When inventor Thomas Edison died in 1931, his friend Henry Ford captured his last dying breath in a bottle.

>> ^jerryku:
I'm not surprised that so few are Republican (Einstein was a Communist, and many of Oppenheimer's relatives were, too), but I wonder how many today are Libertarian-types, since so many identify as independents?
And how many are pro-democracy? I would argue that science and democracy don't really work together well. For one thing, scientists are very smart, while the majority of the human race is probably embarrassingly foolish in their eyes. So are scientists (elite eggheads) really in favor of having the unwashed masses rule the world? I gotta wonder.
A scientist libertarian party guy makes sense to me though. Free market stuff is like a form of social darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Evolution. Science. Brutal, cold, efficient, and without any silly Bible or Quran to teach hippie whatever egalitarian "love your neighbor" principles that are in there.
A scientist fascist makes sense to me, too.
I guess a scientist Communist (which was VERY popular in the past) actually makes the least amount of sense to me. The only part that makes sense is the tenet of Communism that opposes faith in God. If high #s of scientists are not religious, then I can see the appeal of Communism. But all the other aspects of Communism, which is really based on the idea of majority rule ("The People!"), seems to go against what scientists would favor. Then again, I guess convincing the world that there was no afterlife after a nuclear world-destroying war.. would be the most important thing to do for the time being. Kinda like an Ozzymandias from The Watchmen type thing.




Maybe scientists are elite egg heads, but you know who else were also elite eggheads? Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Dr. Salk, Neil Armstrong. It was American eggheads that led the way to map the human genome. Nearly everyone on tonight’s shuttle launch is a science/math geek, and all but two are American. I for one am proud that my country has produced so many eggheads.

Science has done very well under democracy, and amazingly well under American democracy. In our brief history, American scientists (or at least scientists that came to and did their best work while in America [i.e. Nikola Tesla, Alexander Bell, Wernher von Braun]) have given the world the greatest number of advances in science, medicine and technology of the modern era. It makes totally sense; a free society, where ideas and information can be easily exchanged, coupled with a healthy amount of capital from the private sector to fund research is the best environment for scientific advances.

Just because a person is not religious does not mean they would automatically find communism attractive. If everyone that didn’t believe in a god were also a communist, communism would be a lot more successful than it is. I would venture to say that a disbelief in a god is more likely to happen in the above-mentioned free and open societies as opposed to one where everyone are told what to think. Communism (at least as in the form of China, Cuba, North Korea and the USSR) is not a “majority rule” government, but one where a small, self appointed, insular group at the very top controls everything. Majority rule is, however, a tenet of democracy.

Your video, Thomas Edison records silent movie of his friend doing bicycle tricks (1899), has made it into your personal Highest Rated Videos listing. Congratulations on a job well done. For you contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^Autarchic:
"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
--Thomas Edison


Nice quote!

^It's definitely obsessive, but I don't find such an obsession to be problematic. If you're obsession results in your designing and creating a bevy of complex, quality stuff, it could easily lead to a lifetime career in creating cool shit.

Remember, Thomas Edison's middle name was Alva.

Cute video, but the some "facts" presented are nothing but fabrications and urban legends.

e.g.- Walt Disney NEVER worked as a creative asset for any newspaper. Although, he delivered the Kansas City Star and Times for his father's paper route when he was a child, Disney was never hired by a newspaper as a cartoonist. - there were no openings.

e.g - Thomas Edison once said that a teacher considered him "addled". The alleged note to his mother Nancy saying he is "too stupid to learn" is an imaginary figment.

e.g - (The Great Moments with) Abraham Lincoln was first elected to public office at the age of 24, became a member of the bar at 28, after teaching himself law, after 8 years as a State Rep. became a US Rep at age 36. Some failure.

e.g - Hilary & the Donald. Well, that stuff is true.

"Thomas Edison wasn't the first person to record sound."

No, but he was apparently the first person to figure out how to record sound and play it back.

