Winter ice cooling Dodge City beer

TL;DR -- We point to an article/answer on Quora dealing with cooling beverages of the alcoholic type in Dodge City, say around the time of Marshal Earp. The article points back to Wisconsin, but ice collection happened all along the northern border in the winter months. The technology of cooling has an interesting history which we will look at in order to get a focus beyond the shenanigans to the computational crowd. 

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Quora has accumulated a lot of great articles over its  years. These are written as answers to questions. Of late, we are seeing more with pictures from the past. Photos, that is, which we hope are of sufficient provenance to use for research. Right now, this problem is only an idea, for the most part, as fakery has been easy to spot. 

But, it's getting harder. So, we will be addressing that from a technical sense. For now, we will be looking at old photos. We have referenced articles of Erik Painter several times, mostly with respect to the over 100 years of frontier experience that brought the U.S. (us) to today from the start 400+ years ago. The frontier experience exploded post the U.S. Revolution. There are lots of tales to tell about this as we look at the expansion across the interior. On the other side of the matter, Erik Painter has posted well-written articles about Native American culture and the impact on it that the past 200 years has had. 

Today, though, we go to Dodge City, KS. Here is a link to the question and answer: 

• In old episodes of Gunsmoke, Miss Kitty frequently offers Marshal Dillon a cold beer at the Longbranch Saloon. In the days before electricity, how could the beer have been chilled?

Erik showed photos of ice being gathered and shipped. The railroad arrived in the area in the early 1870s. So, shipment would have been regular. Ice could be stored until almost the end of summer under the proper conditions up north. We will look at that further. 

This photo is of a drawing of what an iced railcar delivery adult beverages would have looked like.  

This was a great answer as it pointed to a part of the culture of the early times. A recent article described how some in New Hampshire are trying to keep the "traditon alive" and has photos depicting some of the work and processes. 

Ice Harvesting in
New Hampshire

Switching to a more family-oriented topic, this is actually an issue of technology which is more than the computational flimflam of late. There will be a later post on the history of ice cream in the west as John's family had an early diary in southeast Kansas with an outlet in Oswego, KS in the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s. As the technology improved, they shipped on the Katy railroad all the way to Kansas City.  

Looking at the history, Washington even had a taste for the sweet and icy stuff. New York had a parlor for this product in the 1770s. But, the interest in cold refreshments go back much further. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/31/2024

03/31/2024 --  

Judy Garland

TL;DR -- Bunker Hill West has a lot of history that we must not forget. Fortunately, a few Facebook groups are helping by providing period photos. One of these showed Judy Garland in 1939 working in her flower shop in LA. The photo was from the time that she was filming her famous movie. Her mother thought that she ought to have a Plan B.   

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For the most part, we will be looking at LA, in particular Bunker Hill West. I saw a photo recently that showed Bunker Hill in the late 1800s and recently from nearly the same view and will use it in a future post. The theme is the long reach of New England using the west coast as a focus as we look at families that went west leaving traces across the country. 

As is obvious the culture in the west differs from that of New England, many ways. There are huge similarities, too, which we can discuss. The 400ths might have shown up, but coming up shortly will be the 250th of the U.S. Western settlements started as colonials moved away from the coast. The interior had major activity early on, where St. Louis became the organizing point for bringing points west into the fold. 

Photos became almost regular around the time of the Civil War. What one is seeing now on social media is old photos being uploaded. FB has innumerable groups whose main meme is that. We have mentioned California many times. Several sites showing photos are covering the west coast. And, as mentioned, many times, new photos of the same view, or taken near by, allow us to consider the history. 

We will look at San Francisco, as well, including the Presidio. That goes with our interest in New Spain. 

Now, to Judy Garland (Wikipedia, WikiTree) who was a household name, at one time. She was born in Minnesota which came out of the Northwest Territory. And, she has a southern New England pedigree. See the WikiTree information on her. 

As we go forward, given the 400th and technology's support for research, we can use Judy's pedigree to help study northern and southern New England's relationships. Some of our earlier posts have started to address that topic. Many are about families from the north and the south meeting as they transitioned west through generations after the Revolution. 

According to FamousKin, Judy is related to the Gilman/Ladd (and Dudley) family of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. But, the tie-in is prior to the migration. The site used Alan Ladd, the actor, as the focus. 

What caught our eye on FB was Judy working in a flower shop. The photo was on a FB page devoted to Relics of  LA which we have referenced before. There, also, is a florist's site that has a post titled Did you know that Judy Garland was a florist? She worked in her shop during the time that she was filming the Wizard of OZ.  

