The Other Side of Another

It seems that from the moment time began, if it had a beginning, there was always the other side of another. From the Biblical allegory of Cain and Abel, the other side of another played a pivotal role, just as Adam and Eve were created to be each the other side of another. From the moment, whenever that was, humanity begun to ponder these things, it was always the other side of another that made the world that it is today. 

Let's first do some "housekeeping" on the word "another" before we get to why this is worth spending twenty minutes of your reading time. 

It appears that the word "other", to mean different and discreet entity, was a stand alone word in the English language, needless of any modification.  Now to describe it, since it begins with a vowel, one must say, "an other", just as we would say an egg, an idiom, etc.  It is conceivable that it was merely contracted and later fully evolved more easily into one word, "another".  Just as well that it did because the English language just found another way to prove that is the most efficient language in the world, in my opinion.  I say that as a non-native English speaker.  As such, I sought with great interest anything I could learn about my fourth adopted language. (the other three were all Filipino, but each was nevertheless a distinct language, not just a dialect, albeit each had origins going back to perhaps one proto language derived from Malay (just as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, may all have come from one proto origin but they are three different languages now). I may have just overextended all allowable assumptions on my part as I am not a linguistic expert, nor an amateur lexicographer, not even by a long shot.

One last thing about "another" before we move on. It is so versatile that it can merely be the opposite of one, as in "one went one way, another went the other way", or as a reciprocal as in, "to love one another", or possessively as in "another's arms", and though typically singular, it will modify plural words, as in "another five yards", "another ten years", etc. It can even summon a lot of weighty ambiguity, when the boss uses it in, "I need another opinion or idea". It can connote a foreboding urgency when, "we need another set of tests" or "another lab work". Then relegated to a mere footnote, people, at one time, begun inserting the word, "whole" , into another, to say "a whole nother". If it was an attempt at word evolution, it failed to take hold and did not survive, except as a colloquial artifact.

Now that you know all there is to know about another, we can get into what is on the other side of another?

Everywhere we look, as if baked in all of Creation, there is one and there is always the other side of another. Even among identical twins, the phenomenon is inescapably and naturally real.  Botanists, farmers and horticulture hobbyists have cloned plants for centuries, no two are exactly the same because there was and will always be the other side of another.  Diversity - well known for driving the sustainability, survival and improvement of all living things is brought on by one and the inevitable another side of it.

When males of many pack species of animals, i.e. lions, wolves, chimpanzees, etc. are driven out of their territory, it was as much as avoiding interbreeding as it was about allowing them to spread the gene pool, acting as the other side of another to a different pack or pride, farther away. 

Even in social and inter-personal relationships, opposites attract just as often, if not more so, than homogeneous connections. Couples with two different interests seem to have more to learn from each other as opposed to those with similar interests who are prone to argue more vehemently over the same thing, over and over.  That, right there, is my piece of psychobabble but it worked for me and my wife. We come from different backgrounds, with different tastes in music, the arts and a few others, but for fifty one years it worked more as if an alloy was created out of the combination.

The Stone Age as a historical step for humanity was just that - a step.  There was little our ancestors can do but shape them; only when soft mortar and clay were mixed with stone that ended cave dwelling. Fire did a lot but only when copper was mixed with tin that ushered the Bronze Age. The Iron Age would have been a dead end until somebody came up with infusing carbon to it which gave us steel.  From there it was leaps and bounds for our development.

Lightning, electricity, magnetism are forces driven by two opposing phenomenon of positive and negative, plusses and minuses (+,-), and two opposing poles. In magnetism, two similar north poles or south poles, do not want to have anything to do with each other. It is the negatively charged electron orbiting the positively charged proton in a nucleus that creates one hydrogen atom. All other compounds are put together the same way.

Something can be said of a philosophy that goes back to ancient China that is popular to the reader - the idea of the yin and yang. It may not answer all that we can ask of the universal duality that seems to pervade everything around us; but, if I may suggest, it is worth reading about.  There is a cache of material that is a mere click away if one is inclined to look.

On the other hand, the quest or yearning for the Aryan Race was  doomed from the beginning, as it was nothing more than an astoundingly ignorant and misguided idea only fools could have conceived. Animal species knew better, so it was a case of human folly that should never be repeated. For without the other side of another, humanity should already have regressed into extinction eons ago.  

So it is that today, in every sociological, political, educational, religious coalescence of people, uniformity and singularity of ideas and ideology will doom any society into an ideological inbreeding. Silencing one group so that one monolithic society may emerge is the greatest existential threat. Once social rules, ideas, ideologies and belief systems get funneled into one monochromatic existence, the result will be a monolithic society that will not survive for very long. Silencing opposing opinions, censoring other ideas, one party rule in any government might seem to create a "feel good" environment but only for a while.  Monolithic societies are doomed from the moment they are created.

So, let us not forget that we were not born from just one side but from one and the other side of another. 

 

 

 

The Other Side Of Morning

Every morning is a gift.  We look forward to each one. We all look forward to many mornings to come regardless of how many we've had already because that is how a sustained and long life always begins; and all the  mornings we get are by themselves the greatest gift that we ought to unbox every day. It does not matter what is in each box for as long as we get to open it. The greatest wonder of it all is that we get to do with each gift as we please.

The beauty of every morning is the sunrise that ushers it in - unopposed and unrelenting from behind the clouds, through thunderstorms and heavy raindrops, even through the din of howling winds, even that of a baby crying or the piercing intrusion of an alarm clock - because each is a gift. However, there is a catch.  Isn't there always though? 

Every morning has a mid-day, like the half time of a well contested game, complete with a two-minute warning before lunch. Then there is the frantic scramble to make the most of the next two quarters, then another two-minute warning by way of a gentle sunset.  And the day is over. How well we did is how well we played the entire four quarters. How well it ends is what the other side of morning is all about. But even if we didn't play all four quarters, waking up in the morning is good enough, for the alternative is not to wake up at all. But we'll not go there; at least, not just yet.  That is because there is so much on the other side of morning.

When we got married my wife had this thing about making the bed right away, before she steps out of the bedroom. Actually, she is pretty adamant about making sure the bed is made - bed sheets stretched out tight, blankets folded or laid flat, pillows fluffed.  I, at first, though not overly annoyed by the strict ritual, found it a bit obsessively compulsive.  But it seemed a little much that even when we traveled, she did the same thing with the hotel bed.  At the very least, if we are pressed for time, the bed cover must be laid back properly before we step out.  My wife has to start every morning that way, her first task for the day, which she prefers to do as best she can if she were to expect all subsequent tasks to  go the same way.  That is her way of opening the daily gift of morning.

These days, after the dreaded diagnosis of Parkinson, I took up the role because, as can be expected, she struggled with the routine; though she tried. Should I have changed the ritual? No, I became a convert, instead. That's when I realized my wife had the right idea all along  about how to open the box.  If each morning is a gift, she knew to open it the right way, everyday. I will have to agree.

Many decades ago it was she who applied for immigration to this country, to which I had very lukewarm interest. Today, I'm glad she saw what mornings we were going to have at a place, though foreign and far away, where she knew that over 15,700 mornings later we will be at a place we and our two sons and our five grandchildren can live comfortably and securely - where every morning is the box to be opened first.  My wife knew it all along.  I may have learned it late but I'm glad I now know how. The least I can do today is to stick with the routine that started it all since 18,625 mornings ago when we first got married.

