Arbitrary Constructs

Day 80: The New Year has come 'round...or has it? The equivalent of "New Year's Day" is celebrated on widely disparate days by different cultures depending on their calendars which, after all, are social constructs in and of themselves. Time is an artificial construct as far as its measurement goes, and again, not all cultures regard it in the same manner as we do. We have created devices for determining time (or rather, duration), scientifically ticking off the increments with atomic regularity, but anyone waiting for a bus in the rain can confirm that some minutes are substantially longer than others. Time is relative, in more ways than Albert Einstein was able to quantify. A month in a child's life is an eternity; an octogenarian remarks on how quickly it passed. Perhaps that is what Salvador Dali was intending to suggest with his limp watches in "The Persistence of Memory," that time, the flexible, distorted rigor by which the bulk of us manage our lives and attempt to govern the lives of others, is not as fixed as we wish to make it.

Evidence Of Spring

Day 174: Evidence of the changing season is beginning to show up in the garden, at least between snow showers. Only today, I discovered the volunteer primroses lurking in the moss and the swelling buds of the Red-flowering Currant. While some things seem to be running late (the daffodils are barely budded), the Hellebore is more lush than it's ever been before. What phenologic cues are these plants taking, that some are in a rush to produce as many flowers as possible while others seem to be husbanding their strength? What do they know that we do not? Humans have become so divorced from Nature that our bodies no longer follow the map of the seasons, so separated from the rising and setting of the sun that we complain when compelled to change our clocks to another designation which, after all, is a purely artificial construct in the first place. We have, as a species, moved a long way into an imaginary world. We could do with a lesson from the flowers in how to judge when the time is right.

The Construct Of Time

Day 151: Every year at this juncture (and again in late autumn), I find myself puzzling over humanity's innate masochistic tendencies. Governing bodies seat themselves to debate whether or not Daylight Time should be made permanent or abandoned altogether, all the while knowing full well that again they will come to no resolution, wasting the very thing under discussion along with another of Mankind's constructs, the taxpayers' money. Time and money have caused more problems than any other matters except perhaps religion, all three being totally artificial constructs of society. I must note here that there are some cultures which do not acknowledge the Western concept of time; enlightened people, these, who spare themselves being regulated by ticks, tocks, and lighted displays. The duration of daylight is not affected by Man's intervention. It is simply reallotted. All our efforts to gain control of the situation are futile, and yet we continue to bang our heads against the wall as if we believe we can manipulate the universe to our will. Life would be so much simpler if people would just get up with the sun and go to bed when it gets dark. They might find they didn't have time to stir up trouble about Time.

Tempus Redit

Day 22: Tempus redit...time returns, or at least it gets set back an hour tonight. But does it? Of course not. We don't "lose" an hour or "gain" an hour when we switch to or from Daylight Time. We just shift our perspective. For that matter, not all civilizations view time in the same manner as Western Man. Our perception of it is governed by our desire to have some measure of control (total, if possible) over the things which set the patterns of our lives. We delude ourselves into thinking that by changing the hands of the clock, we are somehow enriching our existence. Poor fools we!

Stop and think about time zones for a minute. When it's 3 AM on the east coast, it's midnight here in the PNW (or so they'd have us believe), but this statement relies on geographic divisions, not where the sun falls. Realistically, when it's noon at my house, it's roughly 12:01 at my office, 12:02 at the Sunrise Visitor Center, 12:04 in Yakima. Our system is woefully inaccurate, and yet we trust in it like no other factor save perhaps our religion if we have one. Time is horridly unscientific, yet we use its figures to record when a bird species was observed gathering nesting material ("2017-05-06, 7:02 AM PST, Coccothraustes vespertinus male observed returning to nest with fine animal hair of indeterminate origin"), or when a peak wind gust occurred ("2017-11-02, 1419 hours EDT, 43 MPH"). This gives us a marker to which we can relate, but it tells us very little about the natural time of the occurrence, i.e., the point at which the sun stood above the horizon. Yes, we can calculate that if the need arises and some studies go into that depth, but by and large, our system for measuring time is as rough as measuring a molecule with a yardstick.

The human animal is not as advanced in evolution as it would like to think it is (speaking both generically and individually). Our brains are not adequately developed to accept a larger explanation of time. Einstein and a few others have barely stirred the surface of temporal science. Now, go set your damn clocks back and stop grumbling. There's a picture here which is a lot bigger than an hour.

Closet Whovian

Day 298: A couple of months ago, I caved in to peer pressure and started watching Doctor Who, beginning with the 2005 series. I had some background on the premise and wasn't sure how I was going to take to a show where the main character changed rather frequently, and grilled my friend Kevin as to whether or not subsequent actors were able to successfully portray enough personality traits to make it believable. On his assurance that I would "see" the Doctor in each regeneration and that the one villain I knew something about would recur, I decided to give it a go. I am happy to say the series did not disappoint. I liked Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and had no trouble adjusting to David Tennant's assumption of the role. Best of all, there were Daleks: "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Now this is quite a leap for an old Trekkie. Initially, I had a hard time believing that any series could hold a candle to Star Trek, but my other favourite (Farscape) proved to be a strong competitor for my loyalties. I liked the fact that Farscape's story was an on-going one, unlike Trek's stand-alone episodes. Many of the episodes of Doctor Who appear to be isolated stories, but subtle hints dropped here and there begin to stack up to a larger plot. I haven't quite pulled Farscape down from its pre-eminent position nor dropped ST:TNG below second place, but Doctor Who is definitely running a strong third. I will save judgment until I've survived another regeneration. For right now, I'll say that David Tennant's "slightly mad from having seen and done so much" Doctor will be hard to lose.

Go Binary

Day 21: It is 8:13:47 by the clock, and as easily read as a standard 12-hour dial once you get the hang of it. The numbers are represented in binary, and the columns are read left to right, bottom to top. The bottom row is 1. The second row is 2. The third row is 4. The top row is 8. The lights indicate the classic yes/no of binary; thus if a light in the bottom row is lit, it equals 1. If another light is lit in the column above it, the value of that light is added; thus if lights in the first and third row are lit, but not the second, 1 + 4 = 5.

To read the time here, we have
0 lights in column 1 = 0
The 8 light in column 2 = 8
The 1 light in column 3 = 1
The 1 and 2 lights in column 4 = 3
The 4 light in column 5 = 4
The 1, 2 and 4 lights in column 6 = 7

See how easy that was?

I've had this little clock for years and prefer it to the regular dials. It's much easier to set if the power goes off.