Tag: skill-estate
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Rita’s talent
Lately I’ve been listening to several Hollywood gossip columns in my OTR bedtime list. The available selection is extremely sparse, only about a dozen altogether. Most are Louella Parsons, with a couple from Erskine Johnson and Nancy Terry. The dates range from ’46 through ’54. Nearly all have one common factor: Rita Hayworth. She was…
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Make something of it, never give up
I’ve been reading Curt McConnell’s ‘Great Cars of the Great Plains’, mainly to gather more about the Great Smith in Topeka. One of those car companies found its niche and is STILL IN BUSINESS TODAY! Luverne began in the usual way as a small carriage maker in a small town, tried making a car in…
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Pierce cars
I’ve done two features on Pierce trucks, first on the rule of sticking with your niche, and second on the trend toward compressed air starters. Pierce cars were stylistically unique. In the ’20s when all cars were basically the same shape, Pierce had the only headlights blended into fenders. You could spot a Pierce instantly.…
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Sunflower blooms again!
The former Sunflower Ammunition Plant in DeSoto is being recast into a giant EV battery plant by Panasonic. I caught a hint of this via Reddit, and noticed that the location looked like Sunflower. Most of the articles miss the Sunflower connection. This article at Bizjournals confirms it. Sunflower was a mysterious ghost town for…
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Why India wins
I’ve been hammering these points: We’re fucked because we’ve been lying about caste for 200 years. We substitute all sorts of other shit like IQ and hard work and ideology. Those variables aren’t entirely irrelevant but the base constant of human activity is CASTE. Caste is innate and permanent. The distribution of castes occasionally shifts…
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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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Best thing in the universe
Noted via Reddit, the Broken Arrow schools near Tulsa are teaching biology and physics as part of fly-fishing! = = = = = START QUOTE: “Over a month ago, we started taking a look at insects,” he said. “Then we started learning how to mimic insects, to fly tie, and now we’re putting these flies…
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Unrealistic
TheFederalist makes a somewhat valid point: In a world where the left has achieved near-total dominance of the cultural space, finding an openly conservative artist can feel like tracking down an endangered species. Unfortunately, like poachers in the jungle, the left is on the hunt. While leftist artists can openly spew their bile for the…
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Skill vs status
Carver in 1913: Start where you are. Work with what you have. Make something of it. Never give up. Here’s a fable showing what happens when you disobey Carver. Around 1915, Ford’s total mastery of high quantity at low price forced everyone else out of that position. Later, Cadillac’s total ownership of the luxury market…
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A craft that adapted
Looking for more info on old trucks and such, came across the American Blacksmith journal from 1917. Real work and real creativity adapt smoothly to changed circumstances. The evil Innovative Disrupters cackle at the “obsolescence” of buggy whips and blacksmiths, because the evil Innovative Disrupters are demonic genocidal murderers. In fact blacksmiths simply broadened their…
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Good point, best point
Pretty good point from Kirn: AI Chatbots simply formalize & make explicit the profoundly inert nature of collective thinking that made real artists & writers attractive in the first place. They are more important than ever now, in fact, as second-rate pseudo-creativity has consolidated itself as never before. Vastly stronger point from one of his…
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Great Smith footnote
Bought a coffee-table book on Great Cars of the Great Plains by Curt McConnell. It features five notable and fairly successful early autos, including the Great Smith of Topeka. One of them, Moon in St Louis, became a mid-sized company and lasted till 1929. Most auto histories mention the Moon, if only because its factory…
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Took longer than they thought
American Radio Library has added more issues of Philco News. Skimming through the sequence shows the fadeout of US electronics. From 1930 to 1950, Philco was a top producer of consumer products, from radios and TVs to appliances. Philco was proud of its focus on consumers instead of shareholders. After 1950, the magazine focuses more…
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Revolutionary design?
NASA announces with great fanfare a revolutionary method of propelling rockets. The RDRE differs from a traditional rocket engine by generating thrust using a supersonic combustion phenomenon known as a detonation. This design produces more power while using less fuel than today’s propulsion systems and has the potential to power both human landers and interplanetary…
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