The True Properties of Time

I don't care what Einstein said, there are just two important properties of time that we need to know about:

    1. Time speeds up as we get older; and
    2. Everything takes twice as long as you think it will, even if you count on it taking twice as long as you  think it will.

Allow me to elucidate. First, time does not actually speed up, of course; it only seems to. Each day, week or year is a smaller percentage of your life than the one before it. When you were ten, 10% of your life had to pass before you reached your next birthday. When you're 50, only 2% has to do so, thus the year seems to go by more quickly. I asked my friend Tadd how he would explain the phenomenon. I didn't tell him my answer, but his was virtually the same. He thought in terms of trips around the sun: the more orbits you've completed, the less significant each additional one seems (mathematically, at least). So by virtue of this independent, unbiased confirrmation, Tadd's and my hypothesis is at least a scientific law, and I'm sticking to it.

The second force is akin to Parkinson's Law, which states: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion." But I think the ETTAL principle ("everything takes twice as long") rises to an even higher level: that of scientific theory.  A scientific theory is a statement that explains a group of observations or phenomena, including hypotheses and laws, and accounts for a wider variety of events. Broad acceptance of a theory comes when it has been tested repeatedly on new data and has been used to make accurate predictions. In some cases, such as the germ theory of infectious disease, a theory becomes so completely accepted that it stops being referred to as a theory and is just taken as a plain and simple fact.

I have been testing ETTAL for many decades and have always found it to be true. No matter how well I plan, everything takes longer than it should; roughly twice as long, in fact. I think it fair to say, without equivocation or peradventure, that ETTAL has finally risen to the level of scientific fact.

For example, just a few days ago I bought a new filing cabinet. I was tired of my black, metal, two-drawer version that always wanted to tip forward if I fully extended the top drawer. At Office Depot I found a handsome lateral file in a dark cherry finish at a good price. There was "some assembly required," of course, but that's not a big deal. Or so I thought.

My first mistake was trying to read the instructions. I should have just looked at the pictures; instructions slow you down. The second problem was that I didn't close the door to my office to keep the cats out. Those of you who have cats know that anything new attracts them faster than catnip. They wanted to be in the empty box. They wanted play cat hockey with screws and other bits and pieces. They wanted to get inside the old cabinet when I removed the drawers. With their help, assembling the thing took most of the afternoon. Once I got it together there was the question of where to put it. The planned location wasn't as convenient as I had thought it would be, so I had to rearrange the furniture, which meant I also had to deal with computer cables, etc.

When I got everything in place, there was the matter of the files themselves. Obviously I couldn't just take the old files and drop them into the new drawers. Certainly not. The new cabinet is build for hanging files, so I have to make new folders for each subject and new labels and plastic tabs for each folder. As I was doing that, I decided to riffle through each file and weed out old material and duplicates. This was time consuming in itself, but as the pile of discarded papers grew I needed two trips to the recylcle bins and even some time to burn sensitive material in the fireplace (because my shredder got lost in the move from Baton Rouge).

Well, I finally got it done and I'm patting myself on the back. I was able to "reduce, reuse and recycle" and learn a little something about the theory of relativity.

The end result, with WhoDat asleep on my chair.

Close-up of the new piece.

During this project I came across some worthwhile things I'd totally forgotten about, which brings me to one more force at work in our lives. Not only does time speed up, and not only do things take longer, but we start thinking about the hereafter, as in:  I walk into a room and ask myself, "What am I here after?" [Ba-dum-bum!]

Apropos of that thought, I leave you with this wonderful little number in which award-winning cabaret singer Pam Peterson sings a great parody about the challenges of an aging memory. Check this out, it's a hoot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzSaoN2LdfU

Stuart

Ice

Ice everywhere. Ice on the Chattahoochee where it flows from Coon Den Ridge;  ice on Lake Lanier;  ice down river at the Roswell Mill and Jones Bridge and on down toward Columbus. Ice on the State Capitol and on the freeways and on the side streets. Ice on the power lines and the trees, weighing them down, stopping traffic and chilling the spirits of the people. Ice blanketing cities and towns and countryside and covering the dome of Stone Mountain where Davis and Lee and Jackson peer into a nether sky as gray as sharks.

Seldom has there come ice so thick, seldom has there come cold so biting, to keep company this genteel Southern city that knows not how to cope.

The ice perdures.

And nothing moves.

