gonna go back in time: part II

A few more past blasts that never made it into the present. (Part I here.)



[March 26, 2006]
While we're at it, let's ban deodorant.


[October 16, 2005]
Yesterday my wife and I happened to catch the end of the Notre Dame / USC gem. When the Irish were driving toward a comeback with about 5:00 left, I turned to my wife and said, "They're going too fast--they're going to give USC time to come back." Two minutes, in fact, enough time for a miraculous drive capped by a crazy touchdown by Mr. Heisman, Matt Leinart.

I flipped over to the WSU / UCLA game. The first half was ending, with WSU in charge of an upset. The Bruins, though, had marched down the field and were poised to score. I again turned to the wife and said, "If they score a touchdown here, they win the game."

They did, and they did, in overtime.

Be afraid.


[May 3, 2005]
The viral vector of evolution is only now becoming fully appreciated, thanks to modern genetic analysis. Natural selection doesn't operate in a vacuum.


[April 12, 2005]
I live in a neighborhood where IHOP and Shari's are the loci of the social ellipse, where traffic moves at the speed of light gray, where retirement homes and memory care facilities salt-and-pepper the landscape. By default, I can't escape considering what I'll be like in fifty years; at times I have the odd sensation that I'm passing my future self as I buzz by another leisure-paced superior citizen.

When forced to caress the brakes and meditate upon the scenery, I inevitably wonder why the car ahead seems to be treading concrete. Is the driver lost or otherwise confused? Poor of vision? Timid? Slipping into sopor? Or is there something more, say, epistemological at work?

The flow of time is subjective. We all have moments where time stops, stands still, ties its shoes; conversely, we've felt the rush and blur of accelerated time, mystified that it could disappear so quickly. Every wiser person who has lectured me on the subject has told me that time revs up after fifty (or sixty or seventy, relative to that senior's current age). I'm inclined to believe they're telling me the literal truth.