The Killers In Manila

Screen shot only. The full video is embedded below.

I have never been to the Philippines, or had any real interest in visiting that land of many islands. After watching this new documentary from the New York Times, I have even less interest in going there. As a subscriber to the online NYTimes, I have been following with growing feelings of horror, the brutal slaughter of thousands of that nation's poorest citizens, who have been targeted because they are either drug dealers or drug users.

Some of the victims of President Duterte's 'war on drugs' have almost certainly been the victims of false accusations by people bearing grudges, while other have been innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. At almost 15-minutes, this short documentary provides shocking proof of what can happen to sane and civil societies everywhere, when police and other thugs, hiding behind a presidential decree are able to brazenly flout the rule of law.

Below I include in full, the email I received today from the New York Times, and Andrew Glazer, the Senior Story Producer for the Times. Be warned however, that the film contains footage of violent death, grief, and graphic violence. You will need to decide for yourself if you want to visit the Philippines after viewing this film. For myself, I know I will never visit there.

When a President Says, ‘I’ll Kill You’

By Andrew Glazer and Jeremy Rocklin

Dear Subscriber, 
My name is Andrew Glazer, and I’m a video journalist for The Times. My colleagues and I have been working hard to bring you the documentary “When a President Says, ‘I’ll Kill You.’ ” I invite you, a valued subscriber, to take a look.

The film will bring you to the front lines of a deadly campaign led by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. He’s called for police and vigilantes to kill drug suspects and pushers; and the official death toll since he took office last summer has reached at least 3,600 — but the actual number is probably much greater. Most of those killed were poor and living in slums. Few of the killings have been investigated. 

A corps of local journalists has worked tirelessly to document the killings and the survivors to highlight their humanity. One, photographer Raffy Lerma of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, is a subject of our documentary. He’ll bring you, the viewer, along as he rushes from crime scene to wake to funeral. You’ll not only see the brutality of their demise but also the desperation and grief of their families. And you’ll hear from the top drug enforcement officials who justify the draconian campaign. 

Putting this together was a team effort. I worked with two talented Manila-based journalists — cameraman/producer Carsten Stormer and co-producer Yasmin Coles — and film editor Jeremy Rocklin and director of enterprise Liz Baylen. And, of course, you, who helped fund this effort with your subscription. 

On behalf of the 50 journalists on The Times video desk, I want to thank you for your support. I hope you continue to explore more of our video journalism in the weeks ahead. We do this for you. 

Andrew Glazer 
Senior Story Producer, The New York Times

Addendum: After adding this post today, and reviewing my introduction to the email and the video, I realised that some readers may think I am ignoring the problem of drugs in society. Any society. I am not. I am well aware of the pain and suffering drugs inflict on the users, their families and friends, and society at large. This however does not excuse the blatant disregard for the rule of law that is now underway in Manila. Laws are there for a reason, as are courts, judges, and prisons. Use them.

A Tale of Too Many Moscow’s

Moscow, Russia

 Yesterday’s post (A Tale Of Two Sydney’s), started me thinking about other potentially conflicting and confusing city names. To my surprise, there were a lot more than I thought there would be. For instance, the cities of Moscow, London, Melbourne, Athens, and Paris, to name just a handful, crop up multiple times across the world. 

To take the Russian capital, Moscow as an example—depending on which online source you consult—there may be twenty-three places called Moscow in the world, or they may be a lot more. Even trying to find the precise number of Moscow’s in the United States varies from eighteen to twenty-six, although again, there could be more (see below). You will find Moscow’s in the states of Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Maine. Some of these are big enough to be called cities, but most are generally not much bigger than small towns or hamlets.

