Dr. Knipping that it might be well to allow an amma to shampoo us was acceded to, more from curiosity as to the possible results than from any faith in the efficiency of the treatment.

"The first act in the drama deals with the abdominal cavity."

The particular amma who came to our room and shampooed us was an ungainly and awfully ugly woman of middle age, whose blackened teeth when she smiled look like a row of watermelon seeds set in her face. During the process I had an opportunity to question her fully as to the business, and learned from her quite a number of interesting facts. She informed us that before commencing the practice of her art she had been obliged to serve an apprenticeship of three years, during which time she read a large number of Japanese books about treating the human body, and especially the muscles, and had become learned in anatomy and physiology. She had practiced the massage for ten years already, and had by means of it gained her livelihood. She stated that she was able in one evening, from 6 to 10, to treat four persons, who paid her a fee of 15 sen apiece. Her daily earnings, however, were not more than 30 sen on an average, or about 24 cents of American currency.

In the operation of shampooing, as practiced by the amma, the patient lies upon a futon or rug, while the amma kneels beside him. The first act in the drama deals with the abdominal cavity. Placing one hand on either side of abdomen, above the hips, the amma compresses the body laterally a number of times , then drawing up the loose folds of flesh, he kneads and pinches them, at the same time making passes which correspond in their direction with that of the colon. This portion of the treatment ended, each leg is attacked and vigorously rubbed and kneaded, the process terminating by a smart bastinado administered to the soles of the feet.

In rubbing and kneading the muscles use is made of a round ball of box wood, though the amma to whose treatment I submitted, employed only her fingers and knuckles. The arms and chest are treated as the legs, and then the patient is turned over face downward, and the shoulders and back are punched until the breath almost forsakes the body. The entire performance ends with a vigorous rubbing of the neck, which, in my case, seemed to threaten the dislocation of the cervical vertebrae. The amount of strength in the fingers and wrists displayed by the amma is quite remarkable. Our amma shampooed four persons in succession the evening we engaged her, consuming four hours in the task, during which she was working with all her might almost constantly, only stopping to wipe off the perspiration, which flowed from her face.

The result of the experiment, so far as I was personally concerned, was, I think, such as to warrant a repetition of the treatment under like circumstances. I awoke on the morrow feeling far less tired and sore than I had reason to believe my mountain climbing would have left me.”

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“We Now Find Ourselves At A Historic Fork In The Road”

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

From “The Accidental Universe: Science’s Crisis of Faith,” a Harper’s piece by physicist and novelist Alan Lightman:

“Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

It is perhaps impossible to say how far apart the different universes may be, or whether they exist simultaneously in time. Some may have stars and galaxies like ours. Some may not. Some may be finite in size. Some may be infinite. Physicists call the totality of universes the ‘multiverse.’ Alan Guth, a pioneer in cosmological thought, says that ‘the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.’ And the philosophical ethos of science is torn from its roots. As put to me recently by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg, a man as careful in his words as in his mathematical calculations, ‘We now find ourselves at a historic fork in the road we travel to understand the laws of nature. If the multiverse idea is correct, the style of fundamental physics will be radically changed.'”

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Brian fails to complete his novel in several universes:


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“Americans Have Trouble Dealing With Reality”

January 2, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

George Carlin, our best stand-up ever, with a brilliant bit about the ever-increasing deceit of language. Just audio.

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

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

"Head for the hills." (Image by Andrew Butko.)

The Robots are Coming!! (Your Mind)

The robots are coming to mindf*ck you. You cant tell them apart from humans and they are smarter than you.

Head for the hills while you still can.

Max Headroom + David Letterman + Charlie Rose

January 1, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Max Headroom was a computer-generated talking head who existed only on television, and I suspect the same is true of Charlie Rose. From 1986:

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“As Soon As President Obama Releases His Grades And Birth Certificate…”

January 1, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

There was a brouhaha last Friday when Mitt Romney’s son, Matt, used some Birther vernacular while campaigning on behalf of his father in New Hampshire, but it really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s followed the former Massachusetts Governor’s strategy. Playing to the idea that Obama is “Other” has been a tacit but clear part of the Romney strategy. The younger Romney’s only real deviation was being explicit instead of implicit.

