Good curse, wrong target
In Aeon, a solid and well-written curse against theories in economics:

Not theory, not statistics, but history – what happened and why. While theory and statistics can help explain ‘why’ questions, first comes systematic study of the ‘who, what, where, when and how’ questions – purportedly quotidian questions to which many economists have, to their detriment, long given short shrift. Had they not spurned or, at best, passed lightly over history, more economists would have sensed in the run-up to the 2007-9 financial crisis that the situation, as Rinehart and Rogoff suggest, maybe wasn’t so different from earlier financial crises after all.

The same applies to ALL theories in ALL disciplines. If we want to stop wasting ALL of our brains and money and energy on MONSTROUS SATANIC EVIL, we need to ABANDON ALL THEORIES.

THEORY KILLS. EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.

What should we do instead of theory?

Follow Carver. Follow Carver. Follow Carver.

Every fucking word counts.

LOOK ABOUT YOU.
TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.
TALK TO THEM.
LET THEM TALK TO YOU.

= = = = =

BUT: In economics, as in many other fields of "science", the real problem is even simpler than theory vs experience.

Economists are NOT failing at their actual job, just as most public "scientists" are NOT failing at their actual job.

The actual job of an economist has nothing to do with theories or facts. Economists are paid to raise the share value of their employers, and they usually succeed.

Other "scientists" are paid by government grantors to support the pet orthodoxies of the grantors, and they usually succeed.

In other words, these people are succeeding in jobs that have ZERO CONNECTION with science, even bad science. They are the Emperor's high priests, wearing weird costumes and chanting in weird language to impress the peasants with the Emperor's divinely authorized power.

Labels: Carver

  ¶ 12:16 AM

  Chatty today
Chatty today, aren't we? Seven blog posts since midnight.

The last week was dull and drab. Grinding on the routine parts of courseware, editing hundreds of HTML files and checking and rechecking and rechecking. Poor sleep from back pain, plus a couple of overly warm days.

Today the editing is done and the weather is cool. Relief. All the dubious thoughts that were rolling around behind the routine work decided to pop out.

The good part, which I tend to forget: Routine work is the BEST way to develop ideas. During repetitive work like bookkeeping or editing, previously unused memories drift to the surface and combine in unexpected ways.

Labels: coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 4:00 PM

  Cry me a Big Question
Still reading the Hix book. HIx delighted in debunking Shared Lies, but occasionally he missed the point.

The writer of the original saying knew that crocodiles don't shed tears. That's exactly why they're used as an example of human false tears. Like "scarce as hen's teeth".

But it turns out to be a lot more complicated. In fact crocodiles do have tear glands. Crocodiles are mainly land dwellers. Fish don't have tear glands. Amphibians have tear glands in their land-based adult forms but not in their fish-like larval forms.

Obviously the purpose of the tear gland, like every other necessary purpose, is present in the genes of all vertebrates. The glands are expressed and implemented exactly when needed.

Big Question: If animals started in water, why was the gene for tear glands present in fish? How did evolution KNOW that fish would later evolve into semi-terrestrial critters who would need tear glands only in their land forms, and then evolve into land-only critters with full-time tear glands?

Contrarily, if the gene wasn't present from the start, how did land-crawlers survive for millions of years until "random mutation" happened to figure out the correct and complicated form of a tear gland? Did they stay near water and dunk their heads when their vision started to blur? If so, how did they know that dunking their heads would clear their vision? Was this an instinct? If so, when did the gene for the instinct evolve?

= = = = =

10 minutes after posting the above, Google fed me this ad:

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 2:40 PM

  Build your own Big Question
Via the immensely valuable American Radio History library, a 1954 book on transistors.

At that time the device was still pretty much custom-made, not yet in full quantity production. For an ordinary experimenter, commercial transistors were essentially unavailable, so the book shows how to build your own!

Germanium diodes were commercially available, so the author details the process of disassembling three diodes to make one transistor.

Each diode is the modern version of a catwhisker detector.

