Monday, August 28, 2006

Genius?

What do you know about Einstein? I knew he developed the theory of relativity. Almost everyone could recite the formula, but what does it mean? I checked out the book.

As long as I had the book and planned to read it and had two little boys who liked listening, I read it to them. He had an easy and comfortable writing style and his explanations were very clear. Granted I read some parts pretty quickly and skipped over the formulas and actually read the general theory and not the specific theory, but I read it and they listened. I remember one example of a man walking on a train covering more ground than if he were walking on the ground. But Einstein said it best:

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

So simple -- why didn't someone figure it out before 1905?

But he didn't stop with relativity. "The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. . . . The trite objects oh human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible." Read the entire essay The World as I See It.

Yes, he convinced me he was a genius with his priorities in the right place.

technorati tags: , ,


No comments: