Podcasts about lord kelvin

Good Sunday morning to you,I am just on a train home from Glasgow, where I have been gigging these past two nights. I've had a great time, as I always seem to do when I go north of the wall.But Glasgow on a Saturday night is something else. My hotel was right next to the station and so I was right in the thick of it. If I ever get to make a cacatopian, end-of-days, post-apocalyptic thriller, I'll just stroll through Glasgow city centre on a Friday or Saturday night with a camera to get all the B roll. It was like walking through a Hieronymus Bosch painting only with a Scottish accent. Little seems to have changed since I wrote that infamous chapter about Glasgow in Life After the State all those years ago. The only difference is that now it's more multi-ethnic. So many people are so off their heads. I lost count of the number of randoms wandering about just howling at the stars. The long days - it was still light at 10 o'clock - make the insanity all the more visible. Part of me finds it funny, but another part of me finds it so very sad that so many people let themselves get into this condition. It prompted me to revisit said chapter, and I offer it today as your Sunday thought piece.Just a couple of little notes, before we begin. This caught my eye on Friday. Our favourite uranium tech company, Lightbridge Fuels (NASDAQ:LTBR), has taken off again with Donald Trump's statement that he is going to quadruple US nuclear capacity. The stock was up 45% in a day. We first looked at it in October at $3. It hit $15 on Friday. It's one to sell on the spikes and buy on the dips, as this incredible chart shows.(In other news I have now listened twice to the Comstock Lode AGM, and I'll report back on that shortly too). ICYMI here is my mid-week commentary, which attracted a lot of attentionRight - Glasgow.(NB I haven't included references here. Needless to say, they are all there in the book. And sorry I don't have access to the audio of me reading this from my laptop, but, if you like, you can get the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. The book itself available at Amazon, Apple Books et al).How the Most Entrepreneurial City in Europe Became Its SickestThe cause of waves of unemployment is not capitalism, but governments …Friedrich Hayek, economist and philosopherIn the 18th and 19th centuries, the city of Glasgow in Scotland became enormously, stupendously rich. It happened quite organically, without planning. An entrepreneurial people reacted to their circumstances and, over time, turned Glasgow into an industrial and economic centre of such might that, by the turn of the 20th century, Glasgow was producing half the tonnage of Britain's ships and a quarter of all locomotives in the world. (Not unlike China's industrial dominance today). It was regarded as the best-governed city in Europe and popular histories compared it to the great imperial cities of Venice and Rome. It became known as the ‘Second City of the British Empire'.Barely 100 years later, it is the heroin capital of the UK, the murder capital of the UK and its East End, once home to Europe's largest steelworks, has been dubbed ‘the benefits capital of the UK'. Glasgow is Britain's fattest city: its men have Britain's lowest life expectancy – on a par with Palestine and Albania – and its unemployment rate is 50% higher than the rest of the UK.How did Glasgow manage all that?The growth in Glasgow's economic fortunes began in the latter part of the 17th century and the early 18th century. First, the city's location in the west of Scotland at the mouth of the river Clyde meant that it lay in the path of the trade winds and at least 100 nautical miles closer to America's east coast than other British ports – 200 miles closer than London. In the days before fossil fuels (which only found widespread use in shipping in the second half of the 19th century) the journey to Virginia was some two weeks shorter than the same journey from London or many of the other ports in Britain and Europe. Even modern sailors describe how easy the port of Glasgow is to navigate. Second, when England was at war with France – as it was repeatedly between 1688 and 1815 – ships travelling to Glasgow were less vulnerable than those travelling to ports further south. Glasgow's merchants took advantage and, by the early 18th century, the city had begun to assert itself as a trading hub. Manufactured goods were carried from Britain and Europe to North America and the Caribbean, where they were traded for increasingly popular commodities such as tobacco, cotton and sugar.Through the 18th century, the Glasgow merchants' business networks spread, and they took steps to further accelerate trade. New ships were introduced, bigger than those of rival ports, with fore and aft sails that enabled them to sail closer to the wind and reduce journey times. Trading posts were built to ensure that cargo was gathered and stored for collection, so that ships wouldn't swing idly at anchor. By the 1760s Glasgow had a 50% share of the tobacco trade – as much as the rest of Britain's ports combined. While the English merchants simply sold American tobacco in Europe at a profit, the Glaswegians actually extended credit to American farmers against future production (a bit like a crop future today, where a crop to be grown at a later date is sold now). The Virginia farmers could then use this credit to buy European goods, which the Glaswegians were only too happy to supply. This brought about the rise of financial institutions such as the Glasgow Ship Bank and the Glasgow Thistle Bank, which would later become part of the now-bailed-out, taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).Their practices paid rewards. Glasgow's merchants earned a great deal of money. They built glamorous homes and large churches and, it seems, took on aristocratic airs – hence they became known as the ‘Tobacco Lords'. Numbering among them were Buchanan, Dunlop, Ingram, Wilson, Oswald, Cochrane and Glassford, all of whom had streets in the Merchant City district of Glasgow named after them (other streets, such as Virginia Street and Jamaica Street, refer to their trade destinations). In 1771, over 47 million pounds of tobacco were imported.However, the credit the Glaswegians extended to American tobacco farmers would backfire. The debts incurred by the tobacco farmers – which included future presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (who almost lost his farm as a result) – grew, and were among the grievances when the American War of Independence came in 1775. That war destroyed the tobacco trade for the Glaswegians. Much of the money that was owed to them was never repaid. Many of their plantations were lost. But the Glaswegians were entrepreneurial and they adapted. They moved on to other businesses, particularly cotton.By the 19th century, all sorts of local industry had emerged around the goods traded in the city. It was producing and exporting textiles, chemicals, engineered goods and steel. River engineering projects to dredge and deepen the Clyde (with a view to forming a deep- water port) had begun in 1768 and they would enable shipbuilding to become a major industry on the upper reaches of the river, pioneered by industrialists such as Robert Napier and John Elder. The final stretch of the Monkland Canal, linking the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas, was opened in 1795, facilitating access to the iron-ore and coal mines of Lanarkshire.The move to fossil-fuelled shipping in the latter 19th century destroyed the advantages that the trade winds had given Glasgow. But it didn't matter. Again, the people adapted. By the turn of the 20th century the Second City of the British Empire had become a world centre of industry and heavy engineering. It has been estimated that, between 1870 and 1914, it produced as much as one-fifth of the world's ships, and half of Britain's tonnage. Among the 25,000 ships it produced were some of the greatest ever built: the Cutty Sark, the Queen Mary, HMS Hood, the Lusitania, the Glenlee tall ship and even the iconic Mississippi paddle steamer, the Delta Queen. It had also become a centre for locomotive manufacture and, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, could boast the largest concentration of locomotive building works in Europe.It was not just Glasgow's industry and wealth that was so gargantuan. The city's contribution to mankind – made possible by the innovation and progress that comes with booming economies – would also have an international impact. Many great inventors either hailed from Glasgow or moved there to study or work. There's James Watt, for example, whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. One of Watt's employees, William Murdoch, has been dubbed ‘the Scot who lit the world' – he invented gas lighting, a new kind of steam cannon and waterproof paint. Charles MacIntosh gave us the raincoat. James Young, the chemist dubbed as ‘the father of the oil industry', gave us paraffin. William Thomson, known as Lord Kelvin, developed the science of thermodynamics, formulating the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature; he also managed the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.The turning point in the economic fortunes of Glasgow – indeed, of industrial Britain – was WWI. Both have been in decline ever since. By the end of the war, the British were drained, both emotionally and in terms of capital and manpower; the workers, the entrepreneurs, the ideas men, too many of them were dead or incapacitated. There was insufficient money and no appetite to invest. The post-war recession, and later the Great Depression, did little to help. The trend of the city was now one of inexorable economic decline.If Glasgow was the home of shipping and industry in 19th-century Britain, it became the home of socialism in the 20th century. Known by some as the ‘Red Clydeside' movement, the socialist tide in Scotland actually pre-dated the First World War. In 1906 came the city's first Labour Member of Parliament (MP), George Barnes – prior to that its seven MPs were all Conservatives or Liberal Unionists. In the spring of 1911, 11,000 workers at the Singer sewing-machine factory (run by an American corporation in Clydebank) went on strike to support 12 women who were protesting about new work practices. Singer sacked 400 workers, but the movement was growing – as was labour unrest. In the four years between 1910 and 1914 Clydebank workers spent four times as many days on strike than in the whole of the previous decade. The Scottish Trades Union Congress and its affiliations saw membership rise from 129,000 in 1909 to 230,000 in 1914.20The rise in discontent had much to do with Glasgow's housing. Conditions were bad, there was overcrowding, bad sanitation, housing was close to dirty, noxious and deafening industry. Unions grew quite organically to protect the interests of their members.Then came WWI, and inflation, as Britain all but abandoned gold. In 1915 many landlords responded by attempting to increase rent, but with their young men on the Western front, those left behind didn't have the means to pay these higher costs. If they couldn't, eviction soon followed. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, women – now in the majority with so many men gone – organized opposition to the rent increases. There are photographs showing women blocking the entrance to tenements; officers who did get inside to evict tenants are said to have had their trousers pulled down.The landlords were attacked for being unpatriotic. Placards read: ‘While our men are fighting on the front line,the landlord is attacking us at home.' The strikes spread to other cities throughout the UK, and on 27 November 1915 the government introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level. The strikers were placated. They had won. The government was happy; it had dealt with the problem. The landlords lost out.In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, more frequent strikes crippled the city. In 1919 the ‘Bloody Friday' uprising prompted the prime minister, David Lloyd George, to deploy 10,000 troops and tanks onto the city's streets. By the 1930s Glasgow had become the main base of the Independent Labour Party, so when Labour finally came to power alone after WWII, its influence was strong. Glasgow has always remained a socialist stronghold. Labour dominates the city council, and the city has not had a Conservative MP for 30 years.By the late 1950s, Glasgow was losing out to the more competitive industries of Japan, Germany and elsewhere. There was a lack of investment. Union demands for workers, enforced by government legislation, made costs uneconomic and entrepreneurial activity arduous. With lack of investment came lack of innovation.Rapid de-industrialization followed, and by the 1960s and 70s most employment lay not in manufacturing, but in the service industries.Which brings us to today. On the plus side, Glasgow is still ranked as one of Europe's top 20 financial centres and is home to some leading Scottish businesses. But there is considerable downside.Recent studies have suggested that nearly 30% of Glasgow's working age population is unemployed. That's 50% higher than that of the rest of Scotland or the UK. Eighteen per cent of 16- to 19-year-olds are neither in school nor employed. More than one in five working-age Glaswegians have no sort of education that might qualify them for a job.In the city centre, the Merchant City, 50% of children are growing up in homes where nobody works. In the poorer neighbourhoods, such as Ruchill, Possilpark, or Dalmarnock, about 65% of children live in homes where nobody works – more than three times the national average. Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show that 85% of working age adults from the district of Bridgeton claim some kind of welfare payment.Across the city, almost a third of the population regularly receives sickness or incapacity benefit, the highest rate of all UK cities. A 2008 World Health Organization report noted that in Glasgow's Calton, Bridgeton and Queenslie neighbourhoods, the average life expectancy for males is only 54. In contrast, residents of Glasgow's more affluent West End live to be 80 and virtually none of them are on the dole.Glasgow has the highest crime rate in Scotland. A recent report by the Centre for Social Justice noted that there are 170 teenage gangs in Glasgow. That's the same number as in London, which has over six times the population of Glasgow.It also has the dubious record of being Britain's murder capital. In fact, Glasgow had the highest homicide rate in Western Europe until it was overtaken in 2012 by Amsterdam, with more violent crime per head of population than even New York. What's more, its suicide rate is the highest in the UK.Then there are the drug and alcohol problems. The residents of the poorer neighbourhoods are an astounding six times more likely to die of a drugs overdose than the national average. Drug-related mortality has increased by 95% since 1997. There are 20,000 registered drug users – that's just registered – and the situation is not going to get any better: children who grow up in households where family members use drugs are seven times more likely to end up using drugs themselves than children who live in drug-free families.Glasgow has the highest incidence of liver diseases from alcohol abuse in all of Scotland. In the East End district of Dennistoun, these illnesses kill more people than heart attacks and lung cancer combined. Men and women are more likely to die of alcohol-related deaths in Glasgow than anywhere else in the UK. Time and time again Glasgow is proud winner of the title ‘Fattest City in Britain'. Around 40% of the population are obese – 5% morbidly so – and it also boasts the most smokers per capita.I have taken these statistics from an array of different sources. It might be in some cases that they're overstated. I know that I've accentuated both the 18th- and 19th-century positives, as well as the 20th- and 21st-century negatives to make my point. Of course, there are lots of healthy, happy people in Glasgow – I've done many gigs there and I loved it. Despite the stories you hear about intimidating Glasgow audiences, the ones I encountered were as good as any I've ever performed in front of. But none of this changes the broad-brush strokes: Glasgow was a once mighty city that now has grave social problems. It is a city that is not fulfilling its potential in the way that it once did. All in all, it's quite a transformation. How has it happened?Every few years a report comes out that highlights Glasgow's various problems. Comments are then sought from across the political spectrum. Usually, those asked to comment agree that the city has grave, ‘long-standing and deep-rooted social problems' (the words of Stephen Purcell, former leader of Glasgow City Council); they agree that something needs to be done, though they don't always agree on what that something is.There's the view from the right: Bill Aitken of the Scottish Conservatives, quoted in The Sunday Times in 2008, said, ‘We simply don't have the jobs for people who are not academically inclined. Another factor is that some people are simply disinclined to work. We have got to find something for these people to do, to give them a reason to get up in the morning and give them some self-respect.' There's the supposedly apolitical view of anti-poverty groups: Peter Kelly, director of the Glasgow-based Poverty Alliance, responded, ‘We need real, intensive support for people if we are going to tackle poverty. It's not about a lack of aspiration, often people who are unemployed or on low incomes are stymied by a lack of money and support from local and central government.' And there's the view from the left. In the same article, Patricia Ferguson, the Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Maryhill, also declared a belief in government regeneration of the area. ‘It's about better housing, more jobs, better education and these things take years to make an impact. I believe that the huge regeneration in the area is fostering a lot more community involvement and cohesion. My real hope is that these figures will take a knock in the next five or ten years.' At the time of writing in 2013, five years later, the figures have worsened.All three points of view agree on one thing: the government must do something.In 2008 the £435 million Fairer Scotland Fund – established to tackle poverty – was unveiled, aiming to allocate cash to the country's most deprived communities. Its targets included increasing average income among lower wage-earners and narrowing the poverty gap between Scotland's best- and worst-performing regions by 2017. So far, it hasn't met those targets.In 2008 a report entitled ‘Power for The Public' examined the provision of health, education and justice in Scotland. It said the budgets for these three areas had grown by 55%, 87% and 44% respectively over the last decade, but added that this had produced ‘mixed results'. ‘Mixed results' means it didn't work. More money was spent and the figures got worse.After the Centre for Social Justice report on Glasgow in 2008, Iain Duncan Smith (who set up this think tank, and is now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) said, ‘Policy must deal with the pathways to breakdown – high levels of family breakdown, high levels of failed education, debt and unemployment.'So what are ‘pathways to breakdown'? If you were to look at a chart of Glasgow's prosperity relative to the rest of the world, its peak would have come somewhere around 1910. With the onset of WWI in 1914 its decline accelerated, and since then the falls have been relentless and inexorable. It's not just Glasgow that would have this chart pattern, but the whole of industrial Britain. What changed the trend? Yes, empires rise and fall, but was British decline all a consequence of WWI? Or was there something else?A seismic shift came with that war – a change which is very rarely spoken or written about. Actually, the change was gradual and it pre-dated 1914. It was a change that was sweeping through the West: that of government or state involvement in our lives. In the UK it began with the reforms of the Liberal government of 1906–14, championed by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, known as the ‘terrible twins' by contemporaries. The Pensions Act of 1908, the People's Budget of 1909–10 (to ‘wage implacable warfare against poverty', declared Lloyd George) and the National Insurance Act of 1911 saw the Liberal government moving away from its tradition of laissez-faire systems – from classical liberalism and Gladstonian principles of self-help and self-reliance – towards larger, more active government by which taxes were collected from the wealthy and the proceeds redistributed. Afraid of losing votes to the emerging Labour party and the increasingly popular ideology of socialism, modern liberals betrayed their classical principles. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd George said ‘the partisan warfare that raged around these topics was so fierce that by 1913, this country was brought to the verge of civil war'. But these were small steps. The Pensions Act, for example, meant that men aged 70 and above could claim between two and five shillings per week from the government. But average male life- expectancy then was 47. Today it's 77. Using the same ratio, and, yes, I'm manipulating statistics here, that's akin to only awarding pensions to people above the age 117 today. Back then it was workable.To go back to my analogy of the prologue, this period was when the ‘train' was set in motion across the West. In 1914 it went up a gear. Here are the opening paragraphs of historian A. J. P. Taylor's most celebrated book, English History 1914–1945, published in 1965.I quote this long passage in full, because it is so telling.Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state, who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913–14, or rather less than 8% of the national income.The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries,from working excessive hours.The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the Second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.Since the beginning of WWI , the role that the state has played in our lives has not stopped growing. This has been especially so in the case of Glasgow. The state has spent more and more, provided more and more services, more subsidy, more education, more health care, more infrastructure, more accommodation, more benefits, more regulations, more laws, more protection. The more it has provided, the worse Glasgow has fared. Is this correlation a coincidence? I don't think so.The story of the rise and fall of Glasgow is a distilled version of the story of the rise and fall of industrial Britain – indeed the entire industrial West. In the next chapter I'm going to show you a simple mistake that goes on being made; a dynamic by which the state, whose very aim was to help Glasgow, has actually been its ‘pathway to breakdown' . . .Life After the State is available at Amazon, Apple Books and all good bookshops, with the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Good Sunday morning to you,I am just on a train home from Glasgow, where I have been gigging these past two nights. I've had a great time, as I always seem to do when I go north of the wall.But Glasgow on a Saturday night is something else. My hotel was right next to the station and so I was right in the thick of it. If I ever get to make a cacatopian, end-of-days, post-apocalyptic thriller, I'll just stroll through Glasgow city centre on a Friday or Saturday night with a camera to get all the B roll. It was like walking through a Hieronymus Bosch painting only with a Scottish accent. Little seems to have changed since I wrote that infamous chapter about Glasgow in Life After the State all those years ago. The only difference is that now it's more multi-ethnic. So many people are so off their heads. I lost count of the number of randoms wandering about just howling at the stars. The long days - it was still light at 10 o'clock - make the insanity all the more visible. Part of me finds it funny, but another part of me finds it so very sad that so many people let themselves get into this condition. It prompted me to revisit said chapter, and I offer it today as your Sunday thought piece.Just a couple of little notes, before we begin. This caught my eye on Friday. Our favourite uranium tech company, Lightbridge Fuels (NASDAQ:LTBR), has taken off again with Donald Trump's statement that he is going to quadruple US nuclear capacity. The stock was up 45% in a day. We first looked at it in October at $3. It hit $15 on Friday. It's one to sell on the spikes and buy on the dips, as this incredible chart shows.(In other news I have now listened twice to the Comstock Lode AGM, and I'll report back on that shortly too). ICYMI here is my mid-week commentary, which attracted a lot of attentionRight - Glasgow.(NB I haven't included references here. Needless to say, they are all there in the book. And sorry I don't have access to the audio of me reading this from my laptop, but, if you like, you can get the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. The book itself available at Amazon, Apple Books et al).How the Most Entrepreneurial City in Europe Became Its SickestThe cause of waves of unemployment is not capitalism, but governments …Friedrich Hayek, economist and philosopherIn the 18th and 19th centuries, the city of Glasgow in Scotland became enormously, stupendously rich. It happened quite organically, without planning. An entrepreneurial people reacted to their circumstances and, over time, turned Glasgow into an industrial and economic centre of such might that, by the turn of the 20th century, Glasgow was producing half the tonnage of Britain's ships and a quarter of all locomotives in the world. (Not unlike China's industrial dominance today). It was regarded as the best-governed city in Europe and popular histories compared it to the great imperial cities of Venice and Rome. It became known as the ‘Second City of the British Empire'.Barely 100 years later, it is the heroin capital of the UK, the murder capital of the UK and its East End, once home to Europe's largest steelworks, has been dubbed ‘the benefits capital of the UK'. Glasgow is Britain's fattest city: its men have Britain's lowest life expectancy – on a par with Palestine and Albania – and its unemployment rate is 50% higher than the rest of the UK.How did Glasgow manage all that?The growth in Glasgow's economic fortunes began in the latter part of the 17th century and the early 18th century. First, the city's location in the west of Scotland at the mouth of the river Clyde meant that it lay in the path of the trade winds and at least 100 nautical miles closer to America's east coast than other British ports – 200 miles closer than London. In the days before fossil fuels (which only found widespread use in shipping in the second half of the 19th century) the journey to Virginia was some two weeks shorter than the same journey from London or many of the other ports in Britain and Europe. Even modern sailors describe how easy the port of Glasgow is to navigate. Second, when England was at war with France – as it was repeatedly between 1688 and 1815 – ships travelling to Glasgow were less vulnerable than those travelling to ports further south. Glasgow's merchants took advantage and, by the early 18th century, the city had begun to assert itself as a trading hub. Manufactured goods were carried from Britain and Europe to North America and the Caribbean, where they were traded for increasingly popular commodities such as tobacco, cotton and sugar.Through the 18th century, the Glasgow merchants' business networks spread, and they took steps to further accelerate trade. New ships were introduced, bigger than those of rival ports, with fore and aft sails that enabled them to sail closer to the wind and reduce journey times. Trading posts were built to ensure that cargo was gathered and stored for collection, so that ships wouldn't swing idly at anchor. By the 1760s Glasgow had a 50% share of the tobacco trade – as much as the rest of Britain's ports combined. While the English merchants simply sold American tobacco in Europe at a profit, the Glaswegians actually extended credit to American farmers against future production (a bit like a crop future today, where a crop to be grown at a later date is sold now). The Virginia farmers could then use this credit to buy European goods, which the Glaswegians were only too happy to supply. This brought about the rise of financial institutions such as the Glasgow Ship Bank and the Glasgow Thistle Bank, which would later become part of the now-bailed-out, taxpayer-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).Their practices paid rewards. Glasgow's merchants earned a great deal of money. They built glamorous homes and large churches and, it seems, took on aristocratic airs – hence they became known as the ‘Tobacco Lords'. Numbering among them were Buchanan, Dunlop, Ingram, Wilson, Oswald, Cochrane and Glassford, all of whom had streets in the Merchant City district of Glasgow named after them (other streets, such as Virginia Street and Jamaica Street, refer to their trade destinations). In 1771, over 47 million pounds of tobacco were imported.However, the credit the Glaswegians extended to American tobacco farmers would backfire. The debts incurred by the tobacco farmers – which included future presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (who almost lost his farm as a result) – grew, and were among the grievances when the American War of Independence came in 1775. That war destroyed the tobacco trade for the Glaswegians. Much of the money that was owed to them was never repaid. Many of their plantations were lost. But the Glaswegians were entrepreneurial and they adapted. They moved on to other businesses, particularly cotton.By the 19th century, all sorts of local industry had emerged around the goods traded in the city. It was producing and exporting textiles, chemicals, engineered goods and steel. River engineering projects to dredge and deepen the Clyde (with a view to forming a deep- water port) had begun in 1768 and they would enable shipbuilding to become a major industry on the upper reaches of the river, pioneered by industrialists such as Robert Napier and John Elder. The final stretch of the Monkland Canal, linking the Forth and Clyde Canal at Port Dundas, was opened in 1795, facilitating access to the iron-ore and coal mines of Lanarkshire.The move to fossil-fuelled shipping in the latter 19th century destroyed the advantages that the trade winds had given Glasgow. But it didn't matter. Again, the people adapted. By the turn of the 20th century the Second City of the British Empire had become a world centre of industry and heavy engineering. It has been estimated that, between 1870 and 1914, it produced as much as one-fifth of the world's ships, and half of Britain's tonnage. Among the 25,000 ships it produced were some of the greatest ever built: the Cutty Sark, the Queen Mary, HMS Hood, the Lusitania, the Glenlee tall ship and even the iconic Mississippi paddle steamer, the Delta Queen. It had also become a centre for locomotive manufacture and, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, could boast the largest concentration of locomotive building works in Europe.It was not just Glasgow's industry and wealth that was so gargantuan. The city's contribution to mankind – made possible by the innovation and progress that comes with booming economies – would also have an international impact. Many great inventors either hailed from Glasgow or moved there to study or work. There's James Watt, for example, whose improvements to the steam engine were fundamental to the Industrial Revolution. One of Watt's employees, William Murdoch, has been dubbed ‘the Scot who lit the world' – he invented gas lighting, a new kind of steam cannon and waterproof paint. Charles MacIntosh gave us the raincoat. James Young, the chemist dubbed as ‘the father of the oil industry', gave us paraffin. William Thomson, known as Lord Kelvin, developed the science of thermodynamics, formulating the Kelvin scale of absolute temperature; he also managed the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.The turning point in the economic fortunes of Glasgow – indeed, of industrial Britain – was WWI. Both have been in decline ever since. By the end of the war, the British were drained, both emotionally and in terms of capital and manpower; the workers, the entrepreneurs, the ideas men, too many of them were dead or incapacitated. There was insufficient money and no appetite to invest. The post-war recession, and later the Great Depression, did little to help. The trend of the city was now one of inexorable economic decline.If Glasgow was the home of shipping and industry in 19th-century Britain, it became the home of socialism in the 20th century. Known by some as the ‘Red Clydeside' movement, the socialist tide in Scotland actually pre-dated the First World War. In 1906 came the city's first Labour Member of Parliament (MP), George Barnes – prior to that its seven MPs were all Conservatives or Liberal Unionists. In the spring of 1911, 11,000 workers at the Singer sewing-machine factory (run by an American corporation in Clydebank) went on strike to support 12 women who were protesting about new work practices. Singer sacked 400 workers, but the movement was growing – as was labour unrest. In the four years between 1910 and 1914 Clydebank workers spent four times as many days on strike than in the whole of the previous decade. The Scottish Trades Union Congress and its affiliations saw membership rise from 129,000 in 1909 to 230,000 in 1914.20The rise in discontent had much to do with Glasgow's housing. Conditions were bad, there was overcrowding, bad sanitation, housing was close to dirty, noxious and deafening industry. Unions grew quite organically to protect the interests of their members.Then came WWI, and inflation, as Britain all but abandoned gold. In 1915 many landlords responded by attempting to increase rent, but with their young men on the Western front, those left behind didn't have the means to pay these higher costs. If they couldn't, eviction soon followed. In Govan, an area of Glasgow where shipbuilding was the main occupation, women – now in the majority with so many men gone – organized opposition to the rent increases. There are photographs showing women blocking the entrance to tenements; officers who did get inside to evict tenants are said to have had their trousers pulled down.The landlords were attacked for being unpatriotic. Placards read: ‘While our men are fighting on the front line,the landlord is attacking us at home.' The strikes spread to other cities throughout the UK, and on 27 November 1915 the government introduced legislation to restrict rents to the pre-war level. The strikers were placated. They had won. The government was happy; it had dealt with the problem. The landlords lost out.In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, more frequent strikes crippled the city. In 1919 the ‘Bloody Friday' uprising prompted the prime minister, David Lloyd George, to deploy 10,000 troops and tanks onto the city's streets. By the 1930s Glasgow had become the main base of the Independent Labour Party, so when Labour finally came to power alone after WWII, its influence was strong. Glasgow has always remained a socialist stronghold. Labour dominates the city council, and the city has not had a Conservative MP for 30 years.By the late 1950s, Glasgow was losing out to the more competitive industries of Japan, Germany and elsewhere. There was a lack of investment. Union demands for workers, enforced by government legislation, made costs uneconomic and entrepreneurial activity arduous. With lack of investment came lack of innovation.Rapid de-industrialization followed, and by the 1960s and 70s most employment lay not in manufacturing, but in the service industries.Which brings us to today. On the plus side, Glasgow is still ranked as one of Europe's top 20 financial centres and is home to some leading Scottish businesses. But there is considerable downside.Recent studies have suggested that nearly 30% of Glasgow's working age population is unemployed. That's 50% higher than that of the rest of Scotland or the UK. Eighteen per cent of 16- to 19-year-olds are neither in school nor employed. More than one in five working-age Glaswegians have no sort of education that might qualify them for a job.In the city centre, the Merchant City, 50% of children are growing up in homes where nobody works. In the poorer neighbourhoods, such as Ruchill, Possilpark, or Dalmarnock, about 65% of children live in homes where nobody works – more than three times the national average. Figures from the Department of Work and Pensions show that 85% of working age adults from the district of Bridgeton claim some kind of welfare payment.Across the city, almost a third of the population regularly receives sickness or incapacity benefit, the highest rate of all UK cities. A 2008 World Health Organization report noted that in Glasgow's Calton, Bridgeton and Queenslie neighbourhoods, the average life expectancy for males is only 54. In contrast, residents of Glasgow's more affluent West End live to be 80 and virtually none of them are on the dole.Glasgow has the highest crime rate in Scotland. A recent report by the Centre for Social Justice noted that there are 170 teenage gangs in Glasgow. That's the same number as in London, which has over six times the population of Glasgow.It also has the dubious record of being Britain's murder capital. In fact, Glasgow had the highest homicide rate in Western Europe until it was overtaken in 2012 by Amsterdam, with more violent crime per head of population than even New York. What's more, its suicide rate is the highest in the UK.Then there are the drug and alcohol problems. The residents of the poorer neighbourhoods are an astounding six times more likely to die of a drugs overdose than the national average. Drug-related mortality has increased by 95% since 1997. There are 20,000 registered drug users – that's just registered – and the situation is not going to get any better: children who grow up in households where family members use drugs are seven times more likely to end up using drugs themselves than children who live in drug-free families.Glasgow has the highest incidence of liver diseases from alcohol abuse in all of Scotland. In the East End district of Dennistoun, these illnesses kill more people than heart attacks and lung cancer combined. Men and women are more likely to die of alcohol-related deaths in Glasgow than anywhere else in the UK. Time and time again Glasgow is proud winner of the title ‘Fattest City in Britain'. Around 40% of the population are obese – 5% morbidly so – and it also boasts the most smokers per capita.I have taken these statistics from an array of different sources. It might be in some cases that they're overstated. I know that I've accentuated both the 18th- and 19th-century positives, as well as the 20th- and 21st-century negatives to make my point. Of course, there are lots of healthy, happy people in Glasgow – I've done many gigs there and I loved it. Despite the stories you hear about intimidating Glasgow audiences, the ones I encountered were as good as any I've ever performed in front of. But none of this changes the broad-brush strokes: Glasgow was a once mighty city that now has grave social problems. It is a city that is not fulfilling its potential in the way that it once did. All in all, it's quite a transformation. How has it happened?Every few years a report comes out that highlights Glasgow's various problems. Comments are then sought from across the political spectrum. Usually, those asked to comment agree that the city has grave, ‘long-standing and deep-rooted social problems' (the words of Stephen Purcell, former leader of Glasgow City Council); they agree that something needs to be done, though they don't always agree on what that something is.There's the view from the right: Bill Aitken of the Scottish Conservatives, quoted in The Sunday Times in 2008, said, ‘We simply don't have the jobs for people who are not academically inclined. Another factor is that some people are simply disinclined to work. We have got to find something for these people to do, to give them a reason to get up in the morning and give them some self-respect.' There's the supposedly apolitical view of anti-poverty groups: Peter Kelly, director of the Glasgow-based Poverty Alliance, responded, ‘We need real, intensive support for people if we are going to tackle poverty. It's not about a lack of aspiration, often people who are unemployed or on low incomes are stymied by a lack of money and support from local and central government.' And there's the view from the left. In the same article, Patricia Ferguson, the Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Maryhill, also declared a belief in government regeneration of the area. ‘It's about better housing, more jobs, better education and these things take years to make an impact. I believe that the huge regeneration in the area is fostering a lot more community involvement and cohesion. My real hope is that these figures will take a knock in the next five or ten years.' At the time of writing in 2013, five years later, the figures have worsened.All three points of view agree on one thing: the government must do something.In 2008 the £435 million Fairer Scotland Fund – established to tackle poverty – was unveiled, aiming to allocate cash to the country's most deprived communities. Its targets included increasing average income among lower wage-earners and narrowing the poverty gap between Scotland's best- and worst-performing regions by 2017. So far, it hasn't met those targets.In 2008 a report entitled ‘Power for The Public' examined the provision of health, education and justice in Scotland. It said the budgets for these three areas had grown by 55%, 87% and 44% respectively over the last decade, but added that this had produced ‘mixed results'. ‘Mixed results' means it didn't work. More money was spent and the figures got worse.After the Centre for Social Justice report on Glasgow in 2008, Iain Duncan Smith (who set up this think tank, and is now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions) said, ‘Policy must deal with the pathways to breakdown – high levels of family breakdown, high levels of failed education, debt and unemployment.'So what are ‘pathways to breakdown'? If you were to look at a chart of Glasgow's prosperity relative to the rest of the world, its peak would have come somewhere around 1910. With the onset of WWI in 1914 its decline accelerated, and since then the falls have been relentless and inexorable. It's not just Glasgow that would have this chart pattern, but the whole of industrial Britain. What changed the trend? Yes, empires rise and fall, but was British decline all a consequence of WWI? Or was there something else?A seismic shift came with that war – a change which is very rarely spoken or written about. Actually, the change was gradual and it pre-dated 1914. It was a change that was sweeping through the West: that of government or state involvement in our lives. In the UK it began with the reforms of the Liberal government of 1906–14, championed by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, known as the ‘terrible twins' by contemporaries. The Pensions Act of 1908, the People's Budget of 1909–10 (to ‘wage implacable warfare against poverty', declared Lloyd George) and the National Insurance Act of 1911 saw the Liberal government moving away from its tradition of laissez-faire systems – from classical liberalism and Gladstonian principles of self-help and self-reliance – towards larger, more active government by which taxes were collected from the wealthy and the proceeds redistributed. Afraid of losing votes to the emerging Labour party and the increasingly popular ideology of socialism, modern liberals betrayed their classical principles. In his War Memoirs, Lloyd George said ‘the partisan warfare that raged around these topics was so fierce that by 1913, this country was brought to the verge of civil war'. But these were small steps. The Pensions Act, for example, meant that men aged 70 and above could claim between two and five shillings per week from the government. But average male life- expectancy then was 47. Today it's 77. Using the same ratio, and, yes, I'm manipulating statistics here, that's akin to only awarding pensions to people above the age 117 today. Back then it was workable.To go back to my analogy of the prologue, this period was when the ‘train' was set in motion across the West. In 1914 it went up a gear. Here are the opening paragraphs of historian A. J. P. Taylor's most celebrated book, English History 1914–1945, published in 1965.I quote this long passage in full, because it is so telling.Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country forever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state, who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913–14, or rather less than 8% of the national income.The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries,from working excessive hours.The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman's food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the Second World war was again to increase. The history of the English state and of the English people merged for the first time.Since the beginning of WWI , the role that the state has played in our lives has not stopped growing. This has been especially so in the case of Glasgow. The state has spent more and more, provided more and more services, more subsidy, more education, more health care, more infrastructure, more accommodation, more benefits, more regulations, more laws, more protection. The more it has provided, the worse Glasgow has fared. Is this correlation a coincidence? I don't think so.The story of the rise and fall of Glasgow is a distilled version of the story of the rise and fall of industrial Britain – indeed the entire industrial West. In the next chapter I'm going to show you a simple mistake that goes on being made; a dynamic by which the state, whose very aim was to help Glasgow, has actually been its ‘pathway to breakdown' . . .Life After the State is available at Amazon, Apple Books and all good bookshops, with the audiobook at Audible, Apple Books and all good audiobookshops. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

