MetaFilter posts tagged with time

Ben '09

XQUZYPHYR — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:52:52 -0800

"The story of the year was a weak economy that could have been much, much weaker. Thank the man who runs the Federal Reserve, our mild-mannered economic overlord." Ben Bernanke is Time's 2009 Person of the Year. Runners-up include General Stanley McChrystal, Nancy Pelosi, and Neda Agha-Soltan.

"The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others." - Marcel Proust.

infinite intimation — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:39:15 -0800

People have studied many things relating to, and regarding Marcel Proust; what they may never have told you is... Proust is funny!! (just not "Lucky Jim" funny.) Professor of French, Catherine LeGouis at Mount Holyoke also reads Proust, and sees the humour: Then last year, while on sabbatical in Moscow, having already decided to teach this course, I reread the whole Recherche again, this time using the annotated four-volume Pléiade edition; this worked out really well. I never left my apartment without one of these smaller volumes in my bag, reading on the subway, or standing in lines, or waiting for people. This time I made it through the whole thing in six months, and I got far more out of it, not only because of all the scholarly notes, but also because I discovered Proust's amazing sense of humor, which shows up in almost every sentence. For Proust there may be no need for the concept of zero... from the infinitesimal instant; he defines his sense of œcology & œcomomia along the scale of the infinite. This stretching, compressing, and ultimate return of times, people and senses long gone is not his copyright... just his trademark. Or is it? Time and sense: proust and the experience of literature and THE SCENT OF A NEW WORLD NOVEL: TRANSLATING THE OLFACTORY LANGUAGE OF FAULKNER AND GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ despite this and other critical attention paid to the role of memory in the author’s preoccupations with the influence of the past and its dead on the present, few to none have commented on how either writer attends to the connection between smell and memory, and, in particular, of how olfactory memories, impervious to time, might haunt the present, setting the stage for the appearance of ghosts and eidolons who inhabit vivid reinstatements of the past. A careful examination of olfactory language and situations in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and in García Márquez’s Leaf Storm, will establish how for both authors, smells, like disembodied souls themselves, call forth ghosts and eidolons. Both authors use Proustian moments of recollection to depict memory not as a controlled, conscious return to what one might review or reconsider, but as a chance visitation of the past, an olfactory haunting of the past through and in the body. Like Proust, Faulkner and García Márquez align history and memory with the body on a strictly personal (read: physical) level; consequently, memory is not limited to the bounds of nostalgia. (full text is free, at bottom of page, but is pdf.) When the beloved Gabo is mentioned alongside Proust however... then things heat up! United States President Clinton is an example of a great thinker who knows to listen when Mr. Marques shares his thoughts. Carlos Fuentes and I have good reason for considering that evening as a whole chapter in our memoirs. From the beginning, we were disarmed by the interest, respect and humor with which he listened to us, treating our words as if they were gold dust. -Gabriel Garcia Marques on President Clinton. (previously; Proust is a Neuroscientist, Mr. Marques and Enron

The Timeslice Phenomenon

namagomi — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:46:19 -0800

Tim Macmillan has been slicing time for more than twenty years now. His early attempts and the recent applications of his technique in nature documentaries, commercials, sports, music videos and his own short films can be watched on his vimeo page. His technique later mutated into the Bullet Time effect made popular by the Matrix movie. Watched enough? Then read an interesting article about him. Via Fleischfilm. Another great treatment of time is of course Zbigniew Rybczynski's Tango. Where Macmillan freezes time and navigates space, Rybczynski locks space and moves in time.

A history of timezones

Pronoiac — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:40:40 -0800

These files, I thought, only tracked daylight savings time for all the different timezones & offsets from Greenwich Time. Actually, they have a detailed, fascinating history of timezones scribbled in the margins. (via)

Delrious Time-Lapse

netbros — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:49:21 -0800

Ben Wiggins features stunning time-lapse photography. From the strange colorings of the Cnidarian and Montipora coral species, to summer cloud transformations in and around San Francisco. Couldn't make it to Burning Man 2009? See it... in just two minutes (2008, 2007).

Masters of Time

hexatron — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:58:16 -0800

In 1883, they took control of time ITSELF. They ran the railroads, and they got what they wanted. No longer would local time be a local choice. In Illinois, in 1883, they met and decided what time it would be. It became the law of the land in 1913. Slow lobbyists back then, eh what? Their decision has a wonderful little shrine in Grand Central Station in New York. (thanks to the NY Times and Dr FrankNFurter)

Time is the universal frequency of synchronization, mathematically expressed as a ratio constant, 13:20

fearfulsymmetry — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:24:20 -0800

Welcome to the official website of the Galactic Research Institute of the Foundation for the Law of Time (via i09)

We Are Peculiar People (Regarding Food)

Askiba — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:47:10 -0800

Getting Real About The High Price of Cheap Food. Why the food we're eating is hurting us, the animals we eat, our world, and what people are trying to do about it.

