There is a phenomenon that is known as "The Resource Curse" or, "The Paradox Of Plenty" There is an article about it on http://www.wikipedia.org/ . This refers to the likelihood that average people in a country that is rich in natural resources are actually worse off than those in a country without such resources.
The reason for this contradiction is human nature. Riches breed corruption and there will likely be people who seek to get the wealth from the natural resources for themselves. Such riches also mean that they may be used by an unpopular government to try to keep itself in power. If a country can get by on income from resources, it may negelect proper development of education and industry.
Today, I would like to ad a similar paradox that I have observed. This paradox involves the language that is spoken in a country. At first glance, it would seem that any country would be better off if it used a language that was widely spoken in the outside world. But surprisingly, this is often not the case.
My economic philosophy is that there is no real substitute for actually making things, in other words manufacturing. But this is also a difficult economic route. It is easier to build an economy based on trade or finance. However, this is never as stable as an economy based primarily on manufacturing. For details, you can review "The Production Tier" on the world and economics blog, http://www.markmeekeconomics.blogspot.com/ .
Let's consider the English language. It would seem to be a tremendous advantage for a country to speak English so as to make it easier to trade with other countries. But that is the problem, it makes it too easy.
Britain, the land where the Industrial Revolution began, now has an economy based more on finance than anything. This is made possible by it having spread it's language across the globe.
If there was one thing that I could change about the economy of my native Britain, it would be that it would go back to manufacturing.
An economy based on moving paper and electrons around can never be as stable as one that actually makes things that are needed and will sell. There is still a significant level of manufacturing in English-speaking North America, but that is mainly because of distance to other manufacturing sources overseas.
India speaks English and that has made it possible for the country to become the knowledge center for the world that it is now. Everything from computer programming to tech support to customer service can be done over the wires from India at much more economical prices. Legions of English-speaking doctors are making India also a center for medical treatment for western countries. It is less expensive to fly to India to have an operation than to have it at home.
China has no such advantage. Relatively few people speak one of the major dialects of Chinese, who are not Chinese. This left the country little choice except to turn to manufacturing, and it has ended up better off than it would have been otherwise. The same pattern applies to Japan.
Basically, developed countries which do not speak a widespread language are forced to turn to manufacturing because the language barrier makes it more difficult to build an economy based on trade or finance. This is the more difficult route, but the country usually ends up better off in the long-term. Probably the four best examples of this are Germany, China, Japan and, South Korea.
A national economy based on natural resources is vulnerable to commodity price swings. Tourism is an excellent source of income, except that it is so fickle. Greece has one of the most difficult of languages, and might have been in this category also. But it also has an abundance of sun and history that was relied upon as a source of income. The European countries that are in the most economic trouble now are the ones that were most dependent on tourism. The Netherlands would also seem a candidate for the language-manufacturing economic route, and this has become true to a great extent, but the Dutch early became skilled in global trade as well.
This blog is about my economic theory as well as about history and general global issues. The better we understand how this world operates, the more easily we can make it a better place for all of us.
Monday, November 26, 2012
The Inverse Geographic Prosperity Principle
When looking at a map of North America, we can actually get a good estimate of the prosperity of large cities simply by evaluating the size of the city and the geographic reasoning behind it's location.
As the continent was being settled, it was fairly predictible where cities would form. The site of New York City is not only a very good location for a harbor (harbour), but also has a plentiful supply of fresh water from the Hudson River. Cape Cod forms an ideal natural harbour (harbor), and it is perfectly logical that a city like Boston would grow up there. If we sail up the St. Lawrence River until we encounter the obstacle of the Lachine Rapids, we find an easily defensible island with a hill in the river and it should come as no surprise that it formed a natural site for Montreal.
When pioneers settled the west, they could go no further than the Pacific Ocean and a city would form where they stopped that is today called Los Angeles. Further north, along the same coast, there was an ideal harbor (harbour) and another city grew there, San Francisco. A similar scenario applies further north, with Seattle, Vancouver and, Victoria. Those pioneers would be delayed as they crossed the plains and encountered the Rocky Mountains, and there we have Denver.
Settlers would also go as far south into Florida that they could go, and there we find Miami. A lake forms an ideal waterway, and since Lake Michigan extends far into America's agricultural heartland we might expect to find a city like Chicago at it's end. Lake Erie was another natural waterway, and Buffalo and Toledo grew at it's opposite ends. In a similar way, we find Hamilton at the western end of Lake Ontario.
Inland, we would expect to see cities roughly evenly-spaced across the hinterland, such as Columbus and Indianapolis, and a series of cities along a river like the Mississippi. Where America's largest river meets the sea, we would logically find a city, and there we have New Orleans. Where two rivers meet, we might expect to find a city like Pittsburgh.
However, I notice that prosperity is another factor. The Inverse Geographic Prosperity Principle is that when the size of a large city exceeds the geographic logic of it's location, the difference can be explained by the prosperity of the city.
The city that first made me think of this is Toronto. The geographic reasoning is simply not there for such a large city to be located where it is. The Toronto Islands, just off the shore in Lake Ontario, form a harbour (harbor), but the city's basic industry is banking and the harbor (harbour) is much less significant than that of Hamilton, to the west. So, the only possible explanation for such a big city to be located on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, without the geographic foundation of the continent's other big cities, is that Toronto is a very prosperous place. Prosperity brings growth as well as does geographical logic.
Atlanta is another city that has grown out of proportion to the geographic logic for it's existence. Atlanta, which is not on the coast, makes sense as a hub city in the hinterland, sorrounded by smaller cities, towns and, farms, but it has clearly grown well beyond what we would expect such a hinterland city to be and this can only be explained by prosperity.