When two Internet cables in the Baltic Sea were reported as broken last November, researchers at the RIPE NCC turned to RIPE Atlas to examine the damage. In this episode, Emile Aben discusses what his analysis uncovered about the impact of these and similar incidents in the months that followed, and how the Internet remained resilient against them.Show notes00:44 - TeleGeography build and maintain massive data sets that are used to monitor, forecast, and map the telecommunications industry. Their submarine cable map is a valuable resource in tracking Internet cable incidents.00:52 - Some early reports on these incidents from Mobile Europe, Reuters, The Register01:08 - Visual guide from the Guardian exploring circumstances surrounding incidents in the Baltic Sea.01:13 - RIPE Atlas01:36 - On RIPE Labs: Does the Internet Route Around Damage? - Baltic Sea Cable Cuts; A Deep Dive Into the Baltic Sea Cable Cuts02:13 - First episode of the RIPE Labs podcast: Measuring Damage on the Internet03:14 - Emile's earlier articles on the Ukraine: The Ukrainian Internet05:25 - RIPE Atlas anchors12:40 - Help expand RIPE Atlas coverage! Learn more about what's involved in hosting a RIPE Atlas anchor.27:05 - The Internet in North Korea - Hanging by a Single Thread?32:50 - Lord Kelvin said both that "To measure is to know" and "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it". Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having weathered the Holidays, flu and chest colds, the start of another academic term, and scheduling hurly-burly, our intrepid Professors are back at, this time in an episode that had no fixed agenda (and thus not purpose or end). For Dr. Jenkins Byzantine course see here: https://tinyurl.com/LuxchristiByzantium And Dr. Moritz's article on AI here (https://tinyurl.com/JMoritzAI) and on Lord Kelvin here (https://tinyurl.com/MoritzKelvin)

Fundamentals of Metric Monitoring podcast episode with speaker Fred Schenkelberg Following along the idea stated by Lord Kelvin, "...when you can measure what your are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it...", we have organizations measuring reliability performance. Not that measuring something is managing it, those are two different activies. […] The post Fundamentals of Metric Monitoring appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Der englische Gelehrte Lord Kelvin soll 1900 verkündet haben, alles Wesentliche sei bereits entdeckt und die Physik somit fast am Ende. Doch Kelvin war kein überheblicher Forscher - den behaupteten Unsinn hat er nie gesagt. Lorenzen, Dirk www.deutschlandfunk.de, Die USA wählen

Het absolute 0-punt is de laagste temperatuur denkbaar. Dat punt, 273 graden onder nul, werd berekend door de Britse natuurkundige Lord Kelvin. Toen duidelijk was dat er in theorie een laagste temperatuur bestaat, begon de race om dat punt ook in de praktijk te bereiken. Wetenschappers gingen aan de slag met het afkoelen van gassen. Ruim een eeuw geleden werd met vloeibaar helium het nulpunt op een paar graden na bereikt. De wetenschap heeft het nu voor elkaar om tot zelfs een miljoenste graad boven het absolute nulpunt te koelen. Hoe doen ze dat? En, zal de wetenschap die allerlaagste temperatuur ooit bereiken?Presentatie: Laura WismansGast: Dorine Schenk & Hendrik SpieringRedactie en montage: Elze van DrielHeeft u vragen, suggesties of ideeën over onze journalistiek? Mail dan naar onze ombudsman via ombudsman@nrc.nlZie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is there anything in the universe that is not moving? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions about stillness, humans on Mars, and what songs they would add to the Voyager Golden Record. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-space-travelers-delight/Thanks to our Patrons Scott Nelson, Bjørn Furuknap, Paul Robinson, Jonasz Napiecek, Micheal Briggs, Blake Wolfe, Brett Maragno, Adam Stephensen, Cicero Artefon, and Paul Lesperance for supporting us this week.

Hoje é dia do "Influencers da Ciência", um Spin-Off do podcast "Intervalo de Confiança". Neste programa trazemos o nome de Influencers que de fato trouxeram algo de positivo para a sociedade, aqueles que expandiram as fronteiras do conhecimento científico e hoje permitiram o desenvolvimento de diversas áreas.Esse mês celebramos o aniversário de 200 anos de um dos nomes mais importantes da ciência: Sir William Thompson, o famoso Lord Kelvin. Sim, ele mesmo, da unidade de medida de temperatura. Apresentado por Kézia Nogueira, esse episódio fala sobre a vida e obra daquele que formulou as duas primeiras leis da termodinâmica, contribuiu para a unificação da física então existente, expandindo seus limites.A Pauta foi escrita por Sofia Massaro. A edição foi feita por Leo Oliveira e a vitrine do episódio feita por Tatiane do Vale em colaboração com as Inteligências Artificiais Dall-E, da OpenAI. A coordenação de redação e de redes sociais é de Tatiane do Vale. A seleção de cortes é de responsabilidade Júlia Frois, a direção de Comunidade de Sofia Massaro e a gerência financeira é de Kézia Nogueira. As vinhetas de todos os episódios foram compostas por Rafael Chino e Leo Oliveira.Visite nosso site em: https://intervalodeconfianca.com.br/Conheça nossa loja virtual em: https://intervalodeconfianca.com.br/lojaPara apoiar esse projeto: https://intervalodeconfianca.com.br/apoieSiga nossas redes sociais:- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iconfpod/- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/IntervalodeConfianca- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iconfpod- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/iConfPod

In this episode I spoke to Nigel Banks, Technical Director at Octopus Energy. Nigel is  author of Fabric Fifth which many now see as the common sense approach to retrofitting and decarbonising homes. Nigel spoke in a personal capacity. I was extremely grateful he came on the show.  I have been critical of Octopus in certain regards but am also well aware they are doing important work. It was a pleasure to have Nigel speak on my show. I also chatted with Dan Kelly, Managing Director at Dartmoor Energy. Dan has nine years experience with heat pump systems as well as being a qualified PAS2035 retrofit coordinator and assessor.  For me, the episode helps illustrate that the fa bric first mantra has possibly led the UK down the wrong path.  And it could be argued there has been a waste of Government funds, essentially tax payers money. The most vehement of fabric first advocates, to me, clearly do not understand why the forefathers of thermodynamics got excited about heat pumps: things which used work to do heat rather than things which use heat to do work.  The former being able to reach well above the 100 percent efficiency cap of the later. It highlights how many are not taking ownership of their own learning and understanding what people like Lord Kelvin knew back in 1852.It has been far too easy for people to  disseminate "fabric first".  Quite honestly it is often laziness and highlights a lack of professional developmentIt is totally understandable that consumers do not understand the science of heat but for those involved in the discourse, especially if they are being paid and funded via money from the tax payer they need to take ownership of their own learning and bring them selves up to speed. What's discussed:UKREiiF event, and lack of heat pump knowledgeFramework lists for Social Housing and Local AuthoritiesConflicts of interest regarding PAS2035Cavity Wall Insulation (and Zone 4)LA's are stuck between a rock and a hard placeHeat Pump Optimisers such as Passiv UK and HomelyTackling fuel poverty at scaleThe able to pay market vs the fuel poverty marketTrust Mark - does it work? Possibly notUnconscious incompetenceI'd like to thank Grundfos for sponsoring this season of BetaTalkSupport the Show.

Foundations of Amateur Radio In the early 1920's long distance communication using radio was a growing interest. At the time it was thought that communication that we take for granted today, over long-distance HF, was limited to long wave or extremely low frequencies, the lower the better. With that restriction came massive antennas and high power transmitters, available only to commercial and government stations. Then radio amateurs let the cat out of the bag by discovering that so-called "short wave" radio could be heard all across the globe. As an aside, today, "short wave" seems quaint, because we've discovered that even shorter waves can be used to communicate, right down to nanometre communication as shown by NASA in its XCOM technology demonstration on the 12th of May, 2019. On a daily basis we use 120 mm and 60 mm waves when we use 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi for example. As a result of the discovery of short wave radio, a gold-rush emerged. There was a hunger in the community for radio, businesses and communities adopted the new medium, there were radio courses being taught in Universities, church services and other forms of entertainment started filling the airwaves. Comedy, talk shows, music, concerts, serials and dramas spread across the electromagnetic spectrum and radio amateurs who had discovered the phenomenon were running the risk of being pushed aside by commercial interests willing to pay for access. As I've said before, in many countries at the time, amateur radio was actively discouraged, sometimes it was even illegal. Before we continue, I should quote some statements made about radio before the gold-rush which at the time was seen as "Telegraphy Without Wires". In 1865 a Boston Post editorial proclaimed: "Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, said: "Radio has no future." and went on to say: "Wireless is all very well but I'd rather send a message by a boy on a pony", he also said: "Heavier-than-air machines are impossible." and "X-Rays will prove to be a hoax." Not all statements aged as badly. The New York Times said in 1899: "All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them." Back to the IARU. Before a business trip to Europe, the board of directors of the ARRL asked their President, Hiram Percy Maxim, to encourage international amateur relations, which on 12 March 1924 resulted in a dinner given, at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris according to Hiram, a "certain dining room" by "the most distinguished radio men of Europe." Hiram goes on to say that: "This A.R.R.L. President has sat in at a good many very impressive radio meetings in the past, ranging from Maine to California, but he has never sat in at a meeting where there was quite as much thrill as at this meeting in Paris where the amateurs of nine different countries sat down together." The countries were, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, Canada and the United States. Hiram remarks that "Denmark was represented by a letter in which regret was expressed at the inability to have a representative present and asked that the amateurs of Denmark be counted in." You should dig up a copy of the May 1924 edition of QST to get a sense of occasion where the ARRL president compares the thrill of the "hamfest" to the atmosphere during that dinner and pities those who have never experienced it. During the meeting it was decided to form an organisation which was going to be called the International Amateur Radio Union. A temporary committee was formed that appointed Hiram Maxim as the chair and Dr. Pierre Corret as secretary to take charge of the details to create a permanent organisation. The final decision was to call for a general Amateur Congress on the Easter Holiday of 1925 where the IARU would be formalised. On the 14th of April, 1925, 250 radio amateurs from 23 countries met in Paris and over the next four days the details of the new Union were hammered out. Among those details were that the organisation was chiefly for "the coordination and fostering of international two-way amateur communication, that it should be an organisation by individual memberships until strong national societies had been formed in the principal nations and a federation would be feasible, and that its headquarters would be located in the USA." The constitution was written over a day and night session and by the morning of the 17th of April, every delegate had a copy and then the hard work began, approving the constitution, section by section, by the entire Congress. On the morning of the 18th, elections were held and Hiram U1AW was elected international president, Gerald G2NM, international vice-president, Jean F8GO and Frank Z4AA councillors-at-large and Kenneth U1BHW international secretary-treasurer. With the election complete, the IARU was officially in business. The new constitution was published in English, French and Esperanto. Why Esperanto, you ask? In the middle of 1924, the ARRL adopted Esperanto as its official auxiliary language. According to Clinton B. DeSoto, W1CBD, author of a fabulous book "Two Hundred Meters And Down - The Story of Amateur Radio", that might have been the highest official recognition that language ever received. Credit to Clinton for much of the time line and wording I've shared here. I'll leave you with one final quote from his book. Clinton W1CBD writes: "One day amateur television is bound to come, however remote though that day may be. It is, indubitably, inevitable that one day amateurs will be able to see each other, as well as talk with each other; and when that day comes the development of amateur radio as a social institution will have taken another great step forward - at least according to present standards. But by then the standards will have changed, and amateurs will have something more to work toward, and the ultimate will still not have arrived. There are always new goals, new horizons. May it fall to amateur radio to march many steps toward the goal of complete knowledge ere its footprints are lost in the sands of time!" I'm Onno VK6FLAB

“La radio no tiene futuro. Las máquinas voladoras que pesan más que el aire son imposibles. Se demostrará que los rayos X son un engaño” Lord Kelvin. Frases así fueron dichas en un tiempo en el que la radio apenas emergía como un invento que se veía con recelo. Hoy, hay más 35 millones de dispositivos de audio. ¿Quieres saber cómo llegamos a esto? No te pierdas la segunda parte de la historia de la radio. Óyelo en www.urosarioradio.co y Spreaker.

Φωτιές στην Χιλή Η ιδέα της θερμοκρασίας Κελσίου και Φαρενάιτ Η ιδέα ενός χαμηλότερου ορίου Jacques Charles, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Lord Kelvin Το τριπλό σημείο του νερού Γιατί 273.15 βαθμοί; Αρνητικές θερμοκρασίες (what?!) Post-show: Apple Vision Pro Επικοινωνία: notatop10.fm/contact

This episode explores the journey of natural philosophy from encompassing multiple fields in the ancient world to becoming synonymous with physics by the mid-19th century. It discusses the works of pioneers like Isaac Newton, Lord Kelvin, and Robert Boyle, and delves into philosophical debates and concepts that continue to influence modern scientific thinking. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy

The latest podcast in the Ahead of the Curves series, supported by Stifel Europe, is on the subject of Experts and Expertise.Responding to an AI enthusiast who had Tweeted a picture of 'what the rest of the Mona Lisa looked like'  the picture above appeared as a response with the caption - "Ever wonder what Venus de Milo's Arms look like? With the power of AI our team has recreated it."AI promises many things, most of which involve taking over from experts, professionals, and even great sculptors. Is it getting too smart for its own good? And is our judgment - borne of years of sometimes bitter experience - going to see it heavily regulated?How can you tell when you're dealing with a genuine expert? Real expertise must pass three tests. First, it must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of the expert's peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results. Brain surgeons, for example, must be skilful with their scalpels but must also have successful outcomes with their patients. A chess player must be able to win matches in tournaments. Finally, true expertise can be replicated and measured in the lab. As the British scientist Lord Kelvin stated, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”We've interviewed three experts in their fields - three individuals at the top of their professional game. They are intentionally diverse: psychology, investment banking and paediatric surgery. If - for whatever reason - you venture into their fields - they come heartily recommend. (I must apologize that they are all men. It just worked out like that. And it won't happen again)  What I've asked all three of them is first, what the nature of their expertise consists of, secondly how they acquired that superior competence and thirdly if they feel that the advent of Artificial Intelligence - Chat GPT and its spawn - will mean that their like becomes redundant in years to come. Will their like get chucked onto the scrap heap of history? Dr Tomas Chamorrow-Premuzic is a psychologist and professor of Business Psychology at Columbia University. His new book I Human is about AI and questions what makes us Homo sapiens unique. Gareth Hunt is an investment banker at Stifel and leads their Law Firms and Litigation Finance advisory team in Investment Banking. He's especially interested in how artificial intelligence might erode the status and need for professionals including lawyers. Bruce Richard is a retired paediatric surgeon who specialised in the repair of cleft lip and palate in children. It took him a long while to become an expert in his field. He talks about robotics in surgery and the difficulties of passing on that expertise to coming generations of surgeons in training. We even get to discuss the medical ethics and in and outs of The Brazilian Butt Lift. 

"There is nothing new to discover in physics", declared the British physicist Lord Kelvin in 1900. That is no longer true. Today it is becoming increasingly clear that there are problems that physics, as we know it, doesn't seem to be able to solve. Perhaps we just need more data, perhaps we need a new fundamental theory of reality. In this six-part series, host Miriam Frankel from The Conversation will take you on a mind-blowing journey from the smallest to the largest conundrums, exploring curled-up dimensions, consciousness and parallel universes along the way. We will discover the greatest mysteries facing physicists today – and discuss the radical proposals for solving them. The first episode will be available on March 8. Great Mysteries of Physics is produced by Hannah Fisher with sound design by Eloise Stevens. You can sign up to The Conversation's free daily email here.Great Mysteries of Physics is a podcast series supported by FQXi. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Como bien decía Lord Kelvin “lo que no se mide, no se mejora”. Por dicho motivo, si queremos evolucionar la cultura preventiva y el liderazgo en seguridad y salud en nuestra organización, es clave disponer de métodos que nos permitan analizar nuestro punto de partida inicial. Lee el artículo en https://prevencontrol.com/prevenblog/donde-esta-tu-organizacion-en-cuanto-a-cultura-preventiva/

Florence Nightingale and her team were nursing four miles of patients. 

