forward and back.

As the girlfriend of a philosopher of time and physics, i think and hear quite a bit about the nature of time. Now, i'm someone who's always felt that our human, recorded (or "ordered") time is somewhat arbitrary. Why do we measure single seconds, instead of two- or three-second increments? Why are there twenty-four hours in a day instead of twelve (two-hour units)? As Nat has pointed out, our system of time is based on the actual movement of the spheres: rotations of the Earth, and Sun.

Being a huge Dark Crystal fan, this orrery-inspired time measurement model feels right (see also Stonehenge, sundials, and so on) somehow. Anyway, apparently those crazy ancient Egyptians with their base 12 numbering system led to our modern-day measurements. Fun fact.

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In related(ish) news, we saw Inception last night. It was certainly a thrilling, mind-bending nail-biter. Pretty nice to look at, even though the sound editing was awful. (Just try and tell me you caught every spoken line in that film. Go on.) Our boy Chris Nolan certainly seems interested in the nuances of perception, time, memory, identity, and reality – and boy, can i dig it. He obviously understands the awesome power of our brains, and how this can both help and hurt us. i would love to sit and eat tiramisu with him some day, and talk about layers. Also, i really liked how he named the characters and entities in Inception: (highlight if you want to read the end of this paragraph:)
Cobb's unsettling wife 'Mal' kept bringing to mind grand mal seizures, or words that begin with that root, such as malicious, malevolent, maladjusted, etc. Naming Ellen Page's architect character 'Ariadne' was clever, and the nefarious company that Leonardo was (or was not?) running from, 'Cobol', might quite possibly have been echoing that mischievous sprite, the kobold.

...Here's an interesting delve if you're so inclined.

In the spirit of the above nonsense, here are some fab time-lapse photographs. They've been sitting around in a folder on my desktop for who knows how long (minutes? months?), so i'm afraid i can't remember where they came from. It would certainly be nice to give credit where it is due, but for now they remain in limbo. Enjoy.