Poe's 1848 Prose Poem "Eureka" may have intuited the Big Bang and an expanding universe:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/edgar-allan-...
Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
31–40 of 42 posts
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#32I use 6.5 digit calibrated multimeter, precision programmable power supply and programmable load (all from Keysight) to discharge/charge my car's battery:) In total the equipment to do this is almost the cost of the car. As a bonus I get nice chart and precise measurement of battery capacity:) Likewise I have precision data logging laboratory thermometer, with current calibration (to 0.01C) to measure temperature of…
Wrong article?
Haha:) Yes. Not sure how this happened. I inteded to respond to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334223
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd go farther—probably too mean for HN, but this kind of attitude gets a pass on here in part because people are too restrained in slapping down painfully-bad opinions that aren't about technology—and point to the above two comments as illustrating the difference between "literate" as in "can read words" and "literate" as in "at least knows what actually reading looks like, even if not fully capable of it oneself".…
Is art important because someone tells us it's important, did something different, or is it up to the beholder? I'd wager the average american if asked throughout there life would reconcile the fact that EAP was not worth learning about.
Sure, but you'd get the same distribution of answers for 90% of the mathematics anyone learns past about 7th grade. Or almost any other topic in school. The good things we use to introduce kids to good things get shit on a lot, but that's because most people go on not to ever engage with them or anything like them ever again, not because they're bad.
We do that so the kids who catch on and pay attention can understand what good things are, and maybe some of them go on to really dig deep on one or two fields so they can learn more about those good things, and hopefully they paid enough attention during their education that they at least don't think everything else is bad just because they never bothered to follow up on it or engage deeply or because they struggled with it (unlike [thing they think is good]) in school.
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#34I saw a pretty cool Twitter thread pointing out how many people made most of their money from something distinct from what they are known for. Kanye: clothes Foreman: grill Jobs: Pixar? Not sure about the specifics but it’s definitely a common enough phenomenon to be worth noticing.
US Presidents are the peak of this. Presidential salary is currently $400K, the real money is made as a former President. George W. Bush, Clinton, Obama have made incredibly amounts of money since being President.
Bill Clinton left office broke due to legal fees, and there are estimates of $100M net worth.
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#35Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#36I saw a pretty cool Twitter thread pointing out how many people made most of their money from something distinct from what they are known for. Kanye: clothes Foreman: grill Jobs: Pixar? Not sure about the specifics but it’s definitely a common enough phenomenon to be worth noticing.
US Presidents are the peak of this. Presidential salary is currently $400K, the real money is made as a former President. George W. Bush, Clinton, Obama have made incredibly amounts of money since being President. Bill Clinton left office broke due to legal fees, and there are estimates of $100M net worth.
Well, they get paid ridiculous sums to speak at events, but really they're just being paid for an hour or two of their time. (And a favor of some sort). They're among the most well-connected and powerful people in their political parties even after leaving office, and paying them to do things after they leave office is perfectly legal.
This is a little different than Kanye or George Foreman, who are paid mainly based on their brand value. At this point, stamping a mediocre shoe with Kanye's name is the same as stamping a shoe with a Nike swoosh, except the multiplier is higher.
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haha:) Yes. Not sure how this happened. I inteded to respond to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27334223
You clicked reply, then that post in another tab, then submit. Is this easy to engineer around? Yes, but they haven’t.
I keep reading comments that hint at the weird statefullness of hacker news
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is art important because someone tells us it's important, did something different, or is it up to the beholder? I'd wager the average american if asked throughout there life would reconcile the fact that EAP was not worth learning about.
Sure, but you'd get the same distribution of answers for 90% of the mathematics anyone learns past about 7th grade. Or almost any other topic in school. The good things we use to introduce kids to good things get shit on a lot, but that's because most people go on not to ever engage with them or anything like them ever again, not because they're bad. We do that so the kids who catch on and pay attention can understan…
You can apply that same logic towards teaching kids trades or skills. Like forcibly telling kids to learn how to drive a semi because it's the backbone of our infrastructure. Doesn't mean they're gonna do it, but they should be exposed to it.
What I'm talking about is that our education system teaches kids a lot of pointless things, especially in the arts for the sake of thinking it is going to achieve some "third eye" opening greater good somehow. And people like me who decry it as some utter waste of time nonsense end up getting bashed because we should do it. It's just nonsense that does not need to be taught. If a shop-class kid is forced to read Poe, are we really helping him? Forcing him to stay back a semester to write a report on Poe when he is destined to be a welder, is that really necessary? Human civilization has done it for millennia, but now all of a sudden in this modern era students need a broad understanding of the world through the sub-par education system that is in the US?
I'm not buying it. If you can call the US education system "education." More like glorified taxpayer funded babysitting with some basic instructional stuff in between.
Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#39Re: Poe’s best-selling book during his lifetime was a guide to seashells
#40If you’re interested in reading Poe’s non-poetry fiction, I put together all of his short stories and novellas into a free/libre compilation for Standard Ebooks: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe/short-fict... Having said that, I personally prefer the writing of Leonid Andreyev (described as Russia’s answer to Poe). Coincidentally, I’ve put together a short fiction compilation for him too: https://sta…
Thank you for the links. So I take it Andreyev is also gothic fiction or do his similarities to Poe lie in some other aspects?
Andreyev was writing 75 years after Poe, so it’s not exactly the same genre (although remember that Poe, while most famous for gothic horror, also wrote in pretty much any genre, including basically inventing the fictional detective). What they do share though is a finely honed sense of the macabre, and the ineffable nature of reality. If we’re picking influential American authors, then it’s fair to place Andreyev mid-way between Poe and Lovecraft, especially with stories like The Wall[1] or The Red Laugh.[2]
[1] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fict...
[2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fict...