mental_floss Blog » History of the U.S.: A Ridiculously Long and Incomplete List of Things Ben Franklin Invented We all remember Ben Franklin as a pretty bright guy who discovered some pretty important stuff. The real question is, what didn’t this polymath genius invent? 1742: Observing the wasteful use of firewood in inefficient colonial fireplaces, he designed the Franklin Stove, which used its iron body to diffuse a much larger proportion of the heat. The stove enabled poor families to save money and be warmer in the winter.1749: Noticing that lightning was attracted to metal and tall objects, Franklin hit on the idea of attaching vertical metal rods to the tops of tall buildings to attract the lightning, thus sparing the roof a direct hit.1752: To prove that lightning was static electricity, Franklin carried out his famous kite experiment with the help of his young son William (nobody ever said he was a responsible parent). He conducted an electrical charge from a key along a wire into a primitive battery. Looking for more fabulous content like this?
Nerd Paradise Posted on: 10 Cado 7:0 - 5.27.29 So you've procrastinated again. You told yourself you wouldn't do this 2 months ago when your professor assigned you this. But you procrastinated anyway. Pick a Topic The more "legally-oriented" your topic is, the better. Make a list ...of every possible outcome that this issue could cause in...the near future...the far future...of every person that this topic affects....of any instances where this topic has come in the news....what you would do about this topic if you had the chance/power/enough-sugar...any little detail you can think ofThe important thing about this is to think of ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, no matter how silly or far-fetched. Reorder everything Put your most obvious argument first. Then put weird off the wall stuff, regardless of importance. Put the strongest argument for your case next. Now list the incidents that will help argue for your point. It's best to keep all this in the form of an outline. Spaces Now print it out. Write Go Back Inside
Hidden musical code found written into Plato's texts "Plato’s books played a major role in founding Western culture, but they are mysterious and end in riddles," said Dr. Jay Kennedy of University of Manchester's Faculty of Life Sciences. Those riddles are finally being unwound, thanks to Kennedy's thorough five-year study of Plato's best-known work, "The Republic". "It is a long and exciting story, but basically I cracked the code. I have shown rigorously that the books do contain codes and symbols and that unraveling them reveals the hidden philosophy of Plato." So what great wisdom does the secret message reveal? Plato was influenced by Pythagoras, another ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician who is perhaps best known for discovering the Pythagorean Theorem. Kennedy discovered that Plato had placed clusters of words related to music in his master work, which can be broken into 12 equal sections — a pattern he suspected was related to the twelve notes of the Greek musical scale.
HOW TO WRITE GOOD Caveat emptor. Carpe diem. O si villi, si ergo, fortibus es in ero. Et tu, brute. by Frank L. My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: Avoid alliteration. Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time @Im_your_Huckleberry: In a different sense, I blame the people who started those wars, the church, and anti-intellectuals in general, for holding the advance of the human race hostage for two thousand years. The depth of reason and creativity at the inception of the scienctific method in Ancient Greece is astounding; such great promise, I shutter to think what time has been lost, and where we'd be now if, say, the Library of Alexandria hadn't been burned to the ground. @hilikusopus: Ironically, armed conflict has also provided the impetus for many technological advancements that later found peaceful uses. The library was finally destroyed for good because "They will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, in which case they are superfluous". Not to single out Islam, Christians had destroyed much of it several hundred years earlier. Say what you will about warfare, it is only a mechanism.
Brief Answers to Cosmic Questions Structure of the Universe Does the Universe have an edge, beyond which there is nothing? Are the galaxies arranged on the surface of a sphere? Why can't we see the whole universe? Evolution of the Universe Did the Universe expand from a point? More about the Big Bang When they say "the universe is expanding," what exactly is expanding? Structure of the Universe Does the Universe have an edge, beyond which there is nothing? Are the galaxies arranged on the surface of a sphere? Why can't we see the whole universe? If you could suddenly freeze time everywhere in the universe, and magically survey all of creation, you would find galaxies extending out far beyond what we can see today. Does the term "universe" refer to space, or to the matter in it, or to both? Today, the situation is reversed. Discovering the properties of space remains one of the deepest and most important problems in modern science. Evolution of the Universe Did the Universe expand from a point? More about the Big Bang
Browse By Category: Audio Book, human-read