Quickie

Sony designed but never released an in-dash car stereo that played MP3s recorded on high-capacity 2.88MB floppy discs. The device could hold 4 minutes of music at 96Kbps.

From Gullible Info

Mind Spanning

I don't know why or how this came up, but now I am the semi-proud father of the knowledge of the longest bridge in the world. That particular honor is held by Japan's Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge which spans 6,532 feet. It opened April 5, 1998, and that's all I want to know about it. This is clearly one of the more pointless facts to date, but hey, that answer may just win you some money some day. Probably not, but maybe...

more

Rabid

Here is another example of something I've known for a long time, but was never clear on the exact details. This interest springing up after viewing the 1971 hippie gore freakout film, I Drink Your Blood, in which a town is overrun by a group of rabid hippie satanic freaks.

Here are the facts:

The virus is usually present in the blood and saliva of a symptomatic rabid animal. The route of infection is usually, but not necessarily, by a bite, and in many cases in animals, causes the victim to be exceptionally aggressive, attack without provocation, and exhibit otherwise uncharacteristic behavior[1]. Transmission has occurred via an aerosol through mucous membranes; transmission in this form may have happened in people exploring caves populated by rabid bats. Transmission between humans is extremely rare, although it can happen through transplant surgery (see below for recent cases), or, even more rarely, through bites or kisses.

After a typical human infection by bite, the virus directly or indirectly enters the peripheral nervous system. It then travels along the nerves towards the central nervous system. During this phase, the virus cannot be easily detected within the host, and vaccination may still confer cell-mediated immunity to preempt symptomatic rabies. Once the virus reaches the brain, it rapidly causes encephalitis and symptoms appear. It may also inflame the spinal cord producing myelitis.

The period between infection and the first flu-like symptoms is normally three to twelve weeks, but can be as long as two years. Soon after, the symptoms expand to cerebral dysfunction, anxiety, insomnia, confusion, agitation, abnormal behavior, hallucinations, progressing to delirium. The production of large quantities of saliva and tears coupled with an inability to speak or swallow are typical during the later stages of the disease; this can result in "hydrophobia". Death almost invariably results two to ten days after the first symptoms; the few humans who are known to have survived the disease were all left with severe brain damage, with the recent exception of Jeanna Giese.

The virus has a bullet-like shape with a length of about 180 nm and a cross-sectional diameter of about 75 nm. One end is rounded or conical and the other end is planar or concave. The lipoprotein envelope carries knob like spikes, composed of Glycoprotein G. Spikes do not cover the planar end of the virion. Beneath the envelope is the membrane or matrix (M) protein layer which may be invaginated at the planar end. The core of the Virion consists of helically arranged ribonucleoprotein. The genome is unsegmented linear antisense RNA. Also present in the nucleocapsid are RNA dependent RNA transcriptase and some structural proteins.

You've generally got about fourteen days after exposure to get your PEP shots before the infection hits your brain so try and get out for some medical treatment, or else you'll turn into a hippie freak and infect the whole town.

from Wikipedia

the MEM Meme

Technological expansion is a multi-dimensional cloud spreading in all directions. Not only through time, but forward and back, up and down, very large and very small. Very small as in Nanotech. Intrinsically, nanotechnology must be composed of something, that something is a type nanomechanics called MEMS.

Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) is the technology of the very small, and merges at the nanoscale into "Nanoelectromechanical" Systems (NEMS) and Nanotechnology.

MEMS are also referred to as micromechanics, micro machines, or Micro Systems Technology (MST). MEMS are separate and distinct from the hypothetical vision of Molecular nanotechnology or Molecular Electronics.

MEMS generally range in size from a micrometer (a millionth of a meter) to a millimeter (thousandth of a meter). At these size scales, the standard constructs of classical physics do not always hold true. Due to MEMS' large surface area to volume ratio, surface effects such as electrostatics and wetting dominate volume effects such as inertia or thermal mass.

But we can now go even one better than that. If MEMS are too large and cumbersome, we can drop down to NEMS.

So the future for human advancement then, appears to be very small.

From Wikipedia.

Use your Illusion

Here's some more visual stimulation to make up for the lack of verbal: an insane collection of mind-bending optical illusions. Way better than your old third grade illusion books.

