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Lewis Wickes' photograph of a few children enjoying a bit of ice cream on a hot day, 1910. (NYPL)

1. America's first ice cream shop was located on Dock Street** (roughly today's Pearl Street) in 1774.  The British confectioner Philip Lenzi advertised ice cream of "any sort", along with a host of treats, including sugar plums, jams and sweetmeats.

2.  Hanover Square (near Stone and Pearl streets) was the center of commerce in colonial New York, and apparently of confections as well.  In 1777, in the midst of British-occupied New York during the Revolutionary War, Lenzi moved his shop up into Hanover Square next to another ice cream shop owned by Joseph Corree at 120 Hanover Square. [source]

3. George Washington and his wife Martha were huge fans of ice cream.  During the first year of Washington's presidency, back in 1789, when the seat of government resided in New York, Martha would make several batches of it from the Washington's home at One Cherry Street.  She sometimes complained of the lack of fresh cream, sometimes serving "unusually stale and rancid" desserts at her weekly tea parties.  One well-repeated legend states that the Washington's spent over $700 on ice cream desserts in the summer of 1789.


Above: A 1803 map of Vauxhall Garden, at Broome Street between the Bowery and Broadway, a lovely place to enjoy a bowl of ice cream in early New York

4. Manhattan's pleasure gardens -- early precursors to the modern park -- became instrumental in spreading the joy of ice cream.  The aforementioned Joseph Corree opened the Mount Vernon Garden at Broadway and Leonard Street in 1800, a few months after ice cream-lovin' Washington died at his estate in Mount Vernon.

On top of the many festive entertainments at the garden -- fireworks, theatricals, topiary, tableaux vivant -- Corree also offered ice cream for sale.  Other popular pleasure gardens of the day, such Vauxhall Garden and Niblo's Garden, would follow suit.

5. Delmonico's, before it became the finest name in restaurant dining in New York in the 19th century, got its start as a small confectionery shop on 23 William Street in 1827 which featured ice cream on its menu. (Learn more about Delmonico's from my podcast on its history.)


6. Ice cream vendors were on the streets of New York as early as the 1820s, the best way for less affluent people to enjoy the dessert.  Within a couple decades, of course, the 'pleasure gardens' would lose their patina of class and become playgrounds for poorer New Yorkers.  In 1852, one garden near the Bowery was described as "a sort of ice-creamery, and general rendezvous for the Bowery fashionables." [source]

At right: A Century Magazine illustration from 1901 of a New York ice cream vendor or 'hokey pokey man' (NYPL)

7. Ice cream saloons, by mid-19th century, were aplenty along the main thoroughfares of New York, experimenting with different kinds of production.  One saloon, Parkinson's on Broadway, claims to have invented pistachio ice cream.  Another, the Patent Steam Ice Cream Saloon, named for its steam-operated freezing unit, catered to the women of the middle class, "the wives and daughters of the substantial tradesmen, mechanics and artisans of the day," according to New York by Gas-Light.

A Brooklyn confectioner ad from 1876:


8. The hokey pokey men, the nickname for one-cent ice cream street vendors, were briefly hindered by the Ice Cream Strike of 1913, a walkout by all 2,500 members of the Ice Cream Workers Union in New York, effectively shutting down the production of ice cream, especially in the Lower East Side.  The strike lasted several weeks.

Below: A Macy's ad in 1913 for a home ice-cream maker:



9. Ice Cream Profiteering or Newspaper Self-Promotion?  After the war, many merchants continued to sell massively overpriced ice cream.  The Evening World reported in 1921 that "profits from ice cream range from 500 to 1,000 percent" at a survey of local ice cream vendors.  "In few articles of food has there been found any greater evidence of extortion from the consumer." [source]

A few days later, the newspaper extolled upon its own crack reporting, claiming that ice cream prices were going down because of their investigations.  "Hundreds of manufacturers and retails have already cut prices," the World boasted.

10. Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream was not created anywhere near Scandinavia, but rather in the Bronx, the product of two Polish-Jewish confectioners Reuben and Rose Mattus.  The official reason for the name was "to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship to which he remained dedicated." Reuben later admitted, "We wanted people to take a second look and say, 'Is this imported?'"

The first Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop, which opened in 1976, is located at 120 Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. The store is still going strong.