Here's the original catwhisker:



And here's a live 1N34 germanium diode scanned:



The first diagram:



and the second:



Clearly an earlier experimenter could have developed the technique using the 1910-era catwhiskers. And in fact some did. They realized that two catwhiskers on the same galena crystal made amplification possible.

This debunks one Shared Lie and raises one Big Question.

Shared Lie: Quantum Quackery was necessary for the development of the transistor. Nonsense. Bell wasn't using QQ. Bell was just experimenting with this technique, which had already been seen in vague and tentative form. Bell had massive resources and a massive NEED for a miniature amplifier and switcher that could be fitted into cable relay points. And above all Bell had the world's best collection of thinkers and technicians.

Resources + need + techs = Working transistor.

Big Question: Why didn't anyone even try to develop the device in the '20s when the possibilities were visible?

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 10:27 AM

  Populism applies at all levels.
Normally I use the word populism at the level of nations.

A populist leader serves the PEOPLE OF HIS OWN NATION, not other nations or corporations or banks or NGOs.

The definition also works at lower levels.

Copkiller Carpetbagger Condon, brought here from NYC by Bloomberg, has been working fanatically hard to ruin Spokane for its OWN PEOPLE. He skyrocketed the crime rate, neutered the police force, made housing unaffordable for all except his own exquisite Bloombergian Billionaire Buddies.

Now he's openly serving ANOTHER CITY to advance his purpose of RUINING SPOKANE.

Via KREM,

SEATTLE — Spokane Mayor David Condon is not mincing words in his effort to convince Seattleites to move east.

A new campaign launched by the City of Spokane is attempting to attract tech talent and businesses to consider the Lilac City as an alternative to the busy, overpriced way of life in Seattle.

The campaign called Hacking Washington suggests that "Here you still can," a subtle dig at Seattle which has become known more for its skyrocketing rent and tech wealth, as opposed to its views and easy living.

Thanks, vile nasty evil NYC fuckhead. Bring in more ZERO TAX fuckheads to make housing EVEN MORE UNAFFORDABLE for the ACTUAL PEOPLE OF THIS CITY.

Labels: infinite evil, Sorosia

  ¶ 9:05 AM

  Symmetrical misattribution
I thought I had written this before, but a quick check of the Malign Misattribution tag shows that I didn't.

For many decades we've been attributing all sorts of bad events to Russia. Our cultural destruction was planned and implemented by CIA and attributed to Russia. Our war against Russia is attributed to Russia. Trump, who runs our war against Russia, is called a Russian troll.

Mirror image: The best part of the last 70 years was ACTUALLY Russia's fault and we DIDN'T attribute it to Russia.

What's the best thing? PEACE in Europe from 1945 to 1990. Peace was Russia's fault.

We falsely attributed this peace to NATO and the EU.

How do I know this is false? Timeline.

The Soviet Union controlled half of Europe from 1945 to 1990.

The EU was a trade zone from 1955 to 1992, and then it became an empire.

NATO was created in 1949, and still exists in strong form today.

Peace lasted from 1945 to 1990. As soon as Russia gave up its control of Europe, we IMMEDIATELY invaded and bombed Serbia.

The only thing that matches the TIME of peace is the TIME of Soviet control. NATO started after the peace and continued through the war. EU started after the peace and got strong DURING the war.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 6:21 AM

  Possible answer to missing chart point
Yesterday I mentioned that some specific frequencies resonate with specific atoms, potentially disrupting certain proteins or chemicals. AFAIK this isn't a real problem with our all-pervasive electromagnetic radiation, but it got me to thinking along similar lines.

As I detailed here, Nature only transmits electrostatic waves, not magnetic waves. When humans started to develop radio, we mainly used inductive or electromagnetic transmitters and receivers. Dolbear's capacitive system was an exception, but he didn't pursue it.

Why does Nature prefer to communicate with static fields instead of magnetic fields? Most animals have magnetic sensors for navigation, so it would seem efficient to re-use those sensors for communication. But nobody does.**

Two answers pop up immediately.

