clock … watching time, the only true currency

I enjoyed The Guardian’s coverage of the chronophage. “Beware the time-eater: Cambridge University’s monstrous new clock includes a marvelous video. The official University of Cambridge video from the inventor and maker, Dr. John C. Taylor, provides more of the history and details. Neal Stephenson must be pleased that a new mechanical clock was introduced the [...]

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Scott Adams does more than just Dilbert. I don’t read his blog regularly, but someone pointed to “Existing” and it’s worth sharing. An excerpt:
It’s nice to think that you can be your own person, true and accountable to no one but yourself, but I don’t think life works that way. We are what other people [...]

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Clock (this blog) is now 5, and I’m (cough) older than that. Still, I matched last year’s mile time of 5:23 (1:19/1:20/1:22/1:21 splits), which brightened the already-beautiful day a bit more. Only hiccup was Kezar was closed for pesticide application, which I found out after running over this morning. So I had to drive over [...]

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Confirmation of the rumors started with typical Dick Costolo panache: “Unlike the rumor that FeedBurner is nearly code-complete on a multiplayer Wii edition, the blog posts, phone calls and conjecture about our future as part of the Google family tree are now officially true.”
What a great team and a great product. I first met Dick [...]

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Chances Are…Adventures in Probability was my other pickup at Cody’s a few weeks ago. Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan jointly authored this exploration of statistics, but the voice is consistent. Chances Are… picks through history with an eye on the odds. Skills with numbers, and misconceptions about numbers, affect far more than simply the roulette [...]

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I’ve made ginger beer three times now, with the most recent time being earlier this week. I’ve made two adjustments to my process, and the results are slightly improved.
First, I use nine cups of water instead of ten. The resulting brew is a tad bit sharper, which I like, and I don’t lose any trying [...]

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And another year has passed. Kids happily re-gifted some of their presents to me, and cupcakes were enjoyed by all.
I started the day in darkness with a mile run on the Kezar track, as I’ve done occasionally in past years. 5:23 left me convinced that I haven’t slowed down too much, although I can’t find [...]

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Paul Graham has another essay posted: “Is It Worth Being Wise?”
The path to wisdom is through discipline, and the path to intelligence through carefully selected self-indulgence.
When I was competing as an athlete over a decade ago, I was pursuing “intelligence,” in Graham’s definiton of being able to do very few things exceptionally well. Knowing that [...]

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Fascinating 22 minute video of statistician Peter Donnelly at TED explaining the impact of our general inability to interpret uncertainty. Logic doesn’t work here. I got his first example wrong, as he says most do. What about you?

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These aren’t new, but it is Saturday, and I’m sick of staring at them in my inbox.
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I thought all The Economist content was invisible on the web, but not this September 7, 2006 opinion piece, “Welcome aboard,” which asks “In-flight announcements are not entirely truthful. What might an honest one sound like?” An honest one [...]

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