      There are or have been at least 30 American towns named Moscow, according to American Demographics magazine. Ohio and Kansas had four each. These aren`t enclaves of pinkos, explains geographer Irina Vasiliev of the State University of New York at Buffalo, who studies the derivation of town names. Moscow, Vermont, is so called because townspeople there thought blades in the local sawmill sounded like cathedral bells of Moscow, Russia. Moscow, Maine, was named to commemorate Russia`s victory over Napoleon, and Moscow, Minnesota, came into being after a forest fire reminded residents of the scorched-earth policy Russian contemporaries adopted to foil the French dictator.
      Only two of America`s Moscow’s actually were named by Russian immigrants, according to Vasiliev. One is in Kansas, the other in Pennsylvania. Then there is the case of Moscow, Texas, which is named after Moscow, Tennessee. Most of America`s other Moscow’s were afterthoughts, named quickly, American Demographics says, “when settlers needed a label for their post office.”
      In most cases, Vasiliev says, the name Moscow was a way to get attention or improve a town`s image. Obviously, these ill-conceived public relations campaigns predated Lenin.[Source: Chicago Tribune…]

Looking south towards Moscow, Idaho

The town of Moscow, Idaho, is one of the biggest towns in America bearing that name. However, when the first US post office opened in 1872, the town was called ‘Paradise Valley,’ but the name was changed to Moscow in 1875. According to the Wikipedia entry for the town:

     The precise origin of the name Moscow has been disputed. There is no conclusive proof that it has any connection to the Russian city, though various accounts suggest it was purposely evocative of the Russian city or named by Russian immigrants. Another account claims that the name derives from a Native American tribe named "Masco”. It was reported by early settlers that five men in the area met to choose a proper name for the town, but could not come to agreement on a name. The postmaster Samuel Neff then completed the official papers for the town and selected the name Moscow. Interestingly, Neff was born in Moscow, Pennsylvania and later moved to Moscow, Iowa.

I am tempted to start a series of regular posts about place names and their origins, but at the moment I have more pressing matters to address. For now I will leave you with this fascinating 21:32-minute radio program from Public Radio International that looks at the prevalence of towns called Moscow in the United States.

A Tale Of Two Sydney's

Screen grab from The Guardian

Ouch! Look at that headline from The Guardian online this past Saturday, April 1st. For a moment or two I thought it might be an April Fool’s Day joke, but no, a young Dutch man, Milan Schipper, thought he had grabbed the bargain of lifetime when he scored a cheap flight from Amsterdam to Sydney, Australia.

Schipper’s plan was to backpack through Australia, taking in its lush coastal landscapes and white sand beaches before heading to college after the Northern summer. Since he knew it was late summer in Australia, he came dressed for the occasion—in a T-shirt, sweatpants and a thin jacket.

Instead, the Dutch teenager found himself 10,000 miles away from Sydney, Australia – staring out at a snow-covered, frozen landscape – as he realised that he had accidentally booked a flight to Sydney, Nova Scotia, a municipality of 32,000 people on Canada’s east coast.

“I thought I was going to Australia, but that turned out a little different,” the 18-year-old told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Thursday.

During a stopover in Toronto, Schipper began to have doubts about his destination after he noticed that the plane lined up on the tarmac was a lot smaller than he thought it should be.

His suspicions were confirmed after he boarded and checked the flight map on his seat screen. “I saw the flight plan was going to go right, not left. It was about the time that I realized there was another Sydney,” he said. “I felt terrible. I think I swore in my head for like 10 minutes. But there was nothing I could do about it because I was already up in the air.”

Sydney, Australia.                             Sydney, Nova Scotia
(Images: Jason Reed, Steve Wadden/Reuters)

On landing in Sydney, Nova Scotia, he discovered the locals were bracing for a snowstorm expected to bring strong winds and 10 to 15 cm (four to six inches) of snow. After Schipper spoke to airline representatives and explained what had happened, he ruled out heading straight to Australia—which would have cost him another €1,500 ($1,600), and another 30 hours of air travel—and decided to fly back to Amsterdam instead.

Incredibly (or so it seems to me), an American woman on the same flight as Milan Schipper made the same mistake! And this incident is not the first time travellers have confused the two Sydney’s. In 2002 two British teenagers ended up in Sydney, Nova Scotia, while trying to visit Australia, as did an Argentine tourist in 2008, another Dutch man and his grandson in 2009, and an Italian couple in 2010.

Clearly, it helps to have more than a passing knowledge of world geography. It also helps to pay a lot more attention to the booking process.

New York City Arts Round-Up #1

MoMA: Unfinished Conversations

This is the first of a regular series of posts highlighting the current art scene in New York City. I have long had an interest in the arts, and now visit to New York is complete without spending time in at least one or two the city's great art institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and so many others. If You are a New Yorker, you know you are spoiled for choice when it comes to immersing yourself in the arts there.