Link

Images can make you smarter too.

Here is an information light, but visually enriching post from Smart Now. It is a fantabulous collection of some of the most bizzare statues from around the world. It has already sent me reeling into a vicious cycle of research, hopefully you will be similarly stimulated. (Warning: the page is huge. Look at them all!)

Link again if you're slow.

So Much Death...

Here I have found a delightfully morbid Wikipedia entry detailing a number of strange deaths throughout history. Some of the Highlights Include:

458 BC: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a live and apparently very savage tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone.

207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.

1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.

1953: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, Sweet Kiss, went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.

1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players dumped a Gatorade bucket on him following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football), resulting in pneumonia.

The rest of them, including those already listed can be found here.

Stuffing Rabbits in your Vagina

In the quiet town of Godalming England, in the year 1726, an event completely unique in the history of medicine was taking place.

From Wikipedia:

Mary Tofts was twenty-five years old and married at the time, and despite a miscarriage in August had still seemed pregnant. She went into apparent labor and the Guildford male-midwife John Howard arrived to assist. Howard reported that Mary told him she and a friend had been weeding in a field when they saw two rabbits and chased them: the escape of the rabbits created "such a longing" in Mary that she miscarried and from then on could think of nothing but rabbits. Soon, Howard recorded, she began producing parts of animals: a rabbit's liver, the legs of a cat, and, in a single day, nine baby rabbits.[1] Howard sent letters to some of England's greatest doctors and scientists asking for help investigating the situation, and among those who came to his assistance were Nathaniel St. Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London. Tofts gave birth to several more dead rabbits in their presence.

Tofts claimed that during pregnancy she had an intense craving for roast rabbit, that she tried to catch rabbits in the garden, that she had admired them in the village market, and that she had dreamed about rabbits. Based on this testimony, the doctors explained the births as a result of "maternal impressions", contending that a pregnant woman's experiences could be imprinted directly on the fetus at conception and cause birth defects.

Sir Richard Manningham eventually exposed the birthings as a hoax after a porter admitted smuggling a rabbit into Mary's chamber. Tofts was forced to admit on 7 December 1726 that she had manually inserted dead rabbits into her vagina and then allowed them to be removed as if she were giving birth.

Unprecedented in the history of medicine, and remains elusive to this day, but what truly transpired that year in England is a phenomenon as old as human society.

Hair yesterday gone tomorrow.

Today on a bus ride back to Indianapolis (why do I keep coming back?) I finished up the excellent book, Mutants by: Armand Marie Leroi. In it many topics of extreme fascination, many of them I have looked into more, but one that struck me as quite a bit queer was the description of "lanugo hair."

From Wikipedia:

Lanugo are hairs that grow on the body to attempt to insulate it because of lack of fat. It is a type of pelage. It occurs on fetuses and it is normal for the unborn fetus to consume the hair, which then contributes to the newborn baby's first feces (meconium). Lanugo hair is usually shed and replaced by vellus hair at 36–40 weeks gestation. The presence of lanugo in newborns is a sign of premature birth.

It is also a common symptom of serious anorexia nervosa, as the body attempts to insulate itself as body fat is lost.

It just seems strange to think that for a period of our development, we're floating around completely covered in downy translucent hair that mostly goes away by the time we come out. Who knew. Now I do, and so do you. ...unless you just read that last sentence, then you don't know what I know.

Female Complex

The spotted hyena of Africa has a very peculiar attribute pertaining to gender. Long thought to be true hermaphrodites the females of the species (which are by far the dominant gender) actually posses masculinised genitalia. The females have no vagina, and have an elongated clitoris that resembles the male penis in nearly every way.

From Wikipedia:

The female Spotted Hyena's urogenital system is unique among mammals: there is no vagina, and the clitoris is as large and as erectile as the male's penis - only the shape of the glans makes it possible to visually tell the sexes apart. The female urinates, mates and gives birth through this pseudo-penis (it dilates for mating, the opening widening to admit the male's penis). It was thought that the development of this structure depended on a masculinisation process triggered by the action of androgens on the female fetus, but experiments with anti-androgens show that it still forms in the effective absence of the hormone, so it is now ascribed to normal morphogenesis and sexual mimicry. Since it is impossible to penetrate without the female's cooperation, female hyena have full control over who they choose to mate with.