When Romney says that “Obama doesn’t have a clue about the economy,” that’s obviously fair game. But when he states that Obama “doesn’t get America,” he’s labeling the President as less than adequately American or not a real American. When Romney says Obama is trying to turn “America into Europe,” he may as well be using “Kenya” in the comparison.

Trying to pander to people who want to see Obama as alien is sad, especially for someone who’s likely been treated to same way because of his own religion. That kind of faux patriotism is often the last refuge of a lout, but it in Romney’s case, it’s been present from the first.

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“What If The Free And Abundant Parking Drivers Crave Is About The Worst Thing For The Life Of Cities?”

January 1, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From “Between the Lines,” a really interesting piece in L.A. Magazine by Dave Gardetta about the science of parking spaces, a segment about UCLA traffic guru Donald Shoup:

“In the United States hundreds of engineers make careers out of studying traffic. Entire freeway systems like L.A.’s have been hardwired with sensors connecting to computer banks that aggregate vehicle flow, monitor bottlenecks, explain congestion in complicated algorithms. Yet cars spend just 5 percent of their lives in motion, and until recently there was only one individual in the country devoting his academic career to studying parking lots and street meters: Donald Shoup.

Shoup is 73 years old. He drives a 1994 Infiniti but for the last three decades has steered a 1975 Raleigh bike two miles uphill daily in fair weather, from his home near the Mormon temple to the wooded highlands of UCLA’s north campus. He was born near one shore (Long Beach), grew up on a far shore (Hawaii), and resembles a 19th-century figure sketched by Melville. He has a mildly hectic complexion, a halo of silver hair that breaks over his small ears into a white froth of a beard, and brimstone eyes. This year Shoup’s 765-page book, The High Cost of Free Parking, was rereleased to zero acclaim outside of the transportation monthlies, parking blogs, and corridor beyond his office door in UCLA’s School of Public Affairs building. He wasn’t surprised—’There’s not even a name for what I do,’ he says. Shoup, however, does not lack for acolytes. His followers call themselves Shoupistas, like Sandinistas, and on a Facebook page they leave posts suggesting parking meters for prostitutes and equations that quantify the contradiction between time spent cruising for free parking versus the ‘assumed time-value’ cited to justify expanding roadways. (The hooker stuff is more interesting.)

After 36 years, Shoup’s writings—usually found in obscure journals—can be reduced to a single question: What if the free and abundant parking drivers crave is about the worst thing for the life of cities? That sounds like a prescription for having the door slammed in your face; Shoup knows this too well. Parking makes people nuts. ‘I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain,’ he says. ‘How to get food, ritual display, territorial dominance—all these things are part of parking, and we’ve assigned it to the most primitive part of the brain that makes snap fight-or-flight decisions. Our mental capacities just bottom out when we talk about parking.'” (Thanks Longform.)

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Godard‘s darkly comic 1967 traffic nightmare:

Goofy on a superhighway, 1965:

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Highlights From Yet Another Week Of Afflictor

December 31, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Thinking the 2012 Baby New Year is representative of the age we live in.

  • Bill Wasik considers the past, present and future of the Flash Mob.
  • Mary Roach investigates the story of a real-life headshrinker.

“Some New Ideas Are Here Needed”

December 30, 2011 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Richard Feynman, profiled on Nova in 1973.

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“Among The Survivors Are Crazy Ants, Millions Of Them”

December 30, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Built in the 1990s in Arizona, Biosphere 2 was a sealed and self-contained ecological world that was to house a team of researchers during two closures. But even controlled environments can’t really be controlled. Disputes over financial management led to the early termination of Biosphere 2 in 1994, and ownership of its remants have changed hands several times, as if it were a failed department store. From a 1996 New York Times article by William J. Broad about Columbia University taking over Biosphere for a spell, at a time when it lay dormant, a domicile only to exotic ants:

The exotic species of ant known as Paratrechina longicornus, or the crazy ant, named for its speedy and erratic behavior when excited, somehow managed to kill off all the other ants over the years, as well as the crickets and grasshoppers.

Swarms of them crawled over everything in sight: thick foliage, damp pathways littered with dead leaves and even a bearded ecologist in the humid rain forest of Biosphere 2, an eight-story, glass-and-steel world in the wilds of the Sonora Desert that cost $200 million to build.