Keeping Perspective

In some emails to family and friends I portrayed the recent Atlanta snowstorm as a big deal, and in fact it was pretty unusual. They don't get snow here every year, our white Christmas last month was the first since 1882, and the total annual snowfall is only 2.5" on average. So when more than that was predicted for Sunday night into Monday morning, people went nuts. Grocery stores sold out of bread and milk. Hardware and home improvement stores ran low on salt, shovels, and sleds. Liquor sales were up, naturally.

All eleven [!] of the area's snow plows hit the roads, but of course they couldn't cover thousands of miles of streets, and the next afternoon the snow changed to freezing rain. Mind you, this isn't pool-table-flat Kansas or Indiana or Florida. This is Atlanta -- there are real hills here because there are actual mountains in the next county. So when you combine the topography with snow, ice, and a few million people who don't know how to drive in these conditions, it creates a very interesting scene indeed.

As I probably would have done had I been in their shoes, my friends up north used the occasion to make fun of us. We're weather wimps, they said. We need to stop com- plaining, they said. Look at Boston getting dumped on with a couple feet of snow today [Jan. 12]. Did you see what New York City went through three weeks ago? Buffalo and Syracuse get this all the time, and you don't hear them whining, they said. 

They're right, of course ... but, although I nobly suffered the slings and arrows of this outrageous fortune -- not to mention my friends' disparaging remarks -- I also chose to reflect on the lessons one can learn from the situation.

 Keeping perspective is one of them. In the larger reality, this is no big deal. When I lived in Lake Bluff, Illinois -- on the shores of Lake Michigan and closer to Wisconsin than Chicago's Loop -- I didn't think much of driving to work in six or eight inches of snow with the temperature below zero. One week I lived there the high temperature the entire week was eight below! Yeah, it was pretty miserable, but you learn to deal with it. This week in Atlanta I just put on a sweater and "bundled in," as dey say in Nordakota.

The other lesson to take away from this little winter vignette is patience. In a few days nature will remove the snow and ice and we'll be back to normal, which in January is in the 40s for a daytime high.

So I'm being patient and reminding myself to keep perspective. After all, I could be in Fargo, dontcha' know.

New Year's Resolution

Jan. 2, 2011
On New Years Eve my friend Bob sent me an e-mail that was too long to post in the comment box. It relates to some of my viewpoints, and he's given me permission to reprint his message as a kind of "guest editorial." Here's what Bob wrote--

from    b******@*********.com
to      Stuart Showalter
date    Fri., Dec. 31, 2010 at 8:21 PM
subj    New Year's Resolution

Stuart,
Like you, I get really frustrated with people who blindly believe whatever they hear or read. Your blog's theme is "question everything and beware of answers," but a lot of people don't seem to question anything. They think they have all the answers already, or they assume that because it was said on cable news or a friend of a friend sent something to them by email, it really is true. These simpletons aren't thinking, and they mock anyone who shows signs of being intellectual. They ridicule experts, and complain of "spineless, elites with Ivy League educations and fat resumes that aren't based on hard work and free enterprise." (Sarah Palin actually said that on Fox News on Nov. 11, 2009.) And they're too dumb to realize that behind their backs they're being ridiculed by people who actually use their minds to think. It's the dumbing-down of America, you betcha!

These people are paranoid about the government. They've been brainwashed into thinking that Reagan was right when he said "government's not the solution, it's the problem" or however he said it, words to that effect. But if government is the problem, why do people accept their military retirement, GI Bill, Medicare and VA benefits? Do they not cash their Social Security checks? Why do they want better mail service and want it six days a week? What would we do without fire, police and EMT services? What about food and drug safety? National defense and homeland security? The state and federal court systems? National Weather Service, NASA and NOAA? National Institutes of Health and the CDC?  There are hundreds of valuable government programs at all levels, but the right wing zealots only want to cut programs and cut taxes and do away with practically everything except fighting wars and delivering the mail, and they'd probably like to privatize those things too.

I've got news for the Tea Partiers and libertarians of the world -- big government isn't bad; bad government is bad, no matter how big or small. Look at corruption in small town governments. Look at the history of cities like Chicago and Newark and LA. But the right wing crazies think smaller is better. Well it ain't necessarily so. And another thing, they're addicted to cutesy sayings and sound bites. Their insight doesn't extend any deeper than a phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker. Phrases like "How's that hope-y, change-y stuff workin' out for ya?" and "A nation of sheep creates a government of wolves" and "I want my country back." These are just substitutes for real thinking.

