Global Warming: It's Now About Time

(Planet Observer/Getty/Chronicle)

Anthropogenic global warming, insist its believers, is nearly all-powerful in its ability to influence nature, but the following assertion sounds extreme:

Climate change is literally impacting time itself

The Earth’s spinning, however, has recently begun to speed up and the length of the day has started getting shorter, for reasons not fully understood. In fact, research by a geophysicist in California finds that it’s only a matter of years before an extra second will need to be subtracted from universal time, rather than added to it.

This possibility is raising concern because many computers, which have been programmed to handle an additional second, aren’t designed to lose a second, threatening to create glitches in systems governing aviation, financial markets, healthcare and more. It’s reminiscent of Y2K, when widespread bugs were feared when the calendar flipped to 2000.

The research, published last year in the science journal Nature, also finds that such a negative leap second and its potential problems are being delayed, perhaps surprisingly, by climate change. Ice that is melting around the Earth’s poles is sending water – and mass – toward the equator and consequently slowing the planet’s rotation, counteracting the faster spin.

“A second doesn’t sound like much,” said Duncan Agnew, author of the recent research and a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a communication to the Chronicle. But, as he explained online: “In today's interconnected world, getting the time wrong could lead to huge problems.”

Agnew’s head-scratching projections are based on the complex and still largely unexplained physics of Earth’s rotation.

As we all know, the planet takes about 24 hours to fully spin around. But because of several factors, this timing varies ever so slightly. It’s also hard to predict. The variation was basically irrelevant until the age of computers, when milliseconds became make or break for things like stock trades and rocket launches.

Earth’s rotation, for thousands of years, has mostly slowed, the biggest driver being the changing tides that come with the gravitational tug of the moon. Currents in the planet’s outer core, which scientists are still trying to figure out, also have slowed the spin. But the core can speed up the spin, too, which may be what’s been happening recently. Additional leap seconds have become a lot less frequent the past two decades.

Since about 1990, Agnew says, the warming climate has become an additional factor, working to slow Earth’s rotation and increase the length of the day. He likens the effect of melting polar ice and the spreading meltwater on the planet’s spin to the inertia of a spinning skater: When the skater spins with her hands over her head, she rotates faster than when she extends her arms to the sides.

“Global warming has proceeded to the point that its effects are showing up in how fast the whole Earth rotates,” Agnew said. “This change in rotation has never been seen before, and this re-emphasizes that we are living in a time when unprecedented changes are happening.”

By extrapolating trends for Earth’s core and other factors affecting rotation, Agnew finds that without the melting ice, a leap second would need to be subtracted from universal time as soon as next year to account for the faster spinning planet. Now, a second won’t have to be removed until 2029, he says.

To summarize: the earth's rotation has slowed over millennia because of the moon's gravitational pull; however, the rotation has recently sped up due to (poorly understood) actions by the earth's core. Now melting ice caps are slowing the spin again. Changes in the earth's rotation add or subtract "leap"-seconds, lengthening or shortening the 24-hour day, respectively.

Even if we accept that ice sheets are melting, a strong faith in the accuracy of computer models is required to believe that the effect on the oceans will slow earth's rotation. Nevertheless, it would not be surprising if the alarmists have taken the hypothesis as proven, and that they're already trying to find a scientist who will claim that slowing earth's rotation by a second every few years is a bad thing.

Timelines Timeliness

(Image from eBay)

Just in time to assuage unhappiness with current politics, the concept of multiverse timelines has caught fire:

On Joe Rogan’s podcast last month, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explained his theory that “the timeline has split twice in the last nine months. . . . The world was going to head in two totally different directions.” The first split was when Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pa., on July 13. The second was on Election Day. Twitter is awash with posts from some users exclaiming that they “love this timeline” and others lamenting that they “hate this timeline.” Ezra Klein, doyen of the intellectual left, said in a Nov. 19 podcast that he’s watching Mr. Trump’s nominees “to see what timeline we’re in.”

