Ptak Science Books

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: Let Your Man fill Your Eyes With Smoke

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick PostDaily Dose from Dr. Odd series

 

Darrell Drake was full of advice, not much of which seems to have weathered the wearying bits of time very well.  Most of what he has to offer has to do with being coy, reserved, and retiring, and so much so to the point of being insipid acquiescing in the superior qualities of the man, forever in the back seat, quiet and demure, patient and understanding and making the back-step always the job of the woman. Not much of a surprise.  But what was very unexpected was the chapter called "Let Smoke Get in Your Eyes", a four-page baiting in which he warns women against the antagonism of correcting the manners and behavior of the man, so much so that she should be well willing to have  smoke blown into her eyes rather than suggest that the smoker not do so--you don't see that every day. 

Dance as the Godless Spasm More Dangerous than Hitler (1946)

JF Ptak Science Books    Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

Hitler was dead in 1946, but dance--the devil's reach of hellfire and something worse than Hitler, according to the author of this pamphlet--wasn't.

The author, Dan Gilbert LL.D., wrote a very _______ summation of modern dance, which was an assault on morals (well, Christian morals) and decency.  He does actually make the case that  dance music (jitterbug, swing, and jazz) was more dangerous than Hitler and was "Hitlerizing" American youth to its utter destruction.  "Jitterbug dens" preached a "faster jitterbuggery" (which was "conceived in the brothel to stimulate lust and vice") which led youth into the Underworld.  The children of America were being lost to "razzy jazzy spasm bands" which would "strouse uncontrollable sex desire" and "infect youth with the disease of immorality" then to  "produce(s) a state of emotional and nervous derangement, which is scientifically indistinguishable from intoxication induced by stimulants or narcotics". And on and on.

These are just a few of the very choice morsels found in Gilbert's 42-page diatribe, picked out by me rather quickly, plucked from the text with toothpicks--I just didn't want to spend very much time with this book at all.  That said, I'm sure that there are tastier items than these, salted through a text of salt.

I don't know why Gilbert became this deeply interested in dance/death/Hell in the year following the end of WWII--after years of destruction, it seems hard for me to imagine to wake up, look out the window, and see the next assault on the U.S. coming in the form of dance.  He did carry on some about the "jitterbug insanity" of "improvisation", and how dancers would abandon the appropriate and constrained methods of dance to simply move according to feeling and need.  This was the root of it all--happy feet. 

An earlier post on this blog addressed a direct relative to this pamphlet:

 

On Tanning Names on Newborn Babies (1930)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post  Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

[Source: Popular Mechanics, October, 1930]

I'm looking for post #2000--this isn't it.  It is however Quick Post #450 or so, which means that we're closing in on 2,500 overall posts in this blog since 2008.  But there should be something with a little more flavor than baby tanning for #2000. 

This is a good/appropriate installment for the Daily Dose from Doctor Odd series.  As ideas go, it is not a very good one--but it is not among the Dantean 9th-level-worst.  If we classify bad ideas on a six-point Major-Minor scale, from MajorMajor to Major to MinorMajor and then to MajorMinor and then Minor and finally MinorMinor, this one would probably rank at the MinorMajor level. Or maybe even a full Major.  It is a bad idea.  (An example, by the way, of a full MajorMajor bad idea would be the electropunk centrifugal birthing patent machine, described earlier on this blog, here. Okay, here's another:  on draining the Mediterranean Sea, here.)

There are less invasive ways of ensuring that the correct baby is delivered to the correct parent(s) than tanning the baby's name onto their body--which doesn't of course take into account the instances where the baby's skin is too dark or whatever to be tanned.  But the idea of subject a brand-new baby to a tanning lamp as  its welcome to the world seems a bit--what?--horrible. Exposure to ultraviolet rays that will cause a six-month brand sounds like it might stir up the melanosome pot to cause damage to organs other than the skin, that it could have been a real assault on the DNA.  Also, that metal object on the table looks a lot like a clamp--I hope it wasn't. 