Birth is very difficult: the internal birth canal extends almost to the subcaudal location of the vulva (which in Crocuta is fused to form a scrotum containing fatty pseudo-testes) before turning abruptly towards the clitoris, and the clitoris itself is narrow (although it ruptures with the first parturition, making subsequent births easier). In captivity, many cubs of primiparous mothers are stillborn because of the long labour times involved; in the wild, survival rates of females seem to fall sharply around the age of first giving birth, suggesting that the process is hazardous for the mother also. This suggests that at some point there must have been powerful selective pressures driving the evolution of masculinisation.

Researchers originally thought that one of the things that causes this characteristic of the genitals is androgens that are expressed to the fetus very early on in its development. However, it was discovered that when the androgens are held back from the fetus, the development of the female genitalia was not altered. Other hyena species lack this adaptation, making it a fairly recent one in the hyena line. Masculinised female genitalia also appears in some lemurs, spider monkeys, and the binturong but the fused vulva is unique to the hyena.

There are a few other mammals with similarly masculinised genitals, but the pseudo-scrotum is unique among the spotted hyena. It should also be noted that no other genus of Hyena possesses this characteristic.

Pedicle Tubing

I have been tracking in awe through the galleries at Project Facade; a exhaustingly comprehensive collection of the facial reconstruction procedures developed for victims of World War I. The project came out of the Gillies Archives at the Queen Mary Hospital in Sidcup, just southeast of London. Project Facade is an exhausting collection of arresting images, terrible injuries, and incredible repairs. While browsing the case studies and galleries you will come into constant contact with images of and references to "pedicle tubing." It is an obvious term, but the true use and nature of the procedure is not as immediately apparent. Here is a full definition of the procedure from Project Facade:

The tube pedicle was developed simultaneously yet independently by Sir Harold Gillies at the Queen’s Hospital Sidcup and ophthalmic surgeon Vladimir Petrovich Filatov in Odessa, Russia between 1916 and 1917. A tube pedicle is a flap of skin sewn down its long edges, with one end left attached to the site of origin, the other is attached to the site to be grafted.

The procedure begins with the lifting of a long, large flap of skin by making a roughly ‘U’ shaped incision. The rounded end of the flap is cut to shape to fit the area to be repaired. The long edges of the skin flap are stitched together to form a tube to prevent drying out and infection of the raw side of the skin flap. The shaped end of the tube is then attached to the site to be repaired whilst the other end of the tube remains attached to its site of origin. After a number of weeks, the tube is cut near the area to be repaired leaving enough skin on the graft site to shape and model. The remainder of the tube can once again be opened and returned to its original position. On occasion, multiple tubes might be taken to rebuild substantial parts of the face or body.

Tissue must be taken from distant parts of the body in stages. For example a tube might be taken from the stomach area and attached to the wrist. After a number of weeks the tube would be disconnected from the stomach, the arm raised and the loose end of the tube attached to the site on the face to be repaired. Once again after a number of weeks the tube is disconnected from the wrist and this loose end of the tube is attached to another part of the face. Only then can the tube be opened and modelled to the face.

Sir Harold Gillies is a fascinating study in his own right. He not only pioneered facial reconstruction and plastic surgery, but preformed the both first sex reassignment surgery from female to male in 1946 and from male to female in 1951. To the strong stomached, I highly recommend browsing around Project Facade. The more you explore the more the accomplishments of these pioneers of plastic surgery begin to shock more than the unimaginable damage suffered by the poor soldiers.

From: Project Facade

Patty Hearst Kidnapping

This is one I have had knowledge for a long time, but was lacking in the all important details. I have long known the generalities of the Patty Hearst kidnapping case, and was familiar with the famous bank-robbing photos, but here is some more information via Wikipedia:

On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from the Berkeley, California apartment that she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed, by an urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). When the attempt to swap Hearst for jailed SLA members failed, the SLA demanded that the captive's family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian - an operation that would cost an estimated 400 million dollars. In response, Hearst's father arranged the immediate donation of $6 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area. After the distribution of food, the SLA refused to release Hearst because they deemed the food to have been of poor quality. (In a subsequent tape recording released to the press, Hearst commented that her father could have done better.)

