1. Colorized photos of Tsarist Russia (includes Russian women!).
3. Rant against Norman Mailer.
4. Brian Arthur's theory of innovation.
5. Mars from the air, new photos.
6. Education as placebo effect; from Create Your Own Economy.
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re: 1, these photos were not colorized. These are original colours, see http://memory.loc.gov/pp/prokhtml/prokback.html#formats.
yes, that color photography method was seriously ingenious and ahead of its time, and to call the photos colorized is a bit of a disservice.
Does a college degree really deliver a placebo effect? No more so than a driver’s license does.
It’s not that having a driver’s license makes me drive better because I think I’m elite; rather, I simply wouldn’t be allowed to drive without one. Similarly, most careers nowadays — even being a barista at Starbucks, I imagine — require a college degree. Not in order to be able to carry out the job itself, but simply to get your foot in the door in the first place.
Having a college degree vs. not having one is a bit like having citizenship vs. being an illegal immigrant. That is, in large part it’s an externally conferred certification and status (with the rights and privileges that go with it) rather than some internal mindset or can-do attitude.
That Nixon health care plan document was dated February 6, 1974. By that time, Watergate had already sucked all the oxygen out of the political sphere and any legislative project of any kind would have been stillborn. So this is a historical footnote rather than a genuine what-if.
The question is, why didn’t Jimmy Carter put forward a health-care reform plan? Perhaps he felt the country couldn’t afford one in the middle of economic malaise, but that isn’t stopping Obama after all.
Picture #19 is particularly juicy.
Picture number 4 is my favorite. The Russian girl in the middle is very attractive. I’ve never seen a color photograph from 1909. It’s amazing how much more appealing she looks in color from nearly every B&W photo of women of that period.
Pictures of attractive Russian girls from any era are always welcome.
Here’s more by Prokudin-Gorskii on a Czech online museum: http://sechtl-vosecek.ucw.cz/en/expozice5.html
Does anybody still care what Brian Arthur thinks?
@ Slocum:
Autochromes from the early 20th Century still look good, as do most Kodachromes from 1940s onwards. Until Velvia’s release Kodachrome was the choice for serious photographers.
Family shapshots may have degraded, often extremely, but dust off the old color family movies if you have them and have a look, as they’re usually on Kodachrome–they look almost as good as the day they were shot.
> 6. Education as placebo effect; from Create Your Own Economy.
“Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn.
It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.
Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
–_Dune_, Frank Herbert
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