Bad Name for a Medical Partnership
How the cure for scurvy was found and lost again.
They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was utterly wrong. They had arrived at the idea of an undetectable substance in their food, present in trace quantities, with a direct causative relationship to scurvy, but they thought of it in terms of a poison to avoid. In one sense, the additional leap required for a correct understanding was very small. In another sense, it would have required a kind of Copernican revolution in their thinking.
I find this fascinating: the application — almost — of the scientific method, only to fail at the crucial falsification stage. And how the wrong answer propagates because of this failure.
Let’s Go to the Movies
Movie Quotes, in infographic form
I don’t think the Godfather one is right. It should be a Venn diagram:
And, on that line of thought, there’s another quote:
Send Him to Sweden
The Nobel prize for Food Science
It must be cartoonsday.
Heisenberg, Unquantumfied
Hearing The Uncertainty Principle
The frequency content of that little pop spans several octaves. It no longer resembles a pure note at all. The large degree of certainty with respect to the time of the note means a large degree of uncertainty with respect to the frequency of the note.
It’s the uncertainty principle and it’s not even quantum!
You Want Some of This?
You can’t miss me.
Geekgasm
Popular Science Puts Entire Scanned Archive Online, Free
You can’t go directly to an issue to browse, but once you have arrived somewhere by search, there are no restrictions on scrolling around. You’ll also find a properly hyperlinked table of contents in each magazine.
I Hope You Like Yours Well-Done
Branch falls on some power lines
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