The two ingredients

I admit, I'm the type of busy-bee that reads an article or watches a half hour of some PBS special and suddenly declares myself an expert of sorts on the subject at hand. Sure I may skew some of the details and perhaps even make up some of my own, but I feel I do the topic justice by spreading the word across thy land. I have recently begun to wonder if by spreading this haphazardly presented second hand knowledge I am doing the intellectual world injustice. A topic for another time I suppose... Now on with the crackpot gospel:

One of the many articles I've recently left half read was about a gentleman in New Zealand who claims that both Einstein and (who was that other scientist from way back… thinking… substituting fact with instinct…) Copernicus were wrong in their theory of where time fits into the grand scheme* of the universe. What this bloke** is saying is that time simply doesn’t exist, it’s just a system of measure instituted by humans to contain the natural flow of the universe and judge just how long we have to wait for dinner***. Things happen as a series of events and time is an illusion, the watch ticks because the gear turns. His idea, constructed on a solid foundation of education and understanding of physics, has turned not only caused intellectual chaos in the physics community, but also in my own grasp of the topic; a grip which is based on my observations of starry nights through squinty red eyes as a youth.

*Notice my heavy reliance on colloquialisms to fool the reader into believing what they are reading is purely genuine.
**An equally-heavy reliance on subject-appropriate slang.
***Simplified, nearly off-subject logic.

I came to the conclusion one late evening outside my apartment in town with a blurry telescope, that the universe had two simple ingredients; time and energy (AKA matter). My theory made sense to me for so many years, and satisfied that deeply curious side of me that simply wasn’t at peace without an answer. My theory was simple enough; every atom of energy simply dances at a different pace of time and with a electron partner or two. The pace and partner of the energy determines just what type of matter it is. Two ingredients; time and energy, simple enough eh?

Had it not been for my saunter through this article in my grossly-delinquent subscription to Wired Magazine, the events of this weekend wouldn’t have sent such fractures through my confidence in my theory. It was high noon, the sun beat down on North Freeport with a relentless cruelty. I decided to let those stupid mutts out for a leak and a squirrel chase, and followed them into the woods for similar reasons (a classy luxury afforded to me in our otherwise humble dwellings). As I walked down towards the secondary brook, the ghost outline of a snake in the grass caught my eye. The bastard was fucking huge!! Well over 18 inches and as round as a nickel! He (I always assume they’re men for some reason) had obviously been baking in the sun for much of the morning and had the energy of a wet cat. He moved quicker than I could run (I’m a fairly awkward creature, but I can move fast when I need to), slithering exactly the same way he would have ever had he not had a 300 lbs ape behind him, but in a much more rapid manner. My eyes took a moment to analyze what I’d just seen. The way that little fucker moved was almost like fast-forwarding through a movie, natural in all aspects except pace. Time meant nothing to the creature, only energy. This idea was only reinforced as I witnessed my youngest (Georgie the Beagle, Terrier, Chihuahua) stare aimlessly into the forest for the better half of the afternoon. Time is a total farce!... The news is on in 2 minutes! Gotta go!