09 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Earth Processes Take Place Gradually and Over Long Period...
But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed.From Aristotle's "Meteorology". Most processes of the Earth take place over time periods longer than human lifetimes and even eras of human existence.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Heat of Our Bodies is Sunbeams
Breathe upon your hand, and feel how hot your breath is; well, that heat which you feel, was once in a sunbeam, and has travelled from it through the food you have eaten, and has now been at work keeping up the heat of your body.Taken in through the food we eat and working to keep us warm.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Color is the Light Beams Things Do Not Want
But the reflected light-waves do more for us than this. They not only make us see things, but they make us see them in different colours. What, you will ask, is this too the work of the sunbeams? Certainly; for if the colour we see depends on the size of the waves which come back to us, then we must see things coloured differently according to the waves they send back. For instance, imagine a sunbeam playing on a leaf: part of its waves bound straight back from it to our eye and make us see t...All other wavelengths are being absorbed.
17 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
Chinese Women Stave Off Death to Perform their Ceremonial...
But there's something more: the Harvest Moon Festival is an important holiday in traditional Chinese communities in America. In the week preceding the festival, the death rate in the community is found to fall by 35 per cent. In the following week the death rate jumps by 35 per cent. Control groups of non-Chinese show no such effect. You might think that suicides are responsible, but only deaths from natural causes are counted. You might think that stress or overeating might account for it, b...Before the Harvest Moon festival, deaths drop off, but surge afterwards.