The ‘dry’ formulas from science books are depended on for a large portion of our existence, and while we may stand in awe at their deeper meaning and even enjoy some lab experiments, they don’t always reveal the full and complete depth of what the scientists went through. The endeavors are ever insightful, often amazing, and some even approach the ridiculous. Some of the scientific pioneers really had it rough. Scientists, like those of any discipline, can be doggedly eccentric in their quests. Sometimes the perseverance paid off and other times it really flopped. Halley, Newton and Hooke Halley was a sea captain, a cartographer, a professor Of geometry, a deputy of the Royal Mint, an astronomer, And the inventor of the deep-sea diving bell, and wrote some On magnetism, tides, planet motions, and fondly on opium. He invented the weather map and actuarial table ages, Even proposed methods to work out the Earth’s old age And its distance from the sun, even how to keep fresh fish, But one thing he didn’t do was to discover Halley’ comet, For he merely noted that it was yet another return of it. He made a wager with Robert Hooke, the cell describer, And with the great and stately Christopher Wren: They bet upon why the planets’ orbit were ellipses. Hooke, a known credit-taker, claimed he’d solved the problem, But had to conceal it so that others could yet have satisfaction. Well, Halley became consumed with finding the answer, So he called upon the Lucasian Mathematics Professor. Issac Newton was indeed brilliant beyond measure, But was solitary, joyless, paranoid, and ever no pleasure. Once he had inserted a needle in his eye and poked around, Far inserting the leather bodkin between the eye and the bone. Another time, he'd stared at the sun for so very long That he had to spend many days in a darkened room. Frustrated by mathematics, Isaac invented the calculus, And then for twenty-seven years kept it hidden from us. Likewise, he did the same with the understanding of light And spectroscopy, keeping it for thirty years in the dark. For Newton, science was but a partial part of his life’s routes, For much time was given to alchemy and religious pursuits. He was wholeheartedly devoted to the religion of Arianism, Whose main tenet was that there could be no Holy Trinity. Ironically, he worked as a Professor at Trinity College, Although the only one there who was not Anglican. He also spent an inordinate amount of time studying The floor plan of the lost temple of Solomon the King, Even learning Hebrew, the better to scan the original texts. Another single minded quest of his was to turn base metals Into precious ones, his papers revealing this preoccupation Over optics and planetary motions and such mentations. Well, Halley asked Newton what the curve would be If the planets’ attraction toward the sun was supposed to be The reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. Newton promptly answered, of course, an “ellipse”. Not finding his calculations of it, Newton not only rewrote it, But retired for two years to produce his master work, The Plilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. To Halley’s horror, Newton refused to release the crucial third volume, Without which the first two would make little sense. There had been a dispute between Newton and Hooke Over the priority of the inverse square law in the book. That solved by Halley’s diplomacy, the Royal Society Had pulled out from the publication, failing financially, For, the year before, there had been a very costly flop Called 'The History of Fishes'; so, Halley himself popped The funds for Netwon’s publication out of his own pocket. Newton contributed nothing, as usual, and, to make matters worse, Halley had just taken a position as the society’s clerk, They failing to pay the promised 50 pounds to his purse, Paying him only with very many copies of 'The History of Fishes'!
Gyroscopic Jesus Gyroscopic Jesus I saw a starry vision in the neon pixel sky, a Gyroscopic Jesus on a holy segway. He rolled along sublimely; he was such a site to see a cybernetic savior for this savage century. He lives online on Facebook; yes he has the access key. And miracles are done there of a small subscription fee. Those friends he’s never met there, he feeds them virtually, and if you want salvation you can buy the DVD. So pray upon an I Phone, redeem a point for sins, yes you can find salvation just by logging into him. Gyroscopic Jesus needs your love you see! Cause in Java script Jerusalem there is a Pilot scheme to ban the use of Segways and to filter ISP’s. Crucified and hacked within a Wi-Fi hotspot hell, he’ll rise again by morning if you pay the service bill. So count on all the servers of the Gyroscopic God, with integrated angels and a user-friendly hub. Don’t pirate him or phreak him, his love is not for free, he’s the cybernetic savior for the 21st century. Just check him out on Youtube, then you will certainly see that Gyroscopic Jesus spins the world for you and me!
(Jimi Heselden, the owner of the Segway company, died after he rode a Segway off a cliff at his estate in Britain.)
