Possible answer to an old question
Dubious thought, sort of makes sense.

We're ramping up our fake noise against China this year, blaming China for our own sins. Most of the time we blame Russia for our own sins, but other countries take a turn occasionally.

Thinking about our voluntary suicide led to a possible realization.

Fact: In the 80s China sent thousands of spies into universities and government research facilities, acting as "students". They were obviously working for China, and obviously spying. I saw it.

Fact: The Tiananmen thing happened at the height of this spying. Reagan went to China to give a speech on "freedom", and many Chinese students responded to his appeal.

Fact: Americans were appropriately suspicious of the Chinese spies UNTIL Tiananmen. After Tiananmen we welcomed them as "defectors" and "rebels", which they weren't. I felt the same way.

Fact: Reagan wasn't breaking any rules. The Chinese government knew what he was going to say, and allowed him to say it.

Question: Why did they allow Reagan to stir up protests?

Fact: All protests are government projects, here and in China and everywhere.

Pivot point: The dude who stood down the tanks and survived. When our FBI brings in the tanks, it NEVER NEVER NEVER allows a survivor or witness who might snitch. I doubt that the Chinese version would be MORE soft and tolerant. He was intended to survive, to energize the Americans. We felt that we were making progress in "helping" China to become "capitalist", while in fact China was already capitalist and we were anti-capitalist. ..... [But the softness might be real. Post-Mao China has vastly more respect for individual property rights than US. 90% of Chinese own their homes, vs 65% of Americans. When a homeowner stands firm against the bulldozers, China builds the road around him. Maybe the same applies to individual life?]

Dubious conclusion: Tiananmen was planned by both Deepstates working together. It was designed to soften and sweeten our surrender to China.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 5:55 AM

  What's this Tulsa crap?
I don't keep up with politics directly, so I catch echoes via Quora and other random websites. It's clear that the D politicians are hitting hard on the 1920 Tulsa riots. Why bring back a hundred-year-old riot?

Part of the motivation is obvious. The "January 6 Violent Insurrection" has reached the standard six-month media halflife, so something new is needed to keep pressure on white Deplorables.

But why specifically Tulsa?

Speculation: Tulsa is one of the current destinations for tech types who are tired of the HOLOCAUSTAL INSANITY and PERPETUAL RIOTS in Portland and Seattle and Frisco. Tulsa is an ATTRACTIVE destination, though its attractiveness is not well known to outsiders. Tulsa has always been a center of serious culture and art and architecture. It has always been a "liberal" town in the older sense of the word. Jews and Unitarians and Episcopals are more influential than Baptists and Pentecostals. (OKC is the opposite, newly reinforced by Pentecostal Hispanics.)

In 2020, Oklahoma was among the states that broke away from the holocaust, though not as early or firmly as Florida and South Dakota.

So the specific linkage of Tulsa and Riots and Alt-Right is designed to keep tech types away from Oklahoma. You think you're leaving riots and moving to sanity? Think again!

It's an old-fashioned political punishment. The winning party rewards the states that helped and punishes the states that didn't help.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 5:22 AM

  More Pence
Justin Hart hinted a few days ago that Pence was the keystone of the crime. Now he's starting to expand on the theme. This could develop into actual Shannon information, not just another false flag or red herring.

The answer is Birx and Pence. Pence endorsed Birx and Birx made the rounds in person to convince DeWine.

In the end - and I'm serious - Pence needs to own up to his role in perpetrating the lockdowns.

This starts to fill in the missing MECHANISM that led from three wacked-out demons to a million devoted holocausters. Not there yet, but heading in the right direction. Suggests that Fauci was the vector of contagion to the D governors and mayors and media, Birx was the vector to the R governors. (All mayors and media are D.)

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 5:41 AM

  Price != status
The latest issue of Collectible Auto has a long and satisfying article on the Ford small V8/60, produced from '37 to '40 in US, failed to sell here, then enjoyed a happy Second Life in many other countries until '67. Ended up as a fast OHV Hemi in Brazilian Simcas.

BEST ARTICLE EVER. Shows how history can include all other subjects. Math, economics, politics, personality, engineering. Every aspect is comprehensive and neatly linked into a solid narrative. Author Karl Ludvigsen deserves an award, if there are awards for this type of writing.

A shorter feature on Chrysler's last custom Imperials is less satisfying and more puzzling:

The Ghia Crown Imperial offers a window into something intangible, the power of glamour. With just 132 produced over a nine-year span, only a very select clientele, the rich, famous, and powerful, could enjoy such a car. That, of course, was the program's purpose.

