Saw a gentleman on Tucker Carlson’s show last night, Zaid Jilani. Brilliant. I am now seeking out his writing.
He made a great point, backed with data, that things certain folks in our society want to attribute to race do not correlate with skin color, at all, but correlate with economics. In other words; life is harder if you are poor.
Not exactly rocket science. Something most all of us reason out by about the age of 5. LeBron James has a good life. Oprah Winfrey has a good life. They are not oppressed in any way. A poor, white girl whose father is absent and mother is a heroin addict, so she’s being raised by her grandparents who have a household income below the poverty level, has a tough road ahead of her and needs help.
When we see people or groups claiming victimhood or oppression based on physical, external characteristics, rather than economics we know they are either lying or ignorant. I think it’s typically the former. It’s a grift.
I’ve written before about shrugging.” If I find a business hates me I’m working to not give them money. Why fund my own abuse? I’ve recently had good luck with a method that I’d like to recommend.
I try to buy local or from small businesses when possible. Even if a proprietor is a rabid communist, if she’s paying taxes in my neighborhood she’s helping improve my neighborhood more than Indra Nooyi. But Amazon has an incredible database of products and reviews. So, now, when I search for something I go to Amazon and use their data (Bezos has no issue using me for data, why not return the favor). I look at products, prices and reviews. Then, I take what I learn and search the Internet for local stores that carry that item. I also try the manufacturer’s website. I’ve had good luck recently and found the prices to be identical to what they were on Amazon.
Some things aren’t available locally, but I’ve found sources other than Amazon who will ship them; usually the manufacturer, and shipping prices have not been bad. Sometimes buying direct the price is a bit lower and it covers the shipping.
And, when I find the item locally I walk or cycle to the store to get it when possible. That way I even get some exercise and time away from Mr. Bezos’ web servers.
It takes a little more time on my end, but I’m actually costing Bezos a bit of cash (he is collecting and storing the data I use to purchase) while making sure my cash doesn’t end up in his pockets.
*From the title of the book, “Atlas Shrugged.”
In a letter sent Tuesday but publicized Wednesday, 31 lawmakers [all Dems] led by Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) urge the commander in chief to “consider modifying the decision-making process the United States uses in its command and control of nuclear forces.”
—
In terms of alternatives, the two California Democrats suggested a number of options.
One would be to require that the vice president and speaker of the House of Representatives concur with the president’s decision to strike.
Another option would be requiring certifications from the secretary of defense that the strike order was valid, as well as the attorney general that it was legal.
The two lawmakers also suggested requiring a Congressional declaration of war and specific approval from Congress on the strike.
The last option they suggested was creating a permanent council of Congressional leaders that would hold regular deliberations with the president and their administration on national security issues.
That council would be required to be consulted before the launch of any nuclear weapon.
1) Isn’t this a tacit admission by Democrats that Slow Joe is not competent to handle this authority? Nobody proposed this nonsense with Trump.
2) Imagine “Doctor Strangelove …” being remade. The new black comedy would almost write itself.
Rufus T Firefly….Chelsea Clinton said that she is teaching her children about their White Privilege.
I don’t know if she is too dumb to notice…or if she just feels she can keep other people from noticing..all the *other* kinds of privilege that her children have & will have, such as: Grandchild of a President privilege, wealth privilege, Ivy League privilege, Celebrity privilege, etc.
Since this is an open thread: this month marks the 75th anniversary of the first programmable electronic computer, the ENIAC. I wrote about it here:
A couple of days ago Mike K mentioned sailing and racing in the Transpac.
I sailed for a lot of years (sold my last boat in 2007). Raised a lot of memories– mostly good about sailing, mostly on the inland lakes of E. Wash. I did sail in the Puget Sound a few times, but never beyond the sight of land.
I had a friend in college, whose dad had a 37′ Britton Chance design and sailed in the Victoria to Maui in 1976. He was looking for crew to sail the boat back– and I’ve regretted not quitting my job and sailing the boat back.
What an adventure that would have been.
I can lay claim to a feat few sailors experience, sinking your boat. It’s one of the few not so good memories– especially since it was my own stupidity that caused the sinking.