MoMA: Unfinished Conversations: New Work from the Collection brings together works by more than a dozen artists, made in the past decade and recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art. The artists that make up this intergenerational selection address current anxiety and unrest around the world and offer critical reflections on our present moment. The exhibition considers the intertwining themes of social protest, the effect of history on the formation of identity, and how art juxtaposes fact and fiction. From Cairo to St. Petersburg, from The Hague to Recife, the artists in the exhibition observe and interpret acts of state violence and the resistance and activism they provoke. They reexamine historical moments, evoking images of the past and claiming their places within it. They take on contemporary struggles for power, intervening into debates about government surveillance and labor exploitation. Together, these artists look back to traditions both within and beyond the visual arts to imagine possibilities for an uncertain future.

Now through July 30, 2017. More at MoMA…

Rubin Museum: Gateway to Himalayan Art

Rubin Museum of Art

150, West 17th Street, rubinmuseum.org

The Rubin presents art that traverses Asia’s diverse cultures, regions, and narratives. The Museum’s special exhibitions celebrate art forms that range from ancient to contemporary, including photography and multimedia, while its permanent collection galleries are focused primarily on art from the Himalayan region. Of particular interest are two exhibitions: Sacred Spaces: Himalayan Wind… (through until June 5, 2017; and Gateway to Himalayan Art (through until June 27, 2017). Sacred Spaces invites visitors to reflect on devotional activities in awe-inspiring places, while Gateway to Himalayan Art introduces visitors to the main forms, concepts, and meanings of Himalayan art represented in the Rubin Museum’s collection.

Grandma's Closet At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Sara Berman's belongings became an unlikely meditation on immigration, re-invention and feminine independence. By Priscilla Frank, Arts Writer, The Huffington Post

Sara Berman kept her closet in perfect order ― shoes lined up in an unerring row, crisply ironed white shirts stacked one atop the other, her signature bottle of Chanel 19 perched within easy grasp. Her children and grandchildren would gaze into the modest, meticulously organized niche reverently, as if staring at a work of art. Still, they never actually imagined their mom or grandma’s closet would one day, quite literally, find its way into The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“If someone told my mother her closet would be in the Met one day, she would have thought they were crazy,” artist, author and illustrator Maira Kalman said during a talk held at the museum last week, alongside her son, Alex Kalman, and Amelia Peck, a curator of American decorative arts at the Met. And yet, among the period rooms in the museum’s American Wing, most of which display opulent domestic craftsmanship from the 17th to 19th centuries, is Berman’s neat and tidy closet of the 1980s. 

If You Go:

Sara Berman’s Closet… 

Now through September 5, 2017

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park & Fifth Avenue

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Carol Rama: Antibodies at the New Museum

From April 26—September 10, 2017

235 Bowery, New Museum…

Appassionata (1940), by Carol Rama; Photo: Studio Gonella

This exhibition is the first New York examination of the work of the late Italian artist Carol Rama. The exhibition lays claim to being the largest presentation of her work in the US.

While Rama has been largely overlooked in contemporary art discourses, her work has proven prescient and influential for many artists working today, attaining cult status and attracting renewed interest in recent years. Rama’s exhibition at the New Museum will bring together over one hundred of her paintings, objects, and works on paper, highlighting her consistent fascination with the representation of the body.

Seen together, these works present a rare opportunity to examine the ways in which Rama’s fantastical anatomies opposed the political ideology of her time and continue to speak to ideas of desire, sacrifice, repression, and liberation. “Carol Rama: Antibodies” celebrates the independence and eccentricity of this legendary artist whose work spanned half a century of contemporary art history and anticipated debates on sexuality, gender, and representation. Encompassing her entire career, the exhibition traces the development from her early erotic, harrowing depictions of “bodies without organs” through later works that invoke innards, fluids, and limbs—a miniature theater of cruelty in which metaphors of contagion and madness counteract every accepted norm.

More at New Museum…

More Arts Information

Museum of Modern Art…
Rubin Museum of Art…
The Metropolitan Museum of Art…

Village Voice Guide to NYC’s Spring Art Exhibits…

Ending The Elephant Slaughter

Intercepting poachers at Lewa Conservancy.