A Who's Who of users included presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson; RCA chief Sarnoff, novelist Pearl Buck, heads of several Middle Eastern royal houses, Dominican dictator Trujillo, and Yugoslav president Tito.

What's puzzling? The Crown cost $18,500. That wasn't a "presidential" price in 1965. It was the price of a basic two-bedroom house. My parents could have bought one if they were savers instead of borrowers. Any upper-middle earner could afford 18k. Inflated to today, it would be $150k. I could buy one if I wanted to use up all my savings.

So price wasn't the constraint. Chrysler must have been selecting the buyers carefully by status, with official standards for the permissible Crown Imperial buyer. Or else they were taking LARGE off-the-books payments. The writer didn't seem to catch this point.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Happy Ending

  ¶ 5:03 PM

  Random auto thought
Ford has always been confused about the branding of Lincoln. Henry originally bought the company to give young Edsel a hobby, a way to seem respectably busy. Edsel showed real talent, and in '36 used the Zephyr to set trends for the rest of the industry. Unfortunately Edsel died in '43, leaving the Lincoln without its internal champion. From '49 to '51, Lincoln looked like a Mercury that had fallen on hard times. Sunken eyes, missing teeth. From '52 to '55, Lincoln looked like a cheap version of the Ford, while Mercury looked like the luxury brand.

To make it worse, Lincoln was sold as the performance brand from '52 to '55, which is NOT what luxury buyers want, and duplicated the earned reputation of Mercury as the real performance brand.

Finally in '56 Lincoln got its own body, and for the first time Lincoln looked and felt like a luxury car, a proper answer to Cadillac.

Today I noticed a visual clue proving that Ford KNEW which of their '55s was the luxury brand.



When they designed the '56 Lincoln from scratch on its own body, they copied the '55 Merc front end, NOT the '55 Lincoln front end.

Another Mercury connection.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 11:41 PM

  Decided to look it up.
Why do we put the $ before the numbers?

This question popped up on Quora. It's something I've often wondered about but never took the time to look it up. Now I've taken the time, and I know part of the answer. There are lots of discussions in various forums, but all seem to be conjectures and guesses.

In the 1812 ledgers from the Missoury Fur Company, the ledger entries have the letter P or S after the number, represented within the column by ditto marks, but the sum on each column (here a sum carried forward) has the Pesos symbol in front of the amount:



The use of specific symbols is relatively recent. According to wiki, the pound sign seems to have started in the 1600s.

The earliest preserved English ledger is the pipe rolls of Lancashire in the 1100s. One item with the translation and explanation, from a 1902 book:

Idem vicecomes reddit Compotum de lxvj. li. et xiij. s. et iiij.d . de Communi Assisa Comitatus de Lancastra, pro defaltis et miseri cordiis. In thesauro lxj .li . et viij . d . Et debet c. et xij . s. et viij . d .

The Sheriff renders an account of £66 13s . 4d ., arising from a general Assize of the County of Lancaster, for defaults and amercements, whereby it appears that this sum was not the result of an Eyre of the Justices, but was a composition or general fine, assessed by competent persons, to discharge the county from liability on account of various negligences, purprestures and trespasses within the widely extended forest lands of Lancaster. The Sheriff paid £61 Os . 8d . into the Exchequer and owed £5 12s. 8d . on balance.

Translating only the numbers:

lxvj. li. et xiij. s. et iiij.d.

becomes

66 li. and 13 s. and 4 d.

Li = libri or pounds, s = solidi or shillings, d = denarii or pence.

Pure conjecture: The £ symbol might have arisen, or become popular, to avoid reading li as 51? S and D wouldn't have been confusing, so they didn't need substitutes. (D means 500, but it was very rarely used.) BUT: Any confusion seems unlikely, since humans are extremely good at 'code-shifting', and bookkeepers have especially well-trained bimetral symbol vision.

At that time all of the units were simple abbreviations, not symbols, and all were after the numbers just as in speech, both English and Latin. (Some adjectives and articles were after the noun in Latin, but numbers were before the noun.)

This book of Worcestershire county records comes close to pinning down the transition point, which agrees with the mention in Wikipedia.

These two passages from English court documents were recorded and 'transliterated' by the same author.

1591:



1616:



Records are continuous and dense between these two years, but items with money amounts are sparse. I couldn't find a closer pair with money. In 1591 the units are all abbreviations, and Latin phrases are vestigial. In 1616 the whole text is English and pounds are £.

The author doesn't discuss terminology, so we can't see WHY the change happened, only WHEN. Presumably we can trust that he was consistent.

Incidentally, many of the items in these records read just like modern police blotters. OCD Karens complaining about trivial violations of etiquette, drunks doing what drunks always do. The one I quoted from 1616 shows that privately run prisons haven't changed in 400 years.

