Postblogging Technology, November 1954: Buy Now, Pay Later!

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada



Dear Father:

Since James and I are a bit worried about our letters being intercepted, I will answer a possibly sensitive question here instead of by post. We do not know when we might be going back to London. We expect we will. We have seen no reason to think that the holdup on cooling down the Qemoy crisis was anything but politics, and that a Democratic victory won't mean a prompt cooling of the Straits crisis. At the same time, those poor Russian sailors are not going to be released soon. They've become an issue in internal Koumintang politics. Whether the crisis will be sorted out, therefore, depends on whether Moscow is willing to swallow the insult. I'd like to say that I have a line on Russia's man in Taipei, but I have no idea how much to credit him. He might be some kind of confidence man, so I am being very cautious. The Koumintang is more than ordinarily enthusiastic about shooting each other down by the water at the moment, so everyone is being understandably close lipped except the people being inexplicably garrulous. So all I can say is that if I know anything, Moscow will. If I don't, all I can say is read the papers for yourself.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Aswan and Wittfogel: A Technological and History of Technology Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1954

Britannica. Which lifted it from Shutterstock, how the mighty have fallen, etc. 

The Aswan high dam is one of the biggest dams in the world, which is understandable, since it controls one of the world's most important rivers, although one with perhaps a bit less volume at the outlet than I expected. 

So, yeah, thought I'd start with negging the Nile. I'll let you all know if it decides to date me. The numbers, per Wikipedia, if you're a dam fan, which no-one is except when they're visiting them because civil engineering is boring unless you're there to see it is that it is 111m high and 3,830m long, and because it is an earth embankment dam, it is a kilometer wide at its base. It has an installed generating capacity of 2100 MW, which isn't actually that much by a jaded BCer's perspective. The Revelstoke Dam generates more current, and even the Keenleyside flood control dam at Castlegar that plays an important role in the tech blogging "story" such as it is by flooding beachfront Nakusp on its 1968 completion, still has a 185MW capacity.  This is because its main purpose is to regulate the flooding of the Nile, for which reason it impounds a 5250 square kilometer, entirely within the boundaries of Egypt, and it is the most historically consequential dam on the world's most historically consequential river.

The introduction to the Wikipedia article notes that it exists in large part for political reasons. The British had a plan to manage the Nile with sacrificial zones in Sudan and Ethiopia, to which Nasser and his colleagues said, "Thanks, but no thanks," which, given the historical reluctance of upstream authorities to sacrifice sacrifice zones when sacrificing is called for, seems like it was a wise choice notwithstanding the high evaporation rate off the Aswan reservoir.

In terms of its political history, there is a lot of meat on the High Aswan Dam bone. Were I to write about that, there are many satisfactory blog-sized conclusions that could be drawn, such as that John Foster Dulles was preposterously unqualified for his role; that the China Lobby is enough to have you rethinking the Great Terror (We could use a man like Robespierre today!); that, er, something about the post-Six Days War territorial settlement in the Middle East (Erik looks around, cringing pathetically); that imperialism is bad.

I do want to talk about politics, but not those politics, even if I come around to the margins of my cringe, because civil engineering is boring, and so people just can't help talking around it, and if it isn't geology and geography, it is . . .well, it's something that hopefully some scholar of science fiction has put a name to and received tenure for, because it's goldarned important, the usurpation of reality by a story that scratches the science fiction itch, and that's as felicitously as I can think to put this insight.

Postblogging Technology, October 1954, II: The Miracle of Transistors

R_.C_.,
Shaughnessy,
Vancouver,
Canada




Dear Father:

We have had an exciting few weeks as various European diplomatic efforts and one American one have inserted themselves in our little Crisis. We got to show the French the Tuapse detainees, which drew some looks from one fellow, who seems to have been a China hand who  has talked to people who perhaps do not have the family's best interests at heart, but there is some urgency to the action, as the Europeans do not have a feel for American politics and find it hard to believe that a single mid-term election could end the McCarthy era at a stroke. WE can hardly argue the point without raising questions about just who we are, so hopefully someone else has. I wish I could coach them. While Lindley is a nepotism hire at Newsweek, he's perfectly right that any prediction based on historical that Eisenhower will lose in '56 if the Democrats take the Senate is stuff and nonsense. It is hard to see the way that the Democrats are falling in line behind Stevenson as anything as conceding in advance. The idea is that if Kefauver really wants to be President, he needs to be thinking about beating Nixon in '60. But what I want to ask is how likely it is that Ike will even run in '56 given his health. He really doesn't seem to be enjoying being President right now. Sherman Adams might be able to carry the load when the GOP holds Congress,but he is not going to enjoy tussling with the Democratic leadership in the back half of his term, so why try for another? 

Anyway, that's my thought. Hopefully this Crisis wraps up before Christmas.

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

A Technological Appendix to Postblogging Technology, October 1954: Microelectronics and Music

 

"Micro" indeed. The screencap is the first size comparison for the proximity fuze I've ever seen, which is why I took the screencap. If you're disappointed that it's not a video, here it is:

I'll start with some housekeeping. The ordering software for the holdings stored in the UBC Library's  Automated Storage Retrieval System is working, and has been for several weeks now. The aisle that holds Engineering and Aviation Week is still only intermittently operational, and your requests will be available when the Library tells you so. I am not sure of the details of this, and the desk librarians are not forthcoming. My best guess is that they cycle the aisle every few weeks; and the moral of the story is that I probably didn't successfully place my request for them last fall, and so missed some retrieval windows. Or not. It's not like the library is inclined to explain! 

Honestly, automated storage is such a fiasco, especially considering that it cam in just as physical acquisitions collapsed. I know that it could be worse. When I got back to Vancouver after my PhD, much of UBC's old technical journal collection was held off campus with no intention of ever making them accessible again. The intent was to destroy them and create a pdf  library in the cloud, and there is going to be a history of the fiasco of Google Books one day, but the short summary is that this was, as usual, placing more faith in computers than warranted. (Seriously, check out this disaster!) Instead, it all went to PARC, which may or may not have automated retrieval, but, importantly, actually works. The building of PARC somewhere in the no visitor's part of UBC campus did lead to The Economist and Time being withdrawn from the open shelves, which is annoying, especially considering that  the university used up the freed floor space for underutilised offices. But, on the other hand they didn't pulp Newsweek. 

So will I have Aviation Week and The Engineer next week, when I have a long weekend to finish October postblogging? Who knows? The important thing is that I got in 40 hours in Baldur's Gate 3 during my (short) vacation.

Fortunately, there's a lot of "microelectronics" to catch up with, going back to the proximity fuze.