Long form journalism on the Web is "not working."

thisisdrew — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:17:20 -0800

Long form journalism on the Web is "not working." - TIME.com Managing Editor Josh Tyrangiel ..Among the detractors of this statement is David Sleight, Deputy Creative Director of BusinessWeek.com: "Really? It’s 2009 and we’re still having this conversation?" Scattered industry advice on this topic varies from moderate to extreme, and while web analytics paint a convincing picture of web readers, some wonder if long form journalism has EVER worked. Of course there seem to be other factors at play, like methods of presentation and quality of content.

the four-day workweek

kliuless — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:55:39 -0800

The Environmental and Economic Pluses of the 4-Day Workweek: "Forget everybody working for the weekend. In Utah all government employees have shifted to a four-day workweek, and the state is calling it a win-win-win for its budget, workers and clean air. Utah has saved $1.8 million in electrical bills in the last year, the air has been spared an estimated 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and workers are thrilled. Eighty-two percent of them say they prefer the new arrangement, which still enforces the 40-hour week by requiring 10 or more hours a day Monday - [Thursday]. Is it time to ask your boss if you can take off Friday .... forever?" (via)

For the Unemployed, the Day Stacks Up Differently

splatta — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:18:15 -0800

How are Americans spending their time? An informational graphic from The New York Times.

Maher and Feather

Christ, what an asshole — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:57:43 -0800

Bill Maher's criticism of Obama? Be more like Bush. ...And just like Lindsey [Lohan], we see your name in the paper a lot, but we're kind of wondering when you're actually going to do something. Follow up of his statements with Keith Olbermann. ...But where's the beef? And it's easy to make speeches; what's hard to do is stand up against corporations. Corporations and their incredible strength are what have ruined this country so far, and this president -- we thought -- might be the one to stand up to them. I'm losing hope. I still have audacity, but my hope is fading.

All this and I didn't link to the Time Cube

metaBugs — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:45:54 -0800

Timepieces! Ancient calendars, ancient clocks, beautiful clocks, atomic clocks and the clocks built into your brain that determine how you perceive time and form memories. All the good stuff is inside: How we count and perceive time is fascinating. Very early civilisations developed sophisticated calendars: the Sumerians 5,000 years ago in what's now Iraq; Stonehenge 4,000 years ago (and more recently, ManhattanHenge); the Chinese calendar system between 3,500 - 4,000 years ago; Calendars from North American societies dating from 500BC; the Julian Calendar from 45BC; and finally our current Gregorian calendar in 1582. Much younger but arguably just as important as the other calendars is Epoch or Unix time, the common time counted by UNIX and LINUX-based computers worldwide, providing a foundation for communication across networks. (previously) More recently, clocks have become crucial. Harrison's very beautiful series of clocks (H1, H2, H3, H4) were accurate enough to calculate longitude and opened the seas for reliable trade, exploration and systematic mapping. The spread of fast travel by rail lead to the standardisation of time zones, with towns in Britain and the USA moving from local solar time to "railway time". Knowing the right time rapidly became a commodity: three generations of the Belville family made their living by providing London's clock-owning homes and businesses with the correct time. Our best atomic clocks can now be accurate to within 1 second every 300 million years and are essential for systems like GPS and global communications. At the other end of the scale, the Long Now foundation wants to build a clock to measure 10,000 years. If you'd prefer something a little more practical, you could always get this wall-mounted 100 year alarm clock instead. We have a multitude of different clocks ticking away inside our brains and bodies. An healthy heart, for example, will keep a steady rhythm indefinitely without any signals from the brain. Our second best-known timekeeper is the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It keeps us on an amazingly accurate cycle that averages 24h11m +- 16 minutes, keeping our bodies to this cycle even if forced to live a 28-hour day or living in a light-free cave with no watch. This 24-hour cycle controls an amazing array of bodily functions, including hormone levels, body temperature, your immune system's activity and much more. It gets re-adjusted daily by sunlight so we can trick it into adopting longer days, which will be useful for when humans get to Mars. Jet-lag sufferers (whose "deep sleep" clock becomes detached from their REM sleep clock) know that this isn't nearly enough, so will be interested that eating breakfast after at least 16 hours without food beats jet lag by immediately kicking your cycle into "morning" mode, at least in mice and one Formula 1 driver (about 50 minutes in, probably UK only). Shorter times (fractions of seconds to hours) are counted by several different systems including the basal ganglia and the parietal lobe. The rate at which these clocks tick determines how fast we perceive the world and form memories; so by altering these ticks we can seem to speed time up or slow it down. It's well known that various drugs can affect our perceptions of time: Caffeine makes time go slower, anaesthetics make it speed up. THC can give a sense of timelessness, possibly by blocking a a clock circuit that measures time in the seconds to minutes range. Memory load, time of day and mood also have effects, but surprisingly, one of the biggest factors seems to be body temperature. Just like in The Matrix, fear really does make time seem to go slower, letting us pick out details that otherwise we couldn't perceive. Some people claim that they've learned to exploit this in sports and actually stretch their perception of time to see the ball moving slower to get an advantage. Finally, this is what started me down this train of thought: a thought-provoking radio programme from the BBC, in which an astrophysicist, a classicist and an author talk about what time means to them.