Meanwhile, I ran across this video of a man and his 23′ boat sailing from California to Hawaii.
Her mother is a stripper, and her father is a crack addict.
Her grandfather just became president.
If that’s not white privilege, I dunno what is. 😛
New commercial: “Re-opening your state. So easy, even a caveman could do it.”
}}} 2) Imagine “Doctor Strangelove …” being remade. The new black comedy would almost write itself.
Yeah, but they’d be aiming at US cities and calling the governor of Texas or Florida, or something…
}}} He made a great point, backed with data, that things certain folks in our society want to attribute to race do not correlate with skin color, at all, but correlate with economics. In other words; life is harder if you are poor.
Indeed, they’ve been making this point for at least two decades… the real indicator for poverty is not skin color or ethnicity, it’s the fact of being raised in a nuclear family unit.
P.S., second on David’s ENIAC piece, if you find the history of computing at all interesting.
I use Amazon the same way to research and buy from other sites when possible. Sometimes the manufacturer’s site will sell cheaper than Amazon.
One thing I thought was interesting in the ENIAC history: the idea apparently made its way from the inventors to the Army liason (who got it funded) not via the formal university channels but via a mutual friend. That kind of thing will often be lost in an era of remote work, which may have some consequences for economy-wide innovativeness.
Also interesting how many relationships & marriages there were among the project staff; much of this would be banned in a lot of organizations today.
david foster, Do you know the story of David Cutler and the genesis of WindowsNT?
The east coast based Digital Equipment corp. hired Cutler to create the next gen. VAX operating system. Cutler decided to base his team in the Seattle area where they worked for a few(?) years. When times got tougher for DEC the first area for major cutting were the people they weren’t close to; Cutler’s team.
Cutler then walked into Bill Gates’ office and WindowNT was born.
_______
Love the B-52’s for pure fun. I’ve got that CD collecting dust somewhere in the house. I’ll have to find it.
_______
OBloodyHell, In the movie Failsafe, the US president did nuke NYC. I can see it now, sorry about Jacksonville.
Here’s how biker bar on the highway responded to the covid lockdown. Within couple weeks of bar closing customers pitched in and help build nice outdoor patio deck on side of building with pick nick tables and went BYOB.
I can’t say for sure but if you didn’t BYOB … your drink of choice would magically appear at your table.
Don’t mess with Texas!
I don’t know if she is too dumb to notice…or if she just feels she can keep other people from noticing..all the *other* kinds of privilege that her children have & will have, such as: Grandchild of a President privilege, wealth privilege, Ivy League privilege, Celebrity privilege, etc.
Privelege = Private Law
‘Grandchild of a President’ privilege is something you see, but it’s appearance is spotty. The examples I can think of would be several Bush scions, one Carter scion, one Nixon scion, and the Eisenhower quartet.
Obtaining things you can buy on the market with your money isn’t a privilege; wealth can be obtained through privilege or used to build connections and get you privileges.
Having an Ivy League degree may net you connections or ground level entree you wouldn’t get if you just had the indicia of competence that a handsome university degree would not get you, but it’s all pretty moot in the case of the Clintons and their spawn. That Yale degree may have landed Billy Jeff a faculty position in 1973, but that’s it. It never did much for Hellary. Chelsea’s degree from Columbia is in public health, which we’ve learned is a half-step above social work. She doesn’t actually work in that trade.
The starf**ker impulse in American life is one I’ll never understand. There was a Vanity Fair profile of Neil Bush’s estranged wife published in 2004. One thing the profiler was puzzled about was how common it was that strangers will willing to ply her with free services. Her life was steeped in it. Ruth Westheimer’s reaction to the phenomenon was to say “I luff freebies!”; at least she’s well-known and entertaining; Sharon Bush was a quondam schoolteacher given to kvetching that her husband wasn’t bringing in enough dough.
David Foster @ 11:27am
No love for Konrad Zuse and his Z3?!
OBloodyHell,
I really like, “Roam” also.
OBloodyHell @ 2:20pm,
That’s funny!
Rufus T Firefly…”No love for Konrad Zuse and his Z3?!”