The angry airheads are addicted to simplistic mottos and simplistic answers. Term limits, for example. Term limits will solve everything! If we keep politicians from lingering in Washington or the state capital or city hall, we'll get back to what the Founding Fathers envisioned: "citizen legislators." Voila! Problem solved! But what the sound-bite crowd doesn't realize is that there are unintended consequences for every "simple" solution. For one thing, a politician who gets term-limited is just beginning to learn how to do the job, so he or she gets replaced by another neophyte. The one who leaves usually moves up to a higher office or becomes a lobbyist. This would mean that lobbyists will have even more power than ever if all the politicians are newbies. The issues are too complicated for amateurs, but that's what you'd have if term limits were in effect. Is that what we want?

And another problem: term limits are undemocratic. If the majority want an elected official to stay for a third or fourth or tenth term in office, wouldn't it be undemocratic to throw them out? You betcha! How's that will-of-the-majority thing workin' out for ya?

I'm going to stop now. This crap gets me too worked up. I'm going to adopt a New Year's resolution and tune out all politics for the year.

All the best for 2011,
Bob
P.S. Thank God it's not an election year!
_______

As you see, Bob does not suffer fools lightly. I can appreciate how he feels; I understand his frustration. I agree with most of it, if not perhaps how he worded it because he verges on anger, and anger is not an argument. Only logic will do. The problem is that logic seems to be out of fashion.Like Bob, I get really frustrated with people whose opinions are based on rumor, myth and hysteria. People like the "birthers," and the people who believed the lies about there being "death panels" in the health reform law. People like the superpatriot pictured here who want to "take the country back," but to where they aren't clear.

These folks' minds are made up, and they have no regard for facts and logic. (See my blogs back in October: "Opinions Are Not Facts" parts 1 and 2.)

Bob has a great idea, and I'm going to join him in making a New Year's resolution.

I, J. Stuart Showalter, hereby resolve --

• to tune out Sarah Palin, Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, etc. for 2011;
• to "de-friend" people on Facebook whose blather irritates me;
• to pay no attention to "Cluster Fox"; and
• to ignore the crying jags and noisy political BS of John Boehner, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, etc.

I can't take it any more, and I refuse to let it continue to upset me. I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but I thank Bob for the idea.

[By the way, Bob is not on any distribution list of mine, so don't bother going back to old emails to figure out who he is.]

Hockey Night in Georgia

Hockey's a beautiful game. I've been a fan for more than 40 years and have attended games in St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, San Diego, and DC. Many games. Professional games with professional players. College games too. I watch it on TV -- pro, college or international. I watched the game a couple of weeks ago when the world record hockey crowd (113,411 people in Michigan Stadium) saw the UM Wolverines trounce the Michigan State Spartans. I'll see the annual "Winter Classic" tomorrow; that's the outdoor NHL game played every year on New Years Day. And there's the IIHF under-20 world championship going on this week as team USA goes against teams from other countries. I'm recording those games to watch when I can. So you get my drift, eh? I love hockey when it's done right.

They have something similar to hockey in Atlanta, as I discovered last night. There are big guys with sticks pushing a little black rubber thing around an ice surface that looks like a hockey rink. But there are fire-breathing birds above the scoreboard that shoot out flames when a goal is scored, and the announcer sounds like Vince McMahon of pro-wrestling fame: "and now ... here they are ... 

YOUR ... ATLANTA ... THRASHERS!!!

I thought a thrasher was a piece of farm machinery. Turns out it's also a bird, and in Atlanta it's a mascot:

After "Thrash" helps introduce the teams the game starts, but a couple of times each period they stop for the "Blue Crew" to clean off the ice. Nowhere else do they do this; cleaning the ice is for the Zamboni machine between periods. But these scantily clad "ice Barbies," as I dubbed them, come out and circle around with snow shovels during what I assume are TV timeouts. The players loll around their respective benches squirting Gatorade into their mouths and gawking while the Barbies scoop shavings into trash buckets then disappear. Nobody but me seems to find this strange. "It's the South," says my brother-in-law. "What do they know about hockey?"

Ice Barbie 

During the intermissions (which aren't the customary 15 minutes each but a bizarre 17 minutes, presumably to work in a few more TV commercials) they do goofy stuff like having kids dressed as Peter Puck run around the rink and leap over obstacles as "Thrash" chases them and knocks them down. It's really charming. 

