Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
The Aerodrome: Friday, March 19, 1909. Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Thursday, February 14, 1924. IBM
The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company renamed itself the International Business Machines Corporation.
IBM.
Mexican Federal troops defeated rebels near Paloverde.
Friday, January 26, 2024
Friday, January 5, 2024
Saturday, January 5, 1924. Ironic?
Sounding like a story line out of an Alanis Morissette song, Eleftherios Venizelos, a Greek hero, was elected as the Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament by his colleagues only to go on and have a heart attack that day during the parliamentary session. He'd serve in the position for only six days, but would live until 1936.
Walter P. Chrysler introduced his first car, the Chrysler Six Model B-70.
Celia Cooney, age 19, commenced her criminal career with the robbery of the Thomas Ralston Grocery store in Brooklyn. Her husband, Ed Cooney, drove the getaway car.
Their criminal career ended in April when they were caught. Ed Cooney lost an arm due to an injury while in prison and recovered $12,000 against the State of New York in 1931 as a result. The same year they were released. He died in 1936 of tuberculosis, and she remarried in 1943. She passed away in 1992.
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Thursday, December 20, 1923. Setback in Mexico.
Mexican revolutionaries were suffering a set back.
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Monday, December 10, 1923. Mexican rebels and cheese empires advance.
The Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution, which has not been ratified, was first introduced in Congress.
At the time, many suffragettes opposed it out of fear that it would eliminate statutory protection of female laborers, which it likely would have.
Rebels were advancing on Mexico City.
Coolidge was encouraging commercial aviation, and running for reelection.
The National Dairy Products Corporation was founded by a merger of Thomas H. McInerney's Hydrox Corporation and Edward E. Rieck's Rieck—McJunkin Dairy Company. In 1930, it would acquire Kraft-Phenix Cheese Company, and then rebrand itself in 1969 as Kraftco Corporation and then Kraft, Inc.
It is now Kraft Heinz as of this very year.
Kraft cheese is, in my opinion, hideous.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co. that only it, in appropriate Federal questions, could review state supreme court decisions.
The Italian parliament was prorogued, i.e., dissolved, by King Victor Emmanuel III at the request of Benito Mussolini.
Turkey and Albania signed a treat of friendship.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Lex Anteinternet: Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry. A Timely Rerun
Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry
Me, third from right, when I thought I had a career in geology, and probably in coal.
My main employer, right after receiving my bachelor's degree.
- "No household was wired for electricity"
- "Flickering light came from candles and whale oil,"
It really started with navies in some ways, although some might argue that it started with hydroelectric. We'll start with navies.
Navies had been powered by sail up until the mid 19th Century but already by the time of the American Civil War that was changing. The U.S. Navy may have had its grandest ships under sail during that war, but coal fired wheels were being introduced even then. And the scary smoke belching squat "monitors" that signaled the end of the age of sail were coal (and perhaps wood) burning beasts. Slow, hardly seaworthy, but iron clad. It was pretty clear by 1865 that the age of militarized wind was ending.
And indeed the Naval reformation that occurred after the American Civil War is incredibly stunning. Everything about navies soon changed. By the 1890s every major navy in the world was building ships that look odd to our eyes, but which still look familiar . Big guns on big ships powered by coal replaced sailing vessels, and the general purpose yeoman sailor was replaced by the specialist. At about this time, in fact, the U.S. Navy started to switching from a navy drawing its recruits mostly from port towns, and which was in fact an integrated navy, to one which was segregated which drew its recruits from the interior of the country. A wood and sail navy required men who had grown up near, or even on ships, and who knew the ins and outs of sail. That was a multi ethnic, polyglot group of men who in some way resembled the men in every port town around the world more than they did the men in the interior of their own countries. It's no accident that the first Congressional Medal of Honor to go to a foreign born serviceman went to a sailor, in action during the American Civil War fighting a naval battle in. . . . .Japan.
Smoke and spontaneous ignition.