“These little guys pretty much run the food web,” Dr. Tony Burgess, the ecologist, said as he tapped a dark frond, sending dozens of the ants into a frenzy. ”Until we understand the ecology, we’re reluctant to eliminate them.”

Columbia University, an icon of the Ivy League, is struggling to turn a utopian failure into a scientific triumph.

The university took over management of Biosphere 2 in January and is starting to reveal just how badly things went awry when four men, four women and 4,000 species of plants and animals were sealed inside this giant terrarium for a two-year experiment that ended in 1993.

The would-be Eden became a nightmare, its atmosphere gone sour, its sea acidic, its crops failing, and many of its species dying off. Among the survivors are crazy ants, millions of them.•

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Biosphere 2, before its fall:

Jane Poynter recalls living in Biosphere 2, at TED:

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“How Many People Would Be Dumb Enough To Come Watch A Riot?”

December 30, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

As the Flash Mob concept closes in on a decade of existence, its originator, Wired editor Bill Wasik, has penned an article about the intersection of group behavior, technology and violence. Wasik on the origins of the idea:

“I even called my events ‘mobs,’ as a wink to the scary connotations of a large group gathered for no good reason. But I didn’t come up with the name flash mob—that honor belongs to Sean Savage, a UC Berkeley grad student who was blogging about my events and the copycats as they happened. He added the word ‘flash’ as an analogy to a flash flood, evoking the way that these crowds (which in the original version arrived all at once and were gone in 10 minutes or less) rushed in and out like water from a sudden storm. Savage and I never met while the original mobs were still going on, but today we work just a block away from each other in San Francisco—me at Wired, him at Frog Design, where he’s an interaction designer—so we now can get together and commiserate about what’s become of our mutual creation. It had been bad enough to see the term get appropriated by Oprah to describe a ridiculous public dance party featuring the Black Eyed Peas. Now the media was stretching the term to include just about any sort of group crime. ‘It means everything and nothing now,’ Savage says morosely.

One reason the term ‘flash mob’ stuck back in 2003 was its resonance, among some sci-fi fans who read Savage’s blog, with a 1973 short story by Larry Niven called ‘Flash Crowd.’ Niven’s tale revolved around the effects of cheap teleportation technology, depicting a future California where “displacement booths” line the street like telephone booths. The story is set in motion when its protagonist, a TV journalist, inadvertently touches off a riot with one of his news reports. Thanks to teleportation, the rioting burns out of control for days, as thrill-seekers use the booths to beam in from all around to watch and loot. Reading ‘Flash Crowd’ back in 2003, I hadn’t seen much connection to my own mobs, which I intended as a joke about the slavishness of fads. I laughed off anyone who worried about these mobs getting violent. In 2011, though, it does feel like Niven got something chillingly correct. He seems especially prescient in the way he describes the interplay of curiosity, large numbers, and low-level criminality that causes his fictional riots to grow. ‘How many people would be dumb enough to come watch a riot?’ the narrator asks. ‘But that little percentage, they all came at once, from all over the United States and some other places, too. And the more there were, the bigger the crowd got, the louder it got—the better it looked to the looters … And the looters came from everywhere, too.’

That last line passed for science fiction in 1973. The not-infrequent riots that wracked American cities in the 1960s tended to be strikingly localized, with rioters taking out their aggression on the immediate neighborhood in which they lived. By contrast, Nick de Bois says that of the 165 or so people arrested so far for the looting in Enfield Town, only around 60 percent hailed from the local borough, which includes not just greater Enfield but a few surrounding towns. The other 40 percent commuted in from elsewhere, including locales as far afield as Essex and Twickenham, each a good hour’s drive away. Instead of teleportation booths replacing telephone booths—how quaint!—it turned out that those phones merely had to shrink down enough to fit into our pockets.”

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Austin Flash Mob, 2003, the year it started:

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“We Think It’s Logical For Robots That Work Together With People To Be Human-Shaped”

December 29, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Robots designed to work alongside people, from the fine folks at Kawada Industries.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 29, 2011 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"I will be at your door tomorrow with various carpet samples."