The notion of this timeline implies the existence of that timeline—an alternative reality in which things unfold differently. Much as the idea “We are living in a simulation” saturated social media during the Covid-19 pandemic, “this timeline” is the latest exclamation of discomfort with our present reality.

Though it’s especially prominent among those who are online and anti-Trump, references to the timeline aren’t the sole province of the left. Last month, David Friedberg, co-host of the tech podcast “All-In,” repeatedly used the term to indicate his elation with political circumstances: “I am so shocked and surprised in a positive way that we ended up on this particular timeline. . . . We’re on this timeline and I do think the United States, as Neo, dodged a lot of bullets here.”

The invocation of Neo, hero of the film franchise “The Matrix,” is telling. The concept of timelines originates in science fiction and is linked intimately with the multiverse, the idea of parallel realities with similar people and personalities but different events and outcomes. This connection to science fiction is perhaps why the theme has resonated with Silicon Valley’s newly right-leaning techno-utopians, as well as members of the left.

Human beings have always believed--or imagined--that there are realities different and maybe better than the one we are stuck in. From heaven to reincarnation, from a simulated universe to a multiverse, there may be a super-reality where our good behavior is rewarded or our lives can have a second chance.

Just as Marxists saw benefits in religion because it was the "opiate" of the masses, conservatives won't decry multiverse-ology because it keeps many leftists quiet, and besides, it may be true (!). Meanwhile, your humble blogger has given up trying to understand the current timeline and is just enjoying the show.

I'm Gonna Be On Time Next Time

Hat on sale from Etsy

WSJ columnist Joe Queenan does not believe that the chronically tardy are being deliberately disrespectful. They are "aspirationally chronometric":

But lately I have come to realize that the chronically tardy are not late because they can’t keep time or because they don’t care that they have kept you waiting or because they never leave enough time to catch the train or find a parking spot. They are late because they practice something called “aspirational chronometry.”

The aspirationally timely are people who honestly think that time can miraculously expand to accommodate their needs, people who are always surprised to discover that the train has left, the cake has burned, the game is over, the blind date has up and left.

People who are always late are like people who are always befuddled that their diets never work or that their new clothes never fit. Just like people who buy a size 8 dress or size 34-36 trousers in the vain hope that they might eventually fit into them, the aspirationally chronometric honestly believe that by saying the words, “I’ll be there in five minutes,” they will actually be there in five minutes. Arriving 40 minutes late always comes as a shock.

I do not believe that the chronically tardy should be excoriated or ridiculed or cast out into the darkness. Just as some of us are insensitive and some of us are cheap and some of us are not so great around children and some of us tell inappropriate jokes in refined social settings, some people couldn’t arrive on time if their life depended on it.

There is nothing to be done about it; the behavior cannot be cured. Making people feel guilty about their maddening tardiness is only going to make things worse. The best course of action is to grin and bear it.

Mr. Queenan's tolerant attitude ends when the tardy person is or could be one's life partner:

You only see your friends from time to time, but you see your partner every day—which means your significant other is going to keep you waiting every day.

How to deal with this? At this point it might be, well, too late. But if you notice early in your relationship that your partner is always, always tardy, it’s likely best to pull the plug on the love affair and move to someone who is more chronometrically reliable.

Just as you would bring down the curtain on a relationship with someone who had a bad drug habit or who seemed way too fond of World War I-era ordnance, you should immediately walk away from a prospective partner as soon as you realize that they’re going to be a half-hour behind for everything for the next 65 years.

One should always practice charity and tolerance. But do not voluntarily enter a relationship where one must practice said charity and tolerance every day for the rest of one's life. That's being too aspirationally virtuous.

