You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [34]
We don’t want to jump to any conclusions. Maybe Einstein’s paper didn’t contain any sources because he was so smart he didn’t need any other current physics texts. But according to Peter Galison’s Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time, Einstein and a small group of his fellow nerdlings had a group called the Olympia Academy, which would regularly gather to discuss their own works as well as the works of current scientists. The book goes on to mention specifically how Poincaré was one of the scientists who Einstein and his battalion of nerds discussed.
Shoots that whole “maybe Einstein didn’t read any other papers” theory right to shit, doesn’t it? It’s interesting that Einstein sat studying and discussing the work of Poincaré for years, published a book that featured a theory that was startlingly similar to Poincaré’s, and then didn’t reference Poincaré once in his book. Wait, that isn’t interesting; it’s total bullshit. Good luck sexing your way out of this one, Einstein.
1. THOMAS EDISON
Edison has been described as one of the “world’s most prolific inventors,” with 1,093 patents to his name. You know, a guy could round up and kidnap a shitload of children and keep them forever, but would you call that guy the “world’s most prolific father”? No, of course not. A “soulless monster,” maybe. A “skilled thief,” if you’re being generous, but you wouldn’t call that guy “the world’s most prolific father,” because those aren’t his kids. He stole them. Such is the case with Thomas Edison.
Edison is celebrated in schools across the country for inventing the lightbulb, the motion picture, electricity, and a bunch of other important crap he had very little to do with, and while all of those claims are spurious, we’re just going to focus on the lightbulb today (we’ve only got 320 pages, you understand).
Who actually invented it?
Plenty of people messed around with the idea of the lightbulb (Jean Foucault, Humphry Davy, J. W. Starr, some other guys you’ll never read about in school), but Heinrich Göbel was likely the first person to have actually created, back in 1854, a version of the lightbulb that resembled the one we have today. He tried selling it to Edison, who saw no practical use in it and refused. Soon after Göbel died, Edison bought Göbel’s “meritless” patent off Göbel’s impoverished widow at a cost much lower than its worth.
Screwing over just one inventor might be all right for Galileo, but Edison was a dreamer. A year before Edison “invented” his lightbulb, Joseph Wilson Swan developed and patented a better bulb. When it became clear Edison’s “this guy Swan’s a lying asshole” defense wouldn’t hold up in court, he made Swan a partner, forming the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company (known as Ediswan), effectively buying Swan.
Thomas Edison: Father of the goddamned lightbulb.
Edison then used his incredible wealth to buy out Swan completely, leaving all records of the lightbulb under the care of the Edison Electric Light Company. Sure, Swan got rich in the end, but Edison purchased the right to claim he invented the lightbulb. Of course, there’s a whole laundry list of inventors Edison stepped on, bullied, exploited, or convinced to name their price. But what do textbooks say about him?
THE FIVE MOST FREQUENTLY QUOTED BULLSHIT STATISTICS
EVERY once in a while, we hear a statistic so startling we can’t believe it’s true. Our first impulse is to repeat it, because knowing interesting things tends to make people like us better. That’s why facts tend to survive based on how interesting they are, rather than whether they’re true.
The five most quoted “too awesome to be true” stats that are as fake as they sound:
5. YOU ONLY USE 10 PERCENT OF YOUR BRAIN
You’ve heard it since you were a child: We only use 10 percent of our brain. Just think what we’d be capable of if we could tap into the rest! It’s appealing because it means that if we worked hard enough, we’d be able to set fires with the power of our minds.
Why is it a