EXTRA: Frozen yogurt was the original cronut.  The trendy dessert was first sold over the counter in New York at Bloomingdale's Department Store in the early 1970s.  As far as I can tell, the first actual yogurt store in the city -- the first of many -- was the Dannon Yogurt Store at 207 East 86th Street, opening in February 1975.

That was the year that New Yorkers first went WILD for frozen yogurt, well at least according to the New York Times (but you know how they are with trend stories!)

Yogurt: "It's the biggest thing since hamburgers and chicken," according to one fast-food executive in 1976.

**There were two Dock Streets back in old New York, so it's possible (although more unlikely) the original shop could have been on the other one, which is near today's Water Street and Coenties Slip.

For more sweet New York City history, check out my prior articles on:
-- New York and the history of soda fountains
-- New York, World War I and the history of the doughnut

At Comic-Con, no-one knows you are Ray Park.

jetgreguar:

this is still my favorite one

Mine too.

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The most #viral movie to hit the small screen in the history of television (probably) was last week's SyFy original flick Sharknado. Have you somehow avoided the mass hypesteria that surrounded its premiere last Friday, like our very own John "I feel smug in that I still don't know what that is" Del Signore? In short, it's a movie about a SHARK TORNADO that hits Los Angeles and Tara Reid is in it. And now a sequel is on the way that will bring the terrible graphics and D-list cast to New York City. [ more › ]

Trends are moving in the right direction, says a report from the Education Trust. Colleges that succeed in closing gaps, it says, make student success a priority.

What would happen if Sterling Archer was Captain of the USS Enterprise? (SLVimeo)

The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure [PDF, there is a Word file direct from the DoD] is 167 pages of stories of elaborate frauds, scams, and abuses of power in the US government. Interestingly, the sarcasm-filled document is also published by the US government, to help illustrate how government workers get in trouble. Freakonomics radio has a amusing and interesting discussion with the Encyclopedia's editor and founding editor [link goes to transcript].

Some samples:

An offshore safety inspector found much of the Government's equipment to be in need of repairs to meet safety standards. He then referred the business to his brother-in-law's repair shop. The rig operators smelled a rat and called the F.B.I. They discovered that, in return for each referral, the brother-in-law was treating the inspector to an evening with a lady of dubious morals. The case was brought to trial. In his defense, the inspector claimed that he had not received a "thing of value" in return for the referral. The judge didn't buy it – and neither did his wife.

and:

For a period of several years, two top executives at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center had an astonishing work record—they took nearly no vacation time at all. The reason, investigators soon discovered, was that the executives had been taking "religious compensatory time" instead. Curiously, the executives' absences seldom fell on any traditionally observed religious holidays. Instead, investigators found that the pair's so-called religious observances took place on days when they had medical appointments, sightseeing trips, and golf tournaments. Asked whether golf tournaments could be considered religious observances, one executive replied, "They could be for some people."

by Choire Sicha

"The Real Tooth Fairy" scheme is one of the great branding bombs of all time, with negligible web traffic to their site and all of 856 Twitter followers. Now the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has found the outfit's original investor pitch video, and it is a delightful hodgepodge of low production values, virulent sexism and childhood "goodness" brainwashing. SUPER GROSS. And it's hosted by the CEO of Fandango! Oh gosh it's bad. The Campaign is on high alert—"Until now, the Tooth Fairy was one of the few iconic children's fantasy figures that escaped being captured, branded, and monetized"—but we think the kids are safe. This thing ain't going anywhere and the hideous, hideous unbelievable website is such a hot mess that no child could make sense of it.

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The post "The Real Tooth Fairy" Fiasco: Sexism For Tweens Actually Isn't Paying Off For Once appeared first on The Awl.

Photos from Manoug Manougian's collection.

In the 1960s, as the US and the USSR began a decades-long war of nerve-wracking almosts on the edge of space, a group of Lebanese scientists and engineers were quietly contemplating their own foray into the final frontier.

This “quiet contemplation” developed into the only thriving space program ever established in the Middle East. Then it disappeared entirely from collective memory. It’s as if an entire generation contracted selective amnesia between 1960 and 1967—no one remembers the small nation's ambitious stab at making it to space. That is, until two Lebanese filmmakers, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, decided to remind the world of the effort. They recently produced a feature documentary that breathed life back into the Lebanese Rocket Society.

