Labels: skill-estate
The result has been constant from the start. Total at this point is 23k votes, which is about 20% of the adult population of Spokane. That's a big N for a survey, larger than turnout in primary "elections". Result: 59% humans, 41% vile filthy nasty genocidal alien grotesque Mascoid holocausters.Labels: Asked and properly answered
The architect was making a specific point in the alignment of the parts. He wanted the building to shout the company slogan: Elgin takes the time from the stars and puts it in your pocket.
You can't really hear the shout from this view, but it's clear from a floor plan:
The octagon is out of sync. Octagons were common in 1910 buildings, and carpenters were accustomed to octagonal towers. If the architect had wanted maximum cost-cutting, he would have aligned the rest of the building to make 90s and 45s with the octagon. Or even simpler, a square building with the octagonal dome sitting on top.
But he didn't want Economic Efficiency. He wanted to express the company's soul. He aligned the building with the streets, and aligned the dome to true north.
The dome doesn't rotate, and the telescope within doesn't rotate. Strictly speaking it's a transit, not a telescope, because its sole purpose is to calibrate the transit of a star across a set of vertical lines. It's firmly attached to the earth with a 60 foot deep concrete pier, slightly separated from the building structure to avoid vibration.
Elgin had a full-time astronomer, and a sleeping office for long nights:
Checking time by the stars was an active subspecies of metrology, with its own peculiar techniques and instruments. All unfamiliar to modern eyes including mine, all gone now.
Astronomer Polistra is observing her favorite star:
Note the telegraph key. She is clicking every time she sees the edge of the chosen star cross one of 11 vertical lines on the transit lens. These clicks make marks on the chronograph or plotter, which is also marked every second by the standard clock nearby. After this observation, the relative alignment of the star-transit marks is compared with the ticks from the clock. Standard almanacs and calculations yield the exact sidereal time when this star should transit this lens on this date, so the local clock can be adjusted each night to keep it in line with the stars.
The astronomer was also calibrated occasionally with a Personal Equation Machine. Wonderful name for a simple gadget.
The Personal Equation Machine had a domesticated star that moved at a known rate across a small transit. The domesticated star clicked eleven contacts when it crossed the eleven lines on the transit, and the astronomer clicked "simultaneously". This yielded an average reaction delay, and the variability of reaction.
Equation of Time referred to any calibration curve between sun time and sidereal time, or a clock versus sidereal time, or Personal reaction time versus sidereal time. In the era when standard time was still competing with sun time, Equation Clocks and Equation Watches were fairly common.
How was the result of these Equations used? The same telegraphic clock that marked the chronograph also drove sounders in the adjustment workshops of the factory. Each watch was adjusted until its ticks exactly matched the telegraphic ticks.
For a while Elgin competed with the National Bureau of Standards, sending the telegraphic ticks to WDAP (later renamed WGN) in Chicago. Like WWV, the ticks skipped a beat at :59. WDAP broadcasted a couple minutes of the ticks several times each day.
= = = = =
Elgin followed the same Social Economics creed as Ford and Conoco and NCR and Weston. Watchmaking, even in mass production, requires special talent and training, so Elgin wanted to keep its employees loyal and contented. Elgin paid its workers well and provided recreation and medical care. Young single employees could stay on campus in a comfortable hotel.
Elgin protected and preserved accurate measurements, and protected and preserved the skills of its workers. Beautiful. Perfect opposition to all modern shit, perfect balance. Equipoise.
Continued and expanded here.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
The better subtopics:
Ohm, Newton, Carnot, Hopkins.
Summing up the Ancestral Clocks.
Equipoise and Experts.
Be your own beacon.
Calibrate your own beacon.
The Harding exception.
Labels: defensible spaces, defensible times, metametrology, Metrology
A research team from the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville, led by Pim Edelaar, has carried out an experimental study that shows that grasshoppers are perfectly aware of their own colouration when choosing the place that provides them with better camouflage. "We have studied a population of grasshoppers that is adapting to living on abandoned paved streets of very different colours. We have been able to verify that the grasshoppers are aware of their own colour, because they choose the type of substrate most similar to themselves, thus camouflaging themselves better..." To verify this thesis, the researchers changed the colour of the grasshoppers with watercolour paint (something that does not affect them more than in their colour), and then observed that they modified their use of substrate: individuals painted in dark colour moved onto the dark asphalt, and individuals painted in pale colour moved onto the pale-tiled sidewalks. "Probably the grasshopper is able to compare the colour of its body with that of the substrate, and subsequently chooses the substrate that contrasts the least," says Adrián Baños.Painting the grasshoppers removes the possibility that green bugs had "evolved" by "accidental natural selection" to favor green surfaces. Natural selection DOES tend to produce such adaptations. By selection, an innately green hopper painted brown should still prefer green surfaces. Instead, the hoppers see their own current color and use it to select surfaces. This unavoidably implies a sense of self, an ability to distinguish what's me from what's not me. I'm gray today, so I should find a gray environment. A nice personal touch from one of the authors:
"It is logical that this happens, but it is not easy to prove it," recalls Alberto Sanabria, whose Master's thesis was the basis of the article. "When I was following the grasshoppers at 40ºC in the Seville summer, I didn't know what we were going to find, but it certainly was worth the effort and the sweat, literally," he adds.
