Društvo

Hourless

Chris Farmer RSS / 26.03.2011. u 08:16

We lose time when we sit and wait for the phone to ring. We lose time when watching the water boil for coffee and tea, looking for the keys, standing in queues. This blog will take me an hour to write - and where will that hour be tomorrow when I wake up and find that we have moved into summer time?

In the fall, when we gain an hour moving back into normal time, most of us use it to sleep. Either that, or we get up artificially early and say to ourselves that we have a much longer day in which to be Productive! But the change usually happens on Sunday so the extra hour is generally used in idleness...

The spring changeover makes us late for stuff. I have a plane to catch in the morning at 10:30 which is really only 9:30. What time should I set my alarm for? My mobile phone tends to change the hour automatically so if I compensate for the hour by setting it for an hour earlier, I will end up getting up at four in the morning. But what if my phone does not make the change? What if I am an hour late to get out the door? What if that taxi driver set his clock the wrong way?

Oh the headache of it all....

People claiming that they have been abducted by aliens say that time is lost, unaccounted for. Aliens generally do their abducting in normal times during the year so as not to cause confusion - never during the switch to summer time or winter time, never on February 29. It is just too messy.

Night people who will be up all night tonight working or playing, will find themselves physically unable to use that missing hour. Seeking ways to compensate, they may stay up later or start the night earlier, but the incontrovertible fact is that March 27 has only 23 hours in it. The 24th has been forfeited. Actually it is the third.

On an abstract level, when we think of time as a continuum, many questions are opened up. The events that happen from 02:01 to 02:59 on March 27, 2011 do not exist. Where there really events at all? If we consider that they actually happened on the reset clock between 03:01 and 03:59, how does it change the nature of phenomena? After all, when we measure space, we cannot omit the increment of physical space occurring between one and three meters - even if everyone agrees, it is still against the laws of physics. Two and half meters is NEVER three and a half meters, even if we all vote to say that it is.

Time, like space, is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities as defined by the metric system. Along with the others - length, mass, electric current, temperature, amount of substance, and luminous intensity - these units are consider objective, unchangeable, immutable. Why do we think we can mess around with time? Just because they do it all the time on Star Trek?

There is indeed more to say about this, but it will have to wait for October 30 this year, when I get my extra hour back.

Atačmenti



Komentari (9)

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fantomatsicna fantomatsicna 08:29 26.03.2011

Numero Uno

As you can see I did not waste any time I saw your blog and already sending you a comment( exept of course if looking at internet as a whole is a bigest timeloss ever...
Chris Farmer Chris Farmer 08:41 26.03.2011

Re: Numero Uno

fantomatsicna
As you can see I did not waste any time I saw your blog and already sending you a comment( exept of course if looking at internet as a whole is a bigest timeloss ever...

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
- Groucho Marx

Congratulations on first post-past-the-post! You shall benefit from an extra few more minutes to surf the net!
fantomatsicna fantomatsicna 12:01 26.03.2011

Re: Numero Uno

an extra few more minutes

No way do'nt forget at the moment I am 12 hours infront of your time,catch me if you can
Chris Farmer Chris Farmer 08:57 26.03.2011

PS: After Thoughts...

Just as an after-thought, I will lose an hour at 0200 tomorrow, but as I am flying to London where the hour is an hour earlier than Serbia anyway, I gain it back immediately.

Net effect: 0.

Bili Piton Bili Piton 09:03 26.03.2011

Pain in the ass



...the hour thingy. Especially in springtime when you lose an hour, although it leaves me equally woozy (and in addition, depressed) in autumn. Usually it takes me about a week to adjust, sometimes more.
Filip2412 Filip2412 09:38 26.03.2011

time is a scam

i naturally ignore time with special reluctance for anniversaries (as if our faulty calendar is the reason to consider march 26 of 2011 somehow related to march 26 let's say 2006... if you know what i mean)

intuitively, on some deep level i strongly feel time is irrelevant, or to put it better, time simply does not exist

monamia monamia 13:33 27.03.2011

Re: time is a scam

Oh the headache of it all....


VIP trivial stories, one after the other.
Unfuckable Unfuckable 18:15 28.03.2011

jebote

zovite Medvedeva, ovo je neizdrživo
monamia monamia 16:52 30.03.2011

Re: jebote

ovo je neizdrživo


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