I hate my noisy neighbor (Inwood / Wash Hts)

You! Upstairs neighbor- I will be speaking with you tomorrow- but why are you walking around upstairs like you are 500 pounds! you drag your feet and walk around constantly and then every it sounds like you are dropping a small child on the floor- It is 1 in the morning!!!! And who is this kid who keeps coming around 11 at night- he keeps ringing the buzzer so what’s his deal

In my mind you are all engaged in some illeagal operation up there, but some days I have a heart and i think- the boy is taking care of an old uncle- what ever it is I am done guessing! Co-op says 80 percent of the floor should be covered in carpeting- I will be at your door tomorrow with various carpet samples.

I hate you people so much- SO MUCH 

And is it just me or does everyone have this experience 

Old Print Article: “Kentucky Mind Reader,” New York Times (1891)

December 29, 2011 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"He has shown his power of mind reading in a manner that would do credit to a Bishop or other person of like fame."

I have no idea what became of Flavius Taylor, but for a period of time in the late 19th century the lad from Kentucky received wide notice for his supposed mind-reading powers. An article from an August 1891 edition of the New York Times, which originally ran in the Louisville Courier-Journal:

“The wonderful feats of Flavius Taylor, the boy mind reader of Glasgow, Ky., continues to astonish all those who see him. Though only nineteen years of age, he has shown his power of mind reading in a manner that would do credit to a Bishop or other person of like fame.

The young man is very modest about his power. It is not often that he will consent to give a performance, even in private. When he does he has never been known to fail, even in the most severe tests. It makes him very nervous, and sometimes after a performance his muscles are in tremor the whole of the next day. Recently he attended a reception near Glasgow, and a Courier-Journal reporter who was present had an opportunity of witnessing some of his wonderful feats.

"As he always does, he took hold of the intermediary's hand." (Image by Keith Schengili-Roberts.)

Mr. Taylor was in another room when it was decided to ask him to give an exhibition of his power. Three coins–a dollar, a quarter, and a nickel–were first secreted by as many young ladies. The room was crowded, and a fourth person, who was a disbeliever in mind reading, went to the room where Mr. Taylor was engaged in conversation. He consented to the test, and then, as he always does, he took hold of the intermediary’s hand. The mind reader led the way in a rapid walk, and without hesitation went directly to the first young lady and asked her to please hand him the nickel from under the edge of her waist. Though the room was crowded, he had not the least trouble in finding the second girl and taking the quarter from her handkerchief, which lay under the fold of her dress. The third young woman was sitting in an opposite corner busily engaged in conversation, but he walked straight to her and took the dollar from her hand.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of this particular test then followed. When the money was his it was also the desire of the one making the trial that young Taylor should give the dollar to a certain person in the room, the quarter to a certain other, and the nickel to a particular third person. He did this without the slightest blunder, and the young mind reader had one more convert.

A physician who was present doubted even in the face of this test, and for his self-satisfaction he decided to give Taylor something that would be hard to do. Fifty yards from the front gate of the house, in a thick clump of trees, were hitched more than a dozen horses and vehicles in which the guests had come. One belonged to the doctor, and he thought of the whip which was in his buggy. Upon taking the physician’s hand, Mr. Taylor said that he knew what he was thinking of, but, to more fully convince him, he led the man to his buggy in the darkness, though he did not know one of the vehicles from the other, and took out the whip.

Small pieces of money were hidden in nooks and corners of the house, but he walked as straight to them as if he had secreted them himself. Some one thought of a certain book in the library. Without knowing what he was to hunt for, he went to the room, opened the door and took out the book. He also turned to a certain page and passage, of which the young man was thinking. He would grasp the hand of any one present and tell exactly what his thoughts were.

"In addition to his ability to possess himself of the secrets of the mind, the young man is a ventriloquist."

Mr. Taylor is a handsome young man, and until six months ago, when he first became aware of his power, the ladies and girls were not loth to shake his hand. He danced at all the parties, and his hand was grasped without fear or tremor. But things have changed, Mr. Taylor says, and not to his advantage. For six months he has been unable to find a girl who will allow him to touch her hand. He often steals a march on those unacquainted with his power, but he fears that his dancing days are over. In addition to his ability to possess himself of the secrets of the mind, the young man is a ventriloquist. He is overflowing with wit and good humor, and on every occasion he takes advantage of his power as a ventriloquist to provoke laughter. He has possessed this particular control of his voice for several years, and is an adept at its practice.