They capture the moment when, in 1960, while Lebanon was still reeling from the high of independence and Arabism still lingered in the cafes and publishing houses, Beirut’s Haigazian University began working on a project that would make Lebanon a serious player in the space race for the next seven years. The project was the brainchild of mathematics and physics professor Manoug Manougian, who, on an autumn day in 1960 put up a sign on the student bulletin board that read “Do You Want to be Part of the Haigazian College Rocket Society?”

Manougian is now a distinguished professor at the University of South Florida. He's also the first man to launch a rocket in the Middle East. The rockets were called Cedars, in reference to the cedar trimmings on the Lebanese flag. It took me three weeks, but I finally managed to get ahold of Manougian, and he recounted the strange and heartbreaking story of the Haigazian College Rocket Society–now called the Lebanese Rocket Society.

Motherboard: How did you go about getting approval to start the rocket society? What was the process like?

Manoug Manougian: I was teaching at Haigazian College—it was a college back then—in 1960 and I was assigned to be in charge of the faculty of science. Since talk of the world was about rockets and space exploration, I suggested to the president of the university that the emphasis of the society be rocketry and space exploration. I changed its name to the Haigazian College Rocket Society and we proceeded.

How did your first launch go? What happened exactly?

What happened was, we had a rocket a little over a meter long and we were launching it. It was very primitive at the time. We didn’t have any money to work with. There was simply a metal rod that we used and stuck in the ground. The area was desolate, no houses, nothing, so we knew it was safe to launch in that direction. But then at ignition, the rocket moved the launcher backwards, to a mountain behind us. That’s where it landed; mere steps outside the oak doors of a Greek orthodox church. I then received a call from lieutenant Wehbe.

How did you first feel when you first received a call from the military? Were you concerned?

It was strange. I met lieutenant Wehbe; we were both at a hotel in Beirut, for different things. He called me and said that he’s interested in what we were doing and I was very excited by the fact that he was, his field was actually in ballistics. So I asked him if he would join our group and permit us to use the military workshop and he said yes to both of them. From then on he would work with us on the project. He became a captain during his time with us.

On what grounds did General Wehbe initially contact you?

His main concern was that we launch in a safe area; a controlled environment. There was no written statement about that, they simply said you can launch in this location and in this direction and that’s what we did. In fact they assigned a beautiful area overlooking the Mediterranean, it used to be their artillery range. There were no planes overhead and no ships in the vicinity of where we were launching. The military was in charge of that.  

Dbayeh: launch site just outside of Beirut

What was the area called in Beirut?

Dbayeh. It’s a beautiful place; we had some great times there. This is way before you were born, the city was absolutely beautiful, the country is beautiful, the beaches are beautiful and the mountains are beautiful. We were hoping it would stay that way.

When did you start launching from Dbayeh then?

The first Cedar to launch from Dbayeh was Cedar 2C. We had several Cedar 2s. The exciting thing about is that is the cedar 2 series were all 2-stage rockets. We had to find a way to separate the 2 stages. At the time we had no remote control or anything like that so we had to use physics and mathematics to affect the separation of the two stages. That was what the society was all about; teaching the students to work with these sciences and put them together, and it worked beautifully.

Why do you think the project became a huge national campaign?

It was like wildfire. While everyone was reading about what the Soviet Union and the U.S were doing, there is Lebanon, a tiny country, that was launching rockets that were reaching considerable distances. There was this feeling among the Lebanese in general, that this was a Lebanese project; they became very proud of it. Large crowds would come and watch the launchings. Once we were successful, the military thought, wait a minute, this seems viable for something more than just launching rockets. Military personnel would come and watch the launches.

We launched towards the evening, so people could see the first and second separation and we all rejoiced and had a great party after that; it was beautiful.

Around when did the military began showing serious interest?

Around 1962, at that point, they would ask  “if we were to put a certain load on the nose cone how far would it go? How accurate would it be?” At this point I would stop them and say “This is not a military operation, rather it is as scientific venture for me and my students to understand what rocketry is all about” I felt that there interest changed after 62. I understood that, General Wehbe was a military man, so he would have to look at this from a military point of view. And he understood that my students and I were scientists.

How did you feel when you came back to Beirut? You haven’t been there since 1966. How did you find it?

I was very glad to be there, I haven’t been there in a long time. My wife and I were there in April. Both of us were very glad to be there and we were saddened. We were saddened to see many of the buildings with bullet holes all over them. Why would a small country, such as Lebanon, have its people divided to the point they would kill each other? But we still had a very good visit.

