Journal BlackHat's Journal: If living is seeing/ I'm holding my breath 4
End of "Notions on Nations" theme, index to JE for NoN, News, Olds and the texttoon.
Quote:
Cultural achievement is a social accomplishment based upon the accumulation of many small acts of insight by individuals. The massiveness of this social process was long ignored or misunderstood. Trancendentalism focused attention upon a small number of innovations, and there was a strong tendency to identify long sequences of achievement with a single item. A conspicuous result of this disposition to put a part for the whole was the frequency of bitter controversies over the claims of various inventors to a particular invention. The history of printing, of the steam engine in various forms, of the power-driven airplane, all furnish illustration of the inconclusiveness of discussions focused on questions that were not accurately formulated. These disputes all rest upon the false assumption that the achievement was so simple and specific that it could properly be identified with the work of a single person at a given moment.
These popular attitudes are justified in their emphasis upon the special importance of some inventions. The position is not really in consistent with the concept of a massive social process of cumulative synthesis. The social process as a whole may be described as a sequence of strategic inventions which draw together many individual items of novelty as well as many familiar elements. The history of the reciprocating steam engine involves at least five strategic inventions: the atmospheric engine of Newcomen; the low-pressure engine of Watt; the high-pressure engine of Trevithick and Evans; the steam locomotive of Hackworth and Robert Stephenson; the compound engines. In many instances, it is not possible to cite a single inventor even for a particular stage in this long development. There are quantitative differences in the achievement which admit, and really require, differentiation in the description of the accomplishment.
The process of cumulative synthesis can be symbolized in a diagram. The achievement of the strategic invention involves all the separate steps that may be found in the emergence of a single item of novelty, but in respect of a strategic invention the process involves synthesis on a high level, comprising both new and old elements. Furthermore, the act of insight does not necessarily result in a solution. Great insight may be required to perceive the inadequacy of a pattern of thought or action that has been sanctioned by tradition for so long a period that most members of the social group do not question the adequacy of a mechanism or a concept or a symbol that is in fact utterly inadequate. Acts of insight may also do no more than set the stage for the achievement of the solution. Similarly, new acts of insight may be essential to the accomplishment of critical revision of an achievement that contains the essential elements of a true solution, but in some form that is not wholly practical.
In the diagram, the development of the strategic invention is symbolized by the large arcs or circles, marked with Roman numerals. Arrows converging toward the focal points of synthesis are designed to suggest the incorporation of familiar items in the new synthesis. The number of items involved at each step is purely arbitrary. The diagram merely indicates the combination of "several" or "many" items, familiar and novel, at each stage in the process. For economy of space the diagram shows one complete sequence in strategic innovation, and part of another. In historical analysis, it would be unusual not to find that several strategic inventions were involved in any achievement of large social importance.
The relation of this concept of process to concrete historical material will be most adequately understood if we apply it to the history of the reciprocating steam engine. The emergence of an "unsatisfactory pattern" was impossible until there was considerable knowledge of the properties of steam and of the phenomena of air pressure. It was necessary to distinguish steam from air. It was necessary to perceive the possibility of producing a vacuum by the condensation of steam in a closed vessel. It was essential to understand the primary phenomena of atmospheric pressure. Each of these scientific discoveries involved a major break with the traditions of classical and medieval science.
They were achievements of primary magnitude, whose significance was not exhausted by their relation to the development of the steam engine. In a study of the history of the analysis of gases and their properties, or in a study of meteorology, these achievements would rank as strategic innovations. Items of knowledge may be parts of more than one whole. The bare emergence of an unsatisfactory pattern in history of the steam engine may be dated by the jet fountain of Solomon des Caus, or better from the Raglan Castle "water-commanding" engine of the Marquis of Worcester.
Failures are thus of explicit historical importance. They are not solutions, but they are not without relation to a solution.
They reveal explicit consciousness of the potentialities of some new mode of action, or of some new contrivance. They are evidence of the emergence of tensions and strivings that are likely to result in a positive achievement, even if it be long postponed and realized only a generation or more after the earliest recognizable emergence of the new objective.