Linguistic sidenote: England was under Roman rule from about 50 AD to 400 AD. By 1100 the Romans had been gone for 700 years, but the ruling class was still writing in Latin. That's impressive permanence and persistence. Advantage: You don't need explicit encryption or secrecy when the commoners can't read or understand what the rulers are saying among themselves. Question: Were there commoners who quietly learned how to read and understand Latin, and used the skill to help other commoners prepare for the next psychopathic STOMP from the insane rulers? Vicilici?

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Jail mode

  ¶ 8:34 AM

  Y no fridge fans?
Reading Collectible Auto magazine while eating, then struggling with the stupidly designed washing machine while doing the laundry. Convective conjunction.

We've always had lots of car fan magazines. Car fans know the names of the major body designers and engine designers, and can recognize the individual work in the metal.

In the '30s and '40s there were radio fan mags just like car fan mags. We recognized the cabinets and dials and schematics of various radio makers.

Why don't we have Fridge Fan or Washer Fan or Fan Fan magazines? Why don't we give credit and blame to the named designers of these machines, which get used more steadily than cars?

The absence of appliances is especially strange because the SAME design firms often worked on cars and radios and appliances. Raymond Loewy and Brooks Stevens and Norman Bel Geddes did all three types of machines.

Is it a gender difference? Women mainly use appliances, and women just don't get into the details of THINGS. They prefer the details of relationships.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 11:25 AM

  Grandinifughi
Last week I ran across these strange devices while looking for something else, as usual.



On further reading, it turns out that hail cannons were a big business for about 20 years. French and Italian farmers were convinced that the cannons made a difference. Like cloud seeding, they didn't halt the weather every time, but they dissipated hail often enough to save massive amounts of money and trouble. Unlike cloud seeding, there was no downside. Seeding is a zero-sum procedure, depriving one location of rain to favor another location. Deicing the hail doesn't move the precip, it just avoids the damage.

Major agricultural implement companies made hail cannons along with plows and seeders and cream separators. Genuine scientific conferences were held annually, showing off the latest experiments and inventions.

The French called them canons contre grèle or grelifuges, and the Italians called them Grandinifughi. A word you can chew on!

Here's part of a wonderfully lyrical account from a 1901 cultural magazine (p 662 of the PDF):

The terror of hail is as old as Adam's first planting season, and the hysterical efforts of man to do away with it date from that same springtime. It is just another phase of man's striving to climb back into Eden, where it does not hail. So he rang bells and made other noises, at first in religious appeal, and then with a vague notion of turning the storm by deafening detonations. Neither is the more scientific idea of shooting against clouds a new one. In 1760 the Chevalier de Jancourt, a physicist, noted that it never hailed on besieged towns, and urged wise men to get to work against what he called the most costly form of divine wrath. But the wise men were not wise enough, and the peasants rang their bells as before, and then declared that it would have hailed harder if they had not rung them.

The author visited actual farms and watched the Grelifuges in action. He talked to the farmers and grape-growers and scientists. Conclusion:

Cannons have been fired against hailstorms, and hail did not fall. You might say that hail would not have fallen anyhow. But it did fall anyhow - that is, all around except on the spot covered by cannon.

Again there remains the other possible coincidence: namely, that the hail had no designs against that particular exempted spot in the first place. But there is still an answering fact; for when the shooting ceased, the rain changed to hail, and when the shooting recommenced the hail as quickly changed back to rain. This is not an isolated instance, but the general case. .......

A veteran artilleur who had lost a leg in the service demonstrated how simply and safely this particular gun can be handled. He first produced one of the empty cartridges. This was of specially forged steel, about eight inches long. He adjusted a percussion cap, rammed in eighty grammes of mining powder, and ended with a wad of soft wood...

The artilleryman advised us to watch for the whirlwind-ring, and then he pulled the string. The explosion sounded like the heavy boom of rock-blasting. You knew vaguely that the tripod was hidden in smoke, and that a white cloud had puffed from the mouth of the funnel. Then, as though growing out of the shock of the explosion, there came the sound of a long, shrill whistling. It was like the fierce metallic singing of some monster tuning-fork, mounting to a more angry pitch as it hurled higher in air. There, away up in the sky, was a gauzy ring as of smoke, still ascending and still buzzing on that shrill crescendo note. The ring was outlined against the deep blue like a soft, silky wreath, in the rays of the sun it was brilliant and changing, and then again shaded. One second later, and it had vanished in space. That, briefly, is the tore, or whirlwind-ring, which bursts from the cannon.

And what happened after the vortex penetrated the cloud?