What was your most successful launch?

Cedar 4. It was the one that was placed on the Lebanese postage stamps commemorating Lebanon’s 21st birthday. I wasn’t actually present for the launching of Cedar 3 and Cedar 4, although I designed the two. Our calculations showed that it had a range of more than 500 KM, depending on the angle. They were fairly successful; they achieved the projected distances we had. For me, however, the most important one was cedar 8; that was a powerful rocket with a range of 125 miles.

That was the last one I launched. Just before launching we got information from the president's office to make sure that it wasn’t directed towards Cyprus, because Cyprus was complaining. 

Sure enough they did go beyond Cyprus. It landed close to a British destroyer off the coast. [laughs] Thankfully no one was hurt. I didn’t know this until I got involved in the movie! [sighs] But in our last launching, we had flares, people were watching. We launched towards the evening, so people could see the first and second separation and we all rejoiced and had a great party after that; it was beautiful.

At the end of the documentary, Hadjithomas and Joreige, create an animated version of what Lebanon would be like if the project had succeeded. Do you think that the success of the project would have changed Lebanon’s history in those crucial years?

Absolutely, I think it was wonderful of Joana and Khalil to end the movie with that. Hopefully, it awakened some of the Lebanese to what could have been done if we could have pursued that instead of war and destruction. Of course, things were getting intense at the time. In 1966, I was advised to take my family and leave. On the one hand, I only had a Masters degree and I didn’t want to wait too long to get my doctorate. At the same time I realized the emphasis was changing from a scientific venture to possibly a military one. And the possibility of war was looming; the whole region was in turmoil. We were certain that there was going to be a war. Three months later we had the 1967 war, war broke out before we landed in Texas.

What terminated the project? It was partly due to the 1967 war that put a dent in every Arab state in the region that was involved, but was it also the fact that there was a vested military interest that began to rear its head?

I wanted to continue my education and there was no choice but to terminate the project. But the military wanted to continue and of course I had no control over what the military wanted to do, they launched one more rocket after I left, and I had nothing to do with that, not even the design. Unlike the previous cedars, three and four, which were launched to celebrate Independence Day, the one launched in 1967 was totally a military one. At that point the government of France and the U.S and Britain advised President Chehab to shut down the project.

So these countries started getting involved in the project after you left. Did they contribute to the launching of the rockets?

Not financially. France sent us experimental propellers, we used them for the last three rockets that we launched while I was still there.  We had no help from the U.S, France or Britain, we were just students figuring out what to do based on the experiments we were performing. As I said the only thing that we finally got, were the propellers that France sent us from 64-67.

I find it quite ironic that the project began plummeting when France started propelling the rockets, Britain got interested in the project and the military began nudging it in their direction.

That’s a good observation. It was very exciting and we were ready to work very hard at achieving what we were trying to achieve, so long as it was for science. When the military wanted to get into the project we were very cautious, none of us, not me nor my students, wanted to be part of a military venture. I personally am against war and destruction and violence of any kind. I want the best for Lebanon; I want it to be a shining example for the rest of the Arab world. You can use science for good, not necessarily for war. You can have chemicals to kill people, you can also you use chemicals to improve their health. You can use atomic power for energy or you can use it to kill people. You have that choice. You always have that choice. I think that Lebanon being a tiny country as it is, as beautiful as it is, it has a wonderful opportunity to take on this aspect of its history, to excel in science and technology and other things.

Why do you think there is such a large gap in the Lebanese collective memory where the Lebanese Rocket Society should be?

Well, one of the photographers of the whole project, had taken hundreds of photos but he said he only has maybe eight or ten of them left. His brother, his relatives, burned them, because if you recall at the time, Israel invaded Lebanon, and they were afraid of possessing anything that showed that they were involved in rocketry. So there were trying to hide the things as if it never happened. They were scared of arrest or imprisonment.

I have two or three large boxes of photos and newspaper clippings of press relating to the society that no one else has. Even in The Daily Star, l’Orient le Jour and al-Nahar and some Armenian newspapers, they had a hard time finding these articles in their archives because some of them were destroyed. I’m looking at some of them now; they’re all over the place. Every now and then I revisit these boxes and read what the papers were saying about us.

