Henry George - Progress and Poverty

https://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm




THE NINETEENTH CENTURY saw an enormous increase in the ability to produce wealth. Steam and electricity, mechanization, specialization, and new business methods greatly increased the power of labor.

Who could have foreseen the steamship, the railroad, the tractor? Or factories weaving cloth faster than hundreds of weavers? Who could have heard the throb of engines more powerful than all the beasts of burden combined? Or envisioned the immense effort saved by improvements in transportation, communication, and commerce?

Surely, these new powers would elevate society from its foundations, lifting the poorest above worry for the material needs of life. Imagine these new machines relieving human toil, muscles of iron making the poorest worker's life a holiday, giving our nobler impulses room to grow. Given such bountiful material conditions, surely we could anticipate the golden age long dreamed of. How could there be greed when everyone had enough? How could things that arise from poverty — crime, ignorance, brutality — exist when poverty had vanished? Such were the dreams born of this wonderful century of progress.

True, there were disappointments. Discovery upon discovery, invention after invention still did not lessen the toil of those who most need relief or bring plenty to the poor. But it seemed there were so many things that could be blamed for this failure that our faith has hardly weakened. Surely we would overcome these difficulties in time.

Yet we must now face facts we cannot mistake. All over the world, we hear complaints of industrial depression: labor condemned to involuntary idleness; capital going to waste; fear and hardship haunting workers. All this dull, deadening pain, this keen, maddening anguish, is summed up in the familiar phrase "hard times."

This situation can hardly be accounted for by local causes. It is common to communities with widely differing circumstances, political institutions, financial systems, population densities, and social organization. There is economic distress under tyrannies, but also where power is in the hands of the people. Distress where protective tariffs hamper trade, but also where trade is nearly free. Distress in countries with paper money, and in countries with gold and silver currencies.

Beneath all this, we can infer a common cause. It is either what we call material progress, or something closely connected with it. What we call an industrial depression is merely an intensification of phenomena that always accompany material progress. They show themselves more clearly and more strongly as progress goes on.

Where do we find the deepest poverty, the hardest struggle for existence, the greatest enforced idleness? Why, wherever material progress is most advanced. That is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and production and exchange most highly developed. In older countries, destitution is found amid the greatest abundance.

Conversely, workers emigrate to newer countries seeking higher wages. Capital also flows there seeking higher interest. They go where material progress is still in earlier stages. The older countries, where material progress has reached its later stages, is where poverty occurs.

Go to a new community where the race of progress is just beginning, where production and exchange are still rude and inefficient. The best house may be only a log cabin; the richest person must work every day. There is not enough wealth to enable any class to live in ease and luxury. No one makes an easy living, or even a very good one — yet everyone can make a living. While you won't find wealth and all its effects, neither will you find beggars. No one willing and able to work lives in fear of want. Though there is no luxury, there is no poverty.

But just when they start to achieve the conditions civilized communities strive for, poverty takes a darker turn. This occurs as savings in production and exchange are made possible by denser settlement, closer connection with the rest of the world, and labor-saving machinery. It occurs just as wealth consequently increases. (And wealth increases not only in the aggregate, but in proportion to population.)

Now, some will find living better and easier — but others will find it hard to get a living at all. Beggars and prisons are the mark of progress as surely as elegant mansions, bulging warehouses, and magnificent churches.

Unpleasant as it may be to admit, it is at last becoming evident that progress has no tendency to reduce poverty. The great fact is, poverty, with all its ills, appears whenever progress reaches a certain stage. Poverty is, in some way, produced by progress itself.

Progress simply widens the gulf between rich and poor. It makes the struggle for existence more intense. Wherever these forces are at work, large classes are maintained on charity.

Yes, in certain ways, the poorest now enjoy what the richest could not a century ago. But this does not demonstrate an improvement — not so long as the ability to obtain the necessities of life has not increased. A beggar in the city may enjoy many things that a backwoods farmer cannot. But the condition of the beggar is not better than that of an independent farmer. What we call progress does not improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. In fact, it tends to depress their condition even more.

