A few years ago I realized that automobiles weren't magically invented with heaters already installed. By coming across random references to motor robes I became aware that car heaters were uncommon until at least 1940, and the earliest reported sighting of a car heater that I could find was in a 1951 Plymouth (thanks, Gary!)
I'm pleased to report that we can narrow the field down even further, thanks to "The Boys' Book of Engines, Motors, and Turbines" by Alfred Morgan. Published in 1946, the book lists "car heaters" among the devices in which a curious suburbanite boy might find an electric motor...and since their inclusion in the list is totally blase, I assume that they were quite common by that time.
Therefore we can safely say that car heaters became standard devices between 1941 and 1945, based entirely on anecdotal evidence and my sort-of-quirky and extremely lucky reading habits. Anybody care to find a patent or a catalogue to back me up?
PS: This book is fabulous. When I started reading it I had no idea of how engines, motors, or turbines worked, and now that I'm halfway through I even know what a camshaft is, how hydroelectric power is harnessed, and that if you try to blow out the fire in your miniature steam engine you'll scatter burning alcohol around the room and "singe your whiskers."
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Showing posts with label study. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, May 15, 2008
"The Canadian Settler's Guide"
Society is hanging by a thread. As the movies keep reminding us, all we need is a nuclear war, a viral outbreak, a terrorist strike, or a polar bear attack to bring all of our modern machinery to a shuddering halt. We are literally inches away from the stone age, and I don't mean the kind of stone age where we wear fur bikinis and fight dinosaurs. I mean the kind where we all die because we're too stupid to know how to make our own bread.
I picked up Catherine Parr Traill's "The Canadian Settler's Guide" because, after the zombies bring down our entire fragile infrastructure, I want to lend a helping hand when the time comes to reconstruct the world. I want to offer more practical knowledge than just how to boil Kraft Dinner and accentuate a lip-line.
The fact that you can't grow insulin in a garden sort of makes my whole plan moot anyway, but I want to AT LEAST build a whipsaw and plant some cabbage before I die.
So Traill's book -- written for the new 1855 Canadian immigrant -- has proved helpful. I now understand the importance building a veranda around even the meanest hovel, and I know one should keep the chickens in a coop while one is planting the crops. I have learned the best way to prepare fried corn (boil it first) and how to make a tasty beer out of beets. I could, if pressed, make a rag rug or a candle or a delightful pigeon pie, and I could tell you how many bricks a yard of clay will make (460), and I could even recite a verse of "The Scottish Immigrant Song":
So when the world comes crashing down, feel free to stay with me for a little while. We'll have a quilting bee, clear some land, and dig a pit to put the potatoes in. But now that I know where rennet comes from, YOU can make the cheese.
I picked up Catherine Parr Traill's "The Canadian Settler's Guide" because, after the zombies bring down our entire fragile infrastructure, I want to lend a helping hand when the time comes to reconstruct the world. I want to offer more practical knowledge than just how to boil Kraft Dinner and accentuate a lip-line.
The fact that you can't grow insulin in a garden sort of makes my whole plan moot anyway, but I want to AT LEAST build a whipsaw and plant some cabbage before I die.
So Traill's book -- written for the new 1855 Canadian immigrant -- has proved helpful. I now understand the importance building a veranda around even the meanest hovel, and I know one should keep the chickens in a coop while one is planting the crops. I have learned the best way to prepare fried corn (boil it first) and how to make a tasty beer out of beets. I could, if pressed, make a rag rug or a candle or a delightful pigeon pie, and I could tell you how many bricks a yard of clay will make (460), and I could even recite a verse of "The Scottish Immigrant Song":
The little gowans tipped wi dewWhen Mrs. Traill devoted a section of the book to "the ague," however, I had to chuckle. "Oh those simple Victorian people, mistaking food poisoning or a tight corset for some mysterious vapor-disease." Little did I know that -- holy cow! -- malaria was a serious problem in Ontario throughout the 1800's. No wonder a spoonful of Epsom salts didn't help.