Let's talk about smoke first, the disadvantage that was always there.
This is something that people who are more familiar with ships of the World War Two era don't instantly recall about earlier steel ships, but coal fires smoke and hence coal fired boilers likewise smoke, or rather the coal fires smoke
Coal has a well known propensity to self heat and to make it worse, the better the coal grade the bigger the problem. Exposed to air and moisture coal begins to engage in an exothermic reaction and can relatively easily self heat to the point where it ignites. Moreover, as it self heats and heads towards ignition it drives off highly flammable hydrocarbon gases. Indeed, heating coal intentionally in a controlled environment is a means of producing those gases and has sometimes been thought of as a method of producing them, although its never proven to be an efficient means of doing so.
Coal is so prone to spontaneous combustion that coal self ignition is a natural phenomenon. It simply happens where coal gets exposed to sufficient oxygen and moisture. Anyone who has ever spent any time in an open pit coal mine has seen coal simply burning on its own, as I have.
There are ways to combat this, of course, but the problem is uniquely acute for ships. Ships must store coal in large bunkers and must taken on a lot of coal at certain points. Ships are wet by their very nature. So any coal burning ship has, at some point, a lot of coal with just enough oxygen and moisture to create a problem.
This proved to be a real problem for ships and of course there were extreme catastrophic occurrences, the most famous of which is the explosion of the USS Maine. The Maine is an extreme example of what could occur, but any coal burning ship could experience what the Maine did. Basically, in the case of the USS Maine, the coal self ignited and the coal bunkers had sufficient liberated gas to create a massive explosion. Not quite as dangerous, but still a huge problem, a simple self ignition of the coal without an explosion was a disaster, quite obviously, of the first rate requiring sailors to put the coal fire out under extreme danger.
By the turn of the century naval designers were aware that oil could be used to heat boilers just as coal could, and they began to study it in earnest. Indeed, not only could it be used, but it had numerous advantages.
Unlike coal, petroleum oil for ships fuel did not result in much smoke. It resulted in some, but not anything like that which coal put out. The smoke from a single ship was much less visible and suffice it to say the smoke from a fleet of ships was greatly reduced. Again, there was smoke, but not smoke like that put out by coal fired boilers. Indeed, it was so much reduced that to a large degree detection of ships over the horizon by the naked eye was approaching becoming a think of the past.
And petroleum does not spontaneously self ignite. A big vat of petroleum can sit around forever and never touch itself off. This does not mean, of course, that its free from danger. It isn't. But some of the dangers it poses were already posed by coal, but in lesser degrees. Petroleum burns more freely than coal by quite some measure and once it ignites putting it out is extremely difficult. Sparks, other fires, etc., all pose increased dangers for petroleum over bunkered coal, but they existed to some degree for bunkered coal already.
And petroleum is more efficient and easier to use for ships. Coal was basically stoked by hand, a dirty laborious job. But petroleum wasn't. Petroleum burning boilers were fueled by what amounts to a plumbing system involving a greater level of technical know how but less physical labor. And oil had double the thermal content of coal making it a far more efficient fuel which required less refueling. And on refueling, ships fueled with oil can be refueled at sea. Ships fueled with coal cannot be. Indeed, the maintenance of coaling stations in the remote parts of the globe was a critical factor in naval planning prior to the introduction of oil.
Which isn't to say that there weren't some unique problems associated with petroleum for ship.
For one thing, the fact that it spreads out when leaked and can more easily ignite meant that petroleum added a unique and added horror for a stricken ship. Coal fired ships that were simply damaged and sinking were unlikely to cause a horrific sea top fire. Petroleum ships are very likely to do that. And the risk of a munitions caused explosion is increased with petroleum fueled ships. A torpedo into a coal bunker might blow a coal fired ship to bits with an explosion or might just sink it. With a petroleum fueled ship the risk of an explosion in such a situation is increased as is the risk that oil on the water will catch on fire or otherwise kill survivors.