So it is that each of us must look forward to every morning that comes our way. Without us having to do anything, it comes with the regularity of a universal cadence. Yet, we are not without a choice.  We can get up early, late or begrudgingly, but it keeps coming anyway. If that is not something we value we must at least know that it is always there, yet it requires little obligation on our part to open it one particular way or another. It will keep coming anyway. Until the day we could no longer have awareness of its coming we must always consider it a gift.  There is no asking price for it. Unused or not, however, we lose it at every sunset.

Let us not forget that the other side of morning is how much or how little we do with it. How we begin to savor the day is always about how we begin the other side of morning. Though we have all day, we know it will soon become sunset.

Parkinson's and "The Other Side of Day"

My woodworking blog, "Web of Cards", garnered one of the highest readership on the first day it was published, although I think it had more to do with the fact that it was my wife's Parkinson's - diagnosed  just this last summer - that prompted  the woodworking project  so she may continue to play the card game that she and I and two other couples have come to enjoy occasionally.  In addition to the regular U.S. readers I was surprised at the numbers from Europe and Canada who took keen interest.

"Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative condition of the brain associated with motor symptoms (slow movement, tremor, rigidity, walking and imbalance) and a wide variety of non-motor complications (cognitive impairment, mental health disorders, sleep disorders and pain and other sensory disturbances)". 

"Globally, disability and death due to PD are increasing faster than for any other neurological disorder. The prevalence of PD has doubled in the past 25 years. Global estimates in 2019 showed over 8.5 million individuals with PD. Current estimates suggest that, in 2019, PD resulted in 5.8 million disability-adjusted life years, an increase of 81% since 2000, and caused 329 000 deaths, an increase of over 100% since 2000".

8.5 million in a world population of 7+ billion, a mere statistical  blip that is easily lost in the rounding off of huge numbers, is much too low relative to other diseases, yet it seems that more people seem to know about it or actually aware of someone, or "a friend of a friend" who has PD. That is perhaps because of the work that a Michael J. Fox and other luminaries who shed the light to this once obscure malady.

However, the number could be higher because in developing countries the illness is either not diagnosed or just merely mis-diagnosed for other neurological disorders.  It is possible too that because it is often age-related (few exceptions like that of MJF and other young PD patients), the well developed countries do tend to exhibit higher numbers for PD, and other age-related ailments because demographics favor the survival of senior citizens - seventy years old and beyond

Where "The Other Side of Day", a phrase I just created,  comes in this musing are the many forms that it is manifested, often as life's metaphor, or a realization that there is indeed that other side of day that we all must consider deeply as each and everyone of us is confronted with an ailing partner or family member, even friends with whom we relate just as intently.

I was at the grocery store's checkout line one day.  The gentleman ahead of me, his cart full to the brim of household essentials, glanced at me a couple of times as if inviting a quick chat as we all waited for the cashier who was fumbling with a fresh roll of paper tape into the receipt dispenser. I initiated the conversation, "I'm glad to see another guy shopping for groceries".  He replied, "Well, my wife can no longer do it.  She has congestive heart failure and emphysema.  She is wheelchair-bound and  an oxygen tank and respirator must be nearby to her at all times. That's why I do this once or twice a week".    I added that my wife too is afflicted with the chronic burden of Parkinson's. I then said, "Well, both our wives are lucky to have you and I do these chores for the household".

He replied, "Well, I look at it this way. You and I are the lucky ones because we are still relatively healthy, clearly still strong to do this chore. So I count myself very fortunate I can drive, walk briskly with a fully loaded cart and unload them with relative ease. So, we are both the lucky ones".

I had to swallow hard first before I could reply, "Yes, right you are".  Before he wheeled his cart away he asked what part of Hawaii I was from.  So, the reason he glanced at me twice was that he was looking at the baseball cap I had on.  It said, "Hawaii".  I told him the cap was a gift from a family friend who has toured the islands and added further that I was born and grew up from the same part of the Pacific region - The Philippines. Of course, he also knew a Filipino as a co-worker and they still keep in touch even after they both retired.  And we bid our goodbyes.  

The cashier chimed in as she was scanning my groceries. She said, "I  am sorry to hear the two-minute conversation you were both having and I can't help but choke a little bit. I thought I was going to cry". 

Indeed, my conversation with that gentleman encapsulated "the other side of day". And like that object in the night sky, the "other side of day" has its own phases when one cares to look closely at how life progresses over time. It is obviously apparent when the health of a spouse is affected.  As the population ages, health of either or both in the partnership between husband and wife overrides everything.  

The other side of day, if it were about expanding life's experiences, also means knowing the layouts of all the grocery interior of the places that are now the objects of my new routine.  I know exactly that cinnamon/raisin bagels are at aisle 3 at HEB, while I know with certainty what to get at aisle H25 at Wal-Mart. It is best to avoid visiting Costco or Sam's on Wednesdays, if you want to avoid the crowd.  Also, there is no recipe or example of the many ways to smoke meat that cannot be found in YouTube.

The other side of day forces us to examine and re-direct life's purposes and trajectory. Caregiving, in whatever form or degree of involvement, becomes a reality for either one in a partnership that is getting older and growing in number as a percentage of the population. Caregiving calls for acknowledging the nobility that it entails and the poignancy of purpose like no one had faced before. When it becomes apparent, the light it brings is a stunning revelation as to how life must  be truly lived at its fullest. That is because both in that partnership must acknowledge with the highest degree of gratitude in realizing the full value of the train ticket they purchased however many years ago to begin the journey of a collaborated and still to be completed life.

For my wife and I, that journey is now fifty-one years to the month.  We just celebrated our 51st yesterday. Of course, gone are the days of going on a trip or a treat of a night stay at the downtown 5-star hotel for a lavish evening of dinner, a show and ordering breakfast the following morning.  But those memories are not to be diminished but only to be cherished.  We did that just once, by the way - the local hotel thing. 

The classical music station I listen to has for its slogan, "Remember, old  music was once new".  If music is the language of the soul, it took a lot of God's resources by way of every composer who created melodies and movement variations of the composition.

And there lies the key to those of us of a certain age.  The face in a crowded room that tantalized and captured your attention decades ago is still there behind the wrinkles and gray thinning hair.  It took a lot of God's material to create the beauty of a maiden among many in that room; or the angular face over a perceived chiseled body in a group of eager young men, but the years have a way of rendering those images their inevitable impermanence. But the person, the essence of his or her personality is still there.  The years of journeying through the good and bad times must count for the permanent etching in the book of life.

That old lady walking gingerly across the room was once that vibrant and grinning cheerleader, or she was that gifted dark haired beauty at the school library who was both captivating and intriguing at the same time; or that the quarterback who scored the winning touchdown of the school year's last game in high school is now hardly able to tie his shoes; or that one on the dialysis bed was once that skinny, smart bespectacled nerd but way too funny to be ignored.  Each a spouse, each part of the journey, so why must any of them not deserve the care and support? Like the classical music that were once new, each was created new with the same living tissues and bones put together with the blessings of The Almighty. If you or I are blessed as the fortunate capable partner, the essence of nobility in deed and intentions are for us to grab and wield in that partnership. 

I swim at the gym as a goal for personal well being, to stay healthy and fit. Now the goal to better my time at swimming a thousand meters at the pool is to remain healthy and fit for the two of us because that is where necessity ends.

The quote from the title of one of my earlier musings, "For Kindness Begins Where Necessity Ends", is in essence what it should all be about in a partnership that had endured this far into the journey. Everyday on that journey makes the train ticket of life worth the cost it took to purchase it.

Everyone A Tenant, Everyone A Traveler ..

