Archives for 2024

Another hot day here today, and I didn’t spend much time outside other than filling the bird bath, heading to the pharmacy for a refill, and heading up the hill to the post office to check my mailbox. The house is at a very comfortable 78 at the moment, which is hotter than I would like, but I just have a hard time justifying cooling a house this big any lower than that for just one person. I have one of those portable ac units in my bedroom and in my office, and I turn them on when I am in those rooms. Other than that, the house will just have to stay at 78. Soon enough this heat wave will pass and I can open the windows at night and get temperatures down again.

I’m watching Dune again because I wanted to see the second installment but decided I should rewatch the first before doing so, and I have to say I am really impressed with how “big” and “grand” and “epic” the director made it feel. A lot of directors try to do that, but it just doesn’t work. This guy pulls it off. Several of his movies have that “big” feel to them, for lack of a better word.

Speaking of science fiction, one of the things I think about a lot is time. How we perceive it, how we treat it and use it, how our concepts of time change over time, etc. One of my favorite ways of looking at time is taking my current age (53) and go back to the year I was born, then subtract my lifetime, and you end up with the year 1917. Then think to myself- I know how long the time I have been a live has felt, and think back to what things were life in an equal period of time and you find us in the heart of WW1. And just think how different things are in that arc of time for which I have a frame of reference.

I suppose it is looking at time kind of the same way you look at the distance of a diving board before you jump. A six foot high dive seems so much bigger than six feet, and that is because it is. I’m six feet tall, so if I am standing on a 6′ diving board looking down, it’s not six feet from my eyes to the water, it’s 12 feet! Twice as large. It’s just a matter of perspective.

At any rate, it gives you a viewpoint on history and change that is different. It also leads to one of the things that irritates me a lot these days, which is that the rise of the internet and social media the virality of videos and well, life these days has really fooled so many people into thinking they are the main character when the fact of the matter is that in your life and personal story, you are the main character, but in the big scheme of things, you’re an NPC. More than likely you were cut from the game during beta.

If you think back to 1917 and on, how many people REALLY made history. How many people are in the books as titular characters of importance. How many do people currently remember. Honestly, how many people could you name from the last hundred years? A thousand? How many could the majority of people remember from the last 100 years? A couple dozen? That’s not to say most people aren’t important. Everyone makes a difference in someone’s life. But I digress.

One of the things that is curious to me is how an alien species would view time. We do things based on the time our planet rotates around the sun. How would alien life forms from different solar systems view time? Would they? Most certainly they wouldn’t in the same way we do. And how would it change their perceptions? I always thought the way the Ents took “forever” to the hobbits to think was for them no time at all was a neat framing. Then again, I don’t even really know how other people view time- I can’t really even know for sure if they perceive colors anywhere like I do. I’m almost sure they don’t.

I have nowhere to go with this thread and no I am not drinking again.

Thursday Night Open ThreadPost + Comments (106)