These itsy bitsy spiders…
…do a lot more than climbing up the water spout.
They detect electrical fields and use them to – fly.
And although I’m well aware that I just used the word “fly” there to refer to the activity and not the creature, the juxtaposition of “spider” and “fly” made me think of this sweet little verse:
“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;
“’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.
The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,
And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”
“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again…”
In the end, of course, the fly is toast.
Which in turn makes me think of this far superior offering:
…O Oysters, come and walk with us!’
The Walrus did beseech.
A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each.’The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head —
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat —
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn’t any feet.Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more —
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore…
You know the ending. We all know the ending.
Wow…
China assassinated someone on American soil (over corona) and no one cares at all
amazing…
who would have thunk it…
When I was about six years old my mom loved to teach us tongue twisters and a favorite was,
A flea and a fly
Flew up in a flue.
Said the flea, “Let us fly!”
Said the fly, “Let us flee!”
So they flew through
A flaw in the flue.
And what your spider said to the fly brought that memory back from way back and thank you very much.
Artfldr:
You keep making the same type of complaint, and I keep answering. It may be a waste of time to answer once again, but I will.
This blog is not a guide to the most important stories of the day. It’s not even a guide to the stories I think are most important. Nor is it meant to be – or could it be- comprehensive.
It is a guide to what I want to write about, day by day. Sometimes it’s because I think the topic very important. Sometimes just for fun and entertainment. Even for important topics (which this is not) I usually only write about something if it interests me and if I have something I feel is compelling or unique to say about it.
I have followed the story you mention. I have nothing definitive, compelling, or unique to say about. Others have written about it.
Ballooning spiders. Do people who get radio transmissions from their fillings swallow more spiders than those who don’t?
https://animals.howstuffworks.com/arachnids/do-we-swallow-spiders-in-sleep.htm
That’s quite cool — little electrified spiders zipping around the atmosphere. Truth really can be stranger than fiction! Thanks for the diversion, Neo.
Large spiders are creepy. Think otherwise? I think hummingbirds are a more cheerful topic. 😉
Ok neo.. I can still say wow… as we covered Russia killing in the UK.. but not here..
so i still say wow… But it also fits with what i said in the other post about how we cultivate the world view we are comfortable with and prevent its modification… always with good reason… always.. just that everyone always has good reasons to themselves about anything they do, so it doesnt really matter what reasons.. I am just amazed… and sorry, i can be gobsmacked… just as i can be surprised they are talking about war in china, and before trump was elected i said we were going to be there (though it silly to think of real war as where would it happen? it just cant happen in any kind of physical way that makes sense.. oh, we can have conflict over a third piece of property, but not war with china in any meaningful physical sense)
cover what you want, i can still be surprised by it or the absence of it…
and even more so given other coverage…
Frankly Scarlet, I dont give a damn. – Rhett Butler
neo,
You’re not looking for input and seem determined to continue regardless, but I’ll register my opinion anyway. I greatly enjoy your approach of writing about what interests you, whenever it interests you. You are an interesting woman and a talented writer. Many blogs stick to one or two themes, and some of those blogs are excellent, but I find myself going to them less and less. The news seems to be a steady repetition of the same themes. As Sam Clemens never said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” I much prefer my avatar, Julius Marx’s take on the subject: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”
Keep up the good work. Your public needs you.
Like most American children I’m pretty sure I encountered at least some of Lewis Carroll’s writing as a child. I don’t recall ever seeing the Disney movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” but I certainly knew the highlights of the story. Elements popped up a lot in other works; the Mad Hatter, Red Queen, March Hare, Cheshire Cat…
Although I knew of it I don’t recall thinking of it, one way or the other until I was about 12 or 13. I don’t recall why, but I read, “Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There” then, and nearly completely soaked it up. Then promptly read it and re-read it. I also read most, if not all of Carroll’s other works around the same time. It’s a hazy memory now, but I recall reading and re-reading Carroll an hour or so before bed many nights for many months. I still have a fair amount of the prose and poems memorized. Little snippets come to me from time to time, including the tale of the Walrus, Carpenter and Oysters quoted above. I can probably still recite all of Jaberwocky from memory. There was something about the pace and meter of Carroll’s writing and his word choices that really clicked with me. Now that I think about it, it was right around the same time, likely shortly after, that I discovered “Monty Python,” and their similar speaking patterns and dry wit.
