Musings on an Assortment of Subjects

My former housemates as Lord of the Rings characters:
(pictures thanks to Jeff)

David	Frodo
Nathan	Sam
Ben	Merry
Jeff	Pippin
Justin	Aragorn
Sol	Tom Bombadil

Jonathan Wise’s essay on what he does as a programmer resonated with me. To whet your appetite:

A software developer must be part writer and poet, part salesperson and public speaker, part artist and designer, and always equal parts logic and empathy.

Code poets of the world unite!

While trying to find a place on my new, large desk to work on my tax forms, I had a flash of insight which led me to the formulation of what I shall call Glick’s Law (a.k.a. the Law of Conservation of Desk Space). Namely:

The percentage of free space on a desk remains constant as the area of the desk surface increases without bound.

Glick’s Law can no doubt be attributed to the fact that paperwork exhibits the behavior — much like compounds in the gaseous state — of expanding to fill its container.

Figure 1. Notice the graph’s distinct lack of slope as the size of the desk increases.