Slashdot Mirror
Periodic Table Gets a New, Unnamed Element
koavf writes "More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of 'super-heavy' element 112, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery, but it has yet to be named. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has temporarily named the element ununbium, as 'ununbi' means 'one one two' in Latin; but the team now has the task of proposing its official name." Slashdotium? Taconium? Man, I shoulda gone into science so I could have named something sweet that kids have to memorize in classes.
Colbertium
Bank on it...
Illudium
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Unobtainium
The natural abbreviation for Plutonium is Pl, which was free since Platinum uses Pt. One of the discoverers, Glenn Seaborg, thought it would be funny to submit it with the abbreviation Pu. He figured the joke would be noticed and the abbreviation changed, but it never happened.
Due to the atomic number 112 I recommend Fibonaccium, after the Fibonacci sequence which adds the 2 preceding numbers to find the next in sequence.
They've found the Jumbonium that I've misplaced!
We could name it Jumbonium!
I just pooped your party.
In honor of the U.S. President who did so much to advance our respect for science.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Or maybe etherium.
uberium.
SteveJobbsium.
Linuxium
novaium
or just stuff.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Upsidaisium. Or wonderflonium.
Such a crappy element.
Or maybe how about Moronium
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
The new element will be named Jumbonion, of course.
We've just received word that the Oval Office has mandated the new element be called "Obamanium." That whole voting thing is so-o-o-o-o-o 2008 Democratic Republic...
Why dont you say what you really mean?
It's going to be something like: BankofAmericaElementium
A nucleus with a half-life measured in milliseconds or smaller doesn't seem to qualify, at least in my sort of language-to-thought translator, as really as an "element". That word carries with it the connotation of actual material existence which seems incompatible with its inability to actually exist for any period of time on the human scale.
I freely admit this is a quibble, but this sort of thing bugs me. Yes, IAAP and this rant has no bearing whatsoever on the scientific merits of the research (not my field, so I'll pass on that) and is just about the naming.
The most useful element.
hypnotoadium
Not available anywhere!
Why dont you say what you really mean?
Fine, I'm a little bit better than the rest of you slackers.
Happy now?
"Element formerly known as ununb"i. And give it some funky symbol
rewriting history since 2109
make it a sequel how about Oxygen2 Silicon 2.0 Plutonium 4: This Time its Personal
or maybe Farnsworthium? Herbertium?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
in a large hall previously devoted to gymnastics
so i propose gymnasium, auditorium, or symposium
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
By contrast, I see almost nothing from any African state. Africans contributed almost nothing to human technical achievement. (The father of Barack Hussein Obama is a Kenyan. In Kenya, arresting and burning supposed witches is still a common occurrence.)
Does anyone know why the Germans outperform? I define "German" to include "German Jews".
In Europe, the general emergency call number is 112. I also like Gentoo.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"Bi" comes from "bis", which is Latin for "twice". "Un" by itself doesn't really mean anything, but can be used as a prefix as in "undeviginti", meaning nineteen. "One" is "unus", "una" or "unum", depending on the gender. I suppose "centesimusduodecimium" would be a bit too complicated? (from "centesimus duodecimus", meaning "the hundred and twelfth")
Trajanium :
As in 112 A.D. the emperor of Rome was Trajan.
And under his rule, Roman Empire reached his maximum extent (113 A.D.)
Or will this be more suited for the next element (113), the ununtrium ?
Seriously, just imagine: "...Meitnerium, Darmstadtium, Roentgerium and... Frank"
Unununium was such an awesome name, why did they have to rename it something stupid like roentgenium? What does that mean anyway? Does it mean it creates rodents?
From the root Latin word:
ignotus : unknown, obscure, ignorant, ignoble
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Servasium...
Damn.. there goes my karma. T_T
Well, it is unnamed, right?
Mod parent up. That is a great idea. I was told l'Hopital didn't invent that theorem, but paid for it. The actual story is a little more complicated, but it's the same idea.
I suppose they should reserve the right to refuse people bid's for controversial or vulgar names, but would you honestly care if it got named Gatesium or Hiltonium? I can think of millions of reasons not to care.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
How about guantuelv, easy to remember :)
here ends what some neis
Lehrerium!
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT
Lipidium
My webcomic
Name it Hypnotodium
Goatsecxium
All the heavy unstable elements already have names derived from their atomic mass, so 112 would be Ununbium
Its also slap bang in the middle of the island of stability most heavy elements are too unstable to last before they decay into smaller elements. 112 Has a half life of 29 seconds, which isnt too bad considering 115 has a half life of 88ms.