These new forces do not act on society from underneath. Rather, it is as though an immense wedge is being driven through the middle. Those above it are elevated, but those below are crushed.

Where the poor have long existed, this effect is no longer obvious. When the lowest class can barely live, it is impossible to get any lower: the next step is out of existence altogether. This has been the case for a long time in many parts of Europe. But where new settlements advance to the condition of older ones, we see that material progress not only fails to relieve poverty, it actually produces it.

In the United States, it is obvious that squalor and misery increase as villages grow into cities. Poverty is most apparent in older and richer regions. If poverty is less deep in San Francisco than New York, is it not because it lags behind? Who can doubt that when it reaches the point where New York is now, there will also be ragged children in the streets?

So long as the increased wealth that progress brings goes to building great fortunes and increasing luxury, progress is not real. When the contrast between the haves and have-nots grows ever sharper, progress cannot be permanent. To educate people condemned to poverty only makes them restless. To base a state with glaring social inequalities on political institutions where people are supposed to be equal is to stand a pyramid on its head. Eventually, it will fall.

This relation of poverty to progress is the great question of our time. It is the riddle that the Sphinx* of Fate puts to us. If we do not answer correctly, we will be destroyed.

As important as this question is, we have no answer that accounts for the facts or provides a cure.

Experts break into an anarchy of opinion, and people accept misguided ideas. They are led to believe that there is a necessary conflict between capital and labor; that machinery is an evil; that competition must be restrained; or that it is the duty of government to provide capital or furnish work. Such ideas are fraught with danger, for they allow charlatans and demagogues to control the masses.

But these ideas cannot be successfully challenged until political economy gives some answer to the great question.

Political economy is not a set of dogmas. It is the explanation of a certain set of facts and their mutual relationships. Its deductions follow from premises we all recognize. In fact, we base the reasoning and actions of everyday life on them. These premises can be reduced to an expression as simple and basic as the physical law that says: motion follows the line of least resistance.

Political economy proceeds from the following simple axiom:


People seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion.

The process then consists simply of identification and separation. In this sense it is as exact a science as geometry. Its conclusions, when valid, should be just as apparent.

Now, in political economy we cannot test theories by artificially producing combinations or conditions, as other sciences can. Yet we can apply tests that are no less conclusive. This can be done by comparing societies in which different conditions exist. Or, we can test various theories in our imagination — by separating, combining, adding, or eliminating forces or factors of known direction.

Properly done, such an investigation should yield a conclusion that will correlate with every other truth. Every effect has a cause; every fact implies a preceding fact.

In the following pages, I will use these methods to discover what law connects poverty with progress. I believe this law will also explain the recurring cycles of industrial and commercial depression, which now seem so unexplainable.

Current political economy cannot explain why poverty persists in the midst of increasing wealth. It teaches only unrelated and disjointed theories. It seems to me, this is not due to any inability of the science. Rather, there must be some false step in its premises, or some overlooked factor in its estimates.

Such mistakes are generally concealed by respect paid to authority. Therefore, I will take nothing for granted. Accepted theories will be tested; established facts will be freshly questioned. I will not shrink from any conclusion, but promise to follow the truth wherever it may lead.



What the outcome proves to be is not our affair. If the conclusions we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch. If they challenge institutions that have long been regarded as wise and natural, let us not turn back.

