Lawrence R. Spencer's Blog, page 394
July 20, 2017
STATE OF FEAR
“And of course we know that social control is best managed through fear.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear
“I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don’t.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear
“For the last fifteen years we have been under the control of an entirely new complex, far more powerful and far more pervasive. I call it the politico-legal-media complex. The PLM. ”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear
“I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear
SAND PAINTING
Originally posted 2014-05-16 14:28:50. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
PHANTASTIC PHOTOGRAPHS
PHANTASTIC PHOTOGRAPHY BY Robbert van der Steeg
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Originally posted 2011-01-20 14:28:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
July 19, 2017
Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek EVER
THIS IS THE FIRST PAGE OF A VERY EXCELLENT ON-LINE “COMIC BOOK” ABOUT NIKOLA TESLA. READ THE ENTIRE THING HERE: Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal
Additional notes from the author:
If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time
Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben’s also got a book out which is packed full of awesome.
There’s an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It’s corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life.
The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.
X-rays: just to clarify, Tesla did not discover x-rays, but he was one of the early pioneers in its research.
Cryogenic engineering: I’m referring to the cryogenic engineering that has to do with using liquified air to cool a coil and reduce its electrical resistance (Patent No. 11,865), not freezing people and waking them up in the future so they can fight Wesley Snipes.
Transistor: Tesla’s influence on the modern transistor can be found in patents 723,188 and 725,605. (a better explanation here)
Radio: Tesla was the nicest geek ever until he decided to sue Marconi a few years later. 8 months after Tesla died, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patents on the invention of radio. So Tesla eventually won that battle, although he was dead by then.
Tesla VS Edison: I could write a novel on the differences between Tesla and Edison, but seeing as how this comic is already huge I decided to leave many things out. For instance, Edison killed cats and dogs, but Tesla loved animals and had a cat as a child. Originally Tesla wanted to be a poet, but after getting zapped by static electricity from his kitty he was inspired to study the effects of electricity. One could vaguely construe that Tesla’s cat was responsible for the second industrial revolution, which arguably makes it the most awesome cat who ever lived.
Edison believed that fossil fuels were the future and that there were enough resources in South America to provide for the next 50,000 years. Tesla believed that renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, solar, and wind power were the future. This is remarkable because in the 1890s there was no such thing as “going green,” so Tesla’s ideas on conservation were very forward-thinking at the time. (From OATMEAL)
Originally posted 2012-05-17 13:47:58. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Bhutto Confirms that Osama Bin Laden is Dead
Bhutto Confirms that Osama Bin Laden is Dead.
Benazir Bhutto (Sindhi: بينظير ڀٽو; Urdu: بینظیر بھٹو, pronounced [beːnəˈziːr ˈbʱʊʈʈoː]; 21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was aPakistan-born politician, with Pakistani and Kurdish–Iranian origin, who chaired the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a centre-left and the largest political party in Pakistan. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state,[1] having twice beenPrime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996). She was Pakistan‘s first and to date only female prime minister and was the eldest child of former Prime minister of Pakistan Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former First Lady of Pakistan Mrs.Nusrat Bhutto, and was the wife of current President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Ali Zardari.
Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time in 1988 at the age of 35, but was removed from office 20 months later under the order of then-President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 she was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by her party’s elected President Farooq Leghari. She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan on October 18th 2007, after reaching an understanding with President Pervez Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn. She was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 in which she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year, she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.[2]
Originally posted 2011-05-02 09:11:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
July 18, 2017
July 17, 2017
OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE
A marvelous story by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite living authors. I’ve read all of his books and recommend them to everyone who still knows everything all the time, yet who want to play. ~ LRS
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ocean-End-Lane-Novel/dp/0062255665
Originally posted 2016-02-04 03:11:09. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
July 16, 2017
THE (IN)SANITY OF WRITERS
I couldn’t have written it better myself….
Lawrence R. Spencer, Writer for the Insane
Originally posted 2012-07-12 15:31:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
ARE HUMAN BEINGS SENTIENT?
“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”― Michael Crichton, The Lost World
“All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World
“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”
“Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World
HISTORICAL HAIR STYLES
Here is a fascinating series of videos that describe and demonstrate the hair styles worn by men and women of the ancient world: (see the full series here)
Originally posted 2013-01-22 00:27:35. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