Rules for Time Travelers

BitterOldPunk — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:07:57 -0800

Rules for Time Travelers [Spoiler? alert.]

For the lulz!

CrunchyFrog — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:37:02 -0800

Voting for the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world's most influential people in government, science, technology and the arts, has taken a bizarre turn. Rather than the expected dance-off between Stephen Colbert and Korean pop star Rain, the top spot is currently occupied by moot, the owner and operator of 4chan. Hear Time's own take on it, and then, learn who hacked the vote.

A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World

nooneyouknow — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:15:33 -0800

A Quiet Revolution Grows in the Muslim World "In many of the scores of countries that are predominantly Muslim, the latest generation of activists is redefining society in novel ways. This new soft revolution is distinct from three earlier waves of change--the Islamic revival of the 1970s, the rise of extremism in the 1980s and the growth of Muslim political parties in the 1990s. Today's revolution is more vibrantly Islamic than ever. Yet it is also decidedly antijihadist and ambivalent about Islamist political parties. Culturally, it is deeply conservative, but its goal is to adapt to the 21st century. Politically, it rejects secularism and Westernization but craves changes compatible with modern global trends. The soft revolution is more about groping for identity and direction than expressing piety. The new revolutionaries are synthesizing Koranic values with the ways of life spawned by the Internet, satellite television and Facebook. For them, Islam, you might say, is the path to change rather than the goal itself."

Video of underwater volcano

CunningLinguist — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 08:55:02 -0800

Cool video of an undersea volcano erupting off Tonga. Spectacular clouds began spewing out of the sea on Monday about 10km from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu, where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered. More on these volcanism blogs.

Time paradoxes and alternate universes

ember — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:19:21 -0800

These subjects still fascinate me after a lifetime of interest: faster-than-light speed, alternate time streams, parallel universes, time travel, antiparticles moving backward in time, time loops, and the recurring themes of paradox -- all serious but astonishing ideas of science. Something about them inspires infinite possibilities. Am I not alone?

Time's Illusion

CheeseDigestsAll — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:54:22 -0800

The thermal time hypothesis. In which Carlo Rovelli and Alain Connes suggest that time does not "exist" as a fundamental feature of the universe, but is an emergent property based on the collapse of the probability of independent events into the probability of a series of events. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Near death experience

puckish — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:01:00 -0800

Australian auto website offers anatomy of a crash-- a point by point account of what happens during an accident, up to and including the moment you realize it's happening. "One way to appreciate the slowness of your perception is to compare it to the speed of mechanical devices. Take this incredible, sobering "anatomy of a crash"....With fine-grained temporal resolution, it analyzes what happens when a stationary Ford Falcon XT sedan is struck in the driver’s door by another vehicle traveling at 50 kilometers per hour" (via 3quarksdaily) Of related interest: David Eagleman on whether our perception of time slows down during terrifying events (short answer: no) and how you would test this in the first place (short answer: strap a chronometer to your test subject and throw him off a building)

"What happened to then?" "We passed it." "When?" "Just now. We're at now now."

voltairemodern — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:44:41 -0800

"It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. ... I believe that time is unreal. But I do so for reasons which are not, I think, employed by any of the philosophers whom I have mentioned, and I propose to explain my reasons in this paper." ~McTaggart, The Unreality of Time, 1908. (Bonus: The Kant Song.)

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swift — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:43:33 -0800

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New Neurons Get Timestamped

homunculus — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:01:42 -0800

Newborn brain cells "time-stamp" memories. [Via]

Time shocks world with unprecedented POTY pick

XQUZYPHYR — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:15:55 -0800

"For having the confidence to sketch an ambitious future in a gloomy hour, and for showing the competence that makes Americans hopeful he might pull it off, president-elect Barack Obama is TIME's Person of the Year." Henry Paulson and Sarah Palin are among the runners-up.

Animata

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 00:46:02 -0800

Animata is an open source real-time animation software, designed to create animations, interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances.