10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Intelligent Plant Life
On certain small planets, drenched with light and heat from a near or a great sun, evolution took a very different course from that with which we are familiar. The vegetable and animal functions were not separated into distinct organic types. Every organism was at once animal and vegetable.
Many species, of course, developed predatory habits, and special organs of offense, such as muscular boughs as strong as pythons for constriction, or talons, horns, and formidable serrated pincers. In the...17 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Benjamin Franklin on Daylight Savings Time
I say it is impossible that so sensible a people [citizens of Paris], under such circumstances, should have lived so long by the smoky, unwholesome, and enormously expensive light of candles, if they had really known that they might have had as much pure light of the sun for nothing.Noting that the people of Paris spend much money on candles when they could simply adjust their clocks to rise with the sun.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Nuclear Winter
In discussing the state of the atmosphere following a nuclear exchange, we point especially to the effects of the many fires that would be ignited by the thousands of nuclear explosions in cities, forests, agricultural fields, and oil and gas fields. As a result of these fires, the loading of the atmosphere with strongly light absorbing particles in the submicron size range (1 micron = 10-6 m) would increase so much that at noon solar radiation at the ground would be reduced by at least a fac...Folksonomies: environmentalism
Folksonomies: environmentalism
An explanation of the science behind this concept and the back-of-the-napkin calculation.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
You Are Speeding Around the Sun
Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom light and life is given;
I, thy crystal paramour
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise,
Magnet-like of lovers’ eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insensiate bride,
On thy form from every side ..."Brightest world of many a one," ... prescient words from Shelley.