But as Bob as already said TIME (whether it be past, present and/or future) and LIFE are relative . . . unless it happens to be TIME computers we're talking about.

Well Open all Hours (all the time)did have a Tiny Granville in it.

Ahhhh. Timeless comedy.

ChicAugur: I agree the economics was a bit far fetched and it was a bit of a joke, but in real life you use cyclical numbers all the time. For instance if it is 10 o'clock and I say meet you in 4 hours, what time will I meet you at? 14 o'clock or 2? on a clock adding 12 h changes nothing to the digits and so 12=0


do you think 1+1=0 only in electicity? how about this, do you know what odd and even numbers are?

odd + even = odd
even + odd = odd
even + even = even
odd + odd = even

now what is the definition off even? a number divisable by 2, what is odd? a number not divisable by two, or to put the definitions a different way

X is odd if there is a number K so that X=2K+1 and X is even if there is a number K so that X=2K=2K+0

so let's use short hand even=0 odd=1 and we get

1+0=1
0+1=1
0+0=0
1+1=0

wow, it has the exact same rules, imagine that :-)

In elementary school when yoor teacher taught you 1+1=2 all the time it was convenience, the same way I said odd and even numbers. That is true for integers (whole numbers, 1,2,3,4......) but not true for real or rational numbers. Let's look at the number 3 is it odd in the real numbers? yes 3=1x2+1 but it is also even 3=1.5*2 , so in the integers a number is either odd or even but not both, on the other hand when I look at the bigger world of rational and real numbers all numbers are both.

Let me ask you this is 3 prime? (integers =yes, rationals=no) 3= 2*(3/2)=5*(3/5)........

Anthony,

You are thinking way too much. Forget about what you've learned. Pretend you are cave boy,.....not a thought in your head. You haven't thought about math or time or gravity or anything. You are only thinking about that cave girl and that dinner running around and how you can get each of them either on you in you.

He doesn't have a watch. In fact time hasn't even been "dreamed up" but you and I both know that there will be a moment that passes between when cave boy wants to play with cave girl and the moment he actually gets to play with cave girl.

Likewise, while cave boy is chasing his dinner with a little spear (that he dreamed up and then built) it will take a period for him to actually catch up with his goal. ("Put bunny in mouth")
These moments or periods are the definition of TIME.

Did he make time up? No Did he track time? Yes, unknowingly his brain calculated how much time it would take between the moment he released his spear on a given trajectory and when it hit the bunny in the butt.

(TIME) was always there, waiting to be named and measured. That we've taken it and created the math of time is irrelevant. Our measurement of our environment is something we created to give things a value. But the environment is there regardless of how we percieve it.

my disagreement was with 1+1 always =2, not with what is time.

I agree with you that if time= temporal causality effect (I am hungry -go kill thing, now not hungry but lusty- go find cave girl) time has always existed since the big bang. Things get born, created then they age/change and eventually are no more. Even if you assume time travel like Doctor who, you have still not broken this, it will just be much more complicated.

But is that what Jay was asking? let's be honest we use 0-9 because it was convenient we think of the day as 24h because that is how long the rotation of the earth took when we created our way of measuring, there is nothing magical about it. We also think of the year as 365 days but nothing magical about that except that it was what it took the earth to go around the sun.

'ang on a second, me ol' mucker. Surely time must have existed before "The Big Bang".

Now for my crazy rant on timezones and time as we know it today.

a long time ago (over a century ago) it used to take for ever to travel and telling time was not important, so each village looked at the sky and set their time. in the 1800's with the train distances got smaller and people traveled more and so the need to standardize time came to be with time zones. They worked well and even though people were scared at the time (what do you mean 12:00 will be 15 minutes earlier , and so will 8:00 when I start my day) but let's face it, none of us think much about it any more. Now my problem is not with the past TZ were a great idea for their time. My problem is with today, technology has brought us closer we can travel much farther much faster ( going around the world in 80 days is a slow luxury trip and not a race any more)and even worst through telecom means communicating across the world can be done instantaneously. My opinion is the world has become too small for 24 time zones and it is time we move to one. I guess part of this attitude comes from my old job. I used to have to communicate with people around the world on a daily basis and so did many others. The thing is sometimes it gets extremely complicated Brazil and Montreal have 1,2 or 3 hours difference depending on the time of year.

Now I know many of you will say "but what do you expect, do you want everyone to work 9-5 Montreal time?" No, but let's face it different parts of the world don't work at the same relative time as others to begin with, the people in our plants in northern Quebec started and ended their day 1/2 he earlier, the guy in Australia was starting his day at 6:00 AM , guys in France were typically there until well past 6:00 PM, guys in the UK worked at the same time we did..... so you don't only need to know what time these people work at (to make meetings convenient) but you also need to take into consideration the time zones and that different parts of the world changed their clocks in different ways at different times of the year (is UK 5h or 6h different today - you guys change it one week before us) or even worst, with the 12h-13.5h-14h depending what part of Australia you are calling you also need to make sure you have the right day, a Tuesday evening meeting here is a Wed morning meeting there

Interestingly, it's only relatively recently that the GB/UK adopted a nationwide time standard; be it GMT or BST.

In the 19th century it was not uncommon for towns to run on local rather than national time so, for example Worcester, being to the east of Hereford would be in advance of those living here; albeit by only a few minutes.

Apparently it used to cause all sorts of confusion, not least with railway timetables. There were also reports of criminal trials being abandoned due witnesses being given incorrect time information for their appearance.

Interesting.

I think I could get used to a system like that EXCEPT it would ruin our perception of daily conditions in different parts of the world.

We know that the daylight conditions at 5:00pm in London is very close to the 5:00pm conditions in Chicago. We don't have to know how many hours we are apart to understand this. Of course for business, we are always accounting for this difference.

So give an example of how you would call out time with your new system. I need some convincing that this can work. It sounds like one of those great ideas that will never come around (Esperanto, Calling football soccer (as it should), The Metric system, living naked, soylent green, etc.)

not true London is always foggy :), but honestly what are 5:00pm conditions in Chicago? I don't know about you but 5pm Montreal in December is no where near the same as 5pm in June. And how about north/south 5PM in Dec in Montreal is dark and the sun is gone 5PM in Dec in Mexico must still be bright


nothing changes. Let's say for the sake of Argument we pick GMT (to pick something far away) right now it is 6:47PM Montreal time, 5:47PM Chicago time and 10:47PM GMT so instead of me saying it is 6:47PM I will say it is 10:47PM and so will you but we will do exactly what we are doing (life does not change). so if I start work at 8:30AM now and stop for lunch at 12:00PM and end at 5:00PM now with the new format I start at 12:30, have lunch at 4PM and end my day at 9PM but my life has not changed just what I call the hour. The idea is not that novel and actually China is using it (only one time zone, even though it should be spanning 4 of them) people at one end of the country just do everything 3h earlier then the ones at the other end

This message was edited by Anthony on 04/21/05 18:54 ET.

every time ive been to london and it has never been foggy!

rainy? :-)

First of all, of course there are always going to be seasonal differences and latitudinal variation for any of your given time zones. Alaska will experience the midnight sun etc.

What we have now is fairly kind to our natural "circadian" rhythms. The people on the eastern end of a large region will be going to work in the sun all happy while the people on the western end will be dragging themeselves to work in the dreary dark of night.
But I don't think that's what you are talking about is it?

You said nothing changes. Won't we always have to account for these differences no matter how we slice things up or how we number this sphere or follow time?

No, that's Manchester.


I work nights, so my circadian rhythms are a little screwed up.