John Tenniel’s illustrations (I did not remember that name and just looked it up) seemed very well suited for Carroll’s words.
Regarding the spiders; it seems like a very well prepared and executed experiment. Clever science for some clever spiders.
“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Spiders don’t shoot silk from their abdomens….”
But where DO they shoot it from?
https://digg.com/video/spider-80-foot-silk-bridge
(Ah yes, “The Atlantic”….)
Regarding “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass” (which I must confess not having taken to the last time I reread it a few years ago, surprising me, actually…), it is becoming ever clearer that these gems of the genre are what Susan Rice must have been referring to when she sent that love note to herself regarding “doing things by the book”.
Except, of course, she meant two books.
(Can’t she get anything straight?)
Which leads us to the ultimate question:
Was Julian Marx the sixth (and long-lost?) brother?
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
Seems apt.
I was very fond of Martin Gardner’s book about Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.
Gardner also had a mathematics column in Scientific American for many years. A very clever man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner
One stanza has been modified:
The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
How Epstein did not kill himself —
And whether pigs have wings.’
And whether pigs have wings…..
As the pig began to climb ever higher, rising to heights no pig, inflatable or otherwise, had ever hoped or dared to dream, a terrible realisation crept over those watching it sail toward the heavens- the pig was flying directly towards Heathrow airport. As panic began to set in, the band did what many would do in such a situation, according to Powell, “Pink Floyd left the site.”
Moments after the skyward swine escaped, Heathrow officials received several communiqués from pilots in passing planes matter-of-factly telling them that they’d just seen a giant pig float past their windows. After realising that the calls weren’t a joke, all flights from the airport were grounded.
As the pig danced around in the sky, police helicopters and eventually the RAF were called in to chase it down, but to no avail; by the time they arrived the pig was gone and, despite their sincerest efforts, they couldn’t find it.
In 1976, Pink Floyd recorded an album called Animals which drew inspiration from the 1945 novel Animal Farm, a thinly veiled allegory of Soviet communism that prominently features pigs as characters.
The Wall was another album about bureaucratic totalitarianism and the broken landscape of an inner world….
@Eeyore – Big smile! 🙂 🙂
In 1977 Pink Floyd was on tour in the Bay Area. I drove a couple of Stanford freshmen dopers to the fantastic show, with half the “Wish you were here” album and virtually all of “Animals”. (I always thought the vocals on most Animals songs were mixed too quietly; I usually like the Pink Floyd music AND lyrics.)
The show included a huge flying pig balloon, and their Pigs on a Wing song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_XnwFVkkjU
Thanks, Artfl, for the news story which I didn’t know. Lots of time you’re worth reading (especially the shorter ones).
For a few years Neo has been my favorite / most read & commented blogger. (I always read Instapundit, but seldom now comment. Askblog by Arnold Kling is more economic. Don Surber is a fun Trump fanboy. Ann Althouse has too many comments to read, but is also interesting.) I’m starting to read more of Jonathan Turley.
https://jonathanturley.org/
I think writing about what you’re interested in, with something to say about it, makes many things interesting. I find virtually all of Neo’s interests interesting – yet many other bloggers’ not so much.
When I read about the spiders and their electrical field use, my wife suggested that may be one reason so many folk are especially against spiders (she is, far more than against flies, for instance). When she was young, she and one sister were talking with their aunt about how terrible spiders were. Aunt Staska disagreed, picking one up and saying how they kill flies and don’t hurt anybody. Then the spider bit her, leaving two small bloody dots.
So physics guy,
Does this in principle confirm electromagnetic, if undirected, levitation using the earth’s magnetic field?
At a glance, I was having trouble distinguishing whether the article was attributing the floating phenomenon to the spider’s use of constant lines of magnetic field force, or to resulting fluctuating electrostatic phenomena in the atmosphere per se, or whether they saw it as all of a piece. Is this like a piece of paper sticking to a rubbed balloon, or a flying saucer, LOL
Since I’m too lazy to read it completely once, much less twice, I’ll ask you , or anyone else, to do the thinking.
Funny (funny-weird rather than funny-ha-ha) that you should quote “The Walrus and the Carpenter” because I’ve been thinking of that poem frequently this past week. The young oysters remind me of “liberals” and other State-shtuppers who see only benevolence in statism and never consider the toll. And the Walrus, shedding tears for the oysters–after he’s killed and eaten them–remind me of the online statists currently defending themselves against the charge of being bullies and tyrants. “Boo-hoo, how ungrateful! We only want what’s best for you! CHOMP!”