teshima art museum

 https://www.designboom.com/architecture/ryue-nishizawa-teshima-art-museum/

Setonaikai National Park - Japan's Inland Sea

Feynman on numbers

Meanwhile, under the influence of this primal dissection of mathematics, Feynman retreated from pragmatic engineering long enough to put together a public lecture on “Some Interesting Properties of Numbers.” It was a stunning exercise in arithmetic, logic, and — though he would never have used the word — philosophy. He invited his distinguished audience (“all the mighty minds,” he wrote his mother a few days later) to discard all knowledge of mathematics and begin from first principles — specifically, from a child’s knowledge of counting in units. He defined addition, a + b, as the operation of counting b units from a starting point, a. He defined multiplication (counting b times). He defined exponentiation (multiplying b times). He derived the simple laws of the kind a + b = b + a and (a + b) + c = a + (b + c), laws that were usually assumed unconsciously, though quantum mechanics itself had shown how crucially some mathematical operations did depend on their ordering. Still taking nothing for granted, Feynman showed how pure logic made it necessary to conceive of inverse operations: subtraction, division, and the taking of logarithms. He could always ask a new question that perforce required a new arithmetical invention. Thus he broadened the class of objects represented by his letters a, b, and c and the class of rules by which he was manipulating them. By his original definition, negative numbers meant nothing. Fractions, fractional exponents, imaginary roots of negative numbers — these had no immediate connection to counting, but Feynman continued pulling them from his silvery logical engine. He turned to irrational numbers and complex numbers and complex powers of complex numbers — these came inexorably as soon as one from facing up to the question: What number, i, when multiplied by itself, equals negative one? He reminded his audience how to compute a logarithm from scratch and showed how the numbers converged as he took successive square roots of ten and thus, as an inevitable by-product, derived the “natural base” e, that ubiquitous fundamental constant. He was recapitulating centuries of mathematical history — yet not quite recapitulating, because only a modern shift of perspective made it possible to see the fabric whole. Having conceived of complex powers, he began to compute complex powers. He made a table of his results and showed how they oscillated, swinging from one to zero to negative one and back again in a wave that he drew for his audience, though they knew perfectly well what a sine wave looked like. He had arrived at trigonometric functions. Now he posed one more question, as fundamental as all the others, yet encompassing them all in the round recursive net he had been spinning for a mere hour: To what power must e be raised to reach i? (They already knew the answer, that e and i and π were conjoined as if by an invisible membrane, but as he told his mother, “I went pretty fast & didn’t give them a hell of a lot of time to work out the reason for one fact before I was showing them another still more amazing.”) He now repeated the assertion he had written elatedly in his notebook at the age of fourteen, that the oddly polyglot statement e πi + 1 = 0 was the most remarkable formula in mathematics. Algebra and geometry, their distinct languages notwithstanding, were one and the same, a bit of child’s arithmetic abstracted and generalized by a few minutes of the purest logic. “Well,” he wrote, “all the mighty minds were mightily impressed by my little feats of arithmetic.

Concern

 https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/jennakass/concern/

Lifting Weights

 

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma

Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma is part of India's space folklore after he became the first Indian to orbit in space way back in April 1984 aboard Russia's Soyuz T-11. He spent 7 days, 21 hours and 40 minutes in space along with two Soviet astronauts, Yury Malyshev and Gennadi Strekalov.

Born on January 13, 1949, in Patiala, Rakesh Sharma, before turning into a cosmonaut, worked as an air force pilot in the Indian Armed Forces.

Sharma immortalised 'Saare Jahan Se Acha, Hindustan Hamara' when he told the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that that's how India looked from up above.

"How does India look from space," India's prime minister asked Rakesh Sharma. "I can say without any hesitation "Saare Jahan se acha" (best in the world)."

Rakesh Sharma is also the first Indian to have been conferred with the 'Hero of Soviet Union' award.

Jin Shengtan's 33 Favourite Things

Adding to the positivity. Let's do this! #不亦快哉 pic.twitter.com/5zXNEV38jf

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 23, 2017

 

2/ 十年別友，抵暮忽至。開門一揖畢，不及問其船來陸來，並不及命其坐床坐榻， 便自疾趨入內，卑辭叩內子；“君豈有鬥酒如東坡婦乎？”內子欣然拔金簪相付。計之可作三日供也。#不亦快哉！ pic.twitter.com/EjlrZJZP7n

