This week's episode of Connections is called Death In The Morning. James Burke starts with a discovery that made metal currency possible, thus replacing barter as the primary means of trade. Of all the possible paths through history that could be followed from here, Burke leads us to an invention that affects everyone's life today.
Following the video are links to further research on the major topics of this episode, with ones that reveal the ending purposefully left out.
Links:
Barter
Lydia
Touchstone
Alexander the Great
Alexandria
Library of Alexandria
Ptolemy
Lateen
Rudder
Compass
Magnetic declination
Elizabeth I of England
Robert Norman
William Gilbert
Otto von Guericke
Vacuum
Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor
Electricity
Atmospheric pressure
Ben Nevis
Glory (optical phenomenon)
Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
Cloud chamber
Edward Victor Appleton
Robert Watson-Watt
Radar
Money, the root of EVIL CAPITALISM!
ReplyDeleteWhen we all have everything in common, and no one lust after money and property it will be UTOPIA!
////
That was such a weird show. I had a totally incompetent physics teacher in highschool who'd show us that program rather than teach us.
ReplyDeleteOk, gotta run off -- my MIL is making me steak for dinner tonight.
Techology!
ReplyDeleteRemote Control Cyborg Insects Now A Reality
By using direct optical lobe stimulation, the bugs can be steered left and right and up and down, and they also respond to stop and start commands. Basically, everything you could want in a remote control bug.
REMOTE-CONTROLLED insects may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but they have already been under development for some time now. In 2006, for example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, the Pentagon's research and development branch) launched the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems program, whose ultimate aim is to turn insects into unmanned aerial vehicles.
Pi Guy!
ReplyDeleteTHAT is fascinating. I remember this show very well and loved it. Still do, thank you so much
(also finally found out what a touchstone is).
Off to make dinner - bbl
Hello all you lurking C2'ers!
ReplyDelete(...or is everyone out enjoying this gorgeous Saturday afternoon?)
Hi Pink. I'm just lurking a little bit. Way too hot here to enjoy it outside. :-(
ReplyDeletehi ya pink!
ReplyDeleteJust got back from the dinner chores. Are you all caught up?
Hi PPG and Attilla! I don't know that I would call what I am "caught up", Attilla, but I'm happy with the status quo! :-)
ReplyDeleteWe're still running at 87, PBJ. I think we'll sidestep winter (or even fall) this year.
ReplyDelete*stretching*
ReplyDeleteAhhh, A nice powernap on a Saturday afternoon is a beeeyooteeful thing.
Afternoon, Pink !
Still 93 here but at least it's down from 105 we had a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteAtilla, PBJ, Pink and Squatch how are y'all?
ReplyDeleteBoring here in Germany anything new going on your side of the pond?
I see everyone is waking up from they naps.
ReplyDeleteBunch of slackers!
/;-P
An interesting op-ed from Kathryn Jean Lopez from National Review Online with a slight variation on Rules for Radicals; an excerpt:
ReplyDeleteThe Left clearly wants to advance radical change. Their success is neither imminent nor inevitable. That has something to do with the fact that folks on the right are so obviously tired of the audacity. Of the presidential slights. Many of these are the same people who would have been — or were — standing athwart history yelling Stop! during the Cold War. They believe it’s about liberty and tyranny, as radio-talk-show host Mark R. Levin puts it in the title of his bestselling book.
In his chronicle of how Howard Dean was changing the world with new technology, Trippi wrote what he called “the story of a person who spends his life reconciling two vastly different worlds — politics and technology — and wakes up one morning to find himself standing at the place where they’re about to converge, to crash together and begin reversing fifty years of political cynicism in one glorious explosion of civic re-engagement.”
That, Mr. Trippi, is where Andrew Breitbart lives. Exposing and getting results, from Congress, from the White House, even, reluctantly, from the media. The left-wing emperor issued many orders, but he has no clothes. If you thought the Right wasn’t competing online, and wasn’t capable of doing some organizing of its own, September 2009 has been an education.
Rules for Counter-Radicals
No kidding, JCM. Here I've been, slaving over hot news articles, and they've all been snoozin'!
ReplyDelete/slackers!
Hiya Cal.
ReplyDeleteNope. Nothing to report.
JCM
I'll have you know it's hard work looking this frumpy.
Hi Squatch, PBJ, JCM, Callahan!
