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Pre-WW1 there was a whole circuit of healing / memory power charlatanry floating about: Pelmanism, etc.
"Fluid Influence", Magnetism, Clairvoyance, and Chewing Gum (1910)
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Daily Dose from Dr. Odd I was quite taken with the sign behind the preacher in this picture. The photograph decorated the front page of the Illustrated London News, December 17, 1910, and showed the healing/clairvoyant "Antoine the Healer", with a definite...
Trove is a wonderful resource - I've found stuff syndicated here, including Maxwell Gray work, that's been rounds in in UK newspapers but hsd never been findable online. - Ray
"Fluid Influence", Magnetism, Clairvoyance, and Chewing Gum (1910)
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post Daily Dose from Dr. Odd I was quite taken with the sign behind the preacher in this picture. The photograph decorated the front page of the Illustrated London News, December 17, 1910, and showed the healing/clairvoyant "Antoine the Healer", with a definite...
"she-pirates"
Yes indeed.
Anne Bonney: http://tinyurl.com/6gh8dcy
Or Cheni I Sao (a.k.a. Ching Shih): http://tinyurl.com/6bo2fmp
Women with Guns--a "First" in Women/Pistols/Advertising?
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1548 [Abdullah Cigarettes Revisited] Here's a not-usual question: when was the first image printed of a woman pointing a gun in the commission of a felony who was NOT an American Western leather-slapping, bronc-ridin', Buffalo gal? I have a funny feeling tha...
"It is interesting to note ..."
The interesting thing is how the trappings of authoritarian systems look much the same wherever you are. Imagine what Americans would make of it if some enemy country had a youth organisation that was celebrated with imagery like this: http://www.trishhaley.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/eagle_court_of_honor_post_card_postcard-p239473487082735862trdg_400.jpg
A Note on the Pledge of Allegiance: Exluding "Equality" and including "God".
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy (1855-1931) in 1892 for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Western Hemisphere. The Christian Socialist Baptist Minister Bellamy started the pledge out as a simple confirmat...
One of these devices - the Bateson Life Revival Device a.k.a. "Bateson's Belfry" - featured in the movie The First Great Train Robbery.
FearNaughtia Coffins: Life Detectors, Escape Ladders, Breathin' Pipes and Premature Burial
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1526 I've written here before on the wonderful book by Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive, the Terrifying History of our Most Primal Fear 1(Norton, 2001) and on the difficulties of determining death in the 19th century, and the various ways that people sought to deal with an...
"Either way, it isn’t good ... This is also part of a long history of the subjugation of women"
Michel Foucalt's ideas seem very applicable. He argued that sadomasochism's adoption of trapppings of historical prisons, punishment and slavery reflected a similar behavioural subtext in "strategic power". Exactly the same could be argued about this excessive hardware used in gynaecological examination and childbirth; it suggests the designers' attitudes were very creepy. Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers" springs to mind.
Disturbing and Disturbed Obstetrical Devices: Straps, Belts and Iron Bits
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1501 Where does a device like the one, below, belong, exactly? Where in the long rolls of intellectual history should it be found? E.A. Agerton is actually Ella C. Agerton--it was easy for me to assume that the person Agerton was a man, because to my experience wh...
"a gentle, evenly distributed, properly directed, precision-controlled force, that acts in unison with and supplements her own efforts""
The concept of gravity doesn't seem to have occurred to them. What a palaver, when the birthing stool does all that.
Electro-IronPunk Centrifugal Birthing Machine--a Fantastically Bad Idea
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1500 I found this by accident, and needed to share it immediately, because in the splendid and chilly vastness of the infinite Encyclopedia of Bad Ideas, this entry would seem quite the poster child for such a stupendous effort--the mud to which all dust aspires. Th...
I recall it being on the radio when I was in my teens (Lordy, 40ish years ago). The "copper fingers" refer to the ending; on detection, the villain escapes the hangman by committing suicide, grabbing the live terminals of his own electroplating generator, and the fingers of his corpse become electroplated with copper.
