OMG. What the hell do they teach kids these days?
When I was their age, I would have recognized an Edison wax cylinder or an early phone with no dial. It's so sad to me that kids are no longer exposed to historical technology. Don't they even watch Nick at Night (I'm just assuming that's still a thing)?
I bet they also have no idea what a Chesterfield is. ;-)

#7. You think like a socialist. You know how you like to call yourself a dialectical materialist who ascribes to a realpolitik understanding of history as shaped by conflict over material needs? It turns out that this American pastime was actually not first invented by Edison flying a kite over the Potomac, but was originally invented by German socialists!

Then you don't know what capitalism promotes, do you? Money = not wasting time. Ie., what Edison said when he improved the light bulb...

Your video, Mean Comments to Tommy Edison, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Had to see it. I had not realised he had started the distribution of alternating current before hiring Tesla.

Also I now know where cigar smoking Bender comes from in american culture.

Also was awarded the Edison medal - some twist.

*ban

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWn7vq23DkA


*related=

http://videosift.com/video/Edison-Pediatrics-Urgent-Care-Piscataway-Doctors-Express

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASLyXAg__9w

*ban

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASLyXAg__9w


*related=

http://videosift.com/video/Urgent-Care-Edison-NJ-Urgent-Care-Rahway-NJ-Edison-Urgen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWn7vq23DkA

Yes, you're ignored, and I read your comment anyway.

No, in saying "use drugs," I was not "implying cannabis." I said "use drugs" because I meant "use drugs." Rather than trying to interpret or 'read into' what I'm saying, it might help if you responded to my post, and not what you post in your mind on my behalf.

And I will take you up on your 'challenge:' below is a list of ten "highly intelligent" people who have used cocaine (note: at no point did I say "encourages the use of cocaine." I said "use drugs" without becoming addicted, and being able to function), so that you can provide me with 10,000 more** whose lives and families have been destroyed by it. (**And note here, we're talking about individuals whose lives were destroyed by the use of cocaine itself, and not by the pointless drug laws that imprison people for having a mental or emotional condition that provokes "self-medication" as a form of treatment. Nor are we talking about the illegal status of cocaine which, itself, gives rise to violent cartels that function in the shadow of its legal status.)

So, while certainly many of the following list of "highly intelligent" (non-cognitively deficient) and successful "celebrities" may no longer be using cocaine, all of the following have used cocaine and are/were not addicted and function(ed) just fine:

Sigmund Freud
Thomas Edison
Oprah Winfrey
Stephen King
Tim Allen
Hunter S. Thompson
Angelina Jolie
Robert Louis Stevenson
Steven Tyler
Robert Downey, Jr.

There are others (like William Burroughs, Eric Clapton, Grover Cleveland, David Crosby, Arthur Conan Doyle, Isadora Duncan, Ulysses S Grant, Abbie Hoffman, Elton John, King George V, Larry Kudlow, Sir Paul McCartney, & Barack Obama), but I thought I'd stop at 10.

And if you post the 10,000 names of those whose lives and families were destroyed by cocaine (and not by the pointless drug laws or its illegal status) by the end of the week, I'll take your point.

Ya know what, @Trancecoach is right. I could rebut all your points, but you've taken an ideological position that is unsupported by evidence, so clearly this is a waste of my time.

You probably genuinely believe what you've written, despite it being obvious nonsense.

One thing I can't let slide is your last little fantasy about the lone scientist against the establishment. That hasn't been true for a long time, and even then, it was generally religion or business (cf. Edison and Tesla) and not scientific consensus that impeded progress. Most major advances in science have come about by people working together, sharing results and bouncing ideas off each other. In fact, most of the time, the people we credit with great ideas (Newton, Einstein, etc) were only a step ahead of other scientists working toward the same ideas.

Yes, evidence trumps consensus, but scientists are not idiots, and there isn't some lone genius who has understood climate change when everyone else hasn't. If there was, the scientific community would recognise it.