The work of des Caus and Worcester did not require any accurate knowledge of vacuums or of air pressure. They perceived that live steam exerted usable pressures, but they hardly achieved more than a demonstration of this fact. The measurement of atmospheric pressure by Torricelli and Pascal, and the studies of vacuums by von Guericke at Magdeburg led directly to a type of experimentation that suggested the invention of the atmospheric engine.
The actual setting of the stage for the new achievement can be taken to be the work of Dionysius Papin. He perceived correctly that the proper mode of using pressures was by means of a cylinder and piston. Von Guericke used a piston in some of his experiments, and it may well be that his work should be recognized as the vital perception of this new use of the familiar mechanism of the pump. But there is no clear documentary evidence that Papin and Newcomen were actually dependent upon von Guericke's work. Papin's work clearly set the stage for Newcomen's fine achievement. The atmospheric engine was the first strategic invention in the history of the reciprocating engine.
We know the background quite adequately. We have latterly had thoroughly satisfactory evidence of the early state of the engine, so that we can now definitely set aside the accounts that described an engine without a self-regulating set of valves. But we have no details on the work of Newcomen at the critical period. The engine was developed in minor details, and in Smeaton's time larger engines were built, but critical revision was less significant than was the case with the steam engine in its later forms.
Watt's inventions were an outcome of careful study of the performance of the Newcomen engine. Excessive fuel consumption, great losses of heat, the failure to utilize the expansive power of steam were shown by direct analysis to make the engine a very ineffective means of utilizing the heat energy produced by the fuel. These new techniques of analysis revealed an unsatisfactory pattern. In Watt's experience it is not easy to identify a step that illustrates adequately a setting of the stage that is clearly distinguishable from the perception of an unsatisfactory pattern. The experiments with heat and the study of the engine cover both phases of the general process.
We have, however, a precise description of the crucial act of insight. The experience described occurred two years after Watt's first work with the engine and six years after his first studies of heat.
I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon. I had entered the Green and passed the old washing house. I was thinking of the engine at the time. I had gone as far as the Lord's house when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a connection were made between the cylinder and an exhausting vessel it would rush into it and might there be condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection water if I used a jet, as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me: First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an offlet could be got at a depth of 35 or 36 feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was, to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air
... I had not walked farther than the Golf house, when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.
A great deal of difficult work remained to be done before a model could be constructed, and the building of the engine involved many new engineering problems. Nevertheless, there is an unusually clear basis for recognizing that the solution of the problem was achieved during this Sunday afternoon walk.
If the concept then achieved had been less adequate, me might properly set a later date for the solution of the problem, but the actual task proved to be the realization in actual mechanism of the apparatus conceived at that time. The concept itself did not require revision. Supplementary inventions were necessary to develop the full power of the engine, as a double-acting engine with steam applied alternately to each side of the piston. The usefulness of the engine was also greatly extended by changes of design that made it possible to produce rotary motion. These developments and the positive innovations in engineering practice can be adequately described as novelties occurring at the stage of critical revision.
The later history of the engine admits of differences of interpretation, so that no position can properly be taken without more critical analysis than is possible in this connection. There are strong grounds for treating the high-pressure engines and the compound engines as distinct strategic inventions. They involved special theoretical and practical problems, and were achievements essential to the realization of the full potentialities of the reciprocating engine. The only alternative is to give great extension to the period of critical revision, and such a view puts too little emphasis on the great number of new inventions essential to the final achievement.
The general concept of a process of cumulative synthesis will thus enable us to analyse a sequence of inventions in considerable detail. In some instances, documentary material might be less adequate than is the case in the history of the steam engine. In some instances we may have a richer documentation. So much of the earlier history of electricity occurred since 1750 that extant records in the field are more complete and the progress of science and invention is more fully reported.
The concept of a cumulative process forces us to recognize that a particular act of insight may not lead to a solution of the primary problem toward with it is directed. It may be dominated by any one of the four basis stages in the development of a strategic invention or discovery. The greater part of the effective documentation on the act of insight is so directly connected with major novelties that we are likely to find the total body of illustrative material more sharply differentiated than we might suppose. It is, therefore, important to consider illustrative material covering all four types of the act of insight at high levels of synthesis.