The Crucible of Weight and the Overweighted State of 1920 Geology

JF Ptak Science Books     Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

Grazing the issues for 1920 in the Popular Mechanics-esque popular-techno-magazine, Illustrated World, I found this superb near-Dadaist photograph.  The image is for a free weighing station, where people could come and have their stuff weighed, and weighed for free.  This no doubt came into being to help protect consumers from being under-weighted and over-charged for their weighed goods like butter and whatever, where their good grocer might have had a thumb or more on the scale or even used a crooked/salted scale when selling their goods.  What someone would do at the point of being told that their stuff was overweighed, I don't know--I mean these are people walking around in the street with things in their pockets or bags....its not exactly "evidence" showing up at the weigh station (staffed by "a woman") saying that the half-pound blob roll in their hand was sold them as a pound on their word of the purchaser probably wouldn't stand up in court.  In any event, I like the idea of the story of the world being told from the viewpoint of the person weighing stuff for free, and the people who came to them, and the stuff brought to be weighed.  Maybe there were weighing-in groupies; maybe there were old people who would just kick up a rock or something and take it to the weigh station for a bit of conversation and complaint on the over-weighted state of geology.  Maybe between 12:00 and 1:00 the weighers weighed stuff out-back, sotto voce, for fun.

If only there was a sign for "no waiting" this photo would be complete.

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: Diving Archery Water Sports

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post  Part of the series Daily Dose from Dr. Odd  

What could possibly go wrong?  from Popular Mechanics, November 1930.

 

 

 

 

Daily Dose of Dr. Odd: a Portrait of the Good Doctor

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post      Part of the Daily Dose from Dr. Odd series

      

Lurking in the pages of the Spetmeber 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics is this little-known portrait of Dr. Odd, who was simply displaying his latest gizmo: a battery-powered set of specs with lightbulbs on the rims to be used for reading in dim light. 

Prison Labor and the Price of Kegs of Lard, 1875-1885

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

 

The title of this quick post seems both irresistibly attractive and horribly repelling in an oh-g_d-is-this-what-we're-down-to dissertation for a moderately-good university.  But really all this post is is a title--I stumbled upon this table looking for emigration figures to illustrate a dot-matrix map from the United States Industrial Commission (printed in 1900), volume 3, which concentrated on the statics and sociology of prison labor.  So what this table shows is the effect of prisoners' labor on the price of pork and pork fat in the Chicago market for a ten year period at the end of the 19th century, and what we see is that the "free" labor in prison in this area produced cheaper prices in the fat market.  There you have it. [Source: Internet Archive, here.]

Movable Maginot: a Feast of Morbidly Techno-Gigantism

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post 959, extended.     Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

 

Nothing quite exceeds like excess said Mr. Wilde (and others) , and he/they could be no more correct when looking at this picture of a Movable Maginot Line—it is a mobile fort, complete with plane launching capacity, two dozen long canons, a crane, and a host of other stuff.  

 

 

It looks as though it has ample room for all sorts of materiel though leaving little room for, perhaps, an engine.  I just can’t see where it might be…perhaps it is near the not-room-enough-for-it-either ammunition compartment.  Maybe they were in a smaller armed cart being pulled by the mothership?  I reckon that this beast was 66 feet high, 100 feet long and 60 feet wide, which is a very big, heavy near-cube. Good luck with driving the thing in anything that was less than perfect conditions.  A big profile like this, filled with guns and canons or not, also makes for a big target profile—a tall, broad target with flat/non-inclined sides. ( I should also point out that there are two 10’ loudspeakers mounted on the front of the fort to instill fear in the people that the thing was approaching with loud noise.  The author points out that the Nazis used noise against the French with their “screaming dive bombers”, and so the fort would use the same tactics against the Nazis in the moveable fort—not that the sound of the engines and the attendant noise wouldn’t’ve been enough of a fear factor in themselves…)

But the image of such a monster, sensical or not, was enough for the purposes of the pamphlet in which it appeared.  The Brains to Win was a piece of British spirit/hope propaganda issued at about the time of the Battle of Britain in 1940, and it listed the sorts of technological breakthroughs that were going to push the nation over the top to victory.  Some of the stuff was real, some not—like the moving fort/Howl’s Castle above, and the floating fort, below.

 

 

I’m not sure where a floating fort would make sense, especially one of that size. (Iterating the figures on deck into distance, it looks as though the deck on the floating platform was 150 or 200’ square.  It would’ve looked like a big target from above.) Given the time and expense and material  needed for such a thing, it seems that it would’ve been cheaper to make a moveable fortress not quite so big, with less of a profile, and more mobile—I think that this was called a “destroyer” or “battleship”.  

But no matter, I’m just poking fun at some of the future vision that became archaic the moment it was drawn, punk retro-future.  All the pamphlet was trying to point out in its 32 pages was that overall the Brits were smarter than the Germans and that would be the balance for victory in the war.  “Hitler will get some very unpleasant surprises before this is over” the author very politely pointed out, no doubt with one eyebrow raised.  The scientists agreed.

