Where are we Really, Anyway?

Going by the calendar this will look like I'm showing off with two entries in one day. I'm just trying to keep myself honest with one a day for a year, and I think I needed this one. That's because I occasionally write this at 10 o'clock at night which is the next day somewhere else. Now I've actually been thinking about this subject since yesterday when Peggy and I were talking to one of my students, Stephenie Davis, and her planned trip to Australia.

It reminded both Peggy and me of a ten year long extended argument we live with to this day. When we flew to Sydney ten years ago, I think it was a 12 hour flight from LA. (not really an important detail.) But during the flight we decided to figure out what time and date it would be in Australia when we arrived. It would be the first time we'd gained a day. I mean how do you do that? When we see time travel in Sci Fi movies we scoff. So how to figure it out and explain it.?

Peggy thought that to do it right you had to pretend to fly East instead of West because that's the way the clock was going. That made no sense to me since we were in fact going west. My time metaphor was reduced to a front flip with a half twist since we would be gaining a day, and looking back on the clock moving the other direction. I also thought the half twist to be a clever addition to the concept of moving from the northern to the southern hemisphere. I won't tell you what she thought I was full of.

This is one of those entrys where you are going to have to stay with me. In addition to front flips with half twists it will require some leaps of faith. It's going somewhere, I think.

Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to worry about these time, date and space questions at all? Well it seems to be we are almost there. Stephenie just looked at her watch or cell phone and said right now it's blah,blah,blah (clock time ) in Melbourne (space) tommorrow (date). No math required. The other day I did one of those Paul's Heimers left my watch at home trick. I'm trying to time a class activity that will allow everybody to keep the rest of their daily promises. So I asked, "anybody got the time?"  I got the strangest looks. Of course they had the time. They had it on their cell phones, on the laptops, time sung to them on their headsets, and unbeknownst to me, so did I. We laugh at future talk where its fantasized they'll just put chips inside us at birth and we'll never have to consider such trivia. I'm conflicted about that idea. On one hand, what a wonderful development. Let's fill in that blank first. I've been in all 50 states. Like most of the male species I pride myself on knowing where I am (let's make it clear, geographically), I love to explore without a map. But when I return to the place of my birth (California), I always, not sometimes, always get reversed. I can arrive by plane, by train, by car, burro and I can't put San Fransciso North, and Los
Angeles south. The ocean is always on the wrong side.  Once I get to Pacific Coast Highway or Highway One, I can get straightened out in an hour, but that's frustrating. So won't it be nice when the chip in your brain hooks up with G-Star and tells you to relax, it knows where we are and where we're going? We're all most there without the chip, arn't we?

Now that's the upside. I told you I was conflicted. Here's the downside. What would Peggy and I have talked about all the way to Australia?