Sunday, March 13, 2011

Time


Time. It's something that is always with us. It's a part of our lives. In fact, it's what our lives are made of. Every day we have to ask and answer questions about it: What time is it? What time do you have to leave? How much time will it take to get there? What time can you start on this project? How long will it take?

Like our thoughts, time is our constant companion. But it doesn't go away when we sleep. It keeps ticking, passing by. Rolex, Timex, Seiko, Waltham, and many other companies have made their fortunes creating devices that allow us to keep track of it. Our days are measured in increments of hours, minutes, seconds. And our lives are made up of years, months and days. And there never seems to be enough of it to do everything we need, or want, to do.

And since we actually LOST an hour of time today with the advent of Daylight Saving Time (again) it seems that time is an appropriate subject to talk about today. I'll try to make it worthwhile so we don't WASTE any of it.

I watched an interesting and entertaining movie recently—one which I had never seen. It's called Peggy Sue Got Married. I'm sure most of you have seen it. I know my wife has watched it numerous times. She just keeps sitting through it, kind of like I do when Jaws comes on. But I was fascinated by the concept and the nostalgic era that it centered on.

I guess we've always been fascinated by time travel. Hollywood has made several movies involving the idea. One of the earliest entries into this subject was a film based on the novel by H.G. Wells entitled The Time Machine. I don't recall the main character traveling back to the fifties, but Hollywood must have sensed an audience for that time period a little later.

If you've seen the movie Back to the Future, you may remember that November 12th, is the date the DeLorean (equipped with the flux capacitor that would deliver 1.4 jigawatts at 80 mph) was set for when Marty McFly took it for a ride. They used the same date in the second installment, Back to the Future II. I'm not sure what significance that date holds, but I'm guessing there may have been a reason for choosing it other than an arbitrary date. If anyone has an idea, leave a comment.

Now, here comes the philosophical part of this post. The whole concept of time travel makes one wonder. Doesn't it? Have we been here before? Are we actually here from a future time? Or have we come forward from an earlier time? It also makes one wonder if we're ever going to come back here again, years from now.

In closing, let me leave you with this question to ponder. Did Bill Gates figure out how to bend the time/space continuum and come back to our era with his ideas on computers and how to build them? Or is he really from another planet? Maybe he's originally from the same race of entities that helped the Egyptians build the pyramids. You never know.

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