 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||
Travelling both sides of the border...
It is often said that the border between genius and madness is very thin. For a classic example, consider the movie director Stanley Kubrick, a man whose legendary obsession with perfection led more than one person to question his sanity.
Stanley Kubrick--a man who held a pilot's license, but was morbidly afraid of airplanes and refused to fly. A man who would travel by car, but would not allow his driver to exceed thirty miles per hour. A man who left Hollywood in the 1960s and moved to England so that he could have complete control over his movies--even down to which movie theaters were allowed to show them, and what the promotional posters should look like. A man who when filming "The Shining", insisted on 148 re-takes of one scene before he was happy that it was good enough. A man who only gave the actors the pages of script for the scenes they were actually in. (In 2001 he went one step further--to ensure the voice of HAL was adequately dispassionate, he gave actor Douglas Rain only the lines HAL needed to speak, in random order.)
A genius, in other words. A man who never made a single bad movie--with the possible exception of his first, which he was scathing about and would not allow to be re-released. I know that I will be standing in line when Eyes Wide Shut is released; and although I have no real idea what Kubrick was like as a person, I was saddened to hear of his death. The world lost its greatest movie director.
I have no idea whether Kubrick was religious or not. Because he was such a private person, I doubt anyone else knows either. Nevertheless, it's quite amusing to read some of the comments about "2001" on the net, where people interpret the film as everything from a history of the Mormon church to an exposition of the teachings of Nietzsche. I found a second set of claims about the religious meaning of "2001", as well, and I remain unconvinced. Kubrick always refused to explain his movies, and now he's gone, so I suppose we'll never know.
[Update: After this issue of web.scan went up, Dave Emerson pointed out the entry for Stanley Kubrick in the list of celebrity atheists. I had actually forgotten to look there!]
Sometimes with ideas, it's hard to tell if they're the work of genius or madness. I feel that way about Internet Time. I'm pretty sure it's either sheer brilliance, or the dumbest idea I've ever heard; but I haven't decided which. I have decided for certain that daylight savings time is one of the most ridiculous ideas in history. Let's engage in a little free thought here... At some point, it was decided that people needed to get up an hour earlier during summer; OK, fair enough. Dates were declared, and between those dates the working day would begin an hour earlier. There were then two obvious alternatives: (a) set your alarm clock to go off an hour earlier; or (b) leave your alarm clock to go off at the same time, but set every single clock on the planet back an hour. Now, which of those two options would a sane man choose?
Time zones are dumb as well. Who actually cares whether the sun is overhead when the hour is twelve? We haven't used sundials to tell the time in hundreds of years, isn't it about time we moved to a system of timekeeping which is convenient for international communication? My watch broke down recently, so while it's being repaired I've been using my Palm III for timekeeping. I've been waking up around @530, getting to work at @630, and arriving home around @000. If everyone else knew Internet Time, and I could get TV Guide in the right format and get my VCR fixed, I'd happily switch tomorrow.
The current western system of recording time is actually a bizarre mixture of systems. The sixty seconds, sixty minutes and twenty-four hours come from Babylonian mathematics, while the seven day week is (of course) Old Testament. The months started out Roman, but were later modified by the Roman Catholics. Perhaps that's why some people get so worked up about the idea of Internet Time--questioning the calendar is like questioning religious history. And as the real 2001 approaches, almost everyone now seems to view the numbers on the calendar as holding deep worldly significance. We're all waiting for something to happen, we're just not sure whether it's going to happen because of the Y2K bug or the Second Coming.
Internet Time isn't the only proposed new time system, of course, and I have no doubt which side of the genius/madness border TimeCube lies. Maybe my mentality has been retarded to stupid and an Education of Evil, but I just cannot work out what the author is talking about. The Earth's period of rotation is 96 hours? OK, so there are four sun-ups and four sun-downs. Now, how do you manage that with a single sun as light source? Someone show me with a cube and a flashlight... What does "God is cornered as a queer" mean, for that matter? The map is something else too; I half expected to see "Purity Of Essence" scrawled on it somewhere. The guy has obviously read way too much meaning into the expression "the four corners of the earth".