Lord Kelvin nem hitt a repülőgépben és a röntgensugárzásban, de van, aki egykor úgy gondolta, hogy központi csillagunk szénből áll. Néha a legnagyobb elméink, legelismertebb tudósaink és gondolkodóink is tesznek olyan előrejelzéseket, amik később hibásnak bizonyulnak: listánkban olyan jóslatokat és megnyilatkozásokat gyűjtöttünk össze, amiket később maga a tudomány cáfolt meg. https://parallaxis.blog.hu/2022/11/28/re_parapod_ep9 https://soundcloud.com/parallaxisuniverzum/re_parapod_ep9 https://youtu.be/zSwITL5c4Gg A Parallaxis Patreon oldalán támogatóink számára még a premier előtt elérhetővé tesszük podcastjeink legújabb epizódját! https://www.patreon.com/parallaxis Podcastjeink epizódjai elérhetőek Facebookon, Soundcloud- és YouTube-csatornánkon, valamint Google Podcasts-en, iTunes-on és Spotify-on is! Kattints és válassz platformot! https://parallaxis.blog.hu/2021/07/16/podcast_platformok

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Prizes for ML Safety Benchmark Ideas, published by joshc on October 28, 2022 on LessWrong. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin (paraphrased) Website: benchmarking.mlsafety.org – receiving submissions until August 2023. ML Safety lacks good benchmarks, so the Center for AI Safety is offering $50,000 - $100,000 prizes for benchmark ideas (or full research papers). We will award at least $100,000 total and up to $500,000 depending on the quality of submissions. What kinds of ideas are you looking for? Ultimately, we will are looking for benchmark ideas that motivate or advance research that reduces existential risks from AI. To provide more guidance, we've outlined four research categories along with example ideas. Alignment: building models that represent and safely optimize difficult-to-specify human values. Monitoring: discovering unintended model functionality. Robustness: designing systems to be reliable in the face of adversaries and highly unusual situations. Safety Applications: using ML to address broader risks related to how ML systems are handled (e.g. for cybersecurity or forecasting). See Open Problems in AI X-Risk [PAIS #5] for example research directions in these categories and their relation to existential risk. What are the requirements for submissions? Datasets or implementations are not necessary, though empirical testing can make it easier for the judges to evaluate your idea. All that is required is a brief write-up (guidelines here). How the write-up is formatted isn't very important as long as it effectively pitches the benchmark and concretely explains how it would be implemented. If you don't have prior experience designing benchmarks, we recommend reading this document for generic tips. Who are the judges? Dan Hendrycks, Paul Christiano, and Collin Burns. If you have questions, they might be answered on the website, or you can post them here. We would also greatly appreciate it if you helped to spread the word about this opportunity. Thanks to Sidney Hough and Kevin Liu for helping to make this happen and to Collin Burns and Akash Wasil for feedback on the website. This project is supported by the Future Fund regranting program. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Prizes for ML Safety Benchmark Ideas, published by joshc on October 28, 2022 on LessWrong. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin (paraphrased) Website: benchmarking.mlsafety.org – receiving submissions until August 2023. ML Safety lacks good benchmarks, so the Center for AI Safety is offering $50,000 - $100,000 prizes for benchmark ideas (or full research papers). We will award at least $100,000 total and up to $500,000 depending on the quality of submissions. What kinds of ideas are you looking for? Ultimately, we will are looking for benchmark ideas that motivate or advance research that reduces existential risks from AI. To provide more guidance, we've outlined four research categories along with example ideas. Alignment: building models that represent and safely optimize difficult-to-specify human values. Monitoring: discovering unintended model functionality. Robustness: designing systems to be reliable in the face of adversaries and highly unusual situations. Safety Applications: using ML to address broader risks related to how ML systems are handled (e.g. for cybersecurity or forecasting). See Open Problems in AI X-Risk [PAIS #5] for example research directions in these categories and their relation to existential risk. What are the requirements for submissions? Datasets or implementations are not necessary, though empirical testing can make it easier for the judges to evaluate your idea. All that is required is a brief write-up (guidelines here). How the write-up is formatted isn't very important as long as it effectively pitches the benchmark and concretely explains how it would be implemented. If you don't have prior experience designing benchmarks, we recommend reading this document for generic tips. Who are the judges? Dan Hendrycks, Paul Christiano, and Collin Burns. If you have questions, they might be answered on the website, or you can post them here. We would also greatly appreciate it if you helped to spread the word about this opportunity. Thanks to Sidney Hough and Kevin Liu for helping to make this happen and to Collin Burns and Akash Wasil for feedback on the website. This project is supported by the Future Fund regranting program. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Prizes for ML Safety Benchmark Ideas, published by Joshc on October 28, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” – Lord Kelvin (paraphrased) Website: benchmarking.mlsafety.org – receiving submissions until August 2023. ML Safety lacks good benchmarks, so the Center for AI Safety is offering $50,000 - $100,000 prizes for benchmark ideas (or full research papers). We will award at least $100,000 total and up to $500,000 depending on the quality of submissions. What kinds of ideas are you looking for? Ultimately, we will are looking for benchmark ideas that motivate or advance research that reduces existential risks from AI. To provide more guidance, we've outlined four research categories along with example ideas. Alignment: building models that represent and safely optimize difficult-to-specify human values. Monitoring: discovering unintended model functionality. Robustness: designing systems to be reliable in the face of adversaries and highly unusual situations. Safety Applications: using ML to address broader risks related to how ML systems are handled (e.g. for cybersecurity or forecasting). See Open Problems in AI X-Risk [PAIS #5] for example research directions in these categories and their relation to existential risk. What are the requirements for submissions? Datasets or implementations are not necessary, though empirical testing can make it easier for the judges to evaluate your idea. All that is required is a brief write-up (guidelines here). How the write-up is formatted isn't very important as long as it effectively pitches the benchmark and concretely explains how it would be implemented. If you don't have prior experience designing benchmarks, we recommend reading this document for generic tips. Who are the judges? Dan Hendrycks, Paul Christiano, and Collin Burns. If you have questions, they might be answered on the website, or you can post them here. We would also greatly appreciate it if you helped to spread the word about this opportunity. Thanks to Sidney Hough and Kevin Liu for helping to make this happen and to Collin Burns and Akash Wasil for feedback on the website. This project is supported by the Future Fund regranting program. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

The Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution explains the behavior of gases nicely, and went well with the Ideal Gas Law of Clapeyton, until van der Waals modified the Ideal Gas Law a bit. We learn about absolute temperature and Lord Kelvin. Van 't Hoff connects the gas laws to osmotic pressure and ionic solutions. We hear of Raoult's Law and freezing-point depression. Finally we arrive at Svante Arrhenius's (barely passing) doctoral dissertation on ionic dissociation, and his activation energy for reactions.Support the show

Quickie with Bob: Friction; News Items: The Neuroscience of Politics, Cozy Lava Tubes, Video Games and Well-Being, Invisible Dark Matter; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Lord Kelvin, Green Methane, Universe Isotropy; Science or Fiction

Quickie with Bob: Friction; News Items: The Neuroscience of Politics, Cozy Lava Tubes, Video Games and Well-Being, Invisible Dark Matter; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Lord Kelvin, Green Methane, Universe Isotropy; Science or Fiction

Šta je tamna materija? Kako je otkrivena? Kako su još krajem 19. veka Lord Kelvin i Poenkare došli do prvih ideja da postoji nedostajuća masa u svemiru koju ne vidimo, a koja nam je neophodna da bismo opisali kretanja zvezda? Šta su rotacione krive galaksija i kako smo na osnovu posmatranja brzina kretanja zvezda u galaksijama zaključili da galaksijama nedostaje masa? Kako je na osnovu upoređivanja vidljive i dinamičke mase Fritz Zwicky došao do sličnog zaključka i kako toj "nedostajućoj masi" dao naziv "tamna materija" 1930-ih godina? Kako je izračunao (i zašto je pogrešio) broj koji nam govori koliko puta više ima tamne materije od vidljive, barionske materije?Šta su nam novo donela radio posmatranja, a posebno posmatranja atomskog vodonika na 21 cm talasne dužine? Kako su Vera Rubin i W. Kent Ford, Jr. otkrili većinu univerzuma i došli do dobrog broja odnosa tamne i vidljive materije?  Na koje još načine možemo da indirektno detektujemo tamnu materiju? Kako smo otkrili njeno postojanje preko gravitacionih sočiva, kako preko anizotropije u kosmičkom mikrotalasnom pozadinskom zračenju i zašto nam anizotropija u CMB-u daje zaključak da je najverovatniji opis Univerzuma onaj koji nudi Lambda-CDM model? Kako MOND ne uspeva da objasni Svemir i zašto je danas paradigma o postojanju tamne materije opšte prihvaćena u nauci? Šta je hladna, a šta topla tamna materija? Kako na čestičnom nivou tragamo za tamnom materijom? Koji su načini indirektne potrage za WIMP-ovima? Kako posmatranjem gama zračenja iz centra Mlečnog puta (ili drugih galaksija) možemo da dođemo do indirektne detekcije tamne materije? Kako tamna materija interaguje međusobno na čestičnom nivou? Koji eksperimenti postoje namenjeni direktnoj detekciji mnogobrojnih kandidata za čestice tamne materije? Sve ovo i još mnogo drugih tema vezanih za tamnu materiju možete čuti u ovoj epizodi Radio Galaksije. Gošća je bila Jovana Petrović, doktorantkinja astrofizike koja se bavi gama zračenjem iz centra Mlečnog puta na Matematičkom fakultetu u Beogradu i game math dizajnom u kompaniji  Playstudios Europe. Support the show

Nombreuses sont les théories scientifiques cherchant à comprendre comment la vie a pu apparaître et se développer à la surface de la Terre. La panspermie est l'une d'entre elles. La vie venue d'une autre planète La panspermie est une théorie selon laquelle les premiers micro-organismes vivants viendraient de l'espace et auraient été apportés sur Terre par divers moyens. Une telle idée avait déjà été exprimée, voilà environ 2.500 ans, par le philosophe grec Anaxagore. La théorie est ensuite un peu délaissée, pour ne réapparaître qu'au XIXe siècle. Le physicien anglais Lord Kelvin imagine alors que, sous l'effet d'une collision avec d'autres corps célestes, des morceaux de roche aient pu se détacher d'une planète où la vie serait apparue. De petits organismes, enfermés dans ces roches, auraient pu voyager dans l'espace et atterrir sur notre planète. Au début du XXe siècle, le chimiste suédois Svante Arrhenius donne plus de consistance à cette théorie, en rappelant que certains micro-organismes ont survécu dans un bain d'azote liquide et que le souffle provoqué par la lumière des étoiles aurait pu propulser des particules de vie dans l'espace. La panspermie est moins mise en avant de nos jours, même si elle a encore des adeptes, dont certains imaginent même que des maladies ont pu être apportées sur Terre par des virus venus de l'espace. Une théorie qui se défend Même s'ils ne sont pas très nombreux, les tenants de la panspermie ont pourtant des arguments à faire valoir. En premier lieu, une telle théorie rendrait mieux compte de l'apparition de la vie sur Terre. En effet, pour certains scientifiques, le temps qui s'est écoulé entre la formation de la Terre et celle des premiers organismes vivants ne serait pas assez long pour permettre la mise en place d'un processus aussi complexe. Par ailleurs, il n'est pas impossible que certaines planètes proches de la Terre, comme Mars, aient pu accueillir la vie à un moment de leur histoire. Enfin, les comètes et certains astéroïdes pourraient se révéler d'excellents véhicules pour le transport intersidéral de ces particules de vie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nombreuses sont les théories scientifiques cherchant à comprendre comment la vie a pu apparaître et se développer à la surface de la Terre. La panspermie est l'une d'entre elles.La vie venue d'une autre planèteLa panspermie est une théorie selon laquelle les premiers micro-organismes vivants viendraient de l'espace et auraient été apportés sur Terre par divers moyens.Une telle idée avait déjà été exprimée, voilà environ 2.500 ans, par le philosophe grec Anaxagore. La théorie est ensuite un peu délaissée, pour ne réapparaître qu'au XIXe siècle.Le physicien anglais Lord Kelvin imagine alors que, sous l'effet d'une collision avec d'autres corps célestes, des morceaux de roche aient pu se détacher d'une planète où la vie serait apparue. De petits organismes, enfermés dans ces roches, auraient pu voyager dans l'espace et atterrir sur notre planète.Au début du XXe siècle, le chimiste suédois Svante Arrhenius donne plus de consistance à cette théorie, en rappelant que certains micro-organismes ont survécu dans un bain d'azote liquide et que le souffle provoqué par la lumière des étoiles aurait pu propulser des particules de vie dans l'espace.La panspermie est moins mise en avant de nos jours, même si elle a encore des adeptes, dont certains imaginent même que des maladies ont pu être apportées sur Terre par des virus venus de l'espace.Une théorie qui se défendMême s'ils ne sont pas très nombreux, les tenants de la panspermie ont pourtant des arguments à faire valoir. En premier lieu, une telle théorie rendrait mieux compte de l'apparition de la vie sur Terre.En effet, pour certains scientifiques, le temps qui s'est écoulé entre la formation de la Terre et celle des premiers organismes vivants ne serait pas assez long pour permettre la mise en place d'un processus aussi complexe.Par ailleurs, il n'est pas impossible que certaines planètes proches de la Terre, comme Mars, aient pu accueillir la vie à un moment de leur histoire. Enfin, les comètes et certains astéroïdes pourraient se révéler d'excellents véhicules pour le transport intersidéral de ces particules de vie. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Episode: 2235 John Perry, Lord Kelvin, Earth's age, and the role of conduction and convection.  Today, we see history evolving.

In perhaps his most comprehensive interview to date, Saifedean talks to Lex Fridman about the history of money, the foundations of economics, and why bitcoin represents a pathway to a more peaceful and prosperous world. Starting from Lex's question “What is money?”, Saifedean draws on insights from his most recent book, The Fiat Standard, to take the listener on a four-hour historical journey. He explains how money emerged as a market good; why the gold standard developed in Britain and spread across the world; and the intriguing historical circumstances that led to government-controlled fiat money becoming the global medium of exchange. By asking fundamental questions about money, the purpose of economics, and the technical foundations of bitcoin, Lex prompts Saifedean to present a first-principles case for free exchange, non-aggression and bitcoin. Their conversation also includes Saifedean's reflections on his upbringing in Palestine, how to make the most of our short time on earth, and advice to younger generations. ResourcesLex Fridman on Twitter.Lex Fridman's podcast website.Carl Menger's Principles of Economics: the founding text of the Austrian School, published in 1871.Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, published in English in 1949.Critical overview of John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in the Journal of Libertarian Studies.Saifedean Twitter thread on scientists who dismissed flight as impossible at the time the Wright brothers were inventing the airplane. Includes comments by Lord Kelvin and the New York Times.Graphic showing technological progress in Britain during the gold standard. For further discussion, see The Bitcoin Standard section: Innovations: “Zero to One” versus “One to Many”, and episode 74 of The Bitcoin Standard Podcast: The Real Drivers of Technological Progress.Saifedean paper on the decline of the aviation industry since the 1970s. For further discussion see chapter 10 of The Fiat Standard on Fiat Fuels.The Bitcoin Standard Podcast episode 108: A New World Monetary Order The ramifications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Bitcoin Net Zero paper by Nic Carter and Ross Stevens. See page 38 for comparison of bitcoin network energy consumption compared with tumble driers and other common household appliances.Saifedean's first book, The Bitcoin Standard.Saifedean's second book, The Fiat Standard.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Bird's Eye View of the ML Field [Pragmatic AI Safety #2], published by ThomasWoodside on May 9, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This is the second post in a sequence of posts that describe our models for Pragmatic AI Safety. The internal dynamics of the ML field are not immediately obvious to the casual observer. This post will present some important high-level points that are critical to beginning to understand the field, and is meant as background for our later posts. Driving dynamics of the ML field How is progress made in ML? While the exact dynamics of progress are not always predictable, we will present three basic properties of ML research that are important to understand. The importance of defining the problem A problem well-defined is a problem half solved. John Dewey (apocryphal) The mere formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which [...] requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. Albert Einstein I have been struck by how important measurement is... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Bill Gates If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. Lord Kelvin (paraphrase) For better or worse, benchmarks shape a field. David Patterson, Turing award winner Progress in AI arises from objective evaluation metrics. David McAllester Science requires that we clarify the question and then refine the answer: it is impossible to solve a problem until we know what it is. Empirical ML research, which is the majority of the field, progresses through well-defined metrics for progress towards well-defined goals. Once a goal is defined empirically, is tractable, and is incentivized properly, the ML field is well-equipped to make progress towards it. A variation on this model is that artists (writers, directors, etc.) come first. They help give ideas, and philosophers add more logical constraints to those ideas to come up with goals or questions, and finally scientists can help make iterative progress towards those goals. To give an example: golems, animate beings created from clay, were a common symbol in Jewish folklore, and at times could create evil. There are many other historical stories of automatons creating problems for humans (Pandora, Frankenstein, etc.). More recent stories, like Terminator, made the ideas more concrete, even as they included fantasy elements not grounded in reality. More recently, Bostrom (2002) recognized the possibility for existential risk from AI, and grounded it in the field of artificial intelligence. Since then, others have worked on concretizing and solving technical problems associated with this risk. For completeness, it's worth mentioning that sometimes through tinkering people find solutions to questions people were not posing, though many of those solutions aren't solutions for interesting questions. Metrics As David McAllester writes, machine learning and deep learning is fundamentally driven by metrics. There are many reasons for this. First, having a concrete metric for a problem is a sign that the problem has been compressed into something simpler and more manageable (see the discussion of microcosms below), which makes it more likely that progress can be made on it. By distilling a problem into a few main components, it is also far clearer when progress has been made, even if that progress is relatively small. Unlike human subjective evaluation, most metrics are objective: even if they do not perfectly track the properties of a system that we care about, it is obvious when somebody has performed well or poorly on an evaluation. Metrics can also be used across methods, which makes different approaches directly comparable rather than relying on many different measuring sticks. High-quality datasets and benchmarks ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Bird's Eye View of the ML Field [Pragmatic AI Safety #2], published by Dan Hendrycks on May 9, 2022 on The AI Alignment Forum. This is the second post in a sequence of posts that describe our models for Pragmatic AI Safety. The internal dynamics of the ML field are not immediately obvious to the casual observer. This post will present some important high-level points that are critical to beginning to understand the field, and is meant as background for our later posts. Driving dynamics of the ML field How is progress made in ML? While the exact dynamics of progress are not always predictable, we will present three basic properties of ML research that are important to understand. The importance of defining the problem A problem well-defined is a problem half solved. John Dewey (apocryphal) The mere formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which [...] requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. Albert Einstein I have been struck by how important measurement is... This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Bill Gates If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it. Lord Kelvin (paraphrase) For better or worse, benchmarks shape a field. David Patterson, Turing award winner Progress in AI arises from objective evaluation metrics. David McAllester Science requires that we clarify the question and then refine the answer: it is impossible to solve a problem until we know what it is. Empirical ML research, which is the majority of the field, progresses through well-defined metrics for progress towards well-defined goals. Once a goal is defined empirically, is tractable, and is incentivized properly, the ML field is well-equipped to make progress towards it. A variation on this model is that artists (writers, directors, etc.) come first. They help give ideas, and philosophers add more logical constraints to those ideas to come up with goals or questions, and finally scientists can help make iterative progress towards those goals. To give an example: golems, animate beings created from clay, were a common symbol in Jewish folklore, and at times could create evil. There are many other historical stories of automatons creating problems for humans (Pandora, Frankenstein, etc.). More recent stories, like Terminator, made the ideas more concrete, even as they included fantasy elements not grounded in reality. More recently, Bostrom (2002) recognized the possibility for existential risk from AI, and grounded it in the field of artificial intelligence. Since then, others have worked on concretizing and solving technical problems associated with this risk. For completeness, it's worth mentioning that sometimes through tinkering people find solutions to questions people were not posing, though many of those solutions aren't solutions for interesting questions. Metrics As David McAllester writes, machine learning and deep learning is fundamentally driven by metrics. There are many reasons for this. First, having a concrete metric for a problem is a sign that the problem has been compressed into something simpler and more manageable (see the discussion of microcosms below), which makes it more likely that progress can be made on it. By distilling a problem into a few main components, it is also far clearer when progress has been made, even if that progress is relatively small. Unlike human subjective evaluation, most metrics are objective: even if they do not perfectly track the properties of a system that we care about, it is obvious when somebody has performed well or poorly on an evaluation. Metrics can also be used across methods, which makes different approaches directly comparable rather than relying on many different measuring sticks. High-quality datasets and benchmarks concret...

Yoo! Fala, galera! Beleza? E hoje é dia de NASA Shuttle! Leo da NASA e Lord Kelvin trocam uma idéia com o game tester Gabriel Kamigauti sobre debug de games! @dropzillacast - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Discord Dêem uma checada nos podcasts da #PodosferaNipoBrasileira

Lo que no se define no se puede medir. Lo que no se mide, no se puede mejorar. Lo que no se mejora, se degrada siempre. Citamos esta frase del gran William Thomson - Lord Kelvin, físico matemático británico, haciendo referencia al contenido de este el Episodio 67 de Podcast Parques.   Hoy vamos a cubrir un tema en el que es necesario trabajar muy fuertemente y profundizar en nuestros parques, sistemas de parques y/o municipalidades. Los datos y métricas en apoyo de una mejor y más eficiente operación y mantenimiento de nuestros espacios.    Quédate en este tu espacio por que hoy vamos a hablar de activos, de cómo medirlos a través del índice de prioridad y de como poder evaluar su condición en el tiempo para alargar su vida útil. Un tema sin duda súper interesante que todos los que gestionamos parques y espacios públicos debemos de tener como columna vertebral de nuestras administraciones.     En el https://anpr.org.mx/operacion-y-mantenimiento-estamos-preparados/ (episodio 63 de Podcast Parques) hablamos en general de la operación y mantenimiento. Hicimos un recorrido por el contenido del primer curso de la certificación en esta competencia tan importante. Recuerda que desde la ANPR México y a través de Academia Parques, estamos ya ofreciendo currículo avalada por la Academia Mundial de Parques Urbanos, que te va a servir para mejorar tu práctica profesional.   Comenzamos este recorrido a través del episodio 63, haciendo una reflexión general sobre:   Introducción a la gestión de instalaciones Lo primero que debemos recordar es que la gestión de instalaciones es una disciplina empresarial y de gestión que es relativamente nueva y que se identificó por primera vez a principios de la década de 1980, es decir, hace menos de 30 años.   Enfoque basado en activos para la gestión de nuestras instalaciones Aquí comentamos que este enfoque se utiliza en la gestión de instalaciones de los parques más avanzados en el mundo y las razones son dos fundamentalmente.    1.- Administración.  2.- Rendición de cuentas.   El Proceso de la Gestión de Instalaciones y sus 7 componentes: Aprendimos a identificar la prioridad y la condición de los activos lo que nos permitir crear planes a largo plazo para poder mantener nuestros activos durante sus ciclos de vida esperados.       En este proceso que hay que seguir para poder llevar a cabo la gestión de instalaciones de manera integral pudimos platicarte sobre la importancia de delimitar:   La misión de tu parque o sistema de parques La evaluación de necesidades El Inventario de activos Identificación del trabajo. Planificación del trabajo La implementación laboral Evaluación        Te vamos a dejar en las notas de este episodio la liga para que puedas acceder a toda esta información de manera más puntual.   Partiendo de entender que existe un proceso integral en la operación y mantenimiento de nuestros parques, hoy vamos a centrar nuestra atención en los activos y su priorización, cómo calcular matemáticamente las prioridades (recuerdas que iniciamos con la famosa frase de Lord Kelvin; probablemente el no estaba pensando en la operación y mantenimiento de los parques urbanos cuando la dijo, pero lo que sí es un hecho es que aplica perfectamente a nuestros activos).   Hoy haremos un recorrido por el tema de Métricas y Datos para la Toma de Decisiones, que conforma el segundo curso de la competencia de Operación y Mantenimiento. Te vamos a contar que es un Índice de Prioridad de Activos y cuales son los 7 criterios para poder ponderar tus decisiones al momento de discernir entre cual de tus activos debe tener prioridad en su mantenimiento preventivo, correctivo o su sustitución.   Por último, te vamos a decir como el Índice de Prioridad de Activos se relaciona directamente con lo que llamamos Índice de Condición de...

Leo da NASA e Lord Kelvin entrevista Roger Santana, médico, especialista no cérebro, que nos informa um pouco sobre AVC, o que é e como se prevenir! Com Rening e Tadashi no episódio, só pra causar mesmo! @dropzillacast - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Discord Sigam também o canal 80Bit na Twitch e acompanhe gameplays e bate papo com o Rening do Dropzilla, Will do Press Start Cast, Otávio do Vôticast e o Flávio, lá do canal LoadingNetBr! Deem uma checada nos podcasts da #PodosferaNipoBrasileira

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Local Validity as a Key to Sanity and Civilization, published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on the AI Alignment Forum. (Cross-posted from Facebook.) 0. Tl;dr: There's a similarity between these three concepts: A locally valid proof step in mathematics is one that, in general, produces only true statements from true statements. This is a property of a single step, irrespective of whether the final conclusion is true or false. There's such a thing as a bad argument even for a good conclusion. In order to arrive at sane answers to questions of fact and policy, we need to be curious about whether arguments are good or bad, independently of their conclusions. The rules against fallacies must be enforced even against arguments for conclusions we like. For civilization to hold together, we need to make coordinated steps away from Nash equilibria in lockstep. This requires general rules that are allowed to impose penalties on people we like or reward people we don't like. When people stop believing the general rules are being evaluated sufficiently fairly, they go back to the Nash equilibrium and civilization falls. i. The notion of a locally evaluated argument step is simplest in mathematics, where it is a formalizable idea in model theory. In math, a general type of step is 'valid' if it only produces semantically true statements from other semantically true statements, relative to a given model. If x = y in some set of variable assignments, then 2x = 2y in the same model. Maybe x doesn't equal y, in some model, but even if it doesn't, the local step from "x = y" to "2x = 2y" is a locally valid step of argument. It won't introduce any new problems. Conversely, xy = xz does not imply y = z. It happens to work when x = 2, y = 3, and z= 3, in which case the two statements say "6 = 6" and "3 = 3" respectively. But if x = 0, y = 4, z = 17, then we have "0 = 0" on one side and "4 = 17" on the other. We can feed in a true statement and get a false statement out the other end. This argument is not locally okay. You can't get the concept of a "mathematical proof" unless on some level—though often an intuitive level rather than an explicit one—you understand the notion of a single step of argument that is locally okay or locally not okay, independent of whether you globally agreed with the final conclusion. There's a kind of approval you give to the pieces of the argument, rather than looking the whole thing over and deciding whether you like what came out the other end. Once you've grasped that, it may even be possible to convince you of mathematical results that sound counterintuitive. When your understanding of the rules governing allowable argument steps has become stronger than your faith in your ability to judge whole intuitive conclusions, you may be convinced of truths you would not otherwise have grasped. ii. More generally in life, even outside of mathematics, there are such things as bad arguments for good conclusions. There are even such things as genuinely good arguments for false conclusions, though of course those are much rarer. By the Bayesian definition of evidence, "strong evidence" is exactly that kind of evidence which we very rarely expect to find supporting a false conclusion. Lord Kelvin's careful and multiply-supported lines of reasoning arguing that the Earth could not possibly be so much as a hundred million years old, all failed simultaneously in a surprising way because that era didn't know about nuclear reactions. But most of the time this does not happen. On the other hand, bad arguments for true conclusions are extremely easy to come by, because there are tiny elves that whisper them to people. There isn't anything the least bit more difficult in making an argument terrible when it leads to a good conclusion, since the tiny elves own lawnmowers. One of the mar...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, published by Eliezer Yudkowsky on the LessWrong. Imagine looking at your hand, and knowing nothing of cells, nothing of biochemistry, nothing of DNA. You've learned some anatomy from dissection, so you know your hand contains muscles; but you don't know why muscles move instead of lying there like clay. Your hand is just . . . stuff . . . and for some reason it moves under your direction. Is this not magic? It seemed to me then, and it still seems to me, most probable that the animal body does not act as a thermodynamic engine . . . The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concourse of atoms[.]1 [C]onsciousness teaches every individual that they are, to some extent, subject to the direction of his will. It appears, therefore, that animated creatures have the power of immediately applying, to certain moving particles of matter within their bodies, forces by which the motions of these particles are directed to produce desired mechanical effects.2 Modern biologists are coming once more to a firm acceptance of something beyond mere gravitational, chemical, and physical forces; and that unknown thing is a vital principle.3 Lord Kelvin This was the theory of vitalism ; that the mysterious difference between living matter and non-living matter was explained by an Élan vital or vis vitalis. Élan vital infused living matter and caused it to move as consciously directed. Élan vital participated in chemical transformations which no mere non-living particles could undergo—Wöhler's later synthesis of urea, a component of urine, was a major blow to the vitalistic theory because it showed that mere chemistry could duplicate a product of biology. Calling “Élan vital” an explanation, even a fake explanation like phlogiston, is probably giving it too much credit. It functioned primarily as a curiosity-stopper. You said “Why?” and the answer was “Élan vital!” When you say “Élan vital!” it feels like you know why your hand moves. You have a little causal diagram in your head that says: But actually you know nothing you didn't know before. You don't know, say, whether your hand will generate heat or absorb heat, unless you have observed the fact already; if not, you won't be able to predict it in advance. Your curiosity feels sated, but it hasn't been fed. Since you can say “Why? Élan vital!” to any possible observation, it is equally good at explaining all outcomes, a disguised hypothesis of maximum entropy, et cetera. But the greater lesson lies in the vitalists' reverence for the Élan vital, their eagerness to pronounce it a mystery beyond all science. Meeting the great dragon Unknown, the vitalists did not draw their swords to do battle, but bowed their necks in submission. They took pride in their ignorance, made biology into a sacred mystery, and thereby became loath to relinquish their ignorance when evidence came knocking. The Secret of Life was infinitely beyond the reach of science! Not just a little beyond, mind you, but infinitely beyond! Lord Kelvin sure did get a tremendous emotional kick out of not knowing something. But ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself. A phenomenon can seem mysterious to some particular person. There are no phenomena which are mysterious of themselves. To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious is to worship y...

