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"The pie keeps growing because things that look like wants today are needs tomorrow," argued Marc Andreessen, the Netscape cofounder, who lelped to ignite a whole new industry, e-commerce, that now employs mil)ns of specialists around the wodd, specialists whose jobs weren't even lagined when Bill Clinton became…
The principle of an opportunity cost does not at first glance seem hard to understand. If you spend half an hour noodling around on Twitter, when you would otherwise have been reading a book, the lost book-reading time is the opportunity cost of the tweeting. If you decide to buy a fancy belt for £100 instead of a…
Premium mediocre is the finest bottle of wine at Olive Garden. Premium mediocre is cupcakes and froyo. Premium mediocre is “truffle” oil on anything (no actual truffles are harmed in the making of “truffle” oil), and extra-leg-room seats in Economy. Premium mediocre is cruise ships, artisan pizza, Game of Thrones, and…
66. Adulthood Earthseed is adulthood. It’s trying our wings, Leaving our mother, Becoming men and women. We’ve been children, Fighting for the full breasts, The protective embrace, The soft lap. Children do this. But Earthseed is adulthood. Adulthood is both sweet and sad. It terrifies. It empowers. We are men and…
Outside Temperatures. Place a thermometer outside a window so students can make daily calculations and keep a chart reporting the actual temperature and the temperature change from the previous day. Students will see that the change can be a negative number without the temperature falling below 0—an often-confusing…
Select two boxes or cans of food that weigh 8 ounces and 16 ounces, respectively. Have students hold each as you tell them (or they read) the weights of the containers. Give students a box or can with the weight covered and have them compare the weight of the new package to the weight of the 8- and 16-ounce samples…
The tapping game is when I tap one time, you tap two times, and when I tap two times, you tap one time. Children play this game sixteen times, mixing up the times that children are asked to tap once when the experimenter taps twice, and tap twice when the experimenter taps once. In other words, the rules of the game…
If they are going to sink below, then the pressure on the vessel is going to rise as Verne talked about in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. If the pressure on the vessel is going to rise, then it's going to collapse unless the pressure within the vessel rises. So the captain is slowly letting the vessel sink into the…
In his book Thoughts without a Thinker, psychiatrist Mark Epstein recounts this teaching by the Thai meditation master Achaan Chah. “You see this goblet?” Achaan Chah asks. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful…
In the third chapter, "High Finance, or the Point of Vanishing Interest", Parkinson writes about a finance committee meeting with a three-item agenda. The first is the signing of a £10 [4] million contract to build a reactor, the second a proposal to build a £350 bicycle shed for the clerical staff, and the third…
When air has been freshly and strongly tainted with putrefaction, so as to smell through the water, sprigs of mint have presently died, upon being put into it, their leaves turning black; but if they do not die presently, they thrive in a most surprizing manner. In no other circumstances have I ever seen vegetation so…
Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on…
…it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm…
Where the untrained eye will see nothing but mire and dirt, Science will often reveal exquisite possibilities. The mud we tread under our feet in the street is a grimy mixture of clay and sand, soot and water. Separate the sand, however, as Ruskinn observes—let the atoms arrange themselves in peace according to their…
People have wracked their brains for an explanation of benzene and how the celebrated man [Kekulé] managed to come up with the concept of the benzene theory. With regard to the last point especially, a friend of mine who is a farmer and has a lively interest in chemistry has asked me a question which I would like to…
A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and ingag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their insuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this…
Sed tamen salis petrae. VI. Part V. NOV. CORVLI. ET V. sulphuris, et sic facies toniitrum et coruscationem: sic facies artificium. But, however, of saltpetre take six parts, live of young willow (charcoal), and five of sulphur, and so you will make thunder and lightning, and so you will turn the trick. Bacon's recipe…
Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden…
A possible sequence of such changes begins with simple eyespots made of light-sensitive pigment, as seen in flatworms. The skin then folds in, forming a cup that protects the eyespot and allows it to better localize the light source. Limpets have eyes like this. In the chambered nautilus, we see a further narrowing of…
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family. They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would meet other babies, cousins not much older than it…