On April 15, 1974, she was photographed wielding an assault rifle while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym Tania (from the nickname of famous guerilla Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider) and asserted that she was committed to the goals of the SLA. A warrant was issued for her arrest and in September 1975, she was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with other SLA members.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on March 20, 1976. Her seven-year prison term was eventually commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and Hearst was released from prison on February 1, 1979, having served only twenty-two months. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, the final day of his presidency.

So now you can impress all of your friends with some specifics about the motherly blonde Patricia Hearst who frequently pops up in John Waters films.

Mini Mouse

I read recently about the ability to engineer a certain type of mouse in the lab by crossbreeding two mice of differing developmental growth deficiencies. While trying to find more information on the subject, however, I stumbled upon the naturally occurring African Pygmy Mouse, which is of similar size and variety.

The mini-mouse is achieved by parenting a mouse with a defective growth-hormone receptor gene with a mouse with defective IGF gene. The mouse lacking the growth-hormone receptors is only about half the size of a normal lab mouse, whereas the mouse with deficient IGF is only about a third of the size. The product of this dominant gene deficient union is lacking in both and end up weighing around 5grams fully grown.

This is incredible small for a mammal. A dime weighs 2 grams. So stack up 2 to 3 dimes and you'll have the equivalent weight of a living mammal in your hands. IInterestingly this is the same size as the naturally occurring pygmy mouse. I do not yet know if they are a result of similar deficiencies, but I would have to assume otherwise at this point since they make up an entire species. The differences in biology between these two tiny rodents could be uite revealing.

Experiment in Absolute Power

This past weekend, I sat down with some friends to view a little German film with a terrible cover called The Experiment (2001). It was about a group of subjects who signed up to take part in a prison simulation for a psychological study. A third of the subjects assumed the role of prison guards while the rest of them became prisoners. The study was supposed to go on for two weeks, but was terminated after five days. The end of the movie turns into a bit of a bloodbath, but the study and a great deal of it's results were based entirely on a real incident at Standford in 1971.

From Wikipedia:

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular, to the real world circumstances of prison life, and the effects of imposed social roles on behavior. It was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. Volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners and lived in a mock prison built in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. Despite the now highly unsanitary and out of control conditions evident, only one of 50 observers, graduate interviewer Christina Maslach, objected to the experiment. Zimbardo then ended the experiment early.

There is more to read on this subject than I alone could adequately do justice, but a riot broke out within the first day, and it was terminated after only six. The whole experiment is a living example of the adage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and the terrifying reality of what prison type systems, or for that matter, any position of dominance and supreme authority can do to normal human beings.

Highly suggested reading/ viewing:

Zimbardo's own Prisonexp.org with slideshow
Wikipedia Article
Stanford Report 2001
Stanford News 1997

And if you are 49 minutes interested in the study, I recommend this documentary, Quiet Rage:


Zimbardo was apparently upset enough about the German "Das Experiment" to try and block it's release in the states.

Zimbardo says that, without notifying him in advance, earlier this year a German production company released a film titled Das Experiment. It opens with the statement: "The story of this film is inspired by incidents that occurred during a psychological experiment at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California."

What angers Zimbardo is the way the movie's authors used specific elements of his experiment but turned its conclusion into a fictional nightmare. Without explaining that the film's climax deviated from Zimbardo's experiment, some viewers might be left confused about the psychologist's role. Instead of showing the abrupt end of the experiment -- Zimbardo halted it early after only six days -- the film shows guards attacking and raping a female psychologist and committing other fictional acts of mayhem.

Zimbardo said he has received hundreds of e-mails from Germans asking how he could have allowed such things to happen -- even though he didn't.

"It was very disheartening to have them take this story and twist it in a negative way," said Stanford's legal counsel, Deborah Zumwalt, whose office contacted the film's director and producers. "We were very concerned about it."

I however, would consider the film is worth seeing for the fact that it led me to the real truth behind the matter. Exaggeration serves as a good lure for the more rewarding truth.

