March 12, 2006

• Only tangentially related: The Problem With Time.
• Wow. I can travel in time!
• But if they ask themselves why it started moving again from the point it stopped (and most won’t), their explanation doesn’t quite pan out For me it kept jumping - it would pause, and then leap forward a couple of seconds once my eyes flicked back to it
• Unsurprisingly
• Wow. I can look at a clock and time just, you know, knows that that means I want it to stop. Freeeeeeaaaky.
• ..oO Creepy.
• wow, dng can jump forward in time!

• Some people think it’s just a simple optical illusion, that they merely stopped seeing the second hand which was actually still moving (which gets entertaining with banishing incantations of blind spots, foveal vision, saccades and such.)

  Bingo. Your blind spots aren't just two tiny little holes in your vision offset near center of your eyes. You can verify this by mapping one of your blind spots. Try it, I think you'll be surprised at just how large that spot is. You really don't see much and your unconscious mind actually fills in a whole lot of information. Now if you'll allow me to go off on a tangent... Remember when you were doing something that seemed like it only took a few minutes of your time but you were surprised to find a much longer interval of time had passed by? Perhaps it seemed like only 10 minutes but in actuality it was closer to an hour? Take a few moments to put yourself in that memory now. Really associate to it, remember what your were doing, what you were feeling. What sounds were there in the room that perhaps you didn't realize at the time but you can remember now? Now, how about remembering a time when you were doing something you'd rather not have been doing and time just seemed to drag on forever? What did it feel like? Take a few moments to really remember a time like that now. Getting back to the here and now... combine the fact that our sense of the passage of time is totally subjective and varies according to the situation we're in with the mind's automatic and unconscious filling in of the rather large holes in the visual field with patterns it believes should be there, then it should not be surprising that sweeping second hands may seem to stop or jump about. A credible explanation, is it not? My bets are that such a mundane explanation is closer to what is really going on rather than some feel-good "we're all god-like" mumbo-jumbo explanation that really doesn't explain anything.

  But if they ask themselves why it started moving again from the point it stopped (and most won’t), their explanation doesn’t quite pan out.

  Personally, I couldn't tell if it started from the same spot or not. The resolution in that part of my visual field just isn't enough to do so.

  their explanation doesn’t quite pan out.

  Hey, that's called projection.
• I found that my eyes were very gradually moving ahead, so as to keep themselves 30 seconds ahead of the second hand. For a few seconds, if you don't realize that's what you're doing, you can maintain the illusion that the hand has stopped. But eventually you get to a point where you realize that your gaze has moved a quarter of the way 'round and the illusion is shattered. That's all it seems to me to be.
• I'm at work. Believe me, time has stopped in some twilight zone fashion. Either that, or I've gone to hell and don't know it.
• When I first heard of the movie "Clockwatchers" and saw it had a mostly female cast, I thought it was something different. Turns out I was looking ahead a letter and it made the "L" stop. The pretentious man-boy that wrote this let me in on the secret, and now I've gone into the "rabbit-hole" so deep it's perverse.
• Best of the web this ain't.
• Me frightened of scary clock stoppage.
• I've often been told that I have a face that could stop a clock, so this isn't really that unusual for me.
• But is your second hand smooth-moving? How about your first one?
• Amazingly enough, if I do this for about a minute, the second hand DOES restart from exactly the same position!
• A directory of wonderful things this ain't, either, techsmith. What's your point? Or did you get your site-specific snark mixed up with the wrong website?
• Didn't work for me, but I can remember having this ability while looking at the clock back in high school in 8th period social studies class.
• "even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day" When I look at my watch, it often seems like more than a second before the second hand moves. Makes me think the battery has died. Also, I was thinking of a friend I hadn't seen for ages, and then they phoned me at that moment. Therefore I am God, and you are all as lice.
• What's your point? Lame FPP, I thought that was obvious. But hey, to each his own...
• MonkeyFilter: You really don't see much and your unconscious mind actually fills in a whole lot of information.
• time marches on, and this is March, and we are left without a hunch about why hands that sweep us on can hesitate as if time hung
• Also, I was thinking of a friend I hadn't seen for ages, and then they phoned me at that moment. Therefore I am God, and you are all as lice. Dude, you'll be sorry about posting that cuz one day you'll be like lying in bed and thinking about it, and the doorbell will ring and you'll be thinking 'uh-oh' but you get up anyways and open it. And there's nothing and you realize that your doorbell's been rung by lice that ran away.
• With a flaming bag of lice poo on the doorstep!
• I just wish the clock in the bathroom would keep the right time instead of slowing down juuuuuust enough to make me five minutes late for work a couple times a week. Payday I'll spring for a new clock. One that I don't have to watch to see if the hands are really moving.
• With a flaming bag of lice poo on the doorstep! deja vu poo!
• Vu poo de oh doo!
• Of course, time doesn't exist.
• Well duh.
• Of course, time doesn't exist. posted by LordSludge at 04:09PM UTC on March 15, 2006