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.

Man's Best Friend

Hey Beans.
   Puddles! What up, dawg?
Very funny.
   I see you got your garbage on.
Someone turned over a can behind a Thai restaurant. Best rolling I've had in a while.
   Very aromatic. I'm gonna have to get real close to smell your butt.
Maybe later, buddy. We've got business.
   You want me to go first?
Please, I have to gnaw on my hind leg for a little while.
   Well, the takeover isn't going as planned. But I guess you knew that.
Mffm... grblllfmm...
   Of course, you always expect setbacks, but this just isn't working out. I think it's because we don't have thumbs.
That's just an excuse and you know it. If we really wanted this, really, really wanted it, we'd find a way to make it work, thumbs or not.
   Easy for you to say, you're eighty pounds of fur and muscle. Some of us weigh less than a Thanksgiving turkey.
All I'm hearing are excuses. 'I can't' instead of 'I will.'
   Okay, big guy, how's your part going?
Well...
   See? It's easy to give orders, not so easy to follow them.
That's not it. I may have been too successful.
   What 'choo talkin' 'bout, Puddles?
This whole financial meltdown, it's gotten out of hand. Way beyond what we intended.
   Don't tell me they actually went for it.
All of it. Everything. Loaning money to people who clearly couldn't pay it back, lax oversight, rampant greed. Even credit default swaps, for Lassie's sake!
   Really? Those were Jughead's ideas, may his spirit chase bees forever. I thought he was stupid for even suggesting them.
They worked. And now my person's out of a job. Snausages are getting few and far between at my house.
    Mine too. I guess we should put the takeover plan on the back burner.
For now. But we can't lose sight of the goal: canine domination.
   A world without Snausages isn't one I want to live in, let alone rule over.
Agreed. I'll pass the word.
    Can I sniff your butt now?


COMMUTE: there - 36 minutes      back - 38 minutes, not too bad
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 80 days

Super-Dog

I was dog-sitting this afternoon, about 40 miles North of Pasadena, when I became witness to an incredible phenomenon. It's common enough, but this is the first time I've seen it in person.
   I was watching TV, with the dogs laying on the floor in the living room, when one of them grumbled, then she sat up and barked loudly. This dog almost never barks, at least not when I've been dog-sitting. She whined to get out, and when she was in the back yard she barked some more and then looked in every direction, like there was something to see that she was missing.
   My first thought was 'earthquake' but I didn't feel anything, and nothing in the house was moving or swaying.
   Fast forward to a few hours later, when I made it back to my place. I turned on the news, and I found out there had been a huge earthquake in Mexico, 7.2 (this is really big). Guess when that earthquake rumbled? 3:40 PM, right when the doggies started barking.
   Amazing. Incredible. The coolest thing I've seen in a long time, and I didn't even know what was going on at the time. The dogs heard/felt/sensed the earthquake hundreds of miles away, and knew enough to realize that it was something they needed to tell me about. Just... astonishing. Like you needed another reason to love dogs.

It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

There's a tradition that on Christmas Eve animals can speak, from midnight until the dawn of Christmas Morning. I know that several times I stayed up and waited for our family dog and cat to start talking but they never did. Maybe they just didn't know how to start the conversational ball rolling, seeing as how inexperienced they were at it. Maybe they just didn't think I would be interested in how funny people look when you're staring up at them, or have your snout in their crotch.
   I was never really interested so much in what the animals might say, though, as what they might sound like when they did talk. When I was a kid I thought our dog Tina, a miniature schnauzer/miniature poodle mix, might sound like Mary Hart, very enthusiastic without anything of substance to say. I thought Puff, our white cat (a boy), might sound like Richard Nixon, an idea that still makes me laugh to this day. "I did not knock over the trash can. I did not pee on your shoes."
   My sister and her family had a Brittany Spaniel, Hank, who I always imagined would sound like Paul Lynde.
   My mother's horrible, vicious cat Smokey - she claims he's just misunderstood - would sound like Joe Pesci. From Goodfellas, not from My Cousin Vinny.
   My friend Marna has an American bulldog Tex, who I absolutely know would sound like Jeff Bridges as The Dude. "So I'm Tex, that's what you call me. Or his Texness, or Tex-er, or El Texerino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

I'll bet you can't look at your pets now without imagining what their human voices would sound like. Go on, just try it, you can't.

You Ever Wonder...?

I've been pondering imponderables again, I have the free time for it. Here are a few.

What did ancient Egyptians use for a nasal decongestant? Did the subject even come up for them? I assume they got colds - they for sure got various plagues - but since they lived in the desert along the Nile I'm not sure they got stuffed up. Maybe King Tut just lived with sinus headache.
   For that matter, what did they do for toilet paper? They had papyrus, but that was for important stuff like government documents, not for wiping. I'm assuming.

