Time
From Philosopedia
TIME
- Theoretically, were we able to travel to some point light-years from Earth and have a spy satellite—something with advanced photoreconnaissance capable of reading the washing instructions on a black silk chemisette from 22,300 miles in geosynchronous orbit—we could actually observe ourselves in the past.
- But until we can outrace light, until we can set up our hyperresolution telescope on some planetoid fifteen, twenty, thirty light-years from Earth and—by dint of its optical wizardry—watch our youth unfold, we must make do with our memories, our diaries and notebooks, our videotapes, microcassettes, floppy disks, our photo albums, our evocative souvenirs and bric-a-brack—all the various and sundry madeleines we use to goad our hippocampi into reverse-scan.
- Mark Leyner, preface to The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1998)
- But until we can outrace light, until we can set up our hyperresolution telescope on some planetoid fifteen, twenty, thirty light-years from Earth and—by dint of its optical wizardry—watch our youth unfold, we must make do with our memories, our diaries and notebooks, our videotapes, microcassettes, floppy disks, our photo albums, our evocative souvenirs and bric-a-brack—all the various and sundry madeleines we use to goad our hippocampi into reverse-scan.
Archbishop James Ussher in 1654 dated the creation as having been in 4004 B.C.E.
Rosalind, in As You Like It, described the world as “almost 6,000 years old.”
“The French Revolution’s calendar, adopted in 1792, had months that were each 30 days long (with a five- or six-day end-of-year festival), three 10-day weeks a month, and days divided into 10 hours. Each of the hours was divided into 100 minutes, and each of the minutes was divided into 100 seconds.
Watches and clocks from the era survive,” Jay M. Pasachoff, a professor of astronomy at Williams College, has reported.
As the World Wide Web expanded toward the end of the century, interest increased in some similar such decimal system for marking time. One plan, that breaks the day into 1,000 units each equivalent to 86.4 seconds, was offered. Thus 3 p.m. on a 24-hour clock would be the equivalent in universal time of “@625”:
- Midnight @000 Noon @500 01:00 @041 13:00 @541 02:00 @083 14:00 @583 03:00 @125 15:00 @625 04:00 @166 16:00 @666 05:00 @208 17:00 @708 06:00 @250 18:00 @750 07:00 @291 19:00 @791 08:00 @333 20:00 @833 09:00 @375 21:00 @875 10:00 @416 22:00 @916 11:00 @458 23:00 @958 24:00 @000
Critics of such a new global Internet time, or decimal “milliday,” point out that Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) already works. Watches easily display local times anywhere on earth. The offset from GMT can be contained in any E-mail message’s header.