On today's ID the Future astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez and host Casey Luskin discuss the idea of undirected panspermia. Gonzalez explains the basic idea and what the best current evidence says about its plausibility. The occasion is his chapter on panspermia in the new anthology A Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, co-edited by Casey Luskin, associate director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Undirected panspermia is the idea that the first life on our planet came from outer space, carried by chance processes from a faraway living planet on space dust, asteroids, or comets either from within our solar system, or from another star system to here. The idea of panspermia was inspired by the extreme difficulty of Read More › Source

How often have you exclaimed, “There isn't enough time.” Albert Einstein once wrote: “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Lisa Broderick says “Once you understand the science of time, you understand that our experience of time is one part physical and one part perception.” She goes on to give us many insights as to how we can be liberated from the illusion that time is strictly linear and is our enemy. This deep dialogue explores how time is less limited than we think and it can be stretched and bent. Broderick describes the difference between selective attention and focused perception, “Selective attention is our ability to tune out that which is not important to us. Focused perception is our ability to focus on, to the exclusion of all other things, one thing. Complete opposites. And focused perception is what we use to change and control our experience of time.”  Lisa Broderick earned her BA from Stanford University and an MBA from Duke University. She's a Transcendental Meditation™ Siddha and has attended the Monroe Institute for the exploration of expanded states of consciousness. For 15 years she studied imagery and dream reading at the American Institute for Mental Imagery. She currently runs a business consultancy based in New York City that helps socially conscious entrepreneurs manifest their creativity and energy. She is the author of All the Time In The World: Learn To Control Your Experience of Time to Live a Life Without Limitations. (Sounds True 2021).Interview Date: 8/12/2021    Tags: MP3, Lisa Broderick, Time, memory, Sidereal time, Lord Kelvin, observer effect, focused perception, meditation, timelessness, Itzhak Bentov, supersight, seeing remotely, Personal Transformation, science, meditation, dreams, death and dying

FOTO: WIRESTOCK – FREEPIK.COM. PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE ROYS PEAK IN NEW ZEALAND WITH LOW MOUNTAINS IN THE DISTANCE UNDER CLOUDSCAPE. HTTPS://WWW.FREEPIK.COM/FREE-VECTOR/PANORAMIC-VIEW-OF-THE-ROYS-PEAK-IN-NEW-ZEALAND-WITH-LOWMOUNTAINS- IN-THE-DISTANCE-UNDER-CLOUDSCAPE_13005896.HTM Después de tres meses de compartir el tema de la felicidad he llegado al punto final: un resumen y una conclusión. Te he mencionado cuatro libros y varios artículos como fuente de información valiosa. Pero hoy es la hora de arribar al punto final de toda investigación. Finalmente, ¿qué es esto de la felicidad? ¿Es un asunto que se nos presenta de manera natural? ¿Hay manera de cambiarlo o debemos resignarnos? Para quienes han estado atentos a mis desarrollos sobre el tema, lo que sigue será una repetición. Es un esfuerzo de concretar algo después de la búsqueda. Son los hallazgos. “Felicidad es un estado de ánimo caracterizado por bienestar pleno sintiéndose a gusto con uno mismo y con lo que nos rodea”. La esencia de una ciencia, así como lo estableció Lord Kelvin (1824-1907): “lo que no se define, no se puede medir. Lo que no se mide, no se puede mejorar. Lo que no se mejora, siempre se degrada”.

Introductory note on Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (Volume 30, Harvard Classics)

We to-day know that there is a direct relation between the moon and tides. When Julius Cæsar went to conquer Britain his transports were wrecked because he did not know the tides on the English coast; a knowledge of which might have changed the whole course of history. (Volume 30, Harvard Classics) Kelvin delivers lecture on "Tides," Aug. 25, 1882.

26 HAZİRAN 2021 DÜNYA TARİHİNDE BUGÜN YAŞANANLAR 1530 - İlk Protestan Meclisi kuruldu. 1819 - Bisikletin patenti alındı. 1861 - Atıf Bey, Bebek'te uçuş denemesi gerçekleştirdi. 1924 - Verem aşısı, Albert Calmette ve Camille Guérin isimli iki Fransız araştırmacı tarafından keşfedildi. 1936 - Nazi Almanyası'nda, ilk kullanılabilir helikopterin in ilk uçuşu başarıyla gerçekleşti. 1974 - Sabah 08.01'de, ABD'nin Ohio eyaletinde bulunan Troy şehrindeki Marsh Süpermarket'in kasasında işlenen bir paket sakız, dünyada barkodla satılan ilk ürün oldu. TÜRKİYE TARİHİNDE BUGÜN YAŞANANLAR 1928 - Yeni Türk alfabesini hazırlamak amacıyla kurulan Dil Encümeni, ilk toplantısını Ankara'da yaptı. 1945 - Türkiye, Birleşmiş Milletler Antlaşması'nı imzaladı. 1994 - Türkiye'de Liberal Demokrat Parti kuruldu. BUGÜN DOĞANLAR 1797 - Kuzey Kafkasya halklarının Avar kökenli politik ve dini önderi Şeyh Şamil, dünyaya geldi. 1824 - İrlandalı fizikçi William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), doğdu. BUGÜN ÖLENLER 1861- Sultan Abdülmecit, Osmanlı'nın 31. Padişahı Sultan Abdülmecit, vefat etti.

Learn about why we still don’t know how eels reproduce and how scientists solved a 150-year-old question about how sandcastles hold together.  We still don't know how eels reproduce by Grant Currin TED-Ed. (2020). No one can figure out how eels have sex - Lucy Cooke [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFi6ISTjkR4  Epic Eel Migration Mapped for the First Time. (2015, October 27). National Geographic News. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/10/151027-american-eel-migration-animal-behavior-oceans-science/  100-year-old mystery solved: Adult eel observed for the first time in the Sargasso Sea. (2015). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151027132839.htm  Scientists have solved a 150-year-old equation that governs how sandcastles hold together by Grant Currin Ouellette, J. (2020, December 9). Physicists solve 150-year-old mystery of equation governing sandcastle physics. Ars Technica; Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/physicists-solve-150-year-old-mystery-of-equation-governing-sandcastle-physics/  ‌Pakpour, M., Habibi, M., Møller, P., & Bonn, D. (2012). How to construct the perfect sandcastle. Scientific Reports, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00549  ‌Yang, Q., Sun, P. Z., Fumagalli, L., Stebunov, Y. V., Haigh, S. J., Zhou, Z. W., Grigorieva, I. V., Wang, F. C., & Geim, A. K. (2020). Capillary condensation under atomic-scale confinement. Nature, 588(7837), 250–253. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2978-1  Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We interview world expert on teacher development, Professor Thomas Guskey, about how to evaluate professional development. What evidence should we use? How can we tell when it’s successful? What can go wrong in professional development? And how can teachers be at the center of the checking process?Visit Tom’s websiteFor more podcast, videos and blogs, visit our website Support the podcast – buy us a coffee!Develop yourself! Find more about our teacher training courses Watch as well as listen on our YouTube channel Ross Thorburn: Professor Guskey, thank you so much for joining us. In one of your papers about evaluating professional development, at the end, you say a lot of good things are done in the name of professional development, but so are a lot of rotten things. What are some of the rotten things that get done in the name of teacher development?Professor Thomas Guskey: One of the things that we tend to do in education, all to our detriment, is we tend to be innovation oriented, without careful attention to the evidence that might support any particular innovation.Educators often go to large conferences where they hear very dynamic presenters who talk about these opinions they have about how education could be structured without a lot of evidence to confirm that that would really lead to greater student success.We invest in these different innovations without thinking carefully about what impact they will have, not caring so much about what evidence really supports them.Teachers try them. They use them for a period of time. They don't see the improvements in student learning that were promised, and so then they become very frustrated. As a result of that frustration, they tend to, one, withdraw, and be distrustful of school leaders who bring in these innovations, of the people who advocate for these innovations, and become rather skeptical overall, because they've been burned in their approaches to it.I think that is going to work against us. I think we're coming to recognize, at long last, that when people are suggesting that these new things should be implemented, we're asking important questions about, "What evidence do you have to support it? Has it been used in contexts similar to ours? Have they documented the impact on students in ways that we find meaningful?"We ask those critical questions, and it leads you in a very different direction.Ross Thorburn: You mentioned evidence there. Can you tell us what would count as evidence, or what does evidence look like?Professor Guskey: I think there are right resources of evidence of student learning. One of the dilemmas, particularly here in the United States that people encounter, is they want to look very narrowly at improvements in standardized test scores.Those standardized test scores may or may not be well aligned with the curriculum that students are taught. If it's poorly aligned with the curriculum that students are taught, we wouldn't see a lot of improvement there because they're testing students on things that they haven't been taught, weren't part of the instruction program.If we think more broadly about the variety of student learning outcomes, that it might be considered to include those overall major standardized assessments, but also to include teacher assessments, classroom assessments, other demonstrations of learning and performance, to even go beyond that to other kinds of affected things where students are confident of themselves in learning situations.Did they feel better about their abilities in school? Are they more engaged in learning activities both in school and out of school? Are they more purposeful in the way they're going about their learning?There's this wide range of student learning outcomes we know contributes to their success, but we often don't think of what we turn to evaluating the impact of professional learning programs.Ross Thorburn: Obviously, there's a lot of different types of evidence. For me, one of the problems I have with this concept is that for someone running a teacher training session, that the time it would take to do the follow‑up and gather evidence that it worked, or it didn't work, would just take so much longer than running the training itself.How can that be done in a manner that doesn't require an obscene amount of time?Professor Guskey: There's a balance must be sought here. Indeed, the kinds of evidence that we often use to evaluate programs is gathered on a very irregular basis. That tends to be pretty ineffective.The approach that I advocate is to actually ask teachers what evidence they trust, what evidence would they believe. If that's what's really working for them, how would they know it, what differences would they see in their students, and what evidence could they provide that could confirm that difference?Sometimes, that kind of evidence is not easy to gather. It might be something we have to obtain through classroom observations, or student interviews, or things like that, but we could certainly build that into the program.The second aspect of it is that information must be gained rather quickly.A few years ago, I was being interviewed by an educational journal. I was asked during the interview, "When teachers are trying a new innovation, a new approach, how soon should they see results?"Very good friends of mine at that time were saying, "Well, change is a slow process, and it might take us a while to get there. And you have to sustain efforts over significant periods of time." I said, "In two weeks."The interviewer was stunned. The reason that I suggested that is that all the evidence that we were gathering was showing that teachers need to see that what they're doing is making a difference.Because the stakes are high for teachers, they have this fear that if they persist in using these new strategies and techniques, there is the danger that there are students who might learn less well. They are unwilling to sacrifice their students for the sake of innovation.That means that you must build into any particular innovation, some strategy where teachers can get evidence pretty quickly, that is making a difference. That means you can't wait until the end of the year to give a standardized assessment.What you need to do is think about the evidence teachers gather on a very regular basis to find out if their students are learning things that's important for them to learn.Ross Thorburn: Does that mean that we are really looking at raising teachers' awareness of how to evaluate new technique and methods rather than, say, launching a big research project about how to evaluate how well something works overall in a school in terms of student outcomes?Professor Guskey: Absolutely. In fact, I advocate for that. These are your frontline warriors who are implementing these strategies. They need to see that it's making a tangible difference in the school lives of the students.We need to be helping teachers think about what evidence they would gather that would show this has made a difference. It could be engagement raised in class. It could be the kids asking more thoughtful questions. It could be them coming to class earlier and engaging more thoughtful discussions as a part of the class. All sorts of things that teachers look for to find out if what they're teaching is really coming across.Engaging teachers in those conversations about, "How would you know that this is making a difference?" is one of the most important ways we can start.Ross Thorburn: We're really then looking at helping teachers evaluate what works and what doesn't work in their own classrooms.Professor Guskey: Yeah, that is exactly right. In fact, I believe that that should be included in any professional learning experience. If this worked, how would you know it? How would you be able to tell from your students? What evidence would you gather to show that this was making a difference?To build that into any professional learning experience so that the teachers become more thoughtful and more evidence oriented in their approaches as well. All those could be very, very positive benefits in any professional learning experience.Ross Thorburn: That's really interesting. I think that's something that's often missing from teacher training, where normally it's, "Here's this great technique, use it." Here I guess, what we're saying is, "Here's this technique, use it. And when you use it, what evidence can you collect from your classes that would show if it was working or not?"Professor Guskey: I agree with you. Yes, it's not something that you would see as a common element in most professional learning programs at this time.Ross Thorburn: Another reason that you've written about why training and teacher development often fails is because of a lack of support from schools.If the school doesn't really support a particular professional development program, or a new practice for teachers, is it still worth trying?Professor Guskey: No. I think that the very best teachers are always looking for ways to get better. They are always open to ideas that might benefit their students. They are in an environment where they're willing to try those things out. They have some initial confidence that it might lead to improvement.Again, the critical element will be allowing them to gain some evidence in a relatively short period of time, that their extra effort and their extra work are paying off, that they see a benefit.Teachers are very, very hardworking individuals. They spend many hours in preparation outside of their regular class time. They are willing to commit even additional time and resources to that if they have some confidence that it is helping their students better.When I do studies on teachers, I'm always asking questions like, "What makes teaching meaningful to you? What are the benefits you derive from teaching? What makes it a good job? What makes you excited about what you're doing?"99 times out of 100, the teachers that I interview define that in terms of their students. What happens is when I see that these lessons are coming across, when I see they catch on to ideas, when I see that light come on.This is the power of professional learning, to give that to teachers in a very powerful way, to give teachers the joy of what brought them to teaching in the first place, and to let them have that positive influence on their students which they really, really want to have.Ross Thorburn: Finally then, as an argument against measurement and evaluation, what do you think of that Einstein quote, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"? Are there some important effects that just can't be measured when it comes to professional development and evidence‑based practice?Professor Guskey: I think that there is. There are certain things that are extremely difficult to measure. I also go back to the quote by another scientist, Lord Kelvin, who said that, "If it can't be measured, it can't be improved."That we really need to think about, if we want to make improvements, we have to find some way to determine whether those improvements have occurred or not. That implies the process of measurement.We might say we want students to be more joyful in approaching learning situations. Clearly, that's difficult to measure, but it doesn't mean it's impossible.We want students to have greater confidence in themselves in learning situations. We want them to have a higher level of aspiration, to have confidence that they can achieve lifelong goals and do well in their lives, and that what we're teaching can help them in that.Just because it's difficult to measure doesn't mean it's impossible. If we want to see improvement, then we need to be able to find some way to document those improvements, which does imply some sort of measurement, even though it could be quantitative, as well as qualitative.

Carlos Fiolhais é professor catedrático de Física na Universidade de Coimbra, divulgador de ciência, escritor e historiador de Ciência.  -> Apoie este projecto e faça parte da comunidade de mecenas do 45 Graus em: 45graus.parafuso.net/apoiar Este é o episódio nº 100 do 45 Graus! Parece incrível, mas já lá vão uma centena de conversas e outros tantos convidados. Como se lembram, lancei há umas semanas um inquérito para voltarem no convidado anterior que gostavam de ouvir outra vez no podcast. A votação foi renhida e o grande vencedor foi, então, Carlos Fiolhais, que teve a simpatia de aceitar o repto. O que é, ao mesmo tempo, uma coincidência engraçada, porque tinha terminado o nosso episódio original, gravado há quase 3 anos, precisamente a desafiá-lo a regressar ao podcast.  Entre os outros nomes muito votados estiveram: Luís Aguiar-Conraria, Paulo Gama Mota e Adolfo Mesquita Nunes. Conto trazê-los também de volta ao 45 Graus um dia destes.   Índice da conversa: Livros do convidado saídos recentemente História Global de Portugal, com José Eduardo Franco e José Pedro Paiva  Apanhados pelo Vírus - Factos e mitos acerca da COVID-19, com David Marçal  A falta de progressos teóricos no século XXI (até agora) Teoria Quântica de Max Planck Teoria da Relatividade de Einstein Teorias quânticas de campos O desafio de unir a teoria da relatividade geral à teoria quântica Teoria das cordas Maiores progressos deste século na área da física (muitos progressos importantes na recolha de evidência via tecnologias mas pouco na teoria).  Lista de vencedores do Nobel da Física  Frase de Lord Kelvin (aparentemente apócrifa!) Ondas gravitacionais Exoplanetas e sinais de vida fora da Terra Lista de exoplanetas descobertos Descoberta de sinais de vida em Vénus Paradoxo de Fermi Equação de Drake Carl Sagan Contacto (filme) SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial life)  Estrelas de neutrões Blaise Pascal Demócrito Mistérios em aberto na Física Matéria escura CERN Bosão de Higgs Modelo-padrão da Física de partículas  Energia escura  Supernova (tipo de estrelas) Ligação à “constante cosmológica” de Einstein Teoria dos Multiversos Navalha de Ockham Teoria das cordas O papel da estética nas teorias científicas e a preferência pela simplicidade Metafísica (filosofia) Pode a beleza ser explicada pela Ciência? ‘Razão dourada’ (golden ratio) O génio de Einstein Buracos negros Como é que a Teoria da Relatividade prevê a existência de buracos negros  Stephen Hawking Tipos de buracos negros Gigante vermelha (tipo de estrela) Radiação Hawking A Teoria de Tudo (filme) O mistério da origem dos Buracos Negros Ligação ao Big Bang Prémio Nobel da Física 2020 A primeira fotografia de um buraco negro Roger Penrose Quase-cristais Quantum mind A teoria ‘panpsíquica’ Livros recomendados Ciclos de Tempo O Grande, o Pequeno e a Mente Humana Emily Dickinson   Obrigado aos mecenas do podcast: João Baltazar, Tiago Leite, Carlos Martins, Joana Faria Alves, Galaró family, Corto Lemos, Margarida Varela, Gustavo, Gonçalo Murteira Machado Monteiro, Filipe Bento Caires, Miguel Marques, Nuno Costa, Nuno e Ana, Francisco Hermenegildo, Mário Lourenço, João Ribeiro, Miguel Vassalo Abilio Silva, Joao Saro, Tiago Neves Paixão, Daniel Correia, Rita Mateus, António Padilha, Ricardo Duarte, Tiago Queiroz, Carmen Camacho, João Nelas, Francisco Fonseca, Diogo Sampaio Viana, José Soveral, Andre Oliveira, José Jesus, Andreia Esteves, Ana Sousa Amorim, Manuel Martins, João Bernardino, Sara Mesquita, Luís Costa, Ana Teresa Mota, Isabel Oliveira, Arune Bhuralal, Francisco Sequeira Andrade, ChaosSeeker, Ricardo Santos Vasco Sá Pinto, Rui Baldaia, Rui Carrilho, Luis Quelhas Valente, Tiago Pires, Mafalda Pratas, Renato Vasconcelos, Joana Margarida Alves Martins, Luis Marques, João Raimundo, Francisco Arantes, Francisco dos Santos, Mariana Barosa, Hugo Correia, Marta Baptista Coelho, João Castanheira, Pedro, rodrigo brazão, Nuno Gonçalves, Pedro Rebelo, Miguel Palhas, Duarte, Tomás Félix, Vasco Lima, Joao Pinto, Francisco Vasconcelos, João Moreira, isosamep, Telmo, José Oliveira Pratas, Jose Pedroso, João Diogo Silva, Marco Coelho, MANNA Porto, Joao Diogo, José Proença, Francisco Aguiar, Tiago Costa da Rocha, João Crispim, Paulo dos Santos, Abílio Mateus, João Pinho , Andrea Grosso, Miguel Lamela, Margarida Gonçalves, Afonso Martins, João Barbosa, Jose António Moreira, Luis Filipe, Sérgio Catalão, Alexandre Freitas, Renato Mendes, Carlos Manuel Lopes de Magalhães Lima, Maria Francisca Couto, Antonio Albuquerque, Pedro F. Finisterra, Francisco Santos, joana antunes, juu-san, Nelson Poças, Fernando Sousa, Francisco López Bermudez, Pedro Correia, MacacoQuitado, Paulo Ferreira, Gabriela, Carlos Silveira, Nuno Almeida, Diogo Rombo, Francisco Manuel Reis, Bruno Lamas, Daniel Almeida, Albino Ramos, Luis Miguel da Silva Barbosa, Inês Patrão, Patrícia Esquível , Diogo Silva, Fábio Mota, Vítor Araújo, Miguel Mendes, Luis Gomes, Angela Martins, Ana Batista, Alberto Santos Silva, Salomé Afonso, Cesar Correia, Cristiano Tavares, Susana Ladeiro, Pedro Miguel Pereira Vieira, Gil Batista Marinho, Jorge Soares, Maria Oliveira, Cheila Bhuralal, Bruno Machado, Maria Virginia Saraiva, João Pereira, Bruno Amorim Inácio, Francisco Valente, Nuno Balsas, Jorge Amorim, Nuno , Rui Vilão, João Ferreira,  Ricardo Leitão, Vitor Filipe, João Bastos, Natália Ribeiro, Bernardo Pimentel, Pedro Gaspar, Hugo Domingues Esta conversa foi editada por: Martim Cunha Rego   Bio: Carlos Fiolhais nasceu em Lisboa em 1956. Licenciado em Física na Universidade de Coimbra e doutorado em Física Teórica na Universidade Goethe, em Frankfurt, Alemanha, em 1982, é professor catedrático de Física na Universidade de Coimbra. Foi professor convidado em universidades de Portugal, Brasil e Estados Unidos. Publicou mais de 30 livros, incluindo Física Divertida, Computadores, Universo e Tudo o Resto e A Coisa Mais Preciosa que Temos (Gradiva); Ciência a Brincar (Bizâncio); manuais escolares de Física e de Química (Gradiva e Texto Editores); Roteiro de Ciência e Tecnologia (Ulmeiro) e Fundamentos de Termodinâmica do Equilíbrio (Gulbenkian). É autor de cerca de 100 artigos científicos em revistas internacionais (um dos quais com 3500 citações) e de mais de 300 artigos pedagógicos e de divulgação. Participou em inúmeros encontros, conferências e ações promovendo a ciência e a cultura científica. Criou o portal de ciência www.mocho.pt. Ganhou em 1994 o Prémio União Latina/JNICT de tradução científica. Ganhou o Globo de Ouro de Mérito e Excelência em Ciência de 2004 atribuído pela televisão SIC e pela revista Caras em 2005. Investiga Física da Matéria Condensada e História das Ciências. Foi fundador e diretor do Centro de Física Computacional da Universidade de Coimbra, onde instalou o maior computador português para cálculo científico (Centopeia). Dirige a revista Gazeta de Física da Sociedade Portuguesa de Física e é membro da comissão editorial das revistas Europhysics News, da Sociedade Europeia de Física, e Física na Escola e Revista Brasileira do Ensino da Física, da Sociedade Brasileira de Física. Foi diretor da Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra.

En este episodio se relatan brevemente los principios de la geología, y está basado en varios artículos de divulgación de la ciencia, como el de Rudwick (1963), Badash (1989), Stinner y Teichmann (2003) y Moorbath (2006). Intenté transmitir el debate que existió entre las diferentes teorías sobre la edad de la Tierra, y el gran esfuerzo que se hizo para llegar al estado de conocimiento actual. También los debates entre las teorías uniformitaristas y catastrofistas del inicio de la historia de la geología. Me estoy dando cuenta de lo difícil que es grabar un podcast, investigar, escribirlo y grabarlo. No es fácil llegar a una grabación que me guste cómo quedó. De todas formas la publico porque creo que uno va llegando a un estilo haciendo camino al andar. Las primeras grabaciones del podcast estaban destinadas a niños, pero creo que este episodio está orientado al público en general, Referencias bibliográficas: Badash, L. (1989). The Age-of-the-Earth Debate. Scientific American, (August), 90–96. Chander, R. (1999). The Debate About the Age of the Earth. Resonance, (May), 52–60. Rudwick, M. J. S. (1963). The foundation of the Geological Society of London: its scheme for co-operative research and its struggle for independence. The British Journal of Rthe History of Science, 1(4), 325–355. Stinner, A. R. T., & Teichmann, J. (2003). Lord Kelvin and the Age-of-the-Earth Debate : A Dramatization. Science and Education, 12, 213–228.