Cafeteria Catholics

The 2013 Time Person of the Year

I disagree with the Catholic Church about some fundamental doctrines (which is why I never considered joining it), but I do admire the Catholic Church for its consistency. Its views on same-sex relationships, transgenderism, abortion, and capital punishment are all principled, if unpopular. And certainly Pope Francis' views on "unfettered capitalism" as the "new colonialism" and instigator of climate change haven't endeared himself to political conservatives.

Earlier this month the Church published a declaration of "Dignitas Infinita" (on the infinite dignity of individual human beings) that unifies the Church's teachings. It's a salutary effort, and what does seem clear after its publication is there's a point at which one can go overboard in picking out the teachings that one agrees with and rejecting others that don't suit one's preferences. In other words Pope Francis shuts down cafeteria Catholism: [bold added]

On an Easter Sunday appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Cardinal Wilton Gregory, archbishop of Washington, lamented that President Biden is a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses dimensions of the faith to highlight while ignoring or even contradicting other parts.”

This week the Vatican published a “declaration” from its doctrinal office titled “Dignitas Infinita,” or “infinite dignity,” in which Pope Francis strongly affirmed the “inherent” dignity of every human being and identified a list of assaults against it: abortion, surrogate childbearing, euthanasia, capital punishment, poverty, war, the travails of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, marginalization of the disabled and digital violence.

Unusually for Pope Francis, the text quotes extensively from his predecessors—the title is a phrase used by St. John Paul II—demonstrating that concerns for human dignity inform all of Catholic teaching and can’t be neatly aligned with a conservative or liberal political agenda. Mr. Biden likes Pope Francis on immigration but not abortion. He thinks the pontiff is bringing him a menu. Pope Francis, for his part, thinks the president mistakes table d’hôte for à la carte.

Much of the media paid attention to the document’s language on gender theory, which Pope Francis has previously called “the ugliest danger” today. The text was unambiguous: “Therefore, all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected.” That’s broad and would seem to cover not only medical interventions but the use of language, including forms of address and prayers.

Frankly, I don't see why Catholics, or any Christians for that matter, don't leave their church and find one that's more agreeable to their sense of right and wrong. There are plenty of denominations to choose from. But if one chooses to stay, pipe down and let your fellow church members worship in peace.

Falling Back

One signpost of technological progress is how few clocks had to "fall back" this morning. 40 years ago there were a dozen time pieces, including wristwatches, that had to be adjusted twice a year. Now the majority change themselves.

Still, I enjoyed turning back the hour hand on two old analog clocks this morning.

It was just enough time to reminisce and appreciate an activity that won't be necessary much longer.

They Weren't People Like Us

Nassim Taleb (NYU photo)

Mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, best known for his bestseller, The Black Swan, reviews Tom Holland's Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World : [bold added]

Christianity did stand the entire ancient value system on its head.

The Greco-Romans despised the feeble, the poor, the sick, and the disabled; Christianity glorified the weak, the downtrodden, and the untouchable; and does that all the way to the top of the pecking order. While ancient gods could have their share of travails and difficulties, they remained in that special class of gods. But Jesus was the first ancient deity who suffered the punishment of the slave, the lowest ranking member of the human race. And the sect that succeeded him generalized such glorification of suffering: dying as an inferior is more magnificent than living as the mighty.

The modern world is guilty of "retrospective distortion". Because we have absorbed many of Christianity's principles (the value of an individual, the importance of character over money and power) we think, mistakenly, that the original Christians were a lot like us.

We see this lack of contextual understanding, for example, on a much lesser scale in our college children who can't imagine a world where they would have to write a physical letter home to ask for money then wait for a check to come back, or go to a library, refer to its card catalogue, then delve into the stacks in the hope of finding the right book on a subject.

If the world has changed so much in 30 years, how alien must it appear after 2,000 years have passed?

Today's lectionary reading, appropriately, was from Luke 14:

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted."

Usefulness Beats Beauty

The larger size is needed to read
the screen or touch the right icon.

Two decades ago I was gifted a nice European timepiece. It was expensive, an item that I would never buy for myself.