I can't think of anything witty right now
"Un" by itself doesn't really mean anything, but can be used as a prefix
Hundredandtwelvium
Stickinthemudium
Apart from BEER, humanity itself, controlled fire, language (probably), sterilisation of food and water, the world's tallest building (a pyramid) until recently, the roots of most modern popular music genres, airmail (by homing pigeon), the pendulum, the tunnel boring machine, stone tools, knives, pigments, burial, housing, bread, plywood, cement, river boats, sutures, the aqueduct, candles, glass, the water clock, toothpaste, metal block printing, coffee, the astrolabe, the ventilator, explosive gunpowder, the cannon, handguns, cartridges, heart transplants, the CAT scanner, ....
You mean, apart for all that?
...since it's heavy.
Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. He very clearly outlines why development was accelerated in some regions and not others.
mootium
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html
retarded fanbases with way too much time to mindlessly endlessly vote are not unique to the Colbert Report
come to think of it, then perhaps AmericanIdolium is an even more appropriate name choice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to suggest "Taminium" or "Luciferium", and link to an old journal entry that describes her, but I'd be modded "troll", especially if I linked to the journal titled "NSFW" that describes her. Nobody but my journal's readers would have gotten the joke.
So I'll instead suggest "Uribeum".>
Free Martian Whores!
CowboyNealium (I'ts a heavy element, right?)
Wonderflonium?
The Element Formerly Known as Ununbium ?
Ubuntium
What's interesting about this kind of thing is that it's getting very close to the island of stability, which is a predicted set of heavy elements that would be stable with respect to fission. What they made is Z=112 (number of protons) and N=165 (number of neutrons), which is a little on the neutron-deficient side of the island in the WP article's chart. If you want to go nuts with far-future scientific extrapolation, it's conceivable that if you could make the isotopes on the actual island of stability, you could actually have macroscopic quantities of the stuff. It would probably be extremely susceptible to neutron-induced fission, so you could probably make a nuclear bomb the size of a pencil eraser. Arms control would get really tough! So maybe it's fortunate that there are extremely difficult technical problems to be solved before we can get there.
To a nuclear physicist, what's more interesting about this kind of thing is that it's a sensitive test of models of nuclear forces and models of the many-body problem. The strong nuclear force isn't like gravity and electromagnetism, which are simple 1/r^2 forces; it doesn't have simple mathematical behavior, and all we have are approximations to its behavior. Also, many-body problems -- even classical many-body problems -- are really tough.
Find free books.
I hate to inform you, but the days of memorizing periodic tables are gone. I have recently taken some college chemistry classes and the high numbered elements are never mentioned outside of general properties they all have in common.
... bolonium.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Well since there is Uranium, neptunium and plutonium, why not call this one Jupiterium
And where do you think Germans came from? The cradle of civilization maybe? Where is that again?
What about using a recursive acronym? It would be the first time ever for an element.
isn't it obvious?
Tiberium!
Now its just a matter of time before the rise of nod.
You speak London? I speak London very best.
Of course, we should see if it is indeed snacktacular first.
Or maybe "passwordusage" ;)
here ends what some neis
Cause Jaymz is Heavy !!
yeah
Ptable.com has had this one for a decade. What gives?
Considering it is another one of these silly artificially created elements that only exist under certain lab conditions and only then for fractions of a second before they decay and are gone. Tp or Te I think.
Tiberium.
Sigurdium.
think about time dilation of one of these elements as it enters some fantastically acceleration, such as near a black hole. the element's "wall clock" half life would be drastically expanded, and you would see it quite well, perhaps as seconds, or hours, or days...
also think about a fly. to them time passes differently than for you and me.
so just in case you are ever transformed into a fly, and you are sitting next to a black hole in a magic bubble looking at someone drop huge blobs of super-elements into it, remember... you want to have names for all those things. not just silly numbers.
In that case it's quite clear what to call it: Anonymium
I can't answer the "Germans vs everyone else" question, but as for Africa, it's theorized that the closer to the equator a country is, the less innovative it is. Maybe that hot sun makes people want to sleep through the day and not invent stuff.
Hofmania (or -um, if you insist). After Professor Hofmann, of course.
Steven Colbert will undoubtedly harness the Colbert bump on the naming of this element. So far he's had a newly discovered spider and the new space station module named after him..
Goatsecxium.
No good? OK, how about happyfunium? Do not taunt happyfunium!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
mootonium, after the Time Mag most Influential man of the year.
tg*l
hayo
emos
*eut
The name, of course, needs to be
AWESOMEITE
Overheard at an atomic energy conference somewhen in the future...
"Sorry, did you say the hydrogen fuses with Colbertium, or cold barium?"
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Hasselhoffium?
They should call it Tylium.
Germans discovered it, so it will be called Nazium. I keed! I keed!
How ya like dat?
And your point is .... ?
Computer processors come from silicon, but you can't surf for porn with a bucket of sand or a block of quartz.
you can fit a lot of information into a little space with chinese writing.
wonderflonium - it's the logical choice... (do not bounce)
And where do you think Germans came from? The cradle of civilization maybe? Where is that again?
