50 Years Ago: The World in 1962
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
This is described in patent 3250902, which is actually pretty clearly written.
There are also examples and explanations in John Koza's "Genetic Programming" series of books.
Today it is 1262.
Sort of makes you realize that peace, freedom and technological advancement aren't defaults, but aberrations. I can't imagine what it would feel like to be an Afghan citizen who was born in Kabul in the 1940s... It must feel like being stuck in a time machine.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a...
Quote: "A half-century ago, Afghan women pursued careers in medicine; men and women mingled casually at movie theaters and university campuses in Kabul; factories in the suburbs churned out textiles and other goods. There was a tradition of law and order, and a government capable of undertaking large national infrastructure projects, like building hydropower stations and roads, albeit with outside help. Ordinary people had a sense of hope, a belief that education could open opportunities for all, a conviction that a bright future lay ahead. All that has been destroyed by three decades of war, but it was real."
The sad thing is, I don't see Islamic countries evolve much. They seem to have no drive to get better unless they have oil and are lucky at the same time.
War, I agree. Unnecessary remark on Islam!
But there are no statistics to indicate that Islam propagates backwardness. Fundamentalism in any religion, may be. But to say a particular religion propagates backwardness is not a right remark.
Islamic scholars have contributed a lot back to the world. Infact corner stone of computer science Algorithm is named after a Arabic scholar of Islamic faith.
Your point comes across as a tell tale sign of Islamophobia in the west to perceive every other muslim as a backward moron from the stonage waiting to blow up the whole world.
While the fact is muslims are like any other people in the world.
For a change you must look into your own backyard and question who started those wars. Is it the mistake of the Afghans that soviets invaded them? Is it mistake of Iraqi's that US invaded them without any proof of WMD's.
You go burning the whole world, in a century US has invaded more countries than anybody else(Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korean Peninsula, Japan, Countries in South America). You've killed several millions of people under the pretext of war, destroyed their national infrastructure to dust. Denied them any hope recovery by sanctions. And you call others backward?
(By the way, Afghanistan's history of being a warzone stretches back waaaaay further than just 30 years, way before the Soviets)
And Iran, that most favourite of whipping boys now that Afghanistan and Iraq are off the map. They were doing just peachy with a liberal, relatively secular, democratic government until Mossadegh kicked out Western oil interests. After that the gloves were off, and the Americans engineered a coup and installed a radical fundamentalist puppet instead. Turns out he wasn't so much a fan of America.
(though to be fair, the Shah kind of had it coming. He had a particularly nasty case of murdering political dissidents... though after Khomeini it became unimaginably worse)
Note: this is not to mean that the Middle East was not without its own problems. It would be entirely unfair to pin the blame solely on Britain and the US for the national failures that litter that subcontinent. That being said, where you see a dramatic failure of government, British or American interventionism is never too far away, and the current woeful state of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan (disregarding recent wars, i.e. <2000) can be traced directly to Western interventionism.
And furthermore, traditionally Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are doing just fine for themselves. In fact, if you put all of these nations side by side, it seems that "crossed the US/Britain" is a greater predictor of misery than "is Islamic".
http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-...
Though, in my private high school in Indiana, in 1999 I overheard kids more than once telling n*er jokes. I heard less overtly racists at the school saying things like "Yeah, it would be weird to have a black friend." These were the rich kids who parents owned the local businesses. I have a hard time believing the kids weren't getting it from the parents.
It seemed so absurd at the time, but I guess it's less surprising if you remember segregation had only officially ended 37 years ago, then, and that the klan remained active in Indiana for decades after.
That was 12 years ago, but I doubt it's all fixed since then. I know that school is still basically exclusively white despite the town being about 25% African American and 9% Latino. I fear the consequences of treating so many people as less than people will stick with us for a long time. Kind of naive to think they would all go away in just 50 years.