I have never understood the attraction of hunting, either for profit or for adventure. I do of course understand the need for hunting if your personal survival depends on it. I also understand that many native populations around the world still rely on hunting wild game to supplement their diets, even if they have access to modern food sources. However, it is rare, if not completely unheard of for native populations who hunt wild game to indiscriminately slaughter large numbers of wild animals simply for ‘sport’ or ‘adventure’.

I was shocked to read recently that the Convention on The Trade in Endangered Species estimates that at least 20,000 elephants were killed for ivory in 2015. In fact, there are now fears that more elephants are being slaughtered each year than are being born. Needless to say, it is impossible to know exactly how many elephants are dying each year at the hands of criminal poaching gangs.

In 2016, the Great Elephant Census indicated that poachers slaughtered nearly 30% of East Africa’s savanna elephants from 2007 to 2014, some 144,000 animals. Poachers also killed nearly two-thirds of central Africa’s forest elephants between 2002 and 2013. Currently, fewer than 400,000 elephants are believed to remain in 18 sub-Saharan countries. While this figure may seem large, when elephants are being slaughtered at the rate 20,000+ creatures a year, it doesn’t take a brilliant mathematician to work out that at the current rate of slaughter, Africa’s wild elephant population could be extinct in twenty years.

Thankfully, there are organisations and people prepared to do whatever they can to minimize—even if they cannot completely end—this wild life slaughter. One of these people is the philanthropist (and former co-founder of Microsoft), Paul Allen, who has funded a new high tech anti-poaching system known as the Domain Awareness System (DAS). Responding to the elephant poaching crisis in the Great Elephant Census report, Allen and his team of technologists and conservation experts are partnering with park managers across Africa to provide the new technology to help protect this iconic species and other wildlife threatened by human activities. 

(Stock image). Credit: © jhvephoto / Fotolia

The Domain Awareness System aggregates the positions of radios, vehicles, aircraft and animal sensors to provide users with a real-time dashboard that depicts the wildlife being protected, the people and resources protecting them, and the potential illegal activity threatening them.

Other high tech tools that are helping in this vital fight are satellites, drones, camera traps, animal sensors, weather monitors and eventually new technology yet to be invented. The new technology also helps take the guess work out of the anti-poaching fight. With real-time data at their fingertips, park rangers can respond quickly and effectively to catch poachers before they wreak havoc on elephant herds and other wild game. 

Sadly, however, it is not just the wild game that are threatened by poachers. Each year, heavily armed poaching gangs kill dozens of park rangers across Africa’s numerous game reserves. The Game Ranger website reports that, “More than 1,000 rangers have been killed worldwide and many more injured over the last 10 years.” Clearly, the stakes are high for both the wild life and their human protectors, so anything that can help reduce the human and animal death toll is to be applauded—which brings us back to the Domain Awareness System. 

The system has been installed at six protected wildlife conservation sites since November 2016. Working with Save the Elephants, African Parks Network, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Singita Grumeti Fund as well as the Lewa Conservancy and Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust, a total of 15 locations are expected to adopt the system this year.

When the system is fully operational by the end of 2017, it will cover more than 90,000 square miles of protected area. An ongoing consortium of conservation NGOs, government partners, and technology companies, is working with Paul Allen's team to integrate DAS with software used in nearly 500 sites across 46 countries to measure, evaluate and improve the effectiveness of wildlife law enforcement patrols and onsite conservation activities.

One can only hope that the combined forces—human and technological—arrayed against the illegal trade in elephant tusks, can put an effective end to this criminal practice before it is too late.

Here is a short video outlining how the Domain Awareness System works in practice:

More Information

Great Elephant Census...

Convention on The Trade in Endangered Species... 

Study: Legalizing ivory trade won’t save elephants…

Game Rangers Association of Africa…

New York City Round-Up #2

Remembering Jimmy Breslin

I came very late to the writing of Jimmy Breslin when I eventually 'discovered' him last year and bought an eBook copy of The World According to Jimmy Breslin, a 1988 compilation of some of his best essays. Since then I have added another seven Breslin books to my collection, and I am slowly working my way through all of them. I’ll let Wikipedia introduce the man:

James Earle "Jimmy" Breslin (October 17, 1928 – March 19, 2017) was an American journalist and author. Until the time of his death, he wrote a column for the New York Daily News Sunday edition. He wrote numerous novels, and columns of his appeared regularly in various New York City newspapers. He served as a regular columnist for the Long Island newspaper Newsday until his retirement on November 2, 2004, though he still published occasional pieces for the paper. He was known for his newspaper columns which offered a sympathetic viewpoint of the working class people of New York City, and was awarded the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "for columns which consistently champion ordinary citizens".