In 2016 it was put into storage in favor of the less costly Apple Watch. The Apple Watch had technological advantages: it had fitness apps; it could take phone calls and send text messages as long as the paired iPhone was nearby; and it kept time more precisely.

Over the years the Apple Watch Series 2 was swapped out for a Series 3 that a family member had retired, then a Series 7 with a plethora of health monitoring (e.g., blood oxygen content, sleep tracking, gait evenness) features.

Almost by necessity the Apple Watch has a large (45mm) diagonal size in order to read messages and to use the touchscreen. It's on the verge of being esthetically ugly by being too large, but since for me usefulness beats beauty, I'm not going back to the more elegant-looking wristwatch.

L to R: Tudor 31mm ($4,925); Bulova 32mm
($1,150); Timex 34mm ($199) - WSJ photo

Which is also why I won't be participating in the latest trend in men's fashion, tiny timepieces.

According to Nick Marino, senior vice president of content for watch site Hodinkee, plenty of other guys have lately been shrinking their wristwear. They’re often trading watches 41mm and above in diameter—long the norm—for versions under 39mm. Many are unisex or women’s models. Some are downright puny, like [Kareem] Rahma’s [15mm] Seiko or the 23mm Cartier Crash favored by stylish rapper Tyler, the Creator.

Since the early 2000s, “big, macho, attention-getting watches were the trend, but the pendulum is swinging back to [smaller] sizes,” said Mr. Marino. A small ticker, he said, is “a sign of confidence: You don’t need a giant billboard of wealth on your arm.”

I don't need a billboard of wealth on my arm, and I don't need to be driving one or living in one either. It makes for a happier life.

Elon Musk: The Excitement is Here Again

I never expected to see another businessman as important or as lionized as Steve Jobs, but ten years after Steve's death Elon Musk has filled that role.

The richest man in the world does not own a house and has recently been selling off his fortune. He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons. An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable. Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops.

Like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk nearly bankrupted his companies in pursuit of a vision that very few could see, much less believe in. Like Steve Jobs, he achieved extraordinary success, disrupting major industries, making himself a multi-billionaire and enriching many thousands of employees, investors, and suppliers. Both men also pushed people out of the way, thereby earning criticism for their acerbic ways and personal eccentricities.

Bill Gates, who knew both men, sees major differences:

“Elon’s more of a hands-on engineer. Steve was a genius at design and picking people and marketing,” Gates said. “You wouldn’t walk into a room and confuse them with each other.”

Indeed, Musk often talks about his demanding schedule and his hands on approach. For example, on a Tesla earnings call in November 2017, Musk said he was spending all hours in the Tesla battery production factory, even sleeping on the floor and skipping showers to catch up on Tesla 3 production in 2018.

“I am personally on that line, in that machine, trying to solve problems personally where I can,” Musk said on the call. “We are working seven days a week to do it. And I have personally been here on zone 2 module line at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning, helping diagnose robot calibration issues. So I’m doing everything I can.”

As for Jobs, he “was such a wizard at over-motivating people ... I could see him casting the spells, and then I would look at people and see them mesmerized,” Gates told podcast host Dax Shepard Aug. 20.

As of this writing Steve Jobs has touched many more lives than Elon Musk. Over one billion people have an Apple device, while less than 1% that number have owned or will own a Tesla.

But with his single-handed revival of the space program, Elon Musk may very well have changed the course of human history. Ten years ago many asked, somewhat plaintively, "Without Steve Jobs, Where's the Excitement Going to Come From?" Time's Person of the Year has the answer to that question.

Hawaiian Time

This morning I performed the annual ritual of turning the clocks back for one hour as California switched from Daylight Saving to Standard Time.

Our household still has analog clocks that don't adjust automatically. I am fond of their look, which offsets the inconvenience. And I can feel the time of day reading a clock face; a digital readout doesn't resonate as deeply.