But even as the spectator on the hill was losing hope for the much-vaunted cannon, he looked up again. There was a disturbance going on in the darkest cloud, just over the vineyards. It looked like billows of rolling, tossing smoke up there. Then all at once the cloud opened, and through the rift was the glorious gold of the afternoon sun. At last, here was a breach in the enemy's flank. A gunner below shouted involuntarily, and all of them worked faster and faster yet. Each cannon was counting two, three, shots to the minute. Other breaks showed in the clouds. There was a moment of wavering, and then panic. The dark-browed invader broke and fled. He scattered towards the hills, and in his retreat he sent down a discouraged volley of raindrops.

Or in more prosaic form, the cannons broke the updrafts that encouraged hail, and left a heavy rain.

Here's my attempt to capture the scene.



Polistra is at the controls of CANNONE FORMIDABILE, a full-fledged artillery piece with azimuth and altitude adjustments:



Happystar is supervising a cannon built into its own cozy shed, with a separate inner room where the tireur could sit and wait for the storm while sipping the products of the vineyard he was protecting.



An automatic acetylene cannon is in the background, developed by Maghiora and Blanchi.



Did the cannons make sense? We know from wind-tunnel studies of streamlining that a vortex breaks up smooth airflow. The purpose of streamlining is twofold: First avoid flat surfaces directly pushing the air; second, avoid vortices. You want the air to split smoothly around the car or plane, and rejoin smoothly afterward.

The end of the Grandinifughi era isn't clear. Did the farmers decide that the Grandinifughi weren't worth the effort? Or did insurance companies make damage more profitable than prevention? Flood insurance works that way.

= = = = =

Happy ending! Grelifuges are STILL USED in France and Italy, and STILL MADE in Spain, and they look about the same as the 1902 versions! The new cannons use acetylene, continuing the tech invented by Maghiora and Blanchi. Video of a modern grelifuge. Live action with a visible and audible whirlwind-ring at 4:14. The old description wasn't lyrical, it was accurate!


= = = = =

Etymological footnote: The French and Italian words for hail are opposite. Grèle comes from Latin gracilis, and means slim or small when used as an adjective. Grandini comes from a root meaning 'coarse-grained', thus by extension grinding and grain and grand and things that grind, including hail. My initial impression of 'chewiness' was spot on.

Labels: 1901, Asked and partly answered, Happy Ending, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 5:11 PM

  Not the remarkable part.
A prophecy for the future of radio, from a 1902 British cultural journal.

May I be allowed to sum up one or two considerations as to the probable influence of wireless telegraphy on the future of our race? In the first place a severance of communication with any part of the earth - even the Antipodes — will henceforth be impossible. Storms that overthrow telegraph posts, and malice that cuts our cables, are impotent in the all-pervading ether.

Oops. Didn't foresee jamming and hackers. Malice always finds a way. Also, storms can overthrow antennas, and nearby lightning can bust a radio more easily than a telegraph. The latter was already known in 1902.

An explorer like Stanley in the tropical forest, or Geary amid ice-fields, will report daily progress in the Times. Every wandering tramp-steamer will have its wireless spar, and will be in constant touch with vessels that dot the ocean all about it. Sir William Preece's dream of signalling to Mars may yet be realised.

Good predictions, all came true.

A governing fact is the cheapening of the new force. Everything essential to human happiness is cheap - air, water, the bountiful fruits of the earth — and electricity is no exception. Hitherto the cost of wires has kept this blessing from the bulk of mankind. Already the Marconi Company offers to telegraph to India at half the present rates, and Mr. Marconi promises messages to America at a penny a word.

He didn't foresee, and really couldn't foresee, that the 'free' ether would be overcrowded by multiple signals, requiring government licensing and taxes to insure that useful signals had a chance of getting through. Rent always finds a way.

Our ultimate ideal must be instantaneous electrical communication with every man on earth, ashore or afloat, at a cost within the reach of everyone.

Remarkable! He predicted the iPhone!

After reading a number of predictions from that decade, I've come to realize that the iPhone part was NOT remarkable. Telegraphs and telephones were two-way personal communication, so extending them to radio was an easy analogy.

What's remarkable is that the prophets DIDN'T predict one-way broadcasting. Experimenters were already broadcasting voice and music around 1905, and it was the dominant use of radio for 100 years. The predictors DIDN'T see that radio would partly replace newspapers, concert halls, and theaters.

Why? Maybe because the existing one-way media were primarily visual?

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 2:17 AM

  Meta-experiential
Just one random thought for today, before I get back to some heavy courseware work.

Why do teachers want to factor their own occupation out of existence? I've asked this before, with no good answer.