Electro-LUXurious 15: Electroplating the Human Dead, 1891
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post This is the 15th installment of a new series on United States Patent Reports on electrical quackery and unsubstantiated bric--a-brac from the newly-electric world of the period of 1870-1900--the following is a little outside the norm, being French, but I couldn...
Literary connection: the Dorothy L Sayers story "The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers" is a Lord Peter Wimsey story featuring the electroplating of a corpse. A suspiciously lifelike copper statue of a woman turns out to be the electroplated murder victim of an insanely jealous artist.
Electro-LUXurious 15: Electroplating the Human Dead, 1891
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post This is the 15th installment of a new series on United States Patent Reports on electrical quackery and unsubstantiated bric--a-brac from the newly-electric world of the period of 1870-1900--the following is a little outside the norm, being French, but I couldn...
You might be interested in Breaking out of the game ( http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/breaking-out-of-game.html ) which has a couple of citations to works discussing the role of chess as a kind of theatre acting out real-world feudal hierarchy.
Chess in the History of Comfort–the Dreams that Things are Made On/Of
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1128 “The stuff that dreams are made of....” Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon (1941). “We are such stuff, As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.” Propsero. The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158 [This is a chess set that I made of ...
The self-portraits are remarkably similar to Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's "character heads" depicting extreme expressions.
French Visionary Architect and Creator of Bad Taste: Jean-Jacque Lequeu.
JF Ptak Post 1124 The history of bad taste is like a history of bad food--you need them to tell you what's good. -- Imaginary quote of Hank Hill I you look hard at some of the leading styles of architecture and design of the 1880-1920 periods, you will see elements of the work of the great visi...
I think all that you'd see as a result of firing canon would be a very bright flash of light, and here would be no smoke
Oh, I don't know. Mars has enough of an atmosphere to have wind and airborne dust; the low pressure might make the gas/smoke from a conventional chemical explosive behave a bit differently, but not that much. On the other hand, the size of the Earth in the sky makes it look more like the Martians are firing from a base on the Earth's Moon.
Strange Things in the Sky Department: Earth Bombarded from Mars
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1113 Earlier in this blog I wrote about odd, extraterrestrial extra Earths--double Earths (like this, for example "Extra-Earth Humano-Alien Souls from Outer Space Repopulate Earth-Hell!")--and then branched out to other strange things found in created skies. This...
However much it's explained to me, I have yet to intuitively grasp how a sewing machine works (not the mechanism - what it does with the thread). Even with this animation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lockstitch.gif - as far as I'm concerned, it throws the whole needle-and-machine through hyperspace to get the thread through the loop.
Shadowlands in the History of Technology--the Sewing Machine, ca. 1838
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1088 The anniversaries of two famous legal cases bumped me into thinking about the shadows of what things might be. Aticus Finch (from To Kill a Mockingbird) and Thomas Scopes (of the “Scopes Trial”, the famous or infamous “Monkey Trial”) celebrated their 50th and 85...
It's like ladies' Rollerball ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_%281975_film%29 ) minus the armour and motorbikes.
"Woman Bagatelle", ca. 1905
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1085 I'm not sure why these women needed roller skates for this sport, but I guess that they were necessary for the good of this cross-"sport" between soccer and hockey. The women put their hair up and got down to business, pushing the ball forward to the somber del...
Another one for you: John Morgan Richards.
This one emigrated to the UK, where he was acclaimed as a model capitalist, chiefly for promoting quack medicines including Carter's Little Liver Pills and Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People. They were in themselves pretty harmless, but were sold via testimonials of amazing pulled-back-from-death's-door cures. He also was prime mover in promoting cigarettes in the UK, selling through chemists' shops (i.e. pharmacies) with a tactic of paying for the tobacconist license of shops that would stock his cigarettes.
See "The writer, the cancer-merchant, his eccentric wife, and the faux castle" ( http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/writer-cigarette-pusher-his-eccentric.html ).
The Medical History of Curing Cancer with Limburger Cheese, Glycerin and Alcohol.
JF Ptak Science Books Post 1064 “The bees were made of sugar and honey, and so made them sting so sweet…” Billy “Craggy” Muffle singing on the French Broad River , 1935. Punched into the New York Times for 24 October 1909 was this weird Sunday filler on page 11: “LIMBURGER AS CANCER CURE.; D...