What about deserts? For a city to grow in the desert, it must be prosperous. There cannot be a big and poor city in the middle of the desert. The only thing that can bring about a city, where geography would seem to dictate that there really shouldn't be a city, is prosperity.
Thus, we can say that the population of a city, at least in North America or other freely settled domains, is equal to the geographic logic for it's existence plus it's prosperity.
As the continent was being settled, it was fairly predictible where cities would form. The site of New York City is not only a very good location for a harbor (harbour), but also has a plentiful supply of fresh water from the Hudson River. Cape Cod forms an ideal natural harbour (harbor), and it is perfectly logical that a city like Boston would grow up there. If we sail up the St. Lawrence River until we encounter the obstacle of the Lachine Rapids, we find an easily defensible island with a hill in the river and it should come as no surprise that it formed a natural site for Montreal.
When pioneers settled the west, they could go no further than the Pacific Ocean and a city would form where they stopped that is today called Los Angeles. Further north, along the same coast, there was an ideal harbor (harbour) and another city grew there, San Francisco. A similar scenario applies further north, with Seattle, Vancouver and, Victoria. Those pioneers would be delayed as they crossed the plains and encountered the Rocky Mountains, and there we have Denver.
Settlers would also go as far south into Florida that they could go, and there we find Miami. A lake forms an ideal waterway, and since Lake Michigan extends far into America's agricultural heartland we might expect to find a city like Chicago at it's end. Lake Erie was another natural waterway, and Buffalo and Toledo grew at it's opposite ends. In a similar way, we find Hamilton at the western end of Lake Ontario.
Inland, we would expect to see cities roughly evenly-spaced across the hinterland, such as Columbus and Indianapolis, and a series of cities along a river like the Mississippi. Where America's largest river meets the sea, we would logically find a city, and there we have New Orleans. Where two rivers meet, we might expect to find a city like Pittsburgh.
However, I notice that prosperity is another factor. The Inverse Geographic Prosperity Principle is that when the size of a large city exceeds the geographic logic of it's location, the difference can be explained by the prosperity of the city.
The city that first made me think of this is Toronto. The geographic reasoning is simply not there for such a large city to be located where it is. The Toronto Islands, just off the shore in Lake Ontario, form a harbour (harbor), but the city's basic industry is banking and the harbor (harbour) is much less significant than that of Hamilton, to the west. So, the only possible explanation for such a big city to be located on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, without the geographic foundation of the continent's other big cities, is that Toronto is a very prosperous place. Prosperity brings growth as well as does geographical logic.
Atlanta is another city that has grown out of proportion to the geographic logic for it's existence. Atlanta, which is not on the coast, makes sense as a hub city in the hinterland, sorrounded by smaller cities, towns and, farms, but it has clearly grown well beyond what we would expect such a hinterland city to be and this can only be explained by prosperity.
What about deserts? For a city to grow in the desert, it must be prosperous. There cannot be a big and poor city in the middle of the desert. The only thing that can bring about a city, where geography would seem to dictate that there really shouldn't be a city, is prosperity.
Thus, we can say that the population of a city, at least in North America or other freely settled domains, is equal to the geographic logic for it's existence plus it's prosperity.
The Logic Of America's State Lines
Here is a map link: www.maps.google.com .
The country is divided into fifty states for ease of administration. Logic tells us that each such unit would encompass one large city, with the sorrounding smaller cities, towns and, hinterland. Georgia appears as such a state, revolving around Atlanta. Indiana is another, centered around Indianapolis.
But so many state lines seem to be purposely illogical. If a state is too efficient of a geographical and economic unit, it's people might one day get the feeling that they would be better off as an independent country. There are several U.S. states that could possibly be viable small countries, or in fact were once independent countries, such as Florida, Texas, California and, Hawaii. But these are all outside the northeastern part of the country.
The nation's largest city is New York City. It is nowhere near the center of it's home state, as are Atlanta and Indianapolis. It is down in the far southeastern corner of New York State. Not only that, but it's metropolitan area extends well into two other states, New Jersey and Connecticut. If this seems utterly illogical, consider how effectively this arrangement would have discouraged separatism in any of these states.
New Jersey is a very urban state. But much of it's urban areas are extensions of two cities in other states, New York in the northeast and Philadelphia in the southwest. Once again, this would make separatism very difficult to achieve.
All of the New England states; Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and, Connecticut, are simply to small to be independent countries and would at least have to join with one another to form a separate country. The same applies to Delaware, which calls itself "The First State".
America's major experience with separatism was, of course, the Civil War of 1861-65. Looking at a map, we see that this war could just as easily been called "The Appalachian War". The natural barrier formed by the mountains and ridges of the Appalachians must have been a prominent factor in leading the Confederate states, starting with South Carolina, to secede from the union. The significance of the Appalachians as a barrier in bringing about the separation can be seen in the case of West Virginia. After the State of Virgina had joined the Confederate cause, West Virginia split from the rest of Virginia, along the line of the Appalachians, because it's people wanted to remain in the union.
The influence of the Appalachians on the war can also be seen in the direction of the initial offensive of the Confederacy. Although the Confederacy extended well west of the Appalachians, to include Texas, it's military priority was to advance northward into Pennsylvania towards Gettysburg. The obvious reason was to liberate all of the territory south and east of the Appalachians to form the new country.
I believe that America's early planners had tried to reckon with the possibility that the Appalachians could possibly bring about separatist feelings on it's opposite sides. Virginia was a large, and seemingly unwieldy, state that spanned the Appalachians before West Virginia broke away.
What about Pennsylvania? It spans the Appalachians both from north to south, and from east to west. There is a mountainous barrier between the cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that must have been difficult to cross in the early days of the country. But this was intended to help neutralize the Appalachians as a natural barrier in possibly bringing about separatism.