Labels: Constants and Variables, Grand Blueprint
Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy, Sucker Filter
Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode
a miniature storehouse for spare needles. The lid also had a hinged flap to hold your current 'playlist' of records, so the Birch was fully self-contained, needing no external power or external supplies.
Now we'll let Polistra and friends have some off-grid '50s fun with the Birch!
= = = = =
I've learned to appreciate the power of clockwork. It's completely independent of all systems that can be turned off by governments or disasters. If you're alive enough to use the device, you're alive enough to wind it up. If you're not alive, it doesn't matter.
Oddly, modern technology makes more windup devices possible. A phono doesn't need electronics, but a radio does. Solid-state circuitry consumes much less power than tubes, so a radio with a windup generator is practical.
Existing cranked radios fail the independence test because they use a cranked generator to store energy in a lithium battery. Lithium batteries have a SHORT shelf life. I tried a cranked radio and a cranked flashlight. Both failed after two years. The lithium cells were soldered in, so even if you were buying spare cells once a year, you couldn't solder the new one without electricity!
A generator turned by clockwork and directly powering the radio would always be ready when you need it. Labels: Patient things, storage
The article under the headline is probably saying something different, but I don't need to read it. The headline carries the truth.
Labels: Equipoise, Experiential education
Labels: Equipoise
Labels: Make or break
Labels: Asked and sort of answered, Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode
The Brunelleschi herringbone pattern was certainly known by the Sangallo in the 16th century, who developed their own self-balanced construction technology for masonry domes based on the cross-herringbone spiraling pattern. Such technology was used for over one century in Italy to build masonry domes without shoring and formwork. However today it is not well known how this cross-herringbone spiraling pattern enables equilibrium states of self-balancing masonry domes.The real correspondence to life is broader than the resemblance to the double-helix. This balanced pattern extends itself without a supporting scaffold or form. When life creates cells or structures inside cells, no scaffolds are needed. The double-helix is just one among many resulting patterns. Symmetrical reflection is the key in all of these constructions. Must admit the octagonal dome is what caught my attention. Is there something about this shape that stirs the inhabitants to think symmetrically and build things with equipoise? A metalayer to the scaffoldless pattern?
Labels: Equipoise, Grand Blueprint
The team analyzed what strategy can promote and maintain a cooperative society in a basic model of a social dilemma called "the prisoner's dilemma" by introducing a new action of not participating in games. They determined a strategy that can lead to mutual cooperation without using non-cooperative actions even when facing an exploiter. The strategy can be described as "escape interaction if a partner defected or cooperate if a partner escaped interaction".Game theory is total nonsense, but we can observe the interests of the demons by observing HOW they use game theory. They are starting to recognize that #desistance is popular. The next step is devising strategies to forbid #desistance and exterminate #desistors. = = = = = END REPRINT. A worldwide state of siege is, shall we say, a rather audacious strategy, but it's classic "social" "science", and it's certainly an effective strategy. When everyone in the world is trapped in their houses, unable to work and talk and congregate, there's no way to avoid participating. Inmates may choose to #desist from imprisonment, but they can't do it.
Labels: #desistance, Jackboot stomping forever, Jail mode
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code. But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasa’s budget and pride. Imperial College’s modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.Again, good Twitter point but useless as a rule or comparison. First: Software in 1962 was a primitive and unsophisticated skill. I don't know how the Mariner code was written, but I suspect it wasn't even Fortran; probably machine opcodes, hard to debug and hard to understand. Modern software has all sorts of internal protections against simple errors, and modern programmers have professional workflow techniques. This is like blaming Ford's safety compliance engineers for a headon crash between 1908 Model Ts. Safety wasn't even a subject in 1908. Second: In this case the software is NOT THE PROBLEM AT ALL. Blaming the software is Malign Misattribution, a typical Shared Lie. Lots of people write crappy simulation code. I've written some myself. When I animate my old tech models, I'm simulating and predicting how they would have worked, and I sometimes get it wrong. Because I know how the world works in general, I can spot the problem and correct it. The people who decided to use Ferguson's code either don't know how viruses and immune systems work, or more likely they know perfectly well HOW TO WRECK THE IMMUNE SYSTEM. Third and most important: THEY DIDN'T NEED ANY FUCKING MODELS AT ALL. THERE'S NOTHING NEW ABOUT THIS VIRUS, SO NO NEW RESPONSE WAS NEEDED. PUBLIC HEALTH WAS WELL PREPARED FOR A NORMAL VIRUS, AND PUBLIC HEALTH WAS ALREADY HANDLING THIS NORMAL VIRUS AS IT FUCKING ALWAYS DOES. THE SOFTWARE WAS JUST ONE ELEMENT OF THE HOLOCAUST, NOT THE CAUSE OF THE HOLOCAUST. = = = = = The genocidal anti-health officials who chose Ferguson are just like the Wreckers who built fake lighthouses to steer ships onto the rocks. Ferguson is the bricklayer who built the tower in the wrong place. He knew that he was participating in a crime, but he wasn't the mastermind. Repeating: Henry VIII responded to the problem by founding Trinity House, a mutual benefit association or guild for sailors, and giving it full authority over lighthouses and navigation. Trinity House still exists and still has the same functions. Remarkable continuity for an organization, breaking all of Parkinson's Laws. Serving the same purpose for 500 years, funded the same way for 500 years. Every ship that docks at British ports pays a user fee to Trinity House. Is there any way for a modern monarch to create an equivalent Mutual Benefit Association for real science? I strongly doubt it. Henry was just as evil and crazy as modern kings, but he was motivated by loss of tax revenue. Modern Sorosian monarchs don't need taxes, so they don't need a country or an economy. They run solely on counterfeit numbers generated by central banks. King Henry of Ford and King Henry of England both operated in a closed circle. Henry of Ford realized that he had to pay his workers enough to buy one of the cars they were building. He wanted MORE PROFIT, and the only way to make more profit is to sell things to workers who are making things. Henry of England realized that he needed uncrashed ships to carry the products that England made, or to import products and crops that England couldn't make. If the ships crashed, the economy would crash and his income would crash. Now the circle is broken. Corporations and governments depend solely on counterfeit numbers.
Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, Parkinson, Shared Lie, the broken circle, Trinity House
The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue. This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities. By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.These varied talents and tendencies are in our genes, and the same type of variety shows up in other complex species from ants to birds to elephants. Within the long history of humanity there has NEVER been a civilization or tribe that restricted its activities to growing and hunting food. All the way back, we find the same major categories. Farmers, cooks, cleaners, builders, parents, priests, healers, teachers, warriors, leaders. Specific to the current maelstrom, healers have always traded in illusions. Healers perform specific rituals and give us specific objects like prayer cloths and pills. We have a hard-wired response to these gestures and tokens. In recent centuries SOME of the rituals and pills do direct physical work on our cells and nerves. Most of the rituals and healing tokens serve to BOOST OUR CONFIDENCE, which directly boosts our immunity. FIRST AND FOREMOST, the lockdowns are OPENLY AND INTENTIONALLY DESIGNED to eliminate immunity. The EXPLICITLY STATED AND PROMISED PURPOSE is to prevent our immune system from encountering the virus and building defenses. THIS IS BLATANTLY AND EXPLICITLY ANTI-SCIENCE, ANTI-MEDICINE, AND MURDEROUS. Secondarily, sieges intentionally destroy the "illusory" aspects of healing, along with many of the physical aspects. We can't sleep, can't work, can't eat a balanced diet, can't think straight, can't exercise enough, can't get fresh air and sunlight, can't go to the chiropractor or PT for therapy, can't go to the hospital for surgery. All gone, both the illusions and the physicalities. Many of them won't come back after "reopening" because the holocaust drove them into bankruptcy.
Labels: Grand Blueprint, Natural law = Sharia law
Next October we shall see the first test of the "Radio Harangue." A truce to jazz and bedtime stories while the candidate for re-election on the anti-Prohibition platform in New Jersey before his invisible audience debates with the Honorable Volstead, who will demonstrate (radially) that bootleggers and homebrewers should be massacred by machine guns. Little doubt the ether enfolding our earth will work overtime next fall.Nobody is running on the anti-Lockdown platform this year. Even Art Robinson, who could have been leading the movement based on expertise and previous courage, stood back and said nothing. = = = = = From Popular Radio, Sept 1923: A review of an early attempt to broadcast a theatrical play with sound effects.
At the proper moment, with the accompanying dialogue, the gentleman-butler began to shake it. In the studio where we sat around the transmitter, the noise of the coins in the shaker, deadened by the hand of the actor, gave a very good illusion of the gladsome sound of a cocktail coming into the world. But in the broadcasting room up on the roof, where an expert was regulating the waves (or whatever it is such experts do), this sudden and unexpected sound caused great consternation. "My God! Static !" he muttered and excitedly began pulling out stops like organ stops, adjusting multipliers and variable condensers, or whatever it is they adjust when "static" is heard. It was not until after the play was finished that the expert discovered that he had been endeavoring, like Mr. Volstead, to suppress cocktails. Fortunately, as in the case of Mr. Volstead, his efforts were not successful. So the joke was on him; again like Mr. Volstead.= = = = = From Popular Radio, June 1924:
In a radio voting contest held recently by Station WJAZ, Chicago, on the subject of national prohibition, over 47,000 votes were cast by telegraph at the voters' expense, the telegraph bill otalling over $30,000. The result was more than two to one in favor of modification of the Volstead Act.Sounds like a GoFundMe result, except that a GoFundMe run by a radio station would be on the opposite side now.
Labels: Jackboot stomping forever
Labels: Jackboot stomping forever
The current icon shows Polistra using a Personal Equation Machine.