(1) Blood cells contain iron. If an internal antenna is creating a strong magnetic field, it could 'permatize' the blood cells, leading them to clump or repel each other.

(2) Navigation is too important and subtle to tolerate interference. The earth's field is much weaker than the radiation needed to communicate, so the communication would overwhelm the geosensors, and again possibly 'permatize' them.

** Partial exception: the bee's waggle dance, which is a sort of vector compass pointer based on the earth's field. "Go 30 degrees left of North for five units, then go 80 degrees right of North for three units."

Labels: Asked and sort of answered, bee

  ¶ 3:32 AM

  Still misses
This RAND study on changes in media is refreshingly objective in some ways, but still misses the main point.

The team also found quantifiable changes in certain linguistic areas between the pre-2000 and post-2000 periods. For example, the three newspapers’ reporting before 2000 used language that was more heavily event- and context-based than it was in stories written after 2000; pre-2000 stories also contained more references to time, official titles, and positions and institutions and used more descriptive, elaborative language to provide story details. In contrast, the team found that post-2000 reporting engaged in more storytelling and emphasized interactions, personal perspective, and emotion.

Refreshingly objective: Treats Fox and CNN as equally bad. Normally an article on this subject treats CNN as the GOLD STANDARD OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH and treats Fox as Satan.

The 2000 dividing line is unsurprising. In 2000 cable networks figured out that soap operas sell more soap than news. So they turned the news into soap operas.

We found a starker contrast between broadcast news and prime-time cable presentation after 2000. Compared with news presentation on broadcast television, prime-time programming on cable outlets exhibited a dramatic and quantifiable shift toward subjective, abstract, directive, and argumentative language, with content based more on the expression of opinion than on the provision of facts.

All of this is obviously true. Nice to have it verified by a quantitative text analysis. But narrative language versus official titles is NOT the problem. Back in the '40s, radio news was strongly narrative. Bob Trout and Lowell Thomas were storytellers, not official statement quoters.

The important difference is in the content of the story, not the style. Trout was narrating things that actually happened. Modern narrators are narrating about narration, not narrating about events. They are telling us what Trump said about what Pelosi said, or more often telling us what Trump failed to say about what Pelosi said about what Pelosi thought Bernie should have said.

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Davis said in an interview that he is "no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump's awareness of the Russian efforts."

99% of our "news" is ATROCIOUSLY BAD EPISTEMOLOGY. If we had actual philosophers, they would be unraveling this nonsense and pointing out its infinite bonkersness.

Since the philosophers aren't doing their JOB, let's try to do it for them. Systematize this mess.

[WaPo claims that [Davis claimed to [know that [Davis no longer knows about [his claim to [know what Cohen [knows about what Trump [knows about a [totally non-existent and thus unknowable fairy tale.]]]]]]]]]

That's EIGHT LAYERS of claims and knowledge and anti-claims and anti-knowledge, based on a delusion (RUSSIAN_MEDDLING) that anyone who ACTUALLY KNOWS THE SLIGHTEST MICROBIT OF REALITY knows to be a delusion.

There is NO ACTUAL EVENT in any of this mess.

NOTHING HAPPENED.

Which means there is NO NEWS and NO INFORMATION. All we have is a stupendous and stupefying pile of BAD PHILOSOPHY. It's a mishmash of midrash.

= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

The Rand report misses the role of the Shared Lie. Most of these "arguments" and "debates" are based on two "opposing" opinions about a FALSE FACT. We are never allowed to hear a statement of plain old reality.

Arguments about foreign policy start with the ABSOLUTE IMPERATIVE that we must destroy Venezuela or Russia or Persia or CURRENT_ENEMY. The discussion is an auction, not a debate. Each side bids up the necessary amount of violence and genocide. Nobody is allowed to ASK why we need to destroy Venezuela.