Breslin, who passed away last week, was one of the old school newspaper greats, certainly in the same league as Joseph Mitchell, Alistair Cooke, and Meyer Berger, although the focus of his topics was often quite different.

Read A Part Of A Cop’s Past Lies Dead, the column Jimmy Breslin wrote following the murder of John Lennon in 1980.

If you can't find print copies of Breslin's books, many of his most popular works are now available as eBooks for Kindle, iPad, and other electronic devices. If you have never read the man, I urge you to seek out his work online, in secondhand bookshops, or electronically, and spend a few weeks as I am catching up with his remarkable writing.

Wikipedia entry for Jimmy Breslin…

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OpDocs: Who Makes The Bronx?

In the shade of the 4 train’s elevated track, Jerome Avenue’s dense clusters of auto-repair shops, storefronts, and manufacturers have long formed the economic spine of the Bronx, one of New York’s increasingly rare blue-collar neighborhoods. But as the city government considers rezoning the corridor to add residential development, change looms for the neighborhood’s social and economic landscape. 

Against that backdrop of uncertainty, Giacomo Francia, writing for the New York Times presents six short documentaries profiling an orange seller, ice cream vendor, glass cutter, hairdresser, mechanic, and pigeon keeper.

Giacomo Francia writes:

To make these profiles of the people who live and work around rapidly changing Jerome Avenue in the South Bronx, I decided to spend last summer [2015] there. That summer turned into 10 months. I spent so much time with the workers on Jerome Avenue that when I greeted them in the morning, smiling, they would nod back at me and say “cuidate” (“be safe”)! I found that the rhythm of Jerome Avenue is driven by the mechanics and street vendors who line its streets, and the shops run by hard-working families, who are often sustaining small businesses proudly handed down to them from generations past.

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Destination Midtown App

Planning a visit to New York City? If so you might want to check out the newish Destination Midtown app. Some of New York City’s top attractions are highlighted in this interactive tour guide to Midtown Manhattan. 

The app features ten step-by-step walking tours that include 34th and 42nd Streets, parts of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, as well as suggestions for rainy days, nights out, the fashion conscious, and others.

Destination Midtown claims to be “your perfect companion to all the best landmarks, museums, restaurants, and shops.” Along with the ten walking tours users will find:

• Detailed attraction profiles featuring locals-only info, insider tips, photos, hours of operation, and more
• Perfectly-framed selfie spots to help you snag that next profile pic
• Always-up-to-date event calendar with Midtown’s top happenings
• The ability to save your favorite walks, attractions, and destinations in “My Trip” to help plan your day
• “Back of the guidebook” info about eating, drinking, and getting around in the Big Apple

The app, which is available as a free download for both Apple and Android devices, has been developed by the Destination Midtown Alliance, founded last year by Empire State Realty Trust. The Alliance is a coalition of businesses and attractions who joined together to spread the word about Midtown Manhattan as a primary tourist destination. The Alliance provides visitors with a variety of interactive itineraries of Midtown’s best sightseeing, dining, shopping and entertainment, all within a 15-minute walk of the heart of New York City, and the Empire State Building.

Here’s a six minute video from Expedia highlighting some of the main New York City attractions including those around the Midtown area:

New York City Vacation Travel Guide | Expedia from Expedia on Vimeo.

More Destination Midtown information and links to the free apps…

New York Times OpDocs: Pickle

I spend far too many hours online roving far and wide across the interweb. One of my go to sites is the New York Times, where a very reasonable monthly subscription gives me full access to the latest news via daily bulletins, and years of archived articles and content.

I recently began exploring the OpDocs section of the NYT Online, and have enjoyed watching many great video's ranging in length from five to fifteen minutes. The video embedded below, Pickle, is a delightful look at the parents of Amy Nicholson, who made the film, but more importantly, she documents the many animals, rescued and otherwise, that Amy's parents have cared for over many years. With regard to the video, Amy writes:

For more than two decades, I have been visiting my dad’s farm on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, often returning to New York with anecdotes about one member or another of the unlikely menagerie that lived there. I would regale my friends with tales of cross-eyed cats perpetually on the verge of death, ailing chickens convalescing in the house or a paraplegic possum that fancied scrambled eggs for dinner. Practically all of the pets were rescues of some sort with various abnormalities, and the ones that didn’t cling to life well past their prime died prematurely.

I try to find a funny side to everything, and tragedy is no exception. This film’s unrelenting march of death has a light side, but hopefully between morbid curiosity and chuckling at the sheer volume of casualties, the audience will find a bit of themselves in this film. “Pickle” examines the depths of one couple’s devotion to their pets while exploring the complicated relationship that we humans have with all animals. If you find a hurt animal that you’re able to help, is it moral to come to its rescue, as we would with a human? Or is it true compassion to let nature take its course?

Amy Nicholson is a documentary filmmaker who lives in New York City. Pickle is her fourth film.

There are many other great short documentaries on through the New York Times OpDocs portal, and I encourage you to explore the collection on your own. As time goes on I will myself add more to this blog, if only to help spread the word about this great resource.

Magda Love: Global Street Artist

Magda Love: unfinished mural at Hudson and Clarkson, lower Manhattan

In my daily trawl across the internet, I am constantly finding interesting snippets of news, information, videos, and events, that catch my eye and make me wish I was right there where the event was taking place.

The global street artist Magda Love is a perfect example of the serendipitous nature of web surfing. This talented New York based artist (an Argentinian by birth) has been creating vibrant paintings and murals right across New York City, as well as in cities and galleries around the world.

As a traveling artist, a single mother and a mentor to students throughout New York City, Magda (like most other artists) struggles with finding the perfect work/life balance. The short video below documents this struggle, while grappling with her biggest project yet – a massive six-storey wall on the corner of Hudson and Clarkson streets in lower Manhattan. 

As you can see from the Google Maps screen shot illustrating this post, the mural project is only partially completed. I got in touch with Magda yesterday, and in a message to me just this morning she writes that she recently signed the last contract to complete the mural, and that, “…hopefully, soon I’ll get back to it.”

Readers interested in seeing more of Magda’s art work will find plenty online with a simple “magda love graffiti” Google search. You can also connect with her via her Facebook page…

More information:
Magda Love online...
Magda Love: From Buenos Aires to Brooklyn...

UPDATE: After uploading this blog post, I went in search of more of Magda Love's work and found the following video that I thought I just had to add to this post. If you are interested in graffiti art in particular, and even art in general, I urge you to do your own Google search for Magda's work.

The Silicon Jungle, 1985

During one of my periodic trawls through the Gutenberg website, I spotted a recent upload for The Silicon Jungle, which was published in 1985, and which is about when I first started mucking around with computers! I did a quick scan through the book and had to marvel at how arcane the world of computers was, way back when the technology was just beginning to find its feet so to speak.

Rothman’s computer of choice at the time was a Kaypro II, which he considered to be the perfect computer for his needs. I can see why—it had a very impressive—wait for it—64K of RAM. Yes, dear reader, that really is 64,000 kilobytes of RAM (Random Access Memory). Incredibly, the file size of the book cover seen here is a very modest (by today’s standards), 99,000 kilobytes.

Reading through books like The Silicon Jungle, I am reminded of the much quoted statement that was once attributed to Thomas J. Watson, the chairman and CEO of IBM from 1911—1956, which went something like: ‘I think there is a world market for maybe five computers’.

Modern research suggests that it is highly doubtful that Watson ever made this statement, but be that as it may, many other authors and experts have made their own assertions about computers and the software and hardware that is needed to run them, and Rothman was one of them. To choose just one example of many, try reading his thoughts on the humble computer mouse without laughing out loud, thirty-two years after he wrote them.