Hawaii never adopted Daylight Saving Time and doesn't have to go through the semi-annual springing forward and falling back. Hawaiian time is constant, yet unhurried. I am going to the Islands later this week and can already feel the temporal tension dissipating.

Note: Hawaiian Time is often used as an excuse for being tardy, but holding Arbor Day in November, seven months after the rest of the country, is extreme.

Mickey Mouse Technology

They were cute and once upon a time ubiquitous and cheap. I even had one.

The old mechanical Mickey Mouse watches, which were on display in the Walt Disney Family Museum, are passé, superseded by high-tech wrist devices.

If the kids must wear watches with cartoon characters, they seem to favor ones that are popular from this century. Despite their current lack of popularity, I know several of the over-40 set who refuse to part with Mickey Mouse timepieces though they no longer wear them. Such is the powerful hold of nostalgia.

Another vestige of earlier days is our Mickey Mouse dial telephone, which I first mentioned in this journal in 2010. We keep it and our landline as insurance against natural disaster:

Mickey Mouse survives because it's our one phone that can operate if the power goes off say, during an earthquake. As long as our landline has tone, we can dial out ("dial" for once may be interpreted literally).

Many in the younger generation don't have landlines, because cell phones and router-plug-in phones are sufficient for their needs.

It's long been rumored that AT&T will abandon the pulse dialing technology that once powered everyone's phone. When it pulls the plug on that, I'll pull the plug on them.

Uncertain Times

When uncertainty rules, we turn to proven sources of guidance. So I cracked open a fortune cookie.

My action was rewarded when I got four, four, fortunes in one.

Time flies.
Suns rise and shadows fall.
Let time go by.
Love is forever over all.

Take your time (which flies and goes by): it's almost too much wisdom to absorb in one sitting.

Reckoning Time

The odds are against it, but this week's Time cover has the potential to be as memorable as the famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline on the November 3, 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune.

If President Trump succeeds in his challenges to the validity of the vote count in certain states, he could still become the next President.

Time's unqualified declaration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President-Elect and Vice-President-Elect would become in retrospect the high water mark of fake news, and the masks on the two individuals will be seen to have multiple meanings.

It will become a cover that rivals Dewey Defeats Truman.

My base expectation is that there will be proof of the existence of fraudulent Biden-Harris ballots, but there will not be proof, just suspicions, that there exist enough of them to overturn the election. Joe Biden is still a heavy favorite to be the next President, and everyone should make their plans accordingly.

However, these suspicions will be enough to poison the discourse of the body politic for months, even years.

I wonder if Time and other news organizations will have the courage to investigate how ballots were counted in the major cities of swing states after President Biden is inaugurated. The fact that the stories by Time and other news organizations on November 4th said that the claims of fraud were "debunked" when the claims were still being prepared is not encouraging.

There will be a terrible reckoning---we don't know when or in what form---but both the guilty and innocent will suffer. Hey, it's Sunday, it's time to use Biblical language.

Watching the Watch Owners

Apple Watch: more useful but frankly not as beautiful.

Back in the day of men wearing suits I used a mechanical watch.

It didn't have the prestige of a Rolex or Patek Philippe, but the Omega was respectable enough for a bankers' meeting.

After nearly two decades of wear, the Swiss timepiece was put away in 2016, displaced by the less expensive but more useful Apple Watch.

Picture of inner turmoil: socks, gold watch, no pants (WSJ)

The COVID-19 lockdown has caused all of us to re-assess priorities. Were expensive watches acquired for social standing or personal enjoyment?

Strapping on a Patek Philippe for Zoom calls just to have friends and co-workers salivate over your bezel is gauche, but the timepiece habits of dedicated collectors have scarcely changed in the Covid era....A good watch is a capstone to any outfit, but these days, people aren’t wearing outfits—they’re grabbing whatever’s on top of the laundry pile.