Mr. Taylor is about 5 feet 8 inches in height, weighs about 135 pounds, has light hair, regular features, with a very high, prominent forehead, and is altogether striking in appearance. He has a brother and sister near his own age, but in none other of the family have any of his remarkable powers been exhibited.

Scientific men over the country are beginning to be attracted by his feats, and he has had offers from several managers to go to some of the larger cities to exhibit himself, all of which he has declined, as his father fears that it would seriously impair his health to practice it continually. On account of his youth and the short time he has been aware that he is a mind reader his case is looked upon as one of the most remarkable ever known, especially as he has so far mastered the hardest tests that could be devised.”

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In The Future, Everything Will Be Egg-Shaped

December 29, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Damnjan Mitic has developed the the Citroën Eggo–an electric concept car like no other. Egg-shaped with all glass doors, a motor in each wheel and  solar panels on the roof, it’s a car from the future that has arrived today. (Thanks Kanikasweet.)

Mitic also designs futuristic concept luggage for Samsonite:

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Afflictor Nation: Great Britain Rules In December

December 29, 2011 in Misc. | Permalink

Piers Morgan: Meritocracy isn't foolproof. (Image by Pete Riches.)

Erstwhile superpower Great Britain sent more unique visitors to Afflictor during December than any other foreign country. Here are the Top 5 finishers:

  1. Great Britain
  2. Canada
  3. Germany
  4. Netherlands
  5. Japan

“For A Month We Will Live And Work Underwater As Other Men Do On The Land Above”

December 29, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A 1964 Jacques Cousteau doc about Continental Shelf Station Two, the first manned underwater colony:

Steve Zissou tells you about his boat:

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Tewa Woman Wears Maiden Hairstyle (1922)

December 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

The above picture, taken by American West photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis, depicts a young woman from the Tewa tribe, wearing her hair in the style of an unmarried maiden. It was composed two years prior to the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, legislation that gave Indigenous Peoples rights of full U.S. citizenship at a time when the popular idea among white culture was that Native Americans were a “vanishing race” and would soon completely disappear. Thankfully, that hasn’t occurred, though Curtis’ photographs are an amazing history lesson nonetheless. From a 1911 New York Times article, “Lives 22 Years With Indians To Get Their Secrets,” in which Curtis discusses becoming an Indian priest:

“‘Do you mean that you are a Pueblo priest in good order?’ asked the reporter.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Curtis,’ and I am a priest in other nations. If I went back there to-day I could officiate as a priest in the snake-dance, that is, in the order to which I belonged.’

‘Then you were adopted into the tribe?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That isn’t necessary. Being adopted into a tribe is nothing–nothing. The thing is to become a member of a secret order. That is the only way to learn their secrets, and to do that it is not necessary to be adopted into the tribe.

‘Every ceremonial group you get into makes it easy to get into others. Belonging to the Snake Order in that village wouldn’t necessarily let me into an order in another village, but it would give me a good ground to make an argument.

‘My belonging to the Snake Order in Arizona helped me greatly when I tried to get into a ceremonial order in Alaska.’

‘You were a priest in Alaska, too?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, in a matter of fact way.

‘But what could the Alaska Indians know about what was done so far off as Arizona?’

‘Oh, when they saw my photographs of the snake dance and heard the phonograph records–‘

‘Do you mean to say that you photographed and phonographed these ceremonies while you were officiating as a priest?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you make them agree to such a thing?’

‘It was not easy,’ said Mr. Curtis, ‘but I finally convinced them of the advantages of getting in the record.'”

Edward Sheriff Curtis, self-portrait, 1889.

 

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“Before They Teed Off, They Sometimes Had To Pull Weeds”

December 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Sports, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A founding member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association which formed in 1950, Bettye Danoff didn’t enjoy the fame or financial rewards of contemporary players, but it sounds like she had fun while paving the way for them. An excerpt from her New York Times obituary by Maraglit Fox:

“Bettye Danoff, one of 13 founding members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association, which began as a hardy, poorly paid band of women who traveled the country for the chance to play the game, died on Thursday in McKinney, Tex. She was 88.

Her daughter Debbie Danoff Bell confirmed the death.

Officially founded in 1950, the L.P.G.A. was begun by 13 women, including Danoff, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Patty Berg and Alice Bauer.

