Briefly Noted for 2020-12-21
NASA: The ‘Great’ Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn https://www.nasa.gov/feature/the-great-conjunction-of-jupiter-and-saturn: ‘What makes this year’s spectacle so rare, then? It’s been nearly 400 years since the planets passed this close to each other in the sky, and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Saturn and Jupiter occurred at night…
Origins of the Drill Sergeant trope in western literature, and in history: William Shakespeare: Henry V, Act III, Scene 6 https://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/play_view.php?WorkID=henry5&Act=3&Scene=6&Scope=scene&LineHighlight=1554#1554...
Wikimedia Commons: File:Dishing-the-Whigs-1867.jpeg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dishing-the-Whigs-1867.jpeg…
Wikipedia: Anton Cermak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak: ‘44th Mayor of Chicago. In office: April 7, 1931 – March 6, 1933…
Clarence Darrow: Darrow -The Story of My Life http://clarkcunningham.org/PR/Darrow-Strike.htm: ‘The Railroad Strike...
Luke A. L. Reynolds: Who Owned Waterloo? Wellington’s Veterans and the Battle for Relevance https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4392&context=gc_etds…
Jason Furman & Lawrence Summers: A Reconsideration of Fiscal Policy in the Era of Low Interest Rates https://www.piie.com/system/files/documents/furman-summers2020-12-01paper.pdf…
Aristotle_: Politics http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html: ‘Book I…
Jules Verne & Michel Verne: In the Year 2889 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19362/19362-h/19362-h.htm…
Wikipedia: In the Year 2889 (Short Story) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2889_(short_story)…
Christine McCloud: How To Use A Shuttle On A Loom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O98vJ8VEF4: ‘How To Use A Shuttle On A Loom…
Anton Howes: Is Innovation in Human Nature? https://www.antonhowes.com/blog/is-innovation-in-human-nature: ‘John Kay’s flying shuttle... an improvement to the loom, which radically increased the productivity of weaving.... Weavers would lift every other warp thread and pass the shuttle from hand to hand, hence passing the weft under the warp threads that were lifted, and over the ones that were not lifted. Under and over, under and over. Kay’s innovation was to use two wooden boxes on either side to catch the shuttle. And he attached a string, with a little handle called a picker, so that the shuttle could be jerked across the loom, at great speed. Here’s a video of it in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O98vJ8VEF4. Kay’s innovation was extraordinary in its simplicity. As the inventor Bennet Woodcroft put it, weaving with an ordinary shuttle had been “performed for upwards of five thousand years, by millions of skilled workmen, without any improvement being made to expedite the operation, until the year 1733”. All Kay added was some wood and some string. And he applied it to weaving wool, which had been England’s main industry since the middle ages. He had no special skill, he required no special understanding of science for it, and he faced no special incentive to do it…
.#brieflynoted #noted #2020-12-21
https://www.bradford-delong.com/2020/12/briefly-noted-for-2020-12-21.html
