Next to reasoning, the greatest handicap to the optimum development of Man lies in the fact that this planet is just barely habitable. Its minimum temperatures are too low, and its maximum temperatures too high. Its day is not long enough, and its night is too long. The disposition of its water and earth is distinctly unfortunate (the existence of the Mediterranean Sea in the place where we find it is perhaps the unhappiest accident in the whole firmament). These factors encourage depression, fear, war, and lack of vitality. They describe a planet, which is by no means perfectly devised for the nurturing or for the perpetuation of a higher intelligence.
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When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 C.
The Russians used a pencil.
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The market thought that, with extremely warm temperatures in the Northeast and refiners pumping near capacity, heating oil supplies would go through the roof. Now we're left wondering what would happen if [it] really set in, if it actually got cold.
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A colour is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth.
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It's all weather-related. Unseasonably warm temperatures here in the Midwest and elsewhere have taken the fear out of this market, at least for the near term.
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NASA spent 8 years and $12 billion developing a pen that could write in space. It needed to be able to work in zero gravity, at a range of temperatures, and be able to write on any surface. The Russians used a pencil.
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