.. Everyone, no exception, is merely a temporary custodian of anything. Everyone  has nothing more than temporary ownership of wealth, title, position, and so on and on. Consequently, everything anyone claims to possess, is as fleeting as every breath one takes.  One breathes in, one breathes out.  When that stops at the end of one's life, custody of anything  abruptly changes hands.

Too simplistic of a view of the world? Or, of life itself? Too fatalistic, too pessimistic?  Or, all too real, or is there something to behold other than what we think?

Just so we know this is beyond debate or to make sure this is impervious to argument, we look to the history of the world and the story of life itself.  When Alexander the Great reached the last empire he conquered, we are told he cried because there was nothing else to set his eyes on.  At age thirty two, all of it ended for him.  He died. His empire split  as his generals fought and divided the greatest accumulation of wealth, power and dominion ever put together by one man. Within two days after his death, the unrest that followed over succession began. Within weeks, there was a revolt in Alexander's base in Athens.

What followed over the next 2600 years, cascading through the centuries, was a string of empires, emperors and rulers, who came and went. All, just the same - every emperor, king, entire kingdoms  mere temporary custodians. A few thousand years earlier, the pharaohs had their bodies preserved so that they may continue to have custody of their power, wealth and glory into the afterlife.

Though the pharaohs' quest for everlasting custody did not hold, the pyramids  they built still stand for tourists to hold in awe.  All reminders that custody is temporary.

 

The only thing that prevails is the story of life. That it has a shelf life that may last three to four generations is miraculous as it is humbling.  Alexander's life was barely over a generation long; one generation deemed by general convention to be 20-30 years. Those among us enjoying the third or fourth quarter of our lives have much to treasure, more than Alexander could have dreamt of.

And so it is that our individual lives are what they are.  Ordinary lives, some short, others long enough, or too long; exceptional lives that have made a difference to the world; self-centered ones that were of little benefit to anyone; and lives cut short. Lives lived and soon forgotten; lives lived quietly. Every now and then a life here and there is celebrated, rarer still is when one life rises to heights of fame and fortune so quickly and ends so suddenly - meteors through the night sky, falling stars one can only wish for.  Just the same, each one a temporary occupier of space, custodian of very little or too much, but nevertheless only for a finite period of time.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”    --- Heraclitus

And so we travel through space and time and no matter what we think or believe, we are never at the same place from one moment to the next. The river of time is unrelenting, so one might as well step into it and do the utmost as best as one can because the alternative is to stand by the river bank to watch it go by. Since we are all tenants, we might as well make full use of the lease - that's what it really is - and as travelers, we might as well enjoy the journey. Lacking in mobility, wheelchair bound even, or shut in within the confines of a retirement home, one's greatest gift for travel is the mind.  For it knows no boundary even as it occupies the littlest of space.

No matter what one's status is in life, no one may take away the joy one feels because no one may dictate what it is we choose to enjoy.

From the Pharaohs to Alexander; from Mozart to Elvis, all travelers  through time, temporary occupiers, tenants all, because permanence is not  and never will be the nature of the universe. { Note: Elvis is an anagram of Lives. }

The Mouse & The Elephant In The Room

The metaphor symbolizes that of the large and the small though they provide little or no contrasting color at all for they are both gray. Let's cut through that quickly. It is like a mouse trying to get the elephant to move as it is mankind's  effort to try to get the climate to change.  As always I obligate myself to explain.

The butterfly effect is a fanciful way of defining that one little thing can literally lead into something huge. Of course, many arguments have been put forward  to prove or disprove such a phenomenon, if it were one. Here is a different take on the butterfly effect.

The fable that I remember, for those not familiar with or had forgotten it, goes like this: Out in the plains of the Serengeti, a lone butterfly was going about its business from flower to flower. Not too far away is a pride of lions patiently waiting for a herd of wildebeest to come closer. The butterfly, as it flutters its wings, hovering and landing on several flowers, causes some of the disturbed pollen to be carried away by the wafting air. A few of the pollen went into the nostril of the lead lioness, thus causing it to sneeze uncontrollably and loudly - loud enough to spook the ever alert and nervous wildebeest. They turned, saw the lions, and they panicked. The resulting stampede of a few thousand wildebeests soon after, caused a cloud of swirling dust upwards with the rising warm air. The dust clouds joined the Jetstream up above. That somehow changed the air density and speed. In a matter of three days, the global weather pattern had changed considerably and by the seventh day, a typhoon had developed on the Bay of Bengal.  In a few more days, Bangladesh was devastated by strong winds and flooding that followed.  All that was caused by one butterfly.

Like I said, it's a fable I remember but the embellished version is all my own.

Now, talk about two global butterfly wings. China and India.  Over one billion people from each. Each a place where industrial manufacturing are their largest economic engines and fossil fuel is the main source of energy.

Climate protests are widespread in the U.S. and Europe but little anywhere else. India and China are the two butterfly wings that, unlike the ones on the plains of the Serengeti, are gigantically real and who is to say those wings are not directly affecting the global climate, despite the efforts in the West. Is it not that the efforts in the U.S. and Europe seem like the mouse trying to get the elephant to move?

Expanding the metaphor further, the planet is to the sun as the mouse is to the elephant.  It is actually much too generous a comparison.  A million earths will fit inside the sun; it will not take but  a mere third of a million mice to weigh as much as an elephant.  I actually did the math, using the heaviest African elephant tipping the scales at 6,350 kilograms and a healthy, fully satiated, mouse at 20 grams. 317,500 mice will tip the balance scale with the elephant at equilibrium.

Anyway, the sun bosses the entire solar system around, literally in fact. Not the least of its power is controlling earth's climate.  Yes, not only that all the eight (or nine) planets, all their moons, all the comets and the asteroid belt go where the sun goes, each of all the hitchhikers are subject to the whims and tantrums of the sun. The sun, on the other hand, while huge and gravitationally overpowering to all that revolve around it, is an average star and merely one of perhaps an estimated 100 to 400 billion other stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The earth would then seem like a single grain of sand on ten acres of the Sahara.  Perhaps, a little too generous a comparison, once again.

But the sun, like every other star, is one giant thermonuclear device. The only thing that stops it from obliterating the entire solar system is that its own gravity keeps it from exploding to smithereens.  What an amazing natural wonder that its own  gravity holds in check all the thermonuclear explosions that occur every second within the sun.  The gravity is so strong that photons of light from its center take several thousand years to reach its surface, but only eight minutes to reach us, across stellar space. Of course, the photon's trek inside the sun is naturally hindered by so many factors, including bumping against and bouncing with other subatomic particles within the sun.

We need to go through the weeds, as I presented above, just to show the reader the futility of going all out towards green energy as an all or nothing alternative against the one proven source of energy that had sustained global industrialization and progress for over two centuries already.  And ignoring the biggest elephant in the room.  The sun.

Think about this for a minute.  Man-made CO2, we are warned, will raise the temperature of the earth two degrees over the next 100 years. Are we forgetting the elephant in the room? The provider of light and warmth and the shepherding grip on all that revolve around it in the solar system has nothing to say at all, in a manner of speaking? The earth's orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, the sun's voyage around the galaxy, gravitational perturbations of the galaxy, and so many other factors that are much too large to take for granted will have to be factored into before we, humans, impose on one another a singular climate agenda.

The mouse is well served to be mindful of the elephant in the room. The mouse must forever be mindful not to impose or act on its assumption that it can get the elephant to move to one side of the room because there are others  in the same room that can get hurt.  The reader is urged to think about who those others are - real people in various industries, developing countries, thriving economies put asunder because of some singular agenda superseding all others.  Think about it hard.