DNW: Does this in principle confirm electromagnetic, if undirected, levitation using the earth’s magnetic field?
The problem with such things has to do with the inability to compress a field
and the earths field while large in terms of planetary size, is very weak in terms of force, so the amount of tesla’s necessary to cause levitation would be huge… the kind of amount in which the device that makes the field destroys itself doing so..
its just not practical..
however there IS a way to reduce the cost of rocket fuel usage that no one uses, and sadly, i dont see them coming up with… however it would make rockets much cheaper to use… though if it comes from me, no one wants it, so i dont bother any more… i just tick off the stuff i designed and worked on as others invent them and get money for them
like the shooting of mosquitos… came up with that in the late 1980s… but required ruby rod lasers because solid state was not done yet… but as soon as they were available i knew you could do it. still have all the drawings… same wiht micro cooling fans that fit in a pc board… did that over 10 years ago… they now are making them… i am not… a high speed search chip that can shorten the time with DNA single nucleotide polymorphism and other scans… but i was crushed by schadt of illumina where i worked, and the tech was taken to china by that kind of stuff that is in the news now…
no one cares, so i dont care any more.
its way way too depressing to talk
like right now… i am quite depressed remembering it
and not being able to do anything about it
Spiders…
https://what-if.xkcd.com/120/
Art,
Why not set up a pocket corporation, and issue shares? Very little cost to that. You could then create a prospectus and circulate it. No doubt, with a sound idea and a prototype feasible within a year, you could leverage a kitchen table operation into something more substantial within a year or two – if, you are talking of a bug zapper kind of quasi novelty.
Probably the more frivolous the better, from a mass marketing perspective. Get the ball barely rolling and get bought out.
There’s no law that says you cannot have any number of corporations set up to pursue specific goals.
Space travel? Well not so much, though you could probably even crowd source funds for that idea of yours, IF that is, you had a coherent or persuasive research plan formulated.
I’ll bet that you could get some tens of thousands in that way, if you thought such modest investments would make a difference.
If you get a patent you could sell or license it. You could be the next Salvatore Pais, working from home.
Now, on the other hand, if the real issue is that you are pissed off and depressed because no recognized institutions or investors will give you a couple million for a speculative idea you see as a sure thing, then my suggestions will obviously not appeal to you.
My newly widowed father would take all us kids up into his lap after dinner and read Alice to us. To this day I can recite many of the poems. Just yesterday I got cleaned up for a rare public foray, and presented myself to my husband for inspection with the announcement that my coat was brushed, my face was washed, my shoes were clean and neat.
DNW: while i can be quite the genius on being creative, math, self learning, etc..
i am quite dense and out of my depth in things like that
call it gods curse…
great ability in X and idiot in Y so X is useless..
the infinite goof..
naw.. thats not it…
we only wanted a shoestring…
the minimum amount needed to show a prototype (talking chip)
there the issue was that the researcher worth over a billion
was famous for adding 2% more speed to Xilinx solution
and we walked in with many orders of magnitude faster
ie. his machines took over a day to run through the data and our thing could have done it in an hour or less with more than one..
so he claimed it was like something else, which it wasnt, and that was that.
the person reviewing the idea to get the cash from work, gave the material to his brother, a tech who worked for Xilinx and had opened up a company across from the Beijing institute..
double “that was that”
the other thing i get is the desire to help X not Y cause Y is evil and pale and etc.
so i gave up… after 40 years of trying and ruining my retirement
a retirement that could have been great if i never tried and instead just put the cash i had to savings and so on… instead of being suckered into the thing without knowing that no matter how hard, it was not going to go no matter how good.
beyond that my partners either stole my money (retirement ruined and now have nothing), or humored me wasting my time rather than saying they were not interested and letting me seek alternatives.
sad…
but thanks.. it was very nice of you to take the time to suggest something
Art, are you saying you had a protoype processor that you wished to demonstrate in someone else’s system and needed financial support for the trials, or that you had a design concept that you wanted someone to build and integrate?
Just wondering if you had a patent or any kind of legal protection before soliciting their cooperation.