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE   Eve Picker: [00:00:11] Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing. My guest today is Daniel Dus. While Daniel has forged a career taking him to the top of the solar industry class, his heart is someplace else, in the Berkshires. That's where he grew up and that's where he's planning his next act. The Berkshires, Massachusetts, is rich with travel destinations and has an amazing inventory of luxury estates dating back to the 1800s. As industry collapsed, so did the use of these estates. Many of them stand dramatically underutilized today. And that's where Daniel and his team come in. You'll want to hear how Daniel is planning to reposition these estates for the sharing economy. Be sure to go to EvePicker.com, to find out more about Daniel on the show notes page for this episode. And be sure to sign up for my newsletter, so you can access information about impact real estate investing, and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small Change. Eve: [00:01:42] Hello, Daniel. Thanks so much for joining me today. Daniel Dus: [00:01:44] Thank you, Eve. Great to be here. Eve: [00:01:46] So, your career has been in the solar industry, and I would love to start by just hearing what you've accomplished in your career. Daniel: [00:01:56] Yes. 15 years in solar now. I've had the pleasure of helping create and build some of the largest solar companies and projects in the solar space, in the United States, over the last 15 years. Currently, with a company, when I joined, had just completed its first solar project, and it's recently ranked the largest solar company in the world with 15.4 Gigawatts of operating and contracted projects. Eve: [00:02:25] Oh, wow. Daniel: [00:02:26] So, seeing growth like that in the space, which is really focused on carbon, SOx and NOx, emissions reductions, is really, really been exciting – to see the industry go from almost nothing 15 years ago, to now solar is number one in energy in terms of new, installed capacity year over year. So, just that transition, rapid transition, has been exciting to be a part of. Eve: [00:02:52] Yeah, I'll say. So, what's your background? How did you get into the solar industry? Daniel: [00:02:58] Actually came into solar out of a focus on real estate. I spent a few years developing real estate along the East Coast U.S., and that's where I was exposed to the trades, financially structuring projects, and ended up selling those assets, but it, this was right in the middle of the financial crisis. Nothing really made sense. Went back to get an MBA and launched my first solar company out of the Drexel business incubator, so ... and the rest, as they say, is history. Eve: [00:03:30] Oh, very good. So, that brings us back to where you are today. Because I've gotten to know you for an entirely different reason. And that's your new company that you're starting up, called Shared Estates. So, why the name Shared Estates? Tell me a little bit about that. Daniel: [00:03:45] We fell upon it as an exemplification of our primary objective, or one of our primary objectives, which is to bring these beautiful, historic, storied estates that in the past have primarily been in the hands of the wealthiest U.S. families, and bring those into the reach of the middle class. In many cases, our properties will cost less per person than a standard hotel room would, but with significantly different benefits and amenities. So, we really want the community to enjoy these spaces, use these spaces. One of the really fun things about the business is seeing families and friends create memories in these spaces. So, it's a major driver for us. Eve: [00:04:30] Basically, buying and repurposing enormous luxury estates, and sharing them in the shared economy. Daniel: [00:04:39] Yeah, that's exactly right. And our geographic focus offers quite a few of these properties. The Berkshires of western Massachusetts, also known as inland Newport, often, was developed in the 1800-1900s. Many of the wealthiest families built these estates there. They called them 'country cottages,' but these are often multi-100 acre, often over 10,000 square foot properties. And there's not as much of a market for these properties as single family, second or third homes today as there was then. And they often end up being very underutilized. I mean, talk about an underutilized asset. Often, they may be used a couple of weeks a year, a few weeks a year, by these families. And so, we're taking those estates and we're putting them into the shared economy where they can be much, much more accessible both to the local community, as well as to the tourist economy there. Eve: [00:05:35] That's really interesting. How did you come up, upon this idea? Like, it's an unusual take on a real estate company. Daniel: [00:05:41] It's a good question. I wish that I could say that I analyzed the market, that I did a bunch of market data research and saw that large group, short-term rentals was a rapidly growing subset of the short-term vacation rental market, and the broader tourism market. But that's not the case. I fell into it entirely. I was living in Manhattan and purchased a property in the Berkshires, which is where I was born and raised, and originally was going to use it for weekends, myself, and went through a deep rehabilitation process, and ended up taking a job in Philadelphia, so moved a little too far away to really use it for myself. And I put it on HomeAway VRBO, originally at, I think, $350 per night. And I figured if it rented 20, 25 percent of the time that it would cover its own mortgage and that would be a win. Well, it booked so much in the first 72 hours that I had to raise the price multiple times, and it now books for well over a $1000 dollars a night, and books 65, 70 percent occupancy. So, it's just such a phenomenal project that it really opened my eyes through the process of developing and listing the property to this underserved market, right? There are very few, if any, large-format, short-term rentals in urban areas, because if they existed they'd be exceedingly expensive. But, in rural America, there are a lot of these properties that are beautiful and really underutilized today. So, it, really fell into it. Eve: [00:07:18] Was that first property the Playhouse? Daniel: [00:07:20] Yeah, that's right. So, the Playhouse is a great example. It was originally built by George Westinghouse in the late 1800s. It was the first place in the world ever powered by AC electricity. He built an AC microgrid there to test what was really the theory of Tesla and the products being developed by Westinghouse and Stanley. So, we know that President McKinley, Tesla, Stanley, Lord Kelvin all visited the property. Westinghouse in the late 1800s had an electric boat; he had an electric car he drove around the property. It was really a leading point of innovation at the time. And this particular structure was called the Playhouse because he built it as a gymnasium, basically, for his children. 7000 square feet. He had a bowling alley in the building ... Eve: [00:08:13] Wow. Daniel: [00:08:13] ... and he later converted it into a theater space, for when his kids were getting older, and entertained there. So, it's a beautiful open floor plan building ... Eve: [00:08:25] Yeh, I've seen photos of it. It's stunning. It's beautiful. Daniel: [00:08:27] Yeah. And it was, when we took it, our architect told us that it was structurally failed. It was literally ready to fall over, and required a lot of structural work to maintain the open floor plan and to make it structurally sound. But in the process, we created a space that has really resonated with folks, where they can bring groups of families, family and friends, and enjoy each other and celebrate each other – weddings, anniversaries, birthday parties and other small gatherings like that. Eve: [00:08:56] I think you told me that it was ranked number one, or is ranked number one place to stay. Daniel: [00:09:03] That's right. Yep. It, on YVRBO, it quickly shot up to the most-booked, most-reviewed property out of over 500 properties listed in the county on VRBO. Eve: [00:09:13] That's amazing. That's a great story. Daniel: [00:09:16] It was. It was. You know, I love the space. I love the property. It means a lot to me and I love that folks get to make memories there. Eve: [00:09:26] So, how does this fit in with your solar background? Daniel: [00:09:32] Yeah, it's a, it's a good question and one I get often. Solar development, financing and construction is very similar to real estate development, financing and structuring. You're talking about zoning approvals, you're talking about geotechnical studies. If you're doing any ground work, you're talking about structuring projects for financing, financial modeling. You're talking about construction and ownership and operation and optimization of assets. It's all exactly the same in both industries. It just is that the asset itself is slightly different, but a lot of overlap there. I'm a Stanford-certified project manager, Villanova-certified Six Sigma, and that's because developing processes for execution of these projects is really at the core of these businesses. So, I think there's just a ton of overlap. Eve: [00:10:24] Yeah, but I suppose I'm also wondering, what of your love for the energy industry are you going to bring to these properties, because they weren't built that way? Daniel: [00:10:34] Yup. That's exactly right. And Shared Estates is also, to a large extent, a conduit for investment in a carbon neutral and sustainable asset. That's, all of our properties will be carbon neutral, offset by either on-site or off-site renewable energy projects, which we're very excited about. And so, we will bring that attribute to all of our properties. Eve: [00:11:02] And I think probably some other features that I've heard about, but we'll go into that later. So, In the Berkshires, which you seem to be focusing on, how many underutilized estates are there? Daniel: [00:11:14] There are a surprising number of them. Again, it was over the span of over 100 years of this economy developing and building, but also had an industrial heyday, itself. General Electric had a major presence there, thousands of jobs. So, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of these estates, in varying states. Some of them are really in rough shape, frankly. These historic properties really need dramatic investment to help bring them up into today's standards, with IT infrastructure, you know, sometimes structural upgrades, definitely bringing back their former glory and beauty. So, everything from landscaping to paint, new fixtures, etc, is all really critical for these properties. And we try to do that and maintain historic elements of them, as well. So, at the Playhouse, for example, we retained the original Westinghouse lighting fixtures from the 1890s. Eve: [00:12:14] Oh, lovely. Daniel: [00:12:14] And so, we do our best to keep the historic elements of the properties. But there are a remarkable number of these in the Berkshires. And frankly, nationally, there are a lot of large, rural farmhouses that are not in their heyday today that could use deep renovations, and other properties that really are, I think, historic to America and deserve to be rehabilitated and brought into the shared economy, which in my opinion, is one of the best possible uses for them. Eve: [00:12:45] If I want to rent one of your estates how will it compare to holding a gathering in a traditional local venue like a hotel, just price-wise. Daniel: [00:12:55] In my opinion, this is the core to our ultimate success. The macroeconomics of our properties versus the alternative. There's kind of no comparison in my mind. Our properties will often be less per person than a standard hotel room would be, but our properties will have ... in the next project we're doing, we'll have 40 acres of private space, it'll have a dedicated pond, docks. It'll have a five-acre vineyard, greenhouses, multiple living spaces, multiple dining rooms, multiple quiet spaces, an office, library. All for your own private use with yourself, your friends and your family. You just have to get a group of family and friends to travel with you. But, in terms of the amenities, there's just no comparison. These are the most luxurious possible properties. And with the right group of friends and family, on a per person basis, they could be less than a holiday. Eve: [00:13:52] That's amazing. Daniel: [00:13:54] Yes. Eve: [00:13:54] So, this is really the shared economy in a very different way. Daniel: [00:13:58] That's right. Eve: [00:13:59] So, you have the Playhouse under your belt. You said, you mentioned the next property. You want to tell us a little bit about that one? Daniel: [00:14:06] Sure. Yeah. We are calling it the Freeman Berkshires. So the Freeman is currently an 11,300 square foot brick mansion on about 40 acres, with a private pond, tennis court. We are going to deeply renovate, rehabilitate this property, new fixtures, new paint, add some square footage, hopefully.  We're going to install a 500 square foot English-style greenhouse and extensive gardens, five acres of vineyard, and in-ground pool, and really bring this into 2020. Modern IT infrastructure. Games rooms and a virtual gaming room, so that there's something for all generations. The name, the Freeman Berkshires comes from a local woman, Elizabeth Freeman. She was the first African-American slave to sue and win her freedom under the Massachusetts constitution. And she was abused at the hands of her, quote unquote, Master's wife. And so, the property will be a tribute to her. We'll be installing a sculpture garden by local artists in tribute to Elizabeth and her story. And we'll be donating a percent of profits to the Elizabeth Freeman Center, a local nonprofit that's been operating since the 1970s, serving battered and abused victims of assault and sexual assault. And so, we're very excited, and that local nonprofit engagement is part of every property that we've done and will do. The Playhouse contributed to St. Jude's, Sierra Club and the local Humane Society on a recurring basis. So, we're very excited about the Freeman Center contract and we'll be closing imminently here in the next weeks. And so, we can't wait to get started on it. Eve: [00:15:54] So, tell me a little bit about financing. I mean, I have been hearing over the last few months the difficulty that people are having financing anything unusual in the real estate market. And this is definitely unusual. Daniel: [00:16:08] Yeah. And in fact, our biggest challenge, Eve, is that these are rural projects. They're all in rural America. And what I didn't realize before going to the market the first time, a couple of years ago, for commercial financing in rural America is that many banks will simply not finance projects in rural United States. They're very focused on urban areas, suburban areas. Commercial lenders like to invest in New York, Manhattan, Philadelphia. They basically red-line rural America, and in places like the Berkshires that really need economic development, that's a real problem. Eve: [00:16:47] Did they just come out and say we don't lend in rural America. Daniel: [00:16:52] Yeah. I have had dozen of lenders simply say, you know, we do not invest in rural properties. Which ... Eve: [00:17:00] Wow. Daniel: [00:17:00] It's kind of like red-lining. Right? I mean, I can't think of any other ... Eve: [00:17:06] Yes. Daniel: [00:17:06] ... comparison. So, it was pretty shocking, frankly. The local banks are fantastic and supportive, but they often have relatively modest caps on the amount of capital that they can contribute. And so, the value of Small Change really shines here in its ability to help bring capital into places like this, and frankly, to offer the ability of the local community to invest. As you know, traditionally, only accredited investors can invest in GP/LP-type structures like ours, and that's highly limiting, you know. The local community is not, on average, worth a million or more dollars, but they're the ones that, they deal with the tourist economy every day, they often work in the tourist economy, and so, they should be able to benefit from that economic activity. Eve: [00:17:53] So how are you financing this project if you don't have the bank? How do you do it? Daniel: [00:17:57] Yeah, this project is particularly unique. We've obtained seller financing for a large portion of the acquisition cost, actually 95 percent of the acquisition cost, allowing us to focus our equity on the rehabilitation and upgrade of the property and aesthetic improvements. And we will be conducting a Small Change raise. So, we're excited. Eve: [00:18:20] Yes, we're excited, too. So, but how long did it take you to negotiate the seller financing? That's not an easy thing to accomplish. Daniel: [00:18:28] It was almost a year, Eve. Eve: [00:18:29] Wow. Daniel: [00:18:29] Of what it was about 11 months of back and forth, and educating the seller on us, what we've done, what we plan to do ... Eve: [00:18:38] Wow. Daniel: [00:18:38] ... and ultimately reached a deal that we're really happy with and I think they're happy with, too. Eve: [00:18:43] So, tenacious must be your middle name. Daniel: [00:18:47] You have to keep that deals, right ... Eve: [00:18:49] Yeh, yeh, yeh. Daniel: [00:18:49] ... that's the nature of development. Eve: [00:18:51] So, final question for you. What's your big, hairy, audacious goal? Where are you going with all of this? Daniel: [00:18:58] For Shared Estates, specifically, I'm born and raised in the Berkshires. I love the Berkshires. I drove by these properties when I was a kid and fell in love with them. And the Berkshires is a really special place. The Boston Symphony Orchestra summers there at Tanglewood, has the oldest and longest performing dance center in the country, Jacob's Pillow. It has one of the largest standing Shakespearean companies in the world, frankly. And these beautiful bucolic views. It's just a phenomenal and special place. And I really want Shared Estates to contribute to the local economy, through taxes, through the nonprofit contributions we'll be making, hopefully through investments by the local community in the business. I want the business to be 'by and for' the local community. And I want it to contribute, honestly, millions and millions of dollars of benefit, both direct and indirect, to local businesses. Every one of our properties supports local businesses. We champion and celebrate local businesses. We have local gift baskets and literature, and we really try to get folks who sometimes travel ... they used to travel from Europe, now generally in New York and Boston, as those families are traveling more domestically. And we've seen a dramatic uptick, frankly, in our activity in rentals. Eve: [00:20:19] Oh, that's interesting, yeh. Daniel: [00:20:19] But we really want this to be a massive engine of growth for the local economy, and to be a benefit to the local organizations there. I mean, that's, that's really our goal. Eve: [00:20:30] That's a pretty fabulous goal. And I hope you're incredibly successful. So, thank you very much for joining me today. Daniel: [00:20:37] Thank you, Eve. It's been a pleasure. Eve: [00:20:38] I hope I get to visit sometime. Daniel: [00:20:40] Absolutely. Us, too. Eve: [00:20:41] Ok, bye. Daniel: [00:20:55] Bye. Eve: [00:20:55] That was Daniel Dus. He's planning a comeback for the many underutilized luxury estates in the Berkshires. Daniel and his team plan to reposition them for the sharing economy. Not only will they be available for middle class families to enjoy, they'll be carbon neutral renovations, making them the ultimate recycling projects. And he's taking the democratization of these estates one step further by offering the opportunity to invest to anyone over the age of 18. These estates won't just be owned by the wealthy any longer.Eve: [00:21:42] You can find out more about impact real estate investing and access the show notes for today's episode at my website, EvePicker.com. While you're there, sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate, while building better cities. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And thank you, Daniel, for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk again soon. But for now, this is Eve Picker, signing off to go make some change

Warum leuchtet die Sonne? Darüber hat man seit Jahrtausenden nachgedacht. Die vorgeschlagenen Antworten wirken aus heutiger Sicht oft absurd. Und tatsächlich hat es überraschend lange gedauert, bis wir gecheckt haben, was in der Sonne abgeht. Was davor passiert ist, erfahrt ihr in der neuen Folge der Sternengeschichten

«Lo que no se define no se puede medir. Lo que no se mide, no se puede mejorar. Lo que no se mejora, se degrada siempre.» Esta cita del físico y matemático británico William Thomson, más conocido como Lord Kelvin nos habla de la importancia de medir las cosas, de tener números, datos o indicios […] La entrada Métricas para mejorar tu estrategia de marca #123 se publicó primero en Toni Colom..

"Lo que no se define no se puede medir. Lo que no se mide, no se puede mejorar. Lo que no se mejora, se degrada siempre”, frase de Lord Kelvin, que generalmente se le atribuye a Peter Drucker. Para mi la medición es la estrategia más importante que hace la diferencia en el marketing digital. Conoce cómo te puede beneficiar, no solo en el marketing, sino en tu negocio en general.

Angeblich sagte der englische Gelehrte Lord Kelvin im Jahr 1900 das Ende der Physik voraus. Ein Beleg für diese Aussage findet sich jedoch nicht, tatsächlich soll der exzellente Physiker über das genaue Gegenteil gesprochen haben. Falsch lag Lord Kelvin bei einer ganz anderen Prognose. Von Dirk Lorenzen www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sternzeit Hören bis: 19.01.2038 04:14 Direkter Link zur Audiodatei

Kelvin, Präsident der Royal Society, war ein hoch intelligenter Mann, dennoch saß er einem Irrtum der Wissenschaft auf, als er behauptete, es werde niemals Flugzeuge geben können.

Acompáñame en esta historia - Lord Kelvin

Topics: - Lord Kelvin - 19% of the ocean floor mapped - Google to auto-delete users' records by default - Amazon bought self-driving startup Zoox for $1.2B - Microsoft says it will permanently close all Microsoft Store - Google gives Android depth sensing and object occlusion with ARCore - Scale of data creation - Amazon says it mitigated the largest DDOS attack ever recorded - Amazon getting into Live TV? - 3D printing news

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church. I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee. What's happening around the world reminds me of a situation Paul addressed when he wrote his letter to the church in Rome. As I watch the nation tire of the pandemic, people forget the disease has not been conquered. It is still as contagious and as dangerous as ever. The spread has not stopped. Federal and state officials gave us some pretty drastic measures to slow the spread, and it worked while we implemented them. We stayed in our homes, and instead of the predicted hundred million infected, we stand at just over two million. Instead of more than a million dead, we are just over 115 million. But we tired of staying at home. We decided we didn't want to wear masks or keep our distance. The number of cases across the United States is showing our dislike of being told what to do. Some are saying the increase in numbers is the second wave of the pandemic. Unfortunately, it is not. It is our failure to do what would stop the disease from spreading. The second wave will not come until late fall, October or November, when the virus will again race through the world with another equally virulent strain, just like a flu season. We understand how coronaviruses operate. This virus is just a new one, more contagious, more deadly. In our haste to get out of our homes, we forgot the rules about what keeps the disease at bay. It's not that we can't get out of our homes, but we have to do the things that keep us safe. Masks to stop asymptomatic carriers from spreading the virus to the vulnerable in our population who then take it home to the rest of the family. Scientists estimate that 85% of those infected, now, are infected by another family member. That happens because someone carelessly goes out without thinking about risks to others and spreads the disease. The unmasked share the virus, and one of them takes it home to their family, and more than half of that family will end up in the hospital. Those are the current statistics. So why does that careless transmission remind me of Paul's letter to the Romans? Because there were some, who received God's grace, his forgiveness, and thought they could just take advantage of it. Here is Paul's answer to them. What are we to say, then? Shall we continue in the state of sin, so that grace may increase? 2 Certainly not! We died to sin; how can we still live in it? 3 Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into the Messiah, Jesus, were baptized into his death? 4 That means that we were buried with him, through baptism, into death, so that, just as the Messiah was raised from the dead through the father's glory, we too might behave with a new quality of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 This is what we know: our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah, so that the bodily solidarity of sin might be abolished, and that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 A person who has died, you see, has been declared free from all charges of sin. 8 But if we died with the Messiah, we believe that we shall live with him. 9 We know that the Messiah, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has any authority over him. 10 The death he died, you see, he died to sin, once and only once. But the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way you, too, must calculate yourselves as being dead to sin, and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus. (Romans 5:1-11 NTE) The more I read and study Jesus' words, the more I understand his kingdom is already here. Jesus' death and resurrection inaugurated the coming of the kingdom to earth. He is the king of the kingdom of God. God invites us into his kingdom as his children when we believe in Jesus as Messiah, the one sent by him to redeem us from our sins. When we ask for his forgiveness, his grace is abundant and he gives it freely, recreating us for his kingdom. There will be more to this re-creation to come when he returns. Our physical bodies will be transformed into something we don't yet understand. We will obtain a physical form like his resurrected form. One that you can see and touch, yet can appear behind locked doors and disappear without warning as Jesus did during those forty days after his resurrection. We don't understand the physics of how that can happen, but if the early Christians willingly gave their lives for the story of the events, I expect we can believe in their authenticity. To those who would say, “It's just not possible.” I would retort, “Neither was flight 150 years ago. Neither was the thought of traveling to the moon 100 years ago. Dark matter was thought a ridiculous hypothesis when posited by Lord Kelvin in 1884. It almost ruined his career as a physicist. It did no better for Henri Poincaré in 1906 or Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922. And the hypothesis wasn't taken seriously until the 1960's and 1970's when nothing else could explain some of the action of subatomic particles physicists saw in cyclotrons. So what else don't we know about the universe? For one, we don't understand how creation happened. Let's assume for argument's sake there was a big bang. How did the big bang happen? Where did the material come from? Who compressed into a form that made it bang in the first place? Genesis doesn't say how. It just says out of nothing, God spoke and there was light. We can find as many arguments as there are people as to how things evolved from there. But it seems few want to argue backward from the bang. How will God re-create a new heaven and new earth? I don't know. Will we all “go” to heaven. The more I read, the less I think we will. The more I read, I think heaven will “come” to earth. Remember Jesus' message? The kingdom of heaven is near. God's kingdom is near. This is what the kingdom of God is like. He tells us to pray, “Your [God's] kingdom come, on earth…” So what does that mean for us? I think it means we need to prepare for his coming when he will reign in his new kingdom here. Will he remake it and restore it? Yes. But maybe, just maybe those who follow him will be left to help re-create it into God's original design for his kingdom. And what was that original design? Humanity caring for all of his creation - tending the animals; caring for the plants; helping each other; living in harmony with each other and with God; God walking in his kingdom with humanity. I think it also means the more we mess up this place now, the more we will have to clean up when he comes. I'm not sure he will wave a magic wand and make everything go away. Could he do that? Sure. Will he do that? I'm not so sure about that. “Idle hands are the devil's workshop,” cannot be found in the Bible, but Solomon and Paul imply it. James almost tells us the same thing. It may be that 1,000-year reign Revelation talks about is the time it will take to put everything back the way it's supposed to be. So now that I've rattled your theology with some things to contemplate for the next week or month or lifetime, I invite you to read carefully Jesus' words. Don't just skim through them the way we usually do because they become so familiar to us, but really read them. I think you'll find that nowhere does he say his followers will “go” to heaven or his kingdom, but rather the kingdom will “come here.” Think about what difference that makes in how you live day to day. You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scripture are taken from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.    

Wasser hat seinen Siedepunkt bei 212 Grad Fahrenheit und bei 100 Grad Celsius. Und Celsius wird inzwischen nach einer dritten Skala festgelegt, nämlich der thermodynamischen Skala des Lord Kelvin.

Today we're going to review the innovations in electricity that led to the modern era of computing.  As is often the case, things we knew as humans, once backed up with science, became much, much more. Electricity is a concept that has taken hundreds of years to really take shape and be harnessed. And whether having done so is a good thing for humanity, we can only hope.  We'll take this story back to 1600. Early scientists were studying positive and negative elements and forming an understanding that electricity flowed between them. Like the English natural scientist, William Gilbert  - who first established some of the basics of electricity and magnetism in his seminal work De Magnete, published in 1600, when he coined the term electricity. There were others but the next jump in understanding didn't come until the time of Sir Thomas Browne, who along with other scientists of the day continued to refine theories. He was important because he documented where the scientific revolution was in his 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica. He codified that word electricity. And computer by the way.  And electricity would be debated for a hundred years and tinkered with in scientific societies, before the next major innovations would come. Then another British scientist, Peter Collinson, sent Benjamin Franklin an electricity tube, which these previous experiments had begun to produce.  Benjamin Franklin spent some time writing back and forth with Collinson and flew a kite and proved that electrical currents flowed through a kite string and that a metal key was used to conduct that electricity. This proved that electricity was fluid. Linked capacitors came along in 1749. That was 1752 and Thomas-Francois Dalibard also proved the hypothesis using a large metal pole struck by lightning.  James Watt was another inventor and scientist who was studying steam engines from the 1760s to the late 1790s. Watt used to quantify the rate of energy transfer, a unit to measure power. Today we often measure those watts in terms of megawatts. His work in engines would prove important for converting thermal into mechanical energy and producing electricity later. But not yet.  1799, Alessandro Volta built a battery, the Volta Pile. We still refer to the resistance of an ohm when the current of an amp flows through it as a volt. Suddenly we were creating electricity from an electrochemical reaction.  Humphry Davy took a battery and invented the “arc lamp.” By attaching a piece of carbon that glowed to it with wires. Budding scientists continued to study electricity and refine the theories. And by the 1820s, Hans Christian Orsted proved that an electrical current creates a circular magnetic field when flowing through a wire. Humans were able to create electrical current and harness it from nature. Inspired by Orsted's discoveries, André-Marie Ampère began to put math on what Orsted had observed. Ampére observed two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract and that they repeled each other, depending on the direction of the currents, the foundational principal of electrodynamics. He took electricity to an empirical place. He figured out how to measure electricity, and for that, the ampere is now the unit of measurement we use to track electric current. In 1826 Georg Ohm defined the relationship between current, power, resistance, and voltage. This is now called “Ohms Law” and we still measure electrical resistance in ohms.  Michael Faraday was working in electricity as well, starting with replicating a voltaic pile and he kinda' got hooked. He got wind of Orsted's discovery as well and he ended up building an electric motor. He studied electromagnetic rotation, and by. 1831 was able to generate electricity using what we now call the Faraday disk. He was the one that realized the link between the various forms of electricity and experimented with various currents and voltages to change outcomes. He also gave us the Faraday cage, Faraday constant, Faraday cup, Faraday's law of induction, Faraday's laws of electrolysis, the Faraday effect, Faraday paradox, Faraday rotator, Faraday wave, and the Faraday wheel. It's no surprise that Einstein kept a picture of Faraday in his study.  By 1835, Joseph Henry developed the electrical relay and we could send current over long distances.  Then, in the 1840s, a brewer named James Joule had been fascinated by electricity since he was a kid. And he discovered the relationship between mechanical work and heat. And so the law of conservation of energy was born. Today, we still call a joule a unit of energy. He would also study the relationship between currents that flowed through resistors and how they let off heat, which we now call Joules first law. By the way, he also worked with Lord Kelvin to develop the Kelvin scale.  1844, Samuel Morse gave us the electrical telegraph and Morse code. After a few years coming to terms with all of this innovation, JC Maxwell unified magnetism and electricity and gave us Maxwell's Equations, which gave way to electric power, radios, television, and much, much more.  By 1878 we knew more and more about electricity. The boom of telegraphs had sparked many a young inventor into action and by 1878 we saw the lightbulb and a lamp that could run off a generator. This led Thomas Edison to found Edison Light and Electric and continue to refine electric lighting. By 1882, Edison fired up the Pearl Street Power station and could light up 5,000 lights using direct current power. A hydroelectric station opened in Wisconsin the same year. The next year, Edison gave us the vacuum tube. Tesla gave us the Tesla coil and therefore alternating current in 1883, making it more efficient to send electrical current to far away places. Tesla would go on to develop polyphase ac power and patent the generator to transformer to motor and light system we use today, which was bought by George Westinghouse. By 1893, Westinghouse would use aC power to light up the World's Fair in Chicago, a turning point in the history of electricity.  And from there, electricity spread fast. Humanity discovered all kinds of uses for it. 1908 gave us the vacuum and the washing machine. The air conditioner came in 1911 and 1913 brought the refrigerator. And it continued to spread. By 1920, electricity was so important that it needed to be regulated in the US and the Federal Power Commission was created. By 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority established a plan to built damns across the US to light cities. And by 1935 The Federal Power Act was enacted to regulate the impact of damns on waterways. And in the history of computing, the story of electricity kinda' ends with the advent of the transistor, in 1947. Which gave us modern computing. The transmission lines for the telegraph put people all over the world in touch with one another. The time saved with all these innovations gave us even more time to think about the next wave of innovation. And the US and other countries began to ramp up defense spending, which led to the rise of the computer. But none of it would have been possible without all of the contributions of all these people over the years. So thank you to them. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We are so lucky to have you. Have a great day!

