Powerful metaphor
Gunter Bechly is discussing the failure of 'missing links' in fossil records. Every major transition requires new genes and new proteins that couldn't have been generated gradually, and the gradual steps required by evolution are simply not there.

Bechly tells an evocative story. Experienced collectors learn where to find the good stuff, and learn what they are going to find in each of the suitable places. After you've been exploring and gathering long enough, you are never truly surprised. If you find an item that seems to be 'in between' two types or two layers, it will ultimately turn out to be in one layer or the other.

This immediately evoked an example.

I've been collecting old electronic stuff for 60 years. I'm not a serious collector because I don't display and classify stuff. After I've had fun with a device, I put it in the drawer or toss it.

In 2016 I bought an intriguing item on Ebay. It was advertised as an 'experimental transistor'. After closely examining it and running it through the usual transistor and tube tests, I decided it wasn't a transistor at all. It was experimental in the sense of being a prototype, but it was an ordinary subminiature vacuum tube, not a transistor or an in-between mashup. It also happens to look like a pre-Cambrian critter.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

I was idly browsing Ebay for Soviet transistors. Curious to see if the oldest ones looked similar to America's oldest transistors. Mostly yes. The Prince Albert shape of the early ones reminded me of my first live encounter with a transistor.....

Around 1958 I was fiddling with radios and electric stuff, and somehow picked up a catalog from Burstein Applebee. Spent hours dreaming through it. When parents visited an uncle in KC, I badgered them into letting me see the Burstein Applebee store in downtown KCMO. They dropped me off and went shopping somewhere else. I walked in and started wandering the aisles, marveling at all the receivers and antennas and tubes. The clerks were NOT happy to have an 8-year-old loose in the store. They herded me out, but not before I got a good look at THE REAL THING: A Raytheon CK722.

Does Ebay have CK722s? Plenty of them but that wasn't the most interesting item. Seller VintChip had a Raytheon 'experimental transistor' for $50.

Instant choice. Had to buy it.

Unpacking......


Vintchip does a good job of packing. Bubble wrap and tissue.


First impression: Printed label says Raytheon Experimental. Written in ink on one side is QF336, on the other side just the number 8. Presumption: This is serial number 8 of a set of experimental tubes denominated QF336.

Scanned both sides:


Looks very much like a miniature hearing-aid tube. Same glass outer envelope, same leads coming through the bottom sealed in glass, same 'can' surrounding the active part. Mini tubes were used in hearing aids briefly in the '50s. Hearing aids soon switched to transistors, but not because of size. Early transistors were about half the size of mini tubes and you needed two or three transistors to substitute for the typical tube. No real advantage. Batteries were the advantage. Tubes needed a large 1.5V filament batt and a large 45V plate batt, and used up the filament batt fast. Transistors used one 9V battery and drained it slowly.

= = = = =


I can see the innards with a magnifier, but couldn't get a photo or scan. So I made a Poser version to illustrate. Two cylinders running through the can in parallel; one cylinder has one wire from it, and the other cylinder has a sort of sheath, with one wire centered and another wire Y-ing out of the sheath.

Innards STRONGLY suggest tube. The sheathed electrode is typical of a cathode with inner heater, with one side of heater tied to cathode. The opposite cylinder looks like the plate. Thinking tubey, this webpage shows a Sylvania experimental miniature thyratron, looking something like qf336, but the Sylvania has four terminals, which seems right. This critter has only three wires, which means it can't be a triode or a thyratron. Could it be a rectifier or a voltage-dependent switch?

One problem with tube assumption: the upper and lower ends of the can are closed by resin or epoxy. Tubes generally get too hot for epoxy.

Thinking solid-statey, the wire pattern reminds me of a thyristor or SCR schematic. Does this mean the schematic was meant to imitate this device? Probably not.

Well, let's try both assumptions. Using DVM, no connectedness shows between the terminals. On R scale and diode scale, just open ckt in both directions on all combinations of the three wires. About 7nF capacitance between terminals, which makes sense from the structure but doesn't mean anything. So this probably isn't solid-state, because even a blown or non-functional solid thing will show some kind of resistance.

I don't have any proper mini tubes for comparison. A large tube (35L6) shows about 40Ω across the filament, varying as the applied voltage slightly warms the heater. I don't know what to expect for a mini tube, but it would certainly be low enough to read easily. Two-digit ohms, not gonna look like open ckt.

= = = = =

Just for fun, trying the tube assumption in the simplest possible ckt for a rectifier. Battery across the filament, cathode to negative, 9V to the plate through a resistor, with voltmeter across the resistor to see if anything flows.



Nope. No heat from the filament, no flow at all.

Conclusion: This is probably a diode tube, and the filament is probably burned out.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Honest paleontologists run through the same process. Excitement! This looks like a missing link! Darwin was right after all! Then do the chemical tests and look at it from various angles with microscopes and scanners.... Oops. It's a familiar item in a familiar layer after all. It was just divided in an unfamiliar way or petrified with an unfamiliar mineral.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 9:58 PM

  It's abacuses all the way down.
Careful observers have decoded the honeybee's waggle dance. It's a vector message. The dancer is telling her hivemates about a good source of honey. She repeatedly forms a figure-8 pattern, with the message in the middle.

The direction of the dance is relative to the main honeycomb wall of the hive. The angle between the central motion line and the wall represents the vector of the food source relative to the sun.

Transposing the viewed dance to a position on the bee's internal compass is complex, but using the memorized template can be hardwired in an insect with compound eyes that cover most of the compass. The template is assigned to one radial set of lenses, and the bee keeps the sun centered on that group of lenses.

The distance component of the vector is conveyed by the number of waggles in each central run.

This reminds me of the glial abacus that keeps track of numbers in short-term memory. Astrocyte cells serve as a kind of scorecard or abacus outside of the neurons. The neurons click up the astrocytes, and when the number of raised beads reaches a threshold the neurons tell the body to stop swimming or flying.

Let's try to imagine how this feels to a forager bee watching the dance.

Polistra has a hive near the mill...



Looking downward inside the hive we see one scout telling one forager about her find:

The forager observes the direction of the dance with respect to the hive, and forms a template for where the sun should be when she's flying.

Taking the important part in slow motion:



Each waggle ticks up the beads of her astrocyte abacus. For a simple animation we'll assume she's a Babylon Bee who counts in base 60. For each of these five waggles she brings in one 12-bead astrocyte. The total of all the counters tells her how many wingflaps she needs. (Obviously the real multiple of wingflaps per waggle would be far more than 12.)

She then launches out of the hive and turns until the actual sun matches the template position supplied by the dance. As she flies, each wingflap clicks down a bead. When the astrocytes have all reached threshold, she's there.




= = = = =


Even better: The clover is also an abacus!



What looks like a blossom is actually a cluster (inflorescence) of a few dozen tiny florets. Each 'spike' is a complete little flower, with a green cup (calyx) containing a white crown (corolla).

Why are some pointing down? Those are the florets that have already been touched by a pollinating insect. The clover detects the touch and removes nutrition from that floret, allowing it to drop down and turn brown.

Labels: bee, Grand Blueprint, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 3:41 PM

  Excellent ID teaching
John and Sandy Palmer have produced an EXCELLENT series of videos on intelligent design. I've been reading and thinking about this stuff for 40 years, and these videos have clarified many points that I didn't see before.

Unlike the obnoxiously overproduced rock-n-roll videos from Discovery Institute, these are just straightforward discussions, with complementary insights from John the engineer and Sandy the teacher. Diagrams are included where needed, but there's no fancy camera cuts or rock-n-roll noise.

In this segment they cite an argument used by Darwinists to claim that gradual unguided randomness can lead to big visible changes.

The argument: If you look at a 1953 Corvette and a 2020 Corvette, you'll see two dramatically different designs that have a vaguely similar theme. But if you look at each annual model change, you'll see small and often invisible changes accumulating to the big jump across 60 years. John and Sandy point out that the Corvette was NOT altered by cosmic rays randomly impinging on the engine and body. It was carefully designed by intelligent humans.

BUT: If you understand WHY auto designers make changes, you can see that change itself comes from an intelligent decision, which was NOT an intrinsic part of the reason for design in either animals or cars. Harley Earl had a rigid policy of changing the appearance of every car every year. This was NOT a necessary policy. Other car companies changed far more slowly or not at all. Dodge's 4WD Power Wagon truck remained the same from 1938 to 1968. Jeeps have remained recognizable from 1941 to 2021. These were SUCCESSFUL products.

Nature is more like Power Wagons. Every product remains exactly the same for millions of years unless it is totally killed off. When a change occurs, it's nearly always from the variable parts of the genome, not from the hardwired constant genes. The epigenes contain all available variations.



Meta: Unfortunately it's easy to see why Discovery chose the obnoxious route. Their videos have 80000 views, while the Palmer videos have 10 views. Harley Earl knew what he was doing.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, infinite GOOD

  ¶ 7:38 AM

  Astrocyte Abacus, reprinted
I was searching for 'abacus' inside the blog, just to check the animations for the IBM 650 (DCL). I wasn't sure if I'd replaced a bad frame.

'Abacus' led first to this item from 2019, which turns out to be important and timely.

Meritocracy is one of Deepstate's oldest weapons in the war of attrition against peasants and incorrect people. We are trained to try harder FOREVER to achieve PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE goals. The Enlightenment lies of tabula rasa and equality were meant to kill us in a way that demons find especially fun to watch.

Trying harder forever is UNNATURAL, and we have a specific mechanism to stop wasted effort.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Another astonishing discovery in brain function.

Learning is controlled by an internal abacus.

Via Eurekalert, a study using larval zebrafish.

These two pictures tell the story.



The experimental setup is 'virtual reality' or in old-fashioned terms a flight simulator. The fish is held firmly in place in a small aquarium. A visual landscape is moved forward and backward in response to the swimming motion. In real life each wiggle moves the fish forward, and then the counterwiggle moves backward a bit. (Like a rowboat with incompletely lifted oars on the backstroke.) So the simulated landscape does the same thing.



As long as the landscape moves, the fish moves forward in bursts. Swim for a second, rest for a second. When the experimenters turn off the motion, the fish tries harder for about 30 seconds, then gives up entirely.

This is rational behavior for all animals in all** situations. Modern human dysculture aka "meritocracy" turns us irrational by persuading us that forward motion is ALWAYS necessary regardless of our observed gains relative to the status landscape. If you're not gaining, you need to try harder. We keep trying harder, wasting exponentially increasing quantities of energy and soul, until we violently burn out and die.

The experimenters were trying to determine how the fish decides when to quit. Is it just a buildup of charge or neurotransmitter on a comparator neuron?

What they found is ASTONISHING. The action is controlled by a specialized type of glial cell, not by neurons.

Here, we found that the fish analog of the mammalian astrocyte is a central computational element of a circuit implementing a behavioral-state change after integrating sensory information.

Specifically, radial astrocytes in a subregion of the brainstem in larval zebrafish temporally integrate noradrenergically encoded failures to accumulate evidence of futility before inducing a state of passivity (giving up). This behavioral pattern has a familiar combination of features: trying to achieve a goal, repeatedly failing despite trying harder, giving up temporarily, and then trying again. Fish swim more vigorously in open loop (i.e., ineffective swim attempts), become passive, then swim again.

First try harder, then give up for a while.

Using whole-brain imaging, we found that astrocytic calcium was elevated just before and during passive states. Activation and silencing experiments established that these glial cells are required to trigger the passive state. Neuronal imaging and manipulation showed that the NE system encodes an expectation-outcome mismatch signal, which activates Ca2+ signaling in radial astrocytes. Thus, behavioral failures are detected by NE-MO and integrated by glia, which, after accumulating sufficient evidence of motor futility, trigger a passive behavioral state via GABAergic neurons. Once passivity is triggered, its persistence may be due to sustained effects of the glial cells on neurons, or a lag in the reactivation of swim circuits.

In other words, the astrocytes serve as a kind of scorecard or abacus outside of the neurons. The neurons click up the astrocytes, and when the number of raised beads reaches a threshold the neurons tell the muscles to stop swimming.

= = = = =

** Later thought: It's obvious that frustration is universal, but why is it universal? Why do so many situations need this calculated give-up response? Specifically, why would zebrafish need to know when their attempt to swim didn't result in forward motion? Virtual reality experimental setups aren't exactly common in the real ocean. A headwind in the current would be the main reason for lack of progress. When you're moving against a headwind you do have to try harder, but I'd think the frustration response would include something like gliding down to the floor for stability until the current slows down, or turning around to swim with the current.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

We're seeing millions of people reaching the last bead on their abacus. Some jump off bridges, most just stop actively living. It's even happening in China, where it's called Lying Flat.

A sane and SURVIVABLE civilization recognizes that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT, and guides each type of person into an appropriate niche where his particular talents lead to ACHIEVABLE goals.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 2:36 PM

  Inspirational meme
Cartoon seen on Quora:



It's a damn good observation. Birdsongs are relatively rigid recordings that play the same way every time. Each bird makes small variations, but the theme is recognizable.

Earworms (what I call the mental jukebox) are also rigid recordings with variations. Does our earworm mechanism occupy the same brain structure, or derive from the same gene set, as the bird's standard song? Is this another bird-human parallel?

Labels: Answered better than asked, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 10:46 AM

  Grandpa said it
Continuing from previous item.

1. The sequence of events is a good example of evolution by subtraction, which is the way Nature, language, and human inventions work. The first genome, or the first language, or the first version of an invention, has all the features it needs. As the genome spreads into different places and creatures, or the language spreads to different people with different tendencies, or the invention tries to seek a global audience, the product simplifies.

