Spring - Time 2015

Yes, it does seem that as the intermingling social interactions via the Internet are moving faster (tweets, tags vines, InstaBabble) I might appear to be blogging slower. Time is relative you know.

This is for your benefit, dear reader. What you read here has actually been pondered and constructed to be worth a bit more than the Time it takes to read it. Such posts are certainly created by others, probably quicker too. These posts are but good things among good things. 

You, dear reader, I thank for your Time, and proffer a few Timely items below:

Spring is getting shorter, Summer is getting longer.

" ... for thousands of years, spring has been losing time in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, summer is the longest season, with 93.65 days ... As the years go on, spring will lose time to summer, and winter will lose time to autumn ..."

I am ok with this.  

This next article has some dubious sections, but a curious theory on Time could be intimated by experimentation with the Large Hadron Collider -

"The detection of miniature black holes by the Large Hadron Collider could prove the existence of parallel universes and show that the Big Bang did not happen, scientists believe."

I am far more concerned about miniature black holes than the big bang proof. And of course there are parallel universes ... aren't there?

And here, a Spring/Time movie recommendation. It's based quite closely to Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" and is now on DVD titled "Predestination". Very good science fiction film, without all the typical trappings. But when the Time paradoxes start to kick in, the story takes off. It begins as an almost detective story, but grows into something far more vast. 

Keeping Time in Tennessee

I mentioned earlier (in Time) the state legislature is debating a bill to stop the back and forth of Daylight Savings Time. To clarify, sponsors want Tennessee to stay forever in DST.

Some fret over the state's businesses having to adjust with other states over the time differences, though really don't we have to do that anyway?

I have no clue what might have prompted this proposal - the change or lack of it seems capricious. Still, I'd sure like it if the changes would just stop. That said, does the idea really merit legislative debate?

KnoxViews has opinions on the debate.

Tom Humphrey talks about the debate too.

What say you? 

2012: Days of Future Passed

As the new year approaches I tend to reflect some, as most folks do, on Past, Present and Future. In truth, I'm likely too reflective on a constant basis, perhaps part of the hard-wired nature of The Writer in My Head.

Given the purely tentative and fragile essence of Life itself, I confess to some surprise to still be a living creature here on this wee speck of a planet in an infinite Universe. Existence for more than a handful of decades defies the odds. Perhaps it is that I have felt as if I were an Old Soul since I was but a young boy. Now that I am far beyond young boyhood, the passage of Time perplexes me far more than ever.

This fading year, 2012, is one where I have realized I am aging to the point of cultural irrelevance, a fact which was driven deep into my thoughts rather too often for comfort. My time here has straddled two centuries, and the changes in how life is lived are radical and spectacular. A great many of the changes were expected, yet many more were not. (Not that such a state is uniquely mine.)

And there's the simple fact that the time which has passed in my life is now greater than the time which is ahead and yet to be lived. Spooky.

The year I was born, Time magazine proclaimed that the "Men of the Year" were Scientists. Scientists. 

Every day, new and startling discoveries are made about our world and how we manipulate it and use it and attempt to understand it. Sadly, this year, the dubious wisdom of the Tennessee state legislature decided that Science was a collection of random theories which were to be challenged and doubted by American grade school and high school students. 

Not that Science solves any and every problem, but the vast wealth of possibility and discovery has apparently been dismissed as if they were mere Superstitions while Superstition is now heralded as a beacon of Truth.

The men who were singled out in 1960 helped to create so many of the innovations which shape life today via technology and medicine, and much more, and hundreds of other inventors and innovators built on their ideas:

George Beadle, geneticist, Charles Draper, designer of the Apollo Guidance Computer, John Enders, "Father of Modern Vaccines", Donald A. Glaser, particle physicist,  Joshua Lederberg, artificial intelligence and genetics,  Willard Libby, chemistry,  Linus Pauling, quantum chemistry and molecular biology,  Edward Purcell, magnetic resonance creator and physicist,  Isidor Rabi, physicist and microwave developer, Emilio Segrè, physicist, William Shockley, "Father of Silicon Valley". Edward Teller, physicist, inspiration for "Dr. Strangelove",  Charles Townes, quantum electronics, James Van Allen, nuclear and astrophysicist, and Robert Woodward, organic chemist.

I often think that it will be the children who have been born in the last few or next few years who will provide the next major shift in how life on our planet is lived -- and I confess that I most selfishly want to live as long as possible just so I can be alive as our wee planet makes another monumental stride into and beyond the realms of possibility.

Here's to you 2013 and all the years and surprises yet to come.