A huge factor, however, was supply.
By odd coincidence all of the major naval powers, save for Japan, had more than adequate domestic supplies of coal. Some had very good supplies of coal, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Imperial Germany, within their own borders. Japan nearly did in that it obtained it from territories it controlled on the Asian mainland, although that did make its supply more tenuous. At any rate all of the big naval powers of the pre World War One world had coal supplies that htey controlled. That's a big war fighting consideration. Of the naval powers of that era, in contrast, only the United States and Imperial Russia had proven petroleum sources they controlled, and Imperial Russia had proven it self to be a second rate naval power during the Russo Japanese War.
Switching from coal to oil did not occur in the Royal Navy, or any navy, all at once. The decision was made somewhat haltingly and it was an expensive proposition to convert an entire navy to oil. Britain started to convert prior to World War One but it didn't complete the process until after the war. Still, its decision to start constructing capitol ships as oil burners in 1912 was a huge step for a nation that had the world's largest navy but which had no domestic oil production at all. The United States followed suit almost immediately, with its first large ship to be converted to oil, the USS Cheyenne, undergoing that process in 1913.
Diesels in that application show that industrial diesel engines had arrived.
By World War Two every navy in the world was an oil burning, not a coal burning, navy. And it wasn't just navies. Merchant ships had followed in the navies' wakes. They were now oil burning too for the most part. Coal at sea had died.
Still, the trend line had been set.
And it would next show itself with transportation.
At least according to one source written in 1912 coal fueled 9/10s of all locomotive engines at that time. The other 1/10th would have been fired by wood or, yes, oil.
Wednesday, August 9, 2023
Monday, August 9, 1943. Blessed Franz Jägerstätter
Franz Jägerstätter, 36, Austrian farmer and conscientious objector, was executed by the Germans.
Born into poverty and illegitimacy, he was the son of a farmer and chambermaid who could not afford to marry. He was initially raised by his grandmother, the pious Elisabeth Huber. His father was killed in World War One and his mother latter married Heinrich Jägerstätter, who adopted him and who gave him his farm upon his marriage.
Irreligious in his youth, he underwent a sudden religious conversion after fathering an illegitimate child and spending a period of time in community exile, during which he worked for several years in iron mines. Upon returning he became profoundly religions and in turn married a deeply religious spouse. Upon the German invasion of Austria he openly opposed the Nazis and while he did serve in the German Army in 1940 he refused to take the Hitler oath. Called back into service in 1943 he refused combat duty, although he did offer to serve as a medic, which was ignored. He was ultimately died and executed on this day.
He was beatified in 2007.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—August 9, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Aug. 9, 1943: On New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, US northern and southern landing forces link.
The US signed a military assistance treaty with Ethiopia.
Life Magazine hit the stands with an article on female steelworkers.
Friday, May 26, 2023
Wednesday, May 26, 1943. Edsel Ford passes. Canada rations, Barclay stays,
Today in World War II History—May 26, 1943: Edsel Ford, President of Ford Motor Company, dies, age 49; his father, Henry Ford, resumes the presidency. Canada begins meat rationing.
From Sarah Sundin's blog.
Ford, a major philanthropist, died of stomach cancer.
Edsel had taken the company into aviation, over the objections of his father, which was foresighted at the time. This allowed the company to engage in aviation manufacture during World War Two.
Like his father, his reputation in not wholly unblemished. There are some reasons to suspect that he sympathized with the Germans in World War Two early on.
Edwin Barclay, the President of Liberia, visited President Roosevelt and spent the night, at the Executive Mansion, the first black to do so. On the same day, Roosevelt ordered striking workers at rubber plants in Akron, Ohio to return to work.
Friday, April 14, 2023
18,000
That's the number of cattle killed in the explosion in Texas. 18,000 dairy cattle.
That's obscene.