ReplyDelete10FIVE PBJ? Damn! (Yeah, but is it a dry heat?) ;-)
/nope, boring here too, Callahan.
Closing Guantanamo
ReplyDelete/another major campaign promise goes under the bus
Now tell me who instantly comes to your mind when you read this joke:
ReplyDeleteVisiting the modern art museum, a lady turned to an attendant standing nearby.
“This,” she said, “I suppose, is one of those hideous representations you call modern art?” “No, madam,” replied the attendant. “That one’s called a mirror.”
/We've all got it bad, I know we do
much value in a well made flint arrow head
ReplyDeleteand a good bow and arrows, with that, no
need white mans silly paper money
imhapache o
eatitorwearit:
ReplyDeleteI predict pissed off hyenas.
/hopey changey, my derriere
Hello BoHS! And how is Mrw. BoHS this fine day?
ReplyDelete/Please give her our best.
Pink,
ReplyDeleteGood stuff from Lopez!
Pink, Pink, that's easy ... may I ... ooh may I?
ReplyDeleteNancy Pelosi
Lopex rocks, and she's over the target with that one.
ReplyDeleteLOL Callahan! And you don't even live here!
ReplyDeleteDing ding! CORRECT!
/the four corners of the world
Callahan23
ReplyDeleteBoring in Germany? I thought you guys are having elections or something?
Iran will allow UN to inspect nuclear site
ReplyDeleteOnce again we restart the game....
Well,ms bohs says, those silver dollars she put back for years and years every time we went to pow/wows in Nevada/Az./New Mexico are hers because we all made fun of her, about 100 lbs of them, she says, its all was stolen by the blue coast and the buffalo solders when the pulled up the curtins on those waggons and fired those cannons on the Apache that time. Her thinking is what goes around comes around.
ReplyDeleteIt does go around, BoHS, she's got that right.
ReplyDelete/You mean you made fun of her and lived to tell the tale?
sas,
ReplyDeleteHow long will the negotiation take for the inspection to take place?
How many centrifuges are spinning?
How much U-235 do they have?
The Useless Nations would know a bomb even if they rode with Major Kong.
Boring in Germany? I thought you guys are having elections or something?
ReplyDeleteReally.
And Oktoberfest is coming up.
Cal,have you broken out the lederhosen yet ?
//
Sos
ReplyDeleteNot only that, Germany has banned overflights at Oktoberfest due to terrorist threats.
Frankly, I think it's really because of all the cleavage - distracted pilots and all.
:D
JCM said...
ReplyDeleteAll of that doesn't matter.
They're COMPLYING !
*spit*
JCM
ReplyDeletedoesn't matter, it's still pissing into the wind.
It's a hardened site - and there are more we don't know about, count on it.
Old meat rations on sale in Sweden
ReplyDeleteFollowing revelations that Swedish meat supplies from the Cold War era are being served up in restaurants in Poland, its has been revealed that tinned rations are also on sale in Sweden.
SvD recently uncovered details that Sweden phased out 1.5 million kilograms of meat in the late 1990s. Conserved between 1983 and 1993, it had a recommended durability of ten years and was sold to a trading company by the Swedish Board of Agriculture.
According to a follow-up article, a number of Swedish websites are also selling the meat. "Consumers can use it for whatever they want," one seller told the newspaper.
"Either they eat it themselves or use it as petfood. We inform them about the use-by-date and they should be aware of it. But we eat the supplies too, I am almost sick of the stuff."
. . .
The meat, sold on to restaurants and served up for school dinners in Poland, has been declared rancid and decayed following analysis from an agricultural college in Warsaw. The tests were carried out on behalf of SvD and Polish television programme Uwaga.
/socialism, eatit up yum!
The case of James O´Keefe, Hanna Giles and ACORN made waves in the States whereas over here in Germany the media is still in anti-Americanism mode and fandom of Michael Moore.
ReplyDeleteThe ACORN case wasn't mentioned in Germany.
A German journalist these past days typed these few search words into Google: „James O´Keefe“, „Amerika“ and „konservativ“ the German Google that is. And all he received was two articles who have reported on this anti Michael Moore. It was mentioned in the „Tagesspiegel“ and in the "Financial Times Deutschland“.
So if y'all think that the media is bad only in America do think again!
Frankly, I think it's really because of all the cleavage - distracted pilots and all.