Partial answer: Experience is the only real teacher. When you are steadily experiencing a job or school or ordinary life, you know what it's like. You know that you're not getting sick and dying, and you know which pieces of the situation are good and bad.

When you're out of the situation, you have to rely on theories and abstractions and feelings. The longer you stay out, the more you rely on abstractions and media myths and phobias.

US teachers (with a few notable exceptions) are totally abstract. They don't use experience in their teaching, and they don't understand that experience is the only real teacher.

Because they don't understand the entire concept, they don't realize that they are giving parents and students a SOLID EXPERIENTIAL LESSON. Middle-class parents who hadn't experienced home-schooling before are now familiar with it. They know they can do it, and they realize that they can get along BETTER without the holocaustal monstrosity of Murder Masks and Chinese Distancing and Lucite Security Theater.

Unfortunately this DOESN'T apply to the poor families who can't possibly manage home schooling. Those students NEED public school, and they're not getting it.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Experiential education, meta-experiential education

  ¶ 11:09 PM

  Where are the national businesses?
I'm thinking of Safeway / Albertson, but this would also apply to WalMart and every national chain. They have stores in sane states like South Dakota, and stores in crazy murderous psychopathic states like Washington. They keep records of employee deaths, so they know that no employees have died of the "virus" (if it exists) in the sane states, and no employees have died of the "virus" (if it exists) in the deranged genocidal holocaustal states.

They know the lockdowns and suicide ballgags make no difference in the "virus" if any.

They also know that their employees are suffering from the ballgags, having to slow down every normal process to compensate for blocked vision and blocked speech and blocked breathing.

They also know that their customers are strenuously avoiding the stores where they have to be strangled with suicide ballgags. The stores in psychopath states must be doing considerably less business.

Even if Safeway and WalMart weren't privy to the original order to Kill All Deplorables, they have figured everything out by now.

Well? Why haven't they taken any action or at least tried to pressure the psychopaths?

Have their executives received billion-dollar bribes to maintain silence?

= = = = =

We know now that such bribes are part of the package. Lukashenko of Belarus revealed that the IMF offered him billions to get with the program and start exterminating his own people, so the EXPERIMENT wouldn't be visible. He refused the bribe.



BLESS HIS NOBLE SOUL. BLESS HIM INFINITELY AND ETERNALLY.

= = = = =

A few days later: WSJ shows a graph of sales by type of business. Groceries had a huge pulse in March from hoarding, then have been selling 20% MORE than normal since then. This shows that my assumption of lost business was wrong. Grocery stores have a genuinely GOOD reason not to complain about the lockdowns. I apologize.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Fucking constants and fucking variables, Natural law = Soviet law, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 11:06 AM

  Were we being prepared for this fake emergency?
The ACU's own Youtube channel doesn't have many of the press conferences, but it does have some useful interviews on the broader topic of immunity. How to increase your confidence, how to prevent the intentional fear and panic from ruining your immunity, how to use nutrition and vitamin C.

Real scientists have understood this in great detail for a LONG time, as witness this 1893 study of panic vs immunity.

I understand the miracle of immunity in some detail. I've been practicing good nutrition and exercise for many years. I haven't been handling anxiety and fear well, because I'm naturally anxious. I've developed techniques, but the techniques are fragile in the face of the constant onslaught of insanity.

In other words, I don't really need this info as info, but it's nice to have reinforcement and reassurance that my knowledge and judgments are valid.

This leads again to an observation about the LACK of immunity info in USA. Our generation received correct info in school, literally punctuated by the required smallpox vaccination. In previous decades media and government and advertisers also gave frequent good advice about maintaining immunity.

I haven't heard this type of advice for a long time in media, and it's clear that the schools haven't been teaching it. Many "well-educated" people are showing that they have no understanding of immunity. The holocausters could write their genocidal script on a blank slate, "informing" people that the ONLY way to fight a virus was through Chinese torture tactics and imprisonment.

Was this long-term preparation? Or did the holocausters simply recognize that a total lack of knowledge about immunity provided a golden opportunity for this specific fake emergency? More likely the latter.

Later: Does this also explain the EU/US difference? Is this why Euro countries were able to realize the horrible mistake and STOP making the mistake earlier? Better and broader knowledge? I don't know, but I'd bet it's part of the distinction.

This fake emergency also relies on a total lack of basic numeracy. All of the fake "data" violates all the standard rules of metrology, rules for proper use of numbers and proportions and baselines and context. People who have a feel for good measurement and proportion can see instantly that the supposed risks and models and predictions are totally wrong and invalid. This aspect of the current fake emergency is identical to the fake "global warming" crisis.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Experiential education, Metrology

  ¶ 4:04 AM

  Partial answer?
Off-Guardian reports a sequence of events that I hadn't heard before. The president of Burundi did the same thing as the president of Tanzania. Kicked WHO out and stuck with real science and real health. His country stayed healthy.

