CAN A LEVER LONG ENOUGH REALLY MOVE THE WORLD?
August 17, 2011 7:03 PM
In my dorm room, armed with some 3x3 and 4x4 Rubik's Cubes, Pythagoras's theorem, knowledge of how Pythagorean triples like 5-12-13 work, with delusions of grandeur and time on my hands, I tried to solve Fermat's Last Theorem. I failed.
It has always haunted me, that maybe he had some simple and incredible insight on the very day he scribbled in the margin, that no one else for five hundred years has been able to see since then. And that, one day, some kid much like Coppola's fat girl from Ohio with her father's camcorder, is going to see the EASY way to solve it, the one that can be done with just a few lines of proofs. And centuries worth of mathematicians will gasp and scream, D'OH!!! !!!! And my Ask MetaFilter question is, what are some examples from history of the biggest D'OH!s ever, in which an invention innovation or discovery is revealed, and literally millions of people howl in anguish --- That's so obvious! Why didn't I think of that!?? Examples I can think of to get this one rolling: Xerographic photocopying, lawn/leaf garbage bags with giant orange pumpkins on them, POKEMON or MAGIC THE GATHERING cards, patenting the XOR operation, using solar energy to desalinate sea water, selling junk bonds and collecting the brokerage fees, putting colored sugar water into bottles and selling them... .....
It has always haunted me, that maybe he had some simple and incredible insight on the very day he scribbled in the margin, that no one else for five hundred years has been able to see since then. And that, one day, some kid much like Coppola's fat girl from Ohio with her father's camcorder, is going to see the EASY way to solve it, the one that can be done with just a few lines of proofs. And centuries worth of mathematicians will gasp and scream, D'OH!!! !!!! And my Ask MetaFilter question is, what are some examples from history of the biggest D'OH!s ever, in which an invention innovation or discovery is revealed, and literally millions of people howl in anguish --- That's so obvious! Why didn't I think of that!?? Examples I can think of to get this one rolling: Xerographic photocopying, lawn/leaf garbage bags with giant orange pumpkins on them, POKEMON or MAGIC THE GATHERING cards, patenting the XOR operation, using solar energy to desalinate sea water, selling junk bonds and collecting the brokerage fees, putting colored sugar water into bottles and selling them... .....
This post was deleted for the following reason: Maybe try this again next week leading with the actual question and ditching all the chatty wrapping? This isn't gonna work like this. -- cortex
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posted by shipbreaker at 7:06 PM on August 17, 2011