New York State is apparently one of the most illogical geopolitical entities in existence. But that is the whole point. The Adirondack Mountains and the wide Hudson Valley, which could definitely lead the people on opposite sides to feel as if maybe they should be separate countries, are both neutralized as such barriers by being contained within one state.
This pattern is not to be seen in western states. As the country expanded westward, it clearly gained confidence that such deterrence of separatism was no longer necessary. A landlocked state is much less viable as an independent country. Even so we see that the great barrier of the west, the Rocky Mountains, are not permitted to serve as a barrier between states. Colorado, for example, spans the Rockies in a way similar to that of the Appalachians in Pennsylvania.
The boundaries between Canadian provinces do not seem to incorporate any deterrence to separatism at all. If Quebec was in America, it would surely have been gerrymandered into making separatism very unlikely.
A Celebration Of My Native England
If any language could be described as the language of the world, it would certainly be English. It has the broad span that enables it to readily adopt new words, as described in the posting "The Story Of The English Language".
HSBC is the world's second-largest bank and second-largest public company in the world. Almost certainly, more money flows through London's financial district than anywhere else in the world. The last I saw, the British pound was worth more than any other currency in the world (although that is not entirely a good thing).
William Shakespeare is considered to have been the greatest writer ever, in any language, and his themes can be found all over modern television.
The Titanic is the most famous ship in history, even if it is for the wrong reason.
The BBC is easily the world's number one news service, partly because it is offered in so many languages.
Norman Baden Powell started the International Boy Scouts.
The only comet that most people can think of by name is Halley's Comet, discovered by Sir Edmund Halley.
In 1808, John Dalton published "A New System Of Chemical Philosophy". This was the start of modern chemistry, without which the world as we know it would be impossible.
In 1825, Michael Faraday discovered benzene, which is the vital starting point for much of organic chemistry.
Hydrogen is the most prominent element in the universe, and was found by Henry Cavendish. The oxygen that we need to live was found by Joseph Priestley. Nitrogen was found by Daniel Rutherford.
Matches were invented by chemist John Walker.
When it comes to atoms, England really shines. Electrons were discovered by J.J. Thomson and neutrons by James Chadwick. Henry Moseley introduced the idea of atomic numbers. Ernest Rutherford discovered protons and the concept of radioactive half-life. (Rutherford was born in New Zealand but his parents were British, and he later became British).
Louis Essen invented the atomic clock.
Francis Crick, along with American James Watson, was the first to work out the molecular structure of DNA.
Galileo was the first to use a telescope to look at celestial bodies. But it suffered from chromatic aberration until John Dollond invented the achromatic lens. A telescope based on lenses is limited in size because the lens can only be supported by it's edges. Sir Isaac Newton got the idea of replacing the lens with a concave mirror, and today all of the largest optical telescopes in the world are based on mirrors.
It was Sir Isaac Newton who founded modern physics with his laws of motion and development of calculus. He was the first to define gravity and began our understanding of light by breaking it down into it's component colours (colors) with a prism.
Henry Fox Talbot did as much as anyone to get photography started.
William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet and the electric motor, without which the modern world would be unimaginable. Neither would the modern world be imaginable without Charles Parson's steam turbine.
There has rarely been a scientist like Michael Faraday, all modern electrical theory and equipment began with him.
From my native Gloucestershire came Charles Wheatstone who, with William Cooke, was the inventor of the telegraph. This was the first step in modern communications.
Modern electronics began with vacuum tubes. These were invented by John Ambrose Fleming and include the cathode ray tubes that were used in televisions and computers until recently.
The U.S. recognizes Thomas Edison as the inventor of the light bulb, but Britain credits it's own Joseph Swan.
Radar came about because of the work of Sir Edward Appleton. Sir Frank Whittle invented the jet engine. Christopher Cockerell invented the hovercraft. The first practical vertical take off and landing plane was the Harrier. The only successful supersonic passenger transport is the Concorde, and the plane that got modern jet passenger aviation started was the Dehavilland Comet. It was actually Frederick Lanchester who developed the airfoil theory that makes flight possible.
John Harrison developed the marine chronometer. This was a very accurate clock which could be used at sea because it was not based on a pendulum. A pendulum was considered as unreliable at sea because it's timing might be affected by the pitching and rolling of the ship in rough water. This brought about our modern system of latitude and longitude. It was easy enough to take a reading of latitude, just measure the angular altitude of the north star over a flat horizon. Longitude was much more difficult. But this clock could be set to Greenwich Mean Time and carried on the ship. Local solar time could be measured with a sundial, and the difference between the two revealed the longitude of the ship.
William Oughtred invented the slide rule, around which all of modern engineering depended until electronic calculators came along.
Charles Babbage is considered as the "father of the computer", with his mechanical computers. George Boole developed the Boolean Algebra, upon which computer science is based. Alan Turing was the first to introduce a programmable calculator. Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, without which you would not be reading this.
The Industrial Revolution was certainly the beginning of the modern world, it began in Manchester. Thomas Newcomen's development of the steam engine got it underway.
Henry Bessemer developed a way of mass-producing steel, without which the modern world would be unimaginable. Harry Brearley later introduced stainless steel.
Josiah Wedgwood revolutionized the mass production of pottery.
Can you imagine the world without trains? The brothers George and Robert Stephenson and Richard Trevithick got railroads started. Maglev trains were invented by Eric Laithwaite. The world's first metal bridge was the "Iron Bridge" across the Severn River, which downstream passes the area where I was born. London had the first modern subway system, and arguably the greatest feat of engineering is the Chunnel.
Oliver Joseph Lodge invented spark plugs, and also did a lot to contribute to the development of radio. The battle tank, around which modern land warfare revolves, was first used by Britain. John Starley produced the world's first commercially successful bicycle.