“If you’re a trained, high-volume production typist,” asked Seymour Rubinstein, the WordStar* developer, “what are you going to do with a mouse except feed it cheese?” Score one for Rubinstein. He says mice are great—if you have three hands. Doing graphics? A mouse, maybe. But damned if I’m going to take my hands off the keyboard to push the cursor from one spot on the screen to the next. It’s simply too much wasted motion. I instead just press the cursor keys right above the main keyboard. Or I use WordStar’s cursor-moving commands. And even if I hadn’t learned touch typing a quarter century ago, I’d still wonder if a mouse for word processing wasn’t the Silicon Valley version of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Next time you’re in California, maybe you’ll see Apple execs naked in the streets as well as their hot tubs. Well, maybe not. The mouse could be a great marketing tool for sales reps peddling Macs or Apple IIc’s to people hoping to do word processing. But experienced typists? Many would probably groan over all the excursions that the mouse forced them to take from the main keyboard.

By the way, my first computer was a state-of-the-art Commodore 128D. So take that, Mr. Rothman. My system had double the memory of your flashy Kaypro II. Sadly (or should that be, happily?), it wasn’t long before Rothman’s Kaypro II, and my Commodore 128D were superseded by much more powerful computers with virtually unlimited amounts of RAM and hard drive storage. If you don’t believe me, look at the advert here for a 10MB hard disk—a bargain at just $3,398.00. At that price, I bet people were snapping them up!

*Note: WordStar was one of the most popular early word processing programs. Of course, it was soon to be relegated to the dustbin of software history with the rise and rise of Microsoft Windows and the new graphics-based word processing software which included MS Word, WordPerfect, Lotus Word Pro—and those pesky mice that somehow found their way into the hands of every computer user.

53,000 Free Books and Counting

I know I have mentioned the Gutenberg website before, but it won’t hurt to mention it again. The site is a clearing house for almost fifty-four-thousand books, all of which are in the public domain, and all of which can be either read online, or downloaded for free to eReaders such as Kindle’s, iPads and other portable devices that can use the ePub format. If you are a keen reader, and you have never checked out the site, you are surely missing out on a great treasury of amazing literature.

New York City Round-Up #1

LinkNYC by The Numbers

Last year when I was in New York City, I began to notice a number of tall, futuristic-looking kiosks located on Manhattan pavements. I soon learned that they were part of a bold new experiment, funded (and owned) by Google. The kiosks provide free WiFi access to users as well as allow people to make free telephone calls, use USB ports to charge devices, access maps, and initially at least, use the built in browser for the usual online purposes.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to use the kiosks since those that I did find, seemed to have been commandeered by one of the many street people in the city. Not that they didn’t have a right to use the kiosks, but from what I could see, they would sit by the kiosks, sometimes for hours, listening, watching, reading, and accessing who knows what content. Well, as it happens, we do know what some people were accessing (although not necessarily street people), with the result that the internet browser function of the kiosks has now been disabled after complaints that people were using the kiosks to watch pornography.

The installation of the LinkNYC kiosks was just a few months into its schedule when I visited New York over the summer of 2016. After a full twelve months of ongoing work, the system continues to be expanded across the city. Michael Garofalo, in this online article provides the following statistics about the program. All data is current as of the week of February 27, 2017.

• 631 LinkNYC kiosks currently active, of a planned 7,500

• 1,256,450 unique devices connected to the Wi-Fi network to date, approximately one for every seven New Yorkers

• 115 million Wi-Fi sessions served to date

• 870.86 terabytes of data transferred to date, the rough equivalent of streaming 33 years of high definition video on Netflix

• 150 feet wireless signal range of each kiosk

• 600,000 Wi-Fi sessions served in year one by the city’s most popular kiosk, at 1313 Broadway in Herald Square

• $0 spent by New York City taxpayers on the system, which is operated by a franchisee and generates revenue through advertising and sponsorships

More Information

LinkNYC Website…
Here are the current LinkNYC locations...

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Native American Art at The Met, Fifth Avenue

Housed in the old Customs House close to the foot of Manhattan, and across the road from the Bowling Green (4 and 5 trains) subway, is New York City’s National Museum of the American Indian. There is also another National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, and no doubt there are more museums touting their own collections in cities across the United States. 

Not to be outdone or ignored, is the collection of Native American artefacts housed at the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. 

