Sunday 14 January 2018

Doodle Doodle Doodle

What to write about today? Nothing is springing to mind. Oh, if this were tomorrow, it could have been a post on the David McCallum 'Invisible Man' series, but there is still one episode to go. It has been surprisingly good, and is definitely the best of the Harve Bennett set of shows from the 1970s (see also 'The Six Million Dollar Man', 'The Bionic Woman', and by legacy extension 'The Incredible Hulk'), but let's not jump ahead.

January is a very awkward month, isn't it? It happens so early that we have very little context for how it's going to fit into the rest of the year. This is a silly phenomenon, as we have December for comparison, and all those preceding months, but the mental conditioning is that this is a whole new year, with its own tone and thematic context. What a load of silliness! Time is a long and continuous string, without knots to separate each calendar year. The knots do make it easier for us to comprehend the temporal vastness though, don't they? We have such funny minds. Once, in a lecture, the lecturer told us the average life expectancy, but in seconds instead of years, and it caused a small nervous breakdown! A year is intangible enough that it doesn't affect you too much, but a second is a time increment with which we are intimately familiar. Knowing your life expectancy in seconds is a crippling piece of knowledge, just like knowing it in monthly toothbrush changes. A second is a period of time of which we can be consciously aware, unlike a year. Changing between these periods of time can completely change the impact of what you are trying to express. It's interesting, isn't it?

Getting back to the previous cul-de-sac, January is a very strange month. There is no plan you can make for it, and many people use it as a great opportunity to try and change routines and norms. It is the season of the New Year's Resolution, after all! It's also the season for recruiting mathematics tutors, but that can be pursued on some other occasion.

For now, since it is so late, we stop. Tomorrow, or Tuesday, we will have a chat about 'The Invisible Man' television show.

O.

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