My 2004 loader had all the features needed. Some of them were later incorporated into Poser itself, and some of them were copied in the plagiarizer's loader.

2. Fast change destroys creativity. When rules and programs and browsers are constantly changing, you have to carve away pieces of your product or mind or soul on each side to remain alive. Adapting to all possible countries and all possible users forces rigid conformity.

3. Rentalism is an alternate form of globalism. When you don't have direct control of the product or house or life, you can't learn or create effectively. Learning and creativity require a STABLE SITUATION so you can distinguish between constants and variables. When the machine or culture is constantly stealing control from your own hands, you eventually give up and stop trying to create.

Reminds me of what my dying grandpa tried to tell me in 1962.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

This line of thought originated from a specific conversation with Grandpa in 1962. Grandpa was dying early from alcohol and tobacco, and the family went to visit him one last time. As we hung around Grandpa's house, or visited nearby parks, Grandpa kept saying true things, and parents kept trying to Rectify him, nervously painting over the facts with conventional leftist crap. I wasn't sure what to think. Grandpa's observations matched what I saw with my own eyes, but didn't match what I'd always heard from parents and TV and books.

I think Grandpa got tired of being painted out. At one point he decided to go for beer and cigarettes (yeah, those were killing him, but it was too late to stop) and took me along. No parents, just me. I don't remember most of the conversation but I remember one emphasized item that seemed to summarize his intentions.

We were talking about his old '52 Ford Mainline. I must have been asking why anyone would want a plain car with no power steering, no radio, no automatic, none of the 'exciting' stuff that 'everyone wanted' in 1962.

Grandpa pointed to the manual choke. He told me that Ford was the only car that still offered a manual choke. He said it was important to have a simple car that you could understand and fix by yourself, and it was important to have direct control over the car.

Extend car to life, and there's the message.

Same as Carver's message.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Talk to them. Let them talk to you.

Dying old engineer trying to pass the key to young potential engineer. He succeeded. I've done a shitty job of following his advice, but I've always remembered and tried.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: Carver, defensible cases, defensible times, Grand Blueprint, storage

  ¶ 2:10 PM

  Much to be modest about
This new attempt to categorize life is vague and sloppy. The authors, for once, are appropriately humble about the highly tentative stage of their understanding.

What REALLY caught my attention in the article is The Unavoidable Typo:



For some reason this particular typo evades all proofreaders. Leaving aside words with plausible alternative spellings, Sante Fe is the champion typo. Anticipatory coarticulation.

The authors see the problems clearly. Taxonomy stopped working a long time ago. Concepts like species and individual simply don't fit the real world. A forest or a field of grass is an individual and a huge group of individuals. Functional modules are sometimes separated by cell boundaries and sometimes not. Many "species" have turned out to be different settings of the variable epigenes, not different settings of the constant genes.

Using this definition vastly increases what can be seen as life, to include concepts such as culture, forests, and the economy. A more traditional definition might consider these as products of life, rather than life itself.

"Human culture lives on the material of minds, much like multicellular organisms live on the material of single-celled organisms," Kempes explains.

Based on their new definition, the researchers argue that life has emerged many times on Earth, and that we in fact are co-existing with many forms of current life.

They are trying to steer away from crude physics and materialism, but their proposal is still too static, too materialistic. It appears to pivot on the tired notion of energy efficiency:

For example, life uses many gradients of energy production using the level one constraints, but all of these must adhere to the level two constraint of the law of thermodynamics. "No cell will be found to contain more internal structure than can be accounted for by the total free energy available from the environment," the team writes in their paper.

Is complexity limited by available energy? No. MAINTAINING a more complex structure doesn't require more energy. The right structure for a PURPOSE may be simple or complex.

A modern car uses much less gas than a Model T. A cellphone uses much less battery energy than a 1950 tube-based computer. There's no correlation.

So these authors aren't anywhere near a usable redefinition, but they are starting the process with a healthy humble attitude.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:57 PM

  Good question.
A good question seen on Quora:

Can our immune system kill insects?

Obvious answer: No.

But when you step back and ask why not, the question gets more interesting.

Plants have an immune system that does repel and kill insects, in complex and effective ways. When an insect starts chewing on a leaf, the plant sends toxins through its circulatory system to repel the bug. And then the plant tells its neighbors to start fighting this type of insect. The signal goes through stolons or through fungal 'wires' or through the air, depending on how the plant is connected up.

Why do animals lack a similar ability?

I can only think of one reason, which is unsatisfying.

Mammals and birds can shake off an insect, or knock it off with a leg or tail or beak. But this doesn’t seem nearly as effective as the plant method.