The modern idea of freedom began with the Magna Charta and the political concept of right and left began when members of the British Parliament would sit to either the right or the left of the aisle, depending on their political views.
Edwin Budding, from my native Gloucestershire, invented the lawnmower.
Also in Gloucestershire was a country doctor named Edward Jenner, who happened to notice that people who worked around cows never seemed to get smallpox. This observation was the beginning of vaccines and the modern science of immunology. Today, there is a statue of Dr. Jenner in Gloucester Cathedral.
Joseph Lister developed antiseptics, which must have saved hundreds of millions of lives. Modern supermarkets would not be possible without the use of "tin cans", soft steel coated with tin, to hold food. They were invented by Peter Durand.
The next time you put on your clothes remember James Hargreaves, inventor of the spinning jenny, John Kay, inventor of the flying shuttle and, William Henry Perkin, inventor of the first synthetic dye.
Luke Howard identified the three basic types of cloud in the sky.
I feel that this heritage is something that I have to live up to.
The Complexity Theory Of Production And Economics
The pre-industrial economic systems, from traditional markets to feudalism, were simple in comparison to the economic systems of today. Yet, there were advantages to the economics of those days. There were shortages then, but the shortages tended to be real shortages caused by factors such as war and drought. In the economy of today, there are not only real shortages but also artificial shortages caused by glitches in the more-complex economics.
When the Industrial Revolution came along, and humans acquired the ability to manufacture and mass-produce goods, the economics had to change. The new economic reality was actually much more difficult to handle. The truth is that, to this day, the economics have never really caught up with our ability to mass-produce goods. The most difficult aspect of industrialization and mass production is settling on the economics necessary to handle it.
My theory here is that the economy to handle mass production must be considered as part of the manufacturing process. The trouble is losing sight of, or not being fully aware of, the complex big-picture economics that industrialization has made necessary. The incredible truth is that, several centuries after the Industrial Revolution, economics still has not reached a new equilibrium.
Mass production means that most of what is produced cannot be sold locally, and so must be sold "over the horizon". The result is all of the controversy and competition between different economic systems, such as Capitalism, Socialism and, Communism. All of this is the result of industrialization and the ongoing effort to find the best economic system to manage it.
The most obvious peril that came with industrialization is the pollution and environmental degradation. But it also vastly increased the potential for wealth disparity. As material and technical progress increased, we eventually got to the point where we can change the world faster than we can adapt to the changes that we have made in the world, a facet of what I have termed "The Commoner Syndrome".
But one of the most important perils of industrial era economics is the addition of artificial shortages because the economics is not working well. Artificial shortages are those that do not really need to happen, except for the inefficiency of the economics. The classic example is a family struggling to keep and old car going, when they really need a new one. Meanwhile, the new car dealership down the road is letting go of the staff because few people can afford to buy new cars.
The best that we can do with the complex new economics is to find a comfortable balance between the conflicting forces. Capitalism suffers from that precarious balance between production and consumption that crashes or goes into recession on a regular basis, while Communism does not provide enough incentive and has issues with corruption. Many who have lived in Communist countries can say that the way to be sure of getting what you need is to be related to the one of the local party officials.
Capitalism provides incentive, but at the same time allows those with the advantages to set the system up to suit themselves. If workers are paid too much money, it gets inflation started, if they are not paid enough it brings about cutbacks in production and gets a recessionary spiral started.
There is an unfortunate tendency for people to believe that either the buyer or the seller in an economic transaction is somehow more important than the other. The economic right could be called the seller or "supply-side" believers, while the left is the "demand side". One thing that seems certain, at this point, is that economic extremes do not work and a mature economy is one that I define as having gone through a reaction in both directions, left and right, so that it positions near the center.
The thing that must be realized when considering post-industrial economic systems is that the workers must ultimately be able to buy the goods that they are working to produce. In a Capitalist economy, if workers are not being paid enough, a cutback in overall production will be necessary because some goods will remain unsold. This is because the cutbacks will mean that some workers will be let go, meaning that workers will have even less buying power. This brings about an artificial shortage, because there would not have needed to the any cutback in production except that the economics brought it about. It was not a real shortage caused by war or drought.
As I have explained on a number of occasions, this is what happened in 1929. The techniques of assembly line mass production had been perfected, and a plethora of new products rolled out of factories from cars to radios. But workers were not being paid enough to be able to afford the products that they were producing, and the goods were just piling up in warehouses. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money, and it spiralled into a devastating crash.
Any cutback in production threatens to get such a spiral started in a capitalist economy, such as when the economy grows too fast. In the old pre-industrial economy, if supply increased or demand decreased, goods would still be sold but at a lower price, or a craftsman would switch to making something else. A factory, in contrast, cannot just go to making something else and is slow to react to the market, except by the unfortunate cutbacks in production that can get a destructive spiral started.
On the other hand, an inflationary spiral will get underway in a capitalist economy if workers are being paid too much relative to production. Nothing could be more economically destructive than giving all workers a pay raise, without a corresponding increase in production. Inflation can bring about a recession, which is one of our artificial shortages in the post-industrial economy, because it erodes buying power.
The real trouble is, of course, that in a large-scale post-industrial economy there is not the continuous price adjustment by haggling. The adjustment to an imbalance must come from another direction-the cutbacks in production that get the recessionary spiral started. Yet another economic peril is the large-scale credit that mass production has brought about. When too many people cannot pay back loans, it starts a destructive domino effect as with mortgages in 2008.
