Life

As I was scrolling through twitter, I happened to come across this beautiful thread that spoke of the lessons learned by a researcher while contemplating his research in the grand scheme of things. Though he was passionate about his research and the questions he was trying to answer, there would come a time when future researchers - with the advantage of hindsight - would contemplate his work as obsolete and irrelevant. But the truth is that we all have to come to terms with this situation. ...

We often live worrying about the future and longing for a less troublesome past; like when we were kids. I know that not everyone had a perfect childhood. I certainly did not, but I still had my moments in which my joy was true and worry free. Those moments are precious to me. Adulthood has many upsides when viewed from a teenager’s perspective; the opposite is also true. If only they could talk to each other.

I have a recurrent discussion with my wife. She likes to do most things as fast as possible. I like to pause and think about things, and do them often slowly. At my pace. I think that if you do things too quickly you might not be fully aware of what you’re doing. You might feel that you are not really in charge of your life. You might feel that you can’t really remember things truly. ...

My favorite topic in an introductory differential equations course is mechanical and electrical vibrations. I enjoyed learning about it as a student and I enjoyed teaching it later. (Or more accurately, I enjoyed being exposed to it as a student and really learning it later when I had to teach it.) John D. Cook on Mechanical vibrations I’ve always thought that education is about learning, as much as parenting is about maturing and growing up. On the parenting side, you can’t really teach your kids how to live – you can’t even imagine the kind of world they will have to live from the time they’re born – but you can expose them to the best things you know. In doing so, they can at least have the chance to form an opinion on the many matters of life, they’ll surely make mistakes, but I bet they won’t regret much. ...

Today in “This American Life” I was listening to an episode about hidden truths. It was really interesting to find out about a secret letter that the prime minister of Britain writes to every commander of a nuclear submarine. It supposedly contains instructions on what to do if the nation has been wiped out and if the commander should retaliate or not. It poses a mystery on what the contents are, even more so because every time there’s a new prime minister in office the letters are destroyed unread. ...

photo credit: mkorsakov via photopin cc All too often I see people who simply talk too much.1 Wether what they speak is nonsense or even meaningful things, there’s a limit to how much one can tolerate. By talking too much – and too often – we miss out on many things. We don’t let others speak (which to my understanding is common courtesy), and worse of all we lose our capacity to empathize with others. We can’t read faces well while uttering words out of our mouths continuously. Loosing that feedback is what prompts us to speak without pause and with no care for what the people around us may feel. It’s what turns you into a prick. We’re just too focused on ourselves to care about others. ...

photo credit: Pablo Moroe via photopin cc. Before Darwin it certainly was very difficult to be an atheist or a nonbeliever – that is, an intellectually fulfilled one.1 At least that’s how Richard Dawkins usually puts it and I quite agree with him. It was not that the scientific method2 didn’t exist at the time, it was that the mystery of life was too big a mystery to even consider tackling through the ways of science. Yet that was what Darwin did. ...

In the latest Generational podcast episode Aaron Hillegass told Gabe that he wrote his Objective-C book with his ten-year-old in mind. I found this to be quite interesting and truly inspiring. By writing the book “for his son,” he made sure anyone could actually read and understand it, but also he was deeply motivated to get it right. I wouldn’t want my son to read a crappy book. ...

This post is in fact a Day One entry. I treat my Day One journal as a sort of personal blog. A blog with a readership of one – at least in the present. What I mean to say is that, for the most part, I write about my life and for my kids, which are too young to read. I hope they read this in some distant future. I think that the things I might forget are probably the things they’ll want to know about. That is why I write. ...

photo credit: chiarashine via photopin cc As is often the case, ideas come about in the most unexpected moments. Lately, I’ve found myself taking notes while walking to work, while waiting for a coffee in front of a bending machine, or like now while getting dressed for work. It’s become a habit of mine to write what I think, when I think it. My iPod touch has enabled that. I could well have pen and paper with me at all times, but I’m not used to that and nothing beats the digital format. ...