The Brownbag

Brand new comic for the Brownbag by Mark Alpert and Gary Kwan

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By Noel Agnew

Good government requires foresight – looking into the future. Apparently not a lot of that went on as we careered into financial meltdown. So where will America be in 50 or 100 years from now? Authors have been keen to weigh in on our future prospects, especially in terms of the economy, population growth, and security.

In his new book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, Joel Kotkin says that there will be 400 million people in America by 2050, so we better get used to the idea. This book, however, does not forecast gloomy conditions with cities bursting at the seams and lack of job opportunities.

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by Noel Agnew

On this day in 1904 the city of New York got its first official subway, riding from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Run by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (even though it only served Manhattan when it opened), it attracted 150,000 passengers on it’s first evening of service. The track ran for 9.1 miles and served 28 stations. This marks the beginning of the current New York subway system and the MTA, but there were other underground rail experiments before 1904. Fully 60 years earlier the Long Island Railroad ran trains under Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and in 1870 the inventor Alfred E. Beachhad had a subway car blown by a giant fan for 312 feet under lower Broadway. 

The ornate station at City Hall where the first IRT subway journey started is no longer in use due to its curved nature which made it impractical to lengthen. It was shut down in 1945 and its entrances sealed. It is not quite lost to the public, however, experienced straphangers knowing that today’s 6 train still uses the old City Hall to turn from its downtown to uptown route. Just stay on the train at the last stop to do the loop (and hope you don’t get yelled at).

 by Mery Diaz

With  the era of Friendster, Myspace and Facebook we were introduced to a whole new and exiting way of interacting with one another. We regained the long lost friend from  Ms. Lee’s 4th grade class whom we would otherwise have never seen  again for the rest of our lives. We were able to keep up with all 500 hundred of our “friends” without  ever so much as calling them once in 2  years. Their pictures and updates tell us all we  need to know  about their 5th baby, their new plant, and checking out their new relationship that will last for all of 2 weeks. All good and fun we could say. However, with the convenience of  social networking comes great responsibility and  it quickly became apparent that people love to  abuse this power of instant gratification. And these same people just seem to love to “lose it! ” on facebook!

Mental meltdowns, “anger” issues,  and  axis 2 diagnosis of the personality disorder variety  just seem to shine brightly on the newsfeeds. Next time you are on facebook, and G-d help us following some tweeter action, notice how the updates range from the painfully mundane and entirely uninteresting comments “ I just ate cheerios and breathed” to the wise and deep thoughts by Jack Handy type “ seek and you shall find,  be kind rewind my friend”  to the more  colorfully dysfunctional type and my personal love-to-hate favorite “ my life is an abyss of nothingness, no one loves me  and  I will start breaking things if no one leaves a comment on my status”. For serious?!

If you are a culprit of “losing it” (because it may just happen to the best of us) you may reconsider status updates as the venue for said ”moments” in your life. If there are more than three of these ”moments” at any given time, Houston you have a problem. However,  If your newsfeed is the victim of numerous “losing it” friends, I suggest constantly updating your settings to reduce the amount  of  comments from the people who  are repeat offenders of ” Losing it”. Because if there ever was a greater invention set to feed into our narcissistic  traits, it is definitely social networking (note: not a substitute for therapy). It is a virtual playground for the attention seeking and not to mention those who love to peep, but  that’s whole other story.

by Noel Agnew

Rubber strips, tinfoil, paper and sticks. On this day in 1947 a reported discovery of these materials in a field sparked rumors that America was being visited by extraterrestrials. It was Wiliam Brazel, a New Mexico farmer, who claimed that he found, “a large area of bright wreckage made up on rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks” on his land. Recent reports of UFO sightings in Roswell NM had Brazel convinced what he found was debris from an alien craft. On July 7th, reported the Roswell Daily Chronicle, Brazel went to town to see the sheriff and “whispered kinda confidential like” that he might have found a flying disk.

As you might expect the army, when dispatched to the scene, was unable to reconstruct a functioning craft from the wreckage. They did say, however, that they could use it to build a kite or weather balloon. I wonder where they put the “considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it”. Many believe that something did fall out of the sky in July 1947 and that Roswell is one of the US government’s biggest cover-ups, but it seems unlikely that Mr. Brazel’s paper and tape shed any light on the theories.

by Erica Goldblatt

 Every social worker has a patient they will remember as long as they live. Mine was Alex (name changed). She was barely 17 when she passed away, and to make a long story short, I adored this kid. When I looked at her, I saw myself as a teen: baffled and in love with the world, writing poetry riddled with metaphor and confusion. She somehow knew she wouldn’t live long, and when she succumbed to her brain tumor, I mourned her loss but understood that, while part of me went with her into the spiritual ether, my living purpose was to preserve her memory.

At Alex’s funeral, a hummingbird hovered over her casket and refused to leave. I’ve heard that hummingbirds appear at gravesides, and I know that in her final days, Alex liked watching the hummingbirds at their feeders outside her window. I decided to add to my tattoo collection and have one of Baltimore’s finest tattoo artists, Chandler (name also changed), put a permanent hummingbird on my right inner bicep. (more…)