Don't miss the companion site, AboveGod. Time is often viewed as an almost mystical thing, but I think this is taking it a little too far. I particularly like the suggestion that children are justified in killing adults who refuse to explain the TimeCube to them. "So, mommy, how does the TimeCube work?"
Ratcheting down the kook factor a little, we come to the STIME web site. Now, I hope it's clear from my dabbling in Internet Time that I'm all for scrapping our current time system, if it's to switch to something rational, simple and convenient. I don't want anyone to think I rejected the idea of STIME out of hand; but let's see now... Nine parts to the day, nine segments to the part, nine periods to the segment. Nine days to the week, nine weeks to the season. Pardon me if I've missed something, but... why nine? Is there some religious significance I'm missing, perhaps?
Ten I could go for. SWATCH picked ten, the Metric Time proponents picked ten. We have ten digits in our base ten number system, after all, so dividing or multiplying by ten to calculate time would be quick and easy. But nine? There's also one small detail which the author of the web site appears to have overlooked: if, as the site says, there are nine nine-day weeks to the season, and four seasons to the year, then doesn't that make the year 324 days long? What happens to the other 41 days? Or are STIME "days" slightly out of sync with the normal rotational day of the planet? I think the page could use a little further clarification on this matter.
Perhaps the idea is to lengthen the day slightly, to match our sleep cycles? That's also the plan behind The 28 Hour Day. It's an idea which fits into the "not as dumb as it sounds" category. A few years back, I tried an experiment where I allowed myself to wake up naturally, and went to bed when I felt tired. I found that after a while, my natural sleep cycle averaged about 25 or 26 hours. That's presumably why I find it unpleasant having to get up for work every day. (Well, one of the reasons.)
Time for something else. Here's another idea on the border: Biblical Action Figures. Kids can have fun playing with fictional heroes like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, so why not let them have fun playing with fictional heroes like, er, Moses and Jesus? Umm, remind me again, what's the message we're supposed to be giving the kids here? Besides, most kids need two sides when they're playing with action figures; where are the other baddies, like Judas and Herod?
Still, there are definitely possibilities. If the manufacturers are smart, they're already working on a low-density plastic Jesus with Water-Walking Action, or maybe a Crucifixion Playset with velcro fastenings on the cross. But the big problem, from a sales point of view, is that the heroes don't seem to be very dynamic these days. Let's face it, God just isn't a very exciting super-hero: when an elevator cable snaps and people are falling to their death, Superman swoops in to save the day, while God just sits there watching. Still, I'm sure the kids will understand which one they're supposed to worship and thank.
Lest I be accused of mindlessly bashing religion, I should point out that 'legitimate' science can also come up with useless, insane or downright repulsive ideas. This month I saw photographs of a four-legged chicken, an invention which only Colonel Sanders could love. And as Homer Simpson put it, we mustn't forget dear little rat boy.
And then there's Atheists For Jesus: atheists who don't actually believe in God or Jesus, but believe in their teachings. Brilliance, or stupidity? It reminds me of an idea I once had, to start the Church of the Immaculate Concept. We'd be a church of people who didn't believe in the existence of God, but believed in the existence of the concept of God. Since I doubt I'll ever start issuing formal membership cards, you're welcome to tell people you're a believer in the Immaculate Concept if you find it useful to do so...
Would I consider being an Atheist For Jesus? Well, the guy had some reasonable teachings, but to be perfectly honest I find Buddhist morality more compelling. The bit about how Christianity was warped by Paul seems true enough, but at some point you have to decide whether it's too late to repair the damage...
Anyway, it's @055 and I'm hungry. That's enough for now.
mathew
|
[ e-mail the URL of this page ]
[top of page]
|
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
Copyright© Internet Infidels® 1995-Present. All rights reserved.
|
Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
