02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Humphry Davy Proves Diamonds are Made of Carbon

In Florence, while the guest of the Grand Duke, Davy performed an impressive carbon-based experiment which proved that the most apparently precious of objects — the diamond — could also be the product of nature’s simplest processes. With the Duke’s permission, he commandeered the huge solar magnifying lens at the Florentine Cabinet of Natural History, and subjected an uncut diamond to intense and continuous heat. The diamond eventually burst into flame, leaving a fine crust of black c...
  1  notes

By setting one on fire.

01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 We Only Notice Certain Statistical Events

Sometimes we can literally count the number of ways you can reshuffle a series of bits - as with a pack of cards, for instance, where the 'bits' are the individual cards. Suppose the dealer shuffles the pack and deals them out to four players, so that they each have 13 cards. I pick up my hand and gasp in astonishment. I have a complete hand of 13 spades! All the spades. I am too startled to go on with the game, and I show my hand to the other three players, mowing they will be as amazed ...
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Using the example of a remarkable card-dealing hand, Dawkins explains how every hand of cards is statistically improbable, but we only notice and awe at combinations that are significant to us in some way.

02 JUN 2011 by ideonexus

 King of Diamonds

In the World of the Blind / the one-eyed man is an hallucinated idiot
Folksonomies: culture norms
Folksonomies: culture norms
 1  1  notes

In the World of the Blind / the one-eyed man is an hallucinated idiot