And they were right, which is all that matters.

 

Standing on Your Stagnant Nerve-Juice Nostril Tube? The Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

JF Ptak Science Books     Daily Dose from Dr. Odd  

This cure-all from G. Anston looks simple, but the hydraulics of his nerve juice pumper is actually a little involved, or more involved than it needed to be given the fact that the machine didn't actually do anything productive.  That said, Anston was  setting out to "move fluids" and cause all manner of cure-alls for "air stagnation" in the body, without the trouble of losing any time except for sticking those tubes into your nostrils.  I do not know why the artist has the subject standing on  #44 (the nerve-waste elimination tube) which was basically the tail-pipe of the cure-waste that was supposed to be flushed from a window.  It seems as though stopping the exit of the stagnated brain-air and nerve-fluid effluvia might've made the subject's head pop off a little, which would be problematical. 

 

[Source:  Google Patents, here.]

More Outhouse Book Reviews: British Privy Statement

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post   [Part of the Daily Dose from Dr. Odd series]

 

Just two days ago there appeared in this blog a bit on an image I had never seen before--dogs acting as biological book reviewers, doing with books one of the things dogs do best. And then, this, ("Kudgello collecting materials to improve our morals") printed around 1766 and another scatological review of books, this based on morals and highly scented books of a sexual nature, all seemingly removed with fire tongs from the wastebucket of an outdoor privy.

{Source: the Library of Congress]  

The books on the floor, the rescued books, include Dialogue ... Married Lady ... A Maid, Aretine (Mansfield, William Murray, Earl of, 1705-1793), Sodom, a play, and Memoirs of a woman of pleasure (Cleland, John, 1709-1789)

The verse at bottom includes: "Thou Grub street author, fit for Bawds to quote / If Bawds themselves with Honor safe may do't / Disgrace to libels! Foil to very shame / Whom 'tis a Scandal to vouchsafe to name." Also: "M. Midnight * her mark ; Publish'd as the Act directs, Price 6d."

Of course the principal interest here is what the semi-smug Kudgello is hoisting from the pit, Essay on Woman, which was written by Thomas Potter in about 1755 with the assistance of John Wilkes This was a take-off of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, though without the intelligence, art, insight or writing ability. I've included this image in the blog because it is so unexpected--and that it comes fast on the heals of a similarly-unexpected scatological book review found only 48 hours earlier.

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: Clock Made Entirely of Straw, 1916

JF Ptak Science Books   Daily Dose of Dr. Odd 

 

Extraordinary! 

[Source: Popular Science, 1916, here.]

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: The Geo-Cube Durer Plastic Man of 1942

JF Ptak Science Books     Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

This puts me in mind of the work of Albrecht Durer's (1471-1528) revolutionary drawing of a geometrical man, compartmentalizing the body into distinct chunks--these and other woodcuts appeared in his Symmetria partium…humanorum corporum and must have been an amazing, startling site for the new reader to such things in 1537.

. 

To me this looks like visionary thinking in trying to understand the motions of living beings with no actual way of capturing the image in motion.  There's also Erhard Schoen who published Unnderweissung der proportzion unnd stellung der possen, liegent und stehent...,which showed that the human form was reducible to connected but discrete Euclidean solids. This must've been an intriguing concept in the 16th century, this associate of form and function and the geometry of substance, all wrapped around the still-developing European re-discovery of perspective.  (A post on this subject appeared earlier in this blog here.)

I really just like the red background of the Plastic Durer Man.

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: Apple Maps of Eating, from the Little to the BIG Eat

JF Ptak Science Books    Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

I've made a post here before on the location of the Garden of Eating, um, "Eden", here, which I guess might be the ultimate of all Apple Maps, The Big Eat; but I've found these two (below) that are entertaining and probably not interetsing though they are without the overwhelming consequences of the first map. They're just about apples, and not what apples might represent (which I think was an unwieldy way for a Creator of the Universe to test the future of humankind with).

[Source:  "Choice Variety of Apples", in American Agriculturist, New York, 1848, vol VII/no. III, page 79.]

And of course the route of Small Things Internally Eating Apples:

[Source: Maps Incohate, here.]