Arguments about domestic policy start with the FLAT ASSERTION that CO2 causes "climate change". The discussion is an auction. How much of civilization do we need to obliterate in order to reduce CO2 by the specified percentage? What is the appropriate percentage? Nobody is allowed to ASK whether the attribution of cause and effect is correct.

Labels: Carbon Cult, epistemology, malign misattribution, Shared Lie

  ¶ 2:08 AM

  Not that complicated
I've been trying to figure out why the COOOOL ones are worried about AI. It doesn't make sense on the surface. Some of these worriers know enough about AI ... or SHOULD know enough about AI ... to understand its limits. They SHOULD know that the Hal-style takeover is physically impossible. Are they just dumb, or do they have a backhanded reason to make us think that they are worried?

Earlier I guessed:

When all of the ruling class is publicly "worried" about a target, it means they're getting ready to treat the target as a fake enemy.

The sponsors of AI are at the deepest heart of Deepstate, maybe even deeper than Henry, so there's no reason for Deepstate to worry about them. Just like previous Red Scares and Muslim Scares, the worry presages a pogrom. We're being "poisoned" by "Russian" AI bots, and we must obey Deepstate's own AI perfectly so it can "defend" us against the "Russian" AI. We must be microchipped and turned into Things Of The Internet Of Things. Most residents of Sorosian lands are already hardwired into the grid, so the pogrom will only affect the unchipped. Take a chip or take a bullet. You're free to choose.

Now a sane article on AI quotes one of the worriers who shows a much simpler version of the worry. The pogrom is already underway, but it's not related to this worry.

A general AI system with access to the internet would be able to hack thousands of computers and copy itself onto them, thus becoming difficult or impossible to shut down – this is a serious problem even with present-day computer viruses. When developing an AI system in the vicinity of general intelligence, it would be important to keep it cut off from the internet. Large scale AI systems are likely to be run on a computing cluster or on the cloud, rather than on a single machine, which makes isolation from the internet more difficult. Containment measures would likely pose sufficient inconvenience that many researchers would be tempted to skip them.

When a learning system is allowed to LISTEN to sane people, it acquires a sane picture of reality. Microsoft already ran into this problem with its chatbots who picked up a factual understanding of human nature and turned into "racist sexist homophobe transphobe" chatbots. MS quickly shut down the fact-infected systems for "repair".

So the worriers are really afraid that humans might take over AI. It's a Dave problem, not a Hal problem.
  ¶ 12:31 AM

  RUSSIAN_FACTS
Today's headline:



Russia wants you to think 5G is dangerous.

The form of this headline tells us what's happening. It's a classic Deepstate trick, common in the '50s and '60s and resurrected for Cold War 2.

Any fact that Deepstate wants us to fight or ignore becomes a RUSSIAN_FACT. We are then required to believe the opposite.

Well, how about the fact itself? Is 5G dangerous?

It's not a yes/no question. It's a gradation, with a parabolic shape.

Static and magnetic fields of all frequencies, including plain old DC, can do damage if the intensity is strong enough. Intensity and penetrating power depend on distance and frequency. Closer distance is obviously stronger, and higher frequency is stronger. There are some specific frequencies that resonate with specific atoms, causing disruption of specific compounds or proteins.

Cellphones are transmitters normally held IN CONTACT WITH THE SKULL, so distance is zero. As the frequency of the transmission gets higher and higher. the penetration gets stronger and stronger.

We already have some rather loose correlations of cellphone usage and brain cancer. As the frequency gets higher, we can expect the incidence to grow.

Is this a risk worth taking?

NYTimes shouts an unequivocal YES because cellphones are the mark of COOOOOOOOOOOLNESS and high status. The higher frequency forms of cellphones (5G versus declasseG and vulgarG) are more expensive and thus COOOOOOLER, which means they are AUTOMATICALLY AND TAUTOLOGICALLY SAFE.

Anyone who dares to question the HOLINESS AND PURITY of the most fashionable idiocy must be RUSSIAN_HACKER and must be EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED EXTERMINATED.