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 23, 2017

4/ 於書齋前，拔去垂絲海棠紫荊等樹，多種芭蕉一二十本。#不亦快哉！ pic.twitter.com/xZ8En8Km6G

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 23, 2017

6/ 街行見兩措大執爭一理，既皆目裂頸赤，如不戴天，而又高拱手，低曲腰，滿口仍用者也之乎等字。其語剌剌，勢將連年不休。忽有壯夫掉臂行來，振威從中一喝而解。#不亦快哉！ pic.twitter.com/qAidIaErQ8

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 23, 2017

8/ 飯後無事，入市閒行，見有小物，戲復買之，買亦已成矣，所差者甚少，而市兒苦爭，必不相饒。便掏袖下一件，其輕重與前直相上下者，擲而與之。市兒忽改笑容，拱手連稱不敢。#不亦快哉！ pic.twitter.com/esTKnlsw0R

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 24, 2017

17/ 夏日於朱紅盤中，自拔快刀，切綠沉西瓜。#不亦快哉！ pic.twitter.com/aBwPAycjHM

— Brendan O'Kane (@bokane) October 24, 2017

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Drawings of the Moon, November-December 1609

 

So Chris Marker is a French filmmaker who died just a few years ago. But he did La Jetée, which is really considered one of the classics of French filmmaking. I think it’s from the 70s or maybe from the 60s. It’s only about 25 minutes and is done almost all with still images. Teju Cole

The 100 Famous Mountains of Japan

 https://www.peakbagger.com/list.aspx?lid=5651

Authoring "Authorial Intention:" Jin Shengtan as Creative Critic Liangyan Ge

Robinson Jeffers “An Artist”

That sculptor we knew, the passionate-eyed son of a quarryman,

Who astonished Rome and Paris in his meteor youth, and then
was gone, at his high tide of triumphs,
Without reason or good-bye; I have seen him again lately, after
twenty years, but not in Europe.

In desert hills I rode a horse slack-kneed with thirst. Down a
steep slope a dancing swarm
Of yellow butterflies over a shining rock made me hope water.
We slid down to the place,


The spring was bitter but the horse drank. I imagined wearings
of an old path from that wet rock
Ran down the canyon; I followed, soon they were lost, I came
to a stone valley in which it seemed
No man nor his mount had ever ventured, you wondered
whether even a vulture'd ever spread sail there.
There were stones of strange form under a cleft in the far hill;
I tethered the horse to a rock
And scrambled over. A heap like a stone torrent, a moraine,
But monstrously formed limbs of broken carving appeared in


the rock-fall, enormous breasts, defaced heads
Of giants, the eyes calm through the brute veils of fracture. It
was natural then to climb higher and go in
Up the cleft gate. The canyon was a sheer-walled crack winding
at the entrance, but around its bend
The walls grew dreadful with stone giants, presences growing
out of the rigid precipice, that strove
In dream between stone and life, intense to cast their chaos . . .
or to enter and return . . . stone-fleshed, nerve-stretched
Great bodies ever more beautiful and more heavy with pain,
they seemed leading to some unbearable
Consummation of the ecstasy . . . but there, troll among
Titans, the bearded master of the place accosted me
In a cold anger, a mallet in his hand, filthy and ragged. There
was no kindness in that man's mind,
But after he had driven me down to the entrance he spoke a
little.

The merciless sun had found the slot now
To hide in, and lit for the wick of that stone lamp-bowl a sky
almost, I thought, abominably beautiful;
While our lost artist we used to admire: for now I knew him:
spoke of his passion.

He said, 'Marble?
White marble is fit to model a snow-mountain: let man be
modest. Nor bronze: I am bound to have my tool
In my material, no irrelevances. I found this pit of dark-gray
freestone, fine-grained, and tough enough
To make sketches that under any weathering will last my lifetime…

The town is eight miles off, I can fetch food and no one follows
me home. I have water and a cave
Here; and no possible lack of material. I need, therefore, nothing.
As to companions, I make them.
And models? They are seldom wanted; I know a Basque shepherd
I sometimes use; and a woman of the town.
What more? Sympathy? Praise? I have never desired them and
also I have never deserved them. I will not show you
More than the spalls you saw by accident.

