Posts by Hollerith 1

Lost Villages of medieval England

Only had time for a peek, due to slow loading, but will try later. Aerial photos taken in the 1930s and 1940s set the world of medieval history reeling with delight, as the remains of abandoned medieval villages (yes, and some Roman remains) were visible in low-angled light. The depopulation of England in the series of plagues after 1348 meant many villages were utterly lost, sometimes even the names gone from local memory. By using the photographs, archaeologists could find and excavate sites undisturbed for centuries, and huge amounts of important information was recovered. Being an ex-mediaevalist, I have a soft spot for these photos.

Skepticism does not mean doubt

I am skeptical about all 'facts' with which I am presented (I hope I am, with a bit of advance notice and sober), to a lesser or greater degree. My skepticism about evolution is .000001%, my skepticism about the existence of a deity is 99.9999%. As I don't believe anything 100%, which would require faith, there is always the possibility that new evidence could alter or negate a held understanding. I assume this is part of the scientific mind-set: one is prepared to accept indefiniteness.

So far, maybe good

I'm part of a team rolling out social media in a global company. There's a real divide: the older staff prefer email, the younger staff prefer the social media area, and the latter is a lot more lively. So far, the business benefits are hard to point to, save for a couple of excellent examples where one global region was able to supply quick answers for a team in a different region, but this is because we are still in an email mind-set. To me, the social media tools are faster, easier, and more inclusive. They work for me like collaboration tools (goodbye SharePoint) and I suspect that by 2013 we will be well bedded down, with old fogies still clinging to email. I will find out...

It's not the fuel but the source

Much of eastern Europe grew pale with fright a couple of years ago when Russia stepped on the gas-supply hose and the supply was reduced to a trickel, France was sitting smugly on its own nuclear-generated electricity. The lesson was not lost. Given the politics today, do we want to rely on gas from Russia, the Middle east, etc? Nuclear and wind/marine/hydro are all local. A country can hide a lot of 'let's render ourselves independent of foreign suppliers' with lots of talk about 'green' and 'carbon reduction'.

Funny, yet not

This is not sex addiction, but serious self-harm, and is in fact an exhibition of insanity. Because it's about sex, it seems funny, but this poor woman is abusing others and living a life of self-damage and disfunction. 'Nymphomania' is always a joke, but these women are usually victims of childhood abuse. Just read (if you can bear it) stories of rescuing 12 year old girls from brothels, or indeed young boys from brotherls -- their actions and reactions are nearly the same.

Interesting but less than useful

The only bookshops I go to are used bookshops -- the books I am looking for are usually out of print and not available digitally. New books, yes, I buy online, hard copy and e-style. But if i were looking at a very expensive technical book in a shop and had the chance to see whether the e-version was cheaper, then yes, I'd probably buy it standing the ein the shop. If I had Nook, which I don't.

Compared to Showgirls...

...this was Shakespeare. OK, maybe Congreve.

I opt for pat down every time

On civil liberty grounds, I always opt for the pat down in the USA. Each time, the security guard has been respectful, polite, formal, and very clear what is going to happen. each time it has been the same pretty thorough pat-down.

But as the USA pat-down is pretty much exactly the pat-down I get in the UK when I forget I am wearing a belt, with no formality or warnings in the UK, just a quick, rough and thorough hands-over, the pat-down I have been getting for years, I was less than upset in the USA.

What Americans think of as intrusive touching and what the UK thinks of as it are very different. But I find neither very upsetting. Save for the fact that I feel the security guard and I should light post-pat cigarettes and do some sleepy love-chat, I have no issue with the pat-down.

That pesky readio frequency and my diabetes

Oh yes, it is the TV and my phone that are making my sugar-levels soar sky-high, not the fries and doughnuts.

Speaking as a diabetic, and having interacted with lardies who find everyone to blame for their high blood-sugar but them and their mouths, I can say that I have noticed every new technology allows people to shift the blame from tiresome facts to the Uncontrollable Other.

Here we go again

As a published author, I have been fighting for the past many years against this and that company or organisation who think that they should have control and rights over my work (and indeed, own my work). If I were making shoes or cars, no one would think they could just help themselves to my product and that, indeed, it was a right ('cars want to be free'). Yet music and writing, because of their nature, are somehow different and up for grabs. They must have some value, or all these organisations and companies wouldn't be seeking to control them. I just wish i could capitalise on this value, but I am the last to see a penny.

So thanks, France...

still torn betwene Kobo and Sony's

But will look into this, as I like a touch screen.

However, I am postign to say that 'disintersted' does not mean 'uninterested' or 'not interested', it means 'altruistic', as in 'I have nothing personal to gain'.

I know we are fast losing the correct meaning of 'disinterest', as people think it is a posh version of 'uninterested' -- and perhaps the original meaning is not much required these days.

Wow

Jemison sounds amazing. Even if she gets nothing accomplished (and she seems to be an accomplisher par excellence) she will explore new worlds of things.

Also, I am in love...

