The Nature of Time
You will be very surprised by my following posts. And I swear you won't have to know know any Physics or math.
To know the nature of Time, consider ringing a bell twice. You hear two dongs, and the easiest thing to observe or SENSE about this is that the dongs are SEPARATED in some way, although the two dongs happened at the same exact place. We can then create a 3rd dong that is "separated" from the second dong by the same amount as the 2nd dong was separated from the 1st dong. We repeat this process with a 4th and then a 5th ringing of the bell, etc.
And just like we can define a "spatial" separation of two objects in a system of units, like feet or meters, we can define the "event" separation of the dongs as one "second" or one "minute." To distinguish this type of "event" separation from a spatial one, we call this a TEMPORAL separation.
And just as organizing the positions of objects around us and knowing their distances from each other creates the concept of SPACE, so the temporal separation of events like a horn honking or a bell ringing or a dog barking can be organized by their temporal separations, and you create the concept of TIME.
The Red Pill is this: In today's world, there are many ways that the concepts of Space and Time go against the nature of Space and Time that I described above. For instance, can you go back in time? What would that mean? What exists is events happening at generally (by definition) different times.
When I say "At a certain time," I mean something like: It happened at the same time that the bell rung its 423rd time. So how can you be born, live a life, and then go "back" in time to be born again? That would mean you were born twice at the same time. That makes no sense.
Time is not a place. The past is not something that still exists somehow and you can go back to it. A "place" exists thru time, so that you can leave your couch and then go back to it. But once an event happens, you can replicate it, of course, (that is how you create a clock) but you can't go back to it.
But once you ring a bell, that event is gone. Every other dong is a new one.
At this scale, it is easier to see that the trees are not under the influence of "artificial" gravity. It is real.
🌎🌐
The gravitational field around each blade of grass and tree is the same as the field around each blade of grass and tree on the surface of Earth.
Notice that if you drive on a road perpendicular to the cylinder axis, you will increase gravity driving one way and decrease it driving the other. If you drive opposite to the spin and at the radial speed, your gravitational field turns Minkowskian, and you are in a "free fall" or inertial coordinate system. That is, you and the car become "weightless."
That means this: The value of a gravity field can go from a surface-of-a-planet value to a free-fall value by a coordinate transformation among systems that are moving at a constant velocity with respect to each other.
At any instant of time, a car moving at the radial speed is in a Minkowski field, and a system at rest on the cylinder is in a planet-surface field. A ...
"Aja" is the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album, and its meaning has been a subject of interpretation rather than a straightforward explanation from the band themselves, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were known for their cryptic and layered lyrics. The song doesn’t tell a linear story but evokes a mood and imagery that fans and critics have analyzed over the years.
The word "Aja" is often speculated to refer to a person, place, or concept. One popular theory ties it to the name "Aja," which Becker and Fagen reportedly chose after learning of a Korean woman named Aja who married a friend of theirs. This fits Steely Dan’s tendency to draw inspiration from real-life fragments and transform them into something abstract. The lyrics—"Up on the hill / People never stare / They just don’t care / Chinese music under banyan trees"—suggest an exotic, serene escape, possibly a romanticized or imagined refuge from the complexities of modern life.
Musically and lyrically, "Aja" ...
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The title "Deacon Blues" itself is intriguing. It’s been suggested that it references football—the "Deacon" could nod to Wake Forest University’s Demon Deacons, a team whose colors are black and gold, though Fagen and Becker have said it’s more about vibe than a literal connection. "Blues" ties it to the musical genre, evoking a sense of soulful melancholy. In a 2003 interview, Fagen described the song as being about "a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life," but delivered with a sardonic twist typical of Steely Dan’s ...
