30 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Chemistry as the Foundation of Science
Chemistry I deem to be the foundation of all other science, and in a manner pf speaking to comprise all other branches of science. As matter and motion comprise everything we can behold or conceive, and as Chemistry is an investigation of the properties of matter, with the causes and effects of its various combinations, it is evidently the most important part of science, or rather, the first and last part of it. The cultivation of the earth—the cookery of our food—its quantity and quality...An early view, predates physics?
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Hell for Scientists
I had at one time a very bad fever of which I almost died. In my fever I had a long consistent delirium. I dreamt that I was in Hell, and that Hell is a place full of all those happenings that are improbable but not impossible. The effects of this are curious. Some of the damned, when they first arrive below, imagine that they will beguile the tedium of eternity by games of cards. But they find this impossible, because, whenever a pack is shuffled, it comes out in perfect order, beginning wit...Is a place where the improbable occurs everywhere.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
The State of Mind of Man in Olden Days
We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the star...Where he could detect the fires of hell beneath his feet and see the splendor of heaven in the night sky above.
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.
03 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
Cargo Cult Science
In the Solomon Islands, as many people know, the natives didn't understand the airplanes which came down during the war and brought all kinds of goodies for the soldiers. So now they have airplane cults. They make artificial landing strips and they make fires along the landing strips to imitate the lights and this poor native sits in a wooden box he's built with wooden earphones with bamboo sticks going up to represent the antenna and turning his head back and forth, and they have radar domes...When we accept scientific "facts" unquestioningly, we are like the islanders who built fake airfields to beckon cargo planes from the sky.