I’ll do a post on the Zuse machines one of these days…the Z3 was probably indeed the first working programmable computer; it was a relay (electromechanical) machine rather than electronic. Zuse accomplished a lot, with no-to-minimal official support.
In addition to his work on general purpose computers, Zuse also built a couple of special-purpose machines which were of direct value to the German military: these were process-control computers which analyzed small deviations in the airfoils of glide bombs and calculated what corrections should be applied to make up for these deviations.
I’ve read quite a few books on the history of computing and the history behind one particular computer, or company, but I think my favorite is still: “Hackers : Heroes of the Computer Revolution” by Steven Levy
He does a great job of describing the personalities involved; especially the first chapter focusing on how so much of it started in Boston because some MIT students liked model railroading, studying phone switches and picking locks.
I enjoyed the dog and the dolphin. 🙂
Thank you for the fun video.
Zuse Fan here. Very smart cookie indeed.
There were giants in the earth in those days.
And John von Neumann. Smartest fellow who ever did live?
Anyone remember Vannevar Bush? WASPdom’s last hurrah. My iPad always gets the machine name Memex.
David Foster,
I just finished your article on the ENIAC. Great stuff! My mother’s (first?) professional job after graduating High School was as one of the women inside a computer who moved the cables, like switchboard operators, according to instructions programmers wrote on sheets of paper.
No mention of Charles Babbage. I know he didn’t use electronics, but didn’t he figure out most of the basics of modern computing through mechanical means? Also George Boole codified a lot of the key logic prior to machines being available to take advantage of his cleverness.
Also you need to stick an appropriate camera on the back of this lens to have any fun with it, and that’s going to cost about the same as the lens.
So in one forum I’m reading people complaining about having to sell stuff to acquire this, and in others there’s much weeping and wailing about the price of AR-15s and ammunition.
Economics and the age-old problem of Scarcity is a real #@$% (Hi, Oldflyer)… but AOC has the answer: she’d pop a cap in the backs of the collective heads of both demographics. Problems solved!
Zaphod:
I once read the Leica described as the “cardiologist’s camera” on account of the price tag. I’ve had Leica envy and settled, sensibly I think, for a Fuji X100.
I assumed Nan Goldin shot all those intimate photos of her bohemian friends with a Leica, but turns out in those days she worked mostly with hot Nikons and Pentaxes she acquired from dodgy friends.
Ken Rockwell is a kick.
@Huxley:
I guess the nephrologist’s camera too, given the number of kidneys that must get sold to fund their purchase.
I love the way Ken Rockwell winds up the serious folks. Short of owning a bass boat, he presses all their buttons.
I had an X100.. I think was Version 2. Autofocus was a bit slow but otherwise brilliant camera for photographing people – especially in tricky harsh light. Probably the friendliest-looking camera ever made, too.
The dirty secret is that by the early 1970s when Goldin came on the scene, Nikon and Pentax already ruled the roost in photojournalism. This gets retconned into something a bit more ambiguous in Leica’s advertising today, of course.
Ctein has a very interesting photography website. A bit down on him after he took a public dump on Jerry Pournelle just after he passed away, but nobody’s perfect.
Homeric and Rufus, collaborators: that’s a nice idea about Amazon and the relationship therewith. My issue is that I have a considerable gift card balance with them, so I don’t know if I can move that out of there. Possibly.
Chopin Nocturnes tonight for me.
David, thanks for that ENIAC writeup. Yes, those times must have been something else.
Some years ago there was an indie film titled “High Art” about an ambitious young assistant at a fancy photography magazine, who discovers a “Nan Goldin” photographer, played by the still-coltish Ally Sheedy, is her upstairs neighbor.
Sheedy has “retired” from photography and floats in a watery, drug-soaked apartment life with fringey friends, then seduces the assistant into that world. Meanwhile the assistant seduces her back into photography. Both pay a price.
It’s a perfect little film for its type. The writer/director, Lisa Cholodenko, later did a bigger-budget, friendlier version of bohemian seduction, “Laurel Canyon,” with Frances McDormand.
For those unacquainted with Nan Goldin — if you’re ever in the photography section of a well-stocked bookstore, check out the big, thick hardcover of Nan Goldin’s work.
Very accessible 24 minute summary of the current state of cellphone privacy.
Definitely do not attend protests carrying a phone.
Zaphod, my favorite Filipino is Richard Fernandez, however Rob is a close second. Very interesting programme. I do not have a “smart” phone but prefer my old Nokia.
@Xylourgos:
Have been following Richard Fernandez along with Neo and GvdL since started following blogs ca. 2nd Gulf War. Fernandez is very bright and seems to have had a very interesting career in the underground during last decade of Marcos. Given his clearly sponsored magic carpet ride to Harvard at the end of that, one wonders just who he was working for:P. I rather suspect he pulls some punches these days because at least some of his strategic consulting income derives from folks who wouldn’t appreciate him dropping truth bombs on us peasants. Similarly, imagine Victor Davis Hanson thinks long and hard about his Hoover Gig before writing about what the Mexicans are up to in the neighbourhood around his ancestral farm, let alone riffing on that charming odd couple, Marius and Sulla.
I was very impressed by the scenario he sketched out where the Philippines accidentally got into a shooting war with China and China lobbed a few Cruise Missiles into some substations and wiped out several million people (at least) in Metro Manila. Best part was his character’s strategy for riding out the chaos — on the roof of his hotel in a plant room because you do not want to be around Other People when this kind of thing goes down.
Zaphod…”Anyone remember Vannevar Bush?”
Smart guy, indeed…in addition to the idea for the Memex, he created the mechanical differential analyzer…see my post about this class of machines (and their possible educational relevance today) here:
OTOH, Bush advised the government, shortly after WWII, that intercontinental ballistic missiles were so far off into the future that we didn’t need to be considering them….Can’t get everything right!
@David Foster:
Great article thanks!
Years back taught first semester Control Theory as a TA — there were still some of those plug board electronic analog computers around which were very handy — hooked them up to pen plotters — weird to think about it now!
Also recall seeing electro-mechanical PID controllers in a coal fired power station — wanted to fine tune the thing, you cut a new cam.
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Saw a gentleman on Tucker Carlson’s show last night, Zaid Jilani. Brilliant. I am now seeking out his writing.
He made a great point, backed with data, that things certain folks in our society want to attribute to race do not correlate with skin color, at all, but correlate with economics. In other words; life is harder if you are poor.
Not exactly rocket science. Something most all of us reason out by about the age of 5. LeBron James has a good life. Oprah Winfrey has a good life. They are not oppressed in any way. A poor, white girl whose father is absent and mother is a heroin addict, so she’s being raised by her grandparents who have a household income below the poverty level, has a tough road ahead of her and needs help.
When we see people or groups claiming victimhood or oppression based on physical, external characteristics, rather than economics we know they are either lying or ignorant. I think it’s typically the former. It’s a grift.
I’ve written before about shrugging.” If I find a business hates me I’m working to not give them money. Why fund my own abuse? I’ve recently had good luck with a method that I’d like to recommend.
I try to buy local or from small businesses when possible. Even if a proprietor is a rabid communist, if she’s paying taxes in my neighborhood she’s helping improve my neighborhood more than Indra Nooyi. But Amazon has an incredible database of products and reviews. So, now, when I search for something I go to Amazon and use their data (Bezos has no issue using me for data, why not return the favor). I look at products, prices and reviews. Then, I take what I learn and search the Internet for local stores that carry that item. I also try the manufacturer’s website. I’ve had good luck recently and found the prices to be identical to what they were on Amazon.
Some things aren’t available locally, but I’ve found sources other than Amazon who will ship them; usually the manufacturer, and shipping prices have not been bad. Sometimes buying direct the price is a bit lower and it covers the shipping.
And, when I find the item locally I walk or cycle to the store to get it when possible. That way I even get some exercise and time away from Mr. Bezos’ web servers.
It takes a little more time on my end, but I’m actually costing Bezos a bit of cash (he is collecting and storing the data I use to purchase) while making sure my cash doesn’t end up in his pockets.
*From the title of the book, “Atlas Shrugged.”
Did anyone see this amusing and shocking congressional maneuver about a week ago.