“Lo que no se define no se puede medir. Lo que no se mide, no se puede mejorar. Lo que no se mejora, se degrada siempre.” Muchos de nosotros habremos escuchado esta frase del físico William Thomson Kelvin, conocido como Lord Kelvin por sus aportes a la física. En un post anterior indicábamos la importancia que tiene disponer de una estrategia preventiva adecuada dentro de las organizaciones. Una de las piezas claves de esa estrategia es analizar dónde y cómo estamos en materia preventiva y qué pasos debemos dar para mejorar.

In this episode we tackle some big questions about the future.What is it?How do we think about it?How do I get a job as a "futurist"?As leaders for change, how do we orient ourselves towards it?And if you're wondering why the image for this post is a piece of repaired pottery, you'll need to listen to the episode.Kintsugi, Centuries Old Japanese Method of Repairing Pottery with GoldTranslated to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece.https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/“As you imagine the consequences of peripheral trends in the future, go beyond the first-degree impact. For example, consider the driverless cars that Google, BMW, and others are working on. Obviously cars without drivers could change driving patterns, which could affect auto manufacturers. Presumably they will crash less frequently, which could enable dramatically different designs that are much lighter weight, affecting material companies. Lighter cars will get much better mileage, affecting gas companies. If cars don’t crash, why would we need auto insurance, at least in its current form? And what about local governments that earn revenue from handing out speeding tickets? Or urban planners that allocate prime real estate to parking lots? Finally, consider employment implications. One million people in the U.S. work as truck drivers. What happens when they are displaced by robots?” Read more here.Famous Quotes about the Future'The Bomb will never go off; I speak as an expert in explosives."- - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923 "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957 "But what is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip. "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us" -- Western Union internal memo, 1876. "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s. "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible" -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper" -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind." "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out" -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962. "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this" - - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads . "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy" -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859."Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value" -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France ."Everything that can be invented has been invented"-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899. "The super computer is technologically impossible.It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." -- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University "I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself." -- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977Listen here.Find the podcast on itunes here.

In my last article in the July issue of MTD magazine, I hopefully gave a useful explanation of what industry 4.0 will mean with respect to manufacturing production processes of which Metrology and its subsequent applied measurement is going to be an important ingredient. I indicated that the start date, pace of change and ultimate impact of i4.0 will differ for each company. We can confidently predict that though the direction of travel is common, the journey may be intermittent and completion may vary by a few decades. Whatever your process, whether it’s complex, relatively simple or complex when looking simple, there is one mantra that you need to live by before you start. “I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.” Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) In this article, I will follow on the focus on Metrology and its current state and its readiness to move to an industry 4 future. To do this I will focus on three key areas. To keep my feet firmly in my own area of expertise, we will focus on Industrial dimensional measurement, not including surface texture. Dimensional measurement is by far the most widely applied form of industrial measurement with hundreds of dimensions on millions of drawings, all sample and first article checked, as a minimum, across every manufacturing process. Dimensional measurement results in the UK are standardised to the metre and termed length measurement. Length has always been impacted by temperature and now, newer measurement technologies also utilise time and luminous intensity (light) as a factor of their measurement accuracy. So now, as Metrologists, we need to have a basic understanding of several of the S.I. Units and their underpinning science. But back to the main thrust of this article. What is the current state and what can we expect in the future? By the way, I have no crystal ball, this is a personal assessment. Technology Application Current state: I said in my last article that metrology is still completing the third industrial revolution. A majority of companies when trying to keep on top of process control and quality, still commonly rely on manual measurements in the form of fixtures and first principle measurement tools and techniques. They will then in most cases have a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) for first article or validation checks. This is still the most common scenario even in larger enterprises. Automation as will be required within the process; is still only applied by a small percentage. The workhorses of coordinate measurement, the CMM are well established and common across small and large companies alike - now being mainstream for several decades. Their recent development has continued to eke out accuracy improvements. They are in the main highly developed with the sensor and the software developed and blend to tackle complex applications of geometry and tolerances. Well advanced in its technology development curve, the laws of physics are hindering any further radical development. There has been an explosion of new technologies starting around the turn of the last century. In this last decade, they started to make inroads into the measuring equipment market share, particularly within the larger volume component arena. Specifically, this development has been in the field of Electro Magnetic Spectrum sensors. Utilising the use of visible light, lasers, X-Rays and photogrammetry techniques and often termed non-contact or optical sensors. The type of technology varies greatly, generally speaking they are not yet as accurate as a typical bridge CMM, but they are making significant and rapid progress in attaining better accuracies. Their ability to capture large amounts of point data in spilt seconds makes for fast measurement, but that does come at a cost, most of these systems are more susceptible to sensor noise (bad data returns). This is commonly offset in the systems by applying statistical analysis to the mass data to remove anomalous outlying data, smoothing and filtering. Averaging, turning point clouds into facetted surfaces, and applying dynamic geometry and pattern based algorithms. This is good for larger surfaces with their size and profile requirements, but generally less useful on smaller more accurate features where form is a critical function to be toleranced. Maybe this should be a future article in itself? Future state: Though CMM’s can with some management and allowances be added into a cell, fed by robots and eventually connected as part of a Cyber Physical System (CPS), they do suffer from a big Achilles heel. They are relatively slow, they will generally not be able to keep pace with the manufacturing process and may have to be built in parallel to a production line and have a serious impact on the ‘Takt’ time. The new kids on the block, predominantly the optical sensors, do meet the speed required and as flexible sensors, they can often be mounted directly within the production line or at least on robot arms, as they may need to move around the object being measured. You can also consider mounting several of the same sensors to collaborate and make one overall coordinate system output. They can measure complex shapes very quickly. But, remember the accuracy and issues around accurate form; sometimes a CMM is still the best option and slower throughput is the price. There is one other possible future solution. That is, as a company you do not buy a complete system, but only buy sensors. Maybe a hundred sensors or more, each one measuring temperature, a feature or selection of features and collaborating with other sensors to build up a complete coordinate and geometry output within the cell cyber system. Of course this may only be valid for more simplistic parts, but it does potentially meet the CPS model better than an independent software system. With off the shelf low cost sensors providing localised data that is coordinated via a cyber-system, maintenance and equipment failures could be easier to manage. But the challenges in designing and validating bespoke systems will be huge, especially the software application. There is also a bigger question to ask, to which only market forces and an entrepreneurial approach by supply companies will answer. CPS requires connectivity and as I said in my last article, it needs a wealth of data, not only of the measured part, but of the line/cell/processes health and environmental changes; sensing all the parameters that can cause variation and issues to the resultant part and the process performance. Complex coordinate measuring system suppliers are very good at supplying and supporting turnkey systems with their own dedicated software. The connectivity of the complex coordinate measuring systems into the cyber system and the collation of their data output with all the other sensors within that line or cell, have still yet to be tackled in the true sense of CPS. Single, simple sensors can already be incorporated, but complex coordinate measuring sensors with bespoke software is another matter. We are currently sat with no single solution, and so the market will decide. A Betamax/VHS type free market forces battle but on a much bigger scale, with huge risks and rewards for early adopters - unless someone sets/agrees a standard that drives this? Finally, as the machine tool companies found out in the 80’s, fixturing will need to be rethought. Most current fixturing is manually fed, again this will create issues as a typical robot arm does not have the senses that humans have to ‘best’ place a part in a fixture, so the fixture design has to be better thought through than currently it is. Is there a cheaper option than making a robot able to fully replicate human senses? Look up Industry 5 on the internet. Again, maybe a future article? Skill and Competence In the current state, we have a real problem here. Industry 4 is going to require much more planning. It will need engineers with broader and deeper skills as they will need to be proficient at planning for right first time. This is because there will be more at risk if it goes wrong. This has come at a time where the impact of 30 years of recessions and its sometimes misdirected cost cutting has eroded the less fashionable skills, particularly the underpinning of cross functional skills from both companies and the offer from education and training. Some of those skills are a shadow of what they will need to be. We have in far too many instances become expert fire fighters and forgotten how to plan for fire prevention, always the lower cost option. Metrology has suffered more than most, as it has been lost or paid lip service to when considering most apprenticeships and degrees. Technology has made it almost impossible for colleges to keep in touch with modern equipment and both techniques and Universities, even with their relatively bigger budgets, cannot specialise in every area of manufacturing. Private training providers have easier, more fashionable and profitable streams to teach in; and equipment manufacturers ultimately want to sell their own product even when they are well intentioned and ethical. The educators also struggle to employ experienced experts as they are a rare beast. Except for a very few examples, today’s design and manufacturing engineers are taught very little about modern measurement and metrology techniques. This is something that must change if the UK wants to be a leader in smart manufacturing where Metrology will be a core engineering skill. Data Management Current state: We already have systems capable of collecting ¼ of a million points in a few seconds. The issue is what we can do with such rich Data, remember a small part of which is false data. Well ideally we would like to keep all the data, even the false data. When mined it could reveal patterns that improve our overall system knowledge. Hardware and storage limitations make keeping all that data problematic and expensive. So currently the equipment manufacturers apply statistics and summarise the data. This is based upon the manufacturers idea of how much of a summary is best to build a software system that will perform in its typical target market. At this time, we can collect 3 million points on a surface, check it against CAD and output some key but simple visual analysis. That core of summarised data which is still very large in file size could be stored; but if we measure 40 parts a day, after a year we would have a significant amount of data in storage and other than repeat a slightly different key visual analysis data set, it will not be used again. So, a lot of companies once they have the green tick of acceptance, delete that data as it is of no further use. Future state: Data management is an area that is clear in terms of what is needed for the future but less clear on how it will be facilitated with regards to mass data from coordinate metrology systems. Every bit of measured data, in the raw and not already summarised, is useful for a cyber-system to use in process improvement and digital twin simulations. That means collecting and keeping huge amounts of data in a way that it can be cross referenced in a search and analysed for opportunity. This is required to make the most of the cyber system. There are already some very good companies, some new and some that are reinventing themselves. These companies are offering production line management and controls systems that are on the march towards i4.0. These companies are working hard on the connectivity and data management side of i4.0 and linking that to the wider business management systems. The integration of single sensors as described, is not an issue as they are a plug-in tool to the cell or line designers. But the integration of complex measurement systems into CPS is not so easy without being dumbed down. Coordinate measurement systems are often not fully understood by those cell or line designers (a broader skill issue) and they have limited connectivity potential to the CPS cyber control system; and so true CPS connectivity is not readily available at this time. The connectivity issues will be resolved as companies attempt to build CPS into their production and utilise current technology and thinking into those lines, but it may take many iterations. Simplistic measurement will go first but eventually over a decade (or two?) it will all become off the shelf for the mainstream manufacturers. I read back my own words and feel I can never do this justice in an article of this size, there are many threads and connections of which metrology is a big part but not the only part. I have probably left you with a lot of questions. But this second part of my article was intended to stimulate thinking and get you to look at your business metrology fitness, not provide an A to B map. More talking needs to be done and if my article starts that I would be happy to hear from you with your own thoughts and comments. You can find me on LinkedIn or via the Coventry University website just type in my name.

Adım William Thomson. Ama gelecekte herkes beni Lord Kelvin olarak bilecek… İşte ben de size bu hikayeyi anlatacağım. Seslendiren: Talat Türkeli

Most of you know the quote, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” It's often attributed, incorrectly, to the famous nineteenth century physicist, Lord Kelvin. Wherever it came from, it's sounds about right. Same goes for this familiar quote from a popular business book author, “What gets measured gets done.” Well, in today's episode were going to talk about what's getting measured and what's actually getting done. What's getting measured are thousands of performance and quality indicators. What's getting done is docking our medical system billions of dollars every year in costs and lost productivity. Nothing new to all of you out there. But what if this “metric fixation,” is doing more than just wasting time and money? Used correctly, metrics and big data analysis offer incredible promise for research, visibility and improvement. Used incorrectly, they can steer us off course, devalue professional judgment, manipulate, encourage fraud, and possibly cause real harm to physicians, hospitals and patients. As you know, every so often we like to venture outside the medical tent for unique perspectives. That's certainly true of today's guest, historian Jerry Muller. Author of many books and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs. His recent book, “The Tyranny of Metrics,” arose from his initial frustrations with metric fixation in higher education. As he dug deeper, he soon realized these fixations weren't' limited to universities, and they weren't new. They were already prevalent in business, law enforcement, the military, philanthropy, and of course medicine. What he found was a growing obsession with rankings, scores and a belief that all aspects of human performance and judgment can ultimately be deconstructed, demystified and quantified. This was a fascinating discussion with a rare thinker and scholar, we hope you'll enjoy. With that said let's get started.

Nearly two thousand years before Rudolph Clausius and Lord Kelvin first expressed the second law of thermodynamics (although there is debate on whether or not the French physicist Sadi Carnot discovered it earlier), Marcus Aurelius was musing on it. “Bear in mind,” he wrote, “that everything that exists is already fraying at the edges and in transition, subject to fragmentation and to rot. Or that everything was born to die.”That is to say: We are all subject to entropy. Science has since confirmed it into immutable law. We cannot eliminate disorder from the system, no matter how much we try. Everything we build, including ourselves, is constantly breaking down. What does this mean for us? First, it should bake in humility. We are building sand castles. Even our real castles eventually fall into the sea or crumble into dust. Second, it demands presence. This moment is all we have. So enjoy it. Drink it in. Appreciate it.But also be prepared to let it all go. Because it’s going, whether we like it or not. That’s the law.

In our 72nd episode, Julia heats up a discussion about the three old dead white men whose names grace the most commonly known temperature scales: Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin.  Later, enjoy a quiz called “Fahrenheit 451”! . . . [Music: 1) The Polish Ambassador, “360 Degree View of the Phantasmal Farm,” 2014. Courtesy of The Polish Ambassador, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license;  2) Frau Holle, “Ascending Souls,” 2017. Courtesy of Frau Holle, CC BY-NC 3.0 license.]

- Decay and refutation of the Genesis minimalist paradigm for interpreting geology.    - What do contemporary young Earth creationists think happened during this epoch of human history (c. 1700-1830)?    - Do they think about it at all?    - Do they think that it was a conspiracy or open rebellion, a force of will to reject the Bible?- Late 18th / early 19th century debate over the age of the Earth    - Change in status of fossils of extinct species from a doubted claim to a means of dating strata        - In Steno's time, the fact that shells of many extinct species clearly do not belong to living animals was considered a telling argument in favor of their abiotic origin.        - By the early 19th century, enough work had been done on systematic stratigraphy across Europe that geologists recognized a number of extinct fossil groupings that could be found in a variety of places, and the conviction grew that these assemblages were the remains of living communities that existed at specific intervals in Earth's past.        - In turn, using fossil assemblages to cross-correlate rocks across Europe and eventually across the rest of the planet allowed the erection and refinement of the geological timescale that we still use today.    - Hutton: "we can see no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end"        - Criticized as bringing back Aristotelian eternalism, but Hutton defends his statement as a comment on the limitations of what we can observe- Final burst of "diluvialist" theory in the 1820s    - "Drift", including "erratic" boulders, gravels, and sands in places contemporary streams and gravity could not have left them (e.g. on hillsides)    - Some such deposits of gravel and sand in Europe and a few other places scattered across the world, particularly in caves, held recent fossils; these were bundled up together and held to be products of either Noah's Flood or a similar flood at a different, somewhat earlier date.    - No human remains found in these deposits (at the time the debate was being resolved, at any rate).- Lyell begins publishing "Principles of Geology" in 1830    - Pushes the Huttonian theme of uniformitarianism to its extreme.    - Lumps Genesis minimalists, diluvialists, catastrophists, and even directionalists together    - Lyell's uniformitarianism was never accepted in absolute completeness        - Even before the advent of thermodynamics in the 19th century, it was still common sense that the Earth is cooling down with time.- What happened to the evidence once taken as proof of diluvialism?    - The gradual, halting acceptance of ice ages as the source of "drift"- Where did the debate go from there?    - Direct reference to Genesis as a historical reference for geological events died out of the living stream of geological debate.    - Physicists, and devotees of the new discipline of geophysics, began to look for ways to constrain the Earth's age with the means available to late 19th century physics. The name of William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, is most remembered today for essentially issuing ultimata to stratigraphers and paleontologists based on his cooling histories of the Sun and the Earth. A tug of war ensued between geologists in these old subdisciplines, whose estimates of the required time for the deposition, uplift, and erosion of strata ran into the hundreds of millions of years, and the physicists, who thought that 100 million years was roughly the longest conceivable time allowable.    - Of course, the physicists were wrong; their estimates of the age of the Earth were yet another area where the advent of 20th century physics (radioactivity, which ultimately is a quantum physics effect) overturned previous thought:        - First, radioactivity heats the interior of the Earth--and nuclear fusion drives the Sun--meaning that the old estimates of cooling lifetimes were meaningless.        - Second, radioactivity gives us many ways of actually calculating numeric ages of minerals and rocks.        -The upshot for the debate between young Earth creationists and geologists.    - It pays to keep in mind that the radiometric dating line of evidence for the long age of the Earth came very, very late in the history of geology. It's not a primary argument, certainly not historically, and perhaps not even scientifically, for an age of the Earth that radically transcends 6,000 years.    - Geology, like physics, chemistry, and biology, was born in the 17th century, in an intellectual climate steeped in Biblical minimalism. There was no shortage of geologists who *wanted* a global Genesis flood to have existed and left evidence of its passing. They were argued, or even argued themselves out of this belief, very reluctantly.    - It's also worth taking some time to think:        - Does the text of Genesis demand a global flood? Really? We are that sure of the definitions of the words and the history of the text?        - Is a God that presided over the ad hoc instantaneous creation of a complex planet any greater in concept than the God that created a whole universe and the laws that govern its growth and change over 13 billion years?

À propos du livre : « Fabuleuses erreurs De Darwin à Einstein » aux éditions  / CNRS Charles Darwin, Lord William Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, Albert Einstein : cinq scientifiques hors du commun qui ont accompli des découvertes scientifiques considérables. Mais également cinq hommes qui se sont aussi, souvent en même temps, parfois lourdement, fourvoyés sur certains sujets. Charles Darwin n’a pas bien évalué les effets de « dilution » dans la transmission des caractères génétiques ; Lord Kelvin a largement sous-évalué l’âge de la Terre ; Linus Pauling s’est fait « coiffer au poteau » dans la découverte de la structure de l’ADN par Jim Watson et Francis Crick ; Fred Hoyle fut un partisan irréductible de la théorie de l’Univers stationnaire ; enfin, Einstein créa une constante cosmologique pour une mauvaise raison. Il ne s’agit pas d’énumérer les erreurs de ces grands hommes, mais bien plutôt de constater et d’analyser les conséquences bénéfiques de ces errements : la théorie de l’évolution de Darwin fonde la génétique moderne ; Kelvin enseigne à ses successeurs comment utiliser la thermodynamique en astronomie et en géologie ; Linus Pauling introduit superbement les considérations chimiques en biologie ; Fred Hoyle démontre les bienfaits et les limites des approches scientifiques qui se démarquent des théories « à la mode » et, curieusement, au lieu d’être une erreur, l’introduction de la constante cosmologique par Einstein s’avère extraordinairement bénéfique. C’est à une véritable enquête policière, qui dévoile de nombreux aspects jusque-là ignorés de l’histoire des sciences, que s’est consacré l’astrophysicien Mario Livio, qui expose ici de façon originale et vivante les chemins parfois tortueux empruntés par la recherche scientifique À propos du livre : « L’école de la curiosité » aux éditions Vuibert Au fil d’une carrière commencée il y a près d’un demi-siècle, Jean Audouze a tout connu de la science, depuis la recherche en laboratoire jusqu’aux négociations internationales, en passant par la direction de grandes institutions. D’Hubert Reeves à François Mitterrand, il a travaillé avec les plus grands. Alors que sévit une « guerre contre la science », il nous raconte à l’aide de nombreuses anecdotes la science au quotidien et surtout nous explique pourquoi il faut la défendre. C’est la mission qu’il confie aux jeunes scientifiques d’aujourd’hui et à tous ceux pour qui la curiosité et la passion d’apprendre constituent les plus beaux des défauts. Jean Audouze est astrophysicien. Il est l’auteur des Secrets du Cosmos à La Librairie Vuibert (2016).

À propos du livre : «L’école de la curiosité » aux éditions La librairie Vuibert Au fil d’une carrière commencée il y a près d’un demi-siècle, Jean Audouze a tout connu de la science, depuis la recherche en laboratoire jusqu’aux négociations internationales, en passant par la direction de grandes institutions. D’Hubert Reeves à François Mitterrand, il a travaillé avec les plus grands. Alors que sévit une « guerre contre la science », il nous raconte à l’aide de nombreuses anecdotes la science au quotidien et surtout nous explique pourquoi il faut la défendre. C’est la mission qu’il confie aux jeunes scientifiques d’aujourd’hui et à tous ceux pour qui la curiosité et la passion d’apprendre constituent les plus beaux des défauts. Jean Audouze est astrophysicien. Il est l’auteur des Secrets du Cosmos à La Librairie Vuibert (2016). À propos du livre : «Fabuleuses erreursDe Darwin à Einstein » aux éditions  / CNRS éditions Charles Darwin, Lord William Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, Albert Einstein : cinq scientifiques hors du commun qui ont accompli des découvertes scientifiques considérables. Mais également cinq hommes qui se sont aussi, souvent en même temps, parfois lourdement, fourvoyés sur certains sujets. Charles Darwin n’a pas bien évalué les effets de « dilution » dans la transmission des caractères génétiques ; Lord Kelvin a largement sous-évalué l’âge de la Terre ; Linus Pauling s’est fait « coiffer au poteau » dans la découverte de la structure de l’ADN par Jim Watson et Francis Crick ; Fred Hoyle fut un partisan irréductible de la théorie de l’Univers stationnaire ; enfin, Einstein créa une constante cosmologique pour une mauvaise raison. Il ne s’agit pas d’énumérer les erreurs de ces grands hommes, mais bien plutôt de constater et d’analyser les conséquences bénéfiques de ces errements : la théorie de l’évolution de Darwin fonde la génétique moderne ; Kelvin enseigne à ses successeurs comment utiliser la thermodynamique en astronomie et en géologie ; Linus Pauling introduit superbement les considérations chimiques en biologie ; Fred Hoyle démontre les bienfaits et les limites des approches scientifiques qui se démarquent des théories « à la mode » et, curieusement, au lieu d’être une erreur, l’introduction de la constante cosmologique par Einstein s’avère extraordinairement bénéfique. C’est à une véritable enquête policière, qui dévoile de nombreux aspects jusque-là ignorés de l’histoire des sciences, que s’est consacré l’astrophysicien Mario Livio, qui expose ici de façon originale et vivante les chemins parfois tortueux empruntés par la recherche scientifique.            Traduit par Jean Audouze

"The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. Lord Kelvin, in his profound meditations, allows us only a short span of life, something like six million years, after which time the suns bright light will have ceased to shine, and its life giving heat will have ebbed away, and our own earth will be a lump of ice, hurrying on through the eternal night. But do not let us despair. There will still be left upon it a glimmering spark of life, and there will be a chance to kindle a new fire on some distant star. This wonderful possibility seems, indeed, to exist[...], the cheering lights of science and art, ever increasing in intensity, illuminate our path, and marvels they disclose, and the enjoyments they offer, make us measurably forgetful of the gloomy future." - Nikola Tesla, The Problem of Increasing Human Energy TRACKLIST || 01. Denis Kenzo - After Dark [A State Of Trance] || 02. AudioStorm - Monumental Architecture [Superordinate Music] || 03. Alfonso Muchacho, Aguizi & Fahim - Anova (Alfonso Muchacho Mix) [Superordinate Music] || 04. Lily Pita - Unlimited [Mistique Music] || 05. Martin Cloud - Treverse [BOX4JOY] || 06. Andromedha - The Hike [Silk Music] || 07. Leo G - Supersonic (Gai Barone Remix) [Pure Progressive] || 08. Alpha 9 - The Night Is Ours (Extended Mix) [Armind (Armada)] || 09. Ashley Wallbridge - Goa (Extended Mix) [Armada Trice] || 10. Armos & Lucid Blue - Call Of The Wild [Suanda Music] || 11. Roman Messer & Denis Sender ft. Cari (Radio Edit) - Don't Give Up [Suanda Music] || 12. Sam Foster - Moon Train [Black Delta Records] Never miss an episode! Subscribe to the Full Spectrum podcast, find the latest releases at https://ffaze.com

"The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom. Lord Kelvin, in his profound meditations, allows us only a short span of life, something like six million years, after which time the suns bright light will have ceased to shine, and its life giving heat will have ebbed away, and our own earth will be a lump of ice, hurrying on through the eternal night. But do not let us despair. There will still be left upon it a glimmering spark of life, and there will be a chance to kindle a new fire on some distant star. This wonderful possibility seems, indeed, to exist[...], the cheering lights of science and art, ever increasing in intensity, illuminate our path, and marvels they disclose, and the enjoyments they offer, make us measurably forgetful of the gloomy future." - Nikola Tesla, The Problem of Increasing Human Energy TRACKLIST || 01. Denis Kenzo - After Dark [A State Of Trance] || 02. AudioStorm - Monumental Architecture [Superordinate Music] || 03. Alfonso Muchacho, Aguizi & Fahim - Anova (Alfonso Muchacho Mix) [Superordinate Music] || 04. Lily Pita - Unlimited [Mistique Music] || 05. Martin Cloud - Treverse [BOX4JOY] || 06. Andromedha - The Hike [Silk Music] || 07. Leo G - Supersonic (Gai Barone Remix) [Pure Progressive] || 08. Alpha 9 - The Night Is Ours (Extended Mix) [Armind (Armada)] || 09. Ashley Wallbridge - Goa (Extended Mix) [Armada Trice] || 10. Armos & Lucid Blue - Call Of The Wild [Suanda Music] || 11. Roman Messer & Denis Sender ft. Cari (Radio Edit) - Don't Give Up [Suanda Music] || 12. Sam Foster - Moon Train [Black Delta Records] Never miss an episode! Subscribe to the Full Spectrum podcast, find the latest releases at http://ffaze.com, or join us on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frequenZphaZe