Labels: asked and worth asking again, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 10:32 PM

  Zoology
The ID folks are pointing to a 2012 book by Thomas Nagel, busting out of the Darwin bubble.

Nagel put a “sell by” date on the Darwinist idea of mind:

I would be willing to bet that the present right-thinking consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two — though of course it may be replaced by a new consensus that is just as invalid. The human will to believe is inexhaustible.

As a colleague points out, Nagel’s departure from the “right-thinking consensus” is on a par with Yale computer scientist David Gelernter’s 2019 farewell to Darwinism: both are major thinkers who showed that rejecting that orthodoxy can be done. Their courage also persuades me it will be done, by others of equal stature, giving intellectual permission to others in turn, until the tipping point that Nagel forecasts comes to pass. Of course, his sober warning about the next “consensus” must also be heeded.

I'm not so confident about the influence of influencers.

In the "virus" holocaust we've seen the same dozen serious biologists pointing out the fraud during the entire 17 fucking months. Ioannidis was first. He's still employed. The others, as I've noted, are mainly from India.

They haven't been imprisoned or fired. BUT nobody else has joined them. The number of CREDENTIALED truth tellers has not changed in either direction.

Nagel's pessimism about the next consensus is more realistic. Tenure and grants guarantee that Big Science will never get close to truth. Will to believe isn't the limitation. The competitive drive for STATUS is the limitation. Big Science is a ferociously competitive team sport. Grants are the scores, STATUS is the goal.

Deepstate allows a few dissenters to survive, in order to create an impression of "freedom" and "democracy". Deepstate encysts those exceptions in a toxic cage that warns other potential dissenters to avoid their fate.

It's a zoo of heretics.

Labels: endless hell, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:24 PM

  Thanks, Discovery Institute!
Occasionally I toss various amounts toward crowdfunds and kickstarts. I always toss enough to get the 'merch', whether it's a t-shirt or a mug or whatever. I've never actually received anything, and the projects never actually produced their video or book.

Finally an exception. I donated $300 toward Discovery Institute's new ID video, and they immediately sent a nice fat packet of CDs and posters on design.

Reminds me of the packets I used to get back in the '50s when I sent a postage stamp or an IRC for 'free literature'. Companies were happy to promote their products, sending posters and magazines and samples of new materials like Mylar. I always looked forward to 'literature', and this packet has the same pleasant feel.



I needed some pleasant feedback this week, and Discovery provided it. Thanks!

Labels: Entertainment, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:41 AM

  Darwin and Delta
Reading the continued fear and panic about the Delta Variant of the Haute-Couture Branded Virus, I'm seeing how Darwinism helps to form this holocaust.

Media and Fauci have persuaded everyone that the new mutation is EXPONENTIALLY SUPERDEADLY AND REQUIRES 9999999999999 TIMES MORE LOCKDOWN AND MUZZLE THAN THE ORIGINAL VERSION.

Fact:

Viruses always mutate. Each mutation is weaker than the previous, and easier for our immune systems to handle.

Larger Fact:

ALL MUTATIONS lead to a less successful organism. From the viewpoint of a virus, less successful means less deadly.

This is perfectly well known by real biologists. Several attempts to create evolution in a Petri dish have failed after millions of generations, because ALL MUTATIONS ARE BAD.

But the public voice of Darwin still tells us that every mutation improves the organism.

Evolution can only work if a significant number of mutations make the critter stronger and more adaptive. Therefore Darwinists must claim falsely that mutations are often good for the mutating organism.

= = = = =

Footnote: I've discussed other contributing streams. OCD. Wellness and testing. Education by theory instead of experience.

Labels: endless hell, Grand Blueprint, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 4:41 AM

  Wrong question as always
Quora question: Does science produce atheists?

This is well-traveled territory among ID types, but I never stopped to think about it from the other angle.

What DOES produce "science-led" atheists?

For 5000 years we've had specialized scientists who weren't called scientists. Astronomers/astrologers, as I've been discussing lately. Alchemists/chemists. Blacksmiths/metallurgists. Aristocratic doctors who had the time to do research on diseases.

The vast majority of them were solid theists, in the prevailing system of their era. Among those who wrote about the subject, opinion is unanimous. The more you learn about stars or organs or cells, the more you recognize that this stuff was created and designed. Only a superficial text-based knowledge can retain a belief in atheism.

I've gone through this sequence personally. After public school I was a standard Dawkins-type atheist, contemptuously dismissing all theism. After I started learning and teaching (via courseware) the fine details of human speech and perception, I was FORCED BY FACTS to see the design. The more I learn about the details, the more I'm convinced of design.

And that's the key.

Science doesn't produce atheists.

Science EDUCATION, and superficial public science as seen on TV or magazines or government genocides, produces atheists.