That 'mang the grass shone brightly;
The harebell waving in the breeze
That bowed its head sae lightly.
So when the world comes crashing down, feel free to stay with me for a little while. We'll have a quilting bee, clear some land, and dig a pit to put the potatoes in. But now that I know where rennet comes from, YOU can make the cheese.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
From the Mouth of the Optometrist (Plus, Chicken Brains)
I've been getting a lot of conflicting advice about my glasses: should I be wearing them all the time or only when I need them? Will wearing them prolong the quality of my eyesight, or vice versa? If I don't wear them constantly, will I ever get used to them?
I should have known that my OPTOMETRIST was the person to ask. Here's what he said, for the enlightenment of future generations:
* The reason the world looks strange when I'm wearing the glasses is because of my astigmatism. If this persists, they can reduce the power of the lenses.
* Given my age, my eyesight will not deteriorate any slower whether or not I wear glasses. Likewise, wearing them will not in any way weaken my eyes.
* In order to adjust to the glasses (the distorted world and the feeling of strain) I should wear them pretty much constantly for a week. At the end of this period I can wear them whenever I want to...when I put them on the adjustment should happen much faster, and when I take them off I will still adjust back to not wearing them. This is not a permanent change (see "Chicken Brains," below).
* By wearing them constantly I WILL get used to how sharp and clear the world can be. When I take the glasses off I will probably miss that sharpness.
So I'm in my fourth day of forcible adjustment. Wearing the glasses at work has been a lot of trouble because I need to struggle to focus on things that are close-up...and I spend all day looking at close-up things. I have not been the most efficient and useful worker this week, spending part of my time staring in an unfocused way at the top edge of my computer monitor and wishing that the day would end.
BONUS: CHICKEN BRAINS
Perceptual psychologists LOVE their prism glasses. By putting these glasses on various creatures at different ages and seeing how they adjust to displacement, they can learn an awful lot about the brain and its wiring.
In one of my classes the professor described an experiment commonly done with chickens. They put glasses on a chicken to displace its vision about twenty degrees, then they watch it try to peck at a seed on the ground. Chickens will continually peck twenty degrees away from the seed, never coming anywhere near the target. They can't adapt.
Most mammals, however, adjust to this displacement eventually through an unconscious mental process. To demonstrate, the professor brought volunteers to the blackboard, made them wear the prism glasses, and asked them to repeatedly and quickly strike out with a piece of chalk while aiming at a spot on the blackboard. I was one of these volunteers and we all reacted the same...the strikes started off far from the target, but gradually reduced the distance until they were bullseyes. Our brains had made an unconscious adjustment, and even though the target still appeared farther to the left than it actually was, our hands could reach it with very little error.
One volunteer, however, was totally unable to hit the correct spot. His errors remained constant. The professor announced to the class that this volunteer had the brain of a chicken, and the nickname "chicken brain" stuck.
I should have known that my OPTOMETRIST was the person to ask. Here's what he said, for the enlightenment of future generations:
* The reason the world looks strange when I'm wearing the glasses is because of my astigmatism. If this persists, they can reduce the power of the lenses.
* Given my age, my eyesight will not deteriorate any slower whether or not I wear glasses. Likewise, wearing them will not in any way weaken my eyes.
* In order to adjust to the glasses (the distorted world and the feeling of strain) I should wear them pretty much constantly for a week. At the end of this period I can wear them whenever I want to...when I put them on the adjustment should happen much faster, and when I take them off I will still adjust back to not wearing them. This is not a permanent change (see "Chicken Brains," below).
* By wearing them constantly I WILL get used to how sharp and clear the world can be. When I take the glasses off I will probably miss that sharpness.
So I'm in my fourth day of forcible adjustment. Wearing the glasses at work has been a lot of trouble because I need to struggle to focus on things that are close-up...and I spend all day looking at close-up things. I have not been the most efficient and useful worker this week, spending part of my time staring in an unfocused way at the top edge of my computer monitor and wishing that the day would end.
