February 2012
11 posts
Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a... →
infoneer-pulse:
Australian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal.
The group of physicists, based at the University of New South Wales and Purdue University, said they had laid the groundwork for a futuristic quantum computer that might one day function in a nanoscale world and would be orders of magnitude smaller and...
what's it like being 30?
Kid: What's it like being 30?
Unemployed Man: It feels the same as being 20.
Kid: What do you mean?
Unemployed Man: Actually, I don't feel any different. 18? 20? 30? It’s all the same to me.
Kid: Are you happy with your life?
Unemployed Man: I have no job. No money really, I am living with my parents.
Kid: Is it hard at 30?
Unemployed Man: It's hard at any age.
Kid: Why haven't you got a job?
Unemployed Man: I don't know. I have been close, but just haven’t worked out yet.
Kid: Are you afraid?
Unemployed Man: You sure ask a lot of questions kid.
Kid: I guess I'm interested and a little afraid.
Unemployed Man: Well, you might be lucky. You see, I know people who are my age and have started a family; they earn good money and think about taking holidays every now and then. On the other hand you have me, trying to find a job.
Kid: I guess I'm afraid now.
Unemployed Man: Stay in school kid; get a certificate in a trade or something. It was easy back in the days, now you need all sorts of degrees. One isn't enough. There are millions of people out there with them and more. At least with a trade, you'll be needed.
Kid: Life is pretty short huh?
Unemployed Man: It is, but hey, options do turn up, but you have to make them happen. They just haven't happened for me yet.
Kid: Do you have a plan?
Unemployed Man: A plan? The plan is find something hard to do and work hard at it, that's where the money is and try to retire early.
Kid: Sounds like a good plan.
Unemployed Man: If I don't fail.
Kid: Are you a morning person?
Unemployed Man: If I sleep early enough it's alright, but I don't want to be 50 or even 60 waking up every morning to go to work. There's not much life left to enjoy if you're working until your grave.
Kid: What's your advice to me?
Unemployed Man: It's never too late to do what you want. It might seem everyone around you is leaving you behind in every aspect, but just keep at it. Do something as opposed to not doing something. You have to make things happen, even if you're 30 and you're still lost, nothing will come to you, you have to work hard. You might be lucky one day, you just might be kid.
The Joy of Quiet →
The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is...