Labels: Carver, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 6:22 AM

  Excellent question
Found on Quora:

How did we just magically figure out that itching relieves bug bites?

It's deeper than it sounds. Scratching is a complex intelligent skill requiring lots of target-seeking. It's not a simple reflex like pulling away from pain. Sometimes scratching requires the use of a tool like a tree or fencepost, especially among animals with less flexible limbs.

All mammals do it, and I suspect birds do it as well.

How did evolution magically lead to this complex response?

Labels: asked and worth asking again, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 10:13 PM

  Tribe, not species
I've run this comparison before, and I feel like running it again.

Just now I bumped into the usual authoritative statement that Neanderthals were a separate species, who went extinct after competition with H. sapiens.

Standard Darwinism never dies.

Even after mainstream anthropologists have established that Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA are found in modern humans, Darwinists continue to insist that those groups were species.

Species don't interbreed. That's the DEFINITION of species. The male may attempt to mate, but the sperm and egg won't get together.

Tribes or ethnic groups mix. So those types were tribes, not species. Neanderthals didn't go extinct, they merged.

Darwin also infects our understanding of industrial species and tribes. We assume extinction by Disruptive Innovation. Nope. Mostly the old versions merged or simply became the new type.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

A tiresome cliche, heard every time some lowly non-progressive human complains about losing his good solid decent job in manufacturing: "Well, buggy whips had to give way to automobiles, so your job has to give way."

It's an evil trick, a misdirection to blame "the inevitable march of technology" for unspeakably evil decisions made by demons. "We're not doing this because we enjoy watching you starve! No, no, no, we're not doing this because your suffering enlarges our bonuses! No, no, no, we're forced against our will to implement the Inevitable And Unstoppable Law Of Globalization. Time Marches On, and we must follow. This hurts us more than it hurts you!"

But what about the precise metaphor? Were buggy whips the main casualty of automobiles? I suspect the unspeakably evil metaphor-makers would acknowledge that they really mean horse-drawn carriages.

So let's look at carriages vs autos. Again pieced together from the 1915 Chicago Tribune almanac:



Data from 1909, when the Model T was just starting production. Horses and streetcars were still dominant, and would remain so until 1920. Already automobiles (85K employees) had outpaced carriages (82K employees). But this wasn't a displacement. Carriage makers were actually subsumed into the auto industry. Studebaker switched directly from buggies to cars. Billy Durant was a buggy maker when he bought Buick to start GM. Many other carriage-makers turned into auto body makers like Fisher, which later became part of major auto companies. In other words, the buggy industry became the auto industry.

The real loss was railroads, not carriages.

A quick comparison from 1909 to 2011. The categories have changed. I assume whips are part of "manufactured leather goods", and I assume that the handful of carriages still produced for horse racing and parades are part of "other transportation", which cites golf carts as an example.

1909 whips 2k / 2011 leather 12k
1909 railroad rolling stock 400k / 2011 railroad rolling stock 27k
1909 automobiles 85k / 2011 "transportation equipment" 1.2M
1909 carriages 82k / 2011 "golf carts, etc" 12k

Where's technology in all of this? Present but complicated. Yes, autos were a new technology, but they expanded the carriage industry into a new form. They didn't kill carriages. They did kill passenger railroads, but freight railroads are still a huge industry, still successful with 1940's tech.

So tech is NOT the primary force in the buggy-whip story, and these sectors are NOT the real losses to American manufacturing anyway.

The real losses are clothing, appliances, electronics and household supplies. And in those sectors technology was a REVERSE force. American workers were replaced by Chinese and Pakistani workers using LOWER technology, solely because America-based corporations are treasonous mass murderers who enjoy slaughtering an entire nation to improve their share value.

I wonder what the 'beta' is? The coefficient of slaughter? How many millions of lives need to be destroyed for a one dollar increment in share value? I'm sure Goldman has a well-calibrated equation.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Footnote: There's one notable exception to the rule. Armbruster Stageway was founded in 1880 as a stagecoach builder, and is still in business in the same unlikely place, still making only bodies and modifications for cars. Never merged, never switched to making complete cars.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:01 PM

  Pay to unblock
MindMatters points to an interesting observation.

The percentage of people who suddenly become lucid on the point of death may be small but their stories are remarkable. Psychology Today notes a survey by researchers Alexander Batthyány and Michael Nahm:

So far, the response rate to the questionnaire has been limited. While the results are in no way definitive, out of the 227 dementia patients tracked, approximately 10 percent exhibited terminal lucidity. From his literature review, Nahm has reported that approximately 84 percent of people who experience terminal lucidity will die within a week, with 42 percent dying the same day.