Belgium.
Dave
Then read "Carnage and Culture" by Victor Hanson, to find out why Diamond is full of it.
Ford invented MASS PRODUCTION of cars but not the car itself. There were many previous example of the "car" before Ford.
Watch it!! This isn't a Serious Screenplay.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
How about Semperubisububium
Always wear under wear
Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
I am a senior in chemistry. I have taken all the chemistry courses, including inorganic chemistry. With Inorganic chemistry the lowest elements on the periodic table e used were the 2nd row, occasionally a third row element. We by no means have to memorize them. I do know some teachers of gen. chem. that require students to memorize the first 16. Some may even want the first 36. Asking to memorize the entire periodic table is kind of crazy, since most of the higher elements nobody will ever use unless they decide to work for CERN or some other extremely specialized field of chemistry.
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
I can see the sub-story: "US schools requiring bailout to support printing of new periodic tables."
Thomas Sowell wrote "Ethnic America", exploring why different ethnic groups do better or worse than others in the American milieu, but he also discusses different ethnic groups and cultures around the world. For instance, Jews tended to be more successful in urban-type jobs (clerks, lawyers, educators, etc.) than rural, e.g. farming. Jews newly immigrating to the US and still living in tenements tended to have the same rates of public library use as native-born middle class Americans. They were in the slums, but the slums were not in them. Chinese, Arabs, Persians, and Indians who emigrate tend to be in merchant or small businessman class wherever they end up, even if they were not merchants back home. Could have to do with the temperament of someone who is willing to leave hearth,home and the familiar and take on the responsibilities of a new, different society. Germany was long known as the "land of poets and philosophers", until the rise of Nazism and it was done in by its poets and philosophers.
.. a conundrium.
Everyone knows that the most useful element is Ducttapium!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Your list of German achievements is not really that impressive in the scope of history. Lets break it down:
The first car. I think a frenchman was actually the first, but the real innovation was Henry Ford's mass production assembly line, not the automobile itself.
Calculus. Leibniz and Newton are not co-inventors - not really anyway. Basically they both built on work done by others including al-Haythem and other decidedly non-German mathematicians. The difference is that Newton did something truly amazing (and innovative) with it.
Quantum physics. As you say 'developed part of the foundation.' Quantum theory developed gradually, with contributions of a lot of people from a lot of places. It was not like Einstein's theory of relativity, which was a real breakthrough (although it too relied on the field equations of Maxwell (an Englishman) and other past theories. Einstein was from Austria by the way.
So all your examples are sort of 'me too' or 'i helped out' innovations. You would be better off to look at the French (Curie, Pasteur, or even Descartes). Or the English (Darwin, Newton). Or the Italians (Galileo, Marconi, etc.). And I am just picking a few of the bigs from Europe (since I am not readily familiar with the history of science outside the western world - my bad).
And lets not forget the Americans. There is no ethnic identity associated with being American, but one could argue that is their strength - the mixing together of scientists who hail from all parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds and ways of thinking about life the universe and everything.
So to bring it down to your level, what have the Germans really innovated, uniquely and on their own? How to start (and loose) two world wars? How to best gas Jewish people?
But seriously, the Germans have made great contributions to science and technology. That can not be ignored. But not more than many other nations. They are about par for the course.
Watch it!! This isn't a Serious Screenplay.
Damn, I must have buried that at least 5 layers deep!
Dave
Someone get rid of the troll mod on this. It's not an unreasonable question, and it's asked in about the most politically correct language manageable for such a charged issue.
The truth is that the scientific and technical advances don't come at random, but are dependent on a range of societal factors. China has one of the largest populations of any countries on earth, yet many much smaller countries produce far more scientific advances per capita. This is clearly not a genetic issue - the Chinese are dramatically disproportionately represented in the sciences in the US, but their society isn't managed in a way that's conducive to training the independent thinking skills needed to do the best science. Go back a few centuries though, and China was the most sophisticated and advanced civilization in the world.
I'm not passing value judgements here, every civilization has it's own strengths and weaknesses, but the sort of mindless PC attitude that mods such a reasonable and polite question as trolling really shouldn't be tolerated.
The parent post (and probably mine as well) could very reasonably be modded off-topic however!
Slashdotium is a terrible idea. Most scientists studying it won't even bother to take measurements. They'll just assume they know what the results will be and they'll write pages and pages of opinions on it.
Flubber.
Voldamortium - for the element that could not be named.
Then you can tell people that running Linux is an elemental experience. :)
Tweeks
If they allow the public to weigh in on it's naming they should call it Gnutonium.
