Tag: defensible cases
-
Ancient offices
BBC is discussing the ancient offices that still exist, with real people ready to perform the duties when required. The King’s Champion, around since 1066, comes into play at every crowning. He is required to don armor and challenge any pretenders who dare to question the authority of the King. The current King’s Champion is…
-
No Okies there
The distinctly NYC/SF “independent” opinion page called The Free Press ran a Thurberish column countering our standard sentimentality about dogs. Famous Author Sherman Alexie joined in the comments and made a joke which none of the NYC/SF people caught. Secrecy is the purpose of language.
-
God believes in ether
Until 1920 most discussion of electricity and radio was based on the assumption of an ether. Michelson-Morley DIDN’T wipe out the ether. It was wiped much later when quantum quackery took over the doctrines and creeds of “science”. Here’s a nice clear example from a 1904 book by Frederick Vreeland, the inventor of the weirdly…
-
The AI telegraph
Well, not exactly… but Highton’s telegraph did use the selective lens idea. Henry Highton was an engineer working for British Railways in the 1840s. (Of course.) He developed several improvements in magnets, wires, insulators and telegraphs. One of his telegraphs was a needle sensor generally similar to Wheatstone. Another was a dial similar to Breguet.…
-
Three ancient words yet again
These folks are strongly pro-bitcoin, but even they can’t figure out why anyone would want to “own” a reference to a part interest in a Warhol painting. If we understood those three ancient words, we’d be harder to fool. = = = = = START REHASH: Thinking of NFT in terms of the three ancient…
-
Gold rushes and calligraphy
Following on my musings about cattle drives. The 1850s gold rush populated and shaped California, and also created another temporary development before the railroads pushed through. Look at the Copperplate cursive on these letters sent back East by prospectors. Almost indecipherable to modern eyes but highly expressive. These men were not poor or uneducated. It…
-
Bond gender
We’re confused about bonds in the same way that we’re confused about gender. A bond is a contract with a specific time interval. You buy it, let the seller use your money for a specific time, and expect a periodic rental fee from the seller. At the end of the fixed time interval you sell…
-
Older and clearer thoughts
The two “bank” crashes this week resulted from a bizarre reversal of basic definitions. In 2017 I had some broader and clearer thoughts on the subject. = = = = = START REHASH: While feebly attempting to “think” about REAL VALUE vs FAKE VALUE in banking, I noticed a basic fact. So far I can’t…
-
Fake all the way down
I always knew that our “wakeup” response to the surprise of Sputnik was fake, or maybe just incalculably stupid. We ruined our own science and math education in an alleged effort to surpass the genuinely excellent Soviet education. This article shows that our SURPRISE was also fake. The context makes sense based on what I…
-
whorfles
Now we have more “Chinese” UFOs. After I obediently gave Deepstate the snap reaction it wanted, I turned up my input filters and baseline sensors. This is clearly a rather low-quality fake THREAT, and the repeat is designed to create a new fake threat CATEGORY. Deepstate treats an ordinary and frequent object as a UNIQUE…
-
It’s all in the deltas
UD notes the death of Frank Drake, father of the Drake Equation estimating likely planets for intelligent life. Drake was working at the Green Bank Radio Telescope during the early days of radio astronomy, in the late 1950s, when he was inspired by Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s famous 1959 paper in Nature about using…
-
Today is & day!
Time to reprint the genuine history of the symbol, which doesn’t match the standard etymology. = = = = = START REPRINT: I’ve always been bothered by the bizarre-sounding etymology of Ampersand. The symbol itself is no mystery: just a stylized version of et. But the usual etymology for the name doesn’t make a lick…
-
Reprint on cultural dominance
Linked this 2017 piece in previous item. Worth a reprint if only because it’s smarter than anything I can write now. = = = = = START REPRINT: A couple days ago I tossed in a techy sidenote on UNARY VARIABLES, just as a random pointless pun: ANTI-WAR is the key. Left and right, liberal…
-
Reprint on chaos vs order
Statcounter showed that somebody was reading this item, written in early 2020 just before the “virus” hoaxocaust. Feels like a good time to reprint the item, in the context of chaos vs order. = = = = = START REPRINT: In previous item I mentioned a question that has been itching me for a while.…
-
That’s the purpose.
Continuing the theme of previous item, examining modern shit by trying to transpose it to an earlier era. I’ve got Github updates on my mind today because I just finished shaving an especially dirty yak. I’m cranking up my courseware-making tools for a new edition. One of my processing programs depends on the PIL image-handling…
Polistra's Mill 