A striking instance of an act of insight as a perception of an unsatisfactory pattern occurs in Lord Rutherford's description of the development of the important revisions of the concept of the structure of the atom. In 1895, Lenard had passed electrons through a thin window in the discharge tube, and observed them outside the tube. He suggested that the atoms might contain spheres of positive electricity associated in some manner with negative charges. Within a year or two, J. J. Thompson had developed the idea and demonstrated by calculation the distribution of negative electrons in a sphere of positive charge. Rutherford describes the experiments that led to a new distribution of charge within the atom:
Now I myself was very interested in the next stage, so I will give you it in some detail, and I would like to use this example to show how you often stumble on facts by accident. In the early days I had observed the scattering of alpha-particles, and Dr. Geiger in my laboratory had examined it in detail. He found, in thin pieces of heavy metal, that the scattering was usually small, of the order of one degree. One day Geiger came to me and said, "Don't you think that young Marsden, whom I am training in radioactive methods, ought to begin a small research?" Now, I had thought that too, so I said, "Why not let him see if any alpha-particles can be scattered through a large angle?" I may tell you in confidence that I did not believe they would be, since we knew that the alpha-particle was a very fast massive particle, with a great deal of energy, and you could show that if the scattering was due to the accumulated effect of a number of small scatterings the chance of an alpha-particle being scattered backward was very small. Then I remember two or three days later Geiger coming to me in great excitement and saying, "We have been able to get some of the alpha-particles coming backwards
... " It was quite the most increditable event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you. On consideration I realized that this scattering backwards must be the result of a single collision, and when I made calculations I saw that it was impossible to get anything of that order of magnitude unless you took a system in which the greater part of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a minute nucleus. It was then that I had the idea of an atom with a minute massive center carrying a charge. I worked out mathematically what laws the scattering should obey, and I found that the number of particles scattered through a given angle should be proportional to the thickness of the scattering foil, the square of the nuclear charge, and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the velocity."
--Abbott Payson Usher
Geeky bits saved to the last and which could very well be the front, if you encounter this theme the other way round.
Thus, as the new all ~18" battleships were being launched, the pace changed again. Monmouth's ship mutates, in our time-eye, to a nuclear aircraft carrier filled with bombers, loaded with H-bombs. And very little changed in peoples expectations of what the task before them is. Commanded by heirs to broken dreams. But, yet, still --Ready to serve us all the fire and brimstone you can eat.
Who and why they get to dine, is all too often based on these scattered notions of nations. Most of which; exist only on paper maps, as cyclic propaganda, misguided & wishful thinking, or a contrivance of nepotism.
Index and then the news. Until we sail in time again.
Notions on Nations:
76421 Lord Ellenborough
76661 E. N. Williams
77294 T. Carlyle
77966 J. Fitzgerald Molloy
78072 London & Clausewitz
78175 N. Dixon
78276 E. N. Williams
78418 John S. C. Abbott
78521 Logan Marshall
78661 William Seymour
78901 Christopher Duffy
78990 T. Carlyle
79031 Carl von Clausewitz
79332 T. Paine & M. Parmele
79463 Gustave le Bon
79585 Logan Marshall
79699 Gustave le Bon
79860 Armgaard Karl Graves
80177 Samuel Butler
80295 Carl von Clausewitz
80344 O. A. Brownson
80415 Mary Parmele
80615 Norman Davies & Clausewitz
80775 C. A. Fyffe
80911 E.N. Williams
81033 T. Paine
81096 Marx and Engels
81177 E. Burke
81299 J. S. Mill
81418 John S. C. Abbott
81558 O. A. Brownson
81708 Matthew Johnson
81832 Carl von Clausewitz
81897 Mary Parmele
81955 Brian Bond
82067 Jakobsen, Anderson, Halvorsen, & Myklebust
82221 Thomas Babington Macaulay
News:
Global War eh? So do we get Rocket attack in the streets of Toronto too? Tanks in Surrey? Israel has vowed to hit Hamas leaders "wherever they are" and accelerate work on its West Bank barrier after the deadliest suicide bombings for months. Near-simultaneous explosions on two buses in Beersheba, southern Israel, killed 16 in attacks claimed by Hamas. WTF-Is the Likud party on a suicide kick here? BBC adding gasoline? They do know that Global means Global against the state of Israel. Blowback for even a "little bit" of collateral damage will be the end of their experiment in modern theocracy. Fools!!!