The Caldron That Almost Brewed Humanity Away At Toba, in northern Sumatra, a supervolcano Erupted only seventy-four thousands years ago. Six years of volcanic winter followed this eruption, Bringing pre-humans to the very edge of extinction. There were but a few thousand of them left around, Since very little light could reach the dusty ground. It took twenty thousand years for them to recompose. From this handful of hardy souls we humans arose. In 1960, Bob Christiansen looked around everywhere At Yellowstone National Park for its volcanic caldera, But found it nowhere. By some coincidence, NASA Had photos from a recently tested high altitude camera. Astounded, Bob learned why he’d failed to spot the caldera; It was virtually the entire park, 2.2 million acres of area! Yellowstone must have blown up with a violent misery Far beyond anything known throughout our history. The crater was forty miles across. The cataclysm was Even beyond the scale of what the imagination does; It had thousands of times more monstrous molten fire Than Mount St. Helens. Krakatoa was but a firecracker. Yellowstone’s eruptions average one really massive blow Every 600,000 years, the last one being 630,000 years ago; It is long overdue. Better take out some no-fault insurance.
THE OTHER SHOE DROPS Determinism doesn’t sit well, at first; Its flavor does not quench the thirst, For then it seems we but do as we must, But, we’ll see a way that in this we’ll trust. We wish that our thoughts reflect us today, Our leanings, for it could be no other way. To know, let us turn to the random say To see whatever could make its day. Shifting to this other, neglected foot, What could make the random take root? It would have no cause beneath to explain It events, they becoming of the insane. We could pretend, imitating air-heads, Posting nonsense on purpose in the threads, But that then we meant to do this way, Noting history, too, so random holds not its sway. There’s less problem of a determined Nature Than the same in our individual nature, But, sense isn’t made from random direction That relies on naught beneath its conception. Would we wish it to be any other way? Doing any old thing of chance that may? The random foot then walks but here and there, Not getting anywhere, born from nowhere. The unrooted tree lives magically, unfathomed. Is not then randomness but a fun phantom? The opposite of ‘determined’ is ‘undetermined’, The scarier ghost that’s often never-minded.
And his feet were sore, And he was tired, He came upon an orange grove And he rested And he lay in the cool, And while he rested, he took to himself an orange and tasted it, And it was good. And he felt the earth to his spine, And he asked, and he saw the tree above him, and the stars, And the veins in the leaf, And the light, and the balance. And he saw magnificent perfection, Whereon he thought of himself in balance, And he knew he was. Just open your eyes, And realize, the way it's always been. Just open your mind And you will find The way it's always been. Just open your heart And that's a start. And he thought of those he angered, For he was not a violent man, And he thought of those he hurt For he was not a cruel man And he thought of those he frightened For he was not an evil man, And he understood. He understood himself. Upon this he saw that when he was of anger or knew hurt or felt fear, It was because he was not understanding, And he learned, compassion. And with his eye of compassion. He saw his enemies like unto himself, And he learned love. Then, he was answered. Just open your eyes, And realize, the way it's always been. Just open your mind And you will find The way it's always been. Just open your heart And that's a start. Moody Blues The Balance Listen if you like... http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...rLTuCw&usg=AFQjCNGVQsJ2PSzMZNyn9cViXPMNB7JwDA
The Moody Blues had a lot of great stuff. The Near Decline of Physics Due to Its Undressed Terms The quarks, those constituents of the orgy Playfully bound within the nucleons’ chamber Are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top, The last two once being called beauty and truth; However, when just one of a type was contained It became referred to, say, as a naked beauty, And thus nude tops and bottoms their charms revealed— To ever be in closeness binding, bonding, So, they even tried just u, d, s, c, b and t To prevent some ultimate collapse of physics, But the truth of the flavors beneath the veils Remained as the sheerest vision preferred. So, we have these vibrant dancing ladies: The naked heavyweight top, charming up, And, down, the strange beauty of the raw truth, With a bare bottom just around and behind. They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling, In the universal dance of stunning motion, The polarity sometimes reversed, Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down. And then there are Eden’s many colors, In this flower garden filled with flavors, Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops, And magenta undulations unstopped. Gluons are the bees of the flower beds, Carrying pollen back and forth to bond The many relationships that make This loved world go ‘round as reality. Eyed in views that probe the fundamental, Quarks strangely swirl in and out of sight, Pulsing, throbbing with elemental delight, In and out—the love-made life of eternity. These attractions in the altogether denuded In the buff became the strong force, manifest, That the mother-nature-naked terms exposed To denote the stark beauty of truth uncovered. “Three Quarks for Muster Mark” Naked quarks would really love to go wild and dance, But there’s only a finite amount of energy and chance; So they would spiral out of control, having quite a blast! Such they have been confined within the proton—to last. They’re made bottoms-up; can we see them tops-down, a go-go? No, for the Quantum Censor protects the charm show, Their strange beauty and flavor bound up and down, As the proton is much immune to disturbance around.
