 |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) cleolinda | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So I finished Thunderstruck, the new Erik Larson, and it was very good. I won't say it wasn't as good as The Devil in the White City, because I think the subject matter of that book gave it a transcendent quality--the magical White City that was there, against all odds, against all sense, for less than a year, and then it was gone. The Marconi wireless, in addition to being something that did endure a while, didn't have that single-event quality that the World's Fair did. The story of the Marconi wireless has a beginning but not really an end--it's just there, and then it's either criticized or accepted. So in Thunderstruck, the murder half of the book really is more compelling, whereas I always said that it was a testament to Devil that the saga of building the massive fairgrounds in two years was actually more gripping than the serial killer plotline. (Both are nonfiction, by the way.) Here, the Crippen murder is the compelling storyline, but Larson manages to do something that the World's Fair/Holmes storyline didn't allow: the Marconi wireless actually becomes the means by which Crippen is caught--and Crippen is the means by which the effectiveness Marconi's wireless is finally proven. The two lines come together in a much more satisfying way, whereas Holmes and the Fair mostly seem to exist in proximity to each other, concurrently, but nothing more. More than anything, though, Larson is a consistently vivid storyteller, and I'm to the point where I pretty much buy anything he puts out without even knowing what it's about. Linkspam: U.S. strike targets al-Qaida in Somalia.New Orleans faces a spike in killings.Wildfire burns 8 mansions in Malibu.Hawking hopes to go in space in 2009.Prisoner "probably" ate parts of cellmate.Van Halen, R.E.M. among Rock hall of fame entrants.Kylie tops best-dressed list, topples Kate Moss.Fed-Ex has a single fan, and he is... John Waters.Batches of new Golden Compass stills: one; two. judith_s: "Please buy the [25th anniversary DVDs, see link yesterday] of The Last Unicorn from Conlan Press, here to help out Peter Beagle who does need it. I'm not affiliated with the web site, but have been in touch with Peter and Connor about their fight with Granada Media." cassildra: Forum talking about the legality of what Getty's doing (see yesterday's entry about Getty going after people high and low for using their images). eofs: Thought this might amuse.foresthouse: "My sister just told me that she's managed to book Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame) to perform at the Star Island Conference of the Arts that is coming up this summer. It's a week-long conference on an island off of Portsmouth, NH that has 6 workshops in various artistic disciplines as well as evening performances and other activities. It's phenomenal, and I had a fantastic time when I went 2 summers ago. I'm planning to go this summer. I'd love it if you could spread the word about the conference. P.S. Jen's got a childrens' author to do the writing workshop this year - have you ever heard of Elizabeth Levy who wrote Something Queer at the Ballpark? I liked it a lot when I was a kid. :)" At which point I flipped out, because I was obsessed with Levy's Something Queer at the Haunted School when I was about eight years old. And finally:      Tags: books, his dark materials, movies, thunderstruck
Current Music: Semisonic, "Singing in My Sleep"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Marconi wireless, in addition to being something that did endure,
I haven't read the book, so I'm not sure quite how you mean that, but I wouldn't say the Marconi wireless endured in any general sense. Marconi's version of wireless wasn't really adaptable to voice communications, so it faded out. The radio we have now works differently -- Marconi's devices aren't a direct ancestor, more like a cousin to present day equipment.
The problem with Marconi's method was that, if sound wave were radio waves, it was like trying to transmit a message by clapping your hands. In a modern radio, we usually start with a continuous wave, which is more like the sound of a plucked string, and then we alter that in various ways (the tech term for it is "modulation").
There was actually an intermediate form of voice communication that was only used once in history that tried to simulate voice by doing the equivalent of clapping really fast at varying rates, but as you can imagine, it didn't work very well.
Marconi's main achievements were to introduce semi-practical long range wireless communications, and to prove that radio was a viable medium.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Yeah, I see what you mean. The Marconi methods probably lasted about 20 years. I'm pretty sure you're right about why the British use "wireless" as the word for radio, since the general public probably didn't know or care what was happening inside the box, except for radio amateurs, of which there were a lot. There's a pretty direct comparison to bloggers. Those guys eventually became ham radio operators, and they're still around. My dad's a ham, actually, and so is his mother and (before he died) my great grandfather. He had one of those original Marconi-style spark gap transceivers, but it's long since lost. Sigh.
--
OT: Apple just released an iPhone that works with iTunes and has no buttons. It has some kind of special touch screen that's supposed to be very accurate so you can't push the wrong button by accident. Also, Apple seems to have reached some kind of deal with The Beatles, because that's whose music Steve Jobs played on the phone to demonstrate it this morning.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Malibu fires in 1994 managed to get part of Pepperdine, but only the hillsides. I remember most people on campus being more afraid of the rocket fuel tanks at JPL (pretty much, directly behind the campus) catching fire than the campus itself burning. A friend of mine at the time was working the guard booth when the flames started lapping at the hillside right across the stretch of road from him.
At some point, I'll have to steal my scanner back, and locate the 2 pictures I took from my dorm patio. They look like a sunset in a gorgeous, stormy sky - except for the fact that it was noon when I took the pictures, and the "storm clouds" were indeed clouds of smoke. I ended up evacuating with my suite mates, rather than staying on campus (one of the girls had asthma something fierce. She'd already killed off one inhaler, and was working her way through a second; to stay would have killed her), and all 6 of us were put up in a motel by Alex Trebec (at the bidding of his wife, my then-roommate's sister).
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
From: obigrrl |
Date: January 10th, 2007 07:11 pm (UTC) |
| (Link) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Previous Next 