Tesla: un nom qui en dehors de la marque de véhicules électriques et de l'unité de mesure du champ magnétique, n'est que rarement associé à l'inventeur américain d'origine serbe né au XIXème siècle et qui participa à l'essor du courant alternatif qui est aujourd'hui indispensable à notre monde.Vous découvrirez que beaucoup d'erreurs sont colportées à ce propos sur l'Internet mondial (inventeur de génie que le système a fait taire, l'homme qui fut capable de dompter l'énergie libre, celui qui pouvait parler aux autres planètes ou encore un vénusien qui était là pour aider l'humanité à grandir) et qu'en se basant sur la littérature sourcée et la science, nous arriverons à comprendre un peu mieux la première partie de sa vie. Ce dossier a été réalisé pour Podcastscience et a été présenté en premier lors du live du 14 juin 2016. Vous pourrez aussi le retrouver sur le site de podcastscience. Introduction On a tous entendu parler de Tesla, que ce soit pour des voitures électriques ou pour l’unité de mesure du champ magnétique. Mais on pense rarement à l’inventeur américain d’origine serbe, contemporain d’Edison, Einstein ou Marconi, qui participa à l’essor de l’industrie électrique et au développement de la radio. Le problème avec Tesla c’est qu’il fit aussi des déclarations fantasques qui font qu’aujourd’hui on entend plus souvent parler de lui comme le chantre du New Age, le maître de l’énergie libre ou pire, un vénusien venu sauver la Terre ...Mais qui est vraiment Nikola Tesla? Sur quoi a-t-il travaillé réellement ?Je vais tenter de démêler le vrai du faux en me basant sur un certain nombre d’ouvrages que j’ai pu lire sur lui directement, sur Edison, ou encore sur l’alterscience.Au cours de ce double épisode nous allons aborder sa jeunesse, son éducation, son voyage en Europe qui le mena à travailler pour Edison, leurs relations, ses travaux sur le courant alternatif et le moteur polyphasé, ceux sur le grand sujet de sa vie : la transmission d’énergie sans fil, ses idées “farfelues” et la fin de sa vie. Je prendrais enfin un peu de temps pour faire du debunking de quelques mythes qui peuvent exister à son propos.Petit disclaimer: les “faits” sur la vie de Tesla, il faut le dire franchement, c’est le bordel pour vérifier. J’ai tenté de donner une vision plus juste de Tesla et si vous pensez que j’ai pu dire quelque chose de faux malgré mes recherches, je suis totalement ouvert à recevoir vos remarques! La jeunesse de Tesla Les parents de Nikola Tesla, Milutin et Djuka, sont nés dans le premier tiers du XIXème siècle[1]. Après un court passage par Senj, sur la côte adriatique de la Croatie, où sont né trois des enfants Tesla[2], ils migrèrent dans une autre ville de Croatie, Smiljan, en 1852.C’est dans cette ville qu’est né Nikola Tesla dans la nuit du 9 au 10 juillet 1856. La légende veut que ce fut à minuit une nuit d’orage et d’éclairs. Un échange aurait eu lieu entre la sage-femme du village qui aurait dit de Nikola qu’il était un enfant de la tempête et Djuka aurait répondu “non, de la lumière”[3].Plusieurs évènements de sa jeunesse, vont marquer toute sa vie. Il découvrit l’électricité statique avec son chat, contracta une horreur pour les boucles d’oreilles, ou encore des troubles obsessionnels compulsifs (les fameux TOC) comme le fait de compter par trois toutes les choses par exemple[4]. Il développa aussi une capacité désormais fameuse à voir, aussi vrai que nature, tout ce qu’il pouvait imaginer[5].Pendant sa jeunesse Tesla fut aussi choqué par la mort de son frère Dane[6] et ses parents furent ensuite très protecteurs avec lui.Suite à cet évènement, ses parents migrèrent à Gospic, toujours en Croatie, où Tesla entra au collège et c’est au cours de cette période qu’il découvrit le principe des turbines et autres roues à aubes. Il prétend d’ailleurs qu’ayant entendu parler des chutes du Niagara il aurait dit à un de ses oncles qu’il maîtriserait leurs forces grâce à ces techniques, ce qu’il réalisa effectivement près de 30 ans plus tard[7].Après avoir fini son collège en 1870, il poursuivit ses études dans un lycée avant d’entrer en 1875 à la Joanneum Polytechnic School de Graz, en Autriche. Nikola entreprit un cursus orienté autour des mathématiques et de la physique. C’est pendant un cours de physique à propos des moteurs ou générateur/dynamo à courant continu que, remettant en cause l’usage du commutateur, son professeur, lui expliqua que l’enlever serait aussi impossible que le mouvement perpétuel[8]. Tesla, instinctivement sûr de son fait, poursuivit cette idée pendant de nombreuses années pour aboutir au moteur à courant alternatif polyphasé qui, aujourd’hui, fait rouler les TGV entre deux grèves notamment.Mais à quoi servait ce commutateur dans les moteurs à courant continu utilisés à l’époque? Prenons un peu de recul pour comprendre un peu ces histoires de courant continu/alternatif et de moteur/générateur d’abord.Le courant continu est celui qui sort d’une pile ou d’une batterie par exemple. Il circulera toujours dans le même sens sans changer d’amplitude au cours du temps. Le courant alternatif de son côté va aller dans un sens puis dans l’autre un certain nombre de fois par seconde (il s’agit de sa fréquence). C’est celui qui est produit par les centrales électriques et qui vous est délivré par les prises de courant de nos maisons.Afin de pouvoir faire fonctionner des rotatives ou des machines industrielles qui fonctionnent à l’électricité, il fallait disposer de générateurs qui produisent du courant, de fils pour le transmettre et de moteurs pour l’utiliser. Ces moteurs devaient, à l’époque, fonctionner sur les mêmes infrastructures électriques que celles utilisées pour la télégraphie qui fonctionnait par l’interruption d’un courant continu. Et il pouvait aussi être nécessaire de pouvoir faire fonctionner les machines sur batterie (qui délivre du courant continu donc).La recherche avait donc tenté d’aboutir à la création d’un couple générateur/moteur à courant continu. Les travaux de l’époque étaient basés sur l’induction magnétique découverte par Faraday en 1831. L’idée était de générer du courant lors du passage d’un aimant dans une bobine de fil (pour le générateur) ou inversement, de générer un champ magnétique lors du passage d’un courant dans une bobine (pour un moteur).By Abnormaal (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia CommonsPour faire fonctionner un moteur il fallait tout d’abord pouvoir générer de l’électricité. Le principe était donc de faire tourner une bobine dans le champ magnétique d'un aimant pour produire un courant électrique dans les fils de la bobine. Comme dans une dynamo de vélo ou une roue à aube par exemple. Mais ce courant étant alternatif par nature, il fallait un moyen de le rendre continu. C’est un certain Hyppolite Pixii qui inventa en 1832[9] le fameux commutateur qui permettait de le faire en prenant le courant dans le bon sens à chaque rotation.Une fois le courant continu arrivé au moteur, le système de la dynamo était inversé et le courant passant dans la bobine générait un champ magnétique qui entre les aimants du stator, la partie aimantée fixe, faisait tourner l’axe.Le problème avec l’usage du commutateur c’était que des étincelles étaient générées quand le courant était récupéré dans un sens puis dans l’autre et cela avait tendance à provoquer des incendies[10].By Pulsar at French Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsPour en revenir à l’éducation de Tesla, et malgré un bon début à Graz, ses résultats scolaires périclitèrent au cours de ses trois années car il fut absorbé par le démon du jeu[11] et il fuit à Maribor (ville située dans l’actuelle Slovénie) pour travailler[12]. Son père le retrouva et lui proposa de reprendre ses études à Prague mais Nikola déclina l’offre.Peu de temps après cette altercation, son père mourut à Gospic en avril 1879. Nikola continua de jouer aux cartes et à perdre de l’argent. Sa mère craignant pour sa santé, le convainc d’arrêter et Nikola alla dans la famille d’un de ses oncles pour finir ses études[13]. Mais en 1881, son oncle ne pouvait le financer plus longtemps et Tesla dut se résoudre à aller à Budapest. Il comptait y travailler pour un certain Puskas, un ami de la famille, qui avait pour charge d’implanter en Europe le téléphone mis au point par Edison. Mais il fut finalement embauché dans le Bureau Central du Télégraphe en Hongrie[14] où il rencontra Anthony Szigeti qui le suivit un bout de temps.C’est en 1882[15], au cours d’une de leurs marches, que Tesla eut son moment Eureka. Il comprit comment se passer de commutateur. La solution : l’obtention d’un mouvement de rotation dans le rotor via des courants de Foucault générés par l’utilisation de champs magnétiques dans le stator grâce à différentes bobines déphasées dans lesquelles passent un courant alternatif.Si vous n’avez pas tout suivi, ce n’est pas grave. Il faut juste retenir que c’est une idée extraordinaire. Il fallait maintenant qu’il puisse le construire en vrai. Tesla et Edison Après un passage court à Budapest, Szigeti et lui furent envoyés à Paris par Puskas afin de travailler pour une division européenne de la société d’Edison dirigée par un de ses proches, Charles Bachelor[16].La réalisation de Tesla la plus notable pendant cette période chez Edison fut de travailler sur les systèmes installés à Strasbourg pour le gouvernement allemand et résoudre une situation complexe pour la société d’Edison. De retour à Paris, il voulut obtenir la prime promise pour ce travail, mais ses supérieurs se rejetaient la responsabilité et il n’obtint rien. Dégoûté par ces agissements, Tesla démissionna. Mais Charles Bachelor, ayant identifié en lui un inventeur de génie du niveau d’Edison, lui fit une lettre d’introduction pour aller à New York s’il souhaitait y travailler pour Edison. L’histoire retient que Bachelor aurait écrit : “I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man”[17]. Ce qui se traduit à peu près en “Je connais deux grands hommes et vous êtes l’un d’entre eux. L’autre est ce jeune homme”.Tesla sauta sur l’occasion et prit le premier train et le premier bateau pour New-York, perdant au passage tous ses effets personnels[18]. Il y arrive néanmoins sûr de ses connaissances et de sa volonté de vouloir démontrer la supériorité de ses inventions.crédit : inventors.about.com : http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison.htmArrivé chez Edison, Tesla le trouva devant un gros dilemme: des dynamos avaient été installées à bord du SS Oregon - le paquebot transatlantique le plus rapide du monde - mais elles ne fonctionnaient pas. Ne disposant pas d’ingénieur qui puisse s’y rendre, il proposa à Tesla d’y aller. Celui-ci s’y rendit et traita le problème rapidement. Recroisant le lendemain matin Edison et Bachelor, Tesla leur annonça que le travail était fini. En partant, Tesla entendit Edison confier à Bachelor : This is a damned good man!”[19]. En français cela donnerait quelque chose comme “Il est sacrément bon!”.Mais la durée du travail de Tesla chez Edison ne dépassa pas les 6 mois et la raison de son départ est controversée. Edison aurait, selon certaines sources, promis à Tesla 50 000 dollars s’il arrivait à passer de continu à alternatif certaines de ses machines[20]. Ceci semble invraisemblable vu qu’Edison ne croyait pas du tout à l’intérêt du courant alternatif. D’autres expliquent qu’Edison avait des problèmes d’argent[21] et qu’il n’aurait jamais pu promettre une telle somme. D’autres racontent enfin que c’était plutôt pour des améliorations sur des machines[22], ou alors pour le non usage d’un système de lampe à arc qu’il aurait mis au point[23] … Tesla et le moteur à courant alternatif Toujours est-il qu’il partit fonder sa propre entreprise. Après une première création d’entreprise qui se finit en eau de boudin[24], Nikola Tesla se retrouva de nouveau à la rue sans le sou. Avec le peu d’argent qu’il arrivait à gagner il déposa néanmoins un brevet en 1886 pour un nouveau type de moteur. C’est le dépôt de ce brevet qui lui permit de rencontrer Alfred Brown. Cette rencontre allait changer sa vie[25].Coutumier de certaines inventions d’Edison pour le télégraphe, Brown, qui travaillait chez Western Union, vit en Tesla un inventeur à soutenir. Aidés par Peck, un homme d’affaires, ils décidèrent de créer Tesla Electric Company dont l’objectif serait de développer le moteur à courant alternatif.La stratégie de Brown et Peck était dite de “patent-promote-sell”. Breveter des inventions, les mettre en avant auprès d’industriels et vendre les brevets. Peck et Brown n’étaient pas convaincus par le courant alternatif, et pour eux le continu était plus établi dans l’industrie[26]. Tesla leur fit le coup de l’oeuf de Christophe Colomb, en version revisitée : S’il arrivait à faire tourner un oeuf sur lui-même sur sa base sans le toucher, Peck et Brown le soutiendraient avec son idée de courant alternatif. Il y arriva grâce au champ magnétique rotatif qu’il pouvait générer grâce au courant alternatif. Peck et Brown furent impressionnés et le soutinrent[27], tout comme Colomb fut soutenu par la reine d’Espagne grâce à son oeuf.Tesla déposa d’abord des brevets pour un système complet pour le courant alternatif incluant dynamo, transformateur, et moteur. Ensuite l’intérêt de l’invention fut mis en avant grâce à des experts du domaine et à travers plusieurs conférences que Tesla réalisa à propos de son moteur, mais aussi à propos du courant alternatif de manière plus générale[28].crédit : encyclopedia brittanica : http://global.britannica.com/biography/George-WestinghouseEnfin ils surent aussi attirer l’attention de George Westinghouse. Il s’agissait d’un homme d’affaires ayant fait fortune grâce à des inventions dans le domaine du ferroviaire et qui souhaitait se développer dans le domaine de l’électricité. Il était l’un des seuls à voir dans le courant alternatif de bonnes perspectives et dans ce but chercha à acquérir des brevets pour diverses technologies en lien avec ce type de courant. A côté l’achat de brevets pour des transformateurs développés eu Europe, les brevets que la Tesla Electric Company possédait étaient, même pour un prix important[29], un atout important pour disposer de dynamos et de moteurs afin de développer cette activité[30]. Enfin cela lui permettait de se différencier d’Edison qui ne misait que sur le courant continu.Tesla travailla avec les ingénieurs de Westinghouse à Pittsburgh pour industrialiser son moteur[31] de juillet 1888 jusqu’à son départ en août 1889. Ce travail continua sans lui car ce n’est pas avant début 1893[32] que Westinghouse eut la possibilité, autant technique que financière, de pouvoir pousser commercialement les résultats de ces travaux. La guerre des courants La période 1890-1891 fut très compliquée pour les sociétés de l’électricité. Entre la fusion des sociétés d’Edison et celle de Thompson Houston pour former General Electric d’un côté et Westinghouse qui tenta d’acheter de petites entreprises locales d’électricité de l’autre, le monde de l’industrie électrique était sous la pression du monde financier pour se structurer.Par ailleurs, la guerre des courants faisait rage entre Edison et Westinghouse. Edison était convaincu que le courant continu était supérieur au courant alternatif. Westinghouse, de son côté, avait fait, comme d’ailleurs Thompson-Houston, le pari du courant alternatif.Pour comprendre un peu cette bataille entre les deux systèmes, laissez moi juste vous expliquer les enjeux. Comme je l’ai expliqué avant, la télégraphie et l’usage régulier de batteries rendaient indispensable l’usage du continu. Un des problèmes que l’on rencontre quand on veut transmettre du courant, c’est la perte en ligne. L’idée étant que plus la tension est élevée, moins on perd par effet joule[33]. Le problème avec le courant continu, c’est que, comme on ne peut pas changer la tension une fois le courant produit, il fallait le produire à la tension utilisée par les moteurs (ou autre) à exploiter. Comme les tensions utilisées n’étaient pas forcément très importantes, il était donc indispensable de produire du courant près des lieux d’usage afin d’éviter les pertes en ligne liée à la faible tension. Pour le courant alternatif c’était différent. Sur la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle des transformateurs, permettant de monter et descendre la tension, ont été développés en Europe. Ces transformateurs ont ainsi permis de transmettre du courant alternatif sur de plus grandes distances en minimisant les pertes en ligne.L’Europe passa assez rapidement au courant alternatif. Mais Edison voulait imposer le courant continu à tout prix car son entreprise reposait principalement d’une part sur la construction de centrales locales produisant du courant continu et d’autre part sur la fabrication de matériel électrique fonctionnant sur ce type de courant. Il était par ailleurs convaincu qu’il était intrinsèquement plus dangereux (à tension égale il avait vu dans des expériences que des risques mortels plus grands existaient). Ce lobbying d’Edison se transforma en campagne agressive contre le courant alternatif. Il alla jusqu’à organiser des démonstrations publiques de sa dangerosité en tuant des animaux[34]. Il arriva même à ce que la première électrocution se fasse grâce à du courant alternatif. A l’époque on parlait d’ailleurs de “Westinghouser”. Mais cela eu l’effet contraire car l’opinion se retourna contre lui[35].Cette guerre et les efforts importants que Westinghouse réalisa en R&D, notamment concernant le moteur de Tesla[36], lui imposèrent de demander à celui-ci de renoncer aux royalties. Selon Westinghouse cette condition était imposée pour qu’il conserve son rôle dans l’entreprise. Tesla aurait accepté par amitié…[37] La transmission sans fil et le show Après avoir quitté Westinghouse, Tesla prit un nouveau laboratoire à Manhattan, sur la Grand Street. Son idée était de développer les recherches autour du courant alternatif à haute fréquence. Partant des travaux de Hertz qui générait des ondes EM, il tenta de les améliorer et mit au point sa fameuse bobine Tesla. Grâce au phénomène de résonance il arrivait à faire un certain nombre de choses : générer ce qu’il appelait des “bouffées” d’énergie électrique; réaliser un transformateur (cela lui permettait d’augmenter fortement le voltage); et produire des fréquences extrêmement élevées. Lors d’une erreur involontaire, il toucha une partie de son matériel branché sur une bobine Tesla, et découvrit l’effet de peau (à haute fréquence le courant alternatif ne pénètre pas profondément et ne se propage qu’en surface, sur la peau donc, d’où son nom) qu’il exploita ensuite dans la plupart de ses conférences pour émerveiller le public[38] en tenant des ampoules ou des tubes fluorescents alimenté par le courant qui passait à la surface de son corps.Il faut noter que Tesla n’était pas un Maxwellien (il ne faisait pas partie des partisans de la nouvelle théorie mise au point par James Clerk Maxwell quelques années auparavant pour expliquer les phénomènes électriques et magnétiques). A la différence de Hertz ou Lodge, il pensait pouvoir justifier des phénomènes observés avec les théories existantes et pensait que les Maxwelliens se trompaient d’explication avec ces nouvelles théories. D’autant plus que selon lui, les ondes électromagnétiques n’étaient pas capables de se propager sur de grandes distances et que les bouffées électrostatiques étaient plus aptes à justifier des phénomènes observés[39].Il présenta diverses inventions lors de plusieurs conférences : en mai 1891 à New York[40] et en Europe en 1892. Il alla notamment à la Royal Society[41] où il eut l’occasion de s’asseoir dans le fauteuil de Faraday et à Paris avant d’aller au chevet de sa mère mourante. Malgré le fait qu’il prétendait ne pas croire aux prémonitions il raconte néanmoins que c’est en rêve que cet évènement tragique lui fut révélé[42] …Parmi ses expériences de l’époque on peut en noter une en particulier : il prenait deux plaques non connectées et il les tournait vers le ciel; la première était branchée sur son oscillateur et elle était connectée à la terre; et l’autre plaque était aussi fixée à la terre avec une induction bien réglée. Une fois ce système mis en place il pouvait connecter sur cette seconde plaque un moteur où une lampe et les faire fonctionner[43]. Cette expérience représente les prémices de la radio pour certains. C’est en tout cas ce que Tesla défendit plus tard lors de divers procès sur la paternité du système[44]. Cependant cela s’entendait dans le cadre de ses recherches sur la transmission d’énergie sans fil et pour lui cela ne fonctionnait pas grâce à des ondes électro-magnétiques mais grâce à ses bouffées électrostatiques. Enfin il faut bien comprendre qu’à l’époque il y avait cette notion de “circuit” à fermer avec la terre, une vue très électricienne de la chose. Et Tesla pensait que le courant passait principalement dans la terre … Les chutes du Niagara En 1893 se tint la foire internationale de Chicago. C’est Westinghouse qui en obtint le contrat d’électrification. Cela permit à Tesla de montrer que le courant alternatif était capable d’illuminer un grand nombre de lampes ou de moteur en toute sécurité, au contraire de ce que pouvait dire Edison. Cette foire fut aussi pour lui l’occasion de présenter les prodiges que le courant alternatif rendait possible : son oeuf de Colomb électrique ou encore le fait de pouvoir allumer une ampoule sans qu’elle soit branchée (grâce à l’effet de peau).Cette foire précéda de peu la victoire de Westinghouse dans l’obtention d’un contrat important : celui de dompter les chutes du Niagara. L’objectif était notamment de pouvoir transporter de l’énergie jusqu’à la ville de Buffalo (28 kilomètres[45])[46].C’est Edward Dean Adams qui en fut le promoteur et fin 1892 un appel d’offre fut lancé pour choisir l’entreprise qui serait en charge du travail[47]. Tesla voulait à tout prix pousser son système à courant alternatif et rencontra Adams à de multiples reprises. En effet, entre la variété de systèmes à courant alternatif possibles, les guerres de brevet le concernant ou la position de Lord Kelvin, membre de la commission, qui poussait le courant continu (selon lui utiliser le courant alternatif était une “erreur gigantesque”), Adams souhaitait garder un maximum d’options[48]. Cependant les arguments de Tesla contre le courant continu convainquirent Adams. Il lui expliqua ainsi que l’usage de hautes tensions en courant continu poserait problème au niveau des moteurs et de l’éclairage qui ne fonctionnaient pas avec des hautes tensions. Il lui expliqua aussi que la génération et l’usage de courant étaient fondamentalement alternatifs comme le mouvement de rotation des turbines et des moteurs et qu’avec le courant alternatif il était possible d’amener de l’énergie plus loin grâce à des transformateurs. En octobre 1893 la commission choisi Westinghouse pour la mise en place du système (le succès de de la foire internationale de Chicago fut sûrement déterminante)[49].Ce fut une grande victoire pour lui[50] et Tesla en fut grandement responsable. La production et la transmission à l’échelle industrielle du courant alternatif avec succès en Europe, et avec les chutes du Niagara aux Etats-Unis furent la démonstration qu’il était bien supérieur au courant continu et en firent un standard dans le monde entier.Cet évènement permit à Tesla d’être reconnu comme un inventeur de premier plan aux Etats-Unis et de pouvoir embrayer sur un domaine qu’il allait développer les années suivantes : la transmission d’énergie sans fil. Mais ce sera pour un autre dossier. Conclusion A travers ce premier dossier nous avons découvert la première partie de la vie de Tesla. Sa jeunesse tout d’abord, avec le développement de certaines idées qu’il chercha par la suite à vouloir développer, avec plus ou moins de succès pour le moteur à courant alternatif par exemple. On découvre aussi comment cette invention fut mise au point et le contexte dans lequel cela se passa. Tesla n’inventa pas un moteur comme un génie venu d’ailleurs, d’autres chez Westinghouse, Thompson Houston ou en Europe en développèrent aussi. Les années qui suivirent son industrialisation furent émaillées de procès sur la paternité de cette invention. On découvre aussi les prémices de la radio, même si appliquée à un autre cas d’usage, la transmission d’énergie sans fil. On voit aussi que pour Tesla la théorie de l’électromagnétisme n’était pas pertinente et cela le fit partir dans une direction différente de celle de ses contemporains pour la transmission d’énergie sans fil, celui de l’usage du courant passant par la Terre …Dans la deuxième partie nous découvrirons la suite des travaux de Tesla sur cette transmission d’énergie sans fil et d’une certaine manière sa déchéance à force de poursuivre des rêves impossibles … Je parlerai aussi de certains mythes qui, aujourd’hui, sont colportés ici ou là à son propos. Quote If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.New York Times, 19 octobre 1931 Références Livres Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius de Marc J. Seifer ISBN : 0806519606 (ISBN13 : 978-0806519609) Auteur : Marc J. Seifer Nombre de pages : 542 pages Date de parution : 01/05/1998 chez Citadel Edition Prix : 19,44€ chez Amazon Inventor of the electric age de Bernard Carlson (meilleure biographie selon moi sur laquelle est basée ce dossier) ISBN : 0691165610 (ISBN13 : 978-0691165615) Auteur : W. Bernard Carlson Nombre de pages : 520 pages Date de parution : 15/05/2015 chez Princeton University Press Prix : 19,26€ chez Amazon Man out of time de Margaret Cheney ISBN : 0743215362 (ISBN13 : 978-0743215367) Auteur : Margaret Cheney Nombre de pages : 400 pages Date de parution : 09/10/2001 chez Touchstone Prix : 10,43€ chez Amazon Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah de Nigel Cawthorne ISBN : 078582944X (ISBN13 : 978-0785829447) Auteur : Nigel Cawthorne Nombre de pages : 192 pages Date de parution : 05/04/2014 chez Chartwell Books Prix : 14,46€ chez Amazon Prodigual genius de John J O’Neill ISBN : 1596057130 (ISBN13 : 978-1596057135) Auteur : John J O’Neill Nombre de pages : 336 pages Date de parution : 01/11/2006 chez Cosimo Classics Prix : 11,96€ chez Amazon My inventions de Nikola Tesla ISBN : 1519534477 (ISBN13 : 978-1519534477) Auteur : Nikola Tesla Nombre de pages : 50 pages Date de parution : 26/11/2015 chez Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 5,65€ chez Amazon Edison: A life of invention de Paul Israel ISBN : 0471362700 (ISBN13 : 978-0471362708) Auteur : Paul Israel Nombre de pages : 560 pages Date de parution : 16/02/2000 aux Editions Belin Prix : 21,59€ chez Amazon et 32,90€ à la Fnac The Wizard of Menlo Park de Randall E. Stross ISBN : 1400047633 (ISBN13 : 978-1400047635) Auteur : Randall E. Stross Nombre de pages : 125 pages Date de parution : 25/03/2008 chez Broadway Books Prix : 13€ chez Amazon et à 12,85€ à la Fnac Nikola Tesla: prophet of the modern technological age de Michael W. Simmons ISBN : 1532867735 (ISBN13 : 978-1532867736) Auteur : Michael W. Simmons Nombre de pages : 242 pages Date de parution : 21/04/2016 aux chez Createspace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 16,81€ chez Amazon Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla: The pioneers of electricity de Charles River Editors ISBN : 149234219X (ISBN13 : 978-1492342199) Auteur : Charles River Editors Nombre de pages : 80 pages Date de parution : 05/09/2013 chez CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform Prix : 10,34€ chez Amazon Altersciences d’Alexandre Moatti ISBN : 2738128874 (ISBN13 : 9782738128874) Auteur : Alexandre Moatti Nombre de pages : 336 pages Date de parution : 17/01/2013 chez Odile Jacob Prix : 23,90 € chez Amazon ou la FnacWeb Marathon Tesla – « Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla » par Marc J. Seifer sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/02/22/marathon-tesla-wizard-the-life-and-times-of-nikola-tesla-par-marc-j-seifer/ Marathon Tesla – « Tesla: The Life and Time of an Electric Messiah » par Nigel Cawthorne sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/marathon-tesla-tesla-the-life-and-time-of-an-electric-messiah-par-nigel-cawthorne/ Marathon Tesla – « Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age » de W. Bernard Carlson sur LisezLaScience : https://lisezlascience.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/marathon-tesla-tesla-inventor-of-the-electrical-age-de-w-bernard-carlson/ La page wikipédia à propos de Nikola Tesla (attention quand même) : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Sur Tesla chez Oatmeal : La page qui avait été faite originellement par the Oatmeal sur Tesla : http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla Un article de Forbes sur la question et qui est pas d’accord : http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/#147cb87c1dbd La réponse de the Oatmeal : http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response Mon point de vue ? Ben The Oatmeal défend son bout de gras et parfois est un peu trop en mode groupie (et tord un chouilla les choses) et Alex Knapp de Forbes est un peu trop “c’est pareil Edison et Tesla”. La page de Galileo Ferraris, scientifique italien ayant travaillé sur le champ magnétique rotatif sur la même période que Tesla : http://www.accademiadellescienze.it/accademia/soci/galileo-ferraris La vidéo de Richard Taillet à propos de Tesla : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDn6rlPXb7g Une suite de trois très bons billets de Richard Taillet sur Scilogs.fr : http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-la-promesse-the-pledge-13/ http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-le-tour-the-turn-23/ http://www.scilogs.fr/signal-sur-bruit/nikola-tesla-le-prestige-the-prestige-33/ Une description intéressante du brevet de Tesla sur le moteur synchrone (avec des affirmations plus difficiles à confirmer/informer concernant les résonnances de Schumann ou le Radar, etc) https://www.bibnum.education.fr/sciencesdelingenieur/electrotechnique/l-invention-du-moteur-synchrone-par-nikola-tesla Une page sur l’Edison Tech Center (ils sont potentiellement partisans) qui, selon eux, débunke des mythes autour de Tesla : http://www.edisontechcenter.org/tesladebunked.html Mon point de vue ? Ok, ils en débunkent certains (l’invention de l’AC par Tesla, par exemple), mais un certain nombre de choses est avancé sans citer de source spécifiquement par information, et vu la passion de certains sur la question on est en droit de se poser la question de la partialité d’un debunkage de soi-disant mythes à propos de Tesla sur une page créée par un centre au nom d’Edison) La page wikipédia sur les bobines Tesla : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobine_Tesla La page wikipédia sur le moteur synchrone : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinesynchrone La page wikipédia sur le monteur à courant continu : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine%C3%A0_courant_continu “A NEW SYSTEM OF ALTERNATING CURRENT MOTORS AND TRANSFORMERS” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888 : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1888-05-16.htm “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF VERY HIGH FREQUENCY AND THEIR APPLICATION TO METHODS OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891 :http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1891-05-20.htm “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF HIGH POTENTIAL AND HIGH FREQUENCY” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, February 1892. : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1892-02-03.htm [1] Son père Milutin Tesla était prêtre orthodoxe et sa mère, Djuka Mandic, s’occupait du foyer et des enfants [2] Un garçon, Dane en 1984, et deux filles Angelina en 1850 et Milka en 1852[3] Inventor of Electric Age, Carlson, p 18[4] My Inventions, Tesla, p 12[5] Capacité qui, selon John O’Neill dans Prodigual Genius, lui permis soit disant de ne pas avoir besoin, ni de prendre de notes, ni de faire de tests en vrai.[6] Inventor of Electric Age, Carlson, p 20[7] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 26[8] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 42[9] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 37[10] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 42[11] Il jouait aux dominos et au poker principalement[12] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 47[13] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 48[14] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 50[15] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 52[16] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 63[17] Prodigual Genius, O’Neill, p 60[18] Prodigual Genius, O’Neill, p 58[19] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 70[20] Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla, The pioneers of Electricity, Charles Rivers Editors[21] Ibid[22] Prophet of the Modern Technological Age, Simmons, p 76[23] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, 73[24] Tesla avait toujours en tête de pouvoir réaliser le développement de son moteur AC et avec quelques investisseurs (principalement messieurs Vail et Lane), qui s’étaient intéressés à ses travaux du temps de son passage chez Edison, il fondât la Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company. Cette société se chargea de vendre des lampes à arc basées sur un brevet déposé par Tesla quelques temps plus tôt. Brevet qu’il mit au nom de cette société. Mais selon Carlson les investisseurs ne souhaitèrent pas poursuivre l’aventure sur les aspects manufacturing et préférèrent se concentrer sur l’aspect vente de systèmes d’éclairages à travers la création d’une nouvelle entreprise en laissant tomber Tesla. Tesla ne put plus exploiter son brevet ni développer son moteur AC comme il l’avait souhaité en s’associant à Vail et Lane.[25] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 77[26] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 87[27] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 92[28] “A NEW SYSTEM OF ALTERNATING CURRENT MOTORS AND TRANSFORMERS” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 1888 : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1888-05-16.htm[29] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson p 113[30] Avant d’acquérir les brevets de Tesla, il acquis aussi celles de transformateur de Gaulard & Gibbs nécessaire à la modification du voltage AC (impossible à l’époque pour du DC), mais aussi les travaux de Ferraris qui a Turin avait aussi travaillé sur les champs magnétiques rotatifs (d’où d’ailleurs une certaine confusion sur la réelle paternité du moteur AC) .On trouve chez Charles Rivers editors une référence à une somme d’1 million de dollars que Westinghouse aurait payé, mais il semble plus réaliste que la Tesla Electric Ligne Company ait reçu 25,000 dollars en liquide, 50,000 dollars en billet à ordre and des royalties de 2,50 dollars par cheval vapeur développé.[31] Il est important de noter, qu’à la différence de ce que Tesla croyait, même si son moteur fonctionnait à la perfection dans sa tête où dans son laboratoire, il était indispensable de pouvoir mettre au point un moteur qui puisse fonctionner dans des conditions réelles, avec les fréquences délivrées par les générateurs, sur le bon nombre de phase, etc.[32] Carlson, p 167[33] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perte_en_ligne_(%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9)[34] selon lui le DC à même tension était non mortel, alors qu’il était surtout question de fréquence[35] Thomas Edison & Nikola Tesla: The pioneers of Electricity, Charles River Editors[36] selon Carlson c’est la raison en tout cas. Par contre on trouve plein d’autres raisons dans les autres bios ...[37] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 131[38] C’est notamment via cet effet de peau et l’usage des ancêtre des tubes néon, ou de lampes à un seul fil avec un bouton en carbone, qu’il est devenu le magicien de la lumière, expert des shows dans les plus grandes capitales. [39] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 125-128[40] “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF VERY HIGH FREQUENCY AND THEIR APPLICATION TO METHODS OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Columbia College, N.Y., May 20, 1891 :http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1891-05-20.htm[41] “EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF HIGH POTENTIAL AND HIGH FREQUENCY” by Nikola Tesla Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, February 1892. : http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1892-02-03.htm[42] Même si il raconte par la suite avoir pu tracer la naissance de cette idée jusqu’à des choses qu’il aurait vu par ailleurs. Cette idée d’un déterminisme de toute idée ou sentiment ou action est quelque chose qu’il a en tête depuis tout jeune et qui conduit aussi à tout ce qu’il a comme opinion sur l’aspect automate de l’homme et sur ce qu’il réalisa autour des bateau téléguidé et de ce qu’il appelait “Teleautomatics” dont nous parlerons plus tard.[43] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 139[44] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 141[45] selon le site : http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distances.html?n=422[46] Si on remonte un peu on peut aussi voir, comme le présente Carlson, que Tesla allât en Europe pour se renseigner plus en détail sur ce qui avait été présenté lors le l’Electrotechnical Exhibition à Francfort en Septembre 1891. Outre qu’à cette occasion fut démontrée la possibilité de transmettre du courant depuis Lauffen (175 kilomètres de distance) via de l’AC, van Miller, Brown et Dolivo-Dobrowolsky démontrèrent le potentiel commercial de l’usage de l’AC polyphasé grâce à un moteur utilisant cette technologie. Il n’était donc pas seul à avoir travaillé sur le sujet à l’époque et même si il semble avoir devancé de peu ceux-ci, l’information n’était pas forcément arrivée en Europe et certains les annoncaient comme les inventeurs de cette découverte. Comme quoi il y avait vraiment une convergence d’idée à l’époque sur ces sujets.[47] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 166[48] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 170[49] Inventor of the Electrical Age, Carlson, p 173[50] même si GE eut le contrat pour la mise en place des lignes servant à transmettre l’énergie

