It’s a long weekend here in Canada, so I’ve got three days to catch up with everything I’ve been meaning to read (and watch). Here’s a rundown so you can play along at home: 1. Kathryn Schulz on being wrong (@TED) Great insight: feeling wrong feels a lot light feeling right. It’s only realizing that… Continue reading Weekend Reading. Play Along At Home
Category: Random
Best Metaphor Ever?
Wendy is currently reading Bill Bryson‘s A Short History of Nearly Everything . From it comes the following passage, with possibly the best metaphor ever for the slow pace of geological time: …If you imagine the 4.5 billion odd years of Earth’s history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about… Continue reading Best Metaphor Ever?
Out With 2010 And In With 2011
So. It’s 2011. Being lazy and using that as an excuse to pretend I’m bucking a trend, I’m going to take this first day of the new year to reflect on the year gone by and look forward. 1. Let’s start with some not quite arbitrarily chosen numbers for last year. 90 blog posts 318… Continue reading Out With 2010 And In With 2011
On Poetry
Over Christmas I had the chance to grab coffee with my most literary of friends and we got to talking poetry. Specifically, my lack of knowledge about it due to a high school curriculum that consisted almost entirely of Shakespeare’s poorer plays and witless rhyming couplets. I said that I’m willing to give it a… Continue reading On Poetry
What Are The Odds This Is True?
So here’s a thought for you. According to a recent visit to the German History Museum, at its apogee, the Roman army had 400-500 thousand troops to protect the empire’s 50-60 million inhabitants. Today, the United States military has ~1.5 million active duty personnel and a similar number of reservists (source) to protect its roughly… Continue reading What Are The Odds This Is True?