The theory of credit is simple enough. If you just go out and buy what you need on credit, the companies that made or grew what you bought will earn more money because of what you spent. The workers in those companies will then have more money to go out and buy what they need so that the workers in the companies that made those goods will then have more money to go out and buy things. Ultimately, it will get back to the company that you work for so that you will end up getting back the money that you spent, and will be able to pay your credit bill.
The trouble is that the glitches of economics get in the way of this otherwise sound credit theory. The trouble with economics ultimately lies with human beings. The wealth structures of various economic systems are vastly different and there are clashing vested interests. Communism works wonders for ants and bees but humans, at least outside of small dedicated groups, find it very difficult to always put forth their best effort unless they will directly benefit from it, as opposed to the economy as a whole.
The Industrial Revolution centered on machines, but that required the supporting economy to also function as well as a machine to get the most efficiency. When building a machine, we can put the parts together and can quickly see whether it works and can readily see ways to improve it. The economics must be part of the mechanism too, it is more nebulous so that it takes much longer to sort out what works the best.
Here then is The Complexity Theory Of Production And Economics: The economy supporting produced goods must be equal in complexity to the processes producing those goods, and is indeed part of the process. This is because the more complex the processes of production, the more it can be varied in order to produce a wide variety of goods. This wider variety of goods then brings about the need for a more complex economy to distribute those goods. But this makes it much more difficult to set up the required economics with the same efficiency as the machines because economics is much less tangible and more prone to conflicting opinions.
British Heritage In Niagara Falls, NY
The name was changed because of the war of 1812, but nearby Amherst, NY was named after a British general and that name did not get changed. General Jeffrey Amherst did not get along with the native Indians in the area. So, he was eventually recalled and replaced with Thomas Gage, who understood the Indians better and for whom Gage Park in Hamilton is named.
During the time of slavery in the U.S., Canada was still British territory and Niagara Falls was where so many crossed into freedom. Slavery was absolutely illegal in British territory. Any worker could leave a job at any time and workers could bargain over such things as wages and working hours. There was education and employment facilities at St. Catharines and Owen Sound, and Harriet Tubman owned a home in St. Catharines during this time.
A British engineer named Thomas Evershed seems to have been the first to suggest using the water power at Niagara to generate electricity. He teamed with a local mill owner named Charles Gaskill, for whom the school on Hyde Park Boulevard is named. Unfortunately, the two were better at coming up with ideas than they were at securing funding for those ideas but this was the beginning of electricity generation at Niagara.
A settlement was started some distance upstream from the falls at what was to be the location of a water intake for the generation of power. The settlement came to be known as Evershed, and can be seen today in the older homes on 56th Street and nearby streets off Buffalo Avenue. There was once a school at Stephenson Avenue and 57th Street called Evershed. As Niagara Falls expanded eastward, and merged with what was then the separate town of LaSalle, Evershed was incorporated in also.
The first man to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel was Bobby Leach, of England, although it is true that a woman preceded him. Charles Stevens was a barber from Bristol, who went over the falls in a barrel but did not survive. Matthew Webb, who had crossed the English Channel, was the first to swim the lower rapids but did not survive the whirlpool. Arthur Midleigh was a visitor from England at Niagara Falls. He was unimpressed when told about the Niagara Daredevils and boasted that he would row a rowboat right across the brink of the falls before going back to England and, well, he never did make it back to England.
I have no interest in such stunts, but I feel that I have met the British tradition of encountering Niagara Falls by making the discoveries in the natural history of the area as descibed in the Niagara natural history blog. Today, Hyde Park in Niagara Falls can be seen as a model of Hyde Park in London, except that there is Gill Creek in place of the Serpentine and the Long Water. The hills adjacent to the Prime Outlet Mall are sculpted in such a way as to make visitors feel that they are on a visit to highland Britain.
Archeological Representation
I have developed the concept that, if a society is abandoned or destroyed, and then investigated by archeologists far in the future, the more technically advanced the society was the more distorted will be it's archeological representation.
The abandoned civilization will be exposed to nature. So it makes sense that the closer to nature it was, the more primitive, the less distorted will be it's archeological representation. The more primitive society will be the more accurately preserved, while the more advanced will have the most distortion.
It is actually prehistoric people that left the most accurate representation of their daily lives. People progressed from living in natural shelters, such as the proverbial cave, to structures made of stone and then to wood. But each is more vulnerable to the ravages of time than the one before it. Writing surfaces progressed from clay tablets to a form of paper called papyrus. But this distorted the archeological representation because clay can last far longer than papyrus.
The same can be said of writing itself. The progression from hieroglyphics to cunieform (use wedge-shaped symbols inscripted with a reed on clay tablets) to alphabets made possible the storing of far more information. But each is more difficult for an archeologist far in the future to piece together than the one before. The most primitive writing is hieroglyphics, the use of picture-like symbols, but that would also be by far the easiest to decipher for anyone who was initially unfamiliar with it.
If our societies were left as they are now and examined by archeologists, say two thousand years from now, how accurately could they piece together our way of life? The first things to be found would be that which is bulky and resistant to the elements. They would find plentiful foundations of buildings, roads, and the hulks of vehicles, trucks, trains, planes and, ships. They would also find machines, tools, coins and, millions of plastic bottles. They would find road and business signs, although few would be at all readable. Coins would be found, but probably no paper money. There would be remains of electrical wires everywhere.
But there would be no trace of any electronic or computerized records. All computer data and programs would be completely lost. Even if some stored computer data could somehow be found, maybe optical storage such as DVDs, the byte coding would be irrecoverable simply because it is so far removed from the way things are done in nature.
So much of modern communications relies on such prearranged codes, including the tones that represent dialed numbers on landline phones and the lines on the screens of cathode ray tubes. This would be forever lost in two thousand years. All writing on paper, movies on reels and music, including vinyl records and magnetic tapes, would be irrecoverably lost. Not only that, but the fact that it is our era that is engaging in large scale archeology of ancient civilizations means that knowledge of those civilizations would be largely lost also, because the sites will not be left for future archeologists.