If Danoff was somewhat less well known than they, that owed partly to the fact that she curtailed her touring in the early 1960s, after her husband’s death left her with children to care for at home.

But before that, she joined her comrades in driving from tournament to tournament, convoy style, in their own cars. In each car, the driver kept a set of color-coded paddles — red, green and yellow — that she could wave out the window to signal a stop for gas, food or the bathroom.

Arriving at a course, they might encounter a sea of mud, or greens more brown than green. Before they teed off, they sometimes had to pull weeds. At night they shared motel rooms and sang popular songs together, sweetly off-key. It was A League of Their Own with woods and irons.”

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Some of Danoff’s fellow female golf pioneers, 1950s:

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Two Examples Of Pioneering Computer Animation

December 28, 2011 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Genesys, 1970:

Key Frame Animation, 1971:

“The New Species, Or ‘Posthuman,’ Will Likely View The Old ‘Normal’ Humans As Inferior, Even Savages”

December 28, 2011 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

If you want to argue that athletes shouldn’t be using PEDs because they may suffer terrible health consequences, feel free. It’s risky business. But arguing that enhancement should not occur at all is futile. We’re all going to be enhanced in the future. It’s not a matter of if it will be done but how. In “The Case for Enhancing People” in the New Atlantis, Ronald Bailey examines pretty much every angle of the topic, including the potential inequality of our brave new world. An excerpt:

“Those who favor restricting human enhancements often argue that human equality will fall victim to differential access to enhancement technologies, resulting in conflicts between the enhanced and the unenhanced. For example, at a 2006 meeting called by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Richard Hayes, the executive director of the left-leaning Center for Genetics and Society, testified that ‘enhancement technologies would quickly be adopted by the most privileged, with the clear intent of widening the divisions that separate them and their progeny from the rest of the human species.’ Deploying such enhancement technologies would ‘deepen genetic and biological inequality among individuals,’ exacerbating ‘tendencies towards xenophobia, racism and warfare.’ Hayes concluded that allowing people to use genetic engineering for enhancement ‘could be a mistake of world-historical proportions.’

Meanwhile, some right-leaning intellectuals, such as Nigel Cameron, president of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, worry that ‘one of the greatest ethical concerns about the potential uses of germline interventions to enhance normal human functions is that their availability will widen the existing inequalities between the rich and the poor.’ In sum, egalitarian opponents of enhancement want the rich and the poor to remain equally diseased, disabled, and dead.

Even proponents of genetic enhancement, such as Princeton University biologist Lee M. Silver, have argued that genetic engineering will lead to a class of people that he calls the ‘GenRich,’ who will occupy the heights of the economy while unenhanced ‘Naturals’ provide whatever grunt labor the future economy needs. In Remaking Eden (1997), Silver suggests that eventually ‘the GenRich class and the Natural class will become … entirely separate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.’

In the same vein, George J. Annas, Lori B. Andrews, and Rosario M. Isasi have laid out a rather apocalyptic scenario in the American Journal of Law and Medicine:

The new species, or ‘posthuman,’ will likely view the old ‘normal’ humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or slaughter. The normals, on the other hand, may see the posthumans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive strike by killing the posthumans before they themselves are killed or enslaved by them. It is ultimately this predictable potential for genocide that makes species-altering experiments potential weapons of mass destruction, and makes the unaccountable genetic engineer a potential bioterrorist.

Let’s take their over-the-top scenario down a notch or two. The enhancements that are likely to be available in the relatively near term to people now living will be pharmacological — pills and shots to increase strength, lighten moods, and improve memory. Consequently, such interventions could be distributed to nearly everyone who wanted them. Later in this century, when safe genetic engineering becomes possible, it will likely be deployed gradually and will enable parents to give their children beneficial genes for improved health and intelligence that other children already get naturally. Thus, safe genetic engineering in the long run is more likely to ameliorate than to exacerbate human inequality.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Be Not A Cancer On The Earth — Leave Room For Nature — Leave Room For Nature”

December 28, 2011 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Yoko Ono performance art, “Cut Piece,” from 1965. Audience members were invited to come on stage and scissor pieces from her clothes. The phrase recited at the beginning is an inscription on the Georgia Guidestones.

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