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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 12, 2020 8:47:17 GMT -8
Note that the above mentioned inventions serve some useful purpose to improve life at a basic level. They were in response to a recognized need, while the phonograph was basically a frivolous invention.
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Post by timothylane on Apr 12, 2020 8:47:23 GMT -8
When I was growing up, I read that tungsten was used for the filaments of light bulbs. No doubt it helps that tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal. (Some form of carbon has an even higher one.)
Isaac Asimov mentioned once that when Edison announced that he was going to work on an electric light, gas company stocks fell even on the London stock exchange. He sees that as the moment when American science and inventiveness really showed a worldwide reputation. Of course, this confirms that Edison's great reputation preceded his invention of the incandescent electric light.
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Post by kungfuzu on Apr 12, 2020 8:57:54 GMT -8
I believe this is still the case, but the move to metal from carbon was a big one. I don't know what alloys are used in light bulbs today, but I suppose tungsten is still the main element.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 12, 2020 9:19:11 GMT -8
Man does not live by bread alone, Mr. Manchu. Surely a little Mozart and Beethoven were good in people’s homes, although I would admit that most pop music today is of a category even lower than “frivolous.” As to why the mere idea of the phonograph (even before it was available) was so exiting and created such a stir is interesting. I’d never known that. Talk about vaporware…or at least pre-announcing an as-yet-unavailable product which is so common today.
In an early interview (perhaps his first in-depth one) by the reporter, Amos Cummings, from The New York Sun, Edison didn’t quite yet foresee the iPod, but he did foresee audiobooks: “Say I hire a good elocutionist to read David Copperfield.”
Edison and his other technicians were apparently very slow to grasp the idea of the phonograph for music. They were simply working on devices to record voice, particularly in connection with increasing the bandwidth of telegraph lines (and save money). You could record a transmission (whether voice or dots-and-dashes…I’m not clear about that) and hand it over to a gaggle of low-paid 25-words-per-minute key operators instead of the high-paid 100 words-per-minute highly skilled telegraph operators.
Frankly, there’s a whole bunch of technology regarding the telegraph that is discussed that remains rather opaque to me. But the basic gist was that then, as today, the problem was always one of bandwidth. How could you get more out if it? How could you send more messages on the same wires?
It’s interesting to note too that Edison used the word, “bug,” in the same way we do today. He told someone (or wrote in his notebook) that such-and-such a device would be ready as soon as he worked the bugs out of it. So any modern stories about the derivation of this word are surely untrue.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 12, 2020 9:28:40 GMT -8
I would assume that would be the case. And if the bulbs were perfect vacuums and never leaked, I guess that tungsten filament could glow for billions of years, presumably.
The previous book mentioned the phenomenon of gas stock prices. And it provided another interesting look at the idiocy of “scientific consensus” or whatever the wizards of smart say is, cannot be, or must be:
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 12, 2020 9:39:02 GMT -8
That previous book on Edison and Westinghouse noted that, indeed, there was a seismic shift in terms of not only where science/invention was being done but how. In Europe, you had one or two non-commercial academic institutions. (You know the names. I forget them.)
In America, on the other hand, the work was in private hands: At that moment, the bright stars in this galaxy were Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla. Edison, in particular, made an industry out of invention and Westinghouse did the same to some extent, but certainly also (sort of like that era’s Steve Jobs) was intent on actually bringing ideas to fruition and then making the end products the best they could be. Tesla was an idea-guy only apparently living for a time on nothing but saltine crackers. He’d invent some crazy new thing and then move on. He had no interest in producing his inventions in quantity or making money off of them.
Later, two guys in a garage in Los Altos really did change the world, as did Gates/Allen. Scmuckerberg and others show the same almost uniquely American phenomenon.
Which is not to give short-shrift to the British, Germans, and Japanese who are amazing inventors as well. But I do think America changed the methods of invention just as that lawyer in the earlier book changed the basic methods of how law firms were organized. I didn’t mention that before, but it is an interesting aspect of the novel and another aspect that adds to its interest.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 12, 2020 9:49:43 GMT -8
This is way above my pay grade, but Edison discovered some fundamentally interesting and highly useful properties from his development of the light bulb, including The Edison Effect.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 13, 2020 7:34:51 GMT -8
I returned the Edison biography. I’ve seen this happen with others. They get bogged down in minutia. They overflow with day-to-day factoids without giving any meaning to those facts. If feels like padding….or that the author simply had a fascination for minutia. Or he has no sense of what a good biography should be.