I know that school is still basically exclusively white
I think this is a non sequitur. (IMO) the stuff about "people are colorblind until society teaches them otherwise" is ridiculous, so you put these kids in an environment with no black children? Of course they are going to see black children as strange- they haven't had the opportunity to interact and learn otherwise. It doesn't have to have anything to do with racist comments from their parents.
Labeling anyone of any color is racicst period. There is only one race called the Human Race!
If everyone recognized this and stopped describing one another in terms of colors, we could end fucking bullshit!
As for the rest, it is a simple fact that the different regions of the world are home to communities with distinct differences in phenotype. Combine that with the (very human) tendency to be cautious around unfamiliar peoples, and there you have it.
I'm not saying it is Just, or Right, or any crap like that. I am only observing that there are simple explanations for why children might behave as described, other than "their parents must be hateful bigots".
Imagine what "Marriage is between one man and one woman" people will look like in 50 years.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for 7 years now, since 2005. My wife's a high school teacher, and when it was legalized her students were 8-9 years old -- too young to care about who can and can't marry whom. Same-sex marriage being legal is, to them, now the default. They don't see it as being a 'debate' and and don't really understand why it's such a big deal in the States.
She says that homophobia in general is almost entirely a thing of the past. There's the odd student that says something homophobic, but all the other students look at them like they're weird. This is a complete 180 from when I was in high school 8 years ago.
When I watched the film Ray and learned about the life of Ray Charles, I was struck by how quickly (just 18 years, IIRC) Georgia's culture went from banning him for refusing to play a segregated concert to officially apologizing to him from the state government.
Even though that was two years after the civil rights act you could still see examples of segregation. Though they were no longer being used you could see separate bathrooms and drinking fountains for the different races.
It left a lasting impression on this Detroit boy. I was too young to comprehend at the time but racism existed in Detroit, but it was just more subtle.
The racism was still quite real even in the early 70s.
I get the feeling Reagan was right, we won't "fix" racism until there is another them.
There are still bastions of hatred in many parts East of the Mississippi, its not just a Southern thing.
Reality check: in 1962, every American city, north or south, with a substantial black population had a thriving black business district and a commercial middle class. Example: Bronzeville in Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas,_Chicago#Bronzeville
Enlightened white people destroyed these worlds and the people who lived in them. The replacement was this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Taylor_Homes
In San Francisco those neighborhoods were Third Street and the Fillmore. Pictures of Third Street from the 1950s show fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy shops, not a white face in sight. Pictures of Third Street today show someone about to sucker-punch the photographer and steal his camera.
In 1962 there were no no-go zones anywhere in America. Today I could walk five miles from my home and be in a place where my life wasn't safe. Black America in 2012:
http://tosh.comedycentral.com/video-clips/uncensored---video...
Upside: black people can vote. For the same party, every time. For a black (or, well, half-East-African) president whose campaign office looks as white as a Romney family reunion:
http://freebeacon.com/minority-report/
I think the enlightened people of 1962 might be a little incredulous at all the back-patting going on in 2012. Nice job you've done of uplifting black America, 2012. With successes like this, who needs failures?
You want to know why black people vote for the same party every time? Because it's the alternative to your party.
If you want to claim there's no undercurrent of racism in standard Republican messaging, well, I can't prove it to you. Just know that most black people disagree with you.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/simpsons-mocks-fox-...
Once again: The world is not as simple as that.
Oh, and while I am here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the American South. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans (GOP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_rights_(speech)
http://newsone.com/16051/top-10-racist-limbaugh-quotes/ (just for fun)
For what it's worth, I don't think President Bush the person was particularly racist. But he was definitely the #1 candidate among racists.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-out-sundown-town...
Preface: I'm a white American, with plenty of WASP guilt.
I forget the issue, but an African-American was in the news spewing the standard reprehensible winger talking points.
An African-American coworker of mine said "There's always one", shaking his head in disgust. He probably let his guard down around me, because we got to know each other pretty well and he knew of my political activism (voting issues).
