watching time

I've got, as it may be abundently clear, a few issues. Not any real bad ones, just a few small ones that don't have much of an impact on my life. One of those is a strong dislike for unfinished timers. Particullary on microwaves - where someone has had a timer going or had been cooking some food and stopped it before it went off - thus obscuring the clock that we would otherwise see there. Though I can resist it, I'd really rather hit that clear button and go back to the clock. I also enjoy setting clocks that have lost their way due to power outage or daylight savings time.

And I think I've finally figured out why these hidden or disrupted clocks bother me. On more than one occasion - and more frequently with the clock in the bathroom - I've glanced at an analog clock just after it ticks over to the next second. It may not have even come to a full halt, but I've caught it at the critical time and have watched the whole second from start to finish.

And, I've got to tell you - that's a long freaking time if you're paying attention. It feels like more than a second passes before the next tick of the clock.

At the quantum level, observation changes things. That's one of the reasons a quantum computer - as super cool and powerful as it would be - is tough to build. If you look at it, things change.

And I guess a fear - or strong concern - is that if I hadn't been watching the clock at that instant, would it have gone on forward? Maybe time only exists in a linear fashion because we're watching it.

There are, fortuanatly, a lot of people here on planet earth and many of them are more obsessed with time than I am. Maybe that was my second to watch, to keep track of thing and keep them moving forward.

And if I can't see the foward progression of time - like on a stopped timer on a microwave - what if I miss the next instant that I'm supposed to observe?

Would everything... stop?

It doesn't keep me up at night - but it does give me pause. And whenever I see a stopped clock, I try to make it right. Just in case I need it...

back to work...