It’s go-go, not cry-cry
{ Tim Geoghegan | Right now on the Amazon page for the pepper spray used by Lt. John Pike… }
related { Pepper spray and cocaine, a little known lethal combination }
bonus [thanks Tobias]:
within the world
And my waiting twenty classbirds
Two men have been arrested for installing “skimmers” on 11 separate Chase ATMs near Union Square in January. They stole $300K altogether. Maybe some was yours!
related { Using a credit card induces euphoria, new research shows. }
‘The recession killed the Christmas party.’ –Anders Chr. Madsen
The drop in street crime in New York City after 1990 is not only the largest decline ever documented in a major city but also a major test of the conventional wisdom that has dominated crime policy in the United States for a generation. (…)
Part of New York’s good fortune was the tailwind of a national crime decline during the 1990s, but the New York decline was twice as large and almost twice as long as the national drop. Why was that? What can we learn from this experience to help other cities?
{ NY Post | Continue reading | More: How New York Became Safe | City Journal }
Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.
Sylvia Beach (1887 - 1962) was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris. (…)
Beach dreamed of starting a branch of Monnier’s book shop in New York that would offer contemporary French works to American readers. Since her only capital was USD$3,000 which her mother gave her from her savings, Beach could not afford such a venture in New York. However, Paris rents were much cheaper and the exchange rates favorable, so with Monnier’s help, Beach opened an English language bookstore and lending library that she named Shakespeare and Company. Four years beforehand, Monnier had been among the first women in France to found her own bookstore. Beach’s bookstore was located at 8 rue Dupuytren in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
Shakespeare and Company quickly attracted both French and American readers - including a number of aspiring writers to whom Beach offered hospitality and encouragement as well as books. As the franc dropped in value and the favorable exchange rate attracted a huge influx of Americans, Beach’s shop flourished and soon needed more space. In May 1921, Shakespeare and Company moved to 12 rue de l’Odéon.
Shakespeare and Company gained considerable fame after it published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, as a result of Joyce’s inability to get an edition out in English-speaking countries. Beach would later be financially stranded when Joyce signed on with another publisher, leaving Beach in debt after bankrolling, and suffering severe losses from the publication of Ulysses.
Comme la misère qui s’abat sur le bas-clergé
We have the rise of the two-earner household and so previously if you just had the head of household working, and the head of household lost his job, it was less of an issue to move. Now if you have both members of the couple working and one of them loses their job, it’s very problematic to try to locate and try to find a better opportunity for both people. That’s one of the things that’s sort of been supporting large cities. If you look at what the data says–there’s been kind of a lot of work on this in the past two decades–it suggests, especially in recent decades, density has become quite important for improving productivity. (…) When a particular industry has a lot of participants in one geographical location, the whole industry gets better. It’s not just that there’s more competition, although that’s part of it, but that there’s a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between the participants, new spin-offs get started; so many aspects of that process take place in Silicon Valley, one of the examples you use, Boston, and other places like that; or in New York, the finance sector–some of them not so healthy–but a lot of innovations taking place that are harder to take place in geographically disparate locations. (…)
Places like New York, Boston, Washington, the Bay area–these are places that have been incredibly economically successful over the last ten years, and I think a lot of that is due to the way a lot of new technology has supported the high levels of human capital that they have. Made those places more productive. What’s striking is that this economic success, growth in wages, employment, to some extent, has not translated into a lot of population growth. In fact, quite the opposite. There has been some population growth there but most of that is due to natural increase or immigration. (…)
There’s been some interesting research on this lately which is that essentially there was no surplus labor in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s. Pretty low unemployment rate, like 2-3%. That was great for the workers who could afford to be there. Salaries were skyrocketing. But it was very difficult to attract new people. You wonder why, if salaries are going up so much, why wouldn’t people just be flooding into this market and taking advantage of that; and that’s because housing prices were growing even faster than compensation. So even as the tech industry was booming, people were leaving Silicon Valley. I think what’s interesting about that is that it put a chill on entrepreneurship; made it very lucrative to stay at a place that was established, to keep piling up stock options. It was much better to be a salaried worker than to be self-employed, so the rate of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley at this point was much lower than the national average. You have a place that’s producing some of the best ideas; it’s a center for innovation; and it’s important that we start new businesses in the center of innovation–that’s what the research tells us. And yet it was very unattractive to start a new business at that point because the labor market was so tight, thanks to the tightness of the housing market.
