Two excerpts I wanted to share with you:

The Khazars has masons who cut and mounted enormous pieces of rock salt on the paths of the winds. On the path of each of the forty Khazar winds (half of which were fresh, half sweet) an arrangements of saline marble was built, and when the annual seasonal winds reappeared, people would gather at these sites ( Read more... )

after 31 months we are almost down to the last bit of school. rumour is that there is light at the end of the tunnel, but it is only the light from the crack beneath the gate. banging my head on the wall won't make the keeper of the gate open up any sooner.

At the end of the work day it almost impossible to get onto the "down" elevator, as it is packed full of people. The only way to go down is to go up, which makes sense since what goes up must come down. Lately I began to notice that coworkers on my floor now pushed the "up" button at the end of the day, instead. The elevator would arrive from below ( Read more... )

"Like characters in a story that keeps changing, we find ourselves playing roles that others appear to have invented for us, in plots whose roots and consequences escape us. We declare ourselves Roman or Carthaginian, but our notion of what Rome and Carthage are is either too restricted to too ambitious to be useful beyond the shorthand of a label ( Read more... )

"A world without memory is a world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents. In order to know himself, each person carries his own Book of Life, which is filled with the history of his life. By reading its pages daily, he can relearn the identity of his parents, whether he was born high or born low, whether he did well or did ( Read more... )

an interesting day: airing a theory of Complaint, the search for an ideal sewage pumps, an effort for water conservation, putting in the final piece into a puzzle that will take another month to complete, researching similarities between microorganisms found in marine beds and in sewage plants, flashing signs of magic, a social science histogram, a ( Read more... )

three definitions:

1. procrastinating: hating what you're doing while you're doing it
2. productipating: being extremely productive at all the things other than the thing you're supposed to be doing
3. producturbating: being extremely productive at being self-indulgent

three statements that cause a lot more trouble than you would think at first:

1. i like to feel ( Read more... )

RC Harris, a water plant at the beaches, was featured a while ago in torontoist.com. My favourite bits are the descriptions:
- the plant as "a factory in the land of Oz"
- the running taps in the lab as "a surrealist sculptural meditation on the implacability of water"
- the pumps as " round, teal things, each as tall as a man, that crouch like snails ( Read more... )

Incidentally, I was delighted to read that the 2011 Nobel prize for chemistry went to Dan Schectman for his work on quasicrystals. Quasicrystals are amazing constructions, if you wish to amuse yourself for many hours:

( Read more... )

"Of all professionals, we engineers must be free to think, to imagine and to contribue to a world of ever-expanding possibilities. This is our nature this is what we have been educated to do; this is our job!" - David Adams, PEO President

"Cute"
- Emily