In a few more days, we will celebrate the change of the calendar, as we move from the year 2004 to the year 2005. It is hard to believe that it is now 5 years since we experienced Y2K. What a bust that was! It seems the anticipation of an event is always greater than participation in the event.
What is time anyway? Physicists say it moves only in one direction. When we travel in space, we can go forwards or backwards. Does that mean that time is somehow intrinsic to creation? I doubt it. Where does it start? The present age is marked by a point defined by the Christian religion as the birth of Jesus. However, they got that all wrong centuries ago. Everything before that time is marked backwards from the same point. I thought time only moves in one direction. The Hebrews set the zero point much further back in history.
Every culture seems to have a particular time of the year that marks the beginning of the New Year. They all seem to be different. Wouldn't it make sense to set the beginning of the year at the winter solstice? That's when the days start getting longer. Hmmm?? I forgot that is only if one lives in the Northern hemisphere. Below the equator, it should then start at the summer solstice. Egad, this is getting confusing.
To make time more usable, we divide it up into smaller pieces. The largest divisions are months. Why did we choose 12 of them? The number of days in a year is not divisible by 12. As a matter of fact, 365 is only divisible by either 5 or 73. We surely would not want 73 months. How about 5? That wouldn't work very well because it would not relate to the 4 seasons. So, we chose 12 and made some months have more days than others. Tsk! Tsk!
Next we come to the weeks. We made them seven days long. Again, 4 weeks does not come to a month except for February. That is such a horrible month that all I can say is "Who cares?" At least the choice of the length of a day matches the rotation of the earth. Well, it's pretty close. From there on, we subdivided into hours, minutes, and seconds. Why are there only 24 hours in a day, while there are 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute?
It seems to me that our ways of measuring time are pretty terrible at best. Then we complicate the whole thing by making the starting point of a day an hour differently in summer than in winter. When I was a boy, I went to school with some people who refused to observe Daylight Saving Time. They claimed that Standard Time was God's time. I thought God was supposed to be perfect. If he created all this time mess, he must have been asleep at the switch. No, I'm afraid that man invented time and it was not one of his better inventions
Good grief, it is now 8:54 PM on December 25, 2005. I don't have time for much more of this nonsense. So, I'll just say Goodnight and the Old Professor wishes you all a Happy New Year. Of course, beginning on January 2, it becomes an old year. Does that mean I am wishing you only one day of happiness? Well, I guess one day of happiness beats 364 days of unhappiness. Hey, at least the Christmas season is over for another year. Yeah!!!