In short, I’d say the overview of Edison is unreliable. And that’s not because of any warts exposed. (Goodness knows, Edison had those.) It’s because of his lack of being able to bring alive the time and the man. This is more of a unimaginative academic term-paper sort of wastage. Many reviewers think the author’s attempt is to knock Edison down a peg. What I’ve read is not inconsistent with that. But even if it was, the writing is so bland (after a promising start) that I really don’t care what agenda he has if he’d make it interesting.
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Post by timothylane on Apr 19, 2020 16:44:42 GMT -8
Among the books a friend sends to his local book club (in Kindle format) recently was an interesting alternate history of the Russian Civil War, Maid of Baikal by Preston Fleming. The main viewpoint character is an American Army officer, Ned du Pont, who has gotten tired of fighting the Moros on Mindanao and would like more regular fighting, such as the Western front. But with the end of the war approaching, he gets persuaded to take a different position, as a communications officer associated with the Americans helping to keep the Trans-Siberian Railway functioning. He meets a Siberian officer, Igor Ivanovich Ivashov, as his liaison in Irkutsk. Ivashov takes him to a farm a short distance away where Ned meets (among others) a strange girl named Zhanna Stepanovich Dorokhina. As it turns out, Zhanna has Visions of various saints who give her advice -- and now are advising her to go to Omsk and see Admiral Kolchak, who has been brought to power via a coup. There she will give him advice he desperately needs (his existing Stavka may be loyal, but they're also corrupt and incompetent). Eventually she succeeds in doing so (she's a very persistent sort) after Ned goes back to Irkutsk to locate the wireless equipment his new station near Omsk needs. She finally succeeds in getting nominal permission to use her charisma as the obvious answer to a (fictitious) prophecy to raise up a force of volunteers. Eventually, accompanied by Ned and Ivashov (as well as a young man named Boris who's personally devoted to her), she joins up with a band of Cossacks whom she leads to recover their home base of Uralsk. From there she goes on to help liberate Orenburg and helps the Siberian army escape defeat in a Bolshevik attack on Ufa. It's hard on her; she is no warrior for all her determination and brilliance (inspired by her Visions). She reacts badly to the dead -- even the Bolsheviks -- at Uralsk. Eventually she gets over this, and inspires and helps lead a rally. The Siberian forces link up with the White forces in southern Russia led by Generals Denikin and Wrangel, and take Tsaritsyn on the Volga, then Saratov and after that Samara. Kolchak organizes a form of assembly at Samara that elects him Regent, thus giving him clear legitimacy. He has also cleaned house at Stavka. But there are still many who doubt that Zhanna's Visions can lead them to victory forever. She goes with her volunteers and her original Cossack allies to Kazan and takes it in a brilliant stroke -- but the Bolsheviks send a large force to retake it, and no one else will come to help hold the town. Meanwhile, local Socialist Revolutionaries (who had helped her take Kazan through their own subversion) have turned against her, and keep trying to kill her. Eventually they succeed in arranging an ambush, taking her prisoner and eventually turning her over to the Bolsheviks. This comes as the Maid of Baikal's Voices seem to have abandoned her. Like her model, Joan of Arc (there's no indication she or anyone else ever noticed the similarity, perhaps because of what happened to Joan in the end), Zhanna is imprisoned, given a rather fraudulent trial by an Orthodox bishop who went over to the Bolsheviks, and finally burned at the stake as the Siberian forces are only a day or so away from the confiscated monastery near Ryazan where she was held, tortured, tried, and executed. Among other things, Zhanna brings up the visions of Our Lady of Fatima, which included (I checked, and this really happened) a prediction that Russia would need to rededicate itself to God and Jesus. If it failed to do so, the results would be disastrous for the world (as indeed we know that Soviet Communism was). Fleming makes no mitigation of Bolshevism as a pernicious force. The book ends with an epilogue set 15 years later, in which we see how the new Russia has fared. It's certainly better than Bolshevik Russia was, but good things never last. Germany and Japan are the threats they were in our world, but we have no way of knowing how that ended up.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Apr 20, 2020 8:03:20 GMT -8
That sounds as if a person could pick up quite a bit of history from reading that book.
