reading
Will Faught
June 2014
A fascinating explanation of the origin of the modern units of time. Also: Seconds were once derived by dividing astronomical events into smaller parts, with the International System of Units (SI) at one time defining the second as a fraction of the mean solar day and later relating it to the tropical year. This changed in 1967, when the second was redefined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 energy transitions of the cesium atom.
1 minute
November 2013
I first heard this story from Dr. Vakalis during a computer science lecture at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He’s an excellent and funny story teller, and I really enjoyed this one, so I was disappointed to find out that it’s probably not true. Too bad!
1 minute
October 2013
Jessica at Today Was Meaningful: don’t change your journey so that it matches someone elses. we need to walk different paths so the whole world can be explored. revel in the differences. and enjoy where you are. here. right here. Great advice.
1 minute
April 2013
The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins
I was delighted to find a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that I hadn’t read before. I love his writings, and if you’re a software engineer, I bet you’d like them too: He divided the universe into forty categories or genera, these being further subdivided into differences, which were subdivided into species. He assigned to each genus a monosyllable of two letters; to each difference, a consonant; to each species, a vowel.
1 minute