Sword fights always the best bit

The best few minutes of the original Arnie Conan the Barbarian was Sandahl Bergman character's rear-guard swordfight in the cave. A really good choreographed sword fight gets you as close to a skilled exchange of arms as possible, this side of the law. I don't, however, remember many lightsabre fights that showed brilliant swordsmanship -- mostly because the fun of the fights was in the clash of the sabres.

A bit sad...

Here, a man persists for two years, not just, say, two wearinsome months or even days. He really does not pick up the hint. And to show her his bank-balance -- well, whoo-eee, what a hot lothario. And boasting of other mistresses -- gee, what a great way to get a woman into your bed. The guy has 'sad' written all over him, and now the public can read it too. If I were Mr Hurd, I would be looking to buy a small island in the Aleutians and retire.

Doesn't matter, won't care

People want to believe in the teeth of the evidence. One of my party tricks is to do cold readings from tarot or playing cards. I state beforehand that I am doing a cold reading and that I am only so-so at it, and that this is a demo to show how 'psychics' and fortune-tellers work. Then I do it. Some are amazed and amused by my accuracy, while others have told me with tears in their eyes that I have a Great Gift and that I should not deny it. Some even asked me to 'read' for them every week. I could have made a few bob, but I am an ethical person. So: even having heard me say that I am making it up, they can't accept that their own reactions, some good guesses on my part, and the human predilection for pattern and meaning have combined to create a convincing psychic event . Belief is always easier than skepticism.

These guys stop at nothing

I worked for an energy company. Around one storage depot they had a huge wire fence etc. Thieves rammed a flat-bed truck through it, followed on with loaders, loading up the flat-bed and roared away into the night. Watchman on duty -- dunno if nobbled or made himself scarce. We are talking huge coils of copper.

If you can't track thieves, can you vet buyers? maybe in UK, but not off-shore.

Where did they get their stats?

Let's choose the year, say, AD 1720. We have slavery rife in the New World, in Europe (esp eastern Europe), Russia, China, the Muslim world, and Africa. Every serf and peasant bound to the land and without rights to dispose of his or her property, wealth or children, forbidden to travel, and under the authority of some master, was a slave. Serfs in Russia could be bought and sold as easily as an African deportee to the Americas.

There are many more people in the world today, but the percentage in bondage is probably smaller. Not that this justifies a single person suffering the realities of slavery right now. But the rich locals in Dubai want their house servants and we want cheap designer clothes and many people are in poverty and powerless, so as night follows day...

Call me a cynic

I think this will mostly be used by sad dweebs who aren't doing anything. Or at least with anyone but themselves. It will be the latest version of the imaginary girlfriend.

And any chap (it seems to be aimed at chaps) who pauses to notify the world of his, erm, situation, risks joining the sad dweeb club about 5 seconds afterwards.

Driven to the intertubes

I realised recently that, of about 8 things I needed to buy over the past month, 1 was found trailing around the shops, and I live in London close to Oxford Street. Basics like certain types of fairly ordinary light bulbs. The department stores have cut back or have signed up to sell only one manufacturer's product. Rather than waste my time in shops with poor stock, queuing, dealing with unhelpful staff who don't seem to correlate helpign customers with sales with wages, I now find I'm turning to the web for ordinary stuff I would not, at one time, have dreamed of having delivered. I sometimes pay a little more, ading in postage, but sometimes not, and I gain in having my time freed up.

Of course I am appalled, but...

Getting drunk while on a business trip is completely out of line. Drink exposes who you really are, and they exposed themselves, in the psychological sense, as utter jackasses.

Nevertheless, as a Canadian, I have a sneaking admiration of guys who are so ravaged that they would and could chew through two different kinds of restraint. The wild, wild Canadian north still breeds berserkers.

Having said that, let's see if they are tough enough to handle that long-term unemployment they are facing.

It it can be anonymous

I don't mind a tap card that I can load with cash at a newsagents or anywhere else that does not have my personal information.

But the minute I know it is tracking my spending, well, thanks but no.

Doom = Judgement

Doomsday or Domesday, 'doom' meaning 'judgement'.

It not only spelled out what land you held, but if you were free or a serf. later on, if you got yourself free, you have to keep your bit of paper to prove it. Not unlike freed African American slaves in the UD+SA in the 19th century who kept their manumission papers.

I have had the pleasur eof studying the Winchester Pipe Rolls, which were started in the 12th century and were kept for over 200 years. They are also on vellum and perfectly easy and clear to read. Every once in a while the scrivener would doodle: a face, a ship, and suddenly you are touching what he touched, in AD1145 or whatever, and humans leap through time to bush against each other's lives.

Even paper from the 16th or 17th centuries is holding up. Of course, many benighted librarians threw out ancient newspapers once they had them on (badly photographed0 microsfilm. Guess which would have lasted longer...

Compared to...?

Have they done similar tests on chaps? What do the comparative brain scans tell us? O what, indeed, of any use does this test tell us, except that female brains are pretty active when there is specific nerve stimulation in a place with lots of nerve endings, and abotu which there is lots of cultural baggage?

Being female myself, I can say that lots goes on in the brain, and if and when you are with someone (as I fortunately am) when it happens, your brain has yourself and their presence and your emotions about them blazing away. Of course, where love is also a factor, I'd say we're talking galaxies.