Sulphur River Autumnal Equinox 1999 [antikvár]

TRIBUTARIES They seem to be everywhere-people in a hurry. At work, in the stores, on the roads, there they are, rushing, rushing, heads bent in single-minded focus on their various purposes. They don't seem to notice you when they cut into line at the checkout or cut in front of you on the highway; they don't seem to notice how rude they can be or how dangerous. They're in a hurry. And if you ask them why, they'll teli you there's not enough time. And they're right, to a certain extent. If you're not willing to take time, then there is most certainly not enough. And this is something of a mystery, since the world is full of machines that do things faster and faster. You'd think we'd have lots of time compared to our counterparts of the past who pretty much had to do everything themselves. And wasn't that one of the promises of the industrial revolution and more recently the technological revolution? These new machines would help us all by doing things quicker than we could and giving us more time for ourselves. So what went wrong? It would seem that if things are done faster, then doing them takes up less time, and more time would then be left for doing other things. However, if we are expected to do more and more because of these fast machines that don't take much time, then the whole promise of the quicker machine turns out to be a falsé promise and the blessing of the quicker machine becomes a curse. How many of you reading this are working fewer hours now than you were ten or twenty years ago? How many of you are working more? Could it be that we have been operating with a totál misconception of what time is and is about? Somé years ago a very smart fellow named Einstein gave the subject of time a great deal of thought and came up with somé ideas that changed our understanding of our world. One such idea is that the measurement of time depends on our reference frames, and that time is different for that which is in motion than it is for that which is standing still. Without getting too deep into the mathematics involved (which I do not have the mentái capacity to explain), the difference is referred to as "time dilation" and is expressed as the product of what