One billion seconds is 31.69 years or a little more than 11,574 days. In the context of a human lifespan, I will personally cross the one billion second threshold around dinner time on May 2nd, 2021. Jean Calment holds the record for individual longevity, clocking in at an impressive 3.86 billion seconds of life. To put that in context, Calment's lifespan covers more than 1% of the total longevity of human civilization, which has been around for roughly 378 billion seconds.
Who Controls the Market?
It's been estimated that 70 percent of the volume of trading on the stock exchanges is done by something called flash traders, which are basically computers that buy and sell stocks and hold them for about 11 seconds on average. All of the discussions around what moves the market, the economy, politics, regulations, company earnings it’s really all out the window given there’s just no way that a computer holding and selling a stock in 11 seconds is going to be able to do all of that analysis. Essentially, there’s no clear-cut explanation for why stocks move up and down every day. And frankly, the fact that we have media trying to make these reports about how it’s related to this or that is just not very helpful for the average investor.
A Whale Song at Full Volume
The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature. The call of the humpback whale is louder than a 747 jet engine and can be heard from 500 miles away.
The Crab with the Poison Hands
Small crabs in the oceans around Hawaii have developed an incredibly close relationship with sea anemones. Known as “Boxer” or “Pom-Pom” crabs, the crustaceans carry sea anemones around in their pincers until the anemones permanently attach themselves to the crab’s claws.
The Boxer Crab uses the anemones as a defense mechanism, waving its claws in the air wildly if a predator approaches so that the sting from the anemone will drive the other creature away. The anemones, in addition to being carried around, help themselves to leftovers of any food the crab eats. If there are no anemones around to bond with, the crabs will improvise and use sponges and corals instead.
Good Christian, Bad Haircut
Tonsure is the traditional practice of Christian churches of cutting or shaving the hair from the scalp (while leaving some parts uncut) of clerics, monastics, and, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, all baptized members. The most popular form of tonsure originated in the 7th and 8th centuries and consisted of shaving only the top of the head, so as to allow the hair to grow in the form of a crown. This is claimed to have originated with Saint Peter, and is the practice of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.
According to Saint Germanus I, Patriarch of Constantinople (715-730):
The double crown inscribed on the head of the priest through tonsure represents the precious head of the chief-apostle Peter. When he was sent out in the teaching and preaching of the Lord, his head was shaved by those who did not believe his word, as if in mockery. The Teacher Christ blessed this head, changed dishonor into honor, ridicule into praise. He placed on it a crown made not out of precious stones, but one which shines with the stone and rock of faith.
Since medieval times the Catholic Church has used “first tonsure” as the rite of inducting someone into the clergy and qualifying him for the civil benefits enjoyed by clerics. Failing to maintain tonsure was the equivalent of attempting to abandon one’s clerical state. Over time, the appearance of tonsure varied, ending up for non-monastic clergy as generally consisting of a symbolic cutting of a few tufts of hair at first tonsure in the Sign of the Cross and in wearing a bare spot on the back of the head which varied according to the degree of orders. Countries that were not Catholic had exceptions to this rule, especially in the English-speaking world. In England and America, for example, the bare spot was dispensed with, likely because of the persecutions that could arise from being a part of the Catholic clergy.
On August 15th 1972, Pope Paul VI‘s decreed that the practice of first tonsure would no longer be conferred.