Viewing profile — hillsboroughman

You make several good points. However I'm not sure if Bell Labs people were different from university people in terms of their academic background. All three, Shockley, Bardeen and…

I wonder if they ever gave a Physics Nobel to a person who held a patent! People like Graham Bell never got recognized by the Nobel people. I get the impression that Physics Nobel …

Awesome story. If black currants are so much richer than oranges in Vitamin C, why didnt the long distance sailors of the Age of Discovery, like the Portuguese going to India or th…

A paywall prevents me from reading the story

Homeric Greek had only sporadic use of the dual. It was apparently a matter of metrical convenience. Classical Greek had all but lost the use of dual. Dual ws lost in Latin. Wherea…

Very informative summary. A stupid question follows though, so request your patience. Did Michael Ventris really ask the question 'what if Linear B encoded some form of Greek'? Did…

The modern cop novel was a formula popularized in England by Edgar Wallace already in the 1915-20 timeframe. His novels show great command of police procedure incl crime scene anal…

Museums, as a concept, rest on a supply chain of plunder and pillage in the past and now increasingly, on theft, dubious commercial transactions etc.. No one can deny that local pe…

> The main thing that kills penmanship is a lack of practice, like playing guitar. Truer words have never been spoken.

Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a true American genius, develops the idea of writing from accounting for objects of common value like olive oil, wine, flour etc. She traces the developme…

If Vikings imitated/emulated the Romans in their funerary practices, arguably they did the same in their living practices too. If that's the case, why are the Vikings persistently …

It is true that ideals have decayed. US government did not retaliate strongly enough against the Tienanmen Square massacre back in 1989. Trade was much more important. Now US is cr…

In the last 20 years, I did several jobs. The jobs I was happiest in were those where my boss was a loyal Costco shopper. I dont know if the two are connected.

This table pertains to the 72 main raga's (melodies/modes) of south Indian music. Each raga gets a number which completely determines its scale (of notes). The number is derived fr…

Katapayadi system has also been used to construct tables of related entries whereby the position of an entry in the table (its row and column) completely determines its properties.…

Makes sense. Another dimension to this is that Minoan language does not appear to have had any resemblance to any form of Greek. The most ancient cultural artifacts from Mycenae se…

On a side note, it wouldn't do to assume the Chinese behavior is fundamentally irrational.

I dont know if anyone read this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/27/china-to-limit... A lot of the big drives that Xi is on seem to be simply to reduce cost per child fo…