But he didn't get a chance to stay healthy. He was murdered "by the virus", then instantly replaced by a globalist slave who imposed the universal lockdowns.

This halfway answers the big question I've been asking. What was the threat behind the order given to all world leaders? The threat was "You will die immediately and we will attribute your death to the virus that you supposedly failed to control."

Standard operating procedure for Inquisitions and Witch Hunts.

But this doesn't explain the other exceptions, Sweden and Belarus and Tanzania.

Another commenter noted that the Tanzanian president had a big military general standing beside him when he kicked out WHO, non-verbally informing the Sorosians that they would have to get through his defenses first. [I went back and looked at the video. Sure enough, a BIG general!]

Lukashenko of Belarus undoubtedly has a similarly loyal military, as well as loyal people. He has served the country well by maintaining the Soviet tradition.

This still doesn't explain the survival of Lofven in Sweden, who is new to power and has a fragile parliamentary majority and a weak military.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, malign misattribution

  ¶ 1:38 PM

  What's a Prueter? /// Edit: probably answered.
Looking at a 1934 issue of Shortwave Radio News. In '34 the FCC was getting fully organized for the first time, with all sorts of new regulations and changes.

At that time police two-way radio was in two bands, one just above the BCB at 1500-1800, and the other around 2400 Kc. Roughly 2/3 of the stations were around 2400, the rest around 1700.

Here's the puzzle:

In addition to stations licensed for police service in the conventional medium - high frequency band - there are outstanding at this time experimental authorizations which permit 50 municipalities to operate 125 stations in the ultra-high frequency range, in the neighborhood of Prueters.

Prueters? It's capitalized, not a blur or obvious misprint. I'm familiar with radio terminology from that era and never heard the word. Google doesn't help; lots of people named Prueter and businesses named Prueter's, but no references that would make any sense in this context.

Do they mean geographical neighborhood or frequency neighborhood? It can't be geographical, because there isn't a city or county named Prueter or Prueters.

Frequency neighborhood seems more likely. Was a Prueter a machine that prueted? Would the readers recognize this frequency range by familiarity with Prueter machines or Prueter-type transmitters?

Was Prueter a brand name for something like a diathermy machine?

= = = = =

The actual FCC publication (p 42 of this PDF) clarifies the frequency but doesn't mention Prueters. The "ultra-high" band being tried by some police depts was around 30 Mc, which is also a typical range for diathermy. The official assignments for diathermy are 27.12 and 40.68 Mc. Still doesn't solve the mystery. Could be diathermy, could be pretty much anything.

= = = = =

Later and better thought: 30 Mc is a wavelength of 10 meters. The assigned area was just over 30, which would be 9 meters. In the neighborhood of 9 meters is a common way of expressing frequency. Was Prueters a linotypist's misread of a handwritten manuscript? A written m can be misread as ru, and 9 could become P. 9meters = Prueters. See p 77 in this 1935 Gernsback mag.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Asked and unanswerable, Bemusement

  ¶ 3:57 PM

  Skill circuits?
I've been talking for a while about skill as a measurable commodity. Is it possible to talk in a more systematic way? Is it possible to show flows and sources and sinks, in a hydraulic or electrical model?

Some unformed thoughts, to see what happens.

Four situations:

1. Sending skill outward and losing it, as US does to Mexico and China.

2. Bringing skill inward from elsewhere, as Mexico and China do to USA.

3. Banking skill, as unions formerly did and Russia still does. Training, protecting against loss, protecting against unfair competition.

4. Encouraging skill elsewhere without losing it here, as China does to Africa.

= = = = =

I can see immediately that the hydraulic or electrical model doesn't work. With water, a filled-up tank has potential energy which is used up by running the water through a turbine or toilet. The water returns sooner or later, recharged, via rain or pumping. With electricity, the negative end of the battery emits electrons with potential energy, which is used up before the electrons return to the positive end.

Skills can't be charged and discharged, can't carry potential energy. There's no circuit.

In situation (1) and (2), skill traveling from country A to country B, the return path is money going from B to A, but the money is NOT circuiting back to the people who lost the skill. The money comes back to the Tribe, the Bankers, the monsters who DESTROYED the local skill. Even then, it's not a direct return. Instead, the Tribal who shipped the skills outward has lower cost of production, so the money that Deplorables spend for the product no longer returns to other Deplorables in this country. It goes to Deplorables elsewhere, and much more money goes to the Tribal. Other Tribals appreciate this work of murderous art, and reward the out-shipping Tribal for his crimework by raising his Share Value.