And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health
{ Torii Kiyonaga }
What hoo they band and what hoa they buck
Where are the cool kids: Williamsburg or the East Village?
We’re in Bushwick, actually, and we’re really sick of being overrun by yuppies and undergraduates. A new coffee shop called Cup just opened across the street from my apartment and a 16 oz. cup of drip is $2.75. It’s obscene. (…)
Sartre or Camus?
No, thanks.
Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of water.
By the 1980s, the onset of puberty, if not actual menstruation, had gone into free fall–a change so sudden and pronounced that something more than normal evolution must have been at work. In a landmark 1997 study of 17,000 [US] girls, more than 10% of white girls and an astonishing 37.8% of black girls were showing early breast development by age 8. (…)
Later studies, one in 1998 and another in 2010, included Hispanics and produced similar results. On average, 2 out of every 10 white girls, 3 out of 10 Latinas and 4 out of 10 black girls are showing breast development by age 8.
Obesity, a well-established puberty accelerant, is high on the list of suspects.
photo { Mustafah Abdulaziz }
‘Yes it’s you.’ –Sweet Charles
He is one of New York’s busiest casting directors, yet very few know of his work. (…)
For some 15 years, Mr. Weston has been providing the New York Police Department with “fillers” — the five decoys who accompany the suspect in police lineups.
Detectives often find fillers on their own, combing homeless shelters and street corners for willing participants. In a pinch, police officers can shed their uniforms and fill in. But in the Bronx, detectives often pay Mr. Weston $10 to find fillers for them.
A short man with a pencil-thin beard, Mr. Weston seems a rather unlikely candidate for having a working relationship with the Police Department, even an informal one. He is frequently profane, talks of beating up anyone who crosses him, and spends quite a bit of his money on coconut-flavored liquor.
But Mr. Weston points out that he has never failed to produce lineups when asked, no matter what time of night. “I never say no to money,” he said.
Across the nation, police lineups are under a fresh round of legal scrutiny, as recent studies have suggested that mistaken identifications in lineups are a leading cause of wrongful convictions, and that witnesses can be steered toward selecting the suspect arrested by the police.
But for all the attention that lineups attract in legal circles, Mr. Weston’s role in finding lineup fillers is largely unknown. Few defense lawyers and prosecutors, though they spar over the admissibility of lineups in court, have heard of him.
Don’t get even; get everything.
Most shocking among UNICEF’s findings is that, despite pervasive discrimination against women, female-headed households in the poorest countries have, on average, better health and economic outcomes than male-headed, two-parent households. Taken together, these statistics suggest that men are nothing less than a complete waste of national resources; one might even wonder why the development community is devoting itself to such slow-motion efforts as microloans to women when the wholesale isolation or expulsion of men (after their sperm is collected and stored) could lift these countries out of poverty much faster.
{ The New Atlantis | Continue reading }
Women today are entering adulthood with more education, more achievements, more property, and, arguably, more money and ambition than their male counterparts. This is a first in human history, and its implications for both sexes are far from simple.
photo { Garry Winogrand, Opening, Frank Stella Exhibition, The Museum of Modern Art, 1970 }
After the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, health was elevated to a goddess
{ Thanks Glenn! }
‘You breathe better when you’re rich.’ –Pessoa
Using within-state variation in employment and unemployment, we find that recreational exercise tends to increase as employment decreases. In addition, we also find that individuals substitute into television watching, sleeping, childcare, and housework. However, this increase in exercise as well as other activities does not compensate for the decrease in work-related exertion due to job-loss. Thus total physical exertion, which prior studies have not analyzed, declines.
