Immediately
August 2, 2011 in Blogs
There is a word in Koine Greek–the language of the Roman Empire and the New Testament–that technically means “immediately”. There is a kind of a joke that the Gospel writer named Mark uses it so persistently that it comes to mean little more than “next”. Next happens to be the title of the film for which I am currently posting a temporal analysis at The Examiner, and today I posted an entry in the series entitled Next part 3: dodging; it has been such a long day that I have more than once had to remind myself that that was posted today, and I have to announce it here tonight. It looks at the use of precognition as a way of avoiding collisions, whether with avalanche debris, bodily attacks, or sniper bullets.
Meanwhile, there is a sense of being rushed that has been dogging me for a while. Yesterday I commented that I needed to run to the store for a couple things, and wound up with a partner who managed to turn it into a four hour shopping trip which did not get the things I had intended to get and left me exhausted (shopping is one of the most tiring things I do, for some reason, and it is exponentially more so when someone shops with me–possibly because of the psychological exhaustion of watching money bleed away). I pushed a substantial amount of yesterday’s work into today, and am still trying to catch up; and I still don’t have a completed series for Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, possibly half finished and needing to be reworked already.
On the other hand, I grabbed a copy of Source Code, which I will expedite as soon as I’ve worked out FAQ. Also complicating my life, I suppose, is that I was asked to consult on a film script (in exchange for a fair payment and screen credit), and I have the script and have started my second read. It is one of those complications in which it is a really clever and entertaining story but probably a time travel disaster–I’m still working on what happens and doesn’t happen, but there are some complications to address. (I also have the money in my PayPal account, but I’m not accessing it until I’ve done the job, unless it becomes very necessary.) I will undoubtedly tell you more about it eventually, but for the moment we’ll give you the title, A Long Tomorrow (I don’t know if that’s subject to change), so when I mention it again you’ll know to what I refer.
I should also make mention of the new contributions from Eric Ashley, although I suspect most of my readers have beaten me to them this time. Practise Bits: Outside is a portrait of a young man who should not be harassed who responds effectively to being harassed. He also gives us Practise Bits: Ghost, the second article of that name, featuring a sort of holy assassin of undead battling a ghost in a fantastic metaphor of economics. Very clever, really, and quite entertaining.
Now let’s see what else I can accomplish before I collapse completely.
–M. J. Young
JohnA1nut said on August 2, 2011
it has been such a long day
To you, it sounds like a smart-aleck quip, but “Same 24 hours as every other day” is actually supposed to be encouraging. It’s not a “Long Day” no matter how much it seems. That represents probably one of the very few consistencies in your life. The day is 24 hours long. It’s really supposed to remind you that God in fact did NOT lengthen the day just to make your life (even more) miserable. That’s why I hate that saying. That’s one thing you know will be consistent.
Tadeusz said on August 2, 2011
As to your question about dodging in Next 3, hmmm, no I probably could not.
Congrats on the screen credit, too.
M. J. Young said on August 2, 2011
Thanks, Eric.
John, what you say is only true if you take an astronomer’s perspective of the matter. The fact is that the Summer Solstice in late June is a much longer day than the Winter Solstice in late December, because the night is shorter in June and longer in December–at least, in the northern hemisphere.
Similarly, most people measure how long their day is from the moment they awaken to the moment they return to bed. I believe I was out of bed around ten thirty yesterday morning–the 9-5E of four thirty in the morning–doing laundry I needed to do the night before but that someone else had the laundry facilities engaged, and it actually was after four thirty in the morning when I got to bed, so that was an eighteen hour day, which leaves six hours for sleep.
It might even be debated whether astronomically every day is twenty-four hours long. There is, ultimately, no astronomical marker that is in exactly the same position every twenty-four hours. To say that the day is twenty-four hours long is really to say that the average length of three hundred sixty-five days is twenty-four hours, so we set our clocks to measure twenty-four hour periods and we call them “days”. They aren’t real; they’re like miles or hours or pounds, an artificial measurement we use for our convenience that is designed such that every one of them will contain one sunrise and one sunset in that order. But if you think that every “day” is exactly twenty-four hours, try starting your days at sunset every day and measuring them. For half a year they’ll get a bit shorter every day, and for the other half they’ll get a bit longer, and your average will be just about twenty-four hours, but I doubt that any one of them will be exactly that long.
You can get exact sunset times in a good almanac.
As an aside, I posted an article about modern non-lethal weapons on my Facebook page, targeted specifically at my Facebook “Gamers” friend group. I’m hoping people saw it, because it had some interesting ideas that are now realities.
–M. J. Young
JohnA1nut said on August 2, 2011
Ya know MJ, you’re the only guy I know that can take an encouraging statement and turn it around so that it depresses me.
M. J. Young said on August 3, 2011
I am sorry, John, but it’s just not true that every day is the same length except as an abstraction, and as you said “it sounds like a smart-aleck quip” which does not make it encouraging at all.
JohnA1nut said on August 3, 2011
Yeah, but you’re probably the only person who frequents this board who would even know or care that a day “wasn’t really 24 hours long”. It’s like you were going out of your way just to prove that a day isn’t 24 hours long for the sole purpose of shooting down my remark that there is one thing in your life which is consistent. Are you THAT desperate to have NOTHING go right?
M. J. Young said on August 4, 2011
No, I’m just not in the mood for smart-aleck quips. I said it was a long day. You wanted to prove me wrong. I responded by proving your proof was wrong.
JohnA1nut said on August 4, 2011
No, I’m just not in the mood for smart-aleck quips.
Sometimes I think God put me in your life so that you would be able to empathize with all the people to whom you gave smart-aleck quips.
My watch says a day is 24 hours long. That’s good enough for me. It WASN’T a long day. Your perception of time has just become warped with old age.
JohnA1nut said on August 5, 2011
Time does that. I’d bet even money that if you were to return to what was your favorite backpacking trail as a younger man, you would find that its length has increased dramatically. The exact same backpack with the exact same gear would be exponentially heavier, and the four hour hike would now be double that. You, being the only one trained in such things, would be the only one capable of noticing that. Time does that. Days get longer, trails lengthen and backpacks get heavier the older you get.
M. J. Young said on August 5, 2011
Actually, time does exactly the opposite, because our perception of time is based on the percentage of time that passes as a total of our memories.
That is, when I was four, the time it took for me to reach five was 25% of as long as I had lived up to that time; but the time it took for me to reach six was only 20% as long. Once I reached fifty, the time it took to get to fifty-one was only 2% of my total life to that point, so it seemed a lot shorter.
It’s not quite the same with days; but time seems to move faster or slower by comparison, according to what you’re doing and whether you are working against a deadline. That is, if you are doing nothing but waiting for something to happen, time seems to move very slowly; if you are constantly busy but with no particular purpose the time flies past; if you do a lot of work without a specific deadline time but you have to keep working until it’s done, it makes the time seem longer, as it takes forever to finish everything; and if you are trying to get a lot done before a specific deadline it arrives faster than you anticipate.
But overall, as you get older time seems to move faster.
–M. J. Young
JohnA1nut said on August 5, 2011
But overall, as you get older time seems to move faster.
So for someone as old as The Architect, a century must feel like a couple of weeks.
M. J. Young said on August 7, 2011
Certainly it does when he looks back over it. “Hey, Michael, remember when we were in NagaWorld a couple centuries ago? I’ve been thinking about the stars problem, and I’ve got an idea I want someone to test next time we’re there.”
–M. J. Young