Curious Minds - February 13, 2023
Happy Monday!
I just returned from Salt Lake City (SLC) for the first time — wow! The people were some of the nicest I have met, something I imagine must reflect some of Mormon culture. I also discovered that SLC is very cold this time of year (sub-freezing), but managed to have a pretty good time while I was there.
Something inspirational
Something educational
I’ve spent years slowly reading the classics and had been feeling pretty good about myself. I then ran into St. John’s Reading List, broken down from Freshman to Senior levels. I now feel like I’ve barely touched the surface. With references from Virginia Woolf to Plato to Pascal — if you’re looking for classics, I haven’t found a better list.
Something for engineers
People are often divided into those that are more analytical or those that are more romantic. I’m not sure where I would have put typical language-learning courses such as Babbel or Duolingo, but after seeing Japanese explained for programmers, I think all of them fall much further on the romantic side of instruction.
As an engineer myself, I really hope this person can go on to fully explain Japanese as it comes across very intuitively to me when explained in this fashion.
Something unlawful
AI continues to buzz about both its incredible ability to come up with answers and how it may or may not destroy the world. I found a recent NPR article detailing how an AI was going to defend a speeding ticket before the company received serious legal threats. I find it a little bit humorous, but also interesting to find how much the legal professional is threatened by these new advances.
Something beautiful
"I attain a different kind of beauty, achieve symmetry by means of infinite discords, showing all the traces of the mind’s passage through the world, and achieve in the end some kind of whole made of shivering fragments."
- Virginia Woolf
This week I would love to collect some of your favorite quotes — send me what you got. I’m an avid quote collector and love finding new ones.
Cheers,
Kerry
Yeah, my experience with Mormons are that they are a very friendly people. I think if you dig a little deeper beneath the social layer there is a lot of religion going on also. Did you get a chance to see the Great Salt Lake?