I love how a vaguely racist troll turns into a literary debate :)
I have read Guns, Germs and Steel and found Diamond's arguments pretty compelling; I have not heard of Carnage and Culture but I will give it a brief peruse and see if its worth a read.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I feel very strongly that the heaviest element should always be known as yourmomium.
China seems a good environment for scientists (so long as they don't talk back to the party of course) - the cultural revolution is long over. You look at their population, 4 times the size of the US, and note that they have fewer scientific achievements. However, look at their GDP - slightly less than that of Spain - and note that they have manned space flight.
Now, whether or not China is a good environment for free expression, fair treatment in the workplace, opportunity for personal advancement, and not being run over by tanks - that is mostly a separate question.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Hey, just because it's got nothing to do with me is no reason they shouldn't name it after me, is it? Well, they should do it anyway.
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
This stuff is so useful, that it can be used with any experiment to obtain the results you want.
So let's call 112 UnObtainium so we can finally do all those experiments.
All jokes aside now... what on earth is the use of such a super-heavy element? And why did they strive to create it - just to prove they could?
blog.idigitall.com
In light of the amount of suffering taking place in the world : Thiswasmoreimportantium
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
First, most research is related to advertising. Big Pharma?
Second, you can deny people the right to bid on stupid names. You don't want reebokium, don't let them bid on that name.
Third, you are not selling your soul/child/arm...
Now, I could hear an argument about how it is a priceless thing and so on. But having an element named something you want it to be won't immortalize you. Rutherfordium doesn't make Rutherford immortal. In fact, it probably doesn't even introduce the man to many people who wouldn't already know his name.
But, if you were so purely interested in science and stuff as you claim. Then take the money and do some more research advancing human knowledge instead of advancing your own ego.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Would these be the starving ones? Or the ones dying of disease?
Yesterday I had mod points.
Both the airport and the headquarters were renamed in 1998, when Bill Clinton was still president.
..one step closer to plasma cannons and antigravity engines.
This is a very expensive to create, very unstable material. Obviously, it should be called Vistaonium.
The beauty is that we have a natural way to refer to isotopes of it: Vistaonium-home, Vistaonium-business, Vistaonium-premium, Vistaonium-lite, etc.
When we start hitting the island of stability and get stuff that will hang together, we can name it Gnuonium.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I would like the right to name the element to goto the highest bidder and all proceeds of the auction to goto charity. See the auction at http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220432828283
-- INTJ Geek Blog http://www.intjgeek.com
I think it's the environment. Daily life is simply more difficult (dense jungle, exotic diseases, empty deserts), so they didn't have a lot of free time to organize and develop civilization (Egypt is an exception, but they were insulated from the rest of the continent by a desert)
How about Shelium?
Nevergonagiveyouupium
somebody had to say it
The part of my comment felt a little off to me too. You're probably right that GDP is at least as important a factor as anything else here. Still, the main thing I wanted to get across was that societal factors influence technological advance, and it's certainly the case that there are reasons the per capita GDP is so low in China.
Personally, I'm inclined to think that lack of freedom of expression is a huge contributing factor to poor GDP since it allows for the sort of corruption which cripples economic efficiency, and also gives free reign to nepotism and cronyism which make it much more difficult for competent individuals to get into positions of power.
After they named one element they discovered -Hassium- after the state where they are, and another -Darmstadtium- after their city, why not another after a castle nearby -Frankensteinium-
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
but can some one tell me, is this something that can possibly naturally occur? and if so, if were in abundance, would it still decay as rapidly.
what reacts with zinc or lead that might explode?
You hear lots of people touting Africa as the "cradle of mankind" and rhetorical crap like that. But if humanity did indeed start there, then why oh why did Africa amount to nothing? They had humans first, they had the head start.
:)
Okay, so then we go on to the suggestion that maybe the living conditions there were harsh hence people put little emphasis on scientific progress and instead opted to just survive. I call bullshit. Look at the middle east, look at how harsh they are, yet they've made countless advances. Same goes with Europe. Europe's environment can be much harsher than in Africa. In fact, I think a harsh environment is exactly why civilization advanced and prospered everywhere but Africa. African's had it easy, and thus there was no pressure for them to make technological advances. Sure this isn't always the case for all other emergent civilizations, but I think the harsh environment was a spark none the less.
Okay, so lots of places in Africa are developed now, no more threat of "predators and oh so harsh conditions". Yet African's are suffering now. They have high mortality rates, low literacy rates, and generally reliant on the helping hand of "wealthy nations". Wait, the reason they're not performing well in science now is because of colonialism, duh! How convenient for them to have such a wonderful excuse. The evil whites (and Arabs, don't forget their slave trade which in fact started before the European one) have pushed us into poverty, they say.
Every step of the way they have excuses and more excuses. Well I don't want excuses as answers to my questions. I valid explanations, with reasoning behind them.
I would have posted this to your parent, but somehow I think you're more qualified to argue with me
Are you guys kidding me?