Mary Gregory reports that: A small but extraordinary collection of Native American masterpieces is in its final days at the Met Fifth Avenue. Consider a visit to this show as a concise course in Native American art history. From the second century to the 20th, from the Plains to the Southwest to the Northwest Coast, “Native American Masterpieces from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection” highlights some of the best works ever made in each age and place. It’s like a greatest hits compilation, and not a single piece disappoints.

The exhibition ends in ten days—March 31, 2017—so be quick. See it before it ends.

Read more here…

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Leslie-Lohman Museum reopens with 250-work Exhibition

A bit less conventional for some, perhaps is a new exhibition which opened this month at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York’s SoHo neighbourhood.

Clair Wang writes: The large, wooden cross hibernating in the back corner of the spacious studio resembles a cactus from afar. Pinned against a white wall, its body is punctured by dozens of colorful glass vials, each containing an assortment of objects that represent a day in the life of mixed-media artist Edward A. Hochschild.

The “Vial Cross” is one of roughly 250 works displayed at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art’s current exhibition, “Expanded Visions: Fifty Years of Collecting,” which opened March 10. The exhibit is the Wooster Street museum’s first following an expansion that nearly doubled the size of its original space. The effort, begun in October, will allow the museum to operate year-round, offering a mix of ongoing and future exhibitions, film screenings and artist lectures.

IF YOU GO

The Leslie-Lohman Museum…

26, Wooster Street, New York City

Ph: +1 212-431-2609

U.S. Capitol Building Tour

During my all too brief five night stay in Washington DC, I managed to squeeze in a tour of the Capitol building, and I do mean squeeze. I got into the last tour of the day, and within minutes realized my mistake. At the end of a long day, tour guides and security staff just wanted to go home, and our one hour tour - that included the awe-inspiring Rotunda and National Statuary Hall - lasted at most 45-minutes, as we were rushed from room to room with barely enough time to admire the Capitol's internal architecture, or time to pause and appreciate the wonderful collection of monumental paintings and the vast sculpture collection.

Sadly, those of us in the tour group who wanted to spend more time visiting the numerous displays and exhibition spaces in the Visitor Center had no time at all to do that. Clearly, visitors will need to allow another hour or two for this, and time their visit accordingly.

A Day In The Life of The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center

The two minute time-lapse video below, depicts a day in the life of the Capitol’s Visitor Center, and shows a constant stream of large school and veterans groups, along with thousands of other visitors pouring in and out of the building on what I assume is a typical day at the Capitol. So while joining the last tour group of the day may not be the best idea, visiting during the morning rush or mid-afternoon may not be such a great idea either.

Watching Congress In Session

The Senate and House galleries are open to visitors whenever either legislative body is in session, however the galleries are not included as part of the U.S. Capitol tour. Passes are required to enter either gallery at any time. American citizens can obtain gallery passes from the offices of their Senators or Representative. International visitors must inquire about gallery passes at the House and Senate Appointment Desks on the upper level of the Capitol Visitor Center.

Do Your Research

This student orientation video provides a good introduction to the Capitol Visitor Center and is worth watching, as are the numerous video on the U.S. Capitol’s YouTube channel here…

The official Capitol Visitor Center website has vast array of useful information that can either be examined online, or downloaded if visitors want to read through the numerous brochures highlighting different aspects of the building and its facilities. 

Permanent and temporary exhibitions at the Capitol

Last Thoughts On My Visit

Despite the rush through the Capitol Building, it was fascinating to hear some of the stories behind the works of art and the significant rooms in the building, and since the tour was free I can't complain about not getting my money's worth,.

 and despite my caveat about the obvious crowds of visitors during the day, I recommend that if you are planning a visit, go early, take a tour, and then allow plenty of time to wander on your own through the building, taking as many photos as you want—but only in areas where photography is permitted, of course.

Having given my truncated visit some serious thought, my recommendation would be to book a late afternoon tour, when the crowds have started to thin out, but get to the Visitor’s Center two to three hours before the tour begins if you want to view the exhibitions, visit the Senate and House galleries, or join one of the separate Specialty Tours or Activities, that also take place throughout the year.

Click here to download a .PDF map of the Capitol site…

IF YOU GO

East Capitol St NE & First St SE, 
Washington DC, DC 20004

Phone Number: +1 202-226-8000
U.S. Capitol Visitors Center...