What I see is the enormous
beauty of things, but what I attempt
Is nothing to that. I am helpless toward that.
It is only to form in stone the mould of some ideal humanity
that might be worthy to be
Under that lightning. Animalcules that God (if he were given
to laughter) might omit to laugh at.
Those children of my hands are tortured, because they feel,'
he said, 'the storm of the outer magnificence.
They are giants in agony. They have seen from my eyes
The man-destroying beauty of the dawns over their notch
yonder, and all the obliterating stars.
But in their eyes they have peace. I have lived a little and I
think
Peace marrying pain alone can breed that excellence in the
luckless race, might make it decent
To exist at all on the star-lit stone breast.

I hope,' he said, 'that
when I grow old and the chisel drops,
I may crawl out on a ledge of the rock and die like a wolf.'

These
fragments are all I can remember,
These in the flare of the desert evening. Having been driven
so brutally forth I never returned;
Yet I respect him enough to keep his name and the place secret.
I hope that some other traveller
May stumble on that ravine of Titans after their maker has
died. While he lives, let him alone.

Mount Kaimondake from Japan Rail's most southerly train station

Map of Xenophon's Anabasis

 

Interview with CK Williams

The Maginhawa Street Journal

Parting, Travel and the Great ROC

Focus Puller

A focus puller is someone who works alongside the camera operator on video productions to control the focus of a camera’s lens. Cine lenses for the types of cameras that are often used on major motion pictures and TV commercials, do not have autofocus lenses. Instead, the lens is manually focussed during the recording. The focus puller’s job is to carefully watch the take and adjust the focus smoothly as the subject moves around the scene. Focus marks are often set with sticky tape, on the floor of the set. The distance of the camera from those marks is measured by the focus puller so that they know the actor’s distance precisely at those points. With a precise distance known, a precise focus ca be achieved by rotating a device called a follow focus, which is attached to the lens on the camera. Sometimes focus pullers will use LCD monitors on the camera to confirm their focus, and sometimes, the really accomplished ones will simply do it visually. Believe it or not, a good focus puller can look at any object and tell you how far away it is, then set the lens barrel’s focus ring to the exact position to put the lens in focus on that object. What’s more, they can do this on the fly as actors move throughout a scene. With film budgets being so high these days, there’s little time for getting things wrong, so the job of a focus puller is extremely important. It’s no good if the actor gives the performance of their life, but the shot of out of focus! Increased camera resolutions these days have also narrowed the tolerances on what is acceptably in and out of focus.

Leica M Series

The Leica M system as we know it has been in existence since 1954 when the first model, the M3 was introduced. Since its introduction, little seems to have changed on the surface - but there are many subtle differences. The M3 turned the 35mm camera industry on end with several groundbreaking features for the time including the bayonet lens mount (which is still in use today) and a viewfinder with multiple, automatically changing framelines with parallax correction that was bright and clear. Over the years, the M system developed more on an evolutionary rather than revolutionary track. Small refinements and changes were added with each release:

This overview only covers the major bodies - excluding some of the variants such as the M2-MOT (1967), MD (1965), M4-MOT (1967), MDa (1967), MD-2 (1977) and the special editions which made their debut after the release of the M6 such as the M6J, etc. They might be added at a later time, but for now they can be summarized as follows.

The MD variants are essentially "Documentation" cameras and do not feature a rangefinder or viewfinder. Instead, they accept index strips - which required a special base plate with a light-tight slot. Used for photographically recording documentation and rather specialized. They could also be used with the Visoflex (an SLR attachment).

The M2-MOT and M4-MOT allowed for coupling to a (large) motorized winder. The compatibility became standard with the M4-2/MD-2 and M4-P onwards with both dedicated winders and the universal Leica Winder M and Motor M. While the size of these motorized winders shrank considerably over the years, the top speed never surpassed 3fps. They also operate at a slower speed of 1-1.5fps and can be triggered for either single or multiple exposures via the shutter button.