This raises the possibility that some dementia is an overinhibition of function, not a loss of function. Near death, as systems are shutting down, the inhibition shuts off first.

= = = = =

Inhibiting an existing function is used in technology on many levels. In the analog era, shifters and switches and ignition locks were sometimes blocked with physical doors, to adapt for US laws and customs, or to create an option that could be "enabled" by the dealer.

Euro carmakers recognized the American preference for insecure locks and dumbed down their cars for American use. My '63 R8 had a steering-lock ignition ...



... but the deadbolt into the column was removed in the US edition. The same R8 also had a physical block on one end of the light lever, blocking off the high-beam position so the high beam could be diverted to the foot dimmer switch for Americans.

There was no legal requirement for either of these blocks, and the car would have been BETTER if they were unblocked. I unblocked the light lever and removed the dimmer pedal, but I couldn't undo the ignition.

When Nash used an Austin engine and transmission for the Metropolitan, they blocked off first gear to 'de-option' a four-speed down to a three-speed.

When Chrysler turned a regular three-speed transmission into a semi-auto, they blocked off first so the physical shifter had only Drive-hi and Drive-lo.

Similar blocks are common in the digital world. Most big programs have a trial version which is the same code as the paid version. When you pay the subscription, the gate is removed from the extra features. Same with paywalled websites. The content is all there but you have to pay to remove the extra gate in front of it.

Sometimes the pay is reversed. When the electric company switched to "smart" meters, I paid to stick with "unsmart" meters that require a physical reading every month. The meter includes the "smart", and I'm allegedly paying to BLOCK or turn off the "smart". I don't believe it's really turned off. I only want to let Avista know that some customers are willing to pay for "unsmart". It's like "voting" to record a preference while knowing good and goddamn well that "voting" doesn't work.

Back to living things... I often wish I could unblock the huge section of my imagination that is open during dreamtime. It generates original locations and characters and dialog that I can't possibly access in waketime. LSD doesn't open the paywall. I tried it in hippie days, and it didn't "open the doors" as Huxley said, it just produced a bunch of weird shit that wasn't imaginative.

The newer understanding of the genome is more like the Avista arrangement. Full functionality is available on the original platform. Each phylum and order and genus pays to have the unwanted genes turned off for convenience.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 1:29 PM

  God says TLM.
In previous item I had the tardigrade protesters carrying a 'Tardi Lives Matter' sign, just because it's a typical sign nowadays. I was throwing together a fast silly picture because I felt a shortage of silly pictures. Amusing myself.



Maybe it's not so amusing.

There are many similar critters living in the same places. Arthropods, annelids, nematodes, rotifers. Some are more complex than tardis, some are simpler. Tardis are ordinary in size and complexity.

Only tardis have superpowers.

None of those other critters have special mechanisms to survive all sorts of conditions that don't happen in nature. A shady moss grove doesn't experience gamma rays, vacuum, absolute zero, or being shot from guns.

It's clear that Tardi Lives Mattered in the mind of the designer. Why? Were tardis the original colonists sent to establish life on earth? Or sent from earth to colonize other planets? They have exactly the powers needed for a long spaceflight. After the flight, they live everywhere and they're inconspicuous and innocuous, maybe even cute. Nobody hates them.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, Entertainment, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:53 AM

  Brilliant experiment, brilliant description
Paleontologists at Yale are using casts of the inner ears of dinosaurs to infer the lifestyle of the dinos.

Because we've been making such casts of modern skulls for a long time, we know how the configuration of the vestibular system correlates with motion patterns of living animals.

The form of the vestibular system is a window into understanding bodies in motion.

One vestibular cluster corresponded with "sophisticated" fliers, species with a high level of aerial maneuverability. This included birds of prey and many songbirds.

Another cluster centered around "simple" fliers like modern fowl, which fly in quick, straight bursts, and soaring seabirds and vultures. Most significantly, the inner ears of birdlike dinosaurs called troodontids, pterosaurs, Hesperornis, and the "dino-bird" Archaeopteryx fall within this cluster.

In other words, dinobirds were chickens.

We also know how the configuration of the cochlea correlates with frequency range of living animals.

Bhullar said the data suggest that the cochlear shape's transformation in ancestral reptiles coincided with the development of high-pitched location, danger, and hatching calls in juveniles.

It implies that adults used their new inner ear feature to parent their young, the researchers said.

"All archosaurs sing to each other and have very complex vocal repertoires," Bhullar said. "We can reasonably infer that the common ancestors of crocodiles and birds also sang. But what we didn't know was when that occurred in the evolutionary line leading to them. We've discovered a transitional cochlea in the stem archosaur Euparkeria, suggesting that archosaur ancestors began to sing when they were swift little predators a bit like reptilian foxes."