Sonic (the) Hedgehog

I read today of a signaling protein named "sonic hedgehog." This is a startling name for a signaling protein for anyone out of the 16bit generation such as myself. It was apparently dubbed "hedgehog" when it was discovered in the 1980's to produce a spiny mutation in fruit fly larva. In the 90's it was discovered to be present in vertebrates and was given the "sonic" qualifier by a postgraduate with a propensity for gaming. Lack or deficiency of the sonic gene is responsible for dividing the forebrain into its two hemispheres. Failure of hemisphere division results in a condition known as holoprosencephaly meaning "whole forebrain" or cyclopia.

From: Mutants

Monster of Ravenna

Opened up the book Mutants today and found this enticing description of a child born of a particularly severe (if the legend is to be believed) deformity in Ravenna in 1512.

Described, among others, by Ambroise Paré, this being was meant to have been born in Italy in 1512, contemporaneous with the bloody Battle of Ravenna, in which King Louis XII and Pope Julius engaged in combat. It survived to grow into a hulking brute which, naturally enough, terrorized the countryside. It was considered an omen of God's anger with the Italian people and, as such, it various disjointed parts could be "read" metaphorically. The arms never developed, scholars claimed, because the Italians showed a conspicuous lack of good deeds. Because the Italians had no firm dedication to any cause, their fickle, flighty nature was reflected in the Monster's wings. The beast was a biological hermaphrodite, and its double set of genitals illustrated sexual immorality: lust, sodomy, bestiality. The great ugly claw was greed, and the knee-mounted eyeball betrayed a covetous love of material things; the single horn-- overweening pride. The only positive side to this scaly abomination, which was in fact not always mentioned (note its exclusion from the above illustration), was a cruciform marking on the beast's trunk. This, of course, was interpreted as Christ's willingness to save all His people-- if they would only reform.

And from Lucca Landucci's 1512 account:

We had heard that a monster had been born at Ravenna, of which a drawing was sent here; it had a horn on its head, straight up like a sword, and instead of arms it had two wings like a bat's, and the height of its breasts it had a fio [Y-shaped mark] on one side and a cross on the other, and lower down at the waist, two serpents, and it was a hermaphrodite, and on the right knee it had an eye, and its left foot was like an eagle. I saw it painted, and anyone who wished could see this painting in Florence.

If modern science was to hazard a guess, you might be able to approximate the beast with the genetic disorder Robert's Syndrome. A particularly severe disorder affecting numerous developmental features.

From Guardian UK: Books
and Ravenna

XLI

A series of bizarre circumstances, and my formative years spent in Indianapolis led me to kind of care about the events of last night's Super Bowl (XLI) The Chicago Bears (My current city of residence) V. the Indianapolis Colts (my roots). I admit that I am one of the last people on the planet to care about a football game, but a lifetime of hearing that the Colts were going to be good this season led to an overwhelming suspicion that they were due (mostly just so I could be done with it, and get on with my life). It is now up for time to tell if my wish will be fulfilled. But regardless of the background, I spent last night in front of the first Football Game I've ever seen from beginning to end. I would be lying if I said that I did not have fun, but I owe that to my friends.

The intrigue comes in after the game has been played, the chips eaten, the cokes empty, and the friends gone. To continue the theme (Super Bowl) My one remaining friend and I viewed the 1977 movie, Black Sunday. The plot concerns the actions of a group of Bosnian Terrorists called black September and their culminating attempt to detonate a lethal device from the Goodyear Blimp above the Miami Stadium at the Super Bowl. Similarities ring. First of all, I had had a similar plan, but abandoned it due to lack of interest. Secondly, last night's game was played at the same stadium. Perhaps they are always played in Miami, I don't know, and I don't care to find out. In Black Sunday the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Dallas Cowboys. I remembered hearing that the Colt's head coach Tony Dungy was now the 3rd person to ever win the Super Bowl as a player and a coach. I also recalled that he won while playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers. AHA! Perhaps this was that very game! Well...almost. Tony Dungy won against the Dallas Cowboys in Miami while playing for the Steelers in Super Bowl XIII. Great! Must be. But not so fast, me. It appears Super Bowl XIII was played in 1979. Black Sunday was shot in 1976. Well what happened then? The Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys in Miami in Super Bowl X. Hmm. But no Tony Dungy. Not until three years later under nearly the same circumstances, but no terrorists, and no blimp. Well too bad, almost would have been a very coincidental viewing. As it is, I'm not so sure.

