Posts Tagged ‘Thomas Jefferson’
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-in-their-own-minds…
Treading in the divots at half time. With champers in hand, of course. by cocorocha
Welcome to St. Tropez by annabelschwartz
#hardknocklife my oldest trying to beat my #defender top score lol #privatejetlife #throwbacktuesday by ninja_tuner
“They have more money than you, and this is what they do”… more at Rich Kids of Instagram.
[TotH to Pop Loser]
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As we work on percentages, we might recall that it was on this date in 1801 that Elisha Brown, Jr. pressed a 1,235 pound cheese ball at his farm. Brown later took his by horse cart to the White House, where he presented it to President Thomas Jefferson. Interestingly, National Cheeseball [sic] Day is celebrated on July 17, on the assumption– erroneous, most sources agree– that that date is the anniversary of Brown’s massive accomplishment.
I’ll take the low road…
source: Argonne National Laboratory
Cartoonist Rube Goldberg sketched ironic paeans to parsimony– cartoons depicting the simplest of things being done in the most elaborate and complicated of ways. His whimsy inspired Purdue University to hold an annual Rube Goldberg Contest, in which teams of college students from around the country compete “to design a machine that uses the most complex process to complete a simple task – put a stamp on an envelope, screw in a light bulb, make a cup of coffee – in 20 or more steps.”
New Scientist reports on this year’s meet:
Who ever said a machine should be efficient? The device in this video was deliberately over-engineered to water a plant in 244 steps, while illustrating a brief history of life and the universe in the meantime. Created by students at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, it sets a new world record for the most complex Rube Goldberg machine – a contraption designed to complete a simple task through a series of chain reactions.
The machine was unveiled in March at the National Rube Goldberg Machine Championships held at Purdue University. The competition, first held in 1949, challenges competitors to accomplish a simple task in under 2 minutes, using at least 20 steps.
Although this machine used the greatest number of steps, it encountered some problems during the contest so was disqualified. But the team tried it again afterwards and it worked – too late to compete in the championships but still valid as a world record entry. They should find out this week if Guinness World Records accepts their record-breaking feat.
For more Rube Goldberg machines, check out our previous coverage of the championships, watch this cool music video by OK Go or see how an elaborate Japanese device could fix you a noodle dinner.
As we savor the sheer silliness of it all, we might recall that The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was founded during the Revolutionary War, was chartered on this date in 1780.
Established by by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock, and other leaders who contributed prominently to the establishment of the new nation, its government, and its Constitution, the Academy’s purpose was (in the words of the Charter) “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”
Over the years, just about everyone a reader may have encountered in a U.S. History text has been a member: The original incorporators were later joined by Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and others. During the 19th century, the elected membership included Daniel Webster, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John J. Audubon, Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Alexander Graham Bell. In the early decades of the twentieth century, membership in the Academy continued to grow as other noted scholars, scientists, and statesmen were elected– including A. A. Michelson, Percival Lowell, Alexander Agassiz and, later, Charles Steinmetz, Charles Evans Hughes, Samuel Eliot Morison, Albert Einstein, Henry Lee Higginson, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, and Henry Cabot Lodge. (Current members are listed here.)
Today the Academy is (in its self-explanation) “an international learned society with a dual function: to elect to membership men and women of exceptional achievement, drawn from science, scholarship, business, public affairs, and the arts, and to conduct a varied program of projects and studies responsive to the needs and problems of society.”
The Minerva Seal (source)
Oh yeah?…
It’s tough to assess the dueling explanations of the fix(es) that we’re in , and to judge the completing claims for remedies. Happily, a professional skeptic– founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Scientific American columnist, and economics professor)– Michael Shermer has ridden to the rescue with his Baloney Detection Kit— “ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim.”
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?
(Presented by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. C.F. also, the ever-insightful Howard Reingold’s “Crap Detection 101,” with it’s allusion to John McManus’ terrific Detecting Bull: How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web.”)
As we get to the bottom of things, we might note that, while this is the day that folks in the U.S. celebrate the Declaration of Independence in 1776 of the US from Great Britain, it is also a day to spare a memorial thought for two of the drafters and signers of that document, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (respectively, of course, the second and third Presidents of the United States), as both died on this date 1826.
Do tell…
Nick Faber, Jeremy Griffin, and Jenny Nicholson offer a very nifty free service: one submits a title for a story, then one of them writes a 100 word tale to fit. Indeed in some cases, they even illustrate them…
One Ukelele and Some Stars
It was dark that night, so even though you were right beside me, I couldn’t see your face, just the black silhouette of your head against the stars. The lake was still and the cicadas trilled in the background, calling out to one another. You told me you’d written a song — for me. I held my breath, waited for the melody to flow over me and across the water. Your hands stumbled over the chords and you cursed under your breath. You stopped playing, and when you apologized, your voice was shaky. I waited for you to start again.
Read more– and submit your own title– at Name Your Tale.
As we compose our thoughts, we might think expansionist thoughts in honor of Thomas Jefferson, whose emissaries Robert Livingston, James Monroe signed the the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, called by some “the letter that bought a continent”, in Paris on this date in 1803… and in one stroke (well, three strokes– Livingston, Monroe, and French representative Barbé Marbois all signed) doubled the size of the United States.
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