Tag: Grand Blueprint
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Delia’s gone, one more round
Sam Kahn writes in New Atlantis about Delia Bacon, a forgotten figure who was at the center of the American creative burst in the 1840s. She was taught by Beecher and influenced Emerson and Hawthorne and Poe. She wasn’t related to Francis Bacon, but spent her life trying to establish that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s work…
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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…
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Secret vectors
This got me thinking about the bee’s waggle dance and vector vs cartesian orientation. Our eyes can do cartesian, but most of our senses, including basic orientation via the eyes, are vector. Looking through PNAS, found a new bit of bee research that goes way beyond this question. The researchers placed an artificial feeder in…
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If humans had been blind 2
Following on theme of previous item…. If humans had been blind, we would have no concept of 2 dimensions. The tactile world is 3d. The audio world has 4 dimensions: time, frequency, intensity, and location. The olfactory world probably can’t be dimensionalized at all. Only the retina traps the world in flat 2d. Recording and…
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Waggle
Kirn cites this short clip of Tom Wolfe interviewing McLuhan. They’re discussing the value of turning off mass media, which is unquestionable and unsurprising. I’ve been doing it for many years. McLuhan says that all mass media is intentionally wrong, which is also unquestionable and unsurprising. Insiders have been telling us occasionally for centuries. If…
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If humans had been blind…
This old book reviews early efforts at printing in tactile form. Braille is the most obvious, but intaglio engraving is also 3dish, and carved letters like runes were 3d. If humans had been blind, we would have no concept of 2 dimensions. The tactile world is 3d. The audio world has 4 dimensions: time, frequency,…
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HGT puzzle solved
My pet theory is that humans are a hybrid of bird and mammal. Which type of bird transferred the genes for politicians? The cassowary is commonly acknowledged as the world’s most dangerous bird, particularly to humans from interestingasfuck Result:
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Close but no pierogi.
Via UncommonDescent, a new hypothesis about human intelligence is generally wiser and more ‘non-partisan’ than the usual Darwin crap. The article acknowledges that brain size is not the major variable, but still clings to the energy-consumption model. The discovery of fire made us smarter because cooked food is easier to digest. First, easier digestion DOES…
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Not silly
Following on previous item about bird-human parallels. I thought I was forming a silly ‘reductio’ in this 2016 piece about rackets and scams: = = = = = START REPRINT: As I noted before, 1950’s radio and TV shows constantly used drama and comedy to help us spot frauds and scams. Media now do the…
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Another bird gene?
I believe that humans are a mix of mammal and bird, possibly from horizontal gene transfer. Like birds, we’re bipedal, we build complex nests, we enjoy and produce music, and we enjoy and produce speech. The rest of our talents and tendencies are shared with other mammals. Male humans have a conflict between the bird…
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Tech gene question
Returning to the subject of tech genes. Here’s an odd question that doesn’t seem to have an easy explanation. Horse-powered vehicles had wheels with iron rims, and continued to have iron rims after automobiles were common.** Horseless carriages had pneumatic rubber tires from the start, even when they were made by the same company. Studebaker…
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Curling
I’m back to animations of embryonic development, after a brief break for Steinheil’s ground. Today I’m setting up a cochlea model and trying to match the shape changes with the actual timepoints. We’ve got rain today, fortunately warm rain instead of snow or ice. Nice relief after a month of solid ice and cabin fever.…
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Hardwired doesn’t need marks
This is intriguing but dubious. Researchers looking closely at some cave paintings of elk and antelope have been puzzled by periodic markings around the animals. These researchers see a correlation between the 13 months of the lunar calendar and the mating cycles of the animals. First: When people are intensely interested in a set of…
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Good knockdown of a silly idea!
This article on the origin of language is sensible but sort of surprising. Apparently the idea that language started from gestures is becoming more common, and might even be the consensus assumption now. The first paragraph is eloquent: Some say language evolved by firelight, with our ancestors sharing stories deep into the night. Others suggest…
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