Tag: Metrology
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‘Flipflop’ is the stupidest insult
Terminally tired of ‘flipflop’. Anywhere else but politics, changing your mind is a sign of LEARNING. Fuck around and find out is the definition of LIFE. Learning is EXACTLY seeing that one course of action fails, and trying a different course. Science is EXACTLY experimentation. Try something, measure results carefully, do something different if the…
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Inspired a reprint
Following on previous item about East Boston and Logan Airport. Reprint from 2020. = = = = = In 1970 GenRad published a lively little handbook of sound measurements. IETlabs continues to make and calibrate derivatives of GenRad products, and performs a tremendous service by maintaining old GenRad publications online. Maintaining old records of old…
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Pic worth 1000 busted eardrums
Vintage.es has some pix of East Boston after Logan Airport was built next door. Impressive testimony to the disruptive power of NOISE. Most of the pix show a jet airplane taking off from the airport. The planes are so close you could almost reach up and touch them. Everyone is holding their fingers in their…
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Outside the worklog
Before 2017, I wasn’t keeping a private worklog for sleeps and dumps, but this public blog included most of the external events like hot spells or windstorms. Nice example right now. I opened the window at midnight to get some non-airconditioned air, and heard an odd noise. Something wrong with the fridge? No, a cricket…
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Fessenden’s practical side
Reginald Fessenden is famous as the Canadian who claimed the first invention of radio. The first is hard to determine. Many people were working on wireless from different angles. Fessenden later made one of the first voice broadcasts in 1906, using a high-freq alternator instead of a spark-gap transmitter. Around 1912 he moved into a…
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Always baselines
BreakingPoints does word-association polls on candidates. The responses from partisans are meaningless. Partisans are simulcasters, each faithfully retransmitting today’s Official Program from DNC or RNC Network Central. Responses from independents are more salient. The top response to Harris is Incompetent, followed by variations on Fake. I can see the Fake. She’s been a standard politician…
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Tidegauge
This gadget caught my attention as an example of equipoise in measurement. The chain has a float at one end and a weight at the other. As tide rises, the float goes up and the weight goes down. The pulley drives a sliding pencil on a graph recorder. Far view, in my Electric Village scene,…
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Truly new!
My standard theme here: Most of today’s “new” ideas were already in place, either patented or produced or fully described in a publication, by 1910. Here’s one that nobody imagined, even in the ’50s when smoking was maximally cool and required! Nobody dreamed of a cigarette that also serves as a radio and phone and…
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Up the down flation
Still thinking about upflation, repurposing a product for a higher price. The largest upflators were American cars made in other countries. It’s a good illustration of BASELINES. The same product has a higher status measurement when the yardstick starts at a lower altitude. The Willys Aero succeeded here for only two years. It beat Rambler…
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When spells break
Thinking about broken spells and busted myths today. When spells break, weird shit happens. We’ve had a lot of broken spells in the last 30 Bush years. 9/11 broke the spell of “terrorism” and Wilsonian “democracy” imperialism. 2008 broke the spell of honest banking. 2020 broke the spell of “public health” as a healing profession…
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Extending again
In previous item: Every real experience has non-verbal cultural factors that can’t be acquired through books or Google. This meshes with my assertion that secrecy is the default. Secrecy in this form is not enforced by government rules and censors; it arises from the natural barrier around the culture and experience of a group. The…
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Accuracy isn’t enough
Somebody cited this quote from physicist Feynmann: “We would always like to present things accurately, or at least precisely enough that they will not have to be changed when we learn more.” Precise and accurate are distinct words in metrology, but this still isn’t enough. When we learn more we change our assumptions about what…
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The reality check test
I listen to writers who agree with reality at points where I can check. Mattingly always fits at the points I can check, so I listen to him on other matters. In this podcast he’s discussing the (admittedly small) turmoil inside the Southern Baptists. Above all Baptists are NOT hierarchical. They disagree on many things…
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Another rerereprint
Originally from 2010, with a few celebrity names and topical words modernized. = = = = = Three types of knowledge: How, What, Who. All three types are necessary, and everyone uses all three types all the time, but the dominant type strongly influences the form and the success of a culture. = = =…
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