BONUS: CHICKEN BRAINS
Perceptual psychologists LOVE their prism glasses. By putting these glasses on various creatures at different ages and seeing how they adjust to displacement, they can learn an awful lot about the brain and its wiring.
In one of my classes the professor described an experiment commonly done with chickens. They put glasses on a chicken to displace its vision about twenty degrees, then they watch it try to peck at a seed on the ground. Chickens will continually peck twenty degrees away from the seed, never coming anywhere near the target. They can't adapt.
Most mammals, however, adjust to this displacement eventually through an unconscious mental process. To demonstrate, the professor brought volunteers to the blackboard, made them wear the prism glasses, and asked them to repeatedly and quickly strike out with a piece of chalk while aiming at a spot on the blackboard. I was one of these volunteers and we all reacted the same...the strikes started off far from the target, but gradually reduced the distance until they were bullseyes. Our brains had made an unconscious adjustment, and even though the target still appeared farther to the left than it actually was, our hands could reach it with very little error.
One volunteer, however, was totally unable to hit the correct spot. His errors remained constant. The professor announced to the class that this volunteer had the brain of a chicken, and the nickname "chicken brain" stuck.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Learning French with Sol the Clown
Us kids had to watch a lot of extremely surreal Quebecois "instructional French" programs in public school, supposedly to teach us that French people are very strange. Seriously, there really did seem to be a "Quebecois style of humour" that relied more heavily on funny faces and slapstick than our "Southern Ontario" style did.
One of the shows we watched constantly was "Parlez-Moi" starring Marc Favreau, French hobo-clown. There are several complete episodes on YouTube, but I'm sad to say that the one where he eats Dracula's cheese cannot be embedded.
Watch just a bit of this program to understand why most English Canadians retained so little French into their adult years. As my co-worker Dave said when he saw these, "it's obvious that the French didn't want us to learn their language."
One of the shows we watched constantly was "Parlez-Moi" starring Marc Favreau, French hobo-clown. There are several complete episodes on YouTube, but I'm sad to say that the one where he eats Dracula's cheese cannot be embedded.
Watch just a bit of this program to understand why most English Canadians retained so little French into their adult years. As my co-worker Dave said when he saw these, "it's obvious that the French didn't want us to learn their language."
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Single-Camera or Multi-Camera?
Watching the commentaries on classic Doctor Who DVDs I find myself learning an awful lot about the technical details of the show. Sometimes I come across the answer to some odd question that I've always wondered about, but never known how to find the answer for.
This week's revelation is about single-camera filming versus multi-camera filming.
I've often wondered why directors don't ALWAYS film with multiple cameras. By filming the same scene simultaneously from several different angles, wouldn't that reduce the amount of time needed to film the different scene elements? Wouldn't it reduce continuity errors?
Multi-camera shooting certainly IS faster, and it DOES make doing continuity a little easier -- requiring continuity checks only for re-takes of entire scenes, as opposed to whenever a scene is shot from a different angle. Another benefit of multi-camera shooting is that foley work becomes less necessary; everybody's voices and movements naturally sync together, instead of needing to be spliced up in an editing room later.
But these Doctor Who commentaries have given me insight into the NEGATIVE aspects of a multi-camera shoot...and there are a lot of them.
First off, there's the obvious drawback of needing to hire and coordinate several different cameramen. The actors also need to know their lines better, as there are fewer opportunities to check the script. Multi-camera shoots are by necessity more "theatrical" -- everyone in the right spot, everybody blocked out, all hitting their cues exactly -- which means that scenes MUST be rehearsed beforehand. This is a time commitment that might negate the time saved by shooting with multiple cameras.
More important, however, are concerns of lighting and sound. When you're only filming with one camera the director of photography can set up the lighting of each shot individually, paying close attention to those aspects of cinematography which make films look so much better than television programs. The boom operators can likewise record each shot in an optimal way, without needing to worry about actors wandering around the entire set and getting out of range.
But when you shoot with multiple cameras, the lighting is compromised: it must be adequate from every potential camera angle. And boom operators need to cover everybody no matter where they end up, instead of focusing on a small segment of dialog which must be recorded.