1) Isn’t this a tacit admission by Democrats that Slow Joe is not competent to handle this authority? Nobody proposed this nonsense with Trump.
2) Imagine “Doctor Strangelove …” being remade. The new black comedy would almost write itself.
Rufus T Firefly….Chelsea Clinton said that she is teaching her children about their White Privilege.
I don’t know if she is too dumb to notice…or if she just feels she can keep other people from noticing..all the *other* kinds of privilege that her children have & will have, such as: Grandchild of a President privilege, wealth privilege, Ivy League privilege, Celebrity privilege, etc.
Since this is an open thread: this month marks the 75th anniversary of the first programmable electronic computer, the ENIAC. I wrote about it here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/64972.html
First they called me deplorable. Now they call me Neanderthal. I’m getting tired of this crap!
And here’s a wonderful song very much in tune with the day… and one of the better songs ever written:
The B-52s: Roam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwC0sp-uA4
A couple of days ago Mike K mentioned sailing and racing in the Transpac.
I sailed for a lot of years (sold my last boat in 2007). Raised a lot of memories– mostly good about sailing, mostly on the inland lakes of E. Wash. I did sail in the Puget Sound a few times, but never beyond the sight of land.
I had a friend in college, whose dad had a 37′ Britton Chance design and sailed in the Victoria to Maui in 1976. He was looking for crew to sail the boat back– and I’ve regretted not quitting my job and sailing the boat back.
What an adventure that would have been.
I can lay claim to a feat few sailors experience, sinking your boat. It’s one of the few not so good memories– especially since it was my own stupidity that caused the sinking.
Meanwhile, I ran across this video of a man and his 23′ boat sailing from California to Hawaii.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUi0gsxVHZM
David:
Somewhere in Arkansas is a 4yo girl.
Her mother is a stripper, and her father is a crack addict.
Her grandfather just became president.
If that’s not white privilege, I dunno what is. 😛
New commercial: “Re-opening your state. So easy, even a caveman could do it.”
}}} 2) Imagine “Doctor Strangelove …” being remade. The new black comedy would almost write itself.
Yeah, but they’d be aiming at US cities and calling the governor of Texas or Florida, or something…
}}} He made a great point, backed with data, that things certain folks in our society want to attribute to race do not correlate with skin color, at all, but correlate with economics. In other words; life is harder if you are poor.
Indeed, they’ve been making this point for at least two decades… the real indicator for poverty is not skin color or ethnicity, it’s the fact of being raised in a nuclear family unit.
P.S., second on David’s ENIAC piece, if you find the history of computing at all interesting.
I use Amazon the same way to research and buy from other sites when possible. Sometimes the manufacturer’s site will sell cheaper than Amazon.
One thing I thought was interesting in the ENIAC history: the idea apparently made its way from the inventors to the Army liason (who got it funded) not via the formal university channels but via a mutual friend. That kind of thing will often be lost in an era of remote work, which may have some consequences for economy-wide innovativeness.
Also interesting how many relationships & marriages there were among the project staff; much of this would be banned in a lot of organizations today.
david foster, Do you know the story of David Cutler and the genesis of WindowsNT?
The east coast based Digital Equipment corp. hired Cutler to create the next gen. VAX operating system. Cutler decided to base his team in the Seattle area where they worked for a few(?) years. When times got tougher for DEC the first area for major cutting were the people they weren’t close to; Cutler’s team.
Cutler then walked into Bill Gates’ office and WindowNT was born.
_______
Love the B-52’s for pure fun. I’ve got that CD collecting dust somewhere in the house. I’ll have to find it.
_______
OBloodyHell, In the movie Failsafe, the US president did nuke NYC. I can see it now, sorry about Jacksonville.
Here’s how biker bar on the highway responded to the covid lockdown. Within couple weeks of bar closing customers pitched in and help build nice outdoor patio deck on side of building with pick nick tables and went BYOB.
I can’t say for sure but if you didn’t BYOB … your drink of choice would magically appear at your table.
Don’t mess with Texas!
I don’t know if she is too dumb to notice…or if she just feels she can keep other people from noticing..all the *other* kinds of privilege that her children have & will have, such as: Grandchild of a President privilege, wealth privilege, Ivy League privilege, Celebrity privilege, etc.