I asked him to explain. He said no matter how stupid or extreme an issue, the white man could always find some black man to voice support.
I'm guessing that "there's always one" is a cliche in the African-American world.
Spike Lee's Boyz in the Hood, a fucking great movie, had scene depicting this phenomenon.
So, in sum, when Clarence Thomas, Condi, or that US Rep Allen fruitcake says something retarded, it's still retarded, and I don't have to measure my criticism (of the idea) just because I'm white and the speaker is black.
http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/2010/10/end-of-cabrini-gre...
Your choice: grow up without a "right" to vote (not actually a right but a power, and of no direct value to you). Or grow up in Cabrini-Green.
Oh, and my party:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism
Democracy is working out pretty much as we always expected. Don't you think? You think your system of government is a success? Oh, please, I can't wait to hear this.
So long as that group kept to their zone. If they go into that zone, then things might happen. Of course the police would take an interest in that group being in that zone, they must be up to no good!
What I really meant to say was that in 1962 there were no no-go zones anywhere in America, Crackerjack Peckerwood Creek in the deep back asshole of Alabama where no one without a mullet in a Camaro would want to go anyway excepted. (Alas, in 1962 there were no Camaros either.)
Trust me, I went to high school in Howard County, Maryland, and I would be the last person in the world to speak up for the indigenous American peckerwood. However, I also note that there's a big difference between Peckerwood, Alabama being a no-go zone (if your skin is darker than a bad white zinfandel), and half of Brooklyn being a no-go zone (for any sane person regardless of race, color or creed).
Also, just because there's a lot of black people on the street doesn't mean a neighborhood is dangerous. FYI. (former brooklyn resident).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
If you ever actually talk to anyone who was personally involved in the former, and they're being frank, they'll tell you that a primary concern was a rational fear for their physical safety and/or that of their families. Which adds up to the latter. Why do you think there are no Serbs left in Kosovo, or no Albanians in Mitrovica?
E. Michael Jones's Slaughter of Cities (http://www.amazon.com/The-Slaughter-Cities-Renewal-Cleansing...) is a good overview from a j'accuse perspective. For a mainstream author, read J. Anthony Lukas' Common Ground. Better yet, read them both.
Of course we've digressed into the question of harmful effects (of the civil-rights movement) on white people. My original post was mainly concerned with the effect on black people.
Perhaps you've noticed some cultural changes? Are they for the better? If we could sit down together and watch WSHH for an hour, how exactly would we disagree?
> If we could sit down together and watch WSHH for an hour, how exactly would we disagree?*
Out of curiosity, do you have any opinions on modern black culture that aren't based on videos you find online?
There are three kinds of blacks in America today - feral, traditional, assimilated. Traditional black people are the nicest people in the world and have the coolest churches. Unfortunately they're all over 50 and have high blood pressure. Assimilated black people are just like white people except for the little box they check when they want to get into Harvard. (Samuel R. Delany's memoir, The Motion of Light in Water, is among other things a wonderful evocation of the old "Jack and Jill" black upper class.) Feral black people need to be rounded up, flex-cuffed, laser de-tattooed, sent to boot camp for three months, and placed in the unconditional custody of traditional black people, who will know exactly what to do with them.
Is that enough stereotypes for you? A stereotype is a pattern you don't want to recognize. I think you'll find you recognize these patterns just fine, however.
No, because I'm not a bigot.
I'm absolutely stunned that your horrific rant hasn't been downvoted into oblivion.
... a man devoted unreafonably to a certain party; prejudiced in favour of certain opinions; a blind zealot. It is ufed often with to before the object of zeal; as, a bigot to the Cartefian tenets...
I'm pretty sure you're not a bigot to the Cartesian tenets. You do strike me as pretty zealous, though - n'est ce pas?
I am actually quite okay with bigots and bigotry. We can't all embrace change. We don't all have to. One thing is certain, though - if it's not surprising, it's not change. Welcome to the 21st century!
