Posted by John Nichols on May 18, 2013 at 07:28:44 user Mcneacail.
In Reply to: Re: In Ransome country posted by Adam Quinan on May 17, 2013 at 02:17:49:
Further on the point of time:
Setting aside the Theory of Relativity, although it is interesting that Dick never mentions it, time is linear, so you are so many days old, which is an integer and linear, of course we could turn it into a double and get down to nanoseconds, or finer, but at that point it would take the equivalent of 100 years to type one letter, so aside from the few seconds of time added in since your birth we could get a good representation in days, but the year is not really part of time, it is an observable phenomena in terms of planetary mass, position and velocity vector, resolving for strange god like reasons to 365 or thereabouts.
The time gods monkey about with it so the people who need to know: when do I plant the corn, when is Aunt Dot's anniversary get a reasonable approximation to the same feeling of "oh God it is May already", but the year is merely mod maths. Of course if I said to take the 365.25 mod of 26000 days you would get lost, except that if I said 71 years, 2 months and a few days you know exactly what I mean.
We make things into common events, a foot, a yard (although my yard is about 30 metres deep), a minute (time for a whizz) an hour (time required to apply make-up) etc... etc...
Of course my wife complains that when I say a second, I mean a long second, like a long hundred or a short ton.
Just a thought:
Ed: Beckfoot had telephone but not power - interesting - so if they did not have power the water had to come from a well or pump, but they do not mention it ever, even though it is front and centre in PP at the Tyson's, so I still content it is a hydraulic ram device in the hills behind Beckfoot. Given that AR had to deal with this stuff on a daily basis it is amazing he left it out.
JMN