Her shop was on Wilshire Blvd; she started it when she was 15 years old. As she became more involved with entertainment, her florist activities went to naught. 

She is a good example for Women's History month. Her mother got her involved with flowers as a Plan B in case entertainment didn't work out. 

May 16, 1939:

Quote - Judy Garland News and Events: The photo and caption above appeared in the papers throughout most of 1939 and into early 1940, promoting Judy and her alleged business, “Judy Garland Flowers,” supposedly opened by Judy and her mom, Ethel.  The photos were all posed and shot by an MGM studio photographer, possibly on January 22, 1939.  Obviously, Judy was too busy at the studio to spend any real-time arranging flowers at the shop’s location on 5421 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.  The location was eventually turned into a bakery.  The building was torn down in the 1980s and a Staples store now occupies the space.

Remarks: Modified: 03/30/2024

03/30/2024 --  

Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz

TL;DR -- Running through links on a topic can lead to interesting finds. By a circuitous route, we ran into a colleague of Einstein who lived in the Netherlands and several other finds. Their work showed that inexpensive experiments can do the job. A related post continues our discussion on content versus configuration. 

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Technology is our interest, and it's without limit. Today, we were researching relativity as it applies to some of the modern turmoils. Mainly, this is to set a basis for future discussion and work. In his book on the Evolution of Physics which he wrote with Infeld, Einstein discussed the rise of the modern views, from the perspective of the 1930s. 

One thing stressed was the importance of knowledge and the means for obtaining and managiing such. That applies across the board and usually was a human endeavor. Now, we have other wrinkles coming into sight. These are not new which we will go into. 

But, on reading material, I ran into the old topic of content versus configuration. Or, vice versa, as it's a two-way street. In fact, the TGS work has been important in following the ins and outs of technology as the web and its use became more sophisticated. Mentioning acquisition of knowledge? Mostly, that seems to be associated with the artificial. But, no, people need to  learn to. 

So, there was a hit on a search for a algorithm that pointed to a website (HyperPhysics) managed at Georgia State. The site uses Java and Javascript to provide demonstrations of algorithms related to research in Physics. It has a goal of providing information of a technial nature to teachs of High School Physics. The Georgia site also links to HyperMath which of the same approach. Both of them are great. 

Another link goes to Physics World which is all modern and mostly reporting. However, the articles are a great collection. One of them motivated this post. 

Given that this is Women's History Month, we wanted to feature Geertruida de Haas-Lorentz who provided an experiment to a French museum. It had been done by her husband and Einstein in 1915 and showed a connection between magnetism and "angular-momentum of electrons" using a simple device. Geertruida herself did experiments that tested Einstein's proposals about Brownian motion. 

Her father was the Nobel Prize winner for his theoretical work that supported Einstein's relativity research. 

This was Einstein's only experiment as his work was theoretical (and cultural). 

Back to content and configuration: old (This week's finds ...); new (Azimuth). 

Remarks: Modified: 03/24/2024

03/24/2024 --  

Boston first

TL;DR -- The 17th of March is associated with St. Patrick with green rivers, too much food, and parades. That same day in 1776 was when the Brits left Boston. The story is that they believed that the colonials had brought in firepower sufficient to be effective. We mention something that happened a few years later in Russia. Why? What's to believe? 

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The Nutfield Genealogy blog noted that this day of St. Patrick's was when the British were run out of Boston: March 17th in Boston ~ Evacuation Day or Saint Patrick's Day? Hence, it is featured yearly. 

The post reports that a fake fort had been assembled on a hill overlooking the town. That motivated the evacuation. The departure of the British forces occurred on 17 March 1776. 

For us, we like to point to the series on the Siege of Boston that Dr. Frank published in The Massachusetts Magazine. 

Now, a historic follow on? The Russian field marshal, Grigory Potemkin, was to show a region to Catherine the Great. This was in an area with which we have become more familiar of late. The tale told is that fake villages were set up along the route that she was to be taken. "Potemkin village" came to be. How much of this is fictional has been researched. 

But, Catherine's journey to the Crimea was in 1787. So, the fakery of the colonials preceeded that of the Russians. 

The topic? Now, we have witnessed several years of another type of fakery (AIn't's output). This deals with technology and its perils which we will be discussing further. 