Down & Dirty on Clean Energy

This is not a diatribe - and should not be taken as such - against clean energy.  Who doesn't want clean energy?  We love our cordless tools, flashlights, phones, cameras, etc. And, more universally, don't we just want energy? All forms of energy, from all sources, because machines - inventing them, utilizing them - are what separated us from all other living organisms on the planet.  Machines made us more productive, made us perform work that were impossible to do, made us advance our civilization, fulfill the ambitions that our ancient forefathers only dreamed about.

Now, in the strictest sense, there is no such thing as dirty energy.  At its fundamental nature, energy - kinetic, electrical, sound, heat, nuclear - is clean. The debate has always been about their  side effects, so to speak, and their residual impact after their application. Take sound, for example. A mother's hum or whisper soothes her sleeping baby; the distant crashing of ocean waves against the rocky shores may lull us to sleep; but a jackhammer, a loud rock band, the blast from a nearby cannon, will produce harmful decibels to deafen us temporarily or even permanently. It's the same sound energy with devastating side effects. 

The most basic and original form of energy since the beginning of time, a fraction of which were condensed to become matter, created the kind of universe we see today but a gamma ray burst, ultraviolet radiation that traveled through space a few hundred, even thousands of years ago, can alter or end life of any living thing billions of miles away.  Nuclear plants will provide power to thousands of homes for a hundred years but a nuclear bomb will annihilate a hundred thousand people in a few seconds.

From the moment Grog, the first caveman, who saw fire created by a lightning strike on a tree nearby, and keeping it lit by feeding twigs and branches to keep it going, and generations after him who found other ways to make fire, man harnessed the first artificially induced form of  energy. I wasn't personally there to witness Grog first hand, but that version is as good as any story anyone can come up with.

Firewood, for eons, was our primary source, alternatively a carrier, of energy. It has always been fuel (wood) plus oxygen plus source of initial ignition (F+O+i=Heat). If we must think about this, for millions of years, the way energy was acquired had always been through that shortest route.  Inefficient, yes, but its delivery was the shortest possible.  The point of this boils down, no pun intended, to accessing energy with the least amount of the proverbial "middleman" in between - metaphorically speaking, that is.

Energy today is largely commoditized, such that at every point of the hand off there is cost to be accounted for.  Let's get to it quickly.

Today, in a typical modern household, before we get to the (F+O+i=Heat), we begin with P (petroleum, exploring for and pumping it from the ground) + T (transporting the crude oil) + R (refining) + S (storage and shipping) + p (piping from provider's storage) + h (Home appliance: heater, stove and furnace), only then do we get to (F+O+i=Heat). So today, in a nutshell, this is how it has become for the modern Grog and Groga's family : P + T + R + S + p + h = (F+O+i=Heat).  At each point and in between is a cost.

Substitute h with C (car) and G (gas station), before we get to (F+O+i=Heat) which by the way is still the same heat energy (F+O+i=Heat) from the rapid, continuous, repeating explosions in each cylinder in every engine that propels the car, and we have the same equation working. Every item or element we add is a cost.

Now, substitute h with c (charger or charging station + B (battery for storing electrical energy before the motor) for the electric vehicle (EV).

We will not quibble with how we get to the battery by mining for lithium and other rare earth minerals from remote and relatively hostile places and horrible working conditions, to get to the manufacture of EVs. We will not quibble with the fact that to manufacture lithium batteries, we employ furnaces and machines that run on electricity generated predominantly from fossil-fuel-fed plants. It is true for all large scale manufacturing processes, which include making the entire body of the electric vehicle itself.

However, we will quibble with the all-or-nothing agenda to choose only one over another form of energy to the full exclusion of the other.  Such rhetoric as "end the fossil fuel industry entirely" and the numerous  slogans that activists come up with regularly - the printing and dissemination of them had become a business by themselves - is as unproductive as Don Quixote's quarrel with the windmill, as glaring an ironic metaphor  that image conveys to the misuse of land for the "almighty wind turbine".  Splattering egg and mashed potato on museum art to protest against oil by young activists when such waste of food could have fed a hungry child for a day somewhere in an impoverished corner of the world that these ignorant protesters pretend to care about from one side of their mouth, is another Quixotic insanity.

We quibble with getting rid of fossil-fuel-fed emergency vehicles that are the only go-to equipment during and post natural disasters.  Try using EVs during flood rescue operations.  Diesel powered earth moving equipment will not only clear roads and debris handily but they will do it with zero downtime to recharge batteries. Even a nuclear powered submarine has in its belly a standby diesel engine, in case its nuclear power fails.

There is obviously much more to quibble with those who aim for totally carbon-free  generators of energy,  but suffice it to say that the world is better off  finding ways to balancing the application of all energy - endeavor for cleaner fossil fuel vehicles along with EVs in a manner that allows for a meaningful co-existence instead of an all or nothing war where there will  not be one winner. EVs have a place in modern transport but it will not be able to do all; so why get rid of the alternative that is definitely more capable at meeting the demands of the heavy lifting, literally speaking, including dealing with natural disasters and mass transportation of massive loads, not the least of which is  air travel and hauling air cargo; and delivering goods and produce across land via 18-wheeler transport.

From the moment of creation, the Creator saw to it that from that moment on  matter and energy may be interchangeable but no longer shall either  be created or destroyed.  All matter, all energy, was and still are a blessing to all creatures. What is stored in a pound of coal, gas in a gallon of fuel oil, lightning sparks from ionized clouds, even the rushing water on a waterfall, wind as warm air rises and cold air rushing through, are all part of the energy from since creation, forever part of the universe. So it is with that premise that we must always widen our views, to include considering other ideas instead of narrowing it only to those who agree with us and reject and ostracize those whose opinions do not conform with ours.

Image below: Do we want this kind of solution?  Someone claiming to have run his Tesla for 1600 miles without having to use a charging station is clever but Quixotic. He installed a lawn mower engine that ran constantly to recharge his EV batteries.  Clever or foolish or he is not aware that there is such a vehicle called a hybrid that has been on the market for quite some time now.

This is what "Down and Dirty with Clean Energy" means.

Let's not be Quixotic with clean energy. 

Referring back to the first paragraph, we do not ban jackhammer, rock bands and cannons (Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture comes to mind). We've come a long way towards clean emissions from the days of the Model T, plants are spewing less contaminants to the environment from all kinds of pollutant reducing measures and stiffer regulations.

Car engines today are not only more efficient, they last longer and regulations keep them in check.  Meanwhile, the push for electric vehicles must be tempered with anticipating issues that could arise from discarded lithium batteries and other harmful rare elements associated with batteries after their useful lives. There are already widespread discarded lithium batteries just from flashlights and myriad portable tools and appliances.  It is not too inconceivable that the next generation of activists will be protesting against lithium wastes and their deleterious environmental impacts not fully anticipated and understood today.

One more word to those who claim concern for world catastrophe from fossil fuel, oil, the oil industry, gasoline engine, etc. If there is one universal truism, it is that 99%, if not all, that we worry about constantly, are likely to be superseded by something else we didn't quite anticipate.

We can't ask the dinosaurs what really worried them 67 million years ago but we can be certain it was not the asteroid that hit  what is now The Yucatan Peninsula.  That single event caused the ultimate extinction of the dinosaurs after reigning at the top of the food chain for 160 million years.

