Tag: skill-estate
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Might be a good idea
Seems like a good idea at the moment: Last month I wrote about an eye-opening History Today article on the 1700 Industrial Revolution. The author showed with numbers that England didn’t become MORE industrial during those centuries. What expanded was the financial sector. England offshored its food and concentrated more on banking. The FORM of…
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Dream helped to answer a question
A 1980s coal pollution project popped up in a dream recently. Thinking about this project led to an answer. At that time Penn State was eagerly hosting hundreds of Chinese grad students. Universities favor foreign students because they pay full price while most domestic students have discounts. They could afford full price because the Chinese…
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Work done.
Finished the current edition of courseware this morning, pending some checks and testing. I’ve been adding more value and beauty when possible, partly inspired by medieval history reading. The previous edition of this book was sort of rushed and hasty, with too many shortcuts. In a nap after finishing, the dream-scripter rewarded me with a…
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Hollywood starting to get it?
Rushfield at The Ankler interviews Jon Glickman, head of Miramax, who claims to be optimistic about the future of entertainment. My first thought was: Related to Dan? Yes, Jon is Dan’s son. I met Dan a few times when I was politically active in Kansas in the 80s. I didn’t know that Dan moved out…
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Why they hate it
For months I’ve been gaining knowledge and inspiration from Sherri Olson’s second book. Recently I bought her first book on the same subject. It’s less interesting for my purposes. The first book is highly quantitative with detailed lists and analyses of peasants who served as jurors or committed crimes or practiced trades. In science jargon…
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Smart idea
CBC interviewed a Canadian businessman with a sharp idea. Canada should have its own car company. It would help to give the nation a commercial purpose, a source of pride. There’s no technical or physical reason why not. Canadian car factories are still as active as ever, and Canada has steel producers and most other…
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Black Rod
The king’s presence in parliament was announced by Black Rod. Many years ago I was tickled by the ancient offices with strange names like Portcullis Pursuivant. Each officer and ceremony continues to represent a tradition or an incident. Human memory was meant to be a continuum, not a digital sequence. The old world maintains this…
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Deserves a serious answer
Question in the bitcoin-skeptic section of Reddit, titled ‘A genuine good faith question’. = = = = = START QUOTE: I’m a huge crypto skeptic. But I see that a core principle here is the belief that blockchain as a concept or technology (unrelated to BTC) is useless or a “scam”. My question is, why…
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Explains a lot
Turns out Substack is not a brave little rebel as the leaders want us to think. Like everything else in the tech realm it’s owned by one of the Effective Altruist devils. Marc Andreesen is one of the worst. This explains many things that didn’t make sense by the struggling young innovator myth. First it…
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Not a good idea
Some commentators are taking the Carney victory as a time to start agitating for independence for the prairie provinces. Bad idea. When you’re the mouse fighting a hostile psychopathic cat, you need all the force you can muster. Workers vs corporations are the easiest example. One worker at a time has no chance of gaining…
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How they did it
I always enjoy seeing how a task is really done. Usually the real thing is a whole lot harder than it looks from the outside. Sometimes it’s easier. This new upload at American Radio Library is a revealing look behind the scenes of talk radio. It’s a user manual for a Telos Talk Radio Call…
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Elbows up in Europe
The Ankler reporting on Euro show biz: = = = = = START ANKLER: Now that we’ve had close to a month to digest Donald Trump’s America-first trade policies, I’m beginning to hear more about the projected impact on the industry, and producers’ “sharp elbows” strategy. “Buy fewer Teslas and U.S. shows, and more Peugeots…
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Read it.
I mostly stopped reading Compact Mag. They have an occasional interesting article but too much ordinary conservative think-tank material. Their latest article rises to the top. It’s the BEST piece of writing I’ve seen in a LONG time. The author lives in Wales, where the British Gaian globalists have been sending coal and steel abroad…
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Zenith Flash-matic
An odd tech dead end from 1956. I got a hint of this while browsing old radio-TV trade journals, then looked it up. Zenith was the king of gadgets and gimmicks. Everything they made had at least one fascinating mechanical or electronic feature. The shutter dial on late 30s radios was the best of all.…
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Literally to the choir
Ross Douthatt, a conservative Catholic who has been writing for NYTimes for many years, has a new book titled “Everyone should go to church.” I got tired of Catholic intellectuals a long time ago. Ockham got tired of them 700 years ago. They have an endless appetite for detailed argument about insignificant matters. In this…
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