Money Allows for Easy Conversions
Money is thus a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. Brawn gets converted to brain when a discharged soldier
Memes with the Watson keyword “short time”
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It is No Accident that We Inhabit a Veritable Paradise
Imagine a spaceship full of sleeping explorers, deep-frozen would-be colonists of some distant world. Perhaps the ship is on a forlorn mission to save the species before an unstoppable comet, like the one that killed the dinosaurs, hits the home planet. The voyagers go into the deep-freeze soberly reckoning the odds…
A Black Hole is a Star Forever Falling Inward
He talked to us about the new theory of black holes which he had then just worked out. The idea of a black hole was one of the most dramatic consequences of Einstein's theory of gravity. According to Einstein's equations, a massive star at the end of its life, when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel, continues to…
A Black Hole is a Star Forever Falling Inward
He talked to us about the new theory of black holes which he had then just worked out. The idea of a black hole was one of the most dramatic consequences of Einsteins theory of gravity. According to Einstein's equations, a massive star at the end of its life, when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel, continues to…
A Black Hole is a Star Forever Falling Inward
He talked to us about the new theory of black holes which he had then just worked out. The idea of a black hole was one of the most dramatic consequences of Einstein's theory of gravity. According to Einstein's equations, a massive star at the end of its life, when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel, continues to…
Strategy of Predator Satiation
An effective strategy of predator satiation involves two adaptations. First, the synchrony of emergence or reproductions must be very precise, thus assuring that hte market is truly flooded, and only for a short time. Secondly, this flooding cannot occur very often, lest predators simply adjust their own life cycle to…
Candles and Animals Both Need Oxygen
If a small animal and a lighted candle be placed in a closed flask, so that no air can enter, in a short time the candle will go out, nor will the animal long survive. ... The animal is not suffocated by the smoke of the candle. ... The reason why the animal can live some time after the candle has gone out seems to be…
Speciesization in a Test Tube
We can even see the origin of new, ecologically diverse bacterial species, all within a single laboratory flask. Paul Rainey and his colleagues at Oxford University placed a strain of the bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens in a small vessel containing nutrient broth, and simply watched it. (It’s surprising but true that…
Bacteria Evolve to Process Lactose in a Test Tube
But “laboratory” adaptations can also be more complex, involving the evolution of whole new biochemical systems. Perhaps the ultimate challenge is simply to take away a gene that a microbe needs to survive in a particular environment, and see how it responds. Can it evolve a way around this problem? The answer is…
Avicenna Describes His Learning
At night I would return home, set out a lamp before me, and devote myself to reading and writing. Whenever sleep overcame me or I became conscious of weakening, I would turn aside to drink a cup of wine, so that my strength would return to me. Then I would return to reading. And whenever sleep seized me I would see…
Non-Anthropocentricm as a Virtue
Anthropocentrism isn’t just a faulty value system, but also a faulty way of understanding the world. Modern science has shown this, displacing human beings from the center of the universe, opening up immense vistas of space and time, telling a story of life in which chance, not destiny, has raised an unusual primate…