An important distinction on the production side might complicate these inferences about the reception side. The configuration of the vocal tract determines the style of singing.



Default mammals, with spine and head horizontal, have very little resonance. The larynx is immediately followed by the mouth, which is typically open on both sides. There's no cavity or tube or column after the larynx.

Humans, with spine and head vertical, are built like a pipe organ or train whistle. The pharynx is a closed Helmholtz resonator above the larynx, with the mouth branching off and providing another closed resonator.

Birds are bugles. The mouthpiece or reed is at the bottom of a long resonator with muscular control. The beak is open on both sides like a cat, but the beak isn't needed as a resonator.

Resonators phase-lock the song into discrete notes.

The cochlear inferences are mixing fox-type and bird-type dinos together, which misses an important part of the signaling and coding ability. Bird-like discrete notes make language possible. Fox-like howling is a signal, but doesn't allow for detailed coding by discrete symbols.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Language update

  ¶ 4:51 AM

  HMR BCP/BCPO TRPM8
If there was still a purpose in doing the Ig-Nobel thing under current holocaustal circumstances when all science is genocide, this study would qualify. It's a perfectly serious description of a perfectly funny natural phenomenon.

Attraction to feces in wild mammalian species is extremely rare. Here we introduce the horse manure rolling (HMR) behavior of wild giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Pandas not only frequently sniffed and wallowed in fresh horse manure, but also actively rubbed the fecal matter all over their bodies. The frequency of HMR events was highly correlated with an ambient temperature lower than 15 °C. BCP/BCPO (beta-caryophyllene/caryophyllene oxide) in fresh horse manure was found to drive HMR behavior and attenuated the cold sensitivity of mice by directly targeting and inhibiting transient receptor potential melastatin 8 (TRPM8), an archetypical cold-activated ion channel of mammals. Therefore, horse manure containing BCP/BCPO likely bestows the wild giant pandas with cold tolerance at low ambient temperatures. Together, our study described an unusual behavior, identified BCP/BCPO as chemical inhibitors of TRPM8 ion channel, and provided a plausible chemistry-auxiliary mechanism, in which animals might actively seek and utilize potential chemical resources from their habitat for temperature acclimatization.

Rolling in shit is ENTERTAINING, no matter how precise and Krautistic the description. It's especially funny when funny critters like pandas do it. Dense jargon and sober acronyms only make it funnier.

There's also an ID corollary. Pandas eat nothing but bamboo, which implies that the two must have developed simultaneously. Now we know that pandas roll in horseshit, and dab it all over their fur, which also implies simultaneous development and reliable simultaneous presence in the same place.

Labels: Entertainment, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 8:24 AM

  Microsoft understands evolution by subtraction!
Via RealClearScience:

We will soon be ending support for the Cortana app on Android and iOS, as Cortana continues its evolution as a productivity assistant.

As of March 31, 2021, the Cortana content you created—such as reminders and lists—will no longer function in the Cortana mobile app, but can still be accessed through Cortana in Windows. Also, Cortana reminders, lists, and tasks are automatically synced to the Microsoft To Do app, which you can download to your phone for free.

After March 31, 2021, the Cortana mobile app on your phone will no longer be supported.

Of course the understanding is accidental, just a corporate buzzword, but still correct.

A genome or an invention or a language starts out with all important features, then loses them.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:06 AM

  Luck and chance aren't the same
Still meandering about purpose and design....

The usual ID argument about randomness doesn't quite hit one important point.

Luck and chance are not the same thing.

Every object, living or non-living, is battered by the chance events of weather. Every human is battered by the effectively random events of crazy or sane governments. Once in the life of a nation we get lucky with a Harding or FDR. Mostly we get holocaustal demons.

Inanimate objects can't respond to chance by ANTICIPATION. When a wind gust blows a pebble around, the pebble can't see it coming and take cover.

Living things ANTICIPATE the pattern of random events. Plants learn a pattern of light and dark or prevailing winds, and bend to meet the opportunity before it happens. We feel a storm coming, or feel a quake coming, and take appropriate steps.

On a higher level, humans can ANTICIPATE more complex opportunities. We can see that traffic is thinning out, so we get ready to jump in. We can see that Prohibition is likely to end, so we start converting our factory from cars to beer. We can see that jobs are starting to appear in the neighboring town, so we move there to be ready. We don't KNOW when the slot between cars will happen, and we don't KNOW when the 18th amendment will be repealed, and we don't KNOW that a job for our skill will appear, but we ANTICIPATE and make our own luck.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 9:00 AM