The City Of Five Towns
Here is a map link: www.maps.google.com
The one of the five towns that would be most familiar to tourists is the one centered around Clifton Hill. To the west of that is another town, centered around Main Street/Portage Road at the intersection of Lundy's Lane. There is a clear division between these two towns in the field with the electric pylons along Ferry Ave.
The town around Clifton Hill was originally named Clifton. The one around Main Street / Portage Road was Drummondville.
To the north of the Clifton Hill area, there is another town centered around Queen Street. This was once the town of Elgin. The division between this town and Clifton Hill is the highway known as Route 420, including Newman Hill and Roberts Street. In the north end of the city is yet another town in the Stamford area, centered around the intersection of Thorold Stone Road and Drummond/Portage Road. This is divided from the Queen Street area by the hydraulic canal and train tracks around where Stanley Avenue meets Thorold Stone Road.
Finally, there is the area in the north of the city along the river centered around Buttrey and Ferguson Streets. This is separated from Queen Street by the train tracks along Bridge Street. It was originally known as Silvertown because of the silver refining industry there.
This reminds me of the painting of a vase that can be looked at as either the vase or the profile of a person, depending on how you look at it. If a group of travel writers were sent to Niagara Falls, who did not know the language and could not read the signs, some might see it as a city and others might see it as five towns.
With regard to urbanization this gives us the idea that, while there are many more people living in cities, not all of them actually moved to the city. Rather, those who did move to the city brought about it's expansion so that it incorporated what were once separate towns. In the majority of the area of Niagara Falls, Canada, we can see how the main streets form neat squares or rectangles with each other. This is because they were once farm roads, until the city spread and incorporated the area and the once separate towns came closer together.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
The Land Of The Frontier
First of all, there is the name itself. I live in an area that has been nowhere near the western frontier for centuries. Yet, not far away there is an avenue called Frontier. There is a phone company, bowling lanes, a school and, a fire department, all named Frontier. In the phone book of our mid-sized city, there is at least a dozen businesses named Frontier.
The days of the western frontier have made a great imprint on American culture, everything from cowboy hats to western movies. Many went west in those days with the hope of "striking it rich" by finding gold. The gold mines are gone now, but Las Vegas has taken their place. Moving out west, or at least spending some time there, is still an American rite of passage.
America is all about the frontier. It is the frontier that gives the country it's sense of purpose. When one frontier closes, America looks for another one to take it's place.
The worst times for America come when it doesn't have a frontier. Before the western frontier was declared closed in 1890, a man who was out of a job could simply head west and start over. There was land for the taking and plenty of work.
The country didn't really adapt well to the closing of the frontier. This would have been an ideal time to join other western countries in implementing a program of social benefits, to be sure that everyone had enough money to live on. The result was the 1929 economic crash. It happened because workers were not being paid enough to be able to buy the products that the factories that they were working for were producing. Factories began cutting back on production, meaning that workers had even less money to buy manufactured products, and it spiralled into a devastating crash.
The same pattern can be seen in warfare. America has always been more comfortable with conventional wars centered around a front line, such as the world wars, as opposed to unconventional wars without a front line, most notably the Vietnam War. The reason is that the front line in a war is actually a frontier, and America is all about frontiers.
America was the world leader in the early development of aircraft. Why? Because the sky was a new frontier, and America is made for frontiers. We were just going upward instead of westward. The same can be said about America's pioneering of skyscrapers.
For the past century, or so, one branch of science that has really revolved around America is astronomy. Much of the modern view of the universe was developed at the Mount Wilson and Palomar astronomical observatories in California, and later at the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii. Should this surprise us, considering that space is a frontier? The latest step has been the Hubble Space telescope.
When people developed the ability to actually send spacecraft and to travel in space, Russia was a very capable space power that put the first satellite and the first human in space. But space is a frontier, and frontiers are America's game. At the time of this writing only Americans have ever been to the moon, not counting unmanned spacecraft.
Is it really a surprise that the internet was developed in America, before spreading to the rest of the world? Remember that cyberspace is a frontier, and frontiers are what America is all about.
The Story Of The English Language
The reason that the English language is suitable to be the global language that it is today is that it has such a wide "span" of words, in comparison with most other languages. This makes it easy for foreign words to be readily adapted into English.
To understand how this came about, we must go far back into history. English is basically a northern European, or Germanic, language. The structure of the language is similar to that of German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish. A close correspondence can be seen between many English words and their counterparts in German, for example. There is I and Ich, water and wasser, house and haus, Friday and Freitag.
But the English language underwent a special event that transformed it by greatly broadening it's span of words and sounds. There are two basic language groups in western Europe, the Germanic languages in the north and the Romance languages around the Mediterranean area. Romance languages include Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan (spoken in the area around Barcelona) and, Romanian. What is now England turned out to be the frontier where the two would meet.
England was originally a part of the Roman Empire. But it is one of the few areas of Roman occupation in Europe that did not end up speaking a Latin-based Romance language. England was later settled by Anglo-Saxons, from what is now Germany, and also Danes and Vikings. This was the beginning of English as a northern European language.
The critical event in shaping the language that we have today was, in my view, the landing of a group of Vikings, known as Normans, in what is now Normandy on the north coast of France. The Normans established a kingdom and adopted the French language. Later they crossed the English Channel, into what is now England, and brought their language with them.
English remained a northern European language in it's structure. But the mixing in of the Normans, and their language, introduced a flood of French words. This would make English almost as much a Romance language as a northern European one. In many cases, new words from French would displace the older Germanic words. As one example, English uses the French "place" instead of a variation of the German "stadt".
