Thursday Things: Sweat Equity Edition
21 July 2022. Vol 4 No 29 By Dan McGirt. #154
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“So you want to be a scientist?” Photo by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash
Sweating for Science. These days our stereotypical image of a scientist is someone wearing a white lab coat, messing around with microscopes and brightly colored liquids in test tubes inside a pristine, well-lit, and no doubt air-conditioned lab. Is that an accurate depiction of what most scientists do? No. Except in stock photos and university recruiting brochures. But 21st century science does have a shiny, antiseptic aura.
“We are totally doing super important science!” Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
But back in the day, science was highly septic. Early scientists, the real pioneers of figuring out basic concepts that we now take for granted and probably learned in middle school, often endured extreme discomfort and even risked death to test their hypothesis.
Take this guy:
In 1774 and 1775 the British physician and scientist Charles Blagden conducted a series of experiments concerned with exploring the effects on the human body of extremely high temperatures, "air heated to a much higher degree than it was formerly thought any living creature could bear". In what equated to something akin to a "super-sauna", Blagden and his co-experimenters (including a dog) subjected themselves to enormously hot temperatures. Beginning at a modest 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), by the 1775 session they progressed to temperatures upward of a whopping 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius). Not surprisingly the air was at times quite literally scorching, and a full cladding of clothing was mostly worn to protect their skin, though Blagden did experiment one time being in the room naked from the waist up with only a suspended cloth protecting him from the rays of the hot irons.
Would a university research review committee approve this experiment today? Doubtful. Not without ludicrous safety protocols. And forget about bringing the dog.
And perhaps rightly so. But our boy Blagden got it done:
Among his many observations, in his latter 1775 report to the Royal Society, Blagden became the first to explicitly recognise the role of perspiration in thermoregulation, seeing that the body temperatures of both the heat-subjected humans and heat-subjected dog were significantly lower than the air they were exposed to. The dog endured a temperature of 236 degrees Fahrenheit (113 degrees Celsius) for a full hour, with seemingly little distress, and recording a body temperature of only 110 Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) - higher than a dog's normal body temperature, but significantly cooler than the room
But was it really as hot in there as he thought it was? A careful researcher always double checks his work. From Blagden’s report to the Royal Society:
To prove that there was no fallacy in the degree of heat shewn by the thermometer, but that the air which we breathed was capable of producing all the well-known effects of such an heat on inanimate matter, we put some eggs and a beef-steak upon a tin frame, placed near the standard thermometer, and farther distant from the cockle than from the wall of the room. In about twenty minutes the eggs were taken out, roasted quite hard; and in forty-seven minutes the steak was not only dressed, but almost dry. Another beef-steak was rather overdone in thirty-three minutes.
I just hope Science Dog got the steak when the experiment was over. He earned it!
From Experiments and Observations in a Heated Room (1774)
Free movies! We like to feature troves of free films and shows available online. Here’s an intriguing one. Hundreds of classic Polish films made available for free online
Hundreds of classic Polish films have been made available to watch legally for free online as part of a project funded by the European Union and Poland’s culture ministry.
Among the films published on the 35mm.online website – all of which have English subtitles – are works by famed directors Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski, including the former’s Man of Marble and Man of Iron and the latter’s Three Colours trilogy.
Not going to lie — I’ve never heard of these directors or films. But that’s what learning new things is all about. But if you’re a cinephile — especially a Polish-speaking cinephile — this is the mother lode. But wait! There’s more!
The new service includes 160 feature films, 71 documentaries, and 474 animated films and TV shows, including classic children’s favourites such as Reksio. The project also features 3,108 episodes of the Polish Film Chronicle, a newsreel shown in cinemas before films from 1944 to 1994.
Ah, 3,108 episodes of communist propaganda news reels. Pass the popcorn!
Hire yourself. The best time to start a new business is during an economic downturn. And while I’m no economist, I think it’s safe to say we’re experiencing one now — or will soon. You can find hundreds of articles and research papers on why now may be the best time to start a new business. Here are a few:
Some of the obvious ones are that in a disrupted economy, established businesses may be struggling, stuck in their ways, and slow to adapt to the changing circumstances, giving a nimble new niche player with low overhead an opportunity. Much like how small mammals took over from the dinosaurs post-meteor.
Also, if you can get your business off the ground in hard times, you’re well-positioned to race ahead when things get better.
So if you’ve been thinking of starting a new business on the side to help make ends meet, have a business idea that you can’t get out of your head, or perhaps need a job, period, this may be the best time to hire yourself.1
If you need a business idea, here are a few: Small Business Ideas for Beginners.
(And don’t forget those sweet, sweet small business tax deductions.)
Good luck and godspeed!
Thank you for reading Thursday Things! Again, please click the hearts, leave a comment, and use the share feature to send this issue to a friend who might enjoy it. See you next Thursday!
Of course many new businesses fail early on. 18.4% in the first year, 49.7% after five years. There is always that risk. And those figures are for all new businesses. Results vary by business size, industry, and location.
But however you slice it, the failure rate for businesses that never start is 100%. Do your homework, plan wisely, but if you’ve got the entrepreneurial bug, the best time to get started is today! Source: The Percentage of Businesses That Fail and How to Boost Your Chances of Success