That's Dolemite, baby!
BiteMyShinyMetalAssium
Atomare-Struktur-Mit-HundertzwÃlf-Protonen-Und- Elektronen-Die-Zeigt-dass-Deutschland-Ist-Wissenschaftlich-Besser-Als-Alle-Anderen-Nationen-Der-Welt,-Nehmen-Sie-Sich-Also-Dass Francium!
(Nuclear-Structure With 112 protons & electrons That showsthat Germany Is Scientifically better than any other nation in the world, so take that Francium! note: quite probably just gibberish in German, as it has been babelfished ;)
Insert witty sig here.
What's interesting to me is that the joke actually started out with the horrible word being 'fuck' and Adams was forced to change it by his editors, censoring and watering down his joke about censorship. To me, the joke works better with 'Belgium' as the outlawed word because it points out how arbitrary and meaningless our definition of curse words are.
c'mon
Stadium?
God spoke to me.
Well, first of all, I haven't read "Carnage and Culture". But I just looked at the Amazon summary, and I don't think it refutes "Guns, Germs, and Steel" at all.
First of all, Europeans got their asses handed to them from about 300CE to the 1480s. The Germans sacked Rome again and again, so viciously that our word "Vandal" comes from the name of one of the Germanic tribes involved. A few hundred years after the Western Empire finally collapsed, the Muslims handily conquered the Iberian Peninsula (on which Spain and Portugal reside today) and reduced the Byzantine Empire to a remnant centered on Constantinople (tellingly, Istanbul today). The only two things that stopped Muslims overrunning Europe were:
This bare survival doesn't indicate European military superiority. Instead, it reveal a fundamental weakness that nearly led to the end of our civilization.
Europeans armies weren't anything special until the Renaissance. Don't forget how we were utterly defeated time and again in the Crusades, or how Western European armies decided to sack Constantinople (greatly weakening the only thing between the Islamic world and Western Europe) because the holy land was too tough. The Chinese had a great professional military as well, and don't forget where Sun Tzu hails from.
And how can we discuss European military weakness without invoking Ghengis Khan, the barbarian who nearly destroyed Europe again. He overran Russia and penetrated all the way to Vienna before being stopped. The idea mentioned in the summary that European armies were particularly ruthless is obviously bunk: Genghis Khan had entire cities impaled. There just wasn't anything particularly exceptional about European armies.
Yes, the Europeans armies later become practically invincible, but only due to cultural changes and competition among martial nation-states. Europe's later military superiority was not an inherent property of Europeans, but instead was a result of the same forces that Diamond details in "Guns, Germs, and Steel".
Mcidasium
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
It strikes me that, considering how unstable and impossible to observe this stuff is, maybe we should just call it Unobtainium.
Debianium
do just about anything really significant (shady or otherwise) if you want the kids to remember you in class. Then if you are just wanting to complicate matters say something oddballish (Eurika!) immediately following your significant act. Then they'll have to remember the who and the what and the when of the act. But that won't be enough. They'll have to remember what magic word you said immediately afterwards... "TacoNealium!"
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
But he is now setting his sights higher. "We tried the same experiment to get to element 120. We've not seen it yet, but we believe the element exists and, with a long enough beam time, it could be produced," he said.
Exists where? "Exists" and "we can make" are two different things.
Xaotik Designs
Or maybe Rebelscum.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
However, look at their GDP - slightly less than that of Spain
That figure looked grossly wrong to me - so I checked and you'll find that China's GDP is about three times that of Spain (this is the sort of thing where I think wikipedia is pretty trustworthy).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
There is a TED talk by Hans Rosling which demonstrates Africa is actually making insanely rapid progress, but it isn't apparent to us because they started at so far behind.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
The CIA Factbook says:
GDP of China in 2008
Approx: $7.8 Trillion
GDP of Spain in 2008
Approx: $1.378 Trillion
Values are US dollars (in 2008)
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
If we're still talking about why most of africa is a wartorn shithole I think we're overthinking this and only need to look back about 80 years or so.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Sort-of. Europeans were the ones who could build infrastructure 100 years ago. However, the climate of Africa is inhospitable for Europeans, so they build the bare minimum infrastructure for resource extraction and with the exception of South Africa, didn't settle. The lack of decent infrastructure is one of the leading causes of sub-Saharan Africa's slow development.
It obviously should be called Geranium, since it is a trans-uranic element discovered in Germany.