I own cattle, and beef cattle at that. But this shows what's really gone wrong with the United States and the Western World. Everything has to be some sort of factory.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
On International Women's Day, 2023.
Today is International Women's Day. Some prior entries:
Thursday, March 8, 2018
International Women's Day, 2018
All that's probably true, and indeed brave women all over the world do struggle, as noted. Cudos to the UN for noting it, even if the UN rather oddly regards nations co-equally that abuse women's rights, as well as act anti democratically in all sorts of other ways.This year’s theme captures the vibrant life of the women activists whose passion and commitment have won women’s rights over the generations, and successfully brought change. We celebrate an unprecedented global movement for women’s rights, equality, safety and justice, recognizing the tireless work of activists who have been central to this global push for gender equality.
In the US I suspect that there won't be much attention to the plight of rural women around the globe. There should be, but we're in the second half of the "Me Too" era which demonstrates a different set of problems. . . maybe. . . for women. An age-old one that social progressive keep trying to solve by suggesting that that they've discovered a new standard that's actually a very, very old one. That's had its own interesting dynamics, as those same forces struggle not to admit the historical truth that equality for women is a movement that's not only western, but Christian. There's a reason that western societies are in the forefront of this movement, and always have been, and that's where that reason is to be found.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Some times you can't win for losing. . .
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, who is married to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is taking heat over an International Women's Day post.She asked people to "celebrate the boys and men in our lives who encourage us to be who we truly are, who treat girls & women with respect" on 8 March.
Ms Gregoire Trudeau urged followers to post images with their "male ally".
But some Facebook commenters said Ms Gregoire Trudeau's post was "tone deaf" and even "shameful".
The post included a photo of her and her husband holding hands."Why do we have to celebrate men on international women's day?" Facebook user Bibi Ebel said in one popular comment. "I am puzzled.
- Sophie Gregoire Trudeau: Canadian PM wife sparks 'help' debate
- International Women's Day 2017: History, strikes and celebrations
"There are so many things that can be done to celebrate women, and yet the call goes out to celebrating men. Allies and unity are crucial, but so is womanhood.
Well, all the prior entries, apparently.
I'm really only going to note a couple of ironies associated with this deserving day, and it is a deserving one.
The great accomplishment in the West, that Westerners honor, is basically extracting women from family life, just as men had successfully been extracted, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, in order to make them greater servants of the economy. Yes, huge strides in equality have been made, but an understanding of organic domestic and familial Christian equality was largely lost, with a later overall loss of equality in that women's roles are now, in a greater sense, once again chosen for them. I.e, they've gone, in the West, from having few options available to them and those in a limited number of "traditional" roles, to now having no easy option to adopt the traditional ones while being saddled with an expectation of non-domestic employment. The direction remains, forcing that conclusion, although it likely won't be. Indeed, my prediction is that in the upcoming and scary world of AI we're entering just now, the impact on women may prove to be considerably different from that upon men. The fact that I'm unlikely to be around to really witness it doesn't hurt my feelings, however, as the new AI world stands to be so troubling.
Another irony is that in our present age, when women have in fact made so many strides, women find their hard won status in the world threatened by the rising tide of faux women, men who have chosen to pretend to be women and to demand female status. This is something that is only safe to do now, in part, as women fought for the right to be treated equally in society, even if they haven't fully achieved it. It's no accident that not too many men chose to assume female roles when being a woman meant second class status and relegation to a domestic role. Men affecting a female appearance, in other words, aren't going to find a world in which they're confronted with no female sports, and no women in the boardrooms and courtrooms, etc. They won't be confronted by the hard lives that were the female routine up until mid 20th Century, which is not to say that male roles, which were different, weren't pretty hard as a rule as well.
Man works till set of sun,
Woman's work is never done.
Indeed, in some ways, women in achieving greater equality have not only had some "male roles" opened up to them, but have been a bit forced into them. This lets men who think they wish to appear as women, for whatever reason, retain male roles, with no real risk of living women's real lives.