Extra Credits
Published on Mar 6, 2018Let’s start our journey to the center of hard science fiction: the works of Jules Verne, who imagined the technological wonders humanity could — and would — create in the twentieth century.
March 7, 2018
The History of Sci Fi – Jules Verne – Extra Sci Fi – #1
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Language and the network effect
Tim Worstall in the Dhaka Tribune:
A recent article on the Dhaka Tribune reported that Bangladesh as a country, as an idea, is rather closely linked with the idea of Bangla as a language. Languages having much to do with something economists find fascinating, network effects.
Indeed, we can explain what happens with languages, with Facebook and with currencies all using these same effects. We end up, as we so often do in economics, with the answer: “It depends.”
Let us leave aside those cultural and political issues, the difference between an official language and a mother tongue and mother language. Instead, consider those as networks. Why is it that Facebook has conquered every other form of social media? For the same reason that one fax machine is an expensive paperweight, two allows information to flow, and millions means those millions can communicate with each other.
So it is with anything subject to strong network effects.
We all go on Facebook because everyone else is there, that everyone else is there means more people join it. The standards fax machines use to talk to each other are just the one set of standards precisely so that they can all communicate.
We might think that the same should be true of language. We could all communicate with each other much more easily if there was just the one language used to do so. Often there is a lingua franca which allows this — say, Latin in the past and English now.
But that’s not really how we humans work. Even Bangla is not the same in each and every area of the country, just as English isn’t even in England. There are local dialects which are not mutually intelligible; we use a simplified or standardized version to speak with people from other areas — this is where the “BBC accent” comes from.
The same is true of German for example, people from different areas cannot understand each other using their local variations so they use a standardized German which no one really speaks at home.
One story — a true one — has it that when John F Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner” in a speech at the Berlin Wall he actually said in the local dialect that he was a jam doughnut. Common German and local are not the same thing at all.
The reason for this is that the language varies from household to household. Every family does have its own little private inside jokes; anyone who has ever met the in-laws knows this.
So too do neighbourhoods, villages and so on. A national language is like a patch-work quilt of these local variations.
To put this into economic terms of our networks, yes, we have that efficiency argument that we should all be using the same inter-changeable language, but that’s just not what we do. There’s a strong force, just us being people, breaking that language up into local variants, as happened with Latin and then Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian over the centuries.
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The reception Mulroney Sr. got shows how little “sizzle” the Conservatives can offer now
Chris Selley covered the recent Caroline Mulroney event featuring her father Brian:
Watching 79-year-old Brian Mulroney campaign for his daughter on Tuesday, I’d be hard-pressed to argue age matters at all.
The public-facing aspects of this leadership campaign have often been stilted, joyless and jittery, with Doug Ford carefully keeping his powder dry and Mulroney trying to build confidence without screwing up. Only Christine Elliott has often sounded passionate, confident and halfway credible all at once.
Mulroney père, on the other hand, waltzed into a packed banquet hall in Vaughan at noon on Tuesday like a conquering hero, to a standing ovation, and settled in behind the lectern like it was a favourite sweater and a mug of hot cocoa. When he was done, but for the greyer beards, the camera-wielding mob that escorted him out of the room might as well have had Justin Trudeau at its centre.
Mulroney regaled us with a smorgasbord of chucklesome anecdotes, bons mots and name-dropping. He cheerfully batted away several entreaties that he return to politics. He said he mooted the idea to Mila during Jean Chrétien’s infamous “I don’t know if I am in West, South, North or East Jerusalem” press conference in 2000.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she supposedly replied, “and I know your new wife is really going to love the experience.” Much mirth!
Mulroney pooh-poohed the need for legislative experience in an aspiring premier — perhaps the biggest knock against his daughter — arguing he had none when he won the Tory leadership in 1983 and rampaged to a majority government, and suggesting he “want(s) no part of” the sort of experience that Kathleen Wynne and Co. have in spades.
“I knew Ontario when it was the driver of Confederation, the engine of Canada’s economy, a glorious leader in this country,” he prated, crediting the “strong, consistent and brilliant” leadership of Tory premiers John Robarts, Bill Davis and Mike Harris for “the large measure” of its success. “And now Ontario has been reduced to accepting equalization payments from Newfoundland and Labrador.”
[…]
Demonstrably, in Canada, you do not need a huge, room-filling personality to govern effectively. But if you haul out Brian Mulroney to campaign for you, you’re going to invite comparisons. And if you’re going to claim that the current government has literally laid waste to the province, a guy like Mulroney is liable to highlight just how modest the Conservatives’ proposals are to rebuild it all from scratch.
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USS Lexington‘s final resting place discovered by Paul Allen’s RV Petrel
As reported by News Corp Australia:
U.S. Navy Martin T4M-1 aircraft of Torpedo Squadron 1B (VT-1B) are launching from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2) in 1931. Note the “four-stacker” (Clemson/Wickes-class destroyer) in the upper right corner.
US Navy photo via Wikimedia.
Now, 76 years after it settled to the bottom, it’s been found.
It’s the latest find by billionaire Paul Allen.
And it’s in a remarkably well preserved condition.
Soon-to-be US ambassador to Australia, US Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris says he is elated at the find.
“As the son of a survivor of the USS Lexington, I offer my congratulations to Paul Allen and the expedition crew of Research Vessel Petrel for locating the ‘Lady Lex’,” he said in a tweet.
[…]
Paul Allen’s research vessel Petrel located the wreck of the USS Lexington yesterday.
According to a post on the philanthropist’s website, it rests some 800km off the coast of Queensland at a depth of about 3km.
The find was the result of a six month project.
Photos so far returned by RV Petrel’s submersible show several aircraft that have tumbled out of the carrier and on to the ocean’s floor. Their original markings and paintwork remain remarkably clear.
The ship itself, while showing heavy scarring from the battle and the stresses of diving 3km to the sea floor, is also well preserved. Gun mounts and other fittings show only little sign of corrosion and deterioration.
Vulcan Inc.
Published on 5 Mar 2018Wreckage from the USS Lexington was discovered on March 4, 2018 by the expedition crew of Paul G. Allen’s Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel. The aircraft carrier, “Lady Lex” was found more than 3,000 meters below the surface, resting on the floor of the Coral Sea more than 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia.
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Tank Chats #23 Hornsby Tractor | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published on 15 Jul 2016In the 23rd Tank Chat, David Fletcher takes a look at the Hornsby Tractor. The Hornsby Tractor was the first tracked vehicle in service with the British Army. They were designed to tow artillery.
The Museum’s example is still running and is the oldest vehicle in the collection.
http://tankmuseum.org/museum-online/vehicles/object-e1958-15
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QotD: Feminism
A consistent theme of feminist discourse for more than 40 years is a completely negative portrayal of male sexuality. Feminists are united in the opinion that whatever men do in regard to sex is always 100% wrong. Male attraction to women is condemned in feminist rhetoric as “objectification.” If a man admires a woman’s beauty, he has thereby degraded her as a “sex object,” according to feminist theory. If a man verbalizes his interest in a woman, feminists denounce this as “harassment,” and if he expresses his interest in a woman by any physical action — a kiss or a hug — feminists consider this sexual assault. Of course, feminists consider heterosexual intercourse to be inherently oppressive, a violent act of male domination — “PIV is always rape, OK?”
Robert Stacy McCain, “Feminism’s Anti-Male Double Standard”, The Other McCain, 2016-07-02.
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