While the Biblical plague caused three days of darkness over Egypt, the year 536 A.D., described by archaeologists and scholars of historical catastrophe, as the worst year to be alive, had much of the world in darkness for a full 18 months, due to volcanic eruptions.  Think about climate change as a result of that.

As it turned out, severe climate changes have always been the recurring pattern to rule much of our history, to include six ice ages and alternating global heating, long before there were cars and trucks and fossil-fuel-fed industries.  And don't forget what ended the reign of T-Rex.

The war on fossil fuel is as foolish an errand as that of The Man from La Mancha. If he had only listened more to the wisdom of Sancho Panza - his "uneducated" sidekick.

You Think Witches Are Scary?

Halloween as traditionally celebrated may not be totally global but without exception, in any country or culture, there are enough stories and widely held tales to make many a childhood nightmare part of growing up.  

The scary witch in black loose clothing, cape and pointy hat straddling a broomstick will not hold a candle to the "aswang" where I grew up. From the other nearby islands they even evolved into taking different but no less menacing forms.

They're mostly female but the occasional male is more fearsome and unforgiving. During the day, they live normal human lives as regular members of the local community.  At night, when everyone is asleep, the "aswang" will go to a secluded place, usually thickets of vegetation of banana trees or bamboo.  There, the "aswang" will sprout bat-like wings and proceed to separate her upper body, from the belly button up at the waist, then off  she will fly away for a night of marauding menace, leaving the lower body unattended, both legs standing still. Before sunrise the "aswang" will come back to the same spot to reunite with his or her lower body, back to  human form to the unsuspecting community.  

What did they hunt for? And how?  

They would fly to the towns or barrio away from their own community, which they typically leave  alone and unharmed.  However, that is not to say that other "aswangs" from the other towns will not be doing the same thing.  So, just because the local "aswang" will fly somewhere else, no one is safe in any town or barrio.

Vulnerable homes are those with thatched roof of nipa fronds, such as ours when I was growing up.  The "aswang" would alight at the top of the roof where a child or children are sleeping on the floor below. She then separates the nipa  ever so slightly for a good look.  Then, once she finds her victim, she would release through her funneled lips  a thin, continuous strand of her saliva through the slit on the roof into the child's mouth or nostril.  This takes away the child's spirit from the body. By morning, the child is dead. The "aswang" will come back later in the week, during wake. That is when she will devour the body from the inside.   It will take several night trips before the "aswang" is finished. The village people who attend the all-night wake are told to remain awake because even if only one person is up, it will keep the "aswang" from completing the task, but invariably everyone doses off, which enables the "aswang" to devour its victim through its long tongue from the rooftop.  The family and the villagers will take to the cemetery a body empty from the inside except for banana stalks and coconut husks  that the "aswang" replaced it with.

Then there was the famous "Tio Gimo" (nickname for the formal Spanish name of Guillermo) from the other island across from ours.  He had several attractive daughters, fair skinned with light brown hair - typical of mixed Spanish and native blood. Many young men would be lured into calling on the young maidens' home lorded over by "Tio Gimo"; Tio actually means "uncle", obviously endearing as it sounds.  These men, always from out of town, will never be heard from again. "Tio Gimo" and his daughters were "aswang" who had evolved into a different form by preying on love-struck adult males instead of young children.

Listening to these stories, we were too young or perhaps even too scared to question how people knew of the story if nobody ever came out alive.

Something we did know, however, was how to defeat the "aswang".  One will have to find the lower half of the "aswang" as she forayed into the night. Pouring capfuls of salt or vinegar or a combination of both over the exposed lower half prevented the flying  "aswang" from reuniting and reconstituting herself or himself into a full human form again. At night when all is quiet, we occasionally hear a distant and faint wailing or moaning sound.  We were told by the elders that an "aswang" somewhere was pleading to allow its body halves to be put back together.  We will not sleep well that night.

The "tamawo" was something else.  

One side of the lot where our nipa hut stood, was where the edge of a pond began, part of a larger watery world of  mangrove - muddy, dark, as vegetation obscured the sunlight from getting through. From our lot stood a huge tree. One of its main branches leaned as an overhang over part of the pond that was clear of aquatic grass and water lilies.  It was a perfect spot to fish. With one or two of my friends we would go up there, straddling horseback-riding-like on the huge branch, with our bamboo fishing poles, tiny hooks and wiggly worms in old rusty tin cans, excited to snag perch and mud fish just below the opaque water.  We were careful to always ask for permission in hushed tones addressed to whichever spirit was present every time we go there. We cannot see the "tamawo", of course, but they're bound to be there because that part of the pond was where their vessels would come to dock.  

The "tamawo" is invisible to everybody, except to some of the elders who are gifted with extraordinary eyesight.  They would tell us that the "tamawo" would leave us alone, in peace and free from harm, if we don't offend them. When asked what the "tamawos" look like, the gifted elders told us that the "tamawos" are pale skinned, almost white, but they have one distinguishing facial feature.  They do not have a philtrum - "the vertical groove on the surface of the upper lip, below the septum of the nose".

When we were out on that tree or anywhere else we ventured out in the field or thicket of wild berries and such, not only were we not to forget to ask for permission to pass, we were not to point at anything or our fingers would fall off. At the pond, it was often that we see a kingfisher a short distance away, perched on a drooping branch, watching for fish below.  The kingfisher had striking features of a pointy beak and plumage of beautiful colors of blue, green and red with a tinge of orange.  Not only can we not point at it, it was best to leave it alone. More than likely it was a "tamawo's" pet. 

In fifth grade, a beautiful classmate of ours did not come to class one day.  We heard later that she passed away  the night before. Our teacher took those of us who wanted to go to her wake. She was the quiet type who pretty much kept to herself, except to be with one or two close friends.  Though not very sociable, her pretty face and a rare but unemotional smile framed by long curly dark hair made it hard to ignore her. 

We were told she was taken by the "tamawo" away to their  invisible outer world, adopted to live among them.  There were many unexplained childhood death when we were growing up.  Half of them were attributed to the "tamawo" and the other half predated upon by the "aswang".

The "mantiw" was one that no one had ever seen but they were around when it was windy. During the night, of course.  They have long legs because everyone can hear them running over the homes, but not touching any of the structures; but they'd come by so fast  disturbing the air to rush out and back, accompanied by a whistling, sometimes roaring, sound. There could be a herd of these "mantiw" running, especially when it was raining, as if they were either fleeing from or going after something.  But nobody could see them and they were not known to harm anyone.

The "kapri" was another harmless creature but no less sinister. We never asked but I've always wondered why those who were "allowed" to see them always described them as male.  There seemed to have been no female "kapris".  The "kapri" is a giant, about 10-12 feet tall, who resided in big abandoned homes. They have a hairy body, large head with disheveled crusty hair, over large piercing black eyes.  Once, a bunch of us young kids and older teenagers and one adult went to an abandoned home because there was a "kapri" there.  The adult and an older teenager who could see the "kapri" described the creature to us.  The "kapri" was reclining his giant body with his back against the wall, legs splayed on the floor, smoking a huge cigar.  Yes, "kapris" were known to smoke cigars!  And the reason we go there to "gawk" at a creature we could not see was because the "kapri"  too was  a harmless denizen of the dark realm.

Up to this point of my musing, I was re-telling from memories of my childhood.  What follows below are those from sources that are at least two to more times removed from  directly hearing or experiencing them.