For the M1/M2/MD models, there was the Leicavit (very rare) and for the MP (original modified M3 and later 2003+ MP) models the Leicavit MP. This accessory replaced your baseplate with a manually operated lever that both advanced the film and cocked the shutter. With practice, up to 2fps were possible.

Early Leica M bodies had a cold shoe and offered M (flashbulb) and X (electronic flashgun) sync ports. These are not compatible with regular PC sync cords, though adapters are available. The hot shoe didn't make an appearance until the M5 (introduced in 1972) and it was a single contact up until the M6 TTL (introduced in 1998) which featured TTL flash metering and brought the count up to four (the shoe acting as a ground for both).
M3 (1954-1966)

The M3 is the quintessential M camera that started it all, defining the M system for the next 57+ years and was even featured in the James Bond movie, "Dr. No." It was a groundbreaking camera when it was introduced and many of its traits carry on through to the latest M cameras, including the bayonet lens mount and viewfinder features. It's a strictly manual (and mechanical) camera in every sense of the word. Many consider it among the finest cameras that Leica has ever produced and is a particular favorite among 50mm shooters because of it's high-magnification .90x viewfinder. The framelines available are 50, 90 and 135 and feature automatic parallax correction. The 50 is always visible - 90 or 135 become visible as well with the corresponding lens mounted.

The M3 was essentially in a constant state of development during its production (much to the delight of collectors). The first batches of the M3 didn't have the frame preview lever but appeared shortly thereafter in 1955 (as of #785891). The shutter speed dial was also calibrated to German standards of the time (e.g. 1/100s, 1/50s, 1/25s, etc.) until 1957 (from #854001) when the normal speeds we see today were introduced. Finally, early M3s were equipped with a shutter cocking/film advance mechanism that required two strokes of the wind lever (so-called "double stroke" or "DS" bodies, as opposed to "single stroke" or "SS"). The latter made its debut in 1958 (as of #915251).

About 225,000 M3s were produced.





The M2 is very similar to the M3 but differs in one key aspect; the viewfinder magnification was reduced from .90x to .72x (which would become the standard for all M bodies to follow) to allow the viewfinder to display framelines for the 35mm focal length. The framelines available are now 35, 50 and 90 and behave as all following Ms will - 50 is no longer fixed. The exposure counter is also different (and now requires a manual reset to zero). Notice the lack of bevels around the windows and a slighly changed top plate. This would define the look for bodies to follow. You'll also notice the illumination window for the framelines is now a fresnel lens, which improved light gathering - and made for brighter framelines.

Early versions of the M2 didn't have a self-timer and had a film rewind button instead of a lever (so-called "button rewind" bodies).

About 83,000 M2s were produced.




The M1 was sort of in between the M2 and the upcoming MD body that replaced it in 1965. It had a viewfinder, but no rangefinder and permanently displayed the 35/50 framelines (though it did have automatic parallax correction). Therefore it had no frame preview lever, and also lacked a self-timer. It was meant as a camera for scientific/technical and documentation use. The MD that followed had no viewfinder at all.

About 9,392 M1s were produced.


The M4 introduces further changes to the viewfinder, which now covers the 35/135, 50 and 90 framelines while still at a .72x magnification. Body controls (winder, self timer and preview levers) change to the more modern look and the film rewind becomes an actual crank, which sits at an angle now.

While actually making its debut with the prior M2R (or "military M2" body, not listed here) the M4 utilizes a new film loading system, which no longer requires a separate take-up spool.

About 58,000 M4s were produced.