@r_aqrabawi

 

Ever logged in to Tumblr on your iPhone or iPad? How about while logged in on a public Wi-Fi connection? If you answered yes to any of the above, you may want to change your Tumblr password ASAP. 

Tumblr has just made users aware of a serious privacy compromise that enables anybody with the ability to “sniff” traffic on public Wi-Fi networks to view Tumblr users’ passwords in unencrypted plain-text format. The problem arose because the iPad and iPhone apps fail to log users in through a secure server. 

An official Tumblr announcement urges Tumblr users to change their passwords immediately if they’ve used the app, and to download the newest version of the app as soon as possible:

If you’ve been using these apps, you should also update your password on Tumblr and anywhere else you may have been using the same password. It’s also good practice to use different passwords across different services by using an app like 1Password or LastPass.

Please know that we take your security very seriously and are tremendously sorry for this lapse and inconvenience.

According to the Register, a reader found the bug by chance while evaluating the Tumblr apps for suitable use on his employer’s smartphones. 

It’s a surprisingly enormous security hole for the Yahoo-bought company to overlook. Anybody who has ever accessed Tumblr over public Wi-Fi from a mobile device, whether at an airport, a coffee shop, or a library, is at risk. 

Fortunately, Tumblr users don’t seem to be reporting any serious consequences. The Tumblr #password and #security tags abound with users spreading the news, but not with sob stories about compromised accounts. Even if a user does find her account has been compromised, it will be hard to peg it on this security breach in particular.

 Darren Nisbett  - Broken Doll from " Chernobyl’s Zone of Alienation "

You cannot like yourself

Apparently people have been using the Pacific Rim's website's Design-a-Jaeger feature without the absolute solemnity it requires. The results have been collected by the 4th String Jaegers Tumblr, and they range from funny to weird to gut-bustingly brilliant. Here are a few of our favorites here, but hit the link for the rest.

Read more...

Long Island College Hospital (LICH). Photo: MK Metz

Attention folks who live, work or play in:

Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, Vinegar Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Red Hook, Columbia District, Navy Yard, Williamsburg, and related areas (Tech Triangle, Brooklyn Bridge Park, BQE):

There are no emergency medical services serving these areas.

If you are sick or feel you are likely to need emergency health services in the foreseeable future, please make every attempt to relocate to an area that provides these services.

SUNY Downstate has banned ambulances from bringing patients to Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Cobble Hill in order to hasten the closure and sale of LICH.

Brooklyn Hospital Center's ER has been on diversion for the last two days due to the heat wave.

Methodist Hospital is overcrowded, with ambulances stacked outside the ER.

Paramedics warn the system is cracking.

If you become ill and live or work near LICH, WALK into the ER if you are able. It is fully staffed and the doctors and nurses there will provide full care. (SUNY personnel will attempt to intimidate you into leaving the hospital, but you do not have to leave if you don't want to. The Dept. of Health inspects LICH daily and certifies that everything is up to snuff.)

More here.

All LICH posts here.

Go to McBrooklyn's HOME PAGE.

Comic creators Matt Fraction (Casanova) and Mike Allred (Madman) make their ultimate summer playlist and discuss everything from Brian Wilson to robots.

McDonald's has a new website dedicated to showing employees how to properly budget their paychecks. Death and Taxes takes a look and concludes: "McDonalds' suggested budget for employees shows just how impossible it is to get by on minimum wage." It also notably excludes heat, food and gas.

Spin magazine's GIRLY SHOW: The oral history of Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville.' It's 20 years old now.

Phair: I remember some guy had come back to my apartment after the bars closed, and we were going to get high or something, and this happened a lot, and I took great pleasure in this. They'd be like, "Blah blah my music, I'm going to do this, blah blah." And then I would be like, "Oh, I'm recording a record too," and they'd be like, "Really?" I'd put it on and they'd be, like, "Oh my god, you really are recording a record." And that was always a proud moment, because I could blow them away because it was a totally good record.

Former Lucky editor Kim France has collected reminiscences about the record on her blog Girls of of a Certain Age: How Exile in Guyville Changed Our Lives.

And Jessica Grose over at Slate's Double X blog takes a (shocker!) contrarian view with her piece Exile in Guyville Is 20. You Should Listen to Liz Phair's Other Albums.

(Previously: A 15th anniversary post for Exile.)