Finally, it's difficult to do really nice, elaborate close-ups of characters when multiple cameras are involved, for the obvious reason that the camera doing the close-up would become visible to all the OTHER cameras. This is one reason why fight scenes in the old Doctor Who tended to be filmed with single cameras, allowing tighter shots and therefore making it all look more tense and action-packed.
Nowadays it seems that multiple-camera techniques are rarely used except when a big, one-time-only practical effect is being shot, or when filming in front of a live studio audience. Otherwise, for reasons of lighting, sound, and general flexibility, single cameras are most desirable.
This week's revelation is about single-camera filming versus multi-camera filming.
I've often wondered why directors don't ALWAYS film with multiple cameras. By filming the same scene simultaneously from several different angles, wouldn't that reduce the amount of time needed to film the different scene elements? Wouldn't it reduce continuity errors?
Multi-camera shooting certainly IS faster, and it DOES make doing continuity a little easier -- requiring continuity checks only for re-takes of entire scenes, as opposed to whenever a scene is shot from a different angle. Another benefit of multi-camera shooting is that foley work becomes less necessary; everybody's voices and movements naturally sync together, instead of needing to be spliced up in an editing room later.
But these Doctor Who commentaries have given me insight into the NEGATIVE aspects of a multi-camera shoot...and there are a lot of them.
First off, there's the obvious drawback of needing to hire and coordinate several different cameramen. The actors also need to know their lines better, as there are fewer opportunities to check the script. Multi-camera shoots are by necessity more "theatrical" -- everyone in the right spot, everybody blocked out, all hitting their cues exactly -- which means that scenes MUST be rehearsed beforehand. This is a time commitment that might negate the time saved by shooting with multiple cameras.
More important, however, are concerns of lighting and sound. When you're only filming with one camera the director of photography can set up the lighting of each shot individually, paying close attention to those aspects of cinematography which make films look so much better than television programs. The boom operators can likewise record each shot in an optimal way, without needing to worry about actors wandering around the entire set and getting out of range.
But when you shoot with multiple cameras, the lighting is compromised: it must be adequate from every potential camera angle. And boom operators need to cover everybody no matter where they end up, instead of focusing on a small segment of dialog which must be recorded.
Finally, it's difficult to do really nice, elaborate close-ups of characters when multiple cameras are involved, for the obvious reason that the camera doing the close-up would become visible to all the OTHER cameras. This is one reason why fight scenes in the old Doctor Who tended to be filmed with single cameras, allowing tighter shots and therefore making it all look more tense and action-packed.
Nowadays it seems that multiple-camera techniques are rarely used except when a big, one-time-only practical effect is being shot, or when filming in front of a live studio audience. Otherwise, for reasons of lighting, sound, and general flexibility, single cameras are most desirable.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Adventure of the Behaviourist
During my first years as a Psychology student at the University of Waterloo, I was a dedicated behaviourist. There was something comforting about its endless chains of predictable cause and effect. Next to the more "subconscious" disciplines it was downright simple: you reward or punish a person for doing something, and eventually you can "condition" them to do what you want.
Behaviourists got results...and they could QUANTIFY them! They used a mixture of hard-nosed determination, patience, and metrics to -- say -- turn a kleptomaniac into an upstanding citizen. And I quickly discovered how useful the behaviourist approach was when dealing with pets; thanks to B.F. Skinner and his operant conditioning I had the family cat rolling over for chicken in a pretty much consistent way.
But courses in child development threw me for a loop, with their revelations of hard-wired mechanisms for things like language and knowledge of "self." Suddenly there were parts of human behaviour UNRELATED to conditioning. The REAL blow was the study of Symbolic Interactionism, which shows that we humans relate to our environment in a symbolic way, and therefore a "stimulus" is what we believe and perceive it to be, not something pure that always means the same thing, all the time, to all people.