Privelege = Private Law
‘Grandchild of a President’ privilege is something you see, but it’s appearance is spotty. The examples I can think of would be several Bush scions, one Carter scion, one Nixon scion, and the Eisenhower quartet.
Obtaining things you can buy on the market with your money isn’t a privilege; wealth can be obtained through privilege or used to build connections and get you privileges.
Having an Ivy League degree may net you connections or ground level entree you wouldn’t get if you just had the indicia of competence that a handsome university degree would not get you, but it’s all pretty moot in the case of the Clintons and their spawn. That Yale degree may have landed Billy Jeff a faculty position in 1973, but that’s it. It never did much for Hellary. Chelsea’s degree from Columbia is in public health, which we’ve learned is a half-step above social work. She doesn’t actually work in that trade.
The starf**ker impulse in American life is one I’ll never understand. There was a Vanity Fair profile of Neil Bush’s estranged wife published in 2004. One thing the profiler was puzzled about was how common it was that strangers will willing to ply her with free services. Her life was steeped in it. Ruth Westheimer’s reaction to the phenomenon was to say “I luff freebies!”; at least she’s well-known and entertaining; Sharon Bush was a quondam schoolteacher given to kvetching that her husband wasn’t bringing in enough dough.
David Foster @ 11:27am
No love for Konrad Zuse and his Z3?!
OBloodyHell,
I really like, “Roam” also.
OBloodyHell @ 2:20pm,
That’s funny!
Rufus T Firefly…”No love for Konrad Zuse and his Z3?!”
I’ll do a post on the Zuse machines one of these days…the Z3 was probably indeed the first working programmable computer; it was a relay (electromechanical) machine rather than electronic. Zuse accomplished a lot, with no-to-minimal official support.
In addition to his work on general purpose computers, Zuse also built a couple of special-purpose machines which were of direct value to the German military: these were process-control computers which analyzed small deviations in the airfoils of glide bombs and calculated what corrections should be applied to make up for these deviations.
I’ve read quite a few books on the history of computing and the history behind one particular computer, or company, but I think my favorite is still: “Hackers : Heroes of the Computer Revolution” by Steven Levy
He does a great job of describing the personalities involved; especially the first chapter focusing on how so much of it started in Boston because some MIT students liked model railroading, studying phone switches and picking locks.
I enjoyed the dog and the dolphin. 🙂
Thank you for the fun video.
Zuse Fan here. Very smart cookie indeed.
There were giants in the earth in those days.
And John von Neumann. Smartest fellow who ever did live?
Anyone remember Vannevar Bush? WASPdom’s last hurrah. My iPad always gets the machine name Memex.
David Foster,
I just finished your article on the ENIAC. Great stuff! My mother’s (first?) professional job after graduating High School was as one of the women inside a computer who moved the cables, like switchboard operators, according to instructions programmers wrote on sheets of paper.
No mention of Charles Babbage. I know he didn’t use electronics, but didn’t he figure out most of the basics of modern computing through mechanical means? Also George Boole codified a lot of the key logic prior to machines being available to take advantage of his cleverness.
Just released today and a steal at $8,195
Leica APO-Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH. Lens
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1627818-REG/leica_11699_apo_summicron_m_35mm_f_2_asph.html
Internet Photography Funny Man Ken Rockwell is calling it ‘The Eye of G-d’.
But can it produce better images than your iPhone? Depends where and what:
https://www.slack.co.uk/leica-35-summicron-m.html
Also you need to stick an appropriate camera on the back of this lens to have any fun with it, and that’s going to cost about the same as the lens.
So in one forum I’m reading people complaining about having to sell stuff to acquire this, and in others there’s much weeping and wailing about the price of AR-15s and ammunition.
Economics and the age-old problem of Scarcity is a real #@$% (Hi, Oldflyer)… but AOC has the answer: she’d pop a cap in the backs of the collective heads of both demographics. Problems solved!
Zaphod:
I once read the Leica described as the “cardiologist’s camera” on account of the price tag. I’ve had Leica envy and settled, sensibly I think, for a Fuji X100.