It's not often that ancient Chinese texts about divining the future and social media meet. It's even less often that they meet in the form of a giant light show that takes place on the plastic bubble facade of a former Olympic venue. But this is what takes place in artist Jennifer Wen Ma and lighting designer Zheng Jianwei's Nature and Man in Rhapsody of Light at the Water Cube.

The installation was unveiled last month at the Beijing National Aquatics Center (known as the Water Cube) and uses a computer program to translate the I Ching and the collective mood of the Chinese people, through the emoticons they use on microblogging site Weibo, into a real-time light display on the building's blistered exterior.

Read an interview with technology director Guillermo Acevedo at The Creators Project.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

The collision between adoption and the Internet is complex. While adoption as an institution has been historically shrouded in secrecy, the Internet is all about openness and accessibility, whether we like it or not. So what happens as the two collide, and how does it affect those who are searching for identity, for information, for family?

I was adopted in 1987 via a closed adoption. Shortly after the proceedings were finalized, my birth father requested a letter from my parents detailing my new life. Other than that, I have not heard from my birth family since. In fact, the only details I know about them fit on the back and front of a sheet of printer paper. I know he liked contact sports and she had blue eyes. I know that there is a history of heart disease and cancer written into my genes. But beyond that, my birth parents are ghosts. And I’m totally okay with that.

But plenty of adoptees are not. Many across the globe want to know where they came from and want to meet the people whose genetic material they share. Fortunately for them, the Internet in its infinite capacities can facilitate that search, and do so much quicker than traditional routes. Unfortunately, little is known about how easier methods of tracing ancestry and tracking down long-lost birth parents affect the institution of adoption as a whole.

In late 2012, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released what may be the first research report on the effects of the Internet on adoption. The report, called “Untangling the Web,” argues that closed adoption, like the one I had, is a thing of the past. Many laws that restrict access to information, including original birth certificates, have been obviated by the searching capabilities of the Internet. Traditionally, an adoption agency or an adoptive family could be a gatekeeper between a child and the biological family, but now those powers have been stripped. Anyone with a Facebook account and some basic Google skills can find anyone else if they are determined enough.

The question then is whether or not the convergence of the Internet and adoption requires its own approach towards privacy. Is this situation unique enough from all other concerns to require its own toolbox?

Adam Pertman thinks so. As the executive director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute and the author of the book Adoption Nation, Pertman believes that more needs to be done to regulate the intersection of adoption and the Internet. To be clear, he believes that the move towards openness is a positive one. “People are entitled to know one another,” he said.

But he’s wary of the immediacy the Internet offers and the lack of preparation of those who embark on finding information and finding family. He notes that search before the Internet took time and time “forced people to think about what comes next.” Now, “you can press a button and, suddenly, you’re reunited with every birth family member in your life! And you’ve never thought about it for a second, other than to look up a name because you knew how.”

In one pretty high-profile case, Redditors helped an adopted child in Denver track down his birth parents.

There is tons of anecdotal evidence of people finding their biological families or their adopted children via social media, forums, or search engines. One man posted a picture of his biological family on Reddit, along with a small amount of relatively superficial information. The site’s users found his family the very same day. A birth mother found her sixteen-year-old biological son on Facebook and was able to reconnect after, well, a lifetime apart. We are fascinated by these stories because they epitomize the power of our virtual world: we can break down barriers and find people who were supposed to be securely hidden behind legal frameworks.

Like most things on the Internet and in life, this new capability is a mixed bag. On one hand, it has helped pushed the entire world of adoption towards more openness, which is seen as a boon for all those involved. Birth families, who are usually the most vulnerable in the process, are now being seen in a positive light as extended families, instead of not being seen at all. Free lines of communication between biological and adoptive families allow for questions to be asked and information to be shared. It can give an adoptee a more complete sense of who they are, normalizing the topic of adoption and decreasing the likelihood that their identity will become a source of friction.

On the other hand, search and potential reconnection has become such a speedy process that there may be little time for reflection. Lines may be crossed and respect may be violated. Birth parents who have moved on may not have told newer people in their lives about the child they gave up. Adoptees may not have room in their lives to accept a new nexus of relatives. While these issues have always been present, the haste with which Internet sleuthing operates means that toes can be stepped on much quicker.

In Pertman's mind, now that these issues have been raised, it is the duty of adoption agencies, legislative agencies, service providers, even Google and Microsoft to step in and regulate. “It’s sort of obvious once you hear it, that there’s reason for concern and reason to do something,” he said. Specific recommendations from his Institute’s report include instructing policy and law enforcement officials to monitor online adoption activity, encouraging social media and other Internet companies to re-examine relevant services, and repealing laws that restrict access to information since the Internet has circumvented their purpose.