I would also like to apologize to the Chicago Bears. It is my belief that you lost last night because we watched your 1985 Super Bowl Shuffle at half-time last night. It must have crippled you past the point of no return. My regrets for the disgrace you must come home to.

City of Darkness

Some time ago, while in Scotland, I met a young girl from Honk Kong who had (unfortunately for her) come to the states to study at Ohio State University. My travel companion wowed her, and I think radically challenged her perception of the standard college fair of America. What particularly impressed her was my friend's mention of the Kowloon Walled City. A forgotten anarchistic block (0.026 KMsq) of Hong Kong, surrounded by British Occupied territory. At it's height it was the most densely populated area on Earth. Approx 1,900,000 per KMsq. It was called because the City of Darkness because so little natural light penetrated into the city; blocked out by the patchwork buildings and pipes. Many of the collaged apartments grew to be 14 stories high. From GSAAP:

The Chinese officials left for good in 1899, but whenever the colonial authorities tried to impose their will, the remaining residents threatened to turn the attempt into a diplomatic incident. And so it remained until the Second World War, when the invading Japanese delivered the first body blow, tearing down the huge granite walls and using them to build Kai Tak Airport in the shallows of nearby Kowloon Bay. The former harmony was destroyed: the creation of the airport drove away the Yin spirit provided by the water and the City was abandoned.

The City may have effectively ceased to exist, but the area's status as a diplomatic black hole was not forgotten, and in the chaos of the War's aftermath it proved the perfect place of asylum for many of the hundred thousands of refugees pouring south to escape famine, civil war and political persecution as the Communists gained control in China. Surrounded now only by walls of political inhibition, the City became the place where they could get their breath back; where they could live as Chinese among other Chinese, untaxed, uncounted and untormented by governments of any kind.

And so, the Walled City became that rarest of things, a working model of an anarchist society. Inevitably, it bred all the vices. Crime flourished and the Triads made the place their stronghold, operating brothels and opium 'divans' and gambling dens. Undoubtedly, these few (and it always was a small proportion) kept the majority of residents in a state of fear and subjection, which is why for many years outsiders trying to penetrate were given the coldest of shoulders.

But for most, the main priority was survival and their needs were little different from anyone else's: a life without interference with water, light, food and space. Of these water was the most indispensable and in the early years the only way to get it was to go down. And so that's what they did, sinking some 70 wells in and around the City, to a depth of some 300 feet. Electric pumps shot the water up to tanks on the rooftops from where it descended via an ad hoc forest of narrow pipes and connections to the homes of subscribers. Only in the last 20 years were Government stand-pipes installed around the City to provide safe drinking water.

To run the pumps and to light up the City's many alleys required electricity and initially this challenge was tackled in a similarly robust fashion: it was stolen from the mains, often by Hongkong Electric employees who lived within the City boundaries. Only in the late 1970s, after a serious fire (much the most terrifying hazard in the City), were the authorities allowed in with their meters.

Thus was the substructure of urban life roughly but workably banged into shape. And out of all the chaos and apparent lack of real organisation, a sort of society began to flourish. Soon, there were factories of every description, small shops and even schools and kindergartens, some of them run by organisations such as the Salvation Army. Medical and dental care were no problem, as many of the residents were doctors and dentists with Chinese qualifications and years of experience, but lacking the expensive licences required to practice in the rest of the Colony. They set up their clinics on the edges of the City and charged their patients a fraction of what they would pay elsewhere.

For the moments of relief from toil, there were many restaurants on the City's fringes and embedded deep in its heart were a temple and a 'yamen', relics of the City's distant past. And so life went on. Every afternoon the alleys were alive with the throb of hidden machinery and the clacking of mahjong tiles, while up on the roof, in cages not much smaller than some of the City's homes, cooed hundreds of racing pigeons, joined there by children playing after school.

The government spent 3 Billion HK$ to evacuate the city for demolition between 1991-92. In 1993 it was leveled. Now a park stands in it's place. Kowloon City remains one of the longest living examples of full-out Urban Anarchy.



From Wikipedia
Kowloon Walled City
GSAAP