This gallery contains 12 photos.
The History of Motorcycles Motorcycles have come a long way from the early designs in the 1800s to the different types available in the market today. This article takes a look at the history of these machines to see how much they have changed throughout the years. The early motorcycles were essentially motorized versions of […]
This gallery contains 5 photos.
Gargoyles Gargoyles are a form of monster that can be found in drawings and sculptures from very early times. They aren’t believed to have really roamed the Earth but to be a creation of what to fear in life. There are many versions of the gargoyles and they have even been portrayed as evil forces […]
A Short History Of Cats
It seems strange that there was ever a time when cats were not a part of our lives. It’s been less that 10,000 years since cats swaggered into our lives. Hardly an eye blink in the grand sweep of life on this planet. Why were cats so late to join our team? The simple answer is they didn’t need us to survive. Cats were surviving just fine on their own. Then, people invented agriculture. Agriculture resulted in large scale storage of grains which attracted the usual and well know group of freeloaders, mice and rats. Grain attracted rodents. Rodents attracted cats who consider them tasty meals. The result was that cats set up housekeeping close to human settlements. Eventually, cats being cats, moved right on in.
Who were these first cats? The first clue lies in where agriculture was first practiced. Agriculture first took root (no pun intended) in the Middle East in a great sweep from modern day Turkey to Egypt. Within this area ranges the African wild cat, Felis libyca. African wild cats are slightly larger that our modern house cats and are yellow in color with muted stripes. These cats have a docile, almost laid back nature. Interestingly, these cats still tend to live and hunt near human dwellings today. Locals still like to catch and rear young wild cats as pets. When mature, wild cats raised by humans tend to behave very much like our familiar housecats. A very good case can (and has) been advanced designating Felis libyca as the principal founding population for domestic cats. At least two other varieties of wild cat are speculated to have contributed to the genetic make up of domestic cats. One is Felis silvestris, The European wildcat who appears to have contributed darker markings and a peppery spirit to the African wild cat base. Also, from Asia, comes the Pallas or Steppe cat (Felis manul) that appears to have contributed long-haired coats to the mix.
The early period of domestication of cats is vague with only patches of evidence. However, by 6,000 B.C. statues found in Anatolia (modern Turkey) show women playing with domestic cats. Cats had clearly become common and affectionate pets by that time. The earliest written records about cats appear by approximately 4,000 B.C. in Egypt where they were frequently kept to hunt mice and rats from stored grains. It was a good time to be a cat in ancient Egypt. Domestic cats were thought to be the embodiment of the goddess Bast (or Bastet). There was a necropolis at her principal temple at Bubastis that contained mummified cats.
Romans spread the domestic cat northward into central Europe and westward to Britain during the expansion of their empire. Cats were quickly adopted and admired as great hunters. And they continued to move north and east in Europe. The Vikings used cats as both rodent hunters and pets. The Viking goddess of love and war, Freyja, was associated with cats. Huge winged cats drew her chariot. It also became the custom to give new brides a kitten in her name.
The Middle Ages it were a very bad time to be a cat. Cats were said to be witches familiars, in league with the devil. Because of this superstition, cats were routinely killed during festivals. Sometimes they were even burned alive or thrown off tall buildings. The Europeans paid heavily for their cruelty to cats. The deaths of so many cats allowed the rodent population to rise out of control, bringing in the Black Death which killed so much of the European population. Eventually, the cats’ cleanly ways and hunting prowess redeemed them in the eyes of the people of Europe. By the 1600s, people in France began putting little holes near the bottom of their doors to allow their cats to enter and leave as they please.
In Asia cats continued to be familiar hunters and cherished pets. Cats were often subjects for drawing and painting in China. In Japan, cats in the form of Maneki Neko, usually portrayed as a sitting cat with one paw raised and bent, are considered good fortune. They are often found in businesses to draw in money.
The history of cats is a fascinating one, worthy of much more in depth study. It fosters an appreciation for the personalities and talents of our pets.
This gallery contains 1 photo.
How Meditation Helps Insomnia Insomnia simply is a chronic inability to sleep. I have had many restless nice with only a few hours a sleep. Many nights I would only get 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I had tried everything to help me sleep.I tried things like Tylenol pm.mild nerve pills and even was […]
This gallery contains 1 photo.
