The definition of a second isn't based on the Earth's motion, but some natural phenomena like you recommended. "The second is the duration of 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." [1]
That's just simply not correct - scientific endeavour and the scientific method is an ongoing prospect. You never actually solve anything, instead you refine the parameters in which a given solution is deemed correct.
Newton "solved" the equations of gravity, Einstein "solved" them too, and now quantum mechanics is "solving" them yet again. None are wrong, but also none of them make the problem solved.
The idea of a "solved problem" in science is a dangerous one IMHO.
I should have used a more accurate word than "problem".
There are two sorts of problems in science: coming up with assumptions and answering questions under these assumptions. I was thinking about the second category. Modeling gravity falls in the first category, where problems are a lot like engineering problems - there is no final answer.
However, problems in the second category often have final answers (let's not bring Gödel's incompleteness theorem to the table) once you bring all the assumptions with you. Think about: in classical mechanics, what are the possible planet trajectories? This problem has already been solved, and since it is solved, it is solved for good. Later students can simply learn the solution by heart. You can, of course, insist to go through all the trouble of finding out the answer - that is what physical majors often do anyway - but the point is that you don't have to as long as you trust the science community.
In software development you don't have this luxury. First, you can almost never trust libraries to be 100% bug-free; second, even it really is correct, you always suffer from performance costs from invoking the library. There is no such thing as "performance" in scientific knowledge; indeed, a short proof is better than a long one as long as they are both correct, but they are just as useful in that they show the solution is correct.
Interesting how this is the case, because that was one of the key goals of the site when they were first building it.
I listened to Joel and Jeff talk about it in their early podcasts when they were first building the site. To be the definitive answer for a question requires that the answer be able to change and evolve over time as new information becomes available.
The post you link seems a bit confused about, for example, why it's important to publish a finding only once. (Hint: So lazy people can't keep regurgitating their old results to seem productive in the eyes of grant-givers.) It also says the Gates decision goes too far, and then suggests something even farther: that the paper would need to be written twice, separately, for public and commercial consumption.
"Would this change undermine the business academic journals are in? The answer is only if they add no value above the raw knowledge an academic could make available themselves."
And the argument is that they are not adding nearly as much value as they are extracting from the system.
I'm definitely not agreeing with that article's perspective, just thought it provided a contrasting point of view. Not sure my comment deserved a downvote though (ouch!) :)
That's definitely a good point about the journals not adding enough value. I think it's clear they've placed themselves into a bit of a position where they hold most of the cards and that really does need to change.
A lot of comedy comes from pain. I think Peter McGraw's benign violation theory partially explains this. According to McGraw's theory, humor comes from a "violation" or something negative that is made benign. Comedians learn to take the negative and transform it into something humorous.
People also say that many comedians have a more realistic view of the harshness of life. This reminds me of the quote from GK Chesterton, “Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"
A large number of comedians are depressed in real life, away from audiences and cameras. I met a relatively famous comedian and he was quite depressed, and definitely not the only one.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winograd_Schema_Challenge