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#37462 08/05/01 06:18 PM
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<<I wonder what kind of shadow *time would cast on the cave wall. And could somebody please loosen my chains, they are getting a little uncomfortable. >>

<<There you go, dear...>>

Hold it, Wow! Brandon's teasing us! Since *he's the one in chains, perhaps he should tell us all about the shadow of time... But I can tell him *this, sooner or later it is cast on each of us.




#37463 08/05/01 06:19 PM
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<<I wonder what kind of shadow *time would cast on the cave wall. And could somebody please loosen my chains, they are getting a little uncomfortable. >>

<<There you go, dear...>>

Hold it, Wow! Brandon's teasing us! Since *he's the one in chains, perhaps he should tell us all about the shadow of time... But I can tell him *this, sooner or later it falls on each of us.




#37464 08/05/01 07:55 PM
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>I found a bunch of contrived definitions...

some of those are not so contrived. for an example, the root for protean (defined here as infinitely variable) is Proteus, a lesser god who had the ability to change form. quasihemidemisemicentury, on the other hand....


#37465 08/05/01 08:15 PM
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And the symptoms of syphilis are said to be Protean, because they can suggest so many other diseases. The
guy who wrote those was a scientist specializing in crystallography. Regrettably it is over a year since his last update.








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What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries - these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of time, not time itself. Time is the life of the soul.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Modern man thinks he loses something--time--when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains--except kill it.
- Erich Fromm

God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. The present is the only time there is.
- Marianne Williamson

"Time takes too much time"
- 'The time is now', Moloko



#37467 08/06/01 03:08 PM
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The scale of things can make unexpected changes. First it was learned that Euclidean geometry was not reliable in infinite space, then it was found even less applicable in the ultraminute.Perhaps something similar applies to time. in our lives it is linear, but if we try to go backwards towards the beginning of time, we see it is impossible to speak of a beginning of time, because if there had been a "time" when there was no time, how could it have been created out of nothingness The same applies to God. If He has not always existed, how could He have been created? No use thinking about it.


#37468 08/06/01 03:32 PM
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No use thinking about it.

Oh, but Dr. Bill, it's such fun to think about it. I love wondering about things. Especially if I can't imagine myself getting the answer in the near future.

I just finished reading Sophie's World, and it made me start wondering about a lot of old things that I'd forgotten about.


#37469 08/06/01 05:07 PM
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i once read about an [N.A.] indian culture whose language included absolutely no provisions for the concept
of past, present or future...


I've been passively searching for a language that is without tense. I've found several references that show that Chinese / Mandarin does not have tense in the way we think about it. Anyone here know about how Chinese handles tense?

I've also found references that the Hmong language has no past or future tenses and that ancient Hebrew has no tense. There seems to be a lot of research floating about where linguists search for tense markers in tenseless texts (whereas readers of my writing are looking for sense markers in my senseless texts).

And if you want to learn more about detensing languages (tensed language, this site notes, is responsible for this mistaken metaphysical picture of temporal reality; therefore we ought to divest language of tenses so that we may conceive of temporal reality as it really is), check this site out: http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/459/oldBtheory.html


#37470 08/06/01 05:24 PM
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ancient Hebrew has no tense

I thought they lived in them, out in the desert and all.


#37471 08/06/01 07:37 PM
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I just realized something while reading this thread that I never noticed before...time backwards is emit...hmmm.


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