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Post by timothylane on Apr 20, 2020 8:06:40 GMT -8
The author has a cast of characters noting which ones are real, and has notes providing actual facts. For example, at one point Admiral Kolchak tells Zhanna of a recurring nightmare about what might happen to him -- and Fleming points out in a footnote that it's what actually did happen in the end.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 3, 2020 21:02:38 GMT -8
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Post by timothylane on May 4, 2020 6:11:19 GMT -8
An interesting article indeed. As it happens, I had the Baring-Gould and Klinger annotated editions. They both made use of existing literature about Holmes. Klinger did the same in his annotated Dracula. I had a large collection of such works, including pastiches and parodies of Holmes. (I still have some here in my Kindle library, which I recently read.)
One advantage of the Baring-Gould version is that in addition to the annotations, he included separate chapters on different aspects of the canon.
I'm not sure when I first heard of Holmes and Watson, but my first actual exposure came in 9th grade, when our reading included "The Adventure of the Speckled Band". This has lone been the most highly regarded of the stories, going back to the first poll (in the 1920s) of readers of The Strand and in polls since. (In the original poll, The Hound of the Baskervilles came in second.) In addition, I have a morbid fascination with venomous snakes (as well as many similar topics). The next year, attending a book fair at my new school, I got the Christopher Morley one-volume complete collection of the stories and novels, solely on having read the one story.
And a most satisfactory acquisition that was. I read every story and novel, most of them more than once.
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Post by timothylane on May 10, 2020 15:24:08 GMT -8
There have been a lot of historical mysteries over the years. The earliest that I have is a series by Lynda Robinson about Lord Meren, Eyes and Ears of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen. There are a lot of Roman mysteries, and others going into modern times. A few of these deal with ancient Greece. There's the recent series by Gary Corby set in Periclean Athens, and I recently discovered by way of the books sent to his circle by Grant McCormick a series by Margaret Doody, of which I have the first book, Aristotle Detective.
Yes, in this the philosopher who seemed to study everything gets to play Holmes to his supplicant (and former lyceum student) Stephanos's Watson. Indeed, though at times Aristotle speaks as one might expect a professional philosopher to speak, at other times he and Stephanos really sound like Holmes and Watson.
Stephanos has a problem. There's been murder done by an arrow (a most unusual weapon in Athens), which in fact he witnessed the aftermath of because he happened to be walking in the vicinity. His cousin Philemon, exiled permanently after killing someone in a tavern brawl, has been accused of the murder. Of course, there's no evidence that Philemon violated the terms of his exile, but that could happen and the prosecutor (Polygnotos, nephew and heir of the murder victim, Boutades) has a few months to find (or invent) evidence against Philemon, who of course can hardly return to defend himself in public (it would be a death sentence just for returning, making the trial irrelevant). So Stephanos has to defend his scapegrace nephew.
As a former pupil, Stephanos seeks advice from Aristotle, who decides to assist him. He suggests Stephanos go incognito to Piraeus -- if Stephanos has come back, there might be news of him in the port. This provides a lot of information, but its utility is another matter. The biggest news is that Philemon apparently married (though its legality is uncertain) before everything went to Hell for him. This will ultimately become crucial, particularly in affecting Philemon's relations with Boutades, though from this he learns that Philemon really has occasionally come back down, both to see his wife Melissa and his ailing mother Eudoxia (who knew this all along but didn't tell anyone even as she argued that Philemon couldn't have committed the crime because he couldn't have been there).
Stephanos has other duties, such as checking out his farm and getting supplies from there -- both for his home and for sale (it's his basic source of income). In making such a visit, he discovers a most unwelcome intruder -- his cousin, illegally returned. After a harrowing trip (it doesn't help that Stephanos has a cold) to Euboea (crossing the great bridge from the mainland to Khalkis on the island), Stephanos succeeds in selling his produce (olive oil, cheeses, and wool) for enough to enable his nephew to make it to Makedonia and find his wife, child, and her maidservant. (Aristotle and Stephanos sent them there for safety, just barely in time) and still have enough for a downpayment on a debt he learned about on his visit to the farm.
Later, by selling off some family property, Stephanos manages to pay off more of his debt to Eutiklides (who also happens to be one of the opposing witnesses in the case). On his way back, he's attacked in the dark by 3 thugs armed with clubs and badly beaten. He fights well, but not well enough to defeat 3 men, and probably only survives because they think they killed him. The next morning he staggers home and eventually recovers, though he also decides for safety's sake (there are reasons to suspect a deliberate murder attempt rather than a random robbery). Aristotle, newly back from an out-of-town trip, takes him into his care, during which he elucidates the case based on what he has learned on his trip, and does his best to teach Stephanos to make his case in the final trial hearing, which is imminent.
Polygnotos pulls few surprises in the trial, but he has enough of a case that the jury seems persuaded. But then Stephanos makes his first speech, and starts poking holes in it. He also comes up with the evidence and key witness that Aristotle found on his trip, and eventually points out in court who the murderer really is. This was actually a bit early -- he should have saved this for his second and final speech, but once he was on a roll he could hardly bring himself to stop. Fortunately, the newly accused murderer decides to take flight then and there, which makes it obvious who the murderer really is. All's well that ends well.
Doody wrote this back in 1978, and waited until this century to resume the series. Perhaps she hadn't intended a series at the start, or perhaps it didn't sell that well to begin with. In 1978 such historical mysteries were rare. By 2000 there was obviously a sizable market for them, as I know well from having bought so many from so many backgrounds.
Doody is a literature professor at Notre Dame, and her wikipedia article connects her to criticism from a feminist viewpoint. I don't know about later books in the series, but in this one you can certainly see little evidence of it. Admittedly, many of the women in the book are fine people, very good at providing care, and in terms of personal quality Philemon married up. But there are no Amazons or even female savants in this. They're fine women in Athenian terms. And if I happen to receive other books in this series, I'll give them a try.
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 19, 2020 10:33:35 GMT -8
Dennis Prager is interviewing Robert Reilly on his show today. Reilly’s new book is America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding. A came into his third hour segment a bit late, but Prager had mentioned that one of the highest traits anyone can have is clarity. And I think he was noting this in regards to Reilly. And the guy certainly sounds clear and non-mealy-mouthed from what I’ve heard so far.
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Post by timothylane on May 19, 2020 11:09:23 GMT -8
The book sounds interesting. Is he saying that many social conservatives reject the Founders because their system made libertinism too easy in addition to leftists rejecting it because they reject personal liberty?
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 19, 2020 15:34:41 GMT -8
I’m not sure. I’d have to read the book. In the summary at Amazon it says: “Reilly reveals the underlying drama: the conflict of might makes right versus right makes might. America's decline, he claims, is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in their disavowal.”
And what I heard with his conversation with Prager included the idea of reason or constitution-based law as opposed to willy-nilly Power of the Will — which is pretty much what we’re seeing from the governors regarding the Wuhan Flu.
Peter Kreeft’s blurb reads: "This book is a defense of the principles of natural law, morality, and natural religion—i.e., reason and faith—as the foundation of American policy from the beginning and a historical 'big picture' of their classical, medieval, and modern origins. The argument is unanswerable, the documentation massive, and the issue prophetic in import.”
These “deep philosophy” books are difficult because I don’t think societies are won or lost (or even governed) via the fine points of debating societies. England infused our American political DNA with a host of good habits and ideas. We broke away. We re-imagined some of these habits and ideas, necessarily grounding our rebellion in Deep Philosophy, if only for the gloss of justification for throwing off a king.
Even back then, there were a whole lot of different ways to practice religion, probably as different as the North was from the South in other details. We forged a national government lest we obviously splinter into pieces and be gobbled up by the great powers of the time, over time.
We had a most wise constitutional convention guided by a most wise set of personages. Truly a remarkably coincidence of forces. And then we went on as a nation, as most nations do, evolving according to forces that could not be imagined nor planned for.
So to reach back and explain America as it is today as a consequence of not doing this, or of doing that, for me is highly problematic. But it might sell some books.
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Post by kungfuzu on May 21, 2020 20:20:08 GMT -8
"The Big Bad Wolf" by James Patterson In between my reading of Durant's "The Age of Reason," I borrowed a James Patterson ebook from the public library. I had never read anything by the man and was curious how he would stand up. Well, let me say his writing stands up about as well as a Raggedy Ann doll does without the help of the little girl who owns it. The book I read was titled "The Big Bad Wolf." It is one of the Alex Cross series which deals with Alex Cross, a black policeman/psychologist/superman/sensitive and loving father who left the Washington D.C. police to work with the FBI. What can I say about such a sorry book? The story is outlandish and the writing is something a well-educated 8th grader might have turned out. At least half of the book is filler and treacly filler at that. From the start, the reader will wonder if it might not be sensible to put the tome down and reach for something else. But I, dear reader, kept plowing on so as to save you the time and pain which would be needed to finish this rubbish. The life of a critic is not without sorrow. Said book is written for those who might have difficulty holding a thought for more than thirty seconds. The chapters are very short and each can generally be read in two or three minutes. The story jumps around because of this, and as I mentioned much of this is simply filler. I understand that Patterson is the world's best-selling author, which is perhaps not surprising. This book was written like a bad 30 minute TV program which has little to say, but tries to build anticipation through misdirection and take up screen time until the end of the program at which point the phrase "To be continued" flashes on the screen. In the end, one is better off not tuning in next week. On top of all of this, the book is filled with an amazing amount PC nonsense and virtue signaling. I am glad to say that I will not be wasting any further time or straining my eyes on anything written by James Patterson. In this case, I suggest you follow my lead.
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Post by Brad Nelson on May 21, 2020 21:22:22 GMT -8
That rings a bell, Mr. 1984 Flu. I'm pretty sure I tried to read one of his books and didn't make it very far. My current obsession is watching the Mr. Wong series with Boris Karloff. You can find five or six of these on Amazon Prime. Don't ask me to defend them. But they are relatively harmless and somewhat campy fun.
As they say, If wuving you is Wong, I don't wanna be White.
Don't ask me what that's stuck in my head when I watch these. Too much social distancing, I think.
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Post by kungfuzu on Jun 3, 2020 19:40:54 GMT -8
"Blind Man's Bluff" by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew with Annette Lawrence Drew
I just finished Blind Man's Bluff which gives a history of American submarine espionage from the period just after WWII to Bill Clinton's presidency. The book begins with the story of the USS "Cochino" which was sent in 1949 to try and intercept Soviet communications off the Kola Peninsula. While the vessel made it to its destination, the final end of the Cochino was somewhat ignominious. From that crude first attempt at spying, the navy learned and continued to improve its spying capabilities. Perhaps surprisingly, this effort was initially given rather small assets to work with. But over time, and particularly after the success of Dr. John Craven's search for the missing H-bomb which had ended up in the ocean off Spain, the program began to consume huge amounts of cash. Throughout this period, Admiral Hyman Rickover was an impediment to the program as it was one he could not completely control. The first fifty-or-so pages were not terribly exciting, but shortly after Craven comes into the picture the story starts to improve. Craven was a brilliant man who used Bayesian Statistics to determine the likely location of the lost H-bomb as well as the final resting place of the USS Scorpion. Along the way to his successes, Craven ran into resistance from many in the Navy who thought him an odd-ball or felt threatened by his work. It was interesting to learn how submarine commanders would lay in wait for their Soviet counterparts and follow them for weeks in order to learn about, and establish protocols regarding the sounds, noise levels and quirks of Soviet subs. But I found the book was most interesting when it laid out how the Navy tapped Soviet naval communications cables in both the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea. These were amazing feats. Unfortunately, the Soviets were able to obtain similar information without having to develop new technologies, and for a small fraction of our cost. They simply paid spies such as John Walker and Ronald Pelton. Higher ups in the Navy had been warned of the real possibility of spies operating in their pond, but they ignored the warnings. The writers were relatively neutral as regards their comments about the American presidents mentioned in the book, until they reached Ronald Reagan. In his case, it is pretty clear that they held a typical leftist's attitude to Reagan's intellect. This slightly spoiled the book for me. Reading this story has only confirmed my belief that the Navy, while the most important military branch, is also the most corrupt and insular. One comes across instances where officers try to cover up and blame others for their mistakes, and even let seamen take unnecessary risks in order to cover the officers' own asses. There are a number of such instances in the book. That said, if one has interest in the navy or recent U.S. history, I can recommend this book. It is an easy read and at about 300 pages does not take much time to get though.
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