“A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure”
I get round this by only wearing one at a time, synchronised with my neighbours sundial (or Alexa if it’s cloudy) and the remainder stay in their boxes.
Does time go differently in those boxes? Were one to live in a Very Large box with a watch telling a different time than those outside the box, what happens to The Universe? Or is it universes?
CUgel, wondering if that Einstein had more than one watch.
The mechanical watches run done their reserves and stop. The few quartz watches have the crowns pulled out to stop them and reduce battery drain.
Therefore time will stand still inside the boxes. [emoji57]
NUKe wrote:Oh we are back to the Grumpy old man thing , where pseudo facts from the fail and the express get bounded about as we all tell anecdotes of how bad the young are. It would seem 20% of old people have problems determining fake news
I paid loadsa money for my grumpy-ole-git license, which was delayed about 10 years, leaving me an unofficial or even illegal grumper in danger of being had-up for grumping without a permit. But I resent your sleight that we grumps need a-one o' them red-top rags to find grump-subjects. I merely look up from my philosophy book and find tons of things to gripe, moan, bitch and grump about!
Anyway, I feel you deserve a bad-tempered reproach for your slanderous libel (whichever it is) and so here is a-one!
Cugel, just practicing.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Oldjohnw wrote:Wear a watch that loses a fraction of a second every day and it's only correct on several million years. Wear a watch that has stopped and it is correct twice a day.
Yes but how does one know when to look at the stopped watch as it indicates the correct time so as to not waste the energy of looking at a watch (and knowing the right time)? Is this how a collection of 29 watches begins?
Cugel
I guess linear time is a construct. I'm no Einstein and this was his area. So I'm out of my depth already.
Oldjohnw wrote:Wear a watch that loses a fraction of a second every day and it's only correct on several million years. Wear a watch that has stopped and it is correct twice a day.
Yes but how does one know when to look at the stopped watch as it indicates the correct time so as to not waste the energy of looking at a watch (and knowing the right time)? Is this how a collection of 29 watches begins?
Cugel
I guess linear time is a construct. I'm no Einstein and this was his area. So I'm out of my depth already.
Actually I think The Goonshow had more information on this conundrum!
John Wayne: "I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on... I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."
The pull cord for the light was swinging gently side to side, and the battery clock on the wall in the bathroom was clicking once per second. The cord swung at one second per swing.
Coincidence that I fitted the cord the correct length perhaps. Just short of 1metre in length ceiling to metal bob-weight. Not measured it, but that's what it must be.
The pull cord for the light was swinging gently side to side, and the battery clock on the wall in the bathroom was clicking once per second. The cord swung at one second per swing.
Coincidence that I fitted the cord the correct length perhaps. Just short of 1metre in length ceiling to metal bob-weight. Not measured it, but that's what it must be.
TMI [emoji23]
From what I remember from high school physics a metre sounds about right for a 1sec ‘tick’.
Hi All, Late to this thread, but like it . Notice that no one has mentioned that one truly desirable collectable, the "Pocket Sundial"? Real miniature work of art and precision, rather pricey as well. Nicholas Parsons is the man to chat to about watches, but he might take rather longer than a minute to explain his passion! He might tell you to use an onion watch to peel back the layer of interest in horology. Again pricey. But my best time memory is that I discovered that as the Great Fire of London was raging towards him Thomas Tompion buried one of his unfinished clocks in the garden in much the same way that Samuel Pepys did to protect his cheese . Have a good 2020 all of you. TTFN MM
The current notion of time seems - like so many other things we are taught is "objective reality" - to be a cultural construct interpreting our experience of reality in one way rather than some other way. A fellow named Henri Bergson made this observation a hundred or more years ago:
His doctoral thesis was on Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889). Here Bergson distinguished between time as we actually experience it, lived time – which he called ‘real duration’ (durée réelle) – and the mechanistic time of science. This, he argued, is based on a misperception: it consists of superimposing spatial concepts onto time, which then becomes a distorted version of the real thing. So time is perceived via a succession of separate, discrete, spatial constructs – just like seeing a film. We think we’re seeing a continuous flow of movement, but in reality what we’re seeing is a succession of fixed frames or stills. To claim that one can measure real duration by counting separate spatial constructs is an illusion: “We give a mechanical explanation of a fact and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself”, he wrote.
A watch works by transposing our experience of spatial constructs (the position of the hands) on to our visceral experience of time. The former is very linear. If one eschews the watch and other spatial means of perceiving time, it becomes obvious that our base experience of the sequence and flow of events is not linear. It jerks about at often very different rates.
Even the use of spatial devices for measuring time can show how we can experience time differently. Who hasn't had the experience of anxiously awaiting a longed for event whilst clock watching? The same experience can feel quite different if one is watching a second hand or watching a sundial or watching traffic go past at varying rates.
My own life has been lived without a watch or other personal time-measurer for nearly twenty years now. Although we have clocks about the house, I never notice them unless there's a bus to catch or some other externally-timed event of interest due. For me, time certainly goes along at very varying rates. Often it seems to go at more than one rate at once. When in the woodworking place time seems to zip along from one perspective yet be a very long time in terms of all the different events that occur. It can be like that riding a bike too (assuming no gizmo on the bars or wrist).
Perspectives on time passing also change with age, especially perspectives of the past. When young history seems immensely long whereas when older it seems to shorten dramatically. 400 years seemed remote when I was a teenager but it now seems almost yesterday - in terms of the effects of events then on events now. Knowledge of the chain of events - the connections from then to now - seem to change their time perspective.
It's queer stuff, time. What was life like before people had access to the Victorian chopped-up time introduced as part of the industrial revolution? There must have been agrarian time and other experiences of how time passed (and would pass) in the future....
How do you experience time? Is it all dictated by a watch or clock or do you have other apprehensions of time?
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Saw a photo of Medvedev and Putin today, I noticed their watches M had a chunky dark digital watch on his left wrist, P had an analog on his right Perhaps someone could check the photo and see what exactly their watches are
Entertainer, juvenile, curmudgeon, PoB, 30120 Cycling-of course, but it is far better on a Gillott We love safety cameras, we hate bullies
Syd wrote:Seeing my neighbour’s young son have difficulty telling the time on an analogue clock earlier today reminded me of a story in early December where it said over 20% of young adults have difficulty telling time on a clock with hands.
The vast majority of the clocks in my home, as well as all 29 of my wrist watches, have ‘hands’ (including my Garmin and Apple watches) as I prefer that way.
What is your preference and how do youngsters you know cope with traditional time pieces?
You mean you don't have a sun dial?
The trick with sundials, is to always leave a torch near them. That way you'll even be able to tell the time at night.
. Have a good 2020 all of you. TTFN MM
IGICB MM