How Karate Can Help With Meditation Although the ancient origins of karate are somewhat unclear to us,The one thing I can tell you,is that about 1400 years ago,while teaching at the Shaolin Temple in China,Daruma Daishi used techniques that were similar to karate.Later these techniques developed into forms of karate known as Shaolin Boxing. You […]
Nerdomeblog is proud to share all of our High Quality Articles & Content absolutely FREE !!! This promotion will remain active until further notice at which point some of it´s new upgraded material will be available for purchase while most will remain FREE for Access.
Nerdomeblog is a part of the gig@byteworld group of companies and a proud sponsor of http://www.nerdomeblog.com
We strive everyday to give you the highest quality content in the World Wide Web. We are gig@byteworld, the next generation.
@Byte_Giga
Reality is not as obvious and simple as we like to think. Some of the things that we accept as true at face value are notoriously wrong. Scientists and philosophers have made every effort to change our common perceptions of it. The 10 examples below will show you what I mean.
Great glaciation is the theory of the final state that our universe is heading toward. The universe has a limited supply of energy. According to this theory, when that energy finally runs out, the universe will devolve into a frozen state. Heat energy produced by the motion of the particles, heat loss, a natural law of the universe, means that eventually this particle motion will slow down and, presumably, one day everything will stop.
Solipsism is a philosophical theory, which asserts that nothing exists but the individual’s consciousness. At first it seems silly – and who generally got it into his head completely deny the existence of the world around us? Except when you put your mind to it, it really is impossible to verify anything but your own consciousness.
Don’t you believe me? Think a moment and think of all the possible dreams that you have experienced in your life. Is it not possible that everything around you is nothing but an incredibly intricate dream? But we have people and things around us that we cannot doubt, because we can hear, see, smell, taste and feel them, right? Yes, and no. People who take LSD, for example, say that they can touch the most convincing hallucinations, but we do not claim that their visions are “reality”. Your dreams simulate sensations as well, after all, what you perceive is what different sections of your brain tell you to.
As a result, which parts of existence can we not doubt? None. Not the chicken we ate for dinner or the keyboard beneath our fingers. Each of us can only be sure in his own thoughts.
George Berkeley, the father of Idealism, argued that everything exists as an idea in someone’s mind. Berkley discovered that some of his comrades considered his theory stupid. The story goes that one of his detractors kicked a stone with his eyes closed and said, “There I’ve disproved it!”
The idea being that if the stone really only exists in his imagination, he could not have kicked it with his eyes closed. Refutation of Berkeley is hard to understand, especially in these days. He argued that there is an omnipotent and omnipresent God, who sees all and all at once. Realistic, or not?
Everybody has heard of Plato. He is the world’s most famous philosopher. Like all philosophers he had a few things to say about reality. He argued that beyond our perceived reality there lies a world of “perfect” forms. Everything that we see is just a shade, an imitation of how things truly are. He argued that by studying philosophy we have a chance of catching a glimpse of how things truly are, of discovering the perfect forms of everything we perceive.
In addition to this stunning statement, Plato, being a monist, said that everything is made of a single substance. Which means (according to him) that diamonds, gold and dog feces all consist of the same basic material, but in a different form, which, with science’s discovery of atoms and molecules, has been proven true to an extent.
Time is something that we perceive as a matter of course, if we view it at the moment, we usually divide it into past, present and future. Presentism argues that the past and the future are imagined concepts, while only the present is real.
In other words, today’s breakfast and every word of this article will cease to exist after you have read it, until you open it again. The future is just as imaginary, because time cannot exist before and after it happened, as claimed by St. Augustine.
Enternalism is the exact opposite of presentism. This is a philosophical theory that says that time is multi-layered. It can be compared to a pound cake (however, unlike the time, a biscuit is not up for philosophical debate). All time exists simultaneously, but the measurement is determined by the observer. What he sees depends on which point he is looking at.
Thus dinosaurs, World War II and Justin Bieber all exist simultaneously but can only be observed from a specific location. If one takes this view of reality then the future is hopeless and the deterministic free will is illusory.