‘Moscow is a city that has much suffering ahead of it.’ –Chekhov
Historically, the international significance of a language has depended on four key factors: demography (that is, the number of native speakers of the language in question); the military might of the native speakers; the economic power of the native speakers; and, finally, the cultural or political significance of what was written in the language.
Nicholas Ostler suggests that, in the 21st century, the military factor will be replaced by new technological and political factors: translation technology is going to help people communicating in different languages, while nationalistic claims in favour of certain languages will limit the spread of English and other contenders for the role of lingua franca. David Graddol, in his comprehensive report for the British Council, gives priority to the demographic factors and stresses the growth of global, post-modern multilingualism.
The foothold of the English language in North America after the multinational colonization that started in the early 17th century was attributed by 19th century commentators in part to the technical and aesthetic virtues of English – its clarity and grammatical simplicity – just as the past pre-eminence of French in Europe was due to its diplomatic polyvalence.
As for Russian, the life expectancy of Russians has been declining since the 1970s, and it is well established that Russia’s fertility rate is among the lowest in the world. The population of Russia is expected to fall by 30 to 50 million by the year 2050, resulting in a national headcount of around 100 million people, as against today’s 141 million. Although the anomalous mortality rate of the Russian male population may be reversed in the next few decades if social conditions improve, the overall demographic trend is unlikely to change – notwithstanding recent pro-fertility measures introduced by Prime Minister Putin. By contrast, the world’s population is expected to grow by almost one and half times by 2050.
related { How Much Can You Say in 140 Characters? A Lot, if You Speak Japanese }
‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ –Shakespeare
1985. Five lionesses at the Singapore Zoo are put on birth control after the lion population increases from 2 to 16.
{ Wikipedia }
images { 1. Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910 | 2. Veterinary Anatomical Illustrations, 1898-1925 }
related { Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new research }
You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes
A survey conducted in 2006 by political scientist Jon D. Miller of Michigan State University showed that only 14 percent of American adults consider evolution “definitely true” while roughly a third believe it to be “absolutely false.” Out of a sampler of 34 countries, only Turkey was less accepting of Darwin’s theories, while in nations such as Denmark, Sweden, and France, better than 80 percent of the adults questioned sided with Darwin. Perhaps more disquieting is the fact that 20 years ago about seven percent of U.S. adults were uncertain about evolution; that number has since tripled.
The uniquely American aspect to this resurgence of religious fundamentalism is reiterated by a chart showing the relationship of wealth to religious belief republished in the June 2, 2010 opinion section of by the New York Times (“Why Is America Religious?”), which demonstrates that “the wealthier a country is, the less important religion is to that country. The one exception: The United States.”
From the deep pain of having to confess again and again that you never loved as you were loved
{ The Great Pyramid, built for the Pharaoh Khufu in about 2570 B.C., sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, and still arguably the most mysterious structure on the planet. | Inside the Great Pyramid | Smithsonian | The Secret Doors Inside the Great Pyramid | Guardians }
The poem you live in
On a peninsula southeast of Beijing, developer Vincent Lee wants to copy New York City—literally.
Two years into its ten-year construction plan, Yujiapu is still a field of cranes, fenced along the perimeter and hazy behind the smog. The only thing that resembles New York City is a diorama in the lobby of Binhai New Area CBD Office, where bureaucrats like Vincent Lee of the Business Bureau, are working to deliver on their ambitious promise of making this 3.86 sq km area the “largest single financial center on the world.”
oil on board { Richard Estes, Staten Island Ferry Arriving Manhattan, 2011 }
Just between you and me, we got a very serious problem with the people taking care of the place. They turned out to be completely unreliable assholes.
Annie Platoff, a librarian at UC Santa Barbara, is on a mission to find out what happened to the American flags that astronauts planted on the moon during the six lunar landings.
Platoff’s research pinpointed four of them, including the one from Apollo 17, the final lunar mission. At the very least, the nylon national symbols are “tattered” and have “darkened” over the years. She speculates that the other two, planted during Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, fell victim to the ignition gases emitted from the lunar module during blast-off.
artwork { Jasper Johns, Green Flag, 1956 | Graphite pencil, crayon and collage on paper }