I've read some of your comments. You repeatedly misinterpret what people say and throw out presumptuous personal attacks.
You know crime in the USA has actually fallen a lot recently?
Crime statistics in the USA have actually fallen a lot recently. What's your explanation of this? You didn't by any chance watch The Wire? You don't by any chance read the New York Times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/nyregion/no-room-for-disse...
The former captains spoke of an unrelenting, often unethical pressure to manipulate crime statistics. In addition, the professors studied police and health data and found weird divergences. City hospital data shows a 90 percent increase in emergency room visits for assaults from 1999 to 2006. But police data for the same period records a nearly 50 percent decrease in assaults.
See also:
A friend offered this: "Clearly the hospitals are just padding their books so it looks like they'll need more funding."
He's talking about late 50s, early 60s. We're not there yet. (NYC used to be safer than London. Yes, same time.)
The late 60s had a huge crime jump in the US. The 70s were even worse. We're working back from that.
Most of them applied if you were black, however (or in the language of the time, "Negro").
But not all. Casablanca (70 years old this year) includes Rick advising the Germans "there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."
Why don't you consider the option that americans just screwed this good idea up?
And substantial portions of America were still "no-go zones" for non-white Americans, and had been for generations. You might want to look into the term "sundown town".
I could not see this as a submission on its own but it seems relevant here. As the US (white) population ages, it seems that immigration has played an incredible part without anyone noticing - its less about race now, then about age, but the dividing lines might not be drawn that way.
And we all know what can go wrong if you are looking at the wrong question for your answers.
[edit - wanted to emphasise age context more]
Here's his personal site: http://www.kokogiak.com/index.php
On the same line, I hope 50 years from now, people will be amused that marijuana was illegal just like I feel amused when I heard about prohibition.
"I don't see any similarity between the two. Gays were trying to obtain equal rights. The right to be a black man and vote is one that no one has, not just black people."
Straight people have the right to marry. Gay people don't. Same exact issue. If you're not gay, you by default don't need the right to marry same-sex, just like if you're not black, you don't need the right to be black and vote.
Gays have benefited from the liberalism and civil rights movement in that the majority of the population doesn't hate them for being different. But you can't deny that they're being harrased, beaten, killed, pushed to suicide, thrown from their homes, and subjected to punishments designed to "fix" them. It's doesn't have to be "black had it worse", the point of the matter is gays have it bad.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth since you didn't come out and directly state your viewpoint, I'm just trying to show how fallacious the words you did say are. Especially when we're on the verge of starting things down the right path. Both blacks and gays have been are are being violently persecuted for something they can't change. Telling gays to marry straight is highly offensive.
My comment was a response to someone comparing the two plights. For me, the differences are worth discussing.
Gay people have never experienced the maltreatment that blacks have in this country.
Then you come back with:
I never said that gays weren't treated badly.
Gays have been routinely beaten up and occasionally murdered for decades. Many have been rejected by their own families.
Freehunter is right, of course -- this is not about comparing who is the most persecuted, as if only the winner of such a comparison had the right to complain about it. It's about seeing prejudice for what it is.
I think that if you really looked at what a lot of gay people have gone through, you would not so facilely deny any similarity between that and what blacks have experienced. Of course there are differences; they are different situations. But there are also very substantial similarities. It appears that you don't want to look at the similarities, and I think you should ask yourself why not.
EDITED TO ADD:
You should really talk to some gay black people. The ones I have spoken to about this have all said the experiences aren't very different at all.
The right to marry (publicaly declare love and live as a family unit) is one that straight couples have and gay couples do not. Equal rights.
If marriage is supposed to have something to do with love (which hasn't always been the case historically), saying that someone can't marry another person they love because of their race is a racist law. Given such a law, you could say "No one has the right to marry someone of another race, it's not just black people!" That would be missing the point.
Saying someone can't marry another person they love because of their sexual orientation is almost exactly the same thing.
"The right to write with their left hand is a right that no one has, not just left-handed people."