Wasser hat seinen Siedepunkt bei 212 Grad Fahrenheit und bei 100 Grad Celsius. Und Celsius wird inzwischen nach einer dritten Skala festgelegt, nämlich der thermodynamischen Skala des Lord Kelvin.

I dagens Lønsj hører du mer om... Sammy Davis Jr. Ukurant UTS-konkurranse! Båter og bølger. Lord Kelvin svarer. Ståle Utslagsnes' fargemaneter Radiogram: Romskip og romferge? Radiogram: Cider Radiogram: Yacht? Radiogram: Kyrne og fotballandslaget Nerstein Kvitbrok åpner den store døra og stikk hovudet inn Takk for oss! Hør mer på Lord Kelvin her: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0mNUvrqmQozYv1dSh83znj Legg igjen din beskjed til Lønsj på 73881480 Lønsj på Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunsjnrkp1 Lønsj på Twitter: https://twitter.com/NRKlunsj Epost: l@nrk.no

The buzz: Hurry! Calling all manufacturers! We're mid-way into our 4th industrial revolution. If your manufacturing facility isn't taking advantage of the exponential advances in technology, exploding big data and amazing innovations, the handwriting is on the wall: you'll soon be obsolete. What will it take to catch up? First, learn to harness the power of in-memory computing, IoT, wearable technologies, additive manufacturing and predictive capabilities. Next, stop underestimating the changing dynamics of your customers' expectations (your competition isn't). Want to know more? The experts speak. Mark Frank, Deloitte: “Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others” (Jonathan Winters). Timothy Day, Johns Manville: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” (Lord Kelvin). Rick Imber, SAP: “The secret of success is doing what you have to do, better than you have to do it” (Unknown). Join us for Transporting Your Factory into the Future Now–Part 1.

The buzz: Hurry! Calling all manufacturers! We're mid-way into our 4th industrial revolution. If your manufacturing facility isn't taking advantage of the exponential advances in technology, exploding big data and amazing innovations, the handwriting is on the wall: you'll soon be obsolete. What will it take to catch up? First, learn to harness the power of in-memory computing, IoT, wearable technologies, additive manufacturing and predictive capabilities. Next, stop underestimating the changing dynamics of your customers' expectations (your competition isn't). Want to know more? The experts speak. Mark Frank, Deloitte: “Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others” (Jonathan Winters). Timothy Day, Johns Manville: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” (Lord Kelvin). Rick Imber, SAP: “The secret of success is doing what you have to do, better than you have to do it” (Unknown). Join us for Transporting Your Factory into the Future Now–Part 1.

Ao fim do século XIX um jovem alemão, contemplando a carreira acadêmica, foi desaconselhado a se empenhar na física. À época o edifício da mecânica clássica erguido por Newton, Maxwell e outros parecia tão bem acabado, que cientistas como Lord Kelvin acreditaram que todas as grandes ideias da física já haviam sido descobertas, só restando trabalhar adornos e pormenores. Por sorte o estudante recusou o conselho e em 1900, já professor de física em Berlim, diria a seu filho que fez uma descoberta tão importante quanto as de Newton. Por mais que soasse grandiloquente, Max Planck falava a pura verdade. Buscando sair de um dilema em relação ao fenômeno da radiação, ele sugeriria que a emissão ou absorção subatômica se dá na forma de quantidades discretas de energia ou quanta. A mecânica quântica descreve um mundo fantástico e desconcertante, onde uma

Ao fim do século XIX um jovem alemão, contemplando a carreira acadêmica, foi desaconselhado a se empenhar na física. À época o edifício da mecânica clássica erguido por Newton, Maxwell e outros parecia tão bem acabado, que cientistas como Lord Kelvin acreditaram que todas as grandes ideias da física já haviam sido descobertas, só restando trabalhar adornos e pormenores. Por sorte o estudante recusou o conselho e em 1900, já professor de física em Berlim, diria a seu filho que fez uma descoberta tão importante quanto as de Newton. Por mais que soasse grandiloquente, Max Planck falava a pura verdade. Buscando sair de um dilema em relação ao fenômeno da radiação, ele sugeriria que a emissão ou absorção subatômica se dá na forma de quantidades discretas de energia ou quanta. A mecânica quântica descreve um mundo fantástico e desconcertante, onde uma

SynTalk thinks about errors, while constantly wondering if they are innately hardwired into nature. Are error free domains possible or desirable? Would we stop making history if there were to be an error free world? The concepts are derived off / from Gnosticism, Aristotle, Alhazen, Galileo, Kepler, Thomas More, Lord Kelvin, Heidegger, Cioran, Gödel, Piaget, John Bell, & Tony Hoare, among others. Is all truth temporal? The difference between systematic (in one direction) and random (in both directions) errors with respect to the true value. Do things fail in the (non-human) natural world or they just ‘happen’? Is failure about an unfolding process while errors are more punctual? How (measurement) errors are inextricably linked to the notion of standard conception and expectation. Is there a trade-off between safety (not making mistakes) and liveness (making progress) for reactive systems (that interact with the environment)? How did a perfect Being create an imperfect world, and is it possible to have a ‘theology of failure’ (via, say, the demiurge)? How we pose the existence of a creator via notions of making, design or performance of the world (as an object). Is it likely that (software) modules that are individually correct give an error when put together? How in languages that are self referential & expressive it is impossible to prove if a program is correct. How some flawed universal notions can be much more intuitive. The (deeply counterintuitive) equivalence of uniform motion and rest. How there is often a striking similarity between students’ flawed conceptions and the history of ideas. Is limited experience the main source of errors? How computer programs non monotonically learn from experience, and the accompanying process of belief revision? Is consistency the virtue of an ass? What is the opposite of failure? Does one experience profound existential nothingness when one encounters failure? How (fortunately?) utopias – the perfect social & political models of the world – fail, and links with expectations and game theory? The links between ‘the world going to the dogs’, violent movement, bugs, chess, God, invariants, flight controllers, voting, winners & losers, exponential blow up, theory of vision, clocks, the original sin, bicycle, & the verifying compiler. Is it possible that there are ‘hidden variables’ in the physical world that makes even the quantum world completely certain? Would becoming perfect be the end of everything, & should we stay imperfect? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Costica Bradatan (philosophy, Honors College, TTU, Texas), Prof. Arvind Kumar (physics, Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, ex-HBCSE TIFR, Mumbai), & Prof G. Sivakumar (computer science, IIT Bombay, Mumbai).

Near the heart of Scotland lies a large morass known as Dullatur Bog. Water seeps from these moistened acres and coalesces into the headwaters of a river which meanders through the countryside for nearly 22 miles, until its terminus in Glasgow. In the late 19th century this river adorned the landscape just outside of the laboratory of Sir William Thompson, renowned scientist and president of the Royal Society. The river must have made an impression on Thompson--when Queen Victoria granted him the title of Baron in 1892, he opted to adopt the river’s name as his own. Sir William Thompson was thenceforth known as Lord Kelvin. Kelvin's contributions to science were vast, but he is perhaps best known today for the temperature scale that bears his name. It is so named in honor of his discovery of the coldest possible temperature in our universe. Thompson had played a major role in developing the Laws of Thermodynamics, and in 1848 he used them to extrapolate that the coldest temperature any matter can become, regardless of the substance, is -273.15°C (-459.67°F). We now know this boundary as zero Kelvin. Once this absolute zero temperature was decisively identified, prominent Victorian scientists commenced multiple independent efforts to build machines to explore this physical frontier. Their equipment was primitive, and the trappings were treacherous, but they pressed on nonetheless, dangers be damned. There was science to be done.

It's electric! In a new series called Six Degrees of Scotland, we explore Scotland's connections to the world. On this episode, learn five different ways to connect Scotland to the history and development of electricity, from the groundbreaking work of James Maxwell and Lord Kelvin to the innovation of James Bowman Lindsay, Thomas Edison, and others. Plus, enjoy highlights from the latest issue of Scottish Memories Magazine! We'll explore the transport issue including trams, buses, trains, and more. Listen to great music from new Gaelic quartet Cruinn, the latest from Blazin' Fiddles, the sound of the pipes, and more!

Seldom have there been more reasons than now to investigate and compare bank regulation around the world. One can point to the global banking crisis of 2007-2009, the banking problems that still plague many European countries in 2013, and the more than 100 systemic banking crises that have devastated economies around the world since 1970. All these crises reflect, at least in part, defects in bank regulation and supervision. The problem is that measuring bank regulation and supervision around the world is hard. Hundreds of laws and regulations, emanating from different national and local governments, define the rules for what banks are allowed to do and how they can do it. This immense quantity and diversity of laws and rules poses a daunting challenge for any effort to compile comprehensive data or to aggregate it into meaningful comparisons of very different regulatory regimes. As a result, the systematic collection of data on bank regulatory and supervisory policies is only in its nascent stages. Yet without sound measures of banking policies across countries and over time, researchers will be hard-pressed to assess which approaches work best or to propose useful reforms. In response, this paper offers a new database for more than 180 countries, covering the period from 1999 through 2011. We seek to contribute to research on the design and implementation of policies by providing useful measures of the systems now in place. As the great 19th-century scientist Lord Kelvin reportedly argued, “[I]f you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.” Our database builds on surveys sponsored by the World Bank that were released in 1999, 2003, 2007, and 2012. Overall, the surveys cover 180 countries. The dataset also provides information on the organization of regulatory agencies and the size and structure of the overall banking system. Besides describing the data, this paper provides a wealth of cross-country and cross-time comparisons.

An area of which 19th century British mathematics could be uniformly proud was applied mathematics where new techniques were used on a wide range of problems. Figures such as William Thompson (later Lord Kelvin), Peter Guthrie Tait, George Stokes and James Clerk Maxwell succeeded in...

Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) was Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1846 to 1899. An FRS, FRSE, knighted in 1866, awarded the Order of Merit in 1902, and in death buried beside Newton at Westminster Abbey, Kelvin was in his lifetime considered the pre-eminent natural philosopher of the Victorian Age. But the passage of time, and the supplanting of classical physics, have eroded his reputation. This talk will survey Kelvin's life and work, and seek to show why the assessment of Kelvin's importance by his contemporaries was not misplaced.

Le mouvement de flux et de reflux de la mer a été l’objet d’un premier travail de théorisation dans les Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) d’Isaac Newton (1642-1727), qui applique le problème des trois corps pour déterminer les influences respectives de la Lunet et du Soleil sur la terre et la mer. Mais la théorie newtonienne est une théroie satique, qui ne fait pas intervenir la réponse de l’océan à ces frces d’attraction. Dans son grand traité de Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825), Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1748-1827) établit la théorie dynamique des marées : il fournit les équations différentielles et détermine l’existence de leurs composantes, diurne, semi-diurne et annuelle, au prix cependant d’hypothèses simplificatrices considérables. Avant même l’invention du marégraphe auto-enregistreur, et leur installation dans différents ports de France, d’Angleterre et de leurs colonies respectives, l’ingénieur hydrographe Antoine M. Chazallon (1802-1872), qui publie en 1839 le premier Annuaire des marées des côtes de France, présente à l’Académie des Sciences en 1837 une méthode des harmoniques pour la prédiction des marées, à laquelle les hydrographes continuent de se référer au XXe siècle, tout en achetant les prédicteurs de marées en Grande-Bretagne. Cette méthode de calcul s’appuie essentiellement sur un examen minutieux des données d’observation transcrites graphiquement. Eclipsé par la production des analyseurs harmoniques et les travaux de William Thomson (1824-1907) – Lord Kelvin – sur l’analyse harmonique. Ce travail reste cependant méconnu. Cet exposé analysera le mémoire de 1837 et tentera d’analyser les conditions de son effacement historique.

Jesus' triumphant entry was the fulfillment of prophesy...He fulfilled all prophesy...proving he was the Messiah..

Transcript: Chemical energy cannot power the Sun, so what is the energy source? Inspired by an idea by the German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz the English physicist Lord Kelvin explored the idea of gravitational contraction. In this mechanism the Sun is slowly shrinking and gravitational potential energy is being converted into heat energy which then radiates out into space. In his estimate the Sun might last a couple of hundred million years with this mechanism. It sounds like a long time, but by the mid-nineteenth century the debate about the age of the Sun began to collide with the debate about the age of the Earth. Most people assumed they formed at the same time. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection seemed to require many millions of years for the diversity of species to be achieved from simple origins. In the nineteenth century in England it was common to have scientific debates carried out in public for a public audience and scientists as well. Darwin had debated Wilberforce on the subject of natural selection and by general acclaim had won the debate. In 1871 Lord Kelvin debated Thomas Huxley who was standing in for Darwin on the issue of the age of the Sun and the age of the Earth. Darwin had estimated that the age of the Earth needed to be many hundreds of millions of years, perhaps billions of years to explain the diversity of species, but Kelvin said the Sun could be no older than half a billion years based on gravitational contraction. Darwin died without knowing whether the Earth could be old enough for his mechanism to work.

Whether it exists in the public consciousness or only in my mind, I can't be sure, but there's an anxiousness about 2008 that gives me pause. We seem to be pushing our way to the edge. Presidency, economy, war. What will happen? I take a breath and close my eyes and remember the words of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus published 1800 years ago, “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” Anthony Hopkins shared a similar thought with James Lipton during a recent interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, “Today is the tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday.” A client recently shared with me one of those amazing “weapons of reason” Marcus Aurelius spoke about: I asked, “How is traffic trending? Are we ahead of last year?” “Roy, I don't measure traffic.” “You're kidding.” “Last week one of my salespeople made 63 sales presentations and closed only 24 of them. That tells me 39 people bought somewhere else. And right now they're telling all their friends why they bought where they did. They're showing off their purchases and explaining why they didn't buy from us.” “Good point.” “That salesperson is no longer with us.” “You're really serious about this.” “Today's close rate is the most reliable indicator of tomorrow's traffic. When close rate is high, traffic increases. When close rate begins to slide, traffic soon begins to slide as well.” Does it surprise you that this client keeps better records than any we've ever served and that he's currently our fastest growing client in North America? Thankfully, he knows what information can be correlated and what cannot. He doesn't let his statistics lead him to ridiculous conclusions. But the part of our conversation that jerked my eyebrows upward was that he was aware of the weekly close rate of each of his nearly 100 salespeople. Wow. You can't improve what you don't measure. What are you measuring? “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.” –   Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Electrical Units of Measurement, 1883 There are lots of things business owners are secretly trying to achieve. And usually these goals are secret, even to themselves. In a couple of weeks https://wizardacademy.org/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=169 (I'll begin 3 intensive days of planning) for 11 different companies. We'll all sit in a circle on the first morning and I'll ask each of them separately, “How will we measure success? What do you want me to help you make happen?” I've been asking that question of business owners for nearly 30 years. It's never easy to get an answer. But it's a whole lot easier to win the game when you're clear on how points are scored. Are you playing to win in 2008? Your goals are your own business. Helping you reach them is mine. Roy H. Williams

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Second Law of Thermodynamics which can be very simply stated like this: "Energy spontaneously tends to flow from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out". It was first formulated – derived from ideas first put forward by Lord Kelvin - to explain how a steam engine worked, it can explain why a cup of tea goes cold if you don't drink it and how a pan of water can be heated to boil an egg.But its application has been found to be rather grander than this. The Second Law is now used to explain the big bang, the expansion of the cosmos and even suggests our inexorable passage through time towards the 'heat death' of the universe. It's been called the most fundamental law in all of science, and CP Snow in his Two Cultures wrote: "Not knowing the Second Law of Thermodynamics is like never having read a work of Shakespeare".What is the Second Law? What are its implications for time and energy in the universe, and does it tend to be refuted by the existence of life and the theory of evolution?With John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex; Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University; Monica Grady, Head of Petrology and Meteoritics at the Natural History Museum.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Second Law of Thermodynamics which can be very simply stated like this: "Energy spontaneously tends to flow from being concentrated in one place to becoming diffused and spread out". It was first formulated – derived from ideas first put forward by Lord Kelvin - to explain how a steam engine worked, it can explain why a cup of tea goes cold if you don't drink it and how a pan of water can be heated to boil an egg.But its application has been found to be rather grander than this. The Second Law is now used to explain the big bang, the expansion of the cosmos and even suggests our inexorable passage through time towards the 'heat death' of the universe. It's been called the most fundamental law in all of science, and CP Snow in his Two Cultures wrote: "Not knowing the Second Law of Thermodynamics is like never having read a work of Shakespeare".What is the Second Law? What are its implications for time and energy in the universe, and does it tend to be refuted by the existence of life and the theory of evolution?With John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex; Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University; Monica Grady, Head of Petrology and Meteoritics at the Natural History Museum.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the age of the Earth. It was once thought that the world began in 4004 BC. Lord Kelvin calculated the cooling temperature of a rock the size of our planet and came up with a figure of 20 million years for the age of the Earth. Now, the history of our planet is divided into four great Eons: the Hadean, the Archaen, the Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Together, they are taken to encompass an incredible four and a half billion years. How can we begin to make sense of such a huge swathe of time? And can we be sure that we have got the Earth's age right? Geologists use Eras, Periods and Epochs to further punctuate what's known as 'Deep Time', but can we be sure that the classifications we use don't obscure more than they reveal? With Richard Corfield, Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University; Hazel Rymer, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open University; Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the age of the Earth. It was once thought that the world began in 4004 BC. Lord Kelvin calculated the cooling temperature of a rock the size of our planet and came up with a figure of 20 million years for the age of the Earth. Now, the history of our planet is divided into four great Eons: the Hadean, the Archaen, the Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic. Together, they are taken to encompass an incredible four and a half billion years. How can we begin to make sense of such a huge swathe of time? And can we be sure that we have got the Earth's age right? Geologists use Eras, Periods and Epochs to further punctuate what's known as 'Deep Time', but can we be sure that the classifications we use don't obscure more than they reveal? With Richard Corfield, Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University; Hazel Rymer, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Open University; Henry Gee, Senior Editor at Nature.

Vice-presidential responsibilities, the careers of Bob Dole, Dan Quayle and Jack Kemp, and the false predictions of Lord Kelvin, Albert Einstein and Arthur C Clarke.