MetaFilter posts tagged with History and science

"Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan—he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes."

defenestration — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:49:17 -0800

Revisionaries: How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks.

Selected Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

Electric Dragon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 03:05:07 -0800

To celebrate the start of its 350th year, the Royal Society has put online 60 of its most memorable scientific papers. The Royal Society's head of archives, Keith Moore, talks about some of them in an audio slideshow. The papers (warning - they're all PDFs) include: Isaac Newton's New Theory on Light And Colors. (1672) Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's observations of Little Animals in Rainwater. (1677) The Electrical Kite of Benjamin Franklin. (1752) Thomas Young's Wave theory of light. (1802) Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden's gold foil experiment which led to the nuclear model of the atom. (1909)

Where the Scent of Yesterday's Vogue Lives

netbros — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:17:31 -0800

Take your nose on a stroll down memory lane with vintage perfumery. The Vintage Perfume Vault features fragrance reviews and articles on perfume history. Perfume Shrine offers articles on perfumery including essays on the science of fragrance and aroma materials, interviews with perfumers and industry professionals, trend-watching. Inspiration in Perfumery profiles Henri Robert, Andre Fraysse, Ernest Beaux and Edmond Roudnitska. More about olfactory delights from 1000 Fragrances. Looking for that special fragrance to make the evening just right? How about: Dregs | Dirt | Earthworm | Funeral Home | Laundromat | Necco | Pinkitude | Redhead in Bed | Sex on the Beach | Stable | or the ever ubiquitous Play-Doh.

Britain Can Make It!

Miko — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:53:28 -0800

Making the Modern World presents a set of twisty little passages through the history of science and invention, from the eighteenth century to the contemporary era, brought to you by the UK's Science Museum.

A Geek Itinerary

netbros — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:58:14 -0800

Technology innovation will be a large part of late 20th century American history. Now the gearheads can explore the roots of all that geekdom. The Geek's Guide to Seattle is a virtual tour of some of the region’s most interesting and notable technology locations. A Geek's Tour of Silicon Valley hits hotspots there. Don't forget The Tech Museum and the Computer History Museum. Back east, there's Research Triangle Park (pdf) in North Carolina, and The Computing Revolution at the Museum of Science in Boston.

Happy 40th anniversary, mankind.

sexyrobot — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:01:13 -0800

Moon Landing Tapes Found! All the videos you've seen of the first moon landing are crap. Remember, back in the day, video cameras and recorders were two different things. So it went like this: camera on moon sends footage to Australia, where it's recorded on tape (and then those tapes were lost), then downsized onto a smaller monitor, which is filmed by another video camera, uploaded to satellite, and disseminated around the world. America watches it on TV, cheers. Some of this footage is filmed off of a television onto 16mm film. This is what goes into the national archives. Crap. So, the original tapes have been found (spoiler: they never left Australia). So what, right? How good could they be, recorded back in the late 60's and all? Pretty darn good, apparently...seems recording heads were much better than the output available at the time (like playing a Blu-Ray disc on a B&W TV), and several recent projects have shown that it's possible to extract very high resolution data from these old analog tapes. How hi-rez? High enough to see Neil Armstrong's nipples get hard. (be sure to click on that picture) So when can we see this amazing footage? Probably soon.

Ptak's Science Book Blog

Rumple — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:57:27 -0800

The blog associated with Ptak's online science bookstore is an absolutely fascinating, frequently-updated tour through historical, social, and scientific miscellany extracted from unusual books in the collection of the author, John Ptak. To give a flavour of the breadth of the mini-essays on his blog, consider: Maps of Lunar Nothingness Map of Missing People of Central Europe and Russia, 1881 (Both from the thread, Maps of Blank and Missing Things) Women Meat Pioneers (from the thread Impossible Titles) Seeing Renaissance Pillows: a Short Bit on an Unnecessary Topic (from the thread Prints: looking HARD/deeply at) Things People Did Underground (from the thread History of Technology). History of Normalcy, Part 1: "Girls" (from the thread militaria)

400 Years Ago

netbros — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:35:41 -0800

Have you ever wondered what New York was like before it was a city? Find out at The Mannahatta Project, by navigating through the map to discover Manhattan Island and its native wildlife in 1609. “The goal of the Mannahatta Project has never been to return Manhattan to its primeval state. The goal of the project is to discover something new about a place we all know so well, whether we live in New York or see it on television, and, through that discovery, to alter our way of life. New York does not lack for dystopian visions of the future…. But what is the vision of the future that works? Might it lie in Mannahatta, the green heart of New York, and with a new start to history, a few hours before Hudson arrived that sunny afternoon four hundred years ago?”

"Greetings from Idiot America"

zarq — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:20:20 -0800

Charles Pierce, author of the 2005 essay "Greetings from Idiot America" decrying the rise of faith-based anti-intellectualism, has expanded his rant into a full length book: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. (via) Previously on MeFi. (link on that post is defunct) Anti-intellectualism has been around for ages, and has not been restricted to the US. But the American cultural divide was thrust further into the national spotlight during the last election cycle. Further reading: Susan Jacoby's book: The Age of American Unreason (interview on left-wing blog Alternet here,) and 1964's Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. Pierce appears regularly on NPR's Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!, and is a feature writer for Esquire, Slate, The American Prospect and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, usually on sports. He's also the author of several books, including Hard to Forget: An Alzheimer's Story.

A Moment in Time

nola — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:53:18 -0800

AronRa has done some really nice YouTube vids on science (previously). In this latest vlog An Archaeological Moment in Time, he take(s) a look at how different societies are advancing at different rates on the same date in the distant past.