You may wonder what real difference this makes, whether we say "place" or "stadt". But it is this influx of new words from a foreign language group that gave English the very wide span that it has today, and this is what gives it the adaptability to be a global language. It readily adapts words from all over the world, just as it once did French words from the Normans.
Most of the new words were changed in pronounciation, or spelling, or both. The French language itself had earlier undergone a similar process. French is classified as a Romance language, descended from the Latin of the Romans and related to Spanish, Portuguese and, Italian. But the Celts were very prominent in France and a lot of their words were absorbed into the language.
This is a fairly common occurence, a language being spread by conquest but then being changed by absorption of local words. Mexican Spanish differs from that of Spain because of the inclusion of so many native Indian words.
I spent a few days keeping a list of all the words I coult think of that seemed to be of French origin or influence. So many of the words that we use everyday have a very French appearance, even though these words may not be used any more, or were never used, in French: active, avenue, beautiful, boutique, bureau, carousel, cataract, chandelier, change, complete, dentist, depot, economy, enroute, envelope, equal, finish, force, glorious, individual, office, origin, palisade, persevere, pharmacy, entreat, precise, provide, route, sequence, service, severe, spontaneous, tour, treasure, unique, venue.
Some French words are still pronounced the same in English, such as depot and debut. Others have has their endings anglicized from -ie to -y, such as economie to economy, -eur to -or, -aire to -ary, such as documentaire to documentary and, -ique to-ic, such as electronique to electronic. The common -aux and -eux endings in French are rarely seen in English.
French words are often formed from a "mix-and match" selection of prefixes and suffixes. A good example is the word "constellation", an arrangement of stars. The word "stellar" means something to do with stars. The prefix con- means "put together", as in construction. The suffix -tion means "a manifestation of something" so that a constellation is a manifestation of an arranging of stars.
The French language is, like English, not always as precise as this. Induction and capacitance are two French words for related concepts in electronics. But one uses the -tion suffix and the other uses the -ance suffix.
Intend and extend are also French words that seem as if they should be opposites. But the two apparently related words actually have nothing to do with each other, to intend is to plan something and to extend is to lengthen something.
The most common French influence on English is probably the -tion, or -ion, ending. It simply means a manifestation of something. The list is nearly endless: addition, communication, compensation, conclusion, concussion, conduction, confirmation, construction, contraption, deception, definition, destruction, division, edification, edition, education, induction, information, institution, instruction, introduction, nation, obstruction, occupation, pension, perfection, position, probation, provision, subtraction, vacation, validation, vibration, vision, vocation.
Then there is the French -ment ending: basement, confinement, escarpment, employment, government, ointment, parliament, replacement, retirement, treatment. This -ment ending is somewhat more focused than the -tion ending, and usually means a place or thing or method that does something. A government is that which governs and a basement is that which acts as a base.
Then there is the -age ending: adage, advantage, beverage, encourage, entourage, language, mortgage, village and, voyage. The -age ending is similar in meaning to -ment. An entourage, for example, is those that are all around one.
The -ance ending falls into the same pattern of something that does something: capacitance, distance, entrance, finance, insurance, renaissance, resistance, resonance.
Notice that these various endings are of the same pattern as common French verbs. There are the verbs in French ending with -er, those ending with -re, and those ending with -ir.
Some French words in English end with -ant: brilliant, enchant, important, infant, restaurant, servant.
Other end with -ate: estate, exaggerate, illuminate. There is altitude, attitude and, gratitude. There is lovable, portable and, soluble. There is also interest and modest. There is defense and offense, content and patent and patient, frontier and cavalier, mortician and politician.
Even if some of these are not French words, they still show the tremendous influence of the patterns in French on English and how it gave it the wide span of the global language that it is today.
Then there is the prefixes, or beginnings of words, from French.
The in- prefix is often seen: incomplete, influence, information, inspection, institution, instruction, insurance, interest. The prefix inter- means between, such as intermission or international.
Examples of the con- prefix are: conduction, confinement, congruent, consolidate, continuation, control, construction.
There is the ex- prefix: exaggerate, exchange, exhibition, explain.
Then there is the French en- prefix: enchant, encourage, enlighten.
The de- prefix means to undo something. Decode means to undo a code. Perception is to see something, deception is to prevent from seeing something. But there is also deficient, definition and, deliver.
The dis- prefix is similar in meaning: discontinue, discourage, disengage.
Re- is generally the opposite of de-: reconnaissance, renaissance, replace, report, request, reverse.
There is pro-: produce, pronounce, provide.
Com- means to put together: combination, compare, compensation, compile.
Pre- means before: precede, prefer, previous.
Even though cars were developed long after the time of the Normans, the subject of cars is especially loaded with French words: alternator, automobile, carburetor, chassis, chauffeur, coupe, exhaust, garage, gasoline, limousine, lubrication, sedan, transmission.
Now, you can see how much the French language has influenced English. It is the grafting of all of these French and French-influenced words onto the northern European structure of English that has given it the broad span that makes it suitable to be the global language that it is today.
To understand how this came about, we must go far back into history. English is basically a northern European, or Germanic, language. The structure of the language is similar to that of German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and, Swedish. A close correspondence can be seen between many English words and their counterparts in German, for example. There is I and Ich, water and wasser, house and haus, Friday and Freitag.
But the English language underwent a special event that transformed it by greatly broadening it's span of words and sounds. There are two basic language groups in western Europe, the Germanic languages in the north and the Romance languages around the Mediterranean area. Romance languages include Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan (spoken in the area around Barcelona) and, Romanian. What is now England turned out to be the frontier where the two would meet.
