Continuing the theme of opposite-purpose Days.
Today is Dimpled Chad Day. The tied Florida “election” was declared tied on Jan 4, 2001, and then the Supremes snatched up the authority that should have belonged to Congress by the obsolete pointless “constitution”, and gave us Bush and infinite war and TARP and ZIRP and “virus” holocausts. The Supremes always serve the monsters, even when an action doesn’t look evil at first glance. (eg the fake “overturning” of Roe, which undid 50 years of gradual erosion of Roe and reinforced mandatory abortion)
Today is Braille Day, worth celebrating without irony or nastiness. Jan 4 is Louis Braille’s birthday. The pregnant chads and dimpled chads were an evil misuse of braille-like embossed paper. Real Braille has been a godsend to blind folks, partly replaced in recent years by computer speech synthesis.
I’ve featured two old technologies related to Braille, both involving a blind female hero of science and invention.
Mary Jameson’s tireless evangelism for the 1917 Optophone eventually led to the development of OCR when the tech was ready.
In 1889 Lizzie Sthreshley patented and commercialized a Braille machine and made plenty of money from its manufacture.
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Semi-related: This Natl Assn of Mfrs film from the mid-50s features a clever use of advanced printing techniques to make tactile-art greeting cards for the blind.
Polistra's Mill 