February 28, 2005
NYT
"Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems," said Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. "It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked."
But you never know.
"One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise," said Dr. Witten, chuckling.
"Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?"
chainsaw writes
Last night while driving down the Joe DiMaggio Highway (West Side Highway) in Manhattan, I saw a black Ford Explorer with the following (New York) license plate:
YYUUUU
To which I replied, "Not quite, buddy." Bear in mind that, depending on the driver, the enumeration might be (3 4, 3 5).
Cellphone photo transmittal
By accident, I figured out how to use my overly complicated cellphone to email myself a digital photo.
I have to "Sign in" to an AOL messenger account, first. Then I can send photos as email attachments.
I have a dim memory of having created the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) account when trying to figure out how to transmit the photos the first time (over a month ago), but I'm not sure why I did it. There's nothing in the manual about creating such an account. There's nothing in the manual that's useful at all, in fact.
Sally Snow
On our flight from Atlanta to Rome, they announced that one of our flight attendants would be retiring when we landed. She had been with Delta airlines since 1968. They passed around a book for passengers to sign:
I could only think of all those movies where a police officer or "detective" is nearing retirement. It's a sure sign that the s*** is about to hit the fan for that particular peace officer.
But there weren't any problems.
Experimental Researches in Electricity
By Michael Faraday: read November 24, 1831.
These considerations, with their consequence, the hope of obtaining electricity from ordinary magnetism, have stimulated me at various times to investigate experimentally the inductive effect of electric currents. I lately arrived at positive results; and not only had my hopes fulfilled, but obtained a key which appeared to me to open out a full explanation of Arago’s magnetic phenomena, and also to discover a new state, which may probably have great influence in some of the most important effects of electric currents...
link (PDF) and RIGB home page
The Pantheon
The coolest building I've ever stepped into.
I had no idea it's so big. Since we had just had a little trouble finding it on the map, I thought, "OK, well, it's a little building, maybe we just walked past it..."
Then I looked up and saw it looming.
On Bullshit
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory..."
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