The June 30, 1860 Showdown Were we descended from some ape-like creatures? A thousand people sat down to hear the lectures. The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, rose to speak, And while speaking, and into his flow, looked at Huxley, And asked if he’d become attached to apes by way Of his grandmother’s or his grandfather’s recent sway. Huxley turned to his neighbor and whispered plans, “The Lord has delivered him into my hands”, Then rose with a relish and said something, agape, Of the nature “I’d rather claim kinship to an ape Than to someone using his eminence to propound Such unscientific twaddle in a serious scientific forum!” This was an insult to the Bishop’s office and his door, So the proceedings instantly turned into an uproar. Someone ran around holding up a Bible, to exclaim “The Book, the Book!” (Truly, we’ll never be the same.) (The "someone" was the Captain of Darwin's Beagle ship)
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. Someone made a similar but longer poem about turbulence - I.e. something like vortices have lesser whorls ... but I forget it. Does anyone know it?
No, although it sounds familiar, but maybe ad infinitum ends with the Planck size or the quantum uncertainty thing/no-thing.
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Raging hill billy's down the road , Digging up the earth looking for gold Can't get no job for it is told so we make the ground sad and old Exposing the rocks put in a box so little the gain that we sold We must do what we do To feed the soul Consumerism demands it Pay taxes and die Ate all the corn chips have to buy more Get them at the store But welfare says whole grain Or your insane Better dig the ground We will like what we found Ca chin Ca chin Consumerism demands it Pay taxes and die
Speaking of 'gold'… and of fool's gold in another way… THE GOLDEN STREAM In 1865, Hennig Brand thought that gold Could be distilled from human urine, old, Perhaps noting a similarity in color, So, he kept fifty buckets in his cellar. By some method, he converted urine Into a noxious paste of some kind, Then into some translucent waxy substance, But so far there was no gold, and none hence. However, after a time the substance began to glow, And when exposed to the air burst as an inferno. The substance soon became known as phosphorus, But was too costly to make its business prosperous… For an ounce of the flaming stuff sold For way more than the price of gold!
That is a funny story. Great discoveries can be made by foolish thoughts . It has happened time and time again. . The guy that invented rubber like we know it today now that is a bitter sweet story . The poor sucker was driven . Talk about determinism
NEW 9TH PLANET FOUND! Poor Pluto’s been banished to the underworld, Charon rowing him to the land of the forgotten. Schoolchildren petitioned for his return, But he was voted off of the solar island. Memory’s crutch for the order of the planets, Is now just “MVEMJSUN”— Old Pluto tried so darn hard, its position Now even closer to the sun than Neptune’s. Well, many have searched for quite a while for The next planet without any success— There have been hoaxes, theories, and some ghosts; Yet, I have firm proof of another planet. But, first, a review of some poor attempts: “Vulcan” was spotted very close to the sun, And “existed” for about five days, But now is relegated to the Star Trek World. Another “Vulcan”, impossible to see, Being 180 degrees away from Earth, Behind the sun, was seen in the movie “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun”. Could an asteroid like Eris be a planet? Nope, not allowed, although all of the Debris between Mars and Jupiter Could have come from an unstable planet. Nice try, but it’s not out there anymore, And any planets of other solar systems Don’t count, nor does Planet Hollywood Or Daily Planet or any other restaurants. Perhaps there’s another planet way out, Beyond; that may be so, but, no matter, Though it may become the 10th planet, since I have found the newest 9th with no doubt. The 9th planet does follow an orbit Close to Earth’s, ever falling toward the sun— It is right under our nose: It’s the moon! But, wait, you say, it is Earth’s satellite. Our moon is unique in the solar system— It’s not captured by the Earth, but by the sun, It’s orbit being everywhere concave to Sol. (Thanks to Issac Asimov for proving this.) Never does our moon fall away from the sun, For it’s attracted to it about twice as much As it is to the Earth, although the moon and The Earth do form a double planet system That revolves about a common point that Happens to be inside of the Earth.
Darkly Twinkle Little Star Darkly twinkle, little star. I wonder what the fuck you are. Sparkling in the evening sky, Like a great unblinking eye. Could you be a satellite? Checking everything’s alright. Unless its from the C.I.A; But who’s to know and who’s to say? Could alien eyes appraise our world, Jealous of all the resources it holds? Beaming down in the dead of the night, Abducting cows before it gets light. Some say like a Diamond you, Shine on through the midnight blue; Just a burning ball of gas, That makes the stuff of all of us. Ultra 23/2/11
…And back to his old job of supervising Hell. VACATION PLANETS Uranus is quite pleasant compared to Pluto. If you’ve ever had a dog, you know what I mean; However, the under-worlded canine has been Banished from the house of Astro— To reign as the under-world in the Underworld, For it’s much better to reign in Hell Than to be an unwelcome guest in the heavens. Once, I was down on Venus, And the sulfurous emanations Were so repulsive that any gases from Uranus Would have been to me as a breath of fresh air. The gas giant planets’ breadth and width is staggering, And their mooning around is getting out of hand. That leaves Mars as the only other good place— Since Klingons have now appeared On the rings around Uranus.