Many islands away up north of the archipelago were  creatures that those in our island felt fortunate to not have to deal with them.  I will only mention one here.  The "tikbalang" has a huge torso, hairy and muscular, an ugly face and disproportionately longs legs like those of a giraffe's. We were told it indiscriminately preyed on anyone - adults and children - who wandered through the open field or empty streets late in the night.  Its hunger and appetite for human flesh rises with that of the waning and waxing moon, when the night is dark.

In the capital city in the main island was a story that today would seem to follow a universal pattern.  It is the "Lady in White".  One major street, Balete Drive, so named because  one giant tropical tree species - Balete - stood in one corner, and there used to be several of them along that road.  There are so many versions of the story, episodes too long to cover here but what was consistent was that a Lady in White waiting by that tree would hail and get into a taxi, or privately driven car, in the middle of the night. After that, the stories would turn into so many different terrorizing versions.  Actually, this story may have started from way back when the method of conveyance was still a horse-drawn carriage. 

Photo of a Balete Tree

Below is a representation of what "witnesses" described what the lady looked like.

In the southern islands, at the university where I went, the school hospital had one prevailing story of a Lady in White, presumably the apparition of a deceased nurse, doctor, or previous patient. The reader will note that such stories abound in different parts of the world, across all cultures.

As I said in the first paragraph, we outgrew the stories by about the same time we learned there really was no Santa Claus, some later than others.  Whatever the effects were on the other children I grew up with, I am in no position to assess.  For me, those stories that included episodes from the comic book version of The Twilight Zone (we had no TV then) were what pushed me to the sciences by the time I got into my freshman year in high school. I embraced physical science, math, algebra and geometry because elements of those subjects were provable, and as in geometry, postulates and theorems and proofs of congruence, shapes whose areas and circumferences can be solved, etc. without any ambiguities.

But I wondered why the stories, even to this day, in many parts of the world, remain in circulation. Is it because fear is just a natural  human instinct, stoked by so much we do not and cannot know?

I was scared of moving from home for the first time to go to college. Integral calculus scared me after I failed it the first time I took it.  College graduation was a happy time but we were all scared about not getting a job.

Potential recession, the threat of war, crime, waiting for medical test results, all of these feed into our capacity for all sorts of mental anguish from what seems like our instinctual nature to be fearful.

I feel that those stories that I seem to remember so well, though I cannot vouch with a hundred per cent accuracy of my recollections, may have actually prepared me in how I dealt with all kinds of fear later in life. For example, I knew that the "mantiw" that our elders would tell us about came during the monsoon season when rains would be accompanied by high winds. That explained for me the whistling and roaring sounds, which were much too fearful when one lived in a nipa thatched home.  The death of young children - so difficult to comprehend or accept - which could only have been caused by the "aswang" or "tamawo" is not a good accounting of the fact that the childhood mortality rate could have been explained by inadequate health care and prevention during those times.

Imagine what it was like for our early ancestors to be fearful of so many things beyond their comprehension. But fear must have been and still is a survival tool. As children, our learning brain with a default feature to be fearful of the unfamiliar perhaps have yet to discriminate between and among a lot of stimuli.  

The question is why adults relish the idea of scaring young children.  There are a lot of reasons, I'm sure. It is fun. It is passing on an initiation tradition of the time they too had been scared. It is a way to get the kids to behave or be wary of unfamiliar environments. Who knows?

All of these can be relegated to superstition because who doesn't have one? We eventually outgrow almost all superstitions and  childhood lore we hear, but woe to those who do not.

I think it is best to quote Carl Sagan, from his book, "The Demon-Haunted World" (Science as a Candle in the Dark):

"..when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."

"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

I hope I have redeemed myself for subjecting the reader to some of the ghoulish recollections of my childhood.

Always Two Sides to a Story

The story of humanity is almost always filled with them. 

Fritz Haber, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918, was and still is hardly a household name. He was reputedly credited by historians then and  now (still), as the man responsible for the death of millions and the savior of billions  of people in the history of mankind - "detonator of the population explosion", as alternatively described by sympathetic historians. Nevertheless, the average person  has no clue who he was.

Fritz Haber was a brilliant German chemist, credited for his invention of a process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen gasses. Ammonium nitrate is a major component in the  production of fertilizer. On the other hand, it is also the same compound used to make explosives.  There lies the two sides of what Haber had accomplished. 

There are many other similarly themed stories, of course, but this is  interesting and truly a fascinating one. As sometimes the case, it is about one side of a story which can lead to the opposite of the other. 

Let's back up for just a bit. I am convinced that what Haber had accomplished was a significant story from which so much is owed by  all of humanity today,  if by that we mean sustaining the life of 7 billion people and rising.   Before we get to the other side of Haber's story, let's examine how and why historians think that what he accomplished triggered the population explosion. As such, it is how world population got up to the 7 billion mark and growing, instead of one curtailed to perhaps a mere 2 billion due to recurring famines in many places around the world, had Haber not come up with a solution.

For millions and millions of years the natural order of the earth's ecosystem begins and ends with nitrogen.  99% of the earth's atmosphere is mostly made up of just two elements - 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen; the remaining 1% is made up of .93% Argon., .04 % carbon dioxide, and a miniscule amount of six other trace elements.  And water vapor in the form of clouds.  A simplified illustration explains it in brief.

All animals, which include us, need more than just oxygen to survive. We need protein to grow and maintain good health. Protein must have nitrogen in it in the form of amino acids.  NH2 is a derivative of ammonia. How do we get it?  Note from the illustration that the upper left arc of the cycle is lightning. It takes the energy of lightning to break the bonds of a nitrogen molecule, allowing for individual nitrogen atoms to combine with  hydrogen to make ammonia (NH3). Hydrogen by weight is miniscule as part of atmosphere but because it is the lightest element, there is plenty of it in terms of number, especially as in water vapor  in the clouds.  Lightning produces tons of ammonia which is then brought down by rain onto the soil below.  From there it is processed by bacteria into a form that is absorbed by plants.  We eat vegetables, fruit and meat from livestock that eat plants and grasses.   Nitrogen as in bat guano, and other animal manure, gets recycled into direct fertilization of the soil where plants grow. That's how we get nitrogen into our system.

The nitrogen cycle worked for millennia with nary a hitch. Nitrogen finds its way back to the atmosphere as a product of other microbial activities in the ground. 

That cycle worked for much of history.  Until that time when humans  broke the nitrogen cycle.  Yes, because we consumed but no longer returned the nitrogen to the ground. When people settled down to form enclaves, then towns and cities that grew into large population centers, sanitation soon forced waste to the sewers and garbage dumps for otherwise compostable waste matter, thus breaking the nitrogen cycle. The cycle still happens in the wild but as cities and nations grew in size and population, farmers who are still expected to grow food and raise livestock needed fertilizers to keep the cycle going.

Fritz Haber found the solution in  a process he pioneered together with another chemist, Max Born, to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen.  Haber's collaboration with Bosch, now a large chemical company called BASF, raised the production of fertilizer into  an unprecedented  industrial scale. Haber was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918.

"The ability to produce much larger quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizers in turn supported much greater agricultural yields and prevented billions of people from starving to death."

What is the other side of Haber's story?

"Haber is also considered the "father of chemical warfare" for his years of pioneering work developing and weaponizing chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I, especially his actions during the Second Battle of Ypres."

The genius of one man's story had two sides when his synthesis for producing ammonium nitrate also enabled cheaper method to produce explosives. In 1995 a Federal building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a devastating explosion - a horrific case of domestic terrorism that killed 167 and injured over a thousand people.  The explosive used that was in a parked truck was from a combination of liquid fertilizer and diesel fuel.