The more possessions we have the more we have to worry about.

Not the Answer But the Question

Peggy Noonan's weekly opinion piece has a small deception.

The title is Who Can Beat Trump?, and a reader would naturally expect her answer to be contained somewhere therein.

Cover from 2016: he should have gotten it
again because he dominated the airwaves.
I guess they're saving him for 2020.

But the essay is really about how the question itself has become paramount to Iowa Democratic voters--not the impeachment and not specific issues like taxes, trade, or medical care.

But “Beat Trump” is back. When 2019 began Democrats were thinking that was priority No. 1. Then other things became more important—Medicare for All, climate change, policy. But it feels like Democrats here are circling back to their original desire. “Who can beat Trump?” is again the most important question. They don’t know the answer. They’re trying to figure it out.

After all the sturm und drang it's probably going to be another pedestrian nomination: Democrats won't vote where their heart is but for the person least likely to scare Republicans and Independents. At the moment it's Joe Biden, the safe candidate who inspires few.

The Republicans, by the way, often opt for safety, too. In 1976 they nominated Gerald Ford over the inspirational but scary Ronald Reagan...and lost.

As the sports folk like to say, if the game were held today it would be Trump over Biden, but a lot can happen in the next eleven months.

In Need of An Editor

In Time's film review of Skin, the tale of a neo-Nazi skinhead who "starts to think for himself [and] his better nature emerges" the reviewer includes a throwaway remark without supporting evidence or even an anecdotal example.

There’s a newly ascendant breed of white supremacists who often look like–and may in fact be–the clean-cut guy next door.

How about a rewrite?

There’s a newly ascendant breed of progressive scolds who often look like–and may in fact be–the well-groomed gal next door.

There. Fixed.

BTW, here's a review from Slate, a publication whose politics likely agree with the director's, which called the film "an idiotic parable about racist violence."

What Makes It Tick

Scientists are devising ever-more-accurate methods to measure time:

WSJ Gif: best if viewed
with recreational substances

Today’s cutting-edge clocks are based on measuring the vibrations of atoms and molecules. The most precise atomic clocks are so accurate that, over a period of time equivalent to the whole history of the universe to date, they would be off by less than one second.

Today’s quantum horologists are looking to improve things further. For instance, it might be possible to monitor atomic nuclei, which vibrate faster than whole atoms.

Despite the scientific advancements, we're no closer to understanding time's essence. However, there is consensus on several of time's properties: [bold added]

Most physicists agree that time had a beginning, and that it is measured from, and indeed came into being with, The Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. Whether, how and when time might end in the future is a more open question, depending on different notions of the ultimate fate of the universe and other mind-bending concepts like the multiverse.

(Image from medium.com)

The so-called arrow of time refers to the one-way direction or asymmetry of time, which leads to the way we instinctively perceive time as moving forwards from the fixed and immutable past, though the present, towards the unknown and unfixed future. This idea has it roots in physics, particularly in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, although other, often related, arrows of time have also been identified.

Our extremely precise methods of measuring time are akin to counting the wrinkles in Einstein's brain. We can observe and record all the data we want, but we're no closer to finding out what makes it tick.

Tempting, But I'll Pass

According to Time:

Costco is selling just the thing—a 27-lb. bucket of one of America’s favorite comfort foods. The big box retailer is offering a massive bucket of mac and cheese with a shelf life so long that you won’t need to venture outdoors until the year 2039.

Your humble blogger loves food bargains like the above offering from Costco. At 50 cents per serving, it's tempting. However, I'll have to pass.

Reasons:
1) Insufficient storage space;
2) My cardiologist objects;
3) Lactose intolerance;
4) Expiration date beyond my own.

Back to the Universe

A bargain even in 2001: 2 Hawking books plus pictures at a cost of $9.99.

Pi is an irrational number (3.14159265.... goes on forever to the right of the decimal point without repeating a sequence), and it's somehow fitting that one of the leading examples of human rationality, physicist Stephen Hawking, died on "Pi Day" (3.14) in England.

