Tag: Entertainment
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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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Strong stuff, weak history
Strong stuff from Kirn: So much imagination, eccentricity, dreaminess, and creativity went into the creation of the tech we use now. Yet it is becoming the instrument of our species’ most simplistic and brutal instincts for raw power, deception and coercion. Damn it, I want that Renaissance they promised! First part is wrong. The true…
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Rifts all the way down
Yesterday I did a grouchy political take on the latest URGENT BREAKING NEWS PANIC EXISTENTIAL EMERGENCY: The continents are drifting! Here’s a somewhat calmer thought on the subject, maybe trite, maybe entertaining. This week I’m putting together an animation illustrating how the larynx develops through embryonic stages. The latest edition of the textbook will have…
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Big money, bad science
The title is gruesomely and torturously true of Big Science itself. No explanation needed. Oddly, the correlation also applies to radio and TV shows about science. Among discussion-type shows, the elite academic “roundtable” shows and elite quiz shows like Information Please generally spewed old worn-out cliches that had been disproved for many decades. The UFO…
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Whimsical correction
Vintage.es has pix of people listening to radios. Most are German, but this one is delightfully American, and reminds me that the Zenith Transoceanic was originally meant to be a portable for boating. So the Zenith needs to be added to this whimsical item, especially since the Transoceanic has a specific Okie connection for me.…
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Hard answer to soft question 3
Third in a stupid series. EnidBuzz asked: What do you like to do the old-fashioned way? Most common answer: Everything. Hard answer (lit and fig): Your mom. = = = = = FWIW, I’m pretty damn old-fashioned, but I’m newfangled in one way. Many of the commenters mentioned drying clothes on the line. Nope, I’ll…
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More BIG
Wesley Smith hits hard on two BIG corrections in BIG medical topics. Two longstanding orthodoxies have been PROVED wrong. 1. Depression is caused by biochemistry. Wrong but probably not fraudulent. 2. Alzheimers is caused by plaque. Wrong and deliberate fraud. THIS IS BIG. I already know 1 is wrong, because I’ve figured out non-chemical ways…
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Shkreli has a GOOD idea.
Shkreli has finished his 5 years in prison, and DailyMail has an informative interview. Is he reformed? Hell no. I understand the Shkreli type, and I understand prison, and I predicted correctly that he would be an outstanding mentor to other Bad dudes. From the DailyMail: At the top of his post-prison to-do list is…
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The opposite of self-liquidating
Lately I’ve been somewhat fascinated by the use of interactive quizzes and ‘self-liquidating premiums’ in radio and other advertising. Smart marketers were able to gain permanent conversion to a product by offering small tokens or premiums, which were fully paid by the customer. NFTs are so horrible that they can’t serve as a self-liquidating premium!…
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Entertainment spawns entertainment
From Gerard and Castor’s record of bitcoin idiocy: But Zhu and Davies have been telling the public — especially their creditors — how they lost money too, how they fear for their lives, and how they are so overwhelmed that they can’t turn over banking information just yet, but they’ll get to that soon, for…
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Getting into the act
I’ve been reading Ruth Moore’s wonderful book about fossils and fossil-gatherers. Today the weather decided to participate in my reading. Weathermen like to talk about historic storms… here’s a prehistoric storm. Despite the scary appearance, it didn’t DO much. No actual rain or lightning, just a nice cool breeze.
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Legacies
EnidBuzz posted a ‘memory’ picture of two ladies dressed up in silly style, riding banana bikes to work. Both worked at Sears, and they were doing the annual Crazy Day in 1968. Commenters had positive memories of the ladies and Sears. This one wins: I worked at Sears back in 1976 and knew Lucille, she…
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Just before the terror
Looking into the Clavecin Oculaire led to a broader view of French science just before the terrorist revolution turned “science” into the horrible unstoppable god of torture and war. The clavecin was a PLAYFUL USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE. The musicians and scientists who tried it out were HAVING FUN. Several other scientists and writers…
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Sharing is meaningless
At least Evolution News isn’t playing the fake surprise game. They acknowledge that the habits of academia are permanent. Scientific progress is being impeded by a culture in which scientists jealously guard their research instead of sharing it. Keas says the problem seems to have gotten worse in recent years but isn’t a new one.…
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Clavecin oculaire
I haven’t been “inspired” to do a tech history piece for a while. This instrument came in through one of those offerings from Academia.edu. I’m surprised that I’d never encountered it before; it stands at the intersection of everything I’ve been doing for the last 20 years. Louis Bertrand Castel invented the color harpsichord or…
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