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Follies that aided science, part 3 of 6
Frederick Smyth was less important in the big picture than Hartness or Green, and his folly served science unintentionally. Unlike the other two, he was primarily a politician. Smyth was born in 1819 and spent the first part of his life clerking or managing retail stores. In 1849 at age 30 he entered city politics…
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Follies that aided science, part 4 of 6
Colonel Ned Green was the most influential of these men. Money talks, and intelligently-directed ENJOYABLE money talks best. His mother Hetty Green was the equivalent of Buffett. She was generally called the Wall Street Witch. She started out rich and manipulated her rich inheritance up to super-rich. (In modern terms, from $100M to $4B.) Her…
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Follies that aided science, part 5 of 6
A mention in a ’50s era issue of Computers and Automation led to this mystery. The best account is in McClure’s Magazine in 1914. John Hammond was a visionary AND the heir to a huge fortune. The money and connections enabled him to turn his visions into large-scale reality. His first invention was a mechanical…
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Follies that aided science, part 6 of 6
Purely personal footnote on follies. I encountered and enjoyed two follies when I was young. One was an astounding and mystifying piece of architecture on a property that had once been wealthy; the other was more ordinary but still fun. The big one: In 1960 my radio uncle was renting the main section of a…
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Analyzing the handwriting on the wall
Somebody noted that the “variants” skipped the letter Xi because a non-insider might accidentally connect the project with China. Can’t let that happen.** I got thinking about the “variants” from a different angle. We need to remember that this holocaust was developed by the SAME demons who gave us 9/11 and “anthrax”, so the setup…
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Why did they hold?
Wolf has been watching Zillow’s antics over the last two years. The process is a share buyback applied to real estate. When you have the power to buy all the products in a finite market, you can raise the price as far as you want. The remaining products still for sale go up FAST. Part…
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Olympic-quality swindle
Here’s a silly hypothesis. Bitcoin is a digital demon who specifically preys on realistic people. I’ve been observing in the last three years that most HARDASS realists, people who seem to grasp the overall picture of the world AS IT REALLY STANDS, are also selling Bitcoin. It’s a peculiar exception. Why should firm and consistent…
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AI spoils design
Artificial Intelligence accidentally intrudes on a discussion of Real Intelligence, accidentally helping to show the huge difference between AI and RI. At EvolutionNews, Luskin is developing one of the usual themes. How do you know if something was made by human intelligence? It’s not just unusual or unique; it may be highly repetitive. It’s more…
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Science as entertainment part 1
I’m going to start republishing some of what I consider the ‘good stuff’ from the previous Blogspot blog, in case the cancelers decide to work harder. This also gives me an opportunity to place related things together, in proper sequence with related titles. Part 1 goes on top instead of the usual blog sequence of…
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Science as entertainment part 2
I’m going to start republishing some of what I consider the ‘good stuff’ from the previous Blogspot blog, in case the cancelers decide to work harder. This also gives me an opportunity to place things in proper sequence with connected titles. Part 1 goes on top instead of the usual blog sequence of first-is-last. So…
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Science as entertainment part 3
I’m going to start republishing some of what I consider the ‘good stuff’ from the previous Blogspot blog, in case the cancelers decide to work harder. This also gives me an opportunity to place things in proper sequence with connected titles. Part 1 goes on top instead of the usual blog sequence of first-is-last. So…
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His predecessors would have loved it
News item: Michael Cohen, one of Trump’s gangsters who got stupid enough to end up in jail for a while, is now jumping on the NFT bandwagon. Among the NFTs will be a handwritten manuscript of his newly released autobiography “Disloyal,” a video of Cohen writing a section of the book during his incarceration at…
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Compiling the Thiel questions
Since I’m restarting on this (HOPEFULLY safer) new platform, it’s time to gather up some loose ends into more solid and consistent lists. The Thiel Question generated several overlapping sub-lists in the last few years. Here’s a condensed and combined list. First the question itself, and my variation on it. How would you respond if…
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Murky territory
I’ve been trying to recover the four censored items. Two of them were easily found in the blogspot archives that I saved offline. The other two are lost for technical reasons, not from total censorship. One was written shortly before the censor struck on 11/26, so it was removed from the Blogspot archive before I…
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Endless Bitcoin point-missing
Greenwald has a long interview with a bitcoin activist. At least for the purposes of argument, Greenwald is taking the objective devil’s advocate side. As an experienced lawyer, he knows how to do this. The anonymous (clearly German) bitcoiner brings up all the usual stupid arguments about decentralizing and freedom from authority. Greenwald does an…
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