Month: January 2013

A Winter’s Tale

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“It is so cold in here,” said Gretchen. “The fire is almost out.”

“I will go to our woodpile and bring more wood,” said Hans.

“There is none left, Hans,” replied Gretchen sadly. “We have used all our wood that we saved for the winter.”

“I will go into the great forest,” responded Hans, “and bring more.”

“Hans!” said Gretchen with alarm. “The forest wardens will take you! I have heard that there are more of them, and they are fiercer than ever toward wood thieves!”

“Nonetheless, I must try, dear Gretchen,” replied Hans firmly, “for you and for the little ones.” He put on his thin overcoat, opened the door, and stepped outside into the icy, howling blast.

A folk tale from the Middle Ages?

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History Friday: Bass Reeves and the Last of the Lawless West

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In the year of the Centennial of the United States, the last of the West left relatively unscathed by the forces of law and order was that part of present-day Oklahoma set aside as homeland for the native Indian tribes. This was a 70,000 square mile territory in which anything went … and usually did. Among what was called the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole) there were native law enforcement officers, who upheld the law among their own. But they had no jurisdiction over interlopers of any color, or tribal members who committed crimes in company with or against an outsider, and the Territory was Liberty Hall and a refuge for every kind of horse thief, cattle rustler, bank and train robber, murderer and scalawag roaming the post-Civil War west. Just about every notorious career criminal at large for the remainder of the 19th century took refuge in the Oklahoma Territory at one time or another, including the James and Dalton gangs.

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Cool Retrotech: a New Oldest Computer

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The world’s oldest functioning computer  is now the WITCH, aka the Harwell Dekatron Computer, recently resorted to operating condition in Britain. It is also, almost certainly, the world’s slowest functioning computer.

The WITCH, built at Britain’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment,  was designed circa 1949 and completed in 1951. Circuits are comprised of dekatrons..a type of electron tube with an inherent count-to-ten capability..and ordinary telephone relays. The machine can store 40 eight-digit numbers, and while it can operate in stored-program mode, it was more normal to execute programs directly from punched paper tape. A “loop” when operating in this mode was an actual physical loop, with the ends of the tape glued together.

This computer was designed for reliability rather than blazing (by the standards of the time) speed, and it was so slow that a human could keep up with it for a limited period of time—but after half an hour or so the human would have to drop out, exhausted, while the machine plowed on, “utterly relentless.” I’d guess that the WITCH..taking into account its ability to operate unattended..could do as much computation as a human group of 5-10 people. Despite the machine’s slowness, the staff at Harwell found it useful, and it continued in use there until 1957, when it was given to Wolverhampton Polytechnic…which is where it got its current name, the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computer from Harwell. There it supported research and teaching until 1973. It was rescued from storage a few years ago and restored by volunteer efforts. It is now on display at Bletchley Park, the WWII center for codebreaking.

The restored WITCH displaces the previous oldest-working-computer champion, the Ferranti Pegasus.

WITCH video here.

Related post about the reconstruction of another early British computer, the EDSAC.

Quote of the Day

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Ann Althouse:

The issue there was not guns but the use of tax money to pay for teachers of religion. In the paragraph quoted above, Madison went on to say that citizens should object to the requirement of paying even “three pence” to support a religion because a government that extracts even that trifle may go on to coerce religious conformity. The small things are not small. The small things are where the people still have the capacity to fight authoritarian government.
 
Democrats know this. They are part of this American culture of deeply engrained belief in constitutional rights. What is different to the Democrats is that they don’t believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional right. They think the Supreme Court misinterpreted the Second Amendment when it found a constitutional right. District of Columbia v. Heller was a 5 to 4 decision, and the 5 are the 5 Justices, still on the Court, whom the Democratic Senators would love to have a chance to replace.

Read the whole thing.

Democratic politicians claim that they don’t want to take away people’s guns, but the pols’ behavior belies the claim. As Althouse points out, the Democrats appear to be looking at all possible ways to restrict the right to arms. The only things that hold them back are the Republican controlled House of Representatives, fear of a backlash by voters, and the courts. But we can be sure that the Democrats will seize any opportunities to restrict the RKBA that appear.

If you haven’t yet done it, now might be a good time for you to join or renew your membership in the National Rifle Association. I just joined. The NRA isn’t perfect but it’s the most effective advocate for the right to arms that we have.