I took a crack at his best-seller, A Brief History of Time, when it first came out in 1988 but didn't have the discipline to read it (skimming a technical text is not considered reading, by the way). I had better luck in 2001 when it was reissued with pictures and diagrams. Here is an excerpt from the chapter entitled The Arrow of Time:

In a quantum theory of gravity, as we saw in the last chapter, in order to specify the state of the universe one would still have to say how the possible histories of the universe would behave at the boundary of space-time in the past. One could avoid this difficulty of having to describe what we do not and cannot know only if the histories satisfy the no boundary condition: they are finite in extent but have no boundaries, edges, or singularities. In that case, the beginning of time would be a regular, smooth point of space-time and the universe would have begun its expansion in a very smooth and ordered state. It could not have been completely uniform, because that would violate the uncertainty principle of quantum theory. There had to be small fluctuations in the density and velocities of particles. The no boundary condition, however, implied that these fluctuations were as small as they could be, consistent with the uncertainty principle.

The universe would have started off with a period of exponential or "inflationary" expansion in which it would have increased its size by a very large factor. During this expansion, the density fluctuations would have remained small at first, but later would have started to grow. Regions in which the density was slightly higher than average would have had their expansion slowed down by the gravitational attraction of the extra mass. Eventually, such regions would stop expanding and collapse to form galaxies, stars, and beings like us. The universe would have started in a smooth and ordered state, and would become lumpy and disordered as time went on. This would explain the existence of the thermodynamic arrow of time.

The above passage may be somewhat abstruse, but by the time the reader encounters it on page 191 Professor Hawking has already discussed thermodynamics, space-time, quantum mechanics, gravity, and the origin of the universe, all prerequisites to this discussion. He was a brilliant theoretician, writer, and teacher. R.I.P.

Time:

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist,” Hawking said of the meaning of life. “Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Tail-Gunner Joe Was Early

The May 29, 2017 cover.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of the most vilified Americans of the 20th century. He saw a Communist under every bed.

To believe today's media, he was just early.

A McCarthy quote, updated for the 21st century:

Our job as Americans and as Republicans Democrats is to dislodge the traitors from every place where they've been sent to do their traitorous work.

Time Magazine is coming around to Tail-Gunner Joe's point of view...

Fear Is the Key

Biographer and Time editor Jon Meacham lists What a President Needs to Know and all but declares that Donald Trump doesn't have it and won't ever get it:

You don’t need a Ph.D. to lead the nation, but you do need to know–as Trump did not appear to grasp in one of the debates–what the nuclear triad is. Or that the Quds and the Kurds, not to mention Hamas and Hizballah, are different things. Or that you can’t order military officers to engage in illegal torture. Or that Ted Cruz’s father was not linked to the Kennedy assassination. Or that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya. At his first joint appearance with Clinton on the campaign trail, President Obama put the matter clearly: “You’ve actually got to know what you’re talking about.”

To be fair Jon Meacham gives time to the Trumpian counter-argument:

As [Trump] likes to point out, if the elites are so smart, then why is the world in the shape it’s in–and why, exactly, is he now the Republican nominee? [snip]

“Government is built with many layers to avoid making mistakes,” wrote Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and one of the nominee’s most important advisers. “The problem with this is that it costs a lot and little gets done. In business, we empower smart people to get jobs done and give them latitude on how to get there. I prefer to move forward and endure some small mistakes to preserving a stale status quo whose sole virtue is that it offends no one.” In this construction, lack of knowledge and a get-stuff-done attitude would be assets–even if they sometimes get stuff wrong and break some geopolitical crockery along the way.

Throughout the campaign the Trump-is-too-risky argument has been made by people who are doing just fine in the current system. So far they've been outnumbered by those who fear more of the same.

Come November, we'll see which fears carry the day.