Do you not see how that would be unfair, not to let people write with whichever hand they prefer, just because the majority happens to be right-handed? What would justify imposing the majority's preference on the minority?
Strangely the sixties doesn't seem that long ago for me personally. I wonder how the contemporaries of Kennedy thought about 1912, when there were few cars/planes, no radio, no television, no talking movies, no color polaroids, William Howard Taft was president and Europe/Russia/China/Japan was ruled by Emperors.
Thank you for coming to the US. I think of the United States as a country that belongs to the whole world, and it really makes me happy when people from other countries like America enough to move here.
As a visitor from India, you're making our country a stronger, better place. I hope you decide to stay.
Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit
As bad a American segregation (or South African apartheid) was, it was nothing compared to the Indian caste system, which is still practiced today.
You can still talk to older people (say, people in their 60s) in Los Angeles, who chose the house they now live in because that neighborhood allowed blacks, asians, or mixed-race couples to buy property, and other nearby neighborhoods did not allow it.
In other words, even these blatant and widespread effects of racism are not past history by any means.
Note: I'm not disagreeing with what you've said, just trying to add some historical background.
http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_051512.mp3/view
I particularly enjoyed the interviews with R. Buckminster Fuller (18:50) and Mahalia Jackson (24:40). If you have just 5 minutes, listen to the one with Jackson which is about the racism of the time.
Sorry, there doesn't appear to be a transcript. The first interview starts at 13:30.
I started to tear up several times, staring into some of the photos—and I realized how alike our world is today. We have a lot of work to do, here.
Indeed, and only by an incredibly narrow margin did we escape many orders of magnitudes more suffering and cruelty - we really did come awfully close to the edge during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Good news! You'd be wrong. The world is safer and more peaceful than it's ever been. This book presents the facts on it: http://www.amazon.com/Winning-War-Decline-Conflict-Worldwide...
The difference between then and now is that we have so much media to saturate our minds. It seems like it's worse.
50 years ago, some countries were moving ahead with science/technology and some were in the midst of war crisis. 50 years later, its still the same.
Picture 44 - Anyone able to locate this on Google Maps? I can see a sign for "Viginia Stree", but I'm having toruble finding the place.
Here's the same street, but I need to work harder for a better location.
(http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Sebastian+Strasse+berlin&...)
Lol Google, your urls.
Click the chain 'link' icon, then check "Short URL"
The monorail only goes down 5th Avenue, so I didn't have too much detective work to do :)
Use j/k keys to navigate
Personally, I would predict incompatible formats with no decryption program available. Will Photoshop and .psd still be around in 50 years?
I guess most consumer formats are pretty broadly supported by open software, most of the hard to access stuff will be pretty specialized.
Except the Mongolian photo. How did it make there?
I, for one, would not. But "The World" in the title seems unwarranted. Just as it does for many "World Series" that only apply to the US, even if everybody deems American teams of sport X to be clearly above the rest.
I went to Moscow and Leningrad in 1986. Just buying things - you queue to point at what you want and then you get a ticket. You take the ticket to a second queue, to pay for the item and get a receipt. You join a third queue with your receipt to collect the item.
I'd love to read more about that time, especially from people who lived there.
But as for receipts, we have this system till now at some stores, in car or computer parts stores, except that you write down item codes on a sheet of paper by yourself, or select them in a database, then you go to cashier to pay and get the receipt, and then you go and get the items from a guy that doesn't deal with money. Don't you have such buerocracy?
There were food supermarkets (универсамы) where you collected items into shopping carts and payed at the exit.
In 1986 there were just enormous queues and deficit of everything due to reasons out of scope for now...
So, OK, there was a bit of a focus on the US, and countries that the US was heavily involved in (like Vietnam and Cuba). But for you to claim that this is US centric except for the Mongolia photo is a bit unfair.
And why would you expect something else from an American magazine? Of course it's going to be the world from a US perspective, as it's a view of the world from a US perspective.