Gerald Berg

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Gerald Berg has posted 397 annotations/comments since 4 March 2013.

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About Tuesday 8 December 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

I agree Thamus. Stress is the given. How one relieves it is the variable. Apparently, bad theatre doesn't work for SP!

About Friday 20 November 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Recall on April 1st just before Liz and Deb were to go to the country Sam molests Deb for the first time. He thereby ensures instability in both L&D's relationship to each other and Liz herself as householder. This is not about Sam's 'love' for Liz (or her 'anger' issues), this is about manipulation of one person by another to ensure they are seen to be unstable by all. Classic gaslighting.

About Thursday 19 November 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

I have to take exception the Phoenix's comment. Liz is a woman who knows what she deserves and it is more than what Sam is giving her. She is a fighter and she is fierce. Maybe that requires some to think she is undeserving for being so, I certainly do not!

About Monday 2 November 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

"trepanned several English ships" Core sampling to find where the wood comes from, as SC pointed out yesterday and TF today?

About Sunday 1 November 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Not to forget the Windmill sawmill:

We've seen how being able to effectively split wood was important to earlier societies that aimed to build ships. Both riving and pit-sawing were effective ways to turn logs into the needed boards, but they were also highly time-consuming and laborious. For a country to win the naval race, they'd need a radical new production technology, something that would blow the competition away.

"Blow" is the right word, as it turns out. In 1594, an ingenious Dutchman invented something amazing: A wind-powered sawmill. Cornelis Corneliszoon, who described himself as "a poor farmer with wife and children" figured out that he could harness the power of the wind and attach it to a whipsaw to make it go up and down. He then added another gear to the crankshaft that would advance the material by means of what looks to be a rack and pinion. Here is the drawing from the patent granted to Corneliszoon in 1597:

The result of Corneliszoon's invention was much faster sawing, without the calorie-burning. Men were still needed to maintain the machine's operation, of course, but the merits of the design were so obvious that others immediately began copying it (leading Corneliszoon to finally apply for a patent three years later).

The importance of the the wind-powered sawmill taking off in the Netherlands cannot be understated. Wood production didn't double, triple or quadruple; it grew by a factor of thirty, or 3,000%. It was all in the time savings: Using the pit-saw method, sawyers could process 60 logs over a span of 120 days. Using a wind-powered sawmill, they could break down 60 logs in four or five days. What used to take four months now took less than a week.

About Sunday 11 October 1668

Gerald Berg  •  Link

Ahh, that last sentence combining his classic immediacy with tumbling confusion. "All alone" he says, with his wife but maybe he meant all alone with Hewer? Anyways, not alone. And then, has a merry time with a dead man's family? No wait, he meant Mr. Turner et al. Awkwardly constructed but allows us to see him in his coach of experience. Creates an excitement, a sort of breathlessness.