I wonder if the style of the first image was an intentional imitation of a cameo carving? Also, interesting that the much later classic Wedgwood Blue pottery uses exactly the same scheme.
History of Anticipation #2: Nothing. Moses and the Rock.
JF Ptak Science Books During the Exodus Moses and the Israelites were often in deep, mortal danger—perhaps none more dangerous as when they ran out of water. Moses’ leadership (and safety) came under question (Exodus 17:4), with Moses crying out to the Creator that he needed help, and that hi...
Oops! Sorry, that link was meant to be to Wikipedia's Teamsters article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teamsters
The Sanctity of Sainted Truck Drivers, 1942
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 1005 Every so often I meet a pamphlet that makes me want to travel back in time, even if that time was mostly a wispy bit of creative analogy. Men You Like to Meet (subtitled Stories of Highway Heroes), written and published by the American Trucking Associati...
The social context is quite interesting. The ATA was formed in the 1930s, and I can well imagine this PR was aimed at taking the moral high ground in relation to the major truck drivers union, the radicalised and corrupt Teamsters ( http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/breaking-out-of-game.html ).
The Sanctity of Sainted Truck Drivers, 1942
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 1005 Every so often I meet a pamphlet that makes me want to travel back in time, even if that time was mostly a wispy bit of creative analogy. Men You Like to Meet (subtitled Stories of Highway Heroes), written and published by the American Trucking Associati...
"Happy birthday, Ray!"
Thanks! I'd forgotten FaceBook gave that away - eeurgh, 54 (I'm still 18 inside).
It's a very interesting, quite possibly pivotal, era in US history that saw socialist movements stamped on. Newman & Byrne's "Back in the USSA" - http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/newman-byrne-alternate-histories.html - is a lovely pastiche and exploration of the idea.
Small Wars: Flowers vs. Coffins in the American Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 929 I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.--Marine Corps Maj...
This is in an era given prominent mention in James W Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, an expose of historical whitewashing in US school textbooks:
"What we did not learn about Woodrow Wilson is even more remarkable. When I ask my college students to tell me what they recall about President Wilson, they respond with enthusiasm. They say that Wilson led our country reluctantly into World War I and after the war led the struggle nationally and internationally to establish the League of Nations. They associate Wilson with progressive causes like women's suffrage. A handful of students recall the Wilson administration's Palmer Raids against left-wing unions. But my students seldom know or speak about two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military interventions in foreign countries.
"Under Wilson, the United States intervened in Latin America more often than at any other time in our history. We landed troops in Mexico in 1914, Haiti in 1915, the Dominican Republic in 1916, Mexico again in 1916 (and nine more times before the end of Wilson's presidency), Cuba in 1917, and Panama in 1918. Throughout his administration Wilson maintained forces in Nicaragua, using them to determine Nicaragua's president and to force passage of a treaty preferential to the United States."
Small Wars: Flowers vs. Coffins in the American Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 929 I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.--Marine Corps Maj...
Yes, very good. The prevalent belief that wars would be played out through a twin emphasis on aerial bombing and gas warfare - I guess extrapolated from World War I - is well-exemplified in HG Wells' "Things to Come".
When Civilians Aren't Civilians: Blowing Up Bomb-Proof Cities, 1927-1934.
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 915 We’re a few days past the 95th anniversary of the first aerial bombing of a city, the first in the long and unhappy calculus of eliminating things and people in civilized settings by dropping high explosives (and etc.) on them from the air. 19 January 1915 s...
Interesting to consider, though, how many of Poe's assumptions could equally apply to a modern chess program, and are clearly wrong: for instance, "a pure machine ... would always win".
The determinacy point is wrong too. A mechanical randomizer (or pseudorandom lookup table) wouldn't be hard to contrive.
A Note on Poe, Babbage and Thinking Machines, 1836
JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 838 Blog Bookstore This is part of a longer piece I’m doing on Man in the Machine—Early Days of Man-Machine Singularity Continuing from yesterday on Poe’s untitled books in “The Raven”, and making my way backwards through his Collected Works (from his criticism ...
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