What Time Is It?

I've been thinking about time again.  Yeah, I know there are theoretical physicists getting paid to ponder the same thing - what is time? - but that shouldn't keep me from thinking about it any more than the existence of NASCAR drivers should keep me from getting behind the wheel of my truck.  They're professionals, and they run their race very well, but they can't get me where I need to go, that's my job.

As Einstein demonstrated, space and time are connected, the same fabric.  It's where we get the concept of spacetime.  And we are embedded in spacetime, all four dimensions of it.  Which is why, I think, we experience time as a one-way arrow.  In order to step outside of time, we'd have to be able to experience a fifth dimension which would allow us a separate perspective on our original four.
    Think of it in terms of Flatland, a hypothetical two-dimensional world.  The Flatlanders have forward and back, and left and right, but they do not have up and down.  They can't even conceive of up and down, since that's a third dimension and they have only two.  Everything they do is constrained to those two dimensions, and even if they were somehow transported through a third dimension they'd never know it, since they can't perceive it.

Same thing with us and time.  It's a fourth dimension, but we're stuck in it like it's 4-D flypaper, nothing we can do to get out of it.  It's not only all we know, it's all we can know.

There's a very good question about time travel:  If time travel is possible, where are all the time travelers?  Once time travel is invented, no matter how far in the future, every era would be lousy with time tourists, because every moment in time would essentially be 'now.'  Since we don't see any time travelers, ipso facto, time travel must not be possible.
   But I put this to you:  if time travel is possible, it's only possible through a fifth dimension.  And since we can't perceive that fifth dimension, we can't perceive any time travelers, who must, of necessity, be five-dimensional beings.  So maybe there are time travelers all around us right now.  We'd never know it, just like Flatlanders could never know us higher-dimensional beings.

Which brings us to another notion about time.  We experience time as a linear flow, but if there is a fifth dimension outside of our four familiar dimensions of spacetime, wouldn't someone in that fifth dimension be able to see all of time?  To them, wouldn't time be just another dimension they could move along, forward or backward or sideways or what have you?  Furthermore, wouldn't that mean that time - though we experience it linearly - is actually all happening at once?  Is every moment in time really lined up in order like a huge card catalog* we leaf through from front to back because we have to by virtue of our four-dimensionality?

I think the notion of there being no real 'now,' just a card-catalog moment we experience as now is both disturbing and poetic.  It's like we live each moment like it's a frame of movie film, one at a time, one after the other. 
    Which has all sorts of implications for the notion of free will.  But that's another sleepless night lying in bed.


* kids, a card catalog is what libraries used to keep track of their books in the days before computers did everything for us.

The Spirit Of LA

Midway through life's journey I found myself in a dark alley, for I had forgotten which parking lot held my vehicle.
   In Hollywood was I, after midnight, when the freaks emerge to do their freakish things and honest citizens flee to their homes. Certain that I had parked down a side street I ventured thence, only to discover by my twistings and turnings that the clear path eluded me. Vile odors of body fluids assailed mine nose as the alley I traversed had clearly been used as toilet, vomitorium, and bordello. Perhaps all at the same time.
   I spied a junkie, strung out as was his wont, bracing himself against the wall, his clothes and demeanor two weeks unwashed. Hard upon that a pimp did swagger forth, ostrich-plumed cap large and emerald, and behind him staggered his soiled dove, no doubt looking to sell her favors for the promise of silver.
   Turning to make my escape I encountered a shadow, the odd form of a person where I had just passed, though I had seen him not before. 'O apparition,' said I, 'if you be friend aid me now, and if you be foe please show mercy.'
   He(?) emerged into the street light, slender to the point of emaciation, clad in patent leather rainment that in other circumstances might have been part of a gimp outfit. Work boots he(?) wore, scuffed and worn, and a Raiders jacket, with a cap turned sideways. His(?) face might have been from the Orient, or perhaps a swarthy inhabitant from below the equator, but had been so extensively altered by surgeons that his(?) origin could not be determined, nor could his gender. He(?) gestured behind himself to a food truck I had not seen before.
   'I have come to guide you through this inferno,' he(?) said, and even his voice sounded genderless, 'though too late I cannot tarry, for I have an audition in the morning.'
   Behind me the pimp approached, smacking his bitch upside the head. Behind them the junkie stood upright, his eyes now full of chemical fury. I turned to the genderless abomination before me, choosing the lesser of two evils.
   'Let us be gone to yon food truck,' said I, hurrying towards him(?). 'Of many questions I have let this be the first: what manner of being are you?'
   'The Spirit of Los Angeles am I,' he(?) said, bowing as if he were on stage. 'It is appointed to me that I be your guide out of this abyss. Mine own reality show shall be my reward.'
   'Let us make haste, then,' said I, leaping into the food truck. 'Does this conveyance vend tacos?'

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I'm concerned that the Japanese have taken this whole 'lifelike robot' thing waaaay too far.
   It was kind of neato with Asimo, the not-really independent robot who interacts with people. It's actually remotely controlled, but the robot is standing upright by itself, which is a feat. Asimo begat the little robot dogs, and consumer electronics that are fun for kids to play with.
   But the Japanese are getting kind of creepy with their robots now, making 'lifelike' women robots who look like they popped out of a 1960's Godzilla movie, and creepy little girl robots who obviously want the codes to our nuclear weapon arsenal. Or our souls.
   I know the Japanese are weird - it's their defining characteristic and gives them an excuse for all those talking toilets - but seriously, this is taking things too far. The next time I'm in Japan (because I go so often) I'm going to pinch people, to make sure they're not robots.