Now it is a fact, and I don’t deny it, that manufacturing is not pure as driven snow. There are plenty of men in industry who will steal any idea or opportunity which is shared with them, and shrug in response that: ” That’s just business, and if you don’t protect yourself, sucker, so much the worse for you. ”
Sales of high dollar industrial capital equipment is notorious in this regard. Not salesmen particularly, but sales managers and executives. No field rep/distributor, especially a non exclusive rep, can ever casually share information regarding an emerging prospect. For a young-in-the-business rep to say to his principal that he heard that the buyer for XYZ Aerospace will be holding a show up in a month to solicit bids, without placing the man on notice first and getting a commitment from him to honor the rep’s groundwork, it is a clear invitation to be cut out of the deal by a capital equipment manufacturer looking to gain an extra 5%.on the sale for the house.
In fact, I don’t believe I have met more than a couple men in my business life who had a principled sense of honor, and could be trusted with information they might turn to their personal advantage. Everything has to be in writing. And all that that guarantees, is that you have evidence in court.
In one instance as a neophyte, back a bit before the time frame you referenced, I managed to make a die profiler sale to a company no one had ever scouted because of a misleading name, bad location, and misleadig industrial number – much less been able to get in the door to see. Not a huge sale, about 1.5 mil, but it came out of nowhere, came in the last quarter, and took a unit off the manufacturing floor which the builder was stuck wiith due to a cancellation. Sold at list. Delivered in 3 months. Paid to manufacturer immediately. I picked up the deposit and the delivery checks and sent them out overnight.
Payment to my company by the builder however, dragged on and on with one chickenshit excuse after another.
Eventually, as I was having dinner with peers working inside the plant sales office, I was showered with praise, called a hero, and credited with keeping the division out of the red that year, if only by a few hundred k. Might have saved their jobs, as they saw it.
But when it came to collecting, it was like pulling teeth as the saying goes.
Unfortunately that was more the rule than the exception. In my first big one, up against Shin Nippon Koki, where the Japanese had dropped their pants to their ankles and bent over for the customer, I pulled in the sale with the help of a sharp inside engineer, and we only gave up about 70 thousand of the 250 the plant was desperate enough to give up.
When it came time to pay commissions the plant suggested that we split the discount 50-50 dollar for dollar. LOL
Yeah, I save them 180k or more, and they suggest I give up 70% of my commission as a “shared burden”. Fat chance.
And that was in the context of a solid relationship with a company over 100 years old, and famed in both industry and history, Anyone who knows what an M16 is, has heard of the corporate conglomerate of that time.
Fairhaired boy my ass. That and 50 cents will buy you, you know exactly what.
Hell will be just as full of throat cutting, back-stabbing, self-serving amoral businessmen as it will be of politicians and bureaucrats.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down. You haven’t lost until you are dead.
Artfldgr & DNW – reading your memoirs here, it would seem to me that those are the people who give capitalism its bad name.
However, at least they are working with productive enterprises where something useful is traded among willing participants.
The politicians, on the other hand, pay bureaucrats to give our money to other people without any productive result at all.
Dante is gonna need a bigger Inferno.
Art, are you saying you had a protoype processor that you wished to demonstrate in someone else’s system and needed financial support for the trials, or that you had a design concept that you wanted someone to build and integrate?
I had a design (still do), using off the shelf parts basically. What we needed was a way to show that the design works. The math was quite easy, the design was quite easy. however having a material something in hand is much better, because people just dont abstract well. I found a fab company that would do the chip, as there are firms that do this (they include your design with dozens of others and cut and make them much like pc boards)… i went so far as to teach myself verilog to do a simulation (zero cost)… and i know enough programming and electronics… i ALSO installed and taught myself how to use the basic chip design software that would let you pick transistors and other items from a list of available IP and route them… however, making a board with large chips would have been good too.. I evne bought reels of parts.. ie. 2 foot wide reels of surface mount shiftregisters and more… all we really needed (at that time), was enough cash so that we could stop funding ourselves… i was tapped out having spent so much money on software, and other things… we were looking for 5k or 10k not 100k or a million… but they handed it to our competition to know whether it woudl work… genius right? and so one competitor who was considered great for minute percentage gains trashed us, and the other competitor was with Xilinx where the percentage gains were implemented and the chips were 20k each.
all we really wanted was to show the concept works… and let the world have it… figuring rewards would come on their own over time given being the originators.
