Archive for January 2016
“Do not count your chickens before they are hatched”*…
We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students)…
From the abstract of a scholarly article published in the journal Human Nature.
Read all of the paper: “Chickens prefer beautiful humans“; get more background here.
* Aesop
###
As we spend a few more minutes at the mirror, we might recall that it was on this date in 1868 that William Davis, a Detroit fish dealer, received a patent for the first practical refrigerated rail car. Entrepreneurs looking to expand the market for agricultural goods had been trying since 1842 to ship produce and meat via rail. But these early “ice box on wheels” designs were impractical (as most worked only in cold weather). Davis’ innovation was to create a car that used metal racks to suspend meat above and between a frozen mixture of ice and salt. Davis’ design worked well as a preservative strategy; but the carcasses had a way of swinging to one side on their hooks when the car entered a curve at high speed… which led to several derailments and the discontinuation of their use. It wasn’t until 1878, and a “cooling from the top; meat stacked low” approach developed by Andrew Chase for the meat packers Swift & Co., that refrigerated cars came into continuous use.
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise… we would have found the safest way to health”*…
From Richard Florida and his team at the Martin Prosperity Institute, a mapping of the American Fitness Index™ (AFI) (which rates metros on individual health indicators like vegetable consumption and daily physical activity, as well as community or environmental indicators like walkability or proximity to a local park): cities with a low fitness score are shown in blue, while cities with a high fitness score are shown in dark purple.
The group then analyzed the data against the key socioeconomic characteristics of these metros. Fitness, it emerges, is highly correlated with a city’s wealth/affluence, education level, and proximity to tech industry centers…
For all the talk of fitness that permeates the American zeitgeist—from reality shows like The Biggest Loser to the First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign to combat childhood obesity—we don’t often explore the more subtle factors that contribute to a healthy lifestyle. As beneficial as exercise and mindful eating may be, the overall health of our lifestyles is not just the product of a series of good decisions. It is also the result of how our culture and society is structured. At the end of the day, fitness is consistently tied up with our affluence, jobs, education, and class position—all of which are partially contingent on where we live. With the success of fit cities comes the unfortunate reality that these cities reflect yet another gripping image of our country’s great divide along economic and class lines.
More data and analysis at “America’s Great Fitness Divide.”
And on a related front, see also: “These Victorian-Era Diseases Are Making a Comeback in a City Near You.” Gout, scurvy, and rickets– who’d have thunk it.
* Hippocrates
###
As we drop and do 50, we might recall that it was on this date in 1889 that U.S. Patent #396,089 was issues to Daniel Johnson for a “Rotary Dining Table.” Johnson’s innovation was to combine a “rotary table and adjustable chair adapted for saloons of sea-going vessels and of other descriptions, in which the occupants of the chairs may be served in rotation from one stationary base of supply without the danger and inconvenience incident to the person making the circuit of the table when the vessel is upon the seas, and also enabling the persons seated at the table to be served with dispatch.” The entire table with its attached chairs was supported on one central rotating shaft – making the seated persons part of a human “Lazy Susan.”
“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding”*…
On the heels of last Sunday’s look at the NYPL Labs’ extraordinary interactive version of the Green Books, another visit to the Library, which has taken advantage of it’s enormous public domain collection to enable one to compare the photos from the 1911 Fifth Avenue from Start to Finish collection with 2015’s Google Street View. The work of Bert Spaan, it illuminates one of the Big Apple’s most storied thoroughfares:
Fifth Avenue, the street that became the social and cultural spine of New York’s elite, first appeared on the Commissioners’ Map of 1811. At that time, it was merely a country road to Yorkville (then just a tiny self-contained village), but in the proposed grid plan it would be a grand boulevard. As the City grew and prospered Fifth Avenue became synonymous with fashionable life, the site of mansions, cultural and social institutions, and restaurants and shops catering to the elite. In 1907, alarmed at the approach of factories, the leading merchants and residents formed the Fifth Avenue Association. The Save New York Committee became a bulwark against the wrong kind of development. Perhaps inspired by this contemporary movement, photographer Burton Welles used a wide-angled view camera in 1911 to document this most important street from Washington Square, north to East 93rd Street.
Take a stroll at “Street View, Then & Now: New York City’s Fifth Avenue.”
* John Updike
###
As we spread the news, we might recall that it was on this date in 1988 that three armed men entered the Bank of America’s World Trade Center location, disarmed two Brink’s guards delivering money to a currency exchange center there, then fled with with $1.6 million. The heist was the brainchild of former mob boss Ralph Guarino. Given the heightened security on the heels of the 1993 WTC bombings, he needed help from a long-time employee of the facility, who handed over his ID badge and informed Guarino of the next expected delivery of cash to the bank; three hired goons were dispatched to carry out the robbery on that day. The three entered the bank via passenger elevator early in the morning, tying up employees and stuffing cash into duffel bags as planned. Luckily for law enforcement, the theives were not very discreet; only one of the the trio bothered to cover his head, so the other two were readily identifiable on security cam footage. They were apprehended quickly following the robbery, leading to the capture of Guarino, who chose becoming an FBI informant over jail time.
The heist is unpacked in detail in the 2003 book Made Men.
“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills”*…
… Or so Schopenhauer argues.
Neuroscientists from Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin have run an experiment, using a “duel” game between human and brain-computer interface (BCI), to find out “Do we have free will?”
* Arthur Schopenhauer
###
As we act as though we do, we might send thoughtful birthday greetings to Paul Karl Feyerabend; he was born on this date in 1924. A student of Karl Popper, Feyerabend became a philosopher, largely concerned (as was his mentor) with the practice and communication of science. He came to be a opponent of rigid understandings of “the scientific method” and a critic of rules that might, in their arbitrariness and constraint, both alienate scientists from the people (general humanity) the are meant to serve and impede scientific progress. For this, he was often accused of having an anarchistic view of science; in any case, he seems clearly to have believed in a scientist’s free will.
“It’s kind of pretty”*…
Fans of Quentin Tarantino might have noticed that items branded “Red Apple” have appeared in every one of his films since Pulp Fiction. For The Hateful Eight, he turned to designer Ross MacDonald…
Much of the action in Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie The Hateful Eight takes place in an 1870 Wyoming trading post called Minnie’s Haberdashery. While you’re viewing it – either in glorious 70mm or regular format – look past the cracking dialog, flying bullets and spraying blood. There – in the background, on the shelves, and occasionally in the character’s hands – you may glimpse a few cans and packages and other general store stuff. For a few months last winter, I was lucky enough to help create a few of those things…
The story– and beautiful examples of the work– at “Hateful Eight & Red Apple.”
[TotH to J.J. Sedelmaier]
* John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (Kurt Russell), The Hateful Eight
###
As we roll our own, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that MGM released The Shop Around the Corner, the romantic comedy by Ernst Lubitsch. While it did reasonably good business in it run, it has become classic, landing on most “100 Best” lists, scoring a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and earning a berth in the National Film Registry. But perhaps its highest accolade came from Lubitsch himself: the creator of Trouble in Paradise, Ninotchka, and To Be Or Not To Be called The Shop Around the Corner “the best picture I ever made in my life.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.