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Time? Even Big Ben is tired..

paranoidwriter waves hello

21:16 / 28.05.05

Saw the article about Big Ben on the news and it started me thinking about time.

I spent yesterday heaving office furniture out of offices, down stairs, into vans, out of vans, up stairs, and into offices; and managed to wear the most inappropriate clothing I possess on the hottest day of the year so far: a grey thermal T-shirt and my black woollen trousers! Yay! Needless to say, the day was hell and dragged on and on and on and on...(almost like this post.)

Then, last night, under pressure for a deadline on a communal project I'm working on, time flew by and before I knew it, it was 03.00am. I woke up today at four o'clock in the afternoon feeling almost jet-lagged, and had to carry on where I left off: more writing....

Looking at the clock now, I can't believe it's nearly 23.00. I've always had a healthy mistrust of time and suspect it is a barrier we need to transcend as a species (e.g. fear of getting old, the Four Dimensions, how the information age was supposed to give us more leisure time, time is relative, etc).

Seeing the Big Ben story made me feel better, so I thought I'd start a thread to see what your thoughts might be on this very big issue of Time.

Anecdotes, responses, book recommendations, old threads I haven't found yet, etc? Anyone?

(Note: I could have put this in Head Shop, or even Temple, but I thought I'd stick it here to open up the conversation and keep the mood light, so to speak).

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:52 / 28.05.05

One word, friend: Fotamecus.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:05 / 29.05.05

I we put someone in a room and the walls and floor and ceiling were all videoscreens showing a pot coming to the boil and he had his eyelids kept open, Clockwork Orange stylee, would he been frozen in time indefinitely?

I just wonder about why they insist on making more and more accurate atomic clocks, the latest one is supposed to remain perfectly correct just so long as it's left alone for several times longer than the human race has existed, then it might drop a half-second or so. I mean, shouldn't the people that make these things think that maybe they've got an accurate enough clock and go and do something else now?

alejandrodelloco

12:36 / 29.05.05

We want the future dominant race of this planet to be able to tell good time dammnit.

paranoidwriter waves hello

13:09 / 29.05.05

We put someone in a room and the walls and floor and ceiling were all videoscreens showing a pot coming to the boil and he had his eyelids kept open, Clockwork Orange stylee, would he been frozen in time indefinitely?

Do you mean as in "A watched pot never boils?"

Studies have shown that our biological rhythms can be altered with Time Depravation. As a semi-hermit (and also as research for a novel I've been thinking about writing for years now), Time Deprivation is an experiment I've always wanted to attempt. However, whilst typing this post, I just tried to find something online about Stefania Follini's experiment in an underground chamber in 1989, only to discover she may have later committed suicide!

(Unfortunately, the only links I can find to substantiate this at present are to a PDF and an online Encyclopaedia which is taking forever to load in my browser. More later...)

Time for a walk?

unheimlich manoeuvre

14:42 / 29.05.05

October 5th 1793:
Adoption by the 'Convention du Calendrier Révolutionnaire de Gilbert Romme et Philippe Fabre d' Eglantine' An important day for horology because of being the starting point of decimal clocks and watches and the 30 days calendar.

from here

paranoidwriter waves hello

20:57 / 29.05.05

I haven't found anything concrete to confirm that she may have taken her own life (anybody know any relevant information about this?); but here are a couple of links about Stefania Follini:

Stefania Follini 1
Stefania Follini 2

In case you were wondering...

21:03 / 29.05.05

If you want to try fucking around with your bodyclock, get hold of some melatonin. It's a hormone that regulates these things. You can buy it OTC in the US; in the UK it's harder to get hold of I believe, though I've never tried. Commonly used by international travellers and also some cokeheads I'm told. It's also the hormone that booze disrupts, causing you to wake up at odd times of the night and not be able to get back to sleep.

22:13 / 29.05.05

apparently richard feynman spent several months on a 25 or 26 hr day [can't remember which] and so was seen wandering the campus at all hours, quite nonchalantly, sleeping at uncommon hours, and reported that the earth's rotation, not our body clocks, was in fact out of synch!

i have vivid memories of a week at negril beach, jamaica, some fifteen years ago with an ex- where one day we had to change hotels, so spent the morning hiring a scooter, scooting up and down the beach to find a new hotel that would have us at the rate we wanted, packing, then checking out, moving our bags and our selves in two trips and then unpacking again and looking at the clock to our amazement that it was about two-three hours earlier than we thought it would be. morning tea of fruit, coffee chocolate and weed was most welcome!

man, a week in that place floated by forever but once we were [sadly] on the plane hooking out of montego bay it seemed to have taken only a blink.

so our apprehension of time seems to be the key - has anyone done or read of any studies on how we apprehend time?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:52 / 30.05.05

If you want to try fucking around with your bodyclock, get hold of some melatonin.

Or work a nightshift. ACtually, having said that, if you're working a nightshift a supply of melatonin can be essential for yourt first couple of months.

paranoidwriter waves hello

12:23 / 02.06.05

I'm no biochemist, which is probably why when I first read the word "Melatonin" in the above posts, I read it as "Melonin" and this confused me somewhat. I was thinking, "isn't that the stuff that controls pigmentation in our hair, etc? Do people who take it for some time find that their hair starts to go grey prematurely?"

Upon second reading, however, I realised my mistake. Shame, I liked the idea; almost like "You can't cheat time..."

Thanks for the heads up on "Melatonin" though, the little research I've since done on the subject has been enlightening.