Culture & Barbarism

Dumsnill — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:25:40 -0800

Metaphysics in a Time of Terrorism. (via)

I Wouldn't Recommend Eating the Cookies at this 12 Step Meeting

vertigo25 — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:15:19 -0800

Polio: A Virus’ Struggle is a Graphic Novella by James Weldon. When we eradicate a disease, do we ever think about how it may effect the disease? Learn all about the history of Poliomyelitis, as he tells his story to the group.

SpaceTime TV: Free Videos on Heaps of Topics

Effigy2000 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:37:42 -0800

SpaceTimeTV collects and lets you watch all the best educational videos online from full length documentaries (such as the 50 minute long Is There Life on Mars) to short video clips such as this one on glaciers and global warming. There are hundreds of videos on topics including history, space, technology, and nature.

Screaming Mummies!

amyms — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:26:54 -0800

Why do mummies scream? Are screaming mummies really testaments to horrific deaths? Or are they the result of natural processes, botched or ad hoc mummification jobs, or the depredations of tomb robbers? Archaeology Online examines the science and history behind the gape-mouthed "masks of agony" seen on some mummies, and explores their portrayal in entertainment and pop culture. The article includes lots of interesting and informative additional links.

A Museum of Living History

netbros — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 07:59:41 -0800

The Academy of Achievement brings students face-to-face with the extraordinary leaders, thinkers and pioneers who have shaped our world. Through profiles, biographies, and interviews Achievers in The Arts, Business, Public Service, Science, and Sports teach us how the Academy's core values of passion, vision, preparation, courage, perseverance, and integrity can, and will, lead to success. Includes a library of podcasts that are excerpts from symposium presentations from the Academy's international summits. Biographies from the Academy of Achievement have been linked on MetaFilter previously (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), but the full site has not been featured.

Gobekli Tepe

homunculus — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:30:10 -0800

Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? "Predating Stonehenge by 6,000 years, Turkey's stunning Gobekli Tepe upends the conventional view of the rise of civilization."

How We Evolve

homunculus — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:16:29 -0800

How We Evolve: "A growing number of scientists argue that human culture itself has become the foremost agent of biological change, making us — for the past 10,000 years or so — the inadvertent architects of our own future selves." Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution (previously). International HapMap Project (previously). The Genographic Project (previously).

(Internetworking Frequency, 2.4 gigacycles.)

TheOnlyCoolTim — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:36:35 -0800

The Early Television Foundation and Museum Website covers the nascent days of the nation's pastime, with interesting items like mechanical TVs and programming schedules from 1939.

Mayan Muons and Unmapped Rooms

homunculus — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:34:04 -0800

Ghost Particles & Pyramids: How physicists and archaeologists “see” inside ancient monuments.

Al-Jazari's Elephant Clock and other Islamic Inventions

Kattullus — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:14:54 -0800

Al-Jazari is the best-known Islamic inventor of the Middle Ages, famous for his waterclocks and automata. The wonderful History of Science and Technology in Islam has articles on him as well as other subjects. A medieval manuscript of Al-Jazari's masterwork, a book generally known in English as either Book of Knowledge of Mechanical Devices, can be perused in its entirety in flash form. It includes 174 illustrations. If you want to see working copies of his most famous automaton, the Elephant Clock, you can go either to the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai (Flickr pictures), the Musée d'Horlogerie du Locle in Switzerland (Cabinet of Wonders post about visiting the museum) or Institute for the History of Arab-Islamic Science in Frankfurt (article about the institute from a feature in Saudi Aramco World magazine called Rediscovering Arabic Science).

"The simplest example of the truly complex"

amyms — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:57:25 -0800

Anything but clear. It is well known that panes of stained glass in old European churches are thicker at the bottom because glass is a slow-moving liquid that flows downward over centuries. Well known, yes, but long known to be wrong. Scientists still disagree about the nature of glass, and researchers continue to try to understand its dual personality . Is Glass Liquid or Solid? Glass: Liquid or Solid - Science vs. an Urban Legend Statistical Calculation and Development of Glass Properties A Brief History of Glass More Glass History Links

Encyclopedia of Greece, from ancient times to the modern day, focusing on science and technology

Kattullus — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 06:21:23 -0800

Hellenica is an encyclopedia of Greek culture, from classical Hellas, through the Byzantine Empire until the modern day, though its focus is on antiquity and especially the science and technology of Ancient Greece. Featuring technical diagrams and explications, there's no better site if you seek information on gigantic galleys, now obscure great Greek mathematicians, the last still working Ancient lighthouse and gears and how they were used by Archimedes and other ancients. This is not to denigrate other sections of the site, such as the page on the Olympics (including a Google Map of the site of the games), biographies of ancient, Byzantine and modern Greeks, the warring and healing of the Byzantines or the overview of Greek literature, taking in antiquity, the medieval era and modern times. That said, Hellenica is at its finest when treating science and technology.

"The great man's brain may need some downtime."

amyms — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:55:47 -0800

Dinner With Darwin. Scientists from various disciplines weigh in on what kind of dinner conversation they envision themselves having with Charles Darwin. Via.

Physics milestones of the past 50 years

Wolfdog — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:28:29 -0800

Physical Review Letters' 50th anniversary retrospective promises to be an interesting survey of the physics landscape for the past half-century.

The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn

DV8 2XL — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 12:23:06 -0800

The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need to Learn Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be working for environmental improvements lack an understanding of a few basic concepts which are absolutely critical to accomplishing anything. The idea that it is nessisary or honorable to make sacrifices to save this planet are overly simplistic and lack a true understanding of the forces at work. To use a phrase I have come to like, they are “Not even wrong.”