ReplyDeleteHeh, that's possible :-)).
JCM had a post up earlier about a plane crash along the same lines re: a distracted pilot.
The language in the NTSB report was...well...hilarious.
Callahan23
ReplyDeleteSo, what, they're not swooning over The Won?
Squatch,
ReplyDeleteCal,have you broken out the lederhosen yet ?
//
Never owned one of those and never will. I and my whole family are from the north of the country. We are waayyy more civilized to wear them trousers.
*hold nose up-high*
Atilla,
ReplyDeleteTwo options for complete resolution.
Internal regime change throws the doors open.
Boots on the ground.
Air strikes can slow them down, for a few years but that's all.
But we're not supportive of internal regime change.
Boots on the ground is completely out of the question.
Air Strikes are off the table unless something major forces that option.
I'm thinking Iran gets a bomb.
Tests one in the desert.
Begins nuclear blackmail.
Even without a credible delivery system I see a lot of dithering, hand wringing and finger pointing in DC.
/socialism, eatit up yum!
ReplyDeleteThose dumbasses.
They should've changed the labels to FuK Yu dog food, stamped the bottoms of the cans "Made in China", and sold 'em to Wal-Mart.
/
There will be no regime change in Iran in the foreseeable future.
ReplyDeleteEven with air strikes, we wouldn't be able to take them out.
So, yeah, it's a done deal.
sos
ReplyDeleteROTHFLMAO!
AtillaTheHoney said...
ReplyDeleteCallahan23
So, what, they're not swooning over The Won?
Sure most do, yet they are still up in arms in their BDS. A lot of people, I even know some, are very convinced here that the money rules and steers everything 'over there' in that capitalist cesspool.
So much so that even the 'black' president cannot steer clear of 'their' interests. Many on the left and the right are full or at least covert conspiracy theorists.
As I am repeatedly stating: The crazy is strong in Germany.
We are waayyy more civilized to wear them trousers.
ReplyDeleteI never had a doubt about that,Cal.
That's not too surprising about the German media, but I'd expect a little more play than 2 stories.
Wow.
Hey Callahan23
ReplyDeleteDid you see El-Masri assaults German Mayor
Last Friday, Khaled Al-Masri, aka. Khaled El-Masri, was arrested after assaulting the mayor of the Germany city of Neu-Ulm. A German citizen of Lebanese origin, Masri gained notoriety as the most visible “victim” of America’s program of “extraordinary renditions.” While on a trip to the Balkans in early 2004, he is alleged to have been illegally seized by the CIA and rendered to Afghanistan, before being released in Albania six months later.
According to German press reports, Masri attacked Mayor Gerold Noerenberg in the latter’s office, punching him and throwing a chair at him. The mayor is reported to have suffered cuts and bruises and a broken finger in the attack. Following one day of sick leave, he returned to work on Tuesday, his left hand fully bandaged except for the thumb and index finger. (See photo here.) Masri is a resident of a suburb of Neu-Ulm. The city has come to be known as perhaps the most important hub of jihadist activism in Germany. (See “Southern German Towns Become Hub of Jihadism”.)
Pub's open guys, if you care to continue this over some drinks.
ReplyDeleteHave fun!
/knocks Squatch down racing up the stairs
ReplyDelete:D
Just ordered from Marathon Photo, photos of a tired old man crossing the finish line after
ReplyDelete6 hrs and 15 min of the HHH 100, proof of a real bike ride. 28 time too.
Callahan23
ReplyDeleteThe crazy is strong in Germany.
Tell me about it. I was talking (internet) to a German who insisted what 'Americans' did to the Native American Indians was much worse than I had been taught and unless I have Native American blood I have no moral authority to speak on the matter.
Well, some of my ancestors were Shawnee. Michener wrote a history-docu-type drama about my family called 'Centennial'.
You know what his reaction was?
"You seem very intelligent. May I ask what you do for a living?"
I told him I teach international relations at the Kemosabe School for Indian Princesses.
Last I saw of him.
/fuck with me, please.
Attila....
ReplyDeleteROFLMAO!
{AtillaTheHoney} as I said and you've experienced yourself. it is indeed true:
ReplyDeleteThe crazy is strong in Germany.
Callahan23 said...
ReplyDeleteAs I am repeatedly stating: The crazy is strong in Germany.
/the trouble always starts when they start leering across the border