Panama. Martin Torrijos takes the helm.
Maggie pawns dad's pool cue and bails the punk out. Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher, 78, has reportedly posted £167,000 bail to free her son, Sir Mark, 51, from house arrest in South Africa. Accused of helping to fund a coup in Equatorial Guinea, Sir Mark, who denies the allegations, faces 15 years' jail. More volts!/ I'm sucking the juice from the generator/ More volts!/ More volts!/ Less Votes or, at least, more for those we like.
The 30-odd bloggers[ aren't we all ] who were officially accredited by the Democratic Party, and the 20 or so covering the Republicans in New York this week, created a bit of a storm. The Boston Herald called them "pamphleteers of a new age". Wired Magazine heralded "the stars of the convention". Of course, the backlash followed in real time. These laptop-wielding political junkies were slammed by one major US newspaper for merely "mimicking major media", making trivial "observations on speakers' clothing and appearance rather than their message", and reporting issues "meaningful only if you failed to watch the speech or see TV and newspaper coverage".
Lard Tubby's excellent adventure.
Celebrities Read Constitution in NYC Recite! surely? As no one reads anymore.
Zell Miller has hypocrite stamped all over his forehead. [How can you tell? What with his ass so firmly over his head and all] It's hard to imagine anyone more Janus-faced than the Democratic Senator from Georgia. In 1992, Miller nominated Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention. At a 2001 Jefferson- Jackson Day dinner in Georgia, Miller described John Kerry as "a good friend,""one of this nation's authentic heroes," and "one of this party's...greatest leaders." But Miller's a cheap date. Earlier this year, the aptly dubbed "Zig Zag Zell" published "A National Party No More," a book blandishing blurbs from Sean Hannity, Robert Novak and Newt Gingrich, which characterizes the Democratic Party as a fringe organization. Employing one-liners in place of logic, Miller wrote, "If this is a national party, sushi is our national dish. If this is a national party, surfing has become our national pastime." The Washington Monthly called it "a rather dreadful [book]"; a "toxic combination of corny folkisms" and "over-the-top jeremiads against fellow Democrats."
French Hat Ban starts today. Mixed with Iraq. Je ne suis pas un racialist, mais, et c'est un grand mais...
Free and not dead press. A well-known Mexican journalist has been beaten to death and his body dumped outside Red Cross offices in the city of Matamoros on the US border. Police say the murder of Francisco Arratia Saldierna, 55, could have links to organised crime. Mr Arratia wrote an outspoken column which appeared in several newspapers.
Olds-OYAITJ:
44419
Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Zell Miller speaking at the RNC. Overlayed captions to simulate a kids toy advertisement. Various fonts and star splats with; "Zell Miller", "Now with action grip!", "Lunches wobbles!", "Turn his coat inside out for a new look!" "New improved formula!", and "Compatible with the Dark Horse Family Card game."
I enjoyed Zell Miller's... (Score:2)
The projected backdrop of oversize, angular and stylized flags were a great resonance with the Nuremburg-style rhetoric.
Thomas Carlyle! I think that I enthused about Sartor Resartus, the last time he was mentioned in your JE. As a young Dandy - 70's and 80's, this was a volume enjo
Re:I enjoyed Zell Miller's... (Score:2)
As to the look of the RNC. I'll bet the design company did it as a joke. Mixed it in with some other themes. In the first proposals just for a larf. The Republicans signed off on that one not thinking [as usual] as to why they liked it so much. Obviously Zell agreed too! Said so, he did. [/;-P
Re:I enjoyed Zell Miller's... (Score:2)
Leni!
Re:I enjoyed Zell Miller's... (Score:2)
Oh and what the Hell is with the psychadelic elephant with the "rising sun" imagery?
I only hope that the RNC has the effect of scaring the bejebus out of everyone except the hardest of the hardcore base.
As for Zell there is a reason he has been known for a long time in Georgia as "zig-zag Zell". It is said that given long enough Zell will have been on all sides of any issue.