My conjecture is that this was down to Geography: The concept of a "German" nation meant different things at different times, but Central Europe, probably a less loaded term for this area, has been an incredibly competitive environment for the past 3 Millenia. There were literally hundreds of tribes / kingdoms / nations fighting for land, food and power. The winters were cold, so people had time on their hands and a need to invent machines that helped them stay alive. Finally, the area was (and still is) at the heart of international trade between Western Europe, the Mediterranean, Arabia and the far East. There were a lot of goods coming through, lots of ideas, and lots of ways to make a profit. This kept people (comparably) open-minded and (comparably) well off. Both are important factors allowing artists (from Duerer to Beuys), philosophers (Luther, Kant, Nietzsche,...), scientists (Leibniz, Helmholtz, Humboldt, Planck, Einstein,...) and musicians (Bach, Haendel, Mozart, Haydn, ...) to develop their ideas, and giving entrepreneurs (Bosch, Siemens, Krupp, Daimler, Benz, ...) a chance to sell their goods.
But, really, this is not unique to Germany. The rest of Europe produced brilliant minds as well. And they, too, spent a large part of their time killing each other. This, put simply, is the reason why Europe, European ideas and European nations dominated the world for a thousand years, and why they still play a major role in the world: It was a tough, rough place, but with enough structure to allow people to spend their time on more than pure survival. It brought out the best and the worst in the humans who lived there. A hundred years ago, America was just like that. Tough, rough, and full of opportunities. Right now, maybe China, Brazil and India are such places.
Illuminotum
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
My mistake. Nevertheless, it is in the bottom end of the range of (much smaller) western European countries.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The chemical should be "T", so that I can finally write Tungsten $ELEMENTNAME Flourine when I'm frustrated with lab results.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
and I think you're wrong.
We have very complex, but what look to be complete, quantum field theories for quantum chromodynamics.
I agree that you have to deal with the fundamental representation rather than our high level concepts. It looks to me as if QCD does that just fine; the problem is just that calculating actual results for more than two interacting fields is computationally intractable using our current model.
Of course, the big caveat here is that while I know the mathematics of basic quantum mechanics in the operator theory formulations, I don't know quantum field theory so most of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics is over my head.
You are an asshole.
GoldenPalace.comium
but the larger point still stands. The original poster is just plain wrong when he claims that Germans 'outperform' other countries - they simply do not. They are about average.
As I said in my first post 'Germans have made great contributions to science and technology.' Perhaps you didn't read that part because you felt the need to come up with a list of more German 'greats,' - which was one of the more pathetic things I have seen someone post on slashdot. You didn't even come up with a good list, and some of them are pretty debatable.
We could sit here all day and site this or that scientist/innovator from this or that country, but I guarantee you that if we did just that, even the most ardent German nationalist would ultimately be forced to admit that Germany is about average.
Ask yourself if you really want to join in with this German delusion of superiority. The facts just don't bare out the argument, and historically, the results have been tragic - perhaps for Germany more than anyone else (holocaust victims excluded).
And what of the original post that started this all off. Do you support that as well? Why single out Africans? How about native Americans, Mongolians, Kurds, etc etc? Different parts of the world developed at different rates. Civilizations, and their associated technological and scientific innovations have come and gone. Northern Europe (including Germany) was once a land of barbarians. When people from all parts of the world are given a chance to get a higher education and participate in the scientific process of discovery (such as in America, and to a lesser extent in Europe today), then we find that we are all about the same. Differences have more to do with the kind of institutional racism (and sexism) that original poster espouses.
How about Onlyexistsfortwomillisecondsium.
Kriston
In Europe, the general emergency call number is 112. I also like Gentoo.
I like Gentoo as well, but I don't get the reference.
-IOVAR Web Dev Platform
RTFB, then bloviate. You sound somewhat uninformed otherwise. I understand how a book review by Newt Gingrich could be off-putting.
I've read both. IANAC (I Am Not A Classicist), but Neither Diamond nor Hanson should be taken too seriously. They're polemicists at worst, and pop historians at best, and darlings of the Left and Right, respectively.
Anyway, in defense of Hanson, the thesis of his book is quite competently defended, and is a bit more nuanced than "Europe is better and always has been." He uses historical battles as illustrative examples of aspects of Western Culture that have led to our Post-Renaissance dominance, which even you, in your haste to condemn the book you haven't read, concede. Things like private land ownership, the ability of a market economy to rapidly switch to war-time production (cf. Venice and the battle of Lepanto, US Pacific Fleet in WWII), civic militarism (i.e. direct participation of soldiers in the government they're fighting for).
Finally, read some Bernard Lewis (who is actually a respected historian) to cure you of your fascination with Arab Culture. If you're too lazy to read that, the short version is: "we had an enlightenment; they didn't."
Nevertheless, it is in the bottom end of the range of (much smaller) western European countries.
No, you should have looked at the figures - you're still not in the right area. China's GDP is third in the world, well ahead of France, Germany and the UK, and only just behind Japan in second. Given China's growth rate and population, it is inevitable it will overtake Japan in the next few years.
I can understand how you could make this mistake though; China's GDP has been increasing at a ridiculously high rate in the last decade and it has come up the GDP rankings very fast.
