Kevin's Watch

Don't know enough about it. Only that it's meant to circumvent the binary nature of computing by allowing "switches" to have more than 1 concurrent state. Instead of being either "off" or "on" they can be both at once or neither.

--A

I once read a popular science book by a world renowned physicist (Paul Davies IIRC) who said that every time you turn on your TV you confirm the quantum theory since the the development of the transistor (?) was based on a practical application of how the world would work if the theory is correct. This would be a further step along this road where successful development loops back and in turn gives us a higher insight into the results of earlier research.

I know its not a view held by most of you who have posted in this thread but I tend to consider an "event" to be singular, real time, cause and effect moment not something that took a century to unfold.

If this notion was adhered to with this thread then many of these examples would be eliminated.

For example: The development of the printing press is noteworthy but it didn't suddenly happen in a day. A singular natural or man made disaster event would be more in line with my thinking and could be traced down to a simple cause.

The Vredefort crater in South Africa was an meteor impact 2 billion years ago 185 miles across. This is an example of a world altering event in my eyes as opposed to the slow development of democracy.

Though the United States would have eventually been drawn into World War II the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor was a dramatic, singular moment that definitely changed the course of history.
As was the American Navy's victory at Midway.
Hurricane Irma just changed history to some extent. A 400 mile wide storm assaulting the entire Florida peninsula at once is an event. Glad I survived it.

Just my two cents.
Don't mind me, I like to pick nits.

Pick them nits to your heart's content Tom! Glad you survived Irma too, and massive commiserations to those whose lives will have been devastated by this momentous natural disaster. The scale of the required relief effort and rebuilding must be almost inconceivable.

Fair enough point I suppose, about singular events as it were.

Of course, that does rather limit it.

Pearl Harbour may have been a singular event, but a lot of stuff built up to it...

--A

peter wrote:Pick them nits to your heart's content Tom! Glad you survived Irma too, and massive commiserations to those whose lives will have been devastated by this momentous natural disaster. The scale of the required relief effort and rebuilding must be almost inconceivable.

Thanks, Peter. It was quite harrowing at times as we rode out the storm in our house just east of Tampa and just west of the eye of the storm which passed through our area near Lakeland. The recovery is enormous undertaking but there is an equally enormous number of people working 24 hours a day to get everything back to normal. I can't thank them enough.

Avatar wrote:Fair enough point I suppose, about singular events as it were.

Of course, that does rather limit it.

Pearl Harbour may have been a singular event, but a lot of stuff built up to it...

--A

What's true about most world changing events is that they all seem to have one critical moment that seems to be a kind of nexus point that marks the beginning of the ripples of change. As you say in the case of the Pearl Harbor attack there were many conditions and actions that led up to the event but the event itself and the way it was enacted created a very specific outcome. How would things have played out if the Japanese attacked a battle ready U.S. Fleet in the open ocean? Public opinion would have certainly been different, possibly giving Charles Lindbergh's America First organization the support they wanted to keep America out of the European war to some extent, causing an imbalance of power leading to the invasion of mainland Britain and possibly a German victory. After Pearl Harbor citizens were enraged and the non-interventionist movement lost traction.

2 p.m., 8 Dec, 1991,Viskuli, Russia. The signing of the Belavezha Accords.

We the Republics of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, as founding states of the USSR that signed the union treaty of 1922, hereby establish that the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality ceases it's existence

How's that?

Good one.

--A

peter wrote:2 p.m., 8 Dec, 1991,Viskuli, Russia. The signing of the Belavezha Accords.

We the Republics of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, as founding states of the USSR that signed the union treaty of 1922, hereby establish that the USSR as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality ceases it's existence

How's that?

Heh. Great example. That's what I am talking about.