Be Doctor Who as a Couch Potato

This, The Sonic Screwdriver Programmable TV Remote, is both what I have always wanted in the whole world and a disturbing commentary on our world. The episode The Power of Three looks at normal life without the Doctor, playing bills, watching TV, living sequentially in the same timeline as the rest of the planet. TV, the couch potatoing, munchie snacking, channel changing/flipping/grazing is anti-Doctor. TV is maybe how we connect to his life, but we want to live in his world not ours.

The End of Piano-Industrial Complex

In a Ken Burns documentary, I forget which, there was a reference to how in the late 19th century more American homes had pianos then indoor plumbing. They were aspirational object that signaled one's arrival into middle class gentility. In the TV documentary The 1900 House a piano was installed in to the parlor. A Globe & Mail story a few years back profiled a family of recent Chinese immigrants. The father was an engineer, now a factory foreman. They lived in a cramped basement apartment, with a piano but no TV. Piano sales are up in China.

Today is different. The above image is from a BBC report of a London piano restorer, Will your piano end up in the dump? The piano being dissembled was made in London's former piano district.  It was judged and found wanting. Its parts well go on to other uses, other pianos. The Image below, Elergy, is from a show The Piano as Art, by Penny Putnam and Shauna Holiman.

The newer cultural artifact of our age is the TV. Soon there won't be any cathode ray tube televisions left, there will be hauled away as trash. The factories that made them are also gone.

Here is an example of a new player piano system that can also replicate a full range of volume, from piano to forte. Looking at through the site of the people who created the modern player piano industry suffers from proprietary and shifting technological standards.

The Great Man Theory and American Economic History

History has gone through many twists and turns over the past the century. The Great Man Theory has now been mostly discredited as historians of the annales school and others have examined the socio-economic conditions that give rise to the "great men" and the sea they swim in. That said it is useful to examine the captains of industry that made our near modern world and primordial ooze they crawled out of. This series seems, according to promo and this video, to be about a bunch of American "robber barons". As an aside the term "robber baron" is like "creeping barrage", it is term which is made of two synonyms.  The series is about the people who in the generations between the US Civil War an d the Great War built the industrial and technological capacity of the US.

Lately thinking of the recent Florida incarceration of Conrad Black I think how unlovable are all the press barons I have ever learned about. It made me think at first the interest in news corrupted and ink stained one's soul. Press Barons were creeps not because they saw newspapers as avenue of profit or as a venue of information but as a means of power. Using such a definition Lenin and Hitler were also Press Lords.

There have been power hungry men through out history.  They trundle over the earth exercising petty tyrannies extending over a some few generations. At certain hinge points their power can be magnified and men like Caesar, Genghis Khan and Cortez change the world forever.

Project Trinity - Complete Film

Years and years ago I saw Project Trinity at tiff. I mentioned this documentary in an earlier post, Nuclear Testing as Art/Astronomy. The above is a complete copy of Project Trinity.

Theoretical, Historical and Current Air Lanes of The World

Years ago on this blog I posted a link to a study of shipping lanes in the 18th and 19th centuries, Windjammer and East Indiaman Shipping Lanes. Now very little commercial cargo is shipped on sailing ships. Instead now there are container ships and air cargo. Weirdly there is a coincidence. Fed Ex according to Wiki shipped 15 million tonne kilometers in 2004.  One clipper, The Blackadder, with a tonnage of 900 tons on a trip to Sydney was capable of shpping 20 million tonne kilometers in one 2 month voyage.

Here is a map of the air lanes of the world published as of 1944 from The Atlas of Global Geography. Link from Thande in Things that look like alternate history, but aren't at AH.com. Look at how Canada is nearly empty of air routes. And how the USSR has dense network of air routes compared to China, India and the Middle East.

Here is a map from 1920 about possible air lanes from The People's Atlas. This atlas was published so soon after WW1 with the result one of the only sections that is not prewar is this section. Helpfully it also has pictures of warplanes drawn to scale. As you can see the scale it presumes that commercial air travel was going to limp along at 100 miles per hour. What may please the those futurists who drew this map is that four airlines that were founded in 1920 still exist.

Here is an illustration of the air traffic in 2008 based on observed contrails. It is from a blog concerned with contrails, Contrail Science. The image below comes from a blog post about the growth of air travel in last 30 years, 30 Years of Airline Travel. The paper that blogpost is based on is not available.

Vegan Altrenative History

Here is a new TV ad from IKEA that postulates a world without textiles. The invention of textiles was a momentous one for world history but people were able to live out textiles. What people been unable to live without, especially in the higher latitudes, is leather and fur. As not far back as living memory the Inuit were without fabrics but of course had leather and fur. You could even do a similar video about only using leather and fur except it wouldn't all that weird at all.

For a normal some of the fur/leather non textile replacements are less practicable and expensive. On the other hand many "make works" are actually the default in our world with textiles. I have heard that some committed vegans actually try to live their lives without leather shoes and other animal byproducts. One begin to think that this ad pushes such a vegan agenda.

Spiderman (2002) Rewatch

Things are stable for a long time then suddenly changes. Punctuated equilibrium can also explain social and technological changes. Things can change gradually and rapidly at the same time. Fashion can evolve and change slowly, adapt and then can be completely changed overnight.

Wigs, powered or not, were worn, as prescribed by fashion, by men from about 1650 to 1800.  There was gradual change in the shape, size, and color. Then there was sudden change as wigs completely fell out of fashion.

A similar process has happened/is happening with men's suits. At one point men of all classes wore suits, to the ball park, to picnics, even if they were complete and total slobs. Men would wear jacket and ties waiting in a soup line. Chaplin's character, the Tramp, mostly wears a jacket and tie. Now the voluntary wearing of suits and ties has declined. Worn now primarily when dress codes are enforced.

I decided  to rewatch Spiderman (2002) because of the unnecessary relaunch of the franchise. Weirdly for a movie only a decade old seems already to be from another era. A decade ago, when there were lan cafes, I saw ads this movie at the lan cafe I used to go to. Spiderman was filmed before the iPod when only a third of Americans had cell phones.

Here are some of the things I noticed are depict a world of last century and not the time we live in now.

Old style camera with film

Want ads on paper

Cathode Ray Television

Payphones

Not All Canadians are Canadiens Fans

I went to Firefox today to needless mess around with my extensions. Then I found the above suggestion. I stopped looking for amusing time wasters like Play Your Piano and went looking for useful extensions like Aviary which is how I screen captured the above image.

I was appalled (mildly) that Firefox assumed that I would support a Montreal team. Looking a little more deeply through the choices only a 7 NHL teams are listed as having "official" themes, including the zombie franchise Phoenix.

Still I'm not a fan of the Habs despite how many of their "ethnically cleansed" fans I meet in Toronto.

Cool Looking Fire Fighter Tool

This is the SP16 SPAX, a fire fighter tool. It is an ingenious combination of a machete and various wrenches to open/close various valves. It is made by the Ontario Knife Company, from Ontario county in Northern New York.

I came across this company because of odd turn of phrase by stalkere in an AH.com post.

I still think it's going to be a desperate fight. But 5.56 only? That's going to be sporty. Mighty sporty. In my opinion, more than a few of the Marines are going to go "All the way to Ontario" - a saying we had - the M-16 bayonet was made by Ontario Cutlery Company.

Real Steam Punk or Steam Powered Punk

From a link from Elidor on AH.com's Things that look like Alternate History but Aren't thread.

USS Enterprise Owner's Workshop Manual

Haynes, American trade/brand name Chilton, is a company that produces detailed technical manuals for just about all makes and models of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The above, the USS Enterprise Owner's Workshop Manual, has a cutaway diagram of the USS Enterprise A. Every Starfleet engineer will wnat one.

Freight Elevator To a View

Patents, Copyrights and Technological Stagnation

Here, James Watt: Monopolist, is an interesting account of James Watt's legal fight to prevent the use and technological advancement of steam engines. It is on a website devoted to the "Austrian School" of economics. It points out that a patent give to James Watt leading to him focusing more on remunerative patent lawsuits that actual construction and sale of steam engines.

The article was cited in a discussion on slashdot on the British intending to focus more selling music then pointless legal wrangling, UK Music Industry Calls For Truce With Technology.

Nuclear Testing as Art/Astronomy

Here is a animation/depiction, What the Hell were Thinking, of all the nuclear explosions between 1945 and 1998. Each nuclear state has its color and tone. As the years go by the rhythm of color splotches and soothing tones is relaxing.

Fifteen years ago I saw Trinity & Beyond at now vanished Uptown. The documentary was about nuclear testing and consisted of one beautiful nuclear explosion after another. 1995 was before the Test Ban treaty and the general end of nuclear testing. As someone who wore a radiation badge for a summer job I was deeply impressed.

The image below is a satellite image showing a portion of the Nevada Proving Grounds. The bumps are bomb dimples, not craters, from underground testing. The Google Maps link for below was provided by RoBt in a discussion about What the Hell were Thinking.

Photos from Siberia

Photos from Siberia

Link from Timbo

Plug for Plugs

slashdot has a good discussion of electrical plugs and why there are so many varying plug standards. There is also a link to gizmodo article about plug standards, where the above map is from, Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug.

Soviet / American Anthem Mashup

While following up a story on slashdot about Russian attempts to enforce their IP for the AK47 design I ended up on a page of Russian/Soviet anthems. Here is a version of the American anthem the Star Spangled Banner sung to the tune of the Soviet Anthem — by Iron Curtain. To me this song like everything associated with Stalin is tainted. It is an anthem not of dying for your country, or living for it, by the anthem to be sung while being murdered by your country for some grand and meaningless purpose.

Update
Repaired the broken link.
09/21/08

In the Land Of the Wolves - Chernobyl and area

Elena, a Ukrainian photographer and motorcyclist has put together a site of photographs of her travels into the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Here for the photographer's site. Here for information on the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Above is the actual nuclear plant. The record of her journeys are filled with rusted out equipment, abandoned disintegrating building and healthy and unconcerned wildlife. A higher background radiation that wildlife pays for a larger habitat and reduced human caused predation.

Has anyone else read the book the World Without Us. What has been happening here and what is discussed in the book gives hope for the future, with or without us.

(link from Goranga!)

Even More Chainsaw Bayonets/Swords

Some days internet produces the same stuff everywhere you look. Yesterday I had a post about working chainsaw bayonet, today it is also on AH.com. In a thread, Things that look like alternate history, but aren't, the above image was posted. Below are the best comments on AH about this invention.

Emperor Norton I

And that's why you don't let rednecks in the army.

Petike

As I already said : Every period of history apparently has it's own Warhammer 40K fanboys...

LordMoogi

That is so completely stupid, that it loops around the other direction and becomes awesome. I feel conflicted.

Weird New Ways to Make Music

Gizmodo has found ten ways using as instruments things varied as scanners, phones and buildings. The music above is made with water filled beer bottles and a R/C car.