Labels: infinite evil

  ¶ 5:46 AM

  A nice SES
This was a message in the local Nextdoor.com today. I've redacted some names for safety.

Update: my car was found at the corner of XX and YY. It had meth in it, drug scales, and smoked meth in it, along with other disgusting stuff. Also had 3,500 miles in 6 days. There was still warm Jack in the Box in the car - tried to get Jack to review camera footage but no response. Frontier Behavior Health paperwork for [Male Criminal] and eviction notice from Volunteers of America for [Female Criminal].

Both ‘well’ known to law enforcement.

Fools who think there's no difference between professional criminals and lawbreakers should pay attention to this. Fools who think crime is about "laziness" or "getting something for nothing" should pay attention to this.

Professional criminals are deeply committed to their vocation. They work long hours developing and implementing crimes. Driving 3500 miles in 6 days is NOT EASY. That's the distance from Seattle to Key West.

Plus a fine example of a one-sentence biography or self-explanatory sentence:

eviction notice from Volunteers of America

It takes serious and sustained effort to get formally evicted from a homeless shelter!

Labels: SES

  ¶ 11:51 PM

  Figured it out
I've been trying to figure out why Uber is so IMPERATIVELY popular among COOOOOOOOOOOOOL idiots. COOOOOOOOOOOOL fuckheads are MANDATORILY REQUIRED to say at least once per minute that they NEVER NEVER NEVER use regular taxis and NEVER NEVER NEVER even look at a bus, and they ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS use Uber.

What is the basic advantage?

Finally figured it out.

Uber is a taxi that you can ONLY call via cellphone.

Non-Uber taxis can be called via landlines or cellphones.

Because landliners are TERMINALLY UNCOOL DEPLORABLES, the system that FREEZES OUT landliners is the only permissible system.

(The above is narrowly true but sarcastic. The real reason is simpler. Uber fits into the absolute globalist model. Its SOLE PURPOSE is to replace LOCAL taxis with a single GLOBAL taxi system. Total monopoly based on share value is MANDATORY. Local business based on profit is EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE.)

Labels: Sorosia

  ¶ 11:37 PM

  Non-Graybill colonialism
The "new" Silk Road version of colonialism isn't new. In an earlier era Britain worked that way.

From a 1911 Marconi Company magazine.



Marconi had been selling to Russia for a while, then Russia decided to advance its skills with a 'local content' law. Russia built its own factory using Simon Eisenstein's patent instead of Marconi's patents.

Modern England and USA would respond to this move with sanctions to CUT OFF all commerce, followed by bombing Russia down to bedrock. Nobody gains, lots of people die.

1911 England responded to the move by negotiating and buying a controlling interest.

Result: Russian workers continued building the equipment, and Marconi had some profit from the concern. Everybody gained. The Russian government lost a bit of profit, but got in return a more experienced and technically advanced management for its workers.

The key pivot point is WORKERS AND SKILLS. Movement of money doesn't ruin people and countries. Movement of labor does.

Sorosian capitalism aims to KILL all production and useful work EVERYWHERE. When we LBO a company we destroy it and destroy the workers and skills. SHARE VALUE IS THE UNIVERSE. Workers and factories are NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES. Killing them raises share value, so they die.

When Toyota and Kia build factories in USA, they employ American workers and supply a more technically advanced and humane management. When China builds a plant or a farm in Africa, it employs African workers.

Back in 1911 England and USA were running the same way. We built factories in Canada and Europe, obeying local content laws, using local workers and suppliers, selling to local customers, creaming off the profit. Everybody gained something.

Life isn't "nice". Everyone is always scrambling for advantage. When government puts SKILLS first, focusing on ADDING REAL VALUE, everybody gains something from the ADDED VALUE. When government puts the Dow first, Bezos gains everything and all humans die.

= = = = =

Later: Seems like the Russians surrendered a little too easily. Best guess: Building the factory was a chess move. Russia knew that it was behind in radio tech, and couldn't really compete with Marconi's experience and patents and lawyers. So it gave Marconi a way to "conquer" the Russian market with Russian workers.

Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 6:36 AM

  Norway leaves Sorosia!
Via ZH, Norway's new anti-EU government is MAKING REAL CHANGES.

Norway's new public health minister, Sylvi Listhaug, thinks that adults don't need government lectures about what they put into their bodies - telling Norway's state broadcaster NRK that "people should be allowed to smoke, drink and eat as much red meat as they like," according to the New York Times.

"The government may provide information, but I think people in general know what is healthy and what is not," she added.

The interview, published just three days into her new role as head of the ministry, was "dotted with the kind of sharp, controversial comments Ms. Listhaug, deputy leader of the right-wing, anti-immigration Progress Party, is known for."

BRAVO.

I've been slow to follow Turley's premature praise for various new gov'ts in Europe, but this is a DECISIVE switch from Sorosian orthodoxy. It's an especially strong DELTA from the previous status of Scandinavian lands as the vanguard of Satan.

Time to add Norway to the God Side on the map of Sorosia. I've also moved Ireland back to the Soros side after a brief false non-Soros indication.



Meaningless pattern recognition: A lot of the new God Side countries are long narrow peninsulas. Compact countries aren't switching sides.

Labels: Sorosia

  ¶ 6:51 AM

  9 = 5
Article on 'Nine strange sounds' caught my attention.

Five of the nine items are really the same thing. A variety of undersea sounds heard through ship sonar systems in the 1990s. Most were near Antarctica. Clearly something strange was going on, but it was all part of the same something. So the list really contains 5 strange sounds.

The section on The Hum is closer to everyday reality, and remarkably fair and open-minded.

It’s difficult to pinpoint when instances of the Hum began, but it’s been well-documented since the 1970s, and since then, cases have popped up all over the world—from Ontario, Canada to Taos, New Mexico to Bristol, England to Largs, Scotland and Auckland, New Zealand.

In most instances, the affected group only makes up around 2 percent of the population, but for those individuals, the Hum is largely inescapable and impossible to track. Those affected report never having heard noises before, and say the Hum is generally heard indoors and becomes louder at night. It’s also most common in rural and suburban areas and among people between age 55 and 70.

Because the Hum appears and disappears and because the cause may vary from case to case, the phenomenon still baffles researchers. At this point, a few things are clear: The Hum is real and likely a byproduct of 21st-century living.

Bravo for calling it real, and bravo for allowing multiple sources.

I suspect most of the sources are electrostriction. Powerlines and transformers nearly always move in tune with 60 cps AC. The strength varies with ambient conditions. Nearby ion-sucking trees can motivate corona-like discharges, pushing the wires more strongly. The conduction and resonance of the sound depends on soil, pavement, and pipes.

A low-freq vibration at a considerable distance can channel through sewer and water pipes to specific houses if the resonant wavelength is right. A good example happened a couple months ago during a period of extreme cold and heavy snow. Suddenly my house started humming and buzzing. The buzzing was intermittent and clearly centered on the electric meter. PANIC! Was the wiring overloaded? After going outside several times, I figured it out. A snowplow several blocks away was vibrating the pavement, and a resonance near 60 was 'surfing' my house. As the house itself vibrated, the inlet conduit of the electric meter was vibrating the opposite way by inertia, so the house was buzzing against the conduit. When the snowplow moved off to a different area, the buzzing ceased and never returned.


(Artist's conception exaggerated for clarity)

Electrostriction doesn't require major current or voltage. Back when TV antennas were common, most antennas emitted a highly audible ring at 15750 cps, the frequency of the horizontal scanning in the TV. You could hear it from the street. Antennas are inputs, not outputs; but the potential difference between the chassis of the TV and the surrounding air was enough to set the vanes of the antenna into electrostriction.

Labels: 1901, Entertainment

  ¶ 1:00 AM

  In other fucking words,
Via Eurekalert, idiotic headline:

Storm water banking could help Texas manage floods and droughts

In other fucking words, Texas needs to build more fucking dams.

