"As the Earth continues to slow, leap seconds……" — James Gleick
"As the Earth continues to slow, leap seconds will grow more common. Eventually we will need one every year, and then even more. Scientists could have avoided these awkward skips by choosing instead to adjust the duration of the second itself. Who would notice? That is what they did, in fact, until 1955."
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James Gleick
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70 Quotes by James Gleick
James Gleick has 70 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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For [Richard] Feynman, the essence of the scientific imagination was a powerful and almost painful rule. What scientists create must…
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You can't waste time and you can't save time; you can only choose what you do at any given moment....
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Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost. It…
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Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.
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Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.
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The history of life is written in terms of negative entropy.
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The universe is computing its own destiny.
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It sometimes seems as if curbing entropy is our quixotic purpose in this universe.
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Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds…
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Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is…
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Cyberspace, especially, draws us into the instant.
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The library will endure; it is the universe... We walk the corridors, searching the shelves and rearranging them, looking for…
See all 70 quotes by James Gleick »
More Adjust Quotes
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