The M5 is unique among the M cameras in several ways; some people like it while others loathe it. The body dimensions are quite a departure from the traditional, being both larger all around (except in thickness) and heavier. The TTL metering is unique among M bodies in that it features a match needle system, and it is because of this and the swing-in metering cell "paddle" that the camera took on its characteristic size and shape. To its credit, it featured a couple of "firsts" in the M system, including a light meter (which requires a battery), a hot shoe and shutter speeds visible in the viewfinder. Some unique features include the rewind crank, which is in the base plate and both horizontal and vertical strap lugs. Because of the uproar from the long-time M shooters and poor sales (It cost close to $1,000 when introduced), it was short-lived - and almost killed the M system entirely, as Leica started focusing on the R system.


The M4-2 marked a turning point for Leica - it was a return to the M system with cost-cutting as a major consideration. Production was moved to Midland, Canada. As a result of the cost-cutting, several things would change about the M. The changes included moving from an engraved "Leica" script to stamped, a lesser vulcanite, and removal of a condenser in the rangefinder mechanism (which introduced the potential for ghosts/flare, which persisted through the M6 model), loss of the self timer and a simplification of its internals.

To its credit, it still had brass top and base plates. The majority of M4-2 bodies were black chrome, though silver chrome was an option as well. From this (and the MD-2 from 1977) model forward, M bodies could now accept the Leica Motor and Winder M accessories - putting an end to the "-MOT" models.


The M4-P is quite similar to the M4-2. It introduced us to the now standard frameline pairs of 28/90, 50/75 and 35/135. Like the M4-2, the majority were produced in black chrome (silver chrome was also an option). Introduced with this model are the zinc top and base plates. The last 1,000 bodies were produced in Wetzlar, Germany as production of the M6 began.


The M6 is very similar to the M4-P but reintroduces electronics to the M system (since the M5) featuring a TTL (Through The Lens) meter, but a more modern implementation. It uses a silicon photodiode as compared to the M5's cadmium sulfide meter cell and covers a greater area of the scene (12mm vs. 8.5mm). Like the M4-P, the M6 features zinc top and base plates.

The M6 TTL differs from the M6 in a couple of ways and marks a new direction for the M bodies - namely, increased use of electronics. The meter from the M6 is now microprocessor controlled and allows for TTL flash metering and the viewfinder display also changed slightly (from "< >" to "> o <"). This last change corresponds to the new shutter speed dial direction, which many now call "backwards" in rotation (to the previous M bodies). The shutter speed dial is larger, as is the body itself - some 2.5mm taller and 60g heavier over the M6. Another new option with the M6 TTL was the availability of the .85 viewfinder magnification in addition to the standard .58/.72. While .85 viewfinders on the M6 exist - only 3,130 were made at the factory that way.

Compare the M6 (top) with the M6 TTL (bottom) - notice the larger shutter speed dial, improved rangefinder/viewfinder and taller top plate of the TTL:


The M7 continues the integration of electronics in the M with the addition of an aperture priority mode ("A") and an all-new viewfinder display for exposure. In addition to the manual metering of the M6 TTL ("> o <") it also offers an LED readout of shutter speed, which remains in use up through the latest M9-P. Early viewfinders were able to be updated to the MP version (which reintroduces the condenser removed starting with the M4-2) and is available in .58 and .85 magnifications besides the standard of .72 as with the M6 TTL. The DX reader could also be updated - the original was electromechanical whereas the revised reader is optical (in some cases problems were noted with the original). Later M7 bodies had both the updated MP viewfinder and optical DX reader. After 22 years, for the M7 (and the following MP) Leica returns to using brass for the top and base plates.

Another feature of the new electronics comes in the form of an electronically-controlled shutter in the M7 that's both quieter and more accurate. However, it now depends on a battery for operation outside of two fall-back speeds of 1/160s and 1/125s which become mechanically controlled should the battery die. This is an important distinction for some over the mechanically-controlled shutters of other bodies.

Search for MIssing Aircraft VH-MDX

https://vhmdx.com.au/




During the night of Sunday 9th August 1981, a light aircraft registered VH-MDX disappeared on or near the ranges associated with Mt Barrington NSW with five people on board.