by Fleur Edwards
Appreciating maths and science as I do, I recently took a trip to Wolfram and his Alpha and was suitably impressed.
Whilst the recently launched Wolfram|Alpha has at times been misinterpreted as a google-est tool, it is really a much more focused, factually correct band of knowledge. This tool is not for all searches, but this ‘computational knowledge engine’ is accessible for many more that its catch phrase would imply.
Wolfram|Alpha grew from the old Mathematica crowd and they use that base to build across all areas, including chemistry, mathematics and biology.
It doesn’t stop there however and also delves into earthquakes, music, weather and education, complete with ‘D dominant eleventh chord’ for example.
Wolfram isn’t even going to give you directions to your friends house, nor is it going to give you a complete filmography of Brad Pitt, but it will let you know that his full name is ‘William Bradley Pitt’, his date of birth (December 18th 1963) and his hometown (Shawnee, OK). What sets Wolfram apart is that for the most part the information is succinct, factually correct and user friendly. It gives you a complete list of background sources (from accredited authors) and steers away from the freestyle community input approach of Wikipedia. Feedback is still welcomed, but quality is put ahead of quantity and all information is ‘combined and curated’ by the Wolfram|Alpha team prior to   being posted on the site.
The content is truly impressive. I was able to analyze an SAT score (not that I have one being from Australia and all) and see that an SAT score of 1750 puts only 25% of males above me and 22% of females above me as well as the number of tests sampled.
The depth is surprising and the ease of use and interpretation makes it suitable for people of all ages and levels of understanding.

Overall Wolfram|Alpha is innovative and extremely ambitious, with initial indications are that they are achieving success in their endeavors. It is not just a place for Nerds-R-Us, but one where the general level of understanding of the human race can be lifted which is an admirable quality in anything.

Check it out
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

by Noel Agnew

When not busy being a Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin used his spare time to paint, write, and invent things. On this day in 1752 he just may have invented the lightning rod. Attempting to prove that static electricity and lightning contained the same electrical energy, he had an ingenious idea. Perhaps as somebody one said he was told to “go fry a kite”.

He attached a string to a silk kite, and fitted the string with a key, which would act as an attractor. Franklin then flew the kite into rain clouds before a thunderstorm (not directly into lightning, that would just be dangerous). It was only when Franklin noticed some of the string’s threads standing erect that he knew he had been successful. Placing his knuckle near the key, he was jolted by an electric spark. As well as receiving plaudits at home, Franklin became famous in France and England and went on to publish instructions on how to protect houses with lightning rods. Then there was Declaration of Independence thing too…

by Mery Diaz 

Is it just me or are bejeweled, Word Twist, and Solitaire extremely addictive? Well, if I am wrong then I don’t want to be right. I find myself naturally drawn to these little joys in my life. Perhaps because they boost my self-esteem when I beat my nerdy friends in unscrambling words of questionable dictionary existence, or perhaps because my adult A.D.D flares up precisely at the moments of impeding deadlines that need to be interrupted with matching pretty colored jewels. Or perhaps it is just an oxymoronic way of boosting brain activity while doing absolutely nothing. Whatever the motivating factor, I do love me some Twirl. Unfortunately my Palm Treo is not equipped with Twirl or Bejewled and cant play them on my way to work. I am however spared by some good old fashioned Solitaire. And boy it never gets old to try and breakmy own record time, over and over again.  What are your favorite games?

by Noel Agnew
If you just can’t wait for overnight shipping, how does Missile Mail sound? On this day in 1959 a US Navy submarine launched 3,000 letters via missile from Virginia to Florida. It arrived at its destination just 22 minutes later. Happily the rocket’s nuclear warhead had been replaced by two Postal Service containers. One of the postcards it contained was addressed to President Eisenhower. This was a test run but Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield claimed at the time that guided missiles would be the future of long distance mail.

Of course this never happened, the cost of such a plan being ludicrously expensive. It makes even less sense today, e-mail is pretty quick isn’t it? Still, apparently America still has around 500 intercontinental ballistic missiles, stashed away since the end of the Cold War. I can think of worse uses than mail runs.

by Deepti Paul

Amazon consider themselves experts in what people buy, and apparently books are no longer on top of the list. I guess someone is reading this, so it can’t be all that bad. And that’s Amazon’s point. People like to read, just not the inconvenience of it. So they’re trying to bring back the love of books and all things reading.
Thus, they offer you the Kindle DX. (more…)

by Sudha Narasimhan

We are in a time of great self-promotion. With the proliferation of Facebook and Twitter, we are submerged into a world of constant reminders of each other. I admit loving to update my Facebook status frequently with obscure phrases, nonsensical euphemisms for scatological humor, and cries for help (see ‘Sudha needs a hug’ status update back on 9/22/08). And don’t even get me started on this whole “friending” and “unfriending”. (more…)

by Gisela Aydin
Only in my wildest trip down LSD lane would I ever imagine Stephen Baldwin baptizing Spencer Pratt in a jungle river in Costa Rica with Patti Blagojevich as a witness.  Praise Jesus for bad TV!

Shortly after said baptism Heidi and Spencer quit NBC’s “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here” which makes me very very sad.  I thoroughly enjoyed watching Heidi cry her eyes out over stolen bug spray, claiming (between sobs) it wasn’t a very Christian thing to do.Who knew these two were so religious?!I guess if I look back on “The Hills” the evidence of their “What Would Jesus Do” mentality was always there reflecting off the million dollar diamonds that blinged out Heidi’s wedding dress.  Conflict free diamonds, I’m sure. Continue reading for the video! (more…)

by Mery Diaz

For the most part, your garden variety irritants that come from being a Facebook user happen when your annoying coworker wants to ‘friend’ you, your ex is stalking your page, or you need to reject one of the many “Which Harry Potter character am I?” applications. But folks, we have a new threat in town. Your Mom! (more…)

by Noel Agnew

Jack Bauer is a terrifically entertaining television character, but should he really be influencing the military policy of the most powerful on earth? Sceptical? The New York Times reports that the creators of Fox’s 24 were visited by the Dean of the US military academy at West Point. He told them that cadets were being influenced by Bauer’s uninhibited use of torture. In Bauer’s own words: “You are going to tell me what I need to know, it’s just a matter of how much you want it to hurt.” (more…)