I assumed Nan Goldin shot all those intimate photos of her bohemian friends with a Leica, but turns out in those days she worked mostly with hot Nikons and Pentaxes she acquired from dodgy friends.
Ken Rockwell is a kick.
@Huxley:
I guess the nephrologist’s camera too, given the number of kidneys that must get sold to fund their purchase.
I love the way Ken Rockwell winds up the serious folks. Short of owning a bass boat, he presses all their buttons.
I had an X100.. I think was Version 2. Autofocus was a bit slow but otherwise brilliant camera for photographing people – especially in tricky harsh light. Probably the friendliest-looking camera ever made, too.
The dirty secret is that by the early 1970s when Goldin came on the scene, Nikon and Pentax already ruled the roost in photojournalism. This gets retconned into something a bit more ambiguous in Leica’s advertising today, of course.
Ctein has a very interesting photography website. A bit down on him after he took a public dump on Jerry Pournelle just after he passed away, but nobody’s perfect.
Homeric and Rufus, collaborators: that’s a nice idea about Amazon and the relationship therewith. My issue is that I have a considerable gift card balance with them, so I don’t know if I can move that out of there. Possibly.
Chopin Nocturnes tonight for me.
David, thanks for that ENIAC writeup. Yes, those times must have been something else.
Some years ago there was an indie film titled “High Art” about an ambitious young assistant at a fancy photography magazine, who discovers a “Nan Goldin” photographer, played by the still-coltish Ally Sheedy, is her upstairs neighbor.
Sheedy has “retired” from photography and floats in a watery, drug-soaked apartment life with fringey friends, then seduces the assistant into that world. Meanwhile the assistant seduces her back into photography. Both pay a price.
It’s a perfect little film for its type. The writer/director, Lisa Cholodenko, later did a bigger-budget, friendlier version of bohemian seduction, “Laurel Canyon,” with Frances McDormand.
For those unacquainted with Nan Goldin — if you’re ever in the photography section of a well-stocked bookstore, check out the big, thick hardcover of Nan Goldin’s work.
Browse leisurely. The risk is entirely your own.
My Favourite Filipino, Rob Braxman:
https://youtu.be/IPrugkYJpO8
Very accessible 24 minute summary of the current state of cellphone privacy.
Definitely do not attend protests carrying a phone.
Zaphod, my favorite Filipino is Richard Fernandez, however Rob is a close second. Very interesting programme. I do not have a “smart” phone but prefer my old Nokia.
@Xylourgos:
Have been following Richard Fernandez along with Neo and GvdL since started following blogs ca. 2nd Gulf War. Fernandez is very bright and seems to have had a very interesting career in the underground during last decade of Marcos. Given his clearly sponsored magic carpet ride to Harvard at the end of that, one wonders just who he was working for:P. I rather suspect he pulls some punches these days because at least some of his strategic consulting income derives from folks who wouldn’t appreciate him dropping truth bombs on us peasants. Similarly, imagine Victor Davis Hanson thinks long and hard about his Hoover Gig before writing about what the Mexicans are up to in the neighbourhood around his ancestral farm, let alone riffing on that charming odd couple, Marius and Sulla.
I was very impressed by the scenario he sketched out where the Philippines accidentally got into a shooting war with China and China lobbed a few Cruise Missiles into some substations and wiped out several million people (at least) in Metro Manila. Best part was his character’s strategy for riding out the chaos — on the roof of his hotel in a plant room because you do not want to be around Other People when this kind of thing goes down.
Zaphod…”Anyone remember Vannevar Bush?”
Smart guy, indeed…in addition to the idea for the Memex, he created the mechanical differential analyzer…see my post about this class of machines (and their possible educational relevance today) here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/57194.html
OTOH, Bush advised the government, shortly after WWII, that intercontinental ballistic missiles were so far off into the future that we didn’t need to be considering them….Can’t get everything right!
@David Foster:
Great article thanks!
Years back taught first semester Control Theory as a TA — there were still some of those plug board electronic analog computers around which were very handy — hooked them up to pen plotters — weird to think about it now!
Also recall seeing electro-mechanical PID controllers in a coal fired power station — wanted to fine tune the thing, you cut a new cam.