A large-scale nine-day search involving organisations including NSW Police, Bushwalkers Search and Rescue NSW (B S&R) (BSAR NSW), National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), WICEN NSW, Cave Rescue, Volunteer Rescue Association (VRA), State Emergency Service (SES), NSW Forestry, Fire Search and Rescue, and the Water Board was commenced.

Numerous searches have been conducted over the years by individuals, NSW Police Rescue, the Defence Force, and a number of other emergency services. BSAR NSW, a volunteer squad specialising in remote area search and rescue, was involved in the initial search for VH-MDX in 1981 and has continued searching for the aircraft on a regular basis for over thirty years.

No trace of the aircraft or its occupants has been found and many theories of what happened some bizarre, have been suggested over the years. Although there are other missing aircraft in Australia, VH-MDX for a number of reasons is one of the most intriguing and discussed.

DAVID HARVEY'S ANTI-CAPITALIST CHRONICLES

 http://davidharvey.org/

8 August 1945 - After Hiroshima but before Nagasaki

August 8, 1945, has become one of the more important atomic bombing dates in my mind over the years. It's after Hiroshima, but before Nagasaki. It's easy to ignore for that reason. But a few very significant things happened that day.

(A fairly shortish thread)

— Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein) August 8, 2021

Pastorius' 'The Beehive'

Taiwanese vs. Mandarin in a village school half a century ago

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=51695

The Largest Black Hole

Expressions of Self in a Homeless World: Zhang Dai (1597-1680?) and His Writings in the MingQing Transition Period

Colbert vs Franco: Nerd Showdown

edgar allan poe on a rainy night - ai art

 

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Picture of the Heike Clan Sinking and Perishing at Sea, 1853,

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Picture of the Heike Clan Sinking and Perishing at Sea, 1853, 6th lunar month https://t.co/t7sD4Y3eVO #minneapolisinstituteofart #museumarchive pic.twitter.com/Qn22IaRp3m

— MIA: Japanese and Korean Art (Bot) (@mia_japankorea) August 2, 2021

Spassky - Fischer World Championship Match (1972), Reykjavik ISL, rd 6, Jul-23 Queen's Gambit Declined: Tartakower Defense. Exchange Variation (D59)

[Event "Spassky - Fischer World Championship Match"][Site "Reykjavik ISL"] [Date "1972.07.23"] [EventDate "?"] [Round "6"] [Result "1-0"] [White "Robert James Fischer"] [Black "Boris Spassky"] [ECO "D59"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "81"] 1. c4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. d4 Nf6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 O-O 6. e3 h6 7. Bh4 b6 8. cxd5 Nxd5 9. Bxe7 Qxe7 10. Nxd5 exd5 11. Rc1 Be6 12. Qa4 c5 13. Qa3 Rc8 14. Bb5 a6 15. dxc5 bxc5 16. O-O Ra7 17. Be2 Nd7 18. Nd4 Qf8 19. Nxe6 fxe6 20. e4 d4 21. f4 Qe7 22. e5 Rb8 23. Bc4 Kh8 24. Qh3 Nf8 25. b3 a5 26. f5 exf5 27. Rxf5 Nh7 28. Rcf1 Qd8 29. Qg3 Re7 30. h4 Rbb7 31. e6 Rbc7 32. Qe5 Qe8 33. a4 Qd8 34. R1f2 Qe8 35. R2f3 Qd8 36. Bd3 Qe8 37. Qe4 Nf6 38. Rxf6 gxf6 39. Rxf6 Kg8 40. Bc4 Kh8 41. Qf4 1-0




In (Game 6) Robert Fischer lead off the Game with 1. c4 - and went into the Queen's Gambit Declined: Tartakower Defense. Exchange Variation. BUT 41. Qf4 -!!!, would be another brilliant Game-Winning Move for Fischer! In this position Boris Spassky would either get Checkmated or lose his Queen. Fischer now took the lead over Spassky by 1 point.