I was browsing some web sites about LLMs and found a link to The Cardboard Computer, which turned out to be about circular slide rules. I have no idea why these are are supposed to be related to LLMs or any other modern AI work, since the first slide rule was invented in 1632. I still have the circular slide rule I bought in high school (1964-68):
In Some of my summer reading (2020), when discussing James Holland’s The Rise of Germany, 1939-1941: The War in the West, Volume One:
…. while Italy was allied with Germany, it was a net liability rather than an asset. The Italians failed in North Africa and the Balkans, and so Germany had to commit substantial forces to bail them out.
Grant Piper makes the same point, arguing that The Real Reason Germany Lost World War II was that Italy was a German ally.
Following up on these posts:
Today I read Beyond the Book (and What the Greeks Knew About the Earth) in which Professor Matt Strassler explains one of the ways the ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was round and how one of them (Eratosthenes of Cyrene} was able to make a reasonably accurate calculation of its circumference. This calculation assumes that the Sun is much further away from the Earth than the Moon, and hence much bigger, than the Earth of the Moon. Which is Bigger, the Sun or the Earth? Check it Yourself! explains how the Greeks knew this.
When I saw the title ‘Accepted’ History Has Dresden Wrong., by Marc Dauphin, I feared the worst. Usually when I read about someone disagreeing with the conventional version of a well known historical atrocity, the authors are trying to minimize the death toll, or even deny that it happened, e.g. holocaust deniers. However, this article is different.
Mia McDavid, my wife, suggested that I look at Geologist unearthed a mystery, then landed on TV in our local newspaper. It was about Scott Wolter, who believes that the Kensington Runestone is a genuine medieval artifact. I am generally skeptical of fringe scholarship claims. The reference to the Knights Templar immediately set off more alarms in my head.
As I wrote in Columbus and the Flat Earth: “No educated European in 1492 believed that the Earth was flat. They all knew it was round.”
A recent Twitter thread (Original tweets here) covers much of the same ground, with the same conclusions, but with a current example:
I fixed some dead links and made other minor corrections and updates, but did not make any drastic changes in the longer pieces, so their style reflects the times when they were written, years or even decades ago. However, I think they are still relevant to the subjects being discussed.
In March 2021 I wrote about A Copper Mine in Ancient Israel, which seems to data from the time of David or Solomon. It now seems that Wood cut to fuel King Solomon’s ancient mines caused environmental collapse – study.
Ivory found in Kyiv in 12th century originated from Greenland – study
Fragments of walrus tusks unearthed in 2007 were traced back to Greenland, indicating that trading routes in the Middle Ages were more advanced than previously thought.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 