Beginning

Well... I guess here goes nothing. I have been telling myself to start one of these blogs for quite a while and I guess this is the day.

One might ask 'what is the reason for making this blog?'. Well the purpose of this is to develop ideas about life, philosophy, society, science, nature -- our Universe and our place in it. After all you can sit there all day and have a deep conversation with yourself but perhaps it might not be too bad of an idea to bounce some of those thoughts around.

I am however unsure where to start (I have always found that the first words are usually the hardest to pick). I guess a little bit about me. I am somewhat of an aspiring theoretical physicist and as a consequence I spend a good deal of my day wondering about our place in the Cosmos. I tend to have a strong opinion about many things and expressing them has never been too big of a problem --really this has never gotten me into any trouble (ehem). I believe that everyone should have a chance to have their opinion heard but not at the expense of others. With my ideals and my love for science I do not leave much room for religion -- at least not organized religion-- yet I know there are certain things I know we cannot explain and will never be able to. This leaves room for something (I have yet to find and appropriate name for this something; a presence, a being, mother nature?) but this something is far from omnipotent or micromanaging. Yet I am going off on a tangent and will save that discussion for another time.

Now since this is the first post for this Blog, I thought it appropriate to mention something about the name. Everyday we take so many things for granted, and it is easy to do so with all of the technology available at our fingertips. I am not talking about our computers, cellphones, mp3 players and so much more. I am talking about the simpler things around us, the ones that we use unconsciously and without even giving a thought as to how they work or where they come from. That is out pens, pencils, kettles, toothbrushes -- next time you use any of these try to think of exactly how they work (this is a very interesting hobby I have developed). Yet, nothing is taken advantage of more than our clocks. These instruments began as simple sun dials and developed into the complex single ion experiments of today. I have recently started working in a measuring institute and found myself a little taken aback at how little I knew about how our clocks work and the complexity that goes into it (and I am not talking about the cesium ion clock beating away in the other room). Our little time keepers have gone from the large instruments -- the grandfather clocks that ticked away the seconds with their momentous pendulums-- to the precise digital instruments of today. Our world is based on their movement, the precision of a second, the flow of time. This relative objective that is so intertwined in physics defines our lives and allows us to function -- imagine having 6 billion people all on different time zones with different definitions for seconds, minutes, hours, days -- I think you get the point. So long as we exist the pendulum will beat -- perpetually.

-Mr. V

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~Si nous n'avions point de défauts, nous ne prendrions pas tant de plaisir à en remarquer dans les autres.

-La Rochefoucauld