Tesla, Rockin’ Nut Job?

There’s been some behind the scenes discussion of Nikolas Tesla. Why? Well Tim posted something about the band Tesla and that sparked (pardon the pun) an interest in N. Tesla. I am thankful Tim didn’t post a bit on The Dead Kennedys

I had largely forgotten about Tesla and it was refreshing to reawaken to the crazed genius. As soon as you start talking about Tesla people come down on two sides: Tesla was so far ahead of his time we’re still catching up -OR- Tesla did some pretty cool things until the thirties then he went off the deep end.

I think Tesla was basically a flake in his later life. His beliefs were not backed by evidence and rejected many things that have been experimentally verified. That being said: so what? Many scientists make great contributions to science and later go off the deep end, apparently genius is only a step or two away from the part of the pool reserved for high diving.

Let’s take a look back:

Newton: Fairly smart, invented calculus in his spare time, did some nice work with forces and light. Spent the rest of his life trying to turn lead into gold. Two things to note: Newton was fairly well off for the times so he didn’t have a pressing need for mass quantities of gold AND anyone smart enough to derive calculus should realize that gold is essentially without value once you can produce it at will.

Einstein: By all accounts Albert produced some fairly keen insights. There’s Brownian motion, the whole E=mc^2 bit and all that stuff he did with gravity. Still he rejected quantum mechanics , spent his later years working on a G.U.T. (tip: If you come up with a bunch of great stuff in just a few years devote a limited amount of time to your next project, cap it at ten years or so. If you can’t figure something out in 3000+ days there’s a good chance it’s not going to get done)

Plus we’ve got that guy, can’t remember his name, who was instrumental in designing the interface of the first Mac. Now he mostly whines about OSX. Things are hard to find, it’s too complicated etc. Fine objections when Macs first arrived but a bit dated now. I’m sure many years ago people thought cars were becoming overly complicated. Pedals? Why would anyone use pedals? Very unintuitive.

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea. In the end Tesla squandered a fortune (sure he got bilked out of some of it) wasted a bunch of other folks money and kept thinking he was right just because he was N. Tesla. Sure people want to believe in secret conspiracies, 200 mpg carbs, over unity machines etc but wanting isn’t quite the same as existing. If the former president couldn’t keep a little under desk action secret I’m supposed to believe that Tesla, who understood less about electricity than a second year physics student, had some magical insight? Well if he did the secret is well guarded by the loch ness monster.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Cool links abound today:

Sychronicity or just a ripoff:
You Decide

You know how some things are disturbing in a “makes you think” sort of way? This is just plain disturbing.

Vere are your papers? This is actually a very serious thing. A case I hadn’t heard about. A police officer repeatedly asks a guy for ID and ends up arresting him for refusing to provide the requested Id. No big deal but the ID wasn’t crucial to the stated purpose of “investigating an investigation”

TV pick for wednesday:Survivor There are better shows, just none on tommorow.

No game today, can’t find any worth a look