Now, taking another view of things here. What we are dealing with is computational systems using sophisiticated mathematics in new ways with unexpected results. None of this is magical in origins. Rather, some choices were made with immature minds that impacted all of us. Major tsk on that. In the meantime, we can control the situations involved to some extent. Human nature, on the other hand, fortunately is not merely endless St. Pat's Day frolicking. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/17/2024

03/17/2024 --  

Questions and such

TL;DR -- Bridging across 400+ years will continue to be of importance. So, our quest will be an ongoing process. Technology? The next two years will provide more of a view to the issues. Right now, we can only intimate. In reality, hype abounds. AIn't adopters will be in for a reckoning. 

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It was a year ago, when we found out about the new information about Thomas and Margaret that was available via digitization of records in Sherbourne, Dorset, UK from 400 years ago. WikiTree used the opportunity to split out their Profile of Thomas into two people: one was at Cape Ann who is unknown, essentially; the other is the one who married Margaret Frier. 

The work and discussion had been done while I was distracted by what became to be known at GenAI. There are several blogs on this. But, we're at the stage to move on and do it right. Not that what had been done before was done wrongly. So, tsk, guy, at WikiTree who passes judgment. We'll take it from here with respect to these two gentlemen or one (our choice - until we really know).

On the first (AIn't), look at the series here under my name: True State of AI Tools, 2024. We started this last year after assessing what OpenAI's toy/tool brought. The jury is still out: those who don't know, let's discuss rationally; those who are on the bandwagon, just be aware of the faults that shake the foundation (oh yes, let's to go Einstein's introduction of the mathematics of Relativity to do this, General, that is - and then come forward to the current nonsense).

On the second (Cape Ann, &c - btw, that's what was used in the time of Levi-Civita), how will the research and change proceed? Well, we got started in 2009 but formalized the effort in 2010. By 2012, it was obvious that there were all sorts of opinions, worthy of note (okay?, we'll discuss - we do not like the top-down dominance that seems to appear - more later). So, this happened. 

• What we know - notice, November of 2012. What took so long? Well, search in this blog on Content and Configuration. I was dealing with new content related to history and people. This was after transitioning my brain from technology, especially advanced computing. And, configuration? I used CMS; later, I pointed to GitHub (with Co-Pilot, is even better of a foild for discussion) as an example. Two hats? Okay. One person's content might be another's configuration. And, so forth. Science and engineering are full of examples. 

So, switching to the 1st, a monolith of knowledge? Nope. The whole framework is idiotic. We'll show this, eventually, if we live long enough. Too, GenAI? Purty pictures. Read about the difficulty of doing something real, as I show with the knowledge-based engineering work that actually bumpled up against the world successfully by meeting constraints intelligently. And, the word salad? Oh yes, perfect grammar, perhaps. But. meaningless. Anyone finding meaning is demonstrating what the Gesalt view was about. 

Going on. Later, we figured that we had enough and started the following using a different format at Google's Blogger. Posts are meant to be conversational through time. Pages (see our Page map) are static. We did this page. Both the post and the page have been annotated with respect to the current topic of needed changes. 

• Frequently asked questions - notice, later. We did not know a lot, even then. But, we thought that we ought to organize this into questions. These might be reworked to have a good set of questions. However, they'll each be updated. 

So, we have started the work. One thing was to add an opinion category, OpEd. One thing that we noticed over the past decade plus. When we started, the internet was still somewhat open which allowed satisfying queries to be made and tweaked to obtain some semblance of an answer. Now It's been trashed. So, that will slow things down. 

Before now, we also saw lots of site with reseach done earlier. Lots of that disappeared. We had collected lots of links over the years and need to prune these out. But, for some, trying to see what happened will be of use As, that was not work to be wasted. If the stuff is available elsewhere, we want to be cognizant of the work. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/15/2024

03/15/2024 --  

Women's History Month, 2024

TL;DR -- March is the month to look at the women's history in all of its aspects. 

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March is Women's History month in the U.S. and many other parts of the worlds. We have had a post for this the past two years. 

• Women's History Month, 2022
• Women's History Month, 2023 

Each post links to other articles on the subject or on something related. 

The below is a list of current material from sites or periodicals which are becoming broader in scope. 

• International Women's Day 
• A Proclamation on Women’s History Month, 2024 
• www.womenshistorymonth.gov 
• www.womenshistory[.]org
• USA TODAY's Women of the Year share their best advice
• Wikipedia has a brief history 
• Time 10 Surprising Facts About Women’s History Month 
• ...

Next post, we will go back through our posts since 2010 and pull out those about a woman. An example would be our posts in 2022 on Emily Noether and on the Wartime Quartet. Or, our various posts on Elizabeth Gardners (several generations). 

Remarks: Modified: 03/15/2024

03/15/2024 --  Added photo of Pres. Carter signing a Proclamation in 1980.