I define "German" to include "German Jews".
Much like you define "American" to include "American Jews" and "Arab" to include "Arab Jews", yes?
Why the inclusion of one particular religion?
Just to clarify, I was taking the rankings from the two 2008 surveys shown in wikipedia; the third (2007) survey shows China fractionally behind Germany, but given the year's gap I don't think this contradicts the later surveys.
LandoCalrissium
er or something. Take 2 pentium and call me in the morning
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Since there isn't anything quite as dense as an asshat....
It should be called the Goodie, because it's dense, unstable and has a short life span.
You're asking why more inventions have come from developed countries, than third world countries?
I don't think that needs answering. The question of why Europe (and America) began accelerating technological progress into the industrial revolution before other continents is a more interesting question.
There's nothing special about Germany in particular. And your reference to Obama's father, trying to associate him with belief in witchcraft, makes me wonder if your post is just an anti-Obama troll in disguise (and anyway, the overwhelming majority of the US believes in supernatural things such as witchcraft, Creationism, God and so on, although thankfully far fewer people kill over it these days).
I also want to apologize for the abrupt and antagonistic tone of the first sentence in the GGP post. It's a style I've developed on slashdot, and it's asinine.
Buttheadium
It's not an unreasonable question, but I can see that it is a troll well-disguised as that reasonable question: the comparison to Africa seems totally arbitrary (why Germany vs Africa, as if they're the only two places in the world?) and then we end up with the reference of Obama's father being a Keynan. I mean, come one:
Africans contributed almost nothing to human technical achievement. (The father of Barack Hussein Obama is a Kenyan.
You're telling me that's not a troll? Followed up with the witch burning, as if that has anything to do with Obama or his father?
Perhaps it wasn't meant as a troll - but I can certainly see a mod taking it that way, and I'm curious why he wrote it like this if it wasn't meant as a troll.
And I don't see what "PC" has got to do with it - no one is claiming offence at language. Crying "OMG PC gone mad" is typically the cry of someone who disagrees, but can't explain why - let's stick to the facts rather than claiming "PC" (indeed if anything, you are the one being PC, as you are complaining about moderation that's offended you, saying it "shouldn't be tolerated" - should the mods not mod as they think best, out of fear of offending you? That would be PC).
And what great advances to mankind have you brought, anonymous coward?
They had humans first, they had the head start.
This isn't a game of Civilization where every country is entirely independent, starting from having to discover The Wheel. New nations are still made up of people who bring the knowledge already known - after all, look how US is now where it is, despite being around for less. Clearly the people who travelled from Africa didn't have to start from scratch.
The evil whites (and Arabs, don't forget their slave trade which in fact started before the European one) have pushed us into poverty, they say.
It probably didn't bloody help, did it.
How about "pandemonium"?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Didn't settle outside of South Africa? I guess all those whites in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Kenya, Réunion, Angola, Mozambique, and Libya (and that's just what I got from a two-minute skim of the Wikipedia article on "White Africans") are just anomalies then?
Le français vous intéresse?
I can't believe anybody has said adamantium....
And don't name it Obamium or AlGorium. GAH!!!!!!
The "enlightenment" is so called because it defined the end of "the dark ages". You're right, the arabs didn't have a dark age, they just kept going with science, astronomy, mathematics etc. Our enlightenment comes in no small part from their culture where it mixed with ours, in spain. And their culture was mixed with indian culture, and the indians culture was mixed with oriental culture.
In short, fuck off, you bombastic prick.
. . . Constipatium.
Thank you very much for defining the Fibonacci sequence on Slashdot.
And I don't see what "PC" has got to do with it - no one is claiming offence at language.
Political correctness really isn't about offence at language.
Look at "political INcorrectness". Most people (in the U.S. at least) immediately equate it with conservatism nowadays. It's a euphemism for racism. But it has a positive connotation, not a negative one. It means "I don't care who I offend [with this stupid offensive statement that I will now make]... I'm just calling it like it is!".
If you want to see real political correctness, watch what happens the next time someone criticizes Limbaugh in any way whatsoever. Many Republicans have spoken about how he can't be controlling the party, they need to move away from him, he's not helping, etc., because he has borderline personality disorder (which they leave out). No offensive language involved at all. And within days, the person has to run around apologizing to Limbaugh. It's happened many times now, and goes down the same way each time.
WTF does any of this UberMenslich bullshit have to do with 112 protons, a hand full of neutrons and an attendant cloud of electrons?
Discovering new atoms is a freaking crapshoot!
So what? It's not like there is enough of these Unobtainium, or Obscurium atoms lurking around to do anything useful. Not even enough atoms can be created to determine it's physical properties.
So some German physical scientists can tell their grandkids that they filled in a functionally useless record in the second-to-last row of the periodic table. So what?
