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POPSI Am a Liar I began by saying, "I am a liar." But if I am, then you have to negate the sentence. I am in fact a truth teller. But if I'm a truth teller, that means I am in truth a liar.
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POPSLearning from Wasps Meanwhile, most 19th-century books are being eaten away by the chemicals in their paper, while abandoned wasp nests -- well -- they seem to last forever.
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POPSThe Battle of San Jacinto At close range, the two little cannon, drawn by rawhide thongs, were wheeled into position and belched their charges of iron slugs into the enemy barricade. Then the whole line, led by Sherman's men, sprang forward on the run, yelling, "Remember the Alamo!" "Remember Goliad!" All together they opened fire, blazing away practically point-blank at the surprised and panic-stricken Mexicans. They stormed over the breastworks, seized the enemy's artillery, and joined in hand-to-hand combat, emptying their pistols, swinging their guns as clubs, slashing right and left with their knives. Mexicans fell by the scores under the impact of the savage assault.
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POPSWhat Color is the Sun in Space? These effects should add up to make the sun appear, if not totally white, much whiter in space than on the Earth. Incidentally, looking directly at the sun in space is an even worse idea than looking at it here! So, turns out the answer is retina-searing white.
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POPSKarnes' Crowbar - Heroic Account of Texas Revolution Pinned down in the streets of San Antonio in 1835 by Mexican muskets and cannon, Henry Karnes, a 23 year-old Tennessean, led his company by example. The soldados occupying the house had no desire to face such a determined enemy.
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POPSSanta Anna and the Origin of Chewing Gum So began the Adams gum dynasty. The Adams family made the first commercial chicle-based gum in 1871. They went on to create Adams Clove Gum, Chiclets, Blackjack, and more. And what about Santa Ana and Adams? Santa Ana died penniless; Adams died rich. And commercial chewing gum has been a uniquely American gift
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POPSIce Flowers They're also called frost flowers, ice ribbons, ice castles, needle ice, and several other invented names...there isn't a standard term yet.
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POPSHachiko: The Legendary Loyal Akita Every day he would go and look for the figure of Professor Ueno among the returning commuters, leaving only when pangs of hunger forced him to. And he did this day after day, year in and year out. Due to his years spent on the street, he was thin and battle-scarred from fights with other dogs. One of his ears no longer stood up straight, and he was altogether a wretched figure, nothing like the proud, strong creature he had once been. Eventually, at the age of thirteen, in the early hours of March 8,1935, he breathed his last in a Shibuya side street. The total length of time he had waited, pining for his master, was nine years and ten months. His bones were buried in a corner of Professor Ueno's burial plot, so he was finally reunited with the master for whom he had pined for so many years.
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POPSAmericans Fail Civic Literacy Quiz Earning a college degree does little to increase knowledge of America’s history, key texts, and institutions. Only 24% of college graduates know the First Amendment prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Only 54% can correctly identify a basic description of the free enterprise system, in which all Americans participate. I felt bad for getting a B, but some of these results are just pathetic...not really too surprising though.
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POPSForts Crumble Into Trenches Period photographs of Sumter show what appears to be total destruction. Yet it was in fact an impenetrable redoubt. And we're left with a remarkable example of how technology informs us. Masonry was no protection against the new rifled cannons, but pulverized walls were. Southern ingenuity was alert to that lesson. By war's end the South had reinvented defensive fortifications. The old masonry forts lingered another half century, but they never again played any important role in war.
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POPSPlato on Global Warming What is knowledge? A basic philosophical definition is - believing what is true and having sufficient reasons for it. This reveals 3 essential features of the essence of knowledge: belief, justification, and truth. Most proponents of man-made global warming are certainly not lacking belief. I see the problem arising when they have weak justification, thus erroneously connecting belief to truth and labeling it knowledge.
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POPSThe Pigeonhole Principle Do any two people in Houston have the same number of hairs on their heads? Sounds tough to answer. Lining people up. Counting their hair follicles. Let’s take another look at our hair problem. The average head has 150 thousand hair follicles. So we can safely assume there’s no head with more than, say, a million hairs on it. Now let’s imagine we have a collection of holes labeled zero through a million. We’ll take all the residents of Houston and put them in the holes corresponding to the number of hairs on their heads. But Houston has a population of over two million. So by the pigeonhole principle, at least one hole (and probably many) will contain at least two people. We can be certain that at least two people in Houston have the same number of hairs on their heads. And we haven’t counted anything.