Whether in the larger picture of global history or politics, or in the micro world of our individual lives, there are often two sides to a story and sometimes a chosen  path can lead to unforeseen trajectories.  

Alfred Nobel became a very wealthy man from his invention of TNT. But he gave up quite a bit of his wealth  to fund what later became the annual event that is the Nobel Prize upon realizing that TNT that he envisioned was the answer to speed up construction of roads, earth moving capability to reshape mountains and to tunnel through them so as to connect from one side to the other, mining for minerals that were not easily accessible, dam building, etc., also became a weapon of war.  

Computers, smart phones, live streaming and social media in general have had one side of technology make life easier, enabled more efficiency on all aspects of modern life and allowed for connectivity among people from across town, provinces, states and across the globe -  instantaneously. That is one side of its story.  The other side, of course, has reflected and magnified the darker side of the human character.  Technology is also a tool for scam artists; to bully and inflict psychological distress among the youth, etc. and a very long list of so many others that two decades ago were never deemed possible as a means to cause havoc on society.

Every ruined relationship, a marriage broken up, governments failing to manage a nation, companies going bankrupt, wars erupting, etc. all have at least two sides to the story. However, it does seem to defy at times whether one is more right or more justified than another. It is also obvious at other times when one side is clearly the bad story.  What defies explanation, however, is why?

Is it perhaps because all of these  are "all baked in", so to speak, to the nature of duality in the universe? By duality, to mean light and darkness, pain and relief, sadness and happiness, and a lot more examples of two sides to a story, and then we get to the most profound duality of all - good and evil.

Religious leaders, theologians, philosophers and, yes, politicians, have much to say. What, as individuals, have we to say?

The two sides to a story can also mean that on every road we travel on, many times in a lifetime that road of life  always takes us to a fork, an intersection, a cross road, and our choices are what will determine in the end where our individual journey takes us.  

We are fully equipped to make those decisions.  But whatever you do, don't take the advice from the ever memorably lovable Yogi Berra, who said, 

And, unlike in baseball where a batting average of .250 is pretty good, and .300 makes you a superstar, we all need to do better than .900 when batting for life.  Arguable, but, hey, we don't aim for a below-average life, do we? 

Yesterday Today Tomorrow

Do you feel like you are always pressed for time?  Or, do you feel like you have too much time on your hands?  Does one have more than another?

Yesterday, today, tomorrow; how different is each from one another? They're merely past, present, future tenses of time.  However, let's pause for a moment and ask, what is time? Is time absolute or is it just an illusion? I purposely avoided commas in the title because those three tenses are just segmented but continuous frames on an infinitely rolling reel of  film. Now, I just obligated myself to explain that, don't I?

But, for a much spicier question, why does time "flow" and only in one direction? 

Please don't be discouraged along the way for what seems so complex of a subject because towards the end there is a method to the madness of this musing, as I often like to say - if only to stretch and flex one's mental muscle, so to speak.  Or, at least, tickle some of your slumbering brain cells into active wakefulness. For sure, some of what we think is difficult to understand is actually easier  than we think. Painlessly, I promise.

There is this to ask first, "Is time universal?"  In other words, if there are beings on a planet orbiting the nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri, only 5.9 trillion miles away, will they perceive a second, a minute, or an hour as "flowing" or "running" at the same rate that it does on earth?"

The quick answer is:  No, they will not. In fact, neither will anyone on Jupiter, Venus or Saturn,  or anywhere else in the entire cosmos. On a neutron star,  where a teaspoon of its material weighs 5.5 billion tons (about 900 Egyptian Giza-size pyramids, according to one calculation by someone with too much "time" on his hands), time may not even "move" a second, the way we perceive a second "to move" here on earth.  This gives new meaning to the term "local time", doesn't it? More on this in a bit.

The long answer is that earth time - seconds, minutes, hours, days, years - were established arbitrarily. A day, for example, is how long it takes for earth to rotate on its axis, allowing for equal but alternating exposure of its one side facing the sun (daylight), and the other side facing away (night time). Then early "timekeepers" subdivided one rotation into 24 segments, giving us the standard 24-hour cycle. It could easily have been, say, 20 hours or 10!  {Actually, many hundred million years ago earth was spinning much faster than it does presently, a day would have been indeed  20 hours long - hours as we "measure" them today}. Each hour was then subdivided further into 60 minutes, then 60 seconds.  That's all it was.  Arbitrarily. Local to earth and nowhere else. 

{And get this: Recently, like a two weeks ago, scientists just found out that earth is spinning faster than previously "clocked" by 1.59 milliseconds. If this keeps up we may someday need a leap second to compensate for the speeding rotation!}.   Like, anyone really cares.

Now, the ancients also figured out that it took  earth approximately 365 days to make one complete revolution around the sun.  Although at first people then believed that the sun revolved around the earth.  

With the exception of the Chinese, Jewish and the Mayan calendar, the entire world uses the Gregorian calendar today.  It was in October 1582 that Pope Gregory XIII made a small modification on the then widely used Julian Calendar.  As was then determined by the astronomers of that time, the year was not exactly 365 days. It was 365.25.  Pope Gregory XIII reduced the year to its present period of exactly 365.2425 days. There was and continues to this day approximately one quarter of a day each year that must be accounted for; otherwise, the accumulated "error" will build up to a ridiculous calendar "drift" that will render the calendar useless.  So, every four years that amounts to, again approximately, an entire extra day.  Hence, we have a leap year to account for it. And for anyone born on February 29 .. well, it's complicated.

Okay, we got that out of the way, so, are the present, the past and the future just illusions?  

The present technically, in the shortest interval of "time" possible, is that moment when the past ends and the future begins, instantaneously, as we perceive them as being different one from the other. But, literally and instantaneously, that shift happens in less than a blink of an eye, or using an atomic clock, from microsecond to microsecond (as in a millionth of a second to the next millionth second). By the time we say, "Give me a second", it's over!  The present moment is ephemerally fleeting, at best.

Here's  something to think about first.

The past is established as something we can never go back to while the future is beyond reach until it happens!  So yesterday, we can remember and everything significant that happened then can be read in yesterday's papers or on the internet.  Unless you are the fabled Merlin, of King Arthur lore, who can remember the future, tomorrow is nothing more than a gazillion probabilities, if we try to anticipate what potentially awaits everyone  from around the globe of over  7 billion people  and every conceivable possibility one field mouse escapes its predator, or what and how many flowers in a meadow one particular butterfly will land on. Until it "happens", nothing is ever certain. 

Using the reel of film analogy, the past is a series of exposed frames, the present is as it is being presently filmed (though quickly at perhaps 24 frames per the arbitrary second), the future are blank frames yet to be exposed.  Time is merely an accessory to the events being filmed.

Time that we think we are able to measure is something we cannot store, save and spend later.  Unless we associate it with observable physical changes, like a ball rolling down an incline or an egg breaking into a bowl, time by itself has no meaning, it is without physical form, body, color and texture.

Time has no effect on what will occur because events happen whether there is a clock, timer or any other "time" measuring instrument. Instead, "time", if we are to give it a character role - a literary extravagance, in a manner of speaking - is a bystander, just like we are if we were just watching what is happening around us.  We can choose to ignore it but events will continue to occur. Time and you and I, who are expecting for a sunrise or a sunset, are all bystanders! There is nothing we can do but wait. Well, not if instead we elect to be doing something, which "time" has no ability to do at all.