Peter Puck

As if that weren't enough, during the first intermission last night the Blue Crew rolled a rubber mat onto the ice and out marched a bride and groom, their wedding party, and a minister, and they proceeded to conduct a marriage ceremony right then and there. Instead of riding off in a limousine when it was over, they got to ride around the rink on the Zamboni machine and wave to the crowd, none of whom seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to them.

Fortunately, the fans in my section of the arena didn't yell during the wedding, but they had some creative cheers when play was underway. The loudest devotee was a big round bald guy with a telescoping vuvuzela (my nephews and I want one now, by the way) who would blow his horn then chant "Ref you suck! Ref you suck!" over and over. Then he'd pause and shout, "Okay, second verse: Ref you suck! Ref you suck!" and on and on. This brought a chuckle and the participation of a few co-conspirators the first couple of times he did it, but by the 10th or 11th time it got a little old, especially since it was punctuated by the cow bells that various folks had brought with them. Another cheer, also with bell accompaniment, was the favorite of my nephews John and Hayden: "I'm blind / I'm deaf / I wanna be a ref!" This too lost its appeal after a dozen or more repetitions, however.

The fans' emotion notwithstanding , both teams seemed uninspired last night. Maybe they'd been out too late the night before or were tired from their away-games on Tuesday. For whatever the reason, they bumbled to a 2-2 tie, a scoreless overtime, and a Thrashers win in a shootout. That's always fun.

There are no great philosophical learnings to be had here, just the realization that this is the South. Hockey doesn't really belong. But it's still fun.

___

On a different note: HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!  I'll "chat" with you next year.

The Real Story of the Three Wise Guys

. . .

You see, they weren't really kings. They were tourists -- a Hindu holy man, a rabbi, and a lawyer. When they got to Bethlehem (the day before Jesus was born) there was one room left in the inn, but it had just one double bed; so the Hindu volunteered to sleep in the stable and he went out there and everyone else went to bed. Five minutes later there was a knock on the door and the Hindu man said, "There's a cow in the stable and cows are holy and I can't sleep out there with a cow."

So the rabbi said, "Okay, I'll sleep in the stable." And he went out and the others went to bed. Five minutes later there was a knock on the door and the rabbi said, "There's a pig in the stable and pigs are unclean and I can't sleep out there with a pig."

So the lawyer said, "Oh for Moses' sake [remember, Christ hadn't been born yet], I'll sleep in the stable; let's all get some rest!" And he went out and the others went to bed. Five minutes later there was a knock on the door ...

... and it was the cow and the pig.

Happy Holidays!

I was thinking about how to wish everyone happy holidays when I came across this gem from the A Word A Day newsletter (www.wordsmith.org).

The subject word was periphrasis (a roundabout way of saying something using more words than necessary), and the example is from a British TV series. One of the characters is speaking to a government minister:

Sir Humphrey: "I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by-no-means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice within government circles as we approach the terminal period of the calendar year, of course, not financial. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One, and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation -- indeed confidence, indeed one might go so far as to say hope -- that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average."

Jim Hacker: "Are you trying to say 'Happy Christmas,' Humphrey?"

Sir Humphrey: "Yes, Minister."

And the same from me to you!  

The Know It All--Redux

One of my avid readers--okay, "avid" is a little strong; it's my niece, who's recovering from surgery and doesn't have anything better to do--wrote that she's amazed they had computers when I was young. Well, check this out: "Calculating Machine" (the cross reference from "Computer") -- "a device which solves problems in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division."  Note the picture. It's not much more than an abacus!


P.S., in the entry, which should be that. ;-)

The Know It All

When I heard about this book, I just had to own it. I mean, really, people have been accusing me of being a "know-it-all" for decades--more than five decades, actually--and here's somebody who's stolen my thunder. He's read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Zed (33,000 pages and 44 million words) and then written a bestseller about the experience. I hate him, the show off!

I never dreamed up A.J. Jacobs's gimmick, darn it, but I came close. You see, when I was ten my parents bought my younger brother and me a set of The World Book Encyclopedia (10,518 pages and around 10 million words by my rough calculation). I'm not sure Paul used it much, but I was immediately enthralled. I kept it in my room. As a budding know-it-all, each night I would grab a volume at random from the shelf and read it in bed until I fell asleep. I even autographed the inside cover of each of the 19 volumes. I still sign my books, but not with the paraph I used then. (A paraph is the decorative flourish accompanying a signature; it was once a popular technique to deter forgery. Think of John Hancock's signature, for example.) 

I still have those World Books. The graphics are simple--quaint, one might say--and of course the information is outdated (for example, the entry for "computer" says: See Calculating Machine), but they are still fun to leaf through. And Jacob's book, modestly subtitled "One man's humble quest to become the smartest person in the world," is a hoot! It's part memoir, part education, and all fun. He writes with wit and charm, and he shares with the reader his journey of discovery from a-ak to zywiec and everything in between. I learned, for example, the following tidbits with which I can now astound my friends:

• besides being a writer, among other things Goethe was a lawyer, painter, theater manager, statesman, soldier, alchemist, astrologer, songwriter, philosopher, botanist, biologist, issuer of military uniforms, and mine inspector
• in some languages there is a cousin to the prefix and the suffix; it's called an "infix," and there's only one in English; it's not polite, but Red Sox fans use it as Bucky Dent's middle name
• Alaska is both the western-most and eastern-most U.S. state (check it out on a globe)
• a "square root" is so called because the Pythagoreans would make a square of, say, 16 pebbles with four equal rows; thus the bottom row--the root of that square--was four

I also learned about the Ebbinghaus curve (a.k.a. the "forgetting curve"). I'd tell you more, but I don't remember how it works.

One thing I didn't learn was why Britannica's last entry isn't zyzzyva, any of various tropical American weevils, often destructive to plants. I've always thought that would be a great Scrabble word, but there aren't enough Z-tiles to pull it off.

The Election is Over -- Hooray!

Now that the election is over (thank goodness!), let’s hope that the people we sent to Washington and the state capitals will settle down and get something done rather than spending their time slinging more loose rhetoric. 

     It’s about that loose rhetoric that I write today. It’s easy enough to brand someone with inflammatory language—“liberal elitist,” “socialist,” “reactionary,” etc.—but seldom do I hear people define those kinds of terms; and seldom is there any purpose other than to put down the opposition.

     An interesting little 10-question exercise (dubbed the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz”) will help you define yourself on the political spectrum. Think of political philosophies not as points on straight line but as positions on a baseball diamond. Everyone is somewhere on the diamond, somewhere near one of these positions:

Third base: Left (Liberal)

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded "safety net" to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

Second base: Libertarian

Libertarians support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government; one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes, promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the free market, and defend civil liberties.

Pitcher’s mound: Centrist

Centrist prefer a "middle ground" regarding government control of the economy and personal behavior. Depending on the issue, they sometimes favor government intervention and sometimes support individual freedom of choice. Centrists pride themselves on keeping an open mind, tend to oppose "political extremes," and emphasize what they describe as "practical" solutions to problems.

First base: Right (Conservative)

Conservatives tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates "traditional values." They oppose excessive government control of business, while endorsing government action to defend morality and the traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

Home plate: Statists (Big Government)

Statists want government to have a great deal of power over the economy and individual behavior. They frequently doubt whether economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in today's world. Statists tend to distrust the free market, support high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose diverse lifestyles, and question the importance of civil liberties. [I don't hear a lot of people claiming to be "statists" today.]

     Take the quiz at: http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz It’s easy and it’s fun. And it will instantly place you somewhere on the political spectrum, as shown in this hypothetical result: 

Then ask your friends to take the little quiz too and see where they land. It’s kind of a Myers-Briggs test for politics, and it should provide some insight into one’s “political personality.”

     If each of us were more conscious of the belief system that underlies our own viewpoints, and if we were able to recognize the belief systems through which others view the issues, maybe we could stop throwing around undefined terms and start actually to define what the problems are. For example, we could ask each other, in a calm and non-threatening way, substantive questions like these:

     “What does it really mean to say so-and-so is a [insert pejorative here]?”

     “I sense that you’re coming from a libertarian viewpoint; do you think we should help homeless people, and if so how?”

     “When you say you want to ‘take our country back,’ can you be more specific about the problems you want to fix and how you want to fix them?”

     “As a liberal, do you agree that there’s a crisis looming in Social Security and Medicare? If so, how are we going to pay for that safety net as the baby boom generation reaches retirement age?”

     Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.” He also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” This election cycle may have proven him right on both counts once again.

     Unless we all shelve the angry rhetoric and name-calling, recognize the basic beliefs each of us is “coming from,” and actually start to identify and solve problems, it’s not likely to get any better for 2012.