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POPSWhy We Love Our Lawns Falk tested his theory by showing various groups worldwide photos of different landscapes, including their own. All groups said they'd prefer to live in savanna-like surroundings, even jungle-dwellers and city folk who'd never seen a savanna or a lawn.
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POPSThe Heart of Monticello And Jefferson's cry of pain was swallowed up in a most remarkable act of rational self-expression. He went back to work on Monticello with the idea that she should come away from royal England, into the lovely American wilderness, and see it.
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POPSClimate of the Carboniferous Period Earth's atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! Understanding Earth's geologic and climate past is important for understanding why our present Earth is the way it is, and what Earth may look like in the future.
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POPSIroquois Blueprint for the U.S. Our constitution has many Iroquois features. Iroquois lawmakers didn't go to war. Civilian and military rule was separate. The Iroquois had no royalty -- no hereditary rule. Their nations could naturalize new citizens. The League didn't just conquer other nations. It could also admit them to membership. We didn't adopt the Iroquois unicameral system. They had only one council. Franklin fought for that. Because he lost, we have both the senate and the house. Franklin also wanted to let soldiers elect their own officers. That's what the Iroquois did. He lost on that one, too. Still, our constitution is a fine piece of engineering design. We looked at the European kingdoms we'd left behind. And we looked at these people who'd governed themselves so well for so long. In the end Canassatego and the Iroquois tipped the scales in shaping our way of life. And we can be very glad they did.
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POPSMargaret Corbin - Soldier for Liberty Life was difficult because of her injury, and in 1779 she received aid from the government...the first woman in the United States to receive pension from Congress. After Congress’s decision, Margaret was included on military rolls until the end of the war. After being discharged, Margaret remained near West Point, known to officials and acquaintances as “Captain Molly”. In 1926, the Daughters of the American Revolution had Margaret’s remains reburied in the West Point military cemetery, becoming the only Revolutionary War soldier to be buried there.
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POPSAncient Greek Music Theory - Modes The Greeks had developed a complex system of relating particular emotional and spiritual characteristics to certain modes (scales). The names for the various modes derived from the names of Greek tribes and peoples, the temperament and emotions of which were said to be characterized by the unique sound of each mode, which included the Ancient Greek subgroups (Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians), one small region in central Greece (Locris), and certain neighboring (non-Greek) peoples from Asia Minor (Lydia, Phrygia). Thus, Dorian modes were "harsh", Phrygian modes "sensual", and so forth.
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POPSHow Anti-Matter Propulsion Works It's not rocket science...at least rockets as we know them. :) So, why haven't we built a matter-antimatter reaction engine? The problem with developing antimatter propulsion is that there is a lack of antimatter existing in the universe. For now, we will have to create our own antimatter. Luckily, there is technology available to create antimatter through the use of high-energy particle colliders, also called "atom smashers." But these high-energy particle accelerators only produce one or two picograms of antiprotons each year. A picogram is a trillionth of a gram. It states that anti-matter propulsion is the most energy efficient propulsion. I suspect that will be true as long as the process of making the anti-matter is itself efficient enough to make it feasible.
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POPSThe First American Patent - Turning Ash Into Gold We don't get the potassium salts we need from wood anymore. But for a long time, Hopkins had put us at the center of a great chemical process industry. So our first patent was one of the great American patents after all.
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POPSThe Incredible Flying Monk Given the geography of the abbey, his landing site, and the account of his flight, to travel for "more than a furlong" (220 yards, 201 metres) he would have had to have been airborne for about 15 seconds.
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POPSShot Tower - Applying Nature to Production Up to then, most shot was cast. That was very labor-intensive. Shot was also made by pouring lead into a sieve over a barrel. That really did give tear-shaped drops. Watts's invention teaches us the two essential elements of good invention. The first is perception. Watts gazed more closely at nature and saw what other people had missed. The other element is simplicity. Others had labored to control the process with their own hands. Watts had the grace to stand aside and let nature do the work for him. The real beauty of this process is that, in the end, there is no human process at all.
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