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Stubblefield, fields of stubble
Reading Frank Edwards’s career biography, the story of his 40 years in radio. As in his other books and features, he takes frequent informative and entertaining detours, always focusing on the class struggle and favoring the underdog. He tells the story of Nathan Stubblefield, the unquestioned inventor of wireless voice and music transmission in 1885.…
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Carver wins again
Another victory for Carverian science. When you look more closely at a totally familiar object that couldn’t possibly be important, you sometimes realize it’s hugely important. Most cells have cilia, and many cells have one primary cilium. Bacteria and other microbes use this primary cilium to get around, but it was ‘obviously’ vestigial for cells…
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Special yup
An article at Brownstone hits all the right points about the “virus”, in the usual overly cautious Brownstone way. I want to single it out for special kudos because FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE a commentator grasped the basic truth about colleges: In some past golden age, we like to think that university…
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Yup
We’ve had a sudden burst of wildfires on the west side of Spokane in the last few weeks. These particular fires are not starting at windy times, they’re not near railroads or farm machinery, they’re not at tramp camps. The pattern tends to suggest an arsonist, and now an arsonist has been spotted in the…
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Mother-in-law, cliff
Classic mixed feelings about this headline at Eurekalert: Exposure to past temperature variability may help forests cope with climate change On the one hand they’re still running the “climate” genocide. On the other hand they’ve finally accepted that Lamarck and Lysenko were mostly right and Darwin was mostly wrong. I’m going to take this as…
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Speaking of extra senses….
Denyse at MindMatters cites a fascinating new study on plant intelligence. TL-DR: Climbing bean plants can sense where a vertical pole is without having to feel around. No trial and error, no obvious negative feedback. The tendrils just drive straight toward the nearest vertical thing. The researchers are trying to use this as evidence of…
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Useful discussion
This is an interesting and valuable discussion between a Russian who now lives in America, and an American who now lives in Russia. They compare experiences and preconceptions. Unsurprisingly, they conclude that Russians have always been more realistic than Americans. Russians (along with most old and deep cultures) haven’t been infected by the idiotic lies…
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More Foy
Continuing on automation vs skills. An old-fashioned union could effectively solve the problem of AI taking over from artists. Union shops place a union label (sometimes called a bug) on publications and products. Bugs are much less common in recent decades, but you can still see them on some products, and they are useful information…
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We can’t even.
Thinking about those optimistic Air Force researchers in 1962 amid the hoopla about Man In Space. We were trailing behind the Russians in space and in telepathy. Sputnik got there first, Gagarin got there first, and Popov got there first in telepathy research. We were trying to catch up, and we DID catch up in…
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A new SES
I used to collect Self-Explanatory Sentences, extremely condensed statements of an entire life or situation. The “virus” hoaxocaust knocked out most of my old habits and enjoyments as I focused on raw survival. Trying to bring back this habit now that the hoaxocaust is briefly paused…….. Defund the courts. Perfect SES. The courts are currently…
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No, it’s not chintzy
Following the subject of unnecessarily CHEAP and chintzy software. I was looking at it from the wrong angle. It’s about COMMAND AND CONTROL, not about saving money. Providing variable features for users is OLD in software. It became practical when hard disks became standard around 1985. Every major program has some way of setting preferences,…
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The Endicott experiment
One of the old FOIA files on the Black Vault site is an account of an Air Force experiment in telepathy. The researchers were working out of Hanscom AFB in Mass. They built a complicated set of computing machines in an attempt to eliminate the human judgment factors in the usual JB Rhine picture-drawing experiments.…
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Price puzzle
There’s an odd conflict in the automatic assumptions of media about prices. Media assumes that everyone wants lower gas prices and food prices. At the same time, media assumes everyone wants higher house prices and stock prices. Polls agree that 3/4 of Americans want lower house prices, ESPECIALLY the younger generations. This makes EXTREMELY GOOD…
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Sharp contrast
Two articles on the use of simulations and models in “science” appeared today. (1) An article in PNAS with ELEVEN co-authors tries to make the use of models appear more legitimate. Why do they want more legitimacy? Here’s why: In a wide range of research fields, computational modeling has become a critical tool. Its use…
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Hard answer to soft question 4
This is a repeat question, and I’ve used it before. But the answers this time were disjunct from the previous answers. Question: What’s the best thing you’ve ever won in a contest? Second prize sweet answer: 3-speed English Racer bike when I was about 12, at the movies. It was electric blue & so pretty.…
Polistra's Mill
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