The “brain in a jar” thought experiment is a question discussed by thinkers and scientists, who, like most people, believe that human’s understanding of reality depends solely on his subjective feelings.
So, what is the debate? Imagine that you are just a brain in a jar that is run by aliens or mad scientists. How would you know? And can you truly deny the possibility that this is your reality?
This is a modern interpretation of the Cartesian evil demon problem. This thought experiment leads to the same conclusion: we cannot confirm the actual existence of anything except our consciousness. If this seems to sound reminiscent of the movie “The Matrix“, it is only because this idea was part of the very basis of the story. Unfortunately, in reality we have no red pills…
Anyone who has not spent the last ten years on a desert island, has at least once heard of “the multiverse”, or parallel universes. As many of us have seen, parallel words, in theory, are worlds very similar to ours, with little (or in some cases, large) changes or differences. The multiverse theory speculates that there could exist an infinite number of these alternate realities.
What’s the point? In a parallel reality you have already killed the dinosaurs, and you are lying under the ground at a depth of eight feet (because that’s what happened there.) In the other you might be a powerful dictator. In another you might never have even been born since your parents never met. Now that’s a memorable image.
This is the most fascinating branch of multiverse theory. Superman is real. Yes, some of you would probably choose a different story, for argument’s sake, Harry Potter might be real too. This branch of the theory argues that given an infinite number of universes, everything must exist somewhere. So, all of our favorite fiction and fantasy may be descriptive of an alternate universe, one where all the right pieces came in to place to make it happen.
Everyone is interested in what happens to things when we aren’t looking at them. Scientists have carefully studied this problem and some of them came to a simple conclusion – they disappear. Well, not quite like this. Phenomenalist philosophers believe that objects only exist as a phenomenon of consciousness. So, your laptop is only here while you are aware of, and believe in its existence, but when you turn away from it, it ceases to exist until you or someone else interacts with it. There is no existence without perception. This is the root of phenomenalism.
www.gigabyteworld.com www.gigaknows.com www.nerdome.com www.nerdomeblog.com
This gallery contains 1 photo.
Rock and Roll Never Forgets It’s a sad thing when we, as baby boomers, begin to feel like “old fogies” when it comes to music and the “hip” things going on in popular culture. It’s also easy to forget that the rock music and many other genres of modern music got their launch way back […]
This gallery contains 1 photo.
An Aversion to War If there ever was a baby boomer “issue” that has become engrained into the heart and psyche of a generation, it is an aversion to war due to the horrific experience if Vietnam. While a relatively small percentage of surviving baby boomers actually went to and fought in Vietnam, the scar […]
The History of Motorcycles
Motorcycles have come a long way from the early designs in the 1800s to the different types available in the market today. This article takes a look at the history of these machines to see how much they have changed throughout the years.
The early motorcycles were essentially motorized versions of the safety bike, a bicycle which has wheels of the same size.
Several inventors tried their hands on creating their version of the motorized safety bike but none would be as significant as the one invented by German inventors Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in 1885.
Their bicycle was powered by a petroleum-fed engine. Later designs by other inventors chose to use the internal combustion engine which was a relatively new invention at the time.
But not all early motorcycles were run by fossil-fuel-powered engines. In 1867, an American inventor Sylvester Howard Roper created a steam-driven engine. Another was by a Frenchman, Louis-Guillaume Perreaux created a motorcycle based on the same concept in 1868.
By the early 20th century, the race was on for the production of motorcycles. Different companies included motorcycles into their line of products such as Triumph which originally produced bicycles.
Several companies were also created that specialized in motorcycle production such as Harley-Davidson and the Indian Motocycle Manufacturing Company.
The use of motorcycles gained even more popularity after WWII when veteran soldiers rode these vehicles to give them the sense of adventure they felt during the war. In the 1950s to the 1960s, a new player came into the market.
Japanese motorcycles went in and later on dominated the world of motorcycles. Japanese brands still have a large share in today’s motorcycle production, but American and European brands like Harley-Davidson and Ducati maintain a high degree of loyalty among its users.
Nerdome 
You must be logged in to post a comment.