England was originally a part of the Roman Empire. But it is one of the few areas of Roman occupation in Europe that did not end up speaking a Latin-based Romance language. England was later settled by Anglo-Saxons, from what is now Germany, and also Danes and Vikings. This was the beginning of English as a northern European language.
The critical event in shaping the language that we have today was, in my view, the landing of a group of Vikings, known as Normans, in what is now Normandy on the north coast of France. The Normans established a kingdom and adopted the French language. Later they crossed the English Channel, into what is now England, and brought their language with them.
English remained a northern European language in it's structure. But the mixing in of the Normans, and their language, introduced a flood of French words. This would make English almost as much a Romance language as a northern European one. In many cases, new words from French would displace the older Germanic words. As one example, English uses the French "place" instead of a variation of the German "stadt".
You may wonder what real difference this makes, whether we say "place" or "stadt". But it is this influx of new words from a foreign language group that gave English the very wide span that it has today, and this is what gives it the adaptability to be a global language. It readily adapts words from all over the world, just as it once did French words from the Normans.
Most of the new words were changed in pronounciation, or spelling, or both. The French language itself had earlier undergone a similar process. French is classified as a Romance language, descended from the Latin of the Romans and related to Spanish, Portuguese and, Italian. But the Celts were very prominent in France and a lot of their words were absorbed into the language.
This is a fairly common occurence, a language being spread by conquest but then being changed by absorption of local words. Mexican Spanish differs from that of Spain because of the inclusion of so many native Indian words.
I spent a few days keeping a list of all the words I coult think of that seemed to be of French origin or influence. So many of the words that we use everyday have a very French appearance, even though these words may not be used any more, or were never used, in French: active, avenue, beautiful, boutique, bureau, carousel, cataract, chandelier, change, complete, dentist, depot, economy, enroute, envelope, equal, finish, force, glorious, individual, office, origin, palisade, persevere, pharmacy, entreat, precise, provide, route, sequence, service, severe, spontaneous, tour, treasure, unique, venue.
Some French words are still pronounced the same in English, such as depot and debut. Others have has their endings anglicized from -ie to -y, such as economie to economy, -eur to -or, -aire to -ary, such as documentaire to documentary and, -ique to-ic, such as electronique to electronic. The common -aux and -eux endings in French are rarely seen in English.
French words are often formed from a "mix-and match" selection of prefixes and suffixes. A good example is the word "constellation", an arrangement of stars. The word "stellar" means something to do with stars. The prefix con- means "put together", as in construction. The suffix -tion means "a manifestation of something" so that a constellation is a manifestation of an arranging of stars.
The French language is, like English, not always as precise as this. Induction and capacitance are two French words for related concepts in electronics. But one uses the -tion suffix and the other uses the -ance suffix.
Intend and extend are also French words that seem as if they should be opposites. But the two apparently related words actually have nothing to do with each other, to intend is to plan something and to extend is to lengthen something.
The most common French influence on English is probably the -tion, or -ion, ending. It simply means a manifestation of something. The list is nearly endless: addition, communication, compensation, conclusion, concussion, conduction, confirmation, construction, contraption, deception, definition, destruction, division, edification, edition, education, induction, information, institution, instruction, introduction, nation, obstruction, occupation, pension, perfection, position, probation, provision, subtraction, vacation, validation, vibration, vision, vocation.
Then there is the French -ment ending: basement, confinement, escarpment, employment, government, ointment, parliament, replacement, retirement, treatment. This -ment ending is somewhat more focused than the -tion ending, and usually means a place or thing or method that does something. A government is that which governs and a basement is that which acts as a base.
Then there is the -age ending: adage, advantage, beverage, encourage, entourage, language, mortgage, village and, voyage. The -age ending is similar in meaning to -ment. An entourage, for example, is those that are all around one.
The -ance ending falls into the same pattern of something that does something: capacitance, distance, entrance, finance, insurance, renaissance, resistance, resonance.
Notice that these various endings are of the same pattern as common French verbs. There are the verbs in French ending with -er, those ending with -re, and those ending with -ir.
Some French words in English end with -ant: brilliant, enchant, important, infant, restaurant, servant.
Other end with -ate: estate, exaggerate, illuminate. There is altitude, attitude and, gratitude. There is lovable, portable and, soluble. There is also interest and modest. There is defense and offense, content and patent and patient, frontier and cavalier, mortician and politician.
Even if some of these are not French words, they still show the tremendous influence of the patterns in French on English and how it gave it the wide span of the global language that it is today.
Then there is the prefixes, or beginnings of words, from French.
The in- prefix is often seen: incomplete, influence, information, inspection, institution, instruction, insurance, interest. The prefix inter- means between, such as intermission or international.
Examples of the con- prefix are: conduction, confinement, congruent, consolidate, continuation, control, construction.
There is the ex- prefix: exaggerate, exchange, exhibition, explain.
Then there is the French en- prefix: enchant, encourage, enlighten.
The de- prefix means to undo something. Decode means to undo a code. Perception is to see something, deception is to prevent from seeing something. But there is also deficient, definition and, deliver.
The dis- prefix is similar in meaning: discontinue, discourage, disengage.
Re- is generally the opposite of de-: reconnaissance, renaissance, replace, report, request, reverse.
There is pro-: produce, pronounce, provide.
Com- means to put together: combination, compare, compensation, compile.
Pre- means before: precede, prefer, previous.
Even though cars were developed long after the time of the Normans, the subject of cars is especially loaded with French words: alternator, automobile, carburetor, chassis, chauffeur, coupe, exhaust, garage, gasoline, limousine, lubrication, sedan, transmission.
Now, you can see how much the French language has influenced English. It is the grafting of all of these French and French-influenced words onto the northern European structure of English that has given it the broad span that makes it suitable to be the global language that it is today.