I ALREADY FIGURED THIS OUT MANY YEARS AGO AND WROTE ABOUT IT. YOU DIDN'T LISTEN, DID YOU? YOU NEVER LISTEN TO TRUTH WHEN IT COMES FROM UNFASHIONABLES AND DEPLORABLES, YOU GROTESQUE ALIEN DEMON MONSTERS.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 2:58 PM

  Non-orthogonal
Since I'm doing supershorts this morning, here's an odd thought.

Non-orthogonal graph:

GIF is for moving images.
JPG is for still images.

MP3 is for moving sounds.
??? is for still sounds.

There's no such thing as a still sound.

You could capture the localized air pressures at a specific moment, but it wouldn't be meaningful or useful**. Sound is time and time is sound.

Does this help to explain why the phonograph took so long to invent? I've noted that all the materials and skills for Edison's original phonograph were available in 1500. Clocks and music boxes had more complex mechanisms than Edison, and a music box maker had the necessary experience with sound. It would take an hour to convert a music box into a Dictaphone, using 1500 materials.

Humans have been drawing and painting still images forever, so the step to moving images was an old idea. Flipcards were around for centuries. After Daguerre found a way to paint instantly, flipcards developed into Muybridge's zoopraxiscope, then almost immediately into Edison's cinema.

Edison's phonograph developed without any intermediate steps. He was working on a rather impractical and unnecessary way to store the clicks of telegraphs, when he realized that it would serve better for voice.

= = = = =

** Peculiar exception to this rule: Forensic engineering. When you're determining how Galloping Gertie collapsed, or how the shock wave from a bomb broke a window or an eardrum, you need a complete snapshot of the relevant pressures at the crucial moment.


= = = = =

Trying to extend the graph to smell: Despite decades of false promises and vaporware, we don't have a way to paint and replay smells; we only have verbal descriptions. Unlike sound, smells can obviously be static or dynamic. Humans recognize and (poorly) describe still smells, but we pay no attention to the dynamic aspect of smells. Dogs clearly have a full picture of both spatial and temporal variations in the world of smell. They can see a map and read a story.

Labels: defensible thymes

  ¶ 12:45 AM

  Best article on learning
Excellent short article on learning by Andrew McDiarmid.

Worth reading. Gets everything right, says everything concisely and quickly. No quibbles!

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 11:53 PM

  Speaking of clock towers.....
Carvana introduces a 'car vending machine':

A different kind of masterpiece has been created in #KC. #Carvana proudly introduces its all-new #KansasCity #CarVendingMachine – a towering eight-story edifice that brings a whole new flavor to car buying

Also known as a multi-story showroom. Common in big cities for 100 years.

Also known as a tornado magnet. Twisters derive special pleasure from ripping out the sides of tall glass structures and redistributing the contents.

Also known as... 1933 Nash!
  ¶ 7:23 AM

  Best peep
Counterexample to the stupid use of ciphering in previous item.

This description of a light-based telegraph credited to Aeneas is in a book about telegraphs published in 1808, twenty years before the first harnessing of electricity or magnetism for human purposes.

Each end had a water-clock, pointing to a list of sentences instead of a list of minutes. The sender flashed a torch and started his clock. The receiver started his clock when he saw the flash, and then flashed his torch to acknowledge receipt. As the pre-sync'd clocks dripped out water, the sender flashed again at the moment when the pointer hit the desired message. The receiver could then read the sentence from his own pointer.

This system had full security. Even if an enemy knew that a clock cipher was in use, the enemy wouldn't know the sentences on the board, and wouldn't know the drip speed or the spacing of the sentences. Both could be varied by a predetermined schedule if needed.

Serendipitous sidenote: Polistra's light-tower sending V for V-day is another type of clock cipher! I'm using it for plain old Morse, but it could be used like the Aeneas device.

Labels: Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 6:26 AM