So I've been forced to let go of much of my love of "billiard ball determinism" and hard-nosed behaviourism, partly because so many other forces seem to be at work, but mainly because all the factors involved -- people, problems, stimuli, responses -- get tangled up with other forces in the real world, making the "laboratory" approach to therapy just as difficult as any other.
So while I skip most of the New Yorker profile pieces, it was interesting to read Kenneth MacGowan's profile of Dr. John B. Watson in the October 6, 1928 issue. Despite the weird synchronicity moment in the first paragraph (Watson was annoyed by the character of "Dr. Watson" in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and here I am reading those stories right now), it's interesting to read a relatively muck-raking article about his academic problems.
By the time of the article Watson had long left academic life. The article claims that this was due to his intransigence and controversial studies, and it inexplicably ignores the entire scandal that surrounded his leaving: his adulterous affair with graduate student Rosalie Rayner. This is my first indication that the New Yorker profiles may have been a BIT of a whitewash.
(Incidentally, for fans of Thomas Pynchon, Watson and Rayner have the dubious honour of conducting the infamous "Little Albert" experiment which gets pride of place in Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow.")
Anyway, Watson was hard at work in the advertising business during 1928, helping with campaigns such as -- more synchronicity here -- Odorono. He made a lot of money perfecting the advertising agency's ability to frighten and titillate us. Maybe that's the way we should remember him; behaviourism was always best at curing phobias, and now we know it was good for causing them as well.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
The Periodic Kingdom
The science classes I took in school never got much beyond the ones called simply "science." I did take a biology course, but the only reason I passed it was because I sat next to the girl who the teacher had a non-sexual crush on.
I suffer from a difficulty that a lot of people probably suffer from: I can't just MEMORIZE a fact, I need to know how the fact WORKS. This caused problems in highschool science, where they want to just teach you about "refraction" without explaining what light is, how visual perception works, and the exact atomic structure of the material the light is bouncing off of.
For the last ten years I've been catching up, learning (and UNDERSTANDING) all those things that previously only registered long enough for me to write the exams. And while I know I'll NEVER understand the math behind atomic-level physics, I'm finding that if I approach it in enough different ways -- and take lots of rests between each information binge -- I can begin to know what's going on.
This latest binge was inspired by Simon Singh's "The Big Bang" which -- besides reinforcing my understanding of general and special relativity -- reawakened my desire to understand SOMETHING about chemistry. Without understanding WHY the periodic table is laid out in such a quirky way, I can't begin to absorb the information IN the table.
Fortunately, this prompted me to go back and re-read "The Periodic Kingdom" by P. W. Atkins. The book presents the periodic table as though it were a physical landmass. The reader "walks" through the kingdom, discovering similarities between adjacent regions (what happens if you pour water on cesium?) and differences between the sections of the land -- atomic weight and density, ionization energies, radioactivity, etc.
Under the guise of describing the kingdom's "government and institutions," Atkins eases you into what the elements are MADE of, how their electrons form into different types of "shells," and -- ultimately -- why the periodic table IS laid out in such a quirky way.
This second time around I'm finding myself understanding it all COMPLETELY. I've had an actual epiphany. This is the first time I've gotten a "feel" for chemical elements, which is a pretty significant thing for me; it means I can hopefully take it further with "The God Particle" (Leon Lederman) and "Hydrogen" (John S. Rigden), which I just picked up on my way home.
What's my point? I have two: if you don't understand a concept and you really WANT to, try reading two (or preferably three) books about the subject...by walking repeatedly on the same ground -- but from different directions -- you can get a much fuller understanding of things than you would if you just memorized the facts. Secondly, if you really want to get a starter in chemistry, pick up "The Periodic Kingdom." I guarantee it will get you started.
I suffer from a difficulty that a lot of people probably suffer from: I can't just MEMORIZE a fact, I need to know how the fact WORKS. This caused problems in highschool science, where they want to just teach you about "refraction" without explaining what light is, how visual perception works, and the exact atomic structure of the material the light is bouncing off of.