Search and potential reconnection has become such a speedy process that there may be little time for reflection.

But not everyone agrees with the notion that adoption requires its own special rules. Rita Taddonio, director of the Adoption Resource Center at Spence-Chapin Adoption Services, the agency that facilitated my adoption, thinks that regulation is the wrong way to go. It's a truism for sure, but the Internet is kind of unstoppable.

“I don’t think it’s realistic frankly to say that you’re going to be able to regulate social media and the Internet,” she said. “If people are intent on finding somebody, they’re going to be able to find them. I tend to think that when we try and regulate something, people find ways around it—in history, throughout time, no matter what we’re talking about.”

Certainly, she agrees with the suggestion that laws need to be changed to allow for better accessibility to information, but ultimately, Taddonio believes that the best way to deal with these issues is by discussing the idea of adoption from the very beginning Then everything else, including the proper approach to utilizing the Internet for search purposes, will fall into place.

“Adoption is just another way of forming a family,” Taddonio said. “I just think the key thing for a relationship with a parent and a child is communication so that if they find somebody or if they’re found, they’re going to be talking to you about it.” For her, the Internet doesn’t pose any extraordinary issues, but is rather just one more factor that can be made a little less stressful through conversation and normalization.

So it seems that whether this confluence is its own beast is up for debate. What isn’t up for debate is that adoption has changed profoundly over the last twenty years, at least partially in response to the Internet behemoth. Where we go from here is dependent on the individuals involved—biological families, adoptees, adoptive families, agencies, and so on—but it’s clear that honesty, accessibility, and general openness are here to stay.

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New York is poised to endure one of the hottest weeks in 18 years, as today is expected to be the third of seven uninterrupted days featuring temperatures of 90 degrees or higher. The Health Department recommends drinking water, turning on your A/C or finding a cooling center, and avoiding unnecessary, strenuous activity. Here are some additional tips to help you beat the heat. [ more › ]

If you're having a hankering for insects or mealworms this afternoon, you may want to stop by the Ferry Building where such snacks are now available in handy snack pouches from the La Cocina kiosk. [ more › ]

The greatest – and last – question that will ever be asked is, “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased”. It follows then, that the worst – and possibly first – question ever asked is, “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively increased?” While for the former question there’s insufficient data for a meaningful answer, we’ve found the answer to the latter question. It’s a machine designed to waste energy, and the exact opposite of a perpetual motion machine.

The machine is set up along two stories of a building, with cables, pulleys, and levers constantly pressing an elevator button. The device is powered by the elevator doors opening, so when the elevator opens of the first floor, the part of the machine on the second story calls the elevator. This repeats ad infinitum.

Wait. It gets better. Inside the elevator car, there’s a modified printing calculator also powered by the elevator doors. Every time the doors open, it calculates the amount of energy consumed for each cycle of the elevator. It’s a hydraulic elevator without a countersink, so moving down is effectively free, but each cycle of the elevator still uses up 11.8 Kilojoules of the universe’s energy. To make the build a complete waste of resources, the printing calculator neatly empties it’s printed tape into a wastepaper bin.

We’re tempted to call this a [Rube Goldberg] machine, but that doesn’t seem to fit this machine that does absolutely nothing. Calling it a useless box is more fitting, but this is far, far more impressive than a box that turns itself off. Whatever it is, you can see a video of it in action below.

Filed under: misc hacks

The Nazis called them "Night Witches" because the whooshing noise their plywood and canvas airplanes made reminded the Germans of the sound of a witch's broomstick. Ms. Popova was a member of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces during WWII. Composed entirely of women, most in their teens and early 20's, the Night Witches flew over 23,000 missions with only 40 2-woman crews. Popova herself flew over 850 missions and was shot down several times.

Seriously now. Why don't people in central Oklahoma have basements to protect them from tornadoes? The answer, according to the engineers and geologists I spoke with for a column at Ensia magazine, is almost entirely cultural. In fact, people who study disasters say that all natural disasters are really cultural ones — created when environmental forces run headlong into complex human social systems. And that presents an interesting question: How do you protect people from tornadoes in a state where most people don't want a basement?

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