Time Flies like an Arrow...

Subject: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Charley Noble
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 03:23 PM

Fruit flies like an banana!

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: gnu
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 03:35 PM

Fruit flies eat bananas.

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 03:41 PM

Time also stands still like a statue and bananas that fly are frozen in Time!

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 04:20 PM

I think Kendall's spreading that campaign pot around. Nothing else could explain ruminating on flying bananas...

A

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Gaffer
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 04:38 PM

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." was used in the teaching of English as a foreign language to show how some words can crop up as different parts of speech flitting from noun to verb to adjective in a way calculated to drive poor students to more useful areas study like Latin (structured, elegant and extinct outside the Vatican) and Astrophysics (Find a fundamental and obvious truth, stick it in a black hole and show how untrue it is). "Blow flies like a cornet" is another you may find relevant - all Mudcatters know at least one person who claims to be able to get a tune out of anything, and Health Inspectors are eager to keep bluebottles out of ice-creams! Gaffer

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 04:46 PM

Time flies by when you're the driver of a train
And you ride on the footplate there and back again
Under bridges, over bridges, to our destination,
Rushing through the countryside, there's so much to be seen.
Passengers waving as we steam through a station,
Carry on driver, for the signal is at green.
Time flies by when you're the driver of a train,
And you ride on the footplate there and back again

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 07:06 PM

Guest - who is sadder, you for posting that or me for knowing it comes from the Camberwick Green area?

LTS

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Cobble
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 07:22 PM

LtS.. Cobble says you've lost it!!! Camberwick Green is Magic.....

Now who's sad. He He He :-) It's his age *BG*

Mrs C.

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 07:26 PM

Lost it? I never had it in the first place!!!

LTS

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: khandu
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 07:36 PM

"I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now"

khandu

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Suffet
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 09:04 PM

And I thought this thread would have something to do with the so-called "Arrows of Time." Those are the phenomena by which we perceive time as unidirectional. To my knowledge, three Arrows have been identified. They are:

1. The Thermodynamic Arrow: This is entropy, or the tendency of a system to become more disorderly over time. To overcome entropy, there must be an input of energy from outside the system. If we look at the universe as a whole being one closed system, entropy is inescapable. Put another way, if we see a movie of a smashed dish reassembling itself and flying up into someone's hand, we know that someone is running the film in reverse!

2. The Biological Arrow: Living organisms grow older. They mature from their embryoinc to infantile to adult state, and then they die.

3. The Psychological Arrow: We can remember the past but not the future.

Does anyone know of another Arrow of Time? What songs would be good to illustrate any or all of the Arrows? I can think of are Malvina Reynold's "Turn Around" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game." I am sure there are more.

--- Steve

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Mudlark
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 09:20 PM

Is this a quiz? These are under the subheading: Arrows of Time--calendar divisions, months: The May Song (The life of man is but a span, it flourish as the flower. Tis here today, has not long to stay, and is vanished in an hour). September Song (also a contender for Biological Arrow).

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Ferrara
Date: 01 Jan 02 - 10:45 PM

But I thought it was Groucho Marx who first said, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

????? Did the ESOL books use Groucho's quip? I suspect GM came first.... Please don't destroy my childlike faith in Groucho by confusing me with facts! ... or pseudofacts as the case may be....

Groucho also said, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Rita

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 Jan 02 - 10:37 AM

Thyme is the spice of life...

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jan 02 - 11:48 PM

I believe there have been experiments in altered psychic states which have demnstrated that beings can remember the future (if that is the word for it).

It's really just a matter of a different filter -- when you make a memory of something, you are including a very tiny sybset of all possible points of perception that you could be open to at that moment. When you predict with certainty a moment ahead you are doing the same thing -- excluding huge numbers of variables in favor of a very tiny subset. The question is, if it is just one filter versus a different one, why we choose the ones we do.

But aside from that it is clear that dropping the filter mechanism or just expanding it significantly, time becomes visible in both "directions". Which is probably not the right word for them anyway.

'Course the harder you marry your own perspective up to your impression of matter, and act matter-like, the harder it is to break the habit of seeing Then, Now and Future as different kinds of places in time.

A

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Crazy Eddie
Date: 03 Jan 02 - 03:29 AM

Shouldn't that read "Fruit-flies like bananas." if the sense is that those critters have a liking for that type of fruit, but "Fruit flies like a banana." if the sense is that a banana is aerodynamically fairly typical of fruit generally?
Now if there is such a thing as a time-fly, (as distinct from a bar-fly) the possibilities are even more intruiging.

I'll get my coat....

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Crazy Eddie
Date: 03 Jan 02 - 05:41 AM

Shouldn't that read "Fruit-flies like bananas." if the sense is that those critters have a liking for that type of fruit, but "Fruit flies like a banana." if the sense is that a banana is aerodynamically fairly typical of fruit generally?
Now if there is such a thing as a time-fly, (as distinct from a bar-fly) the possibilities are even more intruiging.

I'll get my coat....

Damned HTML....mutter, mutter, grumble, grouse....

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Snuffy
Date: 03 Jan 02 - 08:15 AM

I'm with Amos about being able to remember the future. Isn't that what the Beatles' When I'm 64 is all about? As the French might say "Souvenirs de l'avenir".

WassaiL! V

(PS - sorry to drag music into it!)

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 03 Jan 02 - 10:38 AM

Crazy Eddie:

To say "Fruit flies like a banana" is grammatically not significantly different (for this purpose) from "Drunks like a drink first thing in the morning." The singular object "a banana" or "a drink" is taken as representative of all the possible bananas or possible drinks.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Time Flies like an Arrow...
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 03 Jan 02 - 05:36 PM

Now I'll show you who is REALLY sad...

and anyone who knows what this is is just as bad...

(Hey - I'm a poet and I don't know it)

Anyway, just try
# man tunefs

(Just look at the warnings - you can tune a file system but you can't tune a fish)

It's been there since the year dot - honest!

Cheers

Dave the Gnome