Well, I think the trolly problem is perfect for engineering. It's specifically addressed in engineering ethics. People are happier to use technology to kill. It's technology relevant. It's a moral dilemma, but one with a technological context. To me, that's one of the points of it being harder to push a person that a button. But it's your video, and I wouldn't overrule you. (I never took anything out of any channel so I could put it in engineering, but there was plenty of room in the trolly video).

I have a special button to throw things OUT of my channel, but none to put it in that I know of.

All those sound engineering relevant to me. I just got tired of puting htings in...

And thanks for the congrat.


In reply to this comment by jonny:
In reply to this comment by oxdottir:
*engineering

I took the trolley problem vid out of engineering since it doesn't really have any engineering connection. There's not even supposed to be one on the train. Seriously, though, it's a moral dilemma question in the context of a psychology experiment.

I've added some others though - the killacycle vid, the Kurzweil TED talk, and the space shuttle take-off. Obviously, if they don't belong, go ahead and knock them out.

There's a few others I wasn't sure about:

Coyote definitely knows the agony of engineering
Pinky's discussion of Edison and AC (engineering ethics?)
cool software engineering in the SIGGRAPH clip

Oh, and I think there's supposed to be a special button for channel owners to include/exclude vids from their channel, without having to use an invocation.

Congrats on the diamond and your new channel! It definitely fills the void left when the tech collective went away.

In reply to this comment by oxdottir:
*engineering

I took the trolley problem vid out of engineering since it doesn't really have any engineering connection. There's not even supposed to be one on the train. Seriously, though, it's a moral dilemma question in the context of a psychology experiment.

I've added some others though - the killacycle vid, the Kurzweil TED talk, and the space shuttle take-off. Obviously, if they don't belong, go ahead and knock them out.

There's a few others I wasn't sure about:

Coyote definitely knows the agony of engineering
Pinky's discussion of Edison and AC (engineering ethics?)
cool software engineering in the SIGGRAPH clip

Oh, and I think there's supposed to be a special button for channel owners to include/exclude vids from their channel, without having to use an invocation.

Congrats on the diamond and your new channel! It definitely fills the void left when the tech collective went away.

What else can the people expect? They been asleep and have let the fox guard the hen house! They get the kind of government they deserve.

"Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."

--Thomas Edison

Even if it may be 'scurrilous', I absolutely thinks it qualifies for the former Spanning Time.

In reply to this comment by jonny:
hi - I was going through my published vids to update the channels, and wondered if this commentary on Edison qualified for the History Channel. What do you think?

hi - I was going through my published vids to update the channels, and wondered if this commentary on Edison qualified for the History Channel. What do you think?

down vote for Thomas Edison, and HamiltonHabs32

Some other wonderful things about Tom you may not know....


1887 - Edison conducts demonstration in West Orange, New Jersey, in which he kills large numbers of
cats and dogs by luring the animals onto a metal plate wired to a 1,000 volt AC generator. The press
describes these proceedings in detail.

1887 - Edison publishes pamphlet A Warning, comparing AC and DC, including of AC victims. (because Tesla was showing him up....)

...and then, later...(on what happens to be my own freekin' B-day)
June 4, 1888 - New York Legislature passes Chapter 489 of Laws of New York of 1888 establishing
electrocution as the state's method of execution. Medico-Legal Society of New York is designated to
recommend how to implement new law.


soo. upvote for some rollicking footage, taken by the inventor of such bullshit as, the light bulb, the eye-poppin'-out-wathcer's-society-of America, and the "Charge the World For Energy" invention of, power and money, and ego.......oh wait, Thomas Edison was a great innovator, and humanitarian......."Fuck Thomas Edison!", he and his cronies are why we pay for electricity now.....instead of gathering it to us from the ether.......god bless Nikola Tesla...(maybe god will let him put OPEC in a chair later........

This is the one the thief Thomas Edison stole and brought to America...giving not one dime to Méliès.