02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Cultural Change in Technology
As our modern dinosaurs crash down around us, I sometimes wonder what kind of humans will eventually walk out of this epic transformation. Trump and the populism that’s rampaging around the world today, marked by xenophobia, racism, sexism, and rising inequality, is greatly amplified by the forces the GDE has unleashed. For someone like me who saw the power of connection build a vibrant, technologically meshed ecosystem distinguished by peace, love, and understanding, the polarization and h... 1 
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notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Comet Loss Cone
To understand why comet showers occur, we go back to the Oort Cloud. The theory of comet showers was worked out by Jack Hills, an American physicist now at Los Alamos. He realized that the movements of the comets in the Oort Cloud are not entirely random. Comets in the cloud are generally moving in random directions, but if a comet happens to be moving in an orbit almost exactly toward the Sun, it will not survive for long. A comet in an orbit coming close to the Sun may get boiled away and d...Folksonomies: astronomy astrophysics
Folksonomies: astronomy astrophysics
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notes12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Candles and Animals Both Need Oxygen
If a small animal and a lighted candle be placed in a closed flask, so that no air can enter, in a short time the candle will go out, nor will the animal long survive. ... The animal is not suffocated by the smoke of the candle. ... The reason why the animal can live some time after the candle has gone out seems to be that the flame needs a continuous rapid and full supply of nitro-aereal particles. ... For animals, a less aereal spirit is sufficient. ... The movements of the lungs help not a...Folksonomies: physiology respiration
Folksonomies: physiology respiration
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notesQuoting John Mayow.
23 APR 2012 by ideonexus
A Bird Works According to Mathematical Law
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is within the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements, but not with a corresponding degree of strength, though it is deficient only in the power of maintaining equilibrium. We may therefore say that such an instrument constructed by man is lacking in nothing except the life of the bird, and this life must needs be supplied from that of man. Folksonomies: engineering
Folksonomies: engineering
1 notes
notesLeonardo da Vinci equates a bird with a machine, needing an inventor to give it life.
21 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Man is Noble...
Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it... 1 notes
notes...but still "bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." A quote from Charles Darwin.
30 AUG 2011 by ideonexus
The Universe Was Set in Motion and Everything Else Followed
Certainly the atoms did not post themselves purposefully in due order by an act of intelligence, nor did they stipulate what movements each should perform. [58] As they have been rushing everlastingly throughout all space in their myriads, undergoing a myriad changes under the disturbing impact of collisions, they have experienced every variety of movement and conjunction till they have fallen into the particular pattern by which this world of ours is constituted. This world has persisted man... 1 notes
notesLucretius' very prescient observation.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Magnet Was An Accidental Discovery
So again, if, before the discovery of the magnet, anyone had said that a certain instrument had been invented by means of which the quarters and points of the heavens could be taken and distinguished with exactness, men would have been carried by their imagination to a variety of conjectures concerning the more exquisite construction of astronomical instruments; but that anything could be discovered agreeing so well in its movements with the heavenly bodies, and yet not a heavenly body itself... 1 notes
notesThe idea that a bit of metal could point the way North was inconceivable until its lucky discovery.
08 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Babies Can Predict Trajectories
1. If you show very young babies a video of a static Big Bird that then explodes into its separately defined parts, they won't be perturbed. Because all the parts had separate edges anyway, they may, for all the babies know. have been separate objects to begin with. But if you show them Big Bird moving first, so that they see that all the parts of the object move together, and then show them the exploding Big Bird, they'll look much longer and more attentively, as if they recognize that somet... 1 notes
notesIf an object moving at a trajectory disappears behind a screen, the baby will look longer at the other end of the screen if it does not reappear at the proper time and place.
23 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
What Kind of Engineer is God?
Three engineers were having lunch one day, and the talk turned philosophical:
The first engineer wondered what kind of engineering help God had when He created humankind, and proposed "It must have been a mechanical engineer -- just look at the variety of movements in all the joints of the body!"
The second engineer responded, "No, I think it must have been an electrical engineer -- think of how the brain controls all the functions of the body via electrical impulses."
The third engineer t... 1 
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notesAn old joke with an insight into Creationism.
19 APR 2011 by ideonexus
The Mesh of Science
I do not think that truth becomes more primitive if we pursue it to simpler facts. For no fact in the world is instant, infinitesimal and ultimate, a single mark. There are, I hold, no atomic facts. In the language of science, every fact is a field—a crisscross of implications, those that lead to it and those that lead from it.
Truth in science is like Everest, an ordering of the facts. We organize our experience in patterns which, formalized. make the network of scientific laws. But scie... 1 notes
notesScience "articulates the movements of the world."
