The Pun Also Rises(as seen in the North Adams Transcript)
"A Race Against Time"Time is going too fast. Most people think that time passes at roughly one minute per minute. But most people are fools. Years ago, Albert Einstein ("The Stein", to his friends) explained the theory of relativity like this: When you spend a minute sitting on a hot stove, it feels like an hour, and when you spend an hour with a pretty girl, it feels like a minute. Sadly, he never addressed what happens when you spend a half-hour sitting on a stove with a pretty girl. (She's so hot!) Einstein was trying to show us that time isn't a constant. The watchmakers' union never really accepted this, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say I've always felt that Einstein was a smart guy. I've always liked his hair-grooming philosophy, and I've always liked his theory that time can move at different rates. Right now time is going very swiftly, because I'm writing this on a Sunday night. Sunday, as the last day of a weekend, moves faster than other days. In fact, I've been writing for 15 minutes since an hour ago. I'm not making this up. I can look at the clock on my computer and prove that an hour has passed, even though I know it hasn't been more than 15 minutes since I started the previous paragraph. This happens frequently, and although I originally blamed Microsoft (a good start to any problem), I've come to the conclusion that the problem lies with time itself. I've tried to fix time in the past, by suggesting that we convert to a metric system of time measurement. Unfortunately, just like my efforts to fix my bathtub and fix the world series (Sorry, Shoeless Joe!), this didn't work. Sunday still goes by too fast, whether an hour feels like 15 minutes, or a decichron feels like a centichron. Lately, things have gotten worse. Time isn't just speeding up on Sundays, but in general, on a larger scale. The last few years have each been as short as a half-year from a decade ago. One of my friends even admitted that in middle school, weeks lasted for months. Now the tide has turned, and months pass in the span of weeks. We are running out of time. The way we currently measure time does not account for this. The clocks, watches, and other machines in the world all keep ticking away at one second per second, oblivious to the fact that time can and does move much faster than that. There are two things that need to be done. First, we need a more accurate method of telling time. The United States should appoint an official Time Committee, whose members will tell us each time they come to a majority consensus that an hour has passed. (Only a quorum will be required for a vote, and they can sleep in shifts. If more than a week passes at once, a 2/3 vote will be required.) More importantly, the Time Committee will allow us to measure how well we succeed at our second goal: The Slowing of Time. In order to win the war against time, we'll have to do what we can to slow things down. Nobody wants to spend their lives sitting on hot stoves, but if we can bring time back down to roughly one minute per minute, the project will be a success. So how do we slow time without sitting on stoves? Well, Mondays take thrice as long as Sundays, so one solution would be having lots of Mondays, at least twice a week. But this is not satisfactory, and the calendar industry would rebel. Our best hope lies in a varied day. Scientific research has shown that a day containing a highly varied set of activities lasts longer and tastes better than a regular day. A day you do nothing but watch movies will pass much more quickly than a day where you watch a movie, go for a walk, have dinner with friends, and write a poem. I haven't always done as much as I could, but the war against time can be won, and we must start now. If not for me, do it for The Stein. ___________________________________ All work on this page is copyright Seth Brown. If you are sharing it, please give attribution. If you want to reprint it, please contact me first. |