I’ve been in Los Alamos for two months. It’s hard to understand how two months in Los Alamos can fly by when two months in China felt like an eternity. China brought crazy experiences every day. I was constantly stimulated in good and bad ways. Nothing against Los Alamos, but it isn’t exactly the cultural center of the US.
It’s not an original observation, but our perception of time is just bizarre. On the one hand we have incredibly accurate internal clocks. One little hour’s change at the start and end of daylight savings time throws people completely off their game for days. If I forget to set my alarm clock during the week, I still wake up no later than 7:45, but I tend to sleep in till about 9:30 on the weekends.
On the other hand, I could easily spend too long with this blog and ruin the tomato sauce I’m making for the baked polenta that I’m making for an Italian potluck at work tomorrow. Or at work I might check the clock in anticipation of heading to lunch, only to discover that it’s 10:30. How do humans keep track of time outside of things like clocks and the sun? Are there primitive counters in our bodies, or are we entirely reliant on picking up hints from our environment? I’ll bet there’s at least one study about how people experience, predict, and measure time. I bet that even when we’re not taking visual and auditory clues from environment we depend on things like actions to determine how much time as elapsed.
What makes some folks better at measuring time than others? When I ask Beki for the time, she likes to guess before she checks the clock. She’s almost always within a few minutes of the correct time; I’m almost always ten to twenty minutes off (strange because she’s always late for things and I’m generally on time or early (I’ll tell embarrassing stories about being early some other time)). How is that I can even keep time with my foot while I’m listening to this new LCD Soundsystem record (I wasn’t a big fan of his last one either, but Sound of Silver is really freaking good)? This calls for some research. And if any of you have knowledge of these kinds of things, please let me know.
Filed under: African American, Favorite, Film, Society, Thought Provoking
I just saw a documentary on HBO called Bastards of the Party. It's part essay film and part history lesson about the history of LA black gangs. It's told through the words and questions of a gang member trying to figure out how the Crips and the Bloods came into existence and how to change them. It's moving and horrifying and frustrating. Everyone needs to see this film.