Aha! The FACT that these models don't work tells me that I've got the variables backwards. Situations (1) and (2) are not circuits at all. They are stories about how the Tribe demolishes skill circuits. Country B is getting the best part of the deal, but this doesn't show up in a diagram of potential energy and flow.

A functional ckt doesn't involve any MOVEMENT or FLOW of skill at all. When skill is properly used as in situations (3) and (4), it stays in one place and works on one farm or factory, raising the value of seeds or iron or wood. The return path is money coming into the farm or factory.

Aha again. In other words, skill is voltage, not current. The current going out is products, raw material plus high potential skill energy, and the return path is money going back to the workers.

The metaphor is still weak, because the money is charged up with a different kind of potential. A good skill ckt, with value-adding work and proper storage and use of money, leads to a constant increase of both skill and money. It's not a closed circuit like the battery and light bulb.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:02 PM

  Diff in architecture?
In previous item I cited symmetry.

The best patient mechanisms, in life and in built devices, use active symmetry in the form of differentials or balances.

Is there an equivalent in architecture? I can think of patient systems but no diffs.

Bungalows are patient mechanisms. Winter sun heats the interior, summer sun doesn't touch the walls.

Double-hung windows are patient ventilation.

Gravity heating systems were sort of patient, but didn't work very well.

Aha! Drain traps are differential AND Willsonian patient. Balance maintains the water, and the water does all the work. A prosaic gadget with an elegant function!

Anything else?

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Patient things

  ¶ 6:42 AM

  Does QC add value?
Does quality control add value? In most areas the answer is simply and easily YES. In education it's an open question and a real problem.

In manufacturing and farming and mining, QC is a necessary part of value-adding. Manufacturers have to reject bad welds or sloppy assembly. Farmers have to reject poor crops or sickly livestock. Mining is mostly rejection, getting rid of the unwanted minerals that incorporate the valuable minerals.

QC is often analog, with a continuum of grades corresponding to price. A big customer or retailer is often able to do its own grading, and may be able to use the non-prime stuff. Stew instead of entree, understressed circuits for non-prime transistors and ICs, subflooring for ugly wood.

Much of our pre-college education is neither added value nor QC. It's just wasted time.

Vocational courses like cooking and carpentry are pure added value, permanently improving the student's skills and functionality.

Basic reading and writing and arithmetic are added value, changing the brains and muscles of the student to make the student more useful and capable in life.

"History" and "The Humanities" and "Grammar" and the usual "Science" courses are SUBTRACTED VALUE. These courses temporarily infect the student's brain with perfectly wrong and often perfectly murderous "facts" that have no relevance to life. You remember the "facts" long enough to pass the test, then hopefully forget them. If you retain them, your thinking will be disordered and chaotic in ways that serve Deepstate.

Math beyond basic arithmetic is where the QC question arises. Graphing and trig and basic calculus are useful skills. Traditional math teaching is NOT meant to train most kids to use those skills. Math is presented INTENTIONALLY in a way that resonates with the students who will do well in college math, the students who can get math degrees. All others gain nothing more than a permanent distaste for math.

A few good teachers, and all teachers in vocational subjects, train math AS PART OF THE JOB, so the math procedures are a unified part of the real added value of job skills.



It's likely that "history" and "grammar" are taught for the same reason, but I don't know that for sure. In math the QC purpose is well known and discussed, but it never disappears because the profs at the end of the production line can't possibly handle Negative Externality students.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Experiential education

  ¶ 7:44 AM

  More glial gladness
Via ScienceDaily, another BIG finding about how the nervous system works.

After neurologists took off their theory goggles 20 years ago, all sorts of strange and wondrous things started to appear.

Theory said that the glia were just 'glue' and packing material between neurons. No reason to look for functions in styrofoam peanuts.

It turns out that the glial cells do a lot MORE than neurons. Some of them maintain and clean up neurons. Some of them build new neurons. Some are gardeners, pruning unproductive neurons.

And some perform part of the sensing task.

This new finding truly DISRUPTS our understanding of the sense of touch.

The abstract is sparse, so I paid $30 for the whole article. Most of the text describes the gene-splicing methodology of the measurement, which is way over my head. If there's anything dramatic in those parts, I wouldn't know it.

The parts about electrical function are within my ken, and there's plenty dramatic in those parts.