Just wondering if you had a patent or any kind of legal protection before soliciting their cooperation.
no… ie. i been cleaned out.. have no money for such and now Obama changed the patent law… so we were going to go with the, write a paper, be known, and hope for others to hire me… (as the doctor who was helping has retired and has more money than his little socialist heart wanted)… even if it just led to better jobs, it would be ok than what i have now…
Now it is a fact, and I don’t deny it, that manufacturing is not pure as driven snow. There are plenty of men in industry who will steal any idea or opportunity which is shared with them, and shrug in response that: ” That’s just business, and if you don’t protect yourself, sucker, so much the worse for you. ”
True…but less true in the US than in china.. 🙂
In fact, I don’t believe I have met more than a couple men in my business life who had a principled sense of honor, and could be trusted with information they might turn to their personal advantage. Everything has to be in writing. And all that that guarantees, is that you have evidence in court.
i dont look at it that their dishonest… i look at it that htey are playing by the rules in which they are allowed to do these things… and they are… so its not so much they are dishonest but that the rules allow them to act in ways that the average joe thinks are dishonest… or dishonorable… this doesnt bother me once i figured it out…
Don’t let the bastards grind you down. You haven’t lost until you are dead.
but i am dead… i am now old… no children… cleaned out.. no friends.. no job… no degrees… no reputation…
just waiting to die… nothing else to do but that… sadly…
if i wasnt able to do anything with the ideas while it was easier and i was younger and some wanted to help
i certainly cant do it now with no resources, no friends, no reputation, no money, and no one wants to help cause your old..
so… i am giving up after it ruined my life and dreams.. which i coud have easily had if i didnt try…
my wife could have had the child she wanted… if the doctor didnt put us off for 5 years till he retired and abandoned us
and so on and so on… breaks my heart… today is her birthday… and we are alone… and its because of all that..
Yes AesopFan they give Capitalism a bad name because they are not practicing capitalism… they are doing something else under its auspices and methods that to the untrained eye, is not discerned.. and they do it because the state who is supposed to make the laws to protect from such deviations doesnt do their job because they want capitalism to fail for the power and permanency for their children of communism… while promoting the opposite to the women so they destroy their family trees and prevent progeny..
sad.. very sad…
and they wont stop… because to stop is to admit you been conned.
and the beautiful dears ego wont let that… so destruction is assured..
So very sorry to hear your story, Artfl. IBM “offered me a package” (neo-fired!) to leave, just as was about to be 63 so as to be able to retire. So I left – low US retirement is middle class comfy in Slovakia.
I have an idea for a reasonable product, but can’t make it myself. I’ll be asking some Sili Valley friends for help, but I’m willing to ask you, too. I want, and I’m sure many more folk want, a very quiet PC. But I like the Big Screen, and good game play, of a desktop. Most desktops are noisy.
I just upgraded mine to have a no-fan Nvidia graphics card, and replaced my hard drive with an external 2 TB drive for pictures & backup, plus a single 500 GB SSD (no fan!). I bought a “Be Quiet” case, with a couple of very quiet input-output fans. I had a big old eco quiet power supply, which is set to only use the fan if the temp gets too hot.
I have multiple old wimpy notebooks: Everex 286 (1991!), TI 486 Travelmate, Asus, Acer, Lenovo ThinkPad. All with quiet transformers of some 90-120 W. My desktop power supply puts out 750 W, but I think I could get by with 350 W, now.
Why isn’t there a box to combine multiple quiet old notebook power supplies so as to power the motherboard (+graphics or separately), harddrive, and case? I was inspired by Fully Silent PCs, plus (Michael) Dell and the story of a guy who built custom PCs turning his service into a huge business.
https://www.fullysilentpcs.com/?v=13dd621f2711
I’m sure the market for quiet power supplies will be slowly growing, and that combining weaker old notebook transformers into a stronger PC supply has a lot of potential to get Silent plus power at a very low additional cost, for those who have notebooks.
Destruction is not assured!
(… tho death and taxes do remain certain.)
Artfldgr – today is her birthday –
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MRS DODGER!
Tom Grey,
That’s interesting. Years ago I started a business that involved building silent PCs for a different reason. (Silence wasn’t a main goal*, but my design was so efficient it was a by product.) I sourced pre-built cases from China and bought about a dozen to assess quality and build some prototypes. Alibaba is a great resource for finding manufacturers of cases and other components.
But I’m quite certain you know all of this, so I’m wondering if I fully understand your need?
*Turns out that what I designed was the equivalent of a Chromebook. I did this independently, without knowing Google was going to dump millions of them on the market.