For the last ten years I've been catching up, learning (and UNDERSTANDING) all those things that previously only registered long enough for me to write the exams. And while I know I'll NEVER understand the math behind atomic-level physics, I'm finding that if I approach it in enough different ways -- and take lots of rests between each information binge -- I can begin to know what's going on.
This latest binge was inspired by Simon Singh's "The Big Bang" which -- besides reinforcing my understanding of general and special relativity -- reawakened my desire to understand SOMETHING about chemistry. Without understanding WHY the periodic table is laid out in such a quirky way, I can't begin to absorb the information IN the table.
Fortunately, this prompted me to go back and re-read "The Periodic Kingdom" by P. W. Atkins. The book presents the periodic table as though it were a physical landmass. The reader "walks" through the kingdom, discovering similarities between adjacent regions (what happens if you pour water on cesium?) and differences between the sections of the land -- atomic weight and density, ionization energies, radioactivity, etc.
Under the guise of describing the kingdom's "government and institutions," Atkins eases you into what the elements are MADE of, how their electrons form into different types of "shells," and -- ultimately -- why the periodic table IS laid out in such a quirky way.
This second time around I'm finding myself understanding it all COMPLETELY. I've had an actual epiphany. This is the first time I've gotten a "feel" for chemical elements, which is a pretty significant thing for me; it means I can hopefully take it further with "The God Particle" (Leon Lederman) and "Hydrogen" (John S. Rigden), which I just picked up on my way home.
What's my point? I have two: if you don't understand a concept and you really WANT to, try reading two (or preferably three) books about the subject...by walking repeatedly on the same ground -- but from different directions -- you can get a much fuller understanding of things than you would if you just memorized the facts. Secondly, if you really want to get a starter in chemistry, pick up "The Periodic Kingdom." I guarantee it will get you started.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
A Fourth for Bridge (Not to Mention a Second and Third)
Ever since I saw images of well-dressed suburban '50s couples getting tipsy and playing Bridge I've wanted to join in the fun. The problem is that very few people play bridge anymore, and those that do are deadly serious about it.
Imagine my surprise and delight to learn that three people I work with have been dying to play bridge again...but they didn't have a fourth! I said I'd be happy to play, with the caveat that I've never played before and never got past chapter two of the "how to play bridge" book. They said that's okay. I said maybe we should hold off until I've read the REST of the book, and they said no, they'll teach me. I said I've never played any "trick" card games in my life. They said that's okay.
I sort of feel like I'm entering a Scrabble championship without knowing how to spell, but it's all about bettering myself. Right? RIGHT?
As an aside I notice that I've lost some basic English knowledge while writing these blog entries. I'm occasionally confusing my homonyms and not realizing it until later. Maybe it's because I'm trying to write quickly, or because my job involves writing all day and I'm fatigued when I get home. Or maybe I have a degenerative brain disease.
As a further aside my work has already directly affected my writing. 8 months of writing manuals has broken me of most of the habits I spent decades reinforcing. It's a struggle now to type "colour" instead of "color." I automatically use the Oxford comma and use only one space after a period. I'm becoming a drone.
Imagine my surprise and delight to learn that three people I work with have been dying to play bridge again...but they didn't have a fourth! I said I'd be happy to play, with the caveat that I've never played before and never got past chapter two of the "how to play bridge" book. They said that's okay. I said maybe we should hold off until I've read the REST of the book, and they said no, they'll teach me. I said I've never played any "trick" card games in my life. They said that's okay.
I sort of feel like I'm entering a Scrabble championship without knowing how to spell, but it's all about bettering myself. Right? RIGHT?
As an aside I notice that I've lost some basic English knowledge while writing these blog entries. I'm occasionally confusing my homonyms and not realizing it until later. Maybe it's because I'm trying to write quickly, or because my job involves writing all day and I'm fatigued when I get home. Or maybe I have a degenerative brain disease.
As a further aside my work has already directly affected my writing. 8 months of writing manuals has broken me of most of the habits I spent decades reinforcing. It's a struggle now to type "colour" instead of "color." I automatically use the Oxford comma and use only one space after a period. I'm becoming a drone.
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