08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Rules of Magic Don't Make Any Sense
Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.
"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.
Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.
"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.
Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came ou... 1 
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notesRational Potter experiments with a magical bag that will give him whatever he asks for and doesn't understand why it can understand some requests but not others.
17 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Chance Favors, but Ambition is Crucial
The major credit I think Jim and I deserve ... is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It's true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold. Both of us had decided, quite independently of each other, that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene. ... We could not see what the answer was, but we considered it so important that we were determined to think about it long and hard, from any ...Folksonomies: discovery
Folksonomies: discovery
1 notes
notesFrancis Crick admits his discovery was something of chance, but emphasizes the fact that he was looking for the discovery in the first place and willing to dedicate a great deal of time to it.
30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Discovery is the Greatest Possible Reward in Life
The indescribable pleasure—which pales the rest of life's joys—is abundant compensation for the investigator who endures the painful and persevering analytical work that precedes the appearance of the new truth, like the pain of childbirth. It is true to say that nothing for the scientific scholar is comparable to the things that he has discovered. Indeed, it would be difficult to find an investigator willing to exchange the paternity of a scientific conquest for all the gold on earth. An... 1 notes
notesAny scientist who would trade it for all the gold in the world is working in the wrong profession.
08 JAN 2011 by ideonexus
The Use of Gold for Money Leads to Efforts to Inflate Its...
Gold is abused and made into vessels of dishonour, and abolished from ideal society as though it were the cause instead of the instrument of human baseness; but, indeed, there is nothing bad in gold. Making gold into vessels of dishonour and banishing it from the State is punishing the hatchet for the murderer's crime. Money, did you but use it right, is a good thing in life, a necessary thing in civilised human life, as complicated, indeed, for its purposes, but as natural a growth as the bo...Folksonomies: economics
Folksonomies: economics
1 notes
notesReminds me of the Mortgage crisis, when homes became a source of money and every effort was made to over-inflate their value.
