I was curious today about what defined a second so I looked it up, as usual wikipedia had all the answers. A second is defined as "9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom"..." at rest at 0 degrees Kelvin." I never thought about this before but the word second is quite directly related to its position in the sequence "first", "second", "third." A minute was once referred to as a "prime minute" and the second was then called the "second minute." Where minute (small) just means a small portion of an hour. Pretty interesting, and to wrap up the blog post with the most quotation marks ever, I saw this in the news today "Do Not Define Zidane's Career by the Horrible Head Butt". I agree with the sentiment - he has certainly had a history of outbursts but it is his performance on the pitch which should win him lasting recognition- however I propose this header be changed to read "Do Not Define Zidane's Career by the AWESOME Head Butt." Because that shit was awesome.
Posted by Jon at July 14, 2006 03:59 PM