Wait, isn't the act of waiting an acknowledgement of "time running"? No. One is waiting for an event to occur, not for time to "pass" to cause an event to happen.  The brain, in an effort to sift through or to make sense of what it is witnessing, is forced to process the sequence of events,  the cause and effect phenomenon; that is, putting the cause ahead of the effect.  But "time" is not the reason for events happening, except as a marker of the order and sequences by which events occur. Blunter still would be that "time" as a bystander is not an observer, such as we are. We have consciousness, which time doesn't. That's the difference.  So, time is not real? Physically, no; but perceptively, yes. Bear with me a little bit longer.

Notice that when one is busy doing something, as in something really interesting or engrossing, time "runs" much too fast versus sitting idly, not doing anything. It is exacerbated when one is  waiting for someone to arrive, who is already running late.  Time seems to "run" at one particular pace when we are painting the room but excruciatingly a lot slower when we're waiting and watching for it to dry.

Furthermore, when we were children, summer seemed to last a lot longer than the summer we experienced as adults. As children our mind was not quite as heavily laden with lots of so many things to worry about, plan for and sort through, as adults do. Children's perception of a slower passage of time  than how adults perceive time is best explained by another film analogy. A thick spool of film about to unwind is that of the child's. As the film unwinds from the wider diameter of the spool it would seem to move slowly.  By the time it gets closest to the inner diameter of the spool, closer to its center, the film will now seem to be moving faster, as one perceives that there is not very much left to unwind. 

That is the film of life.  The thinning of that spool is what seems to give people much grief.  Why?  How about if we think of it this way?  If we allow ourselves to be just mere bystanders, such as "time" is, then yes we see the spool getting smaller. 

Ready for the "method to the madness" I referred to in the fourth paragraph above?  

The film of life consists of two spools and the lens  in between.  The forward spool where developed frames are wound is the written part of our story - that scroll of life already lived and experienced.  We look to those as we have lived and experienced.  They are not to be repositories of regret or guilt.  We should be grateful to have had that much film accumulated in that spool.  There is no reverse motor that drives the spool, so forget the do over.  

The lens in between is where the film gets developed in the present tense.  That is also where we are allowed to change directions.  But, most importantly, that is where we get to enjoy our experiences. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so the lens will also develop our aches and pains, our moments of anguish and grimaces that are best and soon reposited to the forward spool.

Whatever we do, it should not be to look at the other spool of film. We do not need to see how thick or thin the remaining film is in that spool.  Instead, we focus on what is running across that lens. That is because today is all there is where we get to do what we like to do.  It is no longer possible to do anything at the forward spool.  The other spool is all about what could probably happen.

So yesterday, today and tomorrow are each a frame in the film of life.  But today is all there is. There is nothing we can do about yesterday, we cannot touch tomorrow, so we are left with today - the only place where we can do anything, including where we dream, plan and prepare.  So, we make the most of it before it becomes yesterday because soon tomorrow is here. Therefore, we cannot just be bystanders today.  That is the job for "time"!

Below is just elective reading for anyone willing to over stimulate his or her brain cells, but definitely not required to make any more sense of Yesterday Today Tomorrow.  But Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal will help.

That is one thing for time to be perceived differently by different people or observers.  But what if time, as we've come to understand it, really moves at really different rate - slower for some, faster for others, in real terms.

And so it was that one clever fellow, named Albert, postulated that time is relative!  He's been in the news lately because the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has proven once again another theory or two of his.

“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

It is widely accepted that Einstein said the above - a tongue in cheek commentary on relativity - but I don't know if he really was the one who said it.  

One thing Einstein did postulate that was counterintuitive but later was proven true is that time  "moves" at a different  rate between two observers who are moving at different speeds relative to one another. This phenomenon is real because if we don't account for the difference, navigation via GPS, how emergency and police locate where accident or crime victims are with pinpoint accuracy would be impossible (assuming, of course, their cell phones are on). These devices (including our car GPS) emit and receive signals to and from satellites circling the globe. However, the clock on the satellite and our phones move  at  different rates, so somewhere in Colorado Springs, a "correction" is constantly being done to synchronize the two clocks at regular intervals. Otherwise, in just a short period of "time" without the correction, your GPS navigation  will be useless.

If you thought clocks "running" at different rates are such a complicated concept, it is not!  Old Albert  used trains and flashes of lightning for his mental analogy/thought experiments but I can't find any locomotive graphics so I used the ones below. No rocket ships yet in 1903-05. 

 

Imagine Michael Jordan (MJ) dribbling a basketball down and up the ceiling inside a rocket ship (top drawing) that is speeding through space at half the speed of light, say.  {The drawing shows a mirror and detector as a photon of light bounces from the mirror above to a detector below, so just imagine it to be a basketball}. Shaquille O'Neal (Shaq) was watching him wheeze by from another ship (bottom) that was either slower or stationary relative to or in the opposite direction to MJ's ship.  MJ sees the basketball going vertically up and down as he dribbles it, hitting the ceiling and down to the floor and back endlessly (possible in zero-gravity). Nothing unusual and no different from you tossing a coin while sitting on a plane going at 400 mph. The coin drops back to your hand straight down.  That's because MJ and the basketball, you and the coin are going at the same speed in your respective flying machines.

Shaq, however, sees the basketball taking a much longer path as it goes up and down because relative to him the rocket ship is wheezing by, so the ball traces an inclined path as it goes up the ceiling, and an inclined path the other way as it comes down the floor, as shown by the middle drawings. 

So, what gives?  Both are observing the same thing but they perceive it differently. To Shaq, the basketball takes a longer path than how MJ sees it. Yet, it is the same event!

Reason: From MJ's perspective, watching the ball go up and down vertically, time "runs normally" as if he were on the ground; however, where Shaq is concerned,  "time" must be running slower for MJ since the ball is taking a longer path. 

Actual experiments using identical atomic clocks - one on the ground and another on board a flight on a 747 jet around the globe - had shown that the one on the plane had slowed down, albeit very minutely, but slower nevertheless. But if it were possible for an astronaut to travel at, say, even just half the speed of light, he will come back to find his twin brother an old man, perhaps even bed ridden, while he had aged only a year based on the clock/calendar on board his space ship.  If the astronaut took a longer trip, say five years at an even faster speed, he may come back to find his brother and an entire one or two future generations of his family all gone.  It is as if he had leaped-frog to the future. That phenomenon is, of course, fondly labeled by scientists as the "twin paradox".

A photon of light that reaches our telescopes after leaving its source, be it a star, another galaxy, etc. some millions or even billions of years ago, is still the same photon. Unaged. Not by a nanosecond.

Now, if you were a photon of light, streaming through the cosmos, you too will not age,  you will not grow old, become literally eternal, for sure.  It will take another musing to explain why it is impossible for you or I to travel, at the speed of light, so let's get that fantasy out of our mind. For now, anyway.  

So, what is time then? We've established that time is arbitrary.  It is also local. But as arbitrarily as we've made it, relative motions of observers perceive it differently, and then gravity also affects it.  Those living at sea level will age a bit slower than those up in the Himalayas. Twins Peter and Paul work at the Sears tower.  Peter works at the top floor.  Paul works at the basement parking garage. Peter will age sooner (will be older than Paul) after a certain time.  That is the other weird part about the flow of time.  Gravity affects the passage of time.  A massive gravitational field like inside or at the black hole, will cause time to not only slow down but perhaps to not move at all.  This is what complicates the correction that the navigation system must do.  The satellite is moving fast but it is also farther away from earth where gravitational field is stronger so the correction algorithm must account for it. 

This is exhausting.  So, enough for now.