[Source:private collection, Tabula Paradisi Terrestris justa Systema Auctoris incisa a P. Stark-Man was printed late in the 18th century, probably around 1775, and locates the GOE far in the north country, near the Dead Sea, deep in old Armenia, near Mount Ararat (where Noe and his family were supposed to have landed after the creator flooded the world killing everything, where everything else, young and old, infant younger, men women children, beasts and ants, were killed by a wrathful OT maker.).]

Baking the Big Bang--Guns in the Oven, 1943

JF PTak Science Books     Daily Dose of Dr. Odd

Having made a casual stroll through LIFE magazine during the War Years  (1939-1945) it seems to me as a general observation that there wasn't that much attention paid to covering the war until 1942.  Then there was gradual coverage from January '42 to the summer of 1942, when things really started to pick up for American involvement--of course there was the Japanese invasion of China earlier than that in the Sino-Japanese War of 1935-1945, and most of the rest of Europe and the U.K. had been busy fighting Germany since the autumn of 1939, and then the Soviets were brutally brought into the war following the abrogation of their on-aggression pact with the Nazis in 1940.

The U.S. during those early years was having a very difficult national dialog about how America should deal with the conflict, a conversation that wasn't turned into a great national monologue until 7 December 1941.  Anyway, its my impression that war coverage in the nation's premier picture magazine was fairly skimpy until 1942.  By 1943, it was, in a way, all-war-all-of-the-time in the magazine's pages, and in the ads as well.  Suddenly (over the course of 15 months or something like that), relatively benign products like Ronson lighters sold themselves on their "being able to take it", with squinty-eyed sailors lighting their cigs with the war-tough Ronson; Mrs. Don Ameche was selling Coleman's Mustard with a war flavoring, underwear ads used Hitler's name to sell their product, and so on. (These examples appeared on just two consecutive pages.)  Use of the war in advertising appears in the Brit equivalent of LIFE, the Illustrated London News, but less so; in Germany, the Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig), the most popular popular-illustrated-read in that country, also featured war-based ads, but far less frequently. (Also the war coverage in that journal wasn't nearly as frequent as in th eother two; and from my experience, as sanitized as the other two mags were, there was never any bad military news in the Illus Zeitung that I could see. Maybe ever.  Certainly Hitler wasn't taking about it, even when he was sacrificing entire armies to the Soviets and Mother Winter.)

So.  What does this mean?  I don't know, not really. If the company was doing something for the war effort, and they advertised in LIFE, then the readers of that mag were going to know about it.  On the other hand, if the company produced underwear and seemed to really have nothing to do with the conduct of the war, they were wrapping their product up in a kill-Hitler ribbon  as well.  Was this "bad"?  Das machts nichts.  It is interesting, though, but I really don't know how it is interesting beyond knowing that it is. 

Caveat: even though I've breezed through all of these magazines for the war years out in the warehouse, doing that rather than Doing Something Else, my grazing was not exactly an experimental undertaking. My observations are just general observations that seeped into me from a six-foot pile of war mags.)

 

Daily Dose from Dr. Odd: Hermits, Putridity & Long Life Spans in "The Bible", 1826.

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[Les Ages de l'homme (The Ages of Man)  by D de Vosthem, late 16th century, source here.]

Increasing nothingness and putridness can possible lead to longer life spans, at least this is an hypothesis posed by John Blake in his Geographical Atlas..., published in New York in 1826:

" Rare examples however of extreme longevity of a life of more than 150 years seem to he common to all countries without distinction. If England the salubrity of which is so highly extolled has furnished thrice or four examples of men arriving at the age of from 150 to 169 years. Hungary which generally speaking is not a very healthy country has scen the celebrated Pierre Czartou prolong his life to the 185th year and John Uovin at the age of 172 had a wife of 164 and a younger son of 117. It is in the Bannat of Temeswar a very marshy district and subject to the putrid fever that these examples of longevity and many others have been observed A mode of life which is soher and unruffled by tumultuous passions singularly contributes to longevity..."

"According to the author of a very curious little work called the Apology for Youth* 152 hermits taken in all ages and under every climate produce a sum total of 11,589 years of life and consequently an average of 70 years and a little mare than thrice months for each whereas the same number of Academicians the one half belonging to the Academy of Sciences and the other to that of Belles Lettres gives only 10,511 years of life consequently 69 years and a little more than two months for the mortal career of each. It is therefore not improbable that in the ages of patriarchal innocence the period of 150 or even 200 years was much more commonly attained than it is in our times..."

Notes: