Category: Life the Universe and Everything

Burn the Org Chart – if Not the Organization – Down to the Ground

Don’t panic. This is just a quote. It is a quote from one of my favorite favorite favorite books: The Cluetrain Manifesto, first published in 1999 and now available for free. The website – and the book is a call to the people of earth and puts forward 95 theses, the first of them being Markets are…
Physics Paradoxers and Outsiders

As I did – plain and straightforward – normal science, I do not consider to develop my personal Theory of Everything or to build my personal perpetuum mobile. I am pretty conservative with respect to the laws of thermodynamics and just understanding the main orthodox candidates for theories of everything today is already a a larger-than-life task…
Reconcile All This (Goals of This Blog)

I have now blogged since more than half a year and I have pseudo-blogged since about 10 years, but I have never stated any goals explicitly. Fueled by my Website Resurrection Project I will do so now, running the risk to be able to hold myself accountable for achieving these goals. Despite the title of…
The Website Resurrection Project

I own a bunch of domains. I have once been asked if I had some issues with my provider so that he compensated for that by giving all those domains to me. This question was followed by: What do I need to smoke in order to understand your websites? So yes, there is content on…
I Did Normal Science

Finally I am reading one of the most influential books on science: Thomas Kuhn – The Structure of Scientific Resolutions. I should have done so earlier, actually the book should be part of any science major’s undergraduate curriculum. Naive as I was, I had expected to work on solving earth-shattering problems in physics, or at…
A Blank Sheet of Paper

I have a bunch of websites, and I was pseudo-blogging for a while. ‘Pseudo-blogging’ refers to editing old-school static websites not based on blog software. In contrast to what usability experts might say, I feel that the user interface does not matters. There were times of intense (pseudo-)blogging: Coding and writing html tags in a…
Hansoms and Wires

I am reading the Sherlock Holmes novels on my Kindle, about 25 years after I have read them on paper. The stories are still entertaining. Conan Doyle is a great story-teller, although he re-uses ideas 1:1 in different novels, and once you are used to the typical plots you are able to guess the outcome.…
Anatomy of a Decision (2)

Since there is a part 1, I owe you a second part. Otherwise I would have called this posting: At the other side of the worm hole. I think the following could be applied to life as such, but I am mainly referring to decisions on jobs and work. I once thought that making a…
Stupid Questions and So-Called Intuition

At the beginning of my career, I organized a meeting of a research project team. I was still an undergraduate student. The project was concerned with the development of thin superconducting films for microwave circuits, and my task in the project was the optimization of those films. But I was not an expert in waveguides…
Anatomy of a Decision (1)

About a year ago I have taken a decision, and I am now taking a leap of faith. This blog is gravitating about this decision, and I am writing now about a journey that began a while back. I am finally working on plan A again, after I had been quite successful in pursuing plan…
Shallow Waters and Deep Reading

I have re-read The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, and this is not a balanced book review. I am an occasional reader of popular psychology books and I am guilty of selecting these books according to my pre-established bias. The following experience puzzled me before I read the book: I spent a two-week…
I neither Met Newton nor Einstein

I am just reading The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin. I am not familiar with string theory, quantum gravity, and the related communities, so I cannot comment on Smolin’s main statement. But there is a section in the last chapter of the book that resonated with me. He describes his expectations and feelings when…
My Blog Name Corresponds to a Mistyped Term

I am aware of this. Therefore, it will never be indexed correctly. Google will consider me one of those typo URL hijackers – or whatever the technical term is for people who own domains like micorsoft dot com where they host these web sites that only contain a bunch of other URLs. Elkement is a…
Real Physicists Do Not Read Popular Science Books

At least this is what I believed for quite a while. Now I think I was wrong – not only for the reason that also real scientists might enjoy light entertainment or stay informed about their colleagues’ science outreach activities. First of all, I am not even sure if I still qualify as a real…
Clandestine Blogging

Currently, I have not linked my blog anywhere, and I avoid creating too much outgoing links. The blog is public and nobody is aware of it. I had even planned to blog at a hidden – fully private – blog for a while, although my postings are not that confidential. Reasons being: Thus expect a…
Why Do You Want to Become an Engineer?

There is this cartoon that explains why one would aspire to become an engineer. It appeals to the Bill-Gates-junior-type geek who wants to build cool stuff, rather than musing about the foundations of “stuff”. I sympathize with all of these three roles, also with the philosopher. I have also been inclined to philosophy, and I…
From Early Adopter to Lazy Laggard

Applying the Technology Adoption Life-cycle model to my internet usage pattern, I categorize myself as a Laggard or a member of the Late Majority. The beginning was more promising: I used e-mail since the early 1990s, and I set up my first web site in 1997. At the dawn of the new millennium, I owned…