Tech

High Technology, 1898-style

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That would be the bicycle.

Some rather breathless thoughts on the social implications of this technology from a contemporary Atlantic Monthly article by W J McGee:

A typical American device is the bicycle. Invented in France, it long remained a toy or a vain luxury. Redevised in this country, it inspired inventors and captivated manufacturers, and native genius made it a practical machine for the multitude…Typical, too, is the bicycle in its effect on national character. It first aroused invention, next stimulated commerce, and then developed individuality, judgment, and prompt decision on the part of its users more rapidly and completely than any other device; for although association with machines of any kind (absolutely straightforward and honest as they are all) develops character, the bicycle is the easy leader of other machines in shaping the mind of its rider, and transforming itself and its rider into a single thing. Better than other results is this: that the bicycle has broken the barrier of pernicious differential between the sexes and rent the bonds of fashion, and is daily impressing Spartan strength and grace, and more than Spartan intelligence, on the mothers of coming generations. So, weighed by its effect on body and mind as well as on material progress, this device must be classed as one of the world’s great inventions.

Source: From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932, by David Hounshell.

Beyond Human

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Anyone recognize this guy?

marvel comics thor

That is Thor, comic character from Marvel Comics. Based, of course, on the deity worshiped by the Norse.

What can this object of ancient reverence do to warrant such regard? Like most thunder gods, he can hurl thunderbolts that destroy his enemies as long as he wields a mystical hammer called Mjolnir.

ultimate marvel thor hammer mjolnis

That is the main thing thunder gods do, after all, and it seemed to be something that would be extremely impressive to the Vikings.

Anyone recognize these?

both-9mm-carry-guns-with-spent-brass-and-loaded-magazines

My favorite carry guns. They are smaller and lighter than that hammer thing, and yet I can still create thunder by no more effort than making a fist.

Sure, it isn’t exactly the same thing. I can’t call the storm like Thor supposedly could, for example. But it still is a perfectly common, well known, mature technology that expands my abilities to something that is impossible for an unaided human being to duplicate.

I’m bringing up the fantastically obvious due to this online article. (Hat tip to Glenn.) Some really strange young woman has a hobby where she cuts herself open in order to shove magnets down amongst nerve clusters. Says she can feel magnetic fields that way.

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The Electoral Grind I

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I just appeared before the Lake County, Indiana Board of Elections. My message was for them to reconsider their policy to not permit electronic copying of voter registration data via disk or tape and to now allow electronic copies to flow.

Electronic copies of voter registration data are one of those baseline issues that you never even think about until you run up against a situation where you don’t have them. Then everything gets slow, more error prone, and expensive.

At that point you get knee-bone-connected-to-the-thigh-bone secondary effects and the end result is poorer, less effective oversight and a persistent suspicion that something funny’s happening with the vote in Lake County. As a practical matter, until you can regularly check, there’s no way to fix that distrust of the system.

Once electronic copies become available, a lot of secondary analysis becomes trivial. Accusations of Democrat suppression of the military vote are very common in GOP circles. So what was the comparative rejection rate of military vs. civilian ballot? A few FOI requests and you have the data you need to figure out if our military is being disenfranchised.

There’s a mini scandal brewing over whether south county voters are having their vote suppressed because their precincts are so large that people just give up at the sight of the long lines that inevitably build up. It’s a simple thing to rank 561 precincts by registered vote totals and convert that to minutes needed to process one voter across the critical path to identify the county’s most vulnerable precincts for long lines and lowered turnout. It’s simple to target early voting/absentee voting calls to those vulnerable precincts (in Lake they’re all likely to be strong GOP areas) but only if you can get electronic copies of the records as the early vote comes in so you can adjust daily to trim down the vote you think is vulnerable to suppression due to inadequate voting machine provision.

Cross posted at Northwest Indiana Politics