If you could read someone's mind, would you really want to? I have trouble going into someone else's bathroom, can you imagine treading through the cesspool of someone else's thoughts? There's some dark, disturbing stuff rolling through my head, but I'm pretty sure it's tame compared to what you're thinking about. Mind reading would be a punishment, not a gift.

Why is being brutally honest when you're a little kid cute and precocious, and doing the same thing when you're really old is curmudgeonly and endearing, but being brutally honest at the ages in between is frowned upon? Why do kids and old people get a pass but I get a whispered admonition to 'be nice?' If I want to tell someone he's dressed like a colorblind clown I can't do it, but if some kid tells me I need to shave it's charming. If I open my mouth in a boring meeting and ask why we're there I get a talking-to from my boss, but if an old lady in line tells me to speed it up everybody chuckles. It ain't fair.

How can people not like dogs? I can certainly understand if someone doesn't like cats, if you die alone in the house with them they'll eat your eyeballs, no loyalty at all. I can also understand not liking birds, lizards, hamsters, what have you. But dogs are special. We grew up with dogs, literally, our evolution and theirs are tied together, they need us and we need them. So what kind of degenerate could not like dogs? Communists, that's who. Lousy fifth-columnists as Red as a baboon's ass. That's right, I said it: if you don't like dogs you're a devotee of a discredited socio-political economic philosophy. What are you gonna do about it?

I understand intellectually how airplanes fly, it's a very simple equation. But it still seems like magic to me. How can a 600,000 pound machine stay in the air? It seems like a violation of natural laws for anything that big to be off the ground, let alone carrying people across the globe. Like seeing an elephant swim, your eyes are telling you it's happening but your brain is screaming at you that it can't possibly be. So cut it out already, it makes me uncomfortable.

Doggie Tooth Fairy

Do you think dogs have a tooth fairy? Puppies lose their baby teeth just like human beings do. Those needle-sharp little puppy teeth fall out, usually embedded in a chair leg or old shoe. Sometimes you'll step on this oddly-shaped thing that stabs itself into your foot and when you check your dog's mouth you'll see a space where a tooth had once been.
   The people tooth fairy comes at night, taking the baby tooth the little kid left under her pillow and leaving some loose change, or maybe an IOU if Dad really needed smokes that night.
   Since dogs don't have pillows - most of them anyway - and since dogs really, really, really don't like being surprised when they're asleep, how does the doggie tooth fairy get it done? Don't you think she's kind of battle-scarred from dogs nipping at her when she accidentally wakes them up? And what does she give the dogs in exchange for their teeth? Dogs don't spend money, they don't have any pockets. Or thumbs. Does she carry around a bag of Snausages instead? And then wouldn't dogs chase her and try to steal the Snausages, even if they hadn't lost any teeth?
   I imagine the doggie tooth fairy would probably hate her job, and she'd have developed a drinking problem.

...And Horses Too, Maybe Cows

Those who are acquainted with me know that dogs, cats and babies love me. Pets flock to me, especially when I'm wearing wool dress pants and don't need the extra cat hair, and I'm a baby magnet even though I have none of my own. Yes, 'that I know of...'
   Evidently my dominion now extends over horses and cows too.
   I was recently visiting a friend in Idaho who keeps a horse or two and four steer in her pasture. The first day I was there we went to feed the animals, and I was standing at the fence rail, minding my own business as my friend rounded up one of the horses. The other horse, Cheyenne, was in the barn behind me. Before I knew it she was shoving her head under my hand, demanding that I scratch her nose, shoving up against me as if I were another 1500 pound horse instead of a puny person. Instant friend. I also made instant friends with my host's dog Buddy and the other neighborhood dogs, who roam the apple orchards in what has to be an Earthly representation of doggie heaven, where there are infinitely many trees to pee on.
   The cows, though... ah, the cows...
   I was the center of attention the moment I got out of the car. They followed my every move whenever I was in the pasture, wary and cautious and yet fixatedly curious. When I approached they'd scatter, move off a few yards and then watch me again.
   Here's a picture of all four of them, watching me as I was watching them:From left to right they are: Lester, Lucky, Rufus, and Rex.
   Lucky is the only one with horns, and, as you can tell, the one who gave me the most attitude. Rufus was the leader of the gang - sorry, it's not a gang it's a club - kind of like Pinky Tuscadero and the Pinkettes.
   The guys are yearling cattle, which means that come winter they're destined to become hamburger, which is too bad because otherwise I could see boy band in their future.