Maybe they will get really lucky and some astrochemist will observe a puff of them in a super nova....
Not saying that it's totally useless, but geez, it's not all THAT and a bag of chips.
I've actually seen that talk... However your post is quite an over-simplification of what he said. He makes the correlation between education, wealth and the resulting health. I might be citing Rosling from his other talk, as I think he has had 2-3 of them on TED. One particular thing that he noted was the fact that education has a higher influence than wealth on the resultant mortality rates. Which might explain why Africa still has high mortality rates, despite so much aid. This is especially true if you consider AIDS awareness and prevention education. You would be amazed at how many people in Africa believe that sex with a virgin and/or young child cures you of AIDS/HIV.
I'm not trying to argue about that one particular point. Africa has come a long way and is doing reasonably well now, compared to before.
But let us be honest. Can you say that Africa would be doing so well without so much international aid and investment? I know lots of this "help" is in the form of loans. But these loans are being canceled left right and centre these days.
It probably didn't bloody help, did it.
Colonization of Africa most certainly helped them. Sure, slavery was bad and unfair. But if colonization of Africa never happened, then most likely they still wouldn't have writing, religion or technology. Religion isn't such a good example, as they had ancestral worship prior to colonization.
Granted, they might have developed those things on their own. But that demonstrates my point exactly. They were already behind Europe and the rest of the world; during the middle ages even. And we all know how technological progression has an exponential growth trend. Even with all the technology and knowledge sharing in the world now, Africa is still only outputting a minuscule amount of advances to the world. Which I would argue is steadily decreasing anyways.
This isn't a game of Civilization where every country is entirely independent, starting from having to discover The Wheel. New nations are still made up of people who bring the knowledge already known - after all, look how US is now where it is, despite being around for less. Clearly the people who travelled from Africa didn't have to start from scratch.
It doesn't matter if the Europeans/Asians/Arabs had to start from scratch or not. They still started at the same time, and yet there is a discrepancy in the result. I would, however, like to add that I think they did in fact, to a certain extent, start from scratch. A new environment, especially a cold one such as Europe, requires a totally different set of skills than say a semi-arid environment such as Africa does.
And what great advances to mankind have you brought, anonymous coward?
Have you no better argument than an ad hominem and a poor analogy to a game of civilization? Any "advances" I have made are irrelevant to the discussion here. This isn't a pissing contest, buddy.
Africans contributed almost nothing to human technical achievement.
Let's see, Mathematics, the concept of zero, astronomy, agriculture.... Care to revise your statement?
Indians might be dark skinned, but they aren't from Africa.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Adnausium
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ahh I retract my "concept of zero".
Careful, your ignorance is showing.
The Enlightenment was in the 18th Century. The Renaissance (literally, rebirth) was immediately after the Dark Ages, and indeed did include the incorporation of Arab knowledge, which was quite substantial at that time, into European Cultures. Subsequently, the Middle East stagnated (prior to the rise of European Colonialism, mind you, so you can't really blame whitey for this one), while Europe dominated.
Pick up a copy of What Went Wrong . It'll explain why you are wrong better than I can.
There was scientific development in the so called dark ages. Most of the improvements consisted in techniques to improve agricultural and industrial production which paved the way for a population boom that fueled the change made in the renaissance. Technologies from the dark ages include: heavy plow, crop rotation, tower mill. Was it not for the increased population pressure there would have been little motive for expansion and colonization.
First of all, if Diamond is an amateur, he must be the most cited amateur on earth.
Second, would you need to actually read a book that claimed aliens built the Pyramids, or would a review be sufficient to convince you that the book is full of shit? Hanson is just the latest in a long line of Western exceptionalists. War does not a civilization make, and war is generally won or lost before the first shot is fired. Hanson reverses cause and effect. Do you seriously think that if the Greeks hadn't invented the phalanx, the rest of Europe would never have developed as it did?
Also, perhaps you should think before assigning a "fascination" with Arab culture to me. It's hardly the case: it's just another culture like many others on the planet. It fell into decline, but in the time I mentioned, it was further along than the West.
I think 'Taconium' is the perfect name. After all, it IS the heaviest of all the elements.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Ubuntunium.
Noobium
Maybe you should actually read the book, instead of taking someone else's word on it's contents, then commenting on those comments. The thesis is not that universal military superiority of Western culture, but that a culture is reflected in how a civilization or nation wages war. Western culture does not guarantee success in any endeavor, but in war, gives a larger margin for error than many others. Really, read the book, your local library probably carries it. Hanson is no mere darling of the right, as someone describes him in this thread, but a well-informed classicist and a good writer.
BackToTheFutureum
heavy stuff.
Or maybe TripleStuffedTaconium.
TakesADecadeToNameium.
I have more !
This could be fun. :)
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.