There simply isn't any evidence to support your position that isn't easily dismissed in a few paragraphs. Read http://skepticalscience.com

The whole climate change denial (and no, I won't dignify it by calling it scepticism, that's an insult to scepticism) is marketing.

So I'll leave you, trance and the republicans in your little fantasy world where scientists and environmental campaigners have engaged in a massively profitable (please explain how, still not clear on this one) scheme to fuck up the world economy (because??? reasons, I guess) and the heroic oil companies are going to rescue us from a fate worse than a clean planet.

Meanwhile, I, the scientific community and the other humans that don't believe the earth is flat will accept the reality of climate change and move on.

That's true for a post industrial POV.
When machines already exist, and you just need energy to get things moving.

The energetic concerns of bygone eras were :
Whale oil, and later kerosene. For lighting. (note: back then, a day's work would only buy minutes of light)
Firewood, and later coal. For heating.
Manpower was the only energy user when it came to food production.

Early machines such as the combine were horse drawn, and did not need an energy architecture in place. (ignoring "food" as an energy)

Later machines used steam power, and hence could piggy back on the already existing wood/coal energy architecture (in turn stimulating it to grow larger).

Once the machinery industry was established, and the revenue generation was in place, it was possible to invest in improvements and alternative energies - ultimately leading up to oil burning machinery being common.

In any case, historically, industrialization drove the energy industry. (As it should, why have an industry to produce a product (energy) that isn't needed?)
And industrialization depended on a conducive society. A place where an inventor could own his invention, and could sell it, allowing things that were no more than ideas or garage trinkets to transition into products - which in turn place demand on other resources such as [forms of] energy.

In the past, there was nothing, so everything was build from the ground up. Industries grew out of nothing, they weren't established up front.
Modern times are different, where you have investment capital from entities who's entire existence revolves around investing, and you can front the establishment of an industry in the calculated hope of future demand.
(Granted, lords/aristocrats had a hand in industrial investment. Just not the kind or scale that you can see today.)

What you say applies a bit later, when industrialization was already well under way. Like when Thomas Edison used investment capital to fund power plants and an electrical network, in order to power the first [practical, but not 'first'] light bulb in New York.

-scheherazade

Would you argue that whatever academics say about major world conflicts if they aren't parroting other agreed-upon-by-experts musings could be part of the overall codification of these events in world subconscious and conscious with a view to shaping minds for the next conflict to be orchestrated and implemented? The simple or complex aspects of any sacrificial lump of money and people can always be rendered into the essence of the insanity of the same with a simple and universally-agreed-upon homo-sapient common-sense.
Eveyone thinks 'ol Tom Edison was a goddamn genius and that Chris Columbus wasn't a complete cockbag posing as some ground-breaking explorer as well. What does the tinkerer and and a boat captain have in common? A lot of assholes have written tomes about both of them to deify them. One was an egotistical half-ass and the other a dirty fucking example of a Spaniard working for a cunt whore empire-builder.

ChaosEngine, your lack of any point reads COMPLETELY retarded and it's a not-so-cloaked personal attack at someone much more intellectually honest than yourself.

Also, see Tommy Edison's video on how he uses his MacBook: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzffnbBex6c ...

Above-ground, high-power transmission of energy with arcane technology, not unlike the switch from DC to AC that angered Edison and caused JP Morgan to ambush Westinghouse and cinch-up power for the indefinite future.
Timber and mining concerns wield massive influence in our retarded governments' around the world-Influential assholes whose empires stand to gain from the perpetuity of such back-ass-ward means of providing energy to paying customers work tirelessly to maintain their monopolies.

Anyone who naively believes that the technology does not exist NOW to eliminate the world's network of above-ground aluminum and steel might want to re-visit their knowledge extant of history, and that of the cunts who feed us shit and keep us in the dark.

Your video, EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY - Tesla Vs. Edison, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Damn! John McCain does a pretty good Edison!