TIME MUSHES ON --D.S. Black
Imagine the
power invested in the Directorate of Time.
These temporal bureaucrats have the ability to dispense precious seconds
usually in the amount of a leap second to compensate for the Earth’s rotation,
which surprise surprise does not always conform to our best laid plans.
For though we may live in a world in
which the standard unit of time is pegged to the speed by which the Earth turns
on its axis (24 hours), there are many forces at play to vary the result: gravity, strange weathers both inside (molten
rock) and outside (oceans sloshing) the Earth throws a chaotic fudge factor
into the equation.
On June 30, 1994, the atomic clocks
used by our time-keepers were instructed to pause one golden gratis second to
allow them to catch up to the absolute time implied by that irregular
rotation.
It is interesting to note that despite
the fever pitch of"progress" that has followed the Industrial Revolution,
the Earth has in fact slowed down in recent centuries. Whether this lag is through worker disaffection
or global warming, it does pose a number of interesting questions.
It is similarly remarkable that the Directorate of Time, without any
consultation from those affected, uses its infallible ex
cathedra power to dole out extra ticks of the tock with hardly a ripple
of interest or attention from even those who are most pressed for time.
Consider 30 June 1994. With just one
second added to that day, multiplied by the 5 billion human beings alive at
this time, a total of 158 years of subjective experience were gained by the
species on that last day of June. What
were we able to accomplish collectively in that time? In case you hadn’t heard, not a whole heck of a lot.
Many were asleep, and were able to
squeeze in a few extra winks at their respective dreams and nightmares, if they
troubled to adjust their clocks.
Those on the West Coast who work
normal 9-5 jobs found themselves at 4:59:59 Pacific Daylight Time saddled with
an extra second of unpaid work time.
Out of a population of 30 million, one might conservatively estimate 6
million or more people in California were hustled without their knowledge for a
fleeting second of their lives. It was
not the first time, and would certainly not be the last.
If one computes the number of work
hours this sly insertion of a leap second totaled, say it were all concentrated
on the back of one poor schmo, it comes to approximately 70 days (1666 hours)or nearly 42 forty-hour
work weeks of free time given to employers in the state. Sounds like a jackpot bonus year off all of
our backs.
Look, it’s all in the fine print of
the Directorate of Time’s Contract on
America. To question or to argue with
it is stupid, and a waste of precious time.
