Tag: Metrology
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It’s all about the schnitzels
CBC interviews an author who spent time among the Tech Tyrants and wrote a book about them. He focuses on yachts as the ultimate status symbol, the ultimate way of competing with other rich fuckheads. They don’t care much about the features, even though most gigayachts have things like saunas and Imax movie theaters. The…
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Why philosophy is fucked
Seen on substack: = = = = = Most people don’t realize how ridiculously hard one needs to think in order to thoroughly grasp certain philosophical problems. It took me well over a decade to really grasp the sorites paradox, for instance. And one often needs more years of investigation to realize the depth of…
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Tally sticks
= = = = = MEDIEVAL METROLOGY PART 2 = = = = = In the first part of Medieval Metrology I showed a medieval ruler for measuring length, as used by the ale tasters. It was notched in fractional parts but not numbered. The ruler bears a close resemblance to the medieval way of…
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Who invented the long-d ditto?
Earlier I named and described the long-d ditto, a common practice in pen and ink business records. The standard computer keyboard, and the conventions of digital writing, have brought several punctuation marks into common use. @ and # are most obvious. Oddly, both were essentially obsolete, a vestige of quaint business usage along with pr,…
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Metrology Day 2025
Today is Metrology Day, so I’ll maintain my long tradition. = = = = = MEDIEVAL METROLOGY PART 1 = = = = = This year I’m focusing on the medieval way of thinking as illuminated by Sherri Olson. Medieval villages embodied Natural Law. = = = = = REVIEWING: The Almighty has created this…
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Good woke, reprinted
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = REPRINT FROM 2019: This academic movement is more important and more valid than it sounds. First, how it sounds: = = = = = START QUOTE: Since apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa’s universities have struggled to transform themselves, leading to escalating student protests…
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Metrology bitching
Time for my regularly scheduled metrology bitching. One of the literary types on Substack noted that Sam Johnson was paid the miserly sum of 1575 pounds for his dictionary. Modern freelancers should be happy to get more than that. Miserly? Hardly. Depending on the measurement standard, Johnson got somewhere between $300k and $1 million in…
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Why do juries get it right?
I’ve discussed this before, but it has a deeper connection after reading Sherry Olson’s account of medieval life. Juries are the LAST leftover of Natural Law in governing. In 1300 most governance was Natural Law. The Endarkenment hadn’t filled us with “self-evident” vicious lies about equality and rationality. Written laws were almost entirely local, along…
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Trying a question, reprinted
Linked in previous about juries and Natural Law, worth a reprint since it explicitly refers to trials, and since I wrote it during the “virus” holocaust, at the same time when the Hildebrand fraudsters were breaking the balance that SBA was trying to restore. = = = = = START 2020 REPRINT: Self-calibration is necessary…
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GOOD!
I finally located a report of the trial that I escaped from. Now I can write about it. The jury did the RIGHT THING and found these assholes GUILTY. The Hilderbrands, operating a set of dubious businesses in Spokane Valley, were found guilty on multiple fraud charges. They will be sentenced in July, up to…
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Summer is here!
The neighbor across the street is getting his Fiat X/I/9/ out of the garage and taking it for a ride. Sure sign of solid warm weather. The old Annotated Thermometer joke was too optimistic about Italian cars! Sidenote: This version of the Annotated Thermometer is unfamiliar. The version I’d seen before had a roughly equal…
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Teamites will be teamites
Wolf’s readers often contribute stories from their own experience. This is far more valuable than any sort of generalized observation no matter how well informed. In yesterday’s column on the sudden “unexpected” failure of Elon’s unusable undrivable unsafe illegal Cybrtrk, a marketer tells us why modern businesses choose to appeal ONLY to one religion. This…
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The one difference
Since I’m doing random food-related stuff this week, here’s another. Fussy foodies have always been a complex mix of types and classes. Some of the species have moved their ‘coding’ over the decades, but the species are constant. The measurements treated as important in Fussy Food Talk changed just once, rather dramatically. The three major…
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Brief fashion, random memory
Noticed this article in an old appliance dealer mag. Central vacuum systems were trendy in the 60s, but never widespread. When we lived at the top of the hill in Manhattan, a rich prof built a new house next to ours. He had Euro connections and owned the first Squareback I’d ever seen, brought directly…
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