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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#161

Post by QuantumGood »

dotnet00 wrote: post #63
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

It brings to mind the story of how when Boris Yeltsin was visiting the US, he took an impromptu detour to a random American supermarket to try to catch them off guard, only to be blown away that Americans really did have supermarkets everywhere practically overflowing with food. The story goes that the experience played a big role in shaping his vision for Russia when he went on to become its first freely elected lea…

Many in Yeltsin's circle believed it had been set up, and was not actually used by everyday Americans, similar to how many Soviet PR setups had been undertaken

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#162

Post by kwhitefoot »

orthoxerox wrote: post #118
bee_rider wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit.

There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.

> every kind of vegetable, .., every kind of cheese as well.

That's not my experience of American supermarkets in North Carolina when visiting on business ten years ago. Even in supposedly upmarket supermarkets like Harris Teeter the fruit and veg was really not very good and the selection of cheeses (and other dairy products) was downright poor.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#163

Post by ramblenode »

orthoxerox wrote: post #118
bee_rider wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, Yeltsin was already a liberalizing reformer. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was playing it up a bit.

There's still a difference between the stores having meat on their shelves and the stores having every kind of meat on their shelves. And every kind of vegetable, every kind of drink, every kind of cheese as well.

If you think the average American supermarket has every kind of meat, cheese, drink, and vegetable, you are in for a big surprise traveling the world.

In many ways American markets have fallen behind relatively poorer countries in variety. Most of what is sold are monocultures and packaged foods. The selection of fresh produce (or any produce) is often disappointing.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#164

Post by somenameforme »

dotnet00 wrote: post #112
somenameforme wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Moon landing - It had very little to do with people losing interest. In 1972 Nixon defacto completely cancelled the human space program, which he had been rapidly stripping away since Apollo 13. He was paranoid that a catastrophic failure was imminent and would negatively affect his 1972 election campaign. Interestingly when he signed off on the final stripping down in 1972, he remarked that we may never set foot…

That covers the cancellation of Apollo, but the fact that we didn't even put an uncrewed lander on the Moon within the 50 years in between is indicative of a lack of general interest, since we've had several presidents in these 50 years. Still, this did lead me to the discovery that apparently the often made claim that viewership of the landings waned after Apollo 11 doesn't seem to have any clear evidence besides th…

I don't think what happens in politics is a great proxy for interest. Lots of things with high interest levels never happen - federal digital privacy laws or federal right to repair laws for instance. And, vice versa, lots that are exceptionally unpopular get passed with exceptional rapidity - spying laws and copyright lasting until the heat death of the universe laws are a couple of examples there.

Most polls since the end of the Apollo program have shown strong and growing interest in space. Here's [1] the most recent I could find - a 2018 Pew poll. 72% consider it essential that the US continue to be a world leader in space exploration, 80% agree that the ISS has been a good investment for the country, 63% consider it important (45%) or top priority (18%) to send astronauts to Mars, and so on.

[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/06/06/majority-of-a...

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#165

Post by NateEag »

metadat wrote: post #134
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

And why would bread be full of sand and grit?

Because using millstones to grind grains into flour leaves traces of sand and stone grit in the flour.

It's really hard on the teeth long-term, IIUC.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#166

Post by dotnet00 »

verisimi wrote: post #86

> An obvious winner, something sure to blow Franklin's mind is “yeah, we've sent people to the Moon to see what it was like, they left scientific instruments there and then they came back with rocks and stuff.” But that's no everyday thing, it blew everyone's mind when it happened and it still does. Some things I tell Franklin make him goggle and say “We did what?” and I shrug modestly and say yeah, it's pretty impre…

It's more like a kid who is really proud that the current champion at their sport was an alumni of the same school. It's inspiring without doing any harm.

Perhaps you're being too bitter about life if you think that the only things people are allowed to feel a connection to are the things they've personally played a role in.

In this specific example, considering that most of us are under 50 and thus weren't even alive to be able to participate, and thus can only see it as part of our collective history as a species.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#167

Post by wwarner »

We can feel superior to the past, but by the same logic, how will the past judge us? I suppose it depends on what problems we manage to solve in the future; i.e. the future will have a lot of the same problems we have today, but which ones?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#168

Post by paulryanrogers »

somenameforme wrote: post #103
dotnet00 wrote: post #49

It's refreshing to see a rare openly optimistic article about the world here first thing in the morning. I also like to occasionally appreciate how someone from even just the recent past would see our current world as one full of manmade wonders. Another one of these would be microwaves, although conceptually simple as a box that heats stuff, it'd be pretty mind bending that it does it essentially wirelessly. Adding…

Re: Moon landing - It had very little to do with people losing interest. In 1972 Nixon defacto completely cancelled the human space program, which he had been rapidly stripping away since Apollo 13. He was paranoid that a catastrophic failure was imminent and would negatively affect his 1972 election campaign. Interestingly when he signed off on the final stripping down in 1972, he remarked that we may never set foot…

> It's only in very modern times that private companies can take to the stars, completely independent of governments...

Are there any private companies putting humans in space without huge government grants, launch facilities, or ex-gov talent?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#169

Post by buildsjets »

metadat wrote: post #134
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

And why would bread be full of sand and grit?

Thresh a bushel of wheat by hand by tossing it in the open air outdoors, and let us know the results of your experiment.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#170

Post by paulryanrogers »

Nasrudith wrote: post #97
paulryanrogers wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can. It's just uncomfortable to admit. For example, making housing an investment steals from the poor to give to the rich.

You can frankly tell when something is bullshit when it involves defining new increasingly fantastic and phantasmal forms of theft. It inevitably devolves into some sort of bastardization of voodoo. Just looking at the number of houses and the number of homeless is itself deeply misleading for what should be fairly obvious reasons. If someone operated a model simplistic enough that concluded there should be no deaths…

Would you take the concept more seriously if I'd used 'taking' instead of 'stealing'?
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