We provide evidence for a specialized glial cell type that builds a sensory organ in the skin, initiating the sensation of pain. The nociceptive Schwann cells display a mesh-like network of cytoplasmic sheaths around nerves in the subepidermal border with radial processes entering into the epidermis abutting to unmyelinated nociceptive nerves.

The Schwann cells form a mesh, with connections to neurons.

They transduce nociceptive stimuli into electrical signals that translate into [pain responses by the mouse]. The nociceptive nerve endings in skin also gate responses to various noxious stimuli. Hence, nociceptive nerves and nociceptive Schwann cells form a nociceptive glio-neural complex with two sensor-receptor cell types, the glia and the nerve, both likely influencing the sensation of pain.

Both response and adaptation were very rapid, resulting in similar responses in the subsequent stimuli. The cells tracked the maximum frequency of stimuli that we could generate (60 Hz).

Releasing the force also depolarized the cells. Thus, nociceptive Schwann cells responded to both positive and negative changes in force but much less to sustained force.

So the glial cells are acting as two-way triggers for the neurons, telling the neurons when something has happened. When something pushes on the skin or something pulls away, it's time for the neuron to wake up and do its particular thing.



Question: Are all the senses made this way, with glia serving as the high-pass or low-pass filters and rectifiers and lenses, and neurons serving as the raw sensor? It's certainly true in the retina where glial cells filter and focus specific colors onto the retinal sensors. This setup hasn't been seen yet in the cochlea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it appears. Deiters Cells, though not classed as glia, surround the hair cells in a similar net-like way, with projections from one hair cell to the next.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Carver, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 2:46 PM

  Maybe the old cartoons were right?
Via Eurekalert, an intriguing bit of research.

In the face of diabetes, a common condition in which glucose and levels of destructive inflammation soar, whole body vibration appears to improve how well our body uses glucose as an energy source and adjust our microbiome and immune cells to deter inflammation, investigators report.

For the first time they have described how regular use of whole body vibration can create this healthier mix by yielding a greater percentage of macrophages -- cells that can both promote or prevent inflammation -- that suppress rather than promote.

In earlier decades, whole-body vibration was supposedly used for weight loss. These vibrating rollers and vibrating belts:



were often seen in movies and cartoons. I've never seen them used in real life, and doubted that they could do any good.

Maybe these machines did some good after all. How?

Our microbiome, like a casserole, is in layers and one way whole body vibration may work is by rearranging those layers, Baban says, but they reiterate that no one is certain just how whole body vibration works in this or other scenarios....

Makes sense. The machines were allegedly breaking up the fat around the gut, but they were ALSO vibrating the gut itself. Like flossing, breaking up a biofilm stops the damage.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 11:37 PM

  Why did the videophone take so long?
I've asked the Y-long question about sound recording. Edison's first phonograph was equally usable as recorder and player. The office version (Dictaphone) remained record-play, but the home version instantly became play only. Why did home recording take so long to return? The answer is that home recording never returned. We have the tech built into cell phones and computers, but we still don't feel the need to record our own voices.

Similar question about the videophone.

Here's a 1930 experimental setup by Bell, found in the 1933 Arnold book that also prophesied a horrible TV utopia.



It was fully operational with two-way sound and two-way video, not needing a transmit/receive switch, as described in Arnold's incomprehensible grammarrhoid "English":

In one of these television-telephone booths a person seats himself before a frame in which he will see the face of the person with whom he is talking. His own face is rapidly scanned by a mild beam of blue light which reflects from his face to the photoelectric cells and gives rise to the current which transmits his image to the distant booth. There is no fierce glare to the scanning beam; and one is not annoyed by its presence and may even gaze directly at it without inconvenience.

The first thing which strikes the observer when he steps into the booth, which is lighted with a dim orange light to which the photoelectric cells are insensitive, is the absence of the usual telephone. Special telephone transmitters and receivers are concealed in the booths. One talks face to face to the distant person, and a hidden receiver speaks the words which seem to issue from his mouth.

And here's the more familiar 1960's videophone, proudly exhibited by Bell in several World's Fairs:

Hmm. The 1960's version looks a lot like a desktop computer. Why didn't the desktop computer evolve from the videophone? Why didn't the videophone become popular until 2000?

Same answer. Most people STILL don't use their cellphones as videophones. They use cellphones in two distinct ways. Most of the time it's an interactive TV or videogame system, communicating via text like a telegraph or a desktop computer. When people use it as a phone, they hold it to their head like an old-fashioned phone.

(I've never owned or handled a cellphone, so I'm just observing what others do.)

People don't like to record their own voice, and people don't like to show their face when talking on the phone. Both technologies have been available and rarely used since 1930, because human preferences haven't changed.

Labels: Asked and partly answered

  ¶ 4:57 AM