Urgency is not Agency

I have a lot of students. For some reason, they wait until their assignments are almost due, and then they consult me. They seem to feel that unless there is urgency, there is no emergency. They forget that 'emerge' in its original sense implies the rise of that which is submerged, and the deeper it is submerged, the longer it takes to emerge.

It's for that reason that I must remind them that urgency is not agency. Just because the matter is of some urgency to a student doesn't mean that I must be spurred into action. Indeed, the closer it is to a deadline, the busier I seem to be. What used to be a same-day or eight-hour maximum turnaround time is now about 72 hours or three days simply because the queue for consultations is very long.

Advice for future students: get yours early to avoid disappointment — those who consult me now may be paying as much as a 100% premium over my usual rates. I can't help it; I want to help, but I won't die for my students, and the extra earnings go towards my medical insurance and maintaining the resources I use to help solve their problems.

Fragmental Timing

My mind lies shattered on the floor
Fabergé egg I think in pain
There was a mechanism in glass
Alas the escapement escapes
And time cannot be watched again

So, is the mind a mechanism or the artifact of a mechanism? And if so, is time an artifact of mechanisms used to measure the passage of events?

The main problem with time is that it must be quantised, and yet seems continuous. But if it is quantised, then how can one event lead to another?

And yet, here we are. What a strange world!

The Difference Cliché

"What a difference a week makes!" is one of those clichés that relies on truism. It's hard not to find a difference between snapshots of anything taken a week apart, especially the closer you look. But my life has changed a lot.

Some of you know about the Atlantean enterprise that has been launched. Is it possible to break the narrative of the burning books and launch a kraken into the gates of the Temples of Learning? We call on those who have such hopes to join with us — and it is a call we would not have dreamt of making a week ago.

Meanwhile, back at the Citadel, they've bid farewell to the busy one and will be bidding farewell to the business one. Will times change? Will the Pillars of Herakles still stand guard at the mouth of the 'Inmost Sea of all the Earth'? Only the long view will tell.

And we look further across the world, wondering how a contender for a throne of the world can fail to differentiate between 'wooden ships, iron men' and 'nuclear carrier battlegroup, Iron Man'. A week (as the other cliché goes) is also a long time in politics.

Day 1635 (Day 0002)

If I were counting, it would be Day 1635 after the Event. But I have long stopped counting. It was good to not be counting.

So maybe it is good to call it Day 0002 after the new Event. I am not sure that the new Event is that kind of Event though.

Extra Time

Ah, that real time were as mutable as football time, and that rewards should be as great as the gods of the stadia make them sound. Then we would all be living a much more exciting life!

Well, no, not really. But there were some amazing moments. Heh.

Turnover Time

Things turn over time, and when turnover time is due, things turn and some of them do not return over time. But sometimes all things are made new, and what is new was never there to be turned over anyway, any time.

The Last Minute Lasts 3-5 Months

Quite often, people remark on the fact that I seem to have a lot of last-minute students. That's one of those strange terms, because although I know what they mean by it, that's not conveyed at all by the naked text.

That's because 'last minute' has become somewhat of an anachronistic term. I can only imagine that this refers to old-time clocks which showed the time changing in increments of minutes, as the mechanism shifted the hands by 1/60 of a revolution. Recently, the term 'last second' has become a bit more common, since that's the smallest convenient unit of time, and clocks use those now. The older term 'eleventh hour' is hardly ever used — after all, now you can get a lot done in the last hour before midnight or noon.

But back to my students. No, I don't think they're last-anything. They do often come to me with 3-5 months remaining of their effective school life before terminal exams. And every single one of them has the potential to do well.

My job is, at the very least, to get them the equivalent of a B grade. This is generally easy to do; get them up to speed, throw them in running, they'll make it.

My calling is a bit different. It's to see if I can push them to an A grade in the short term, or if I have more time, to instil in them some interest, motivation or drive to be habitual learners. That old adage about 'teaching a man to fish instead of giving a man to fish' is pretty applicable. But all that is moot unless you can persuade the person in question that fish is worth eating, that there are many kinds of tasty fish; and that a lifelong interest in finding, catching and eating fish is a worthy one.

And so... give me a student for 3 months and I'll give that student fish; give me a student for 18 months and I'll make that student a fisherman who eats what he catches.

Clashes

Between Scylla and Charybdis, a ship might be shattered or unmanned. There is always a price to pay. Torn by the many demands of the timetable, one can also be scattered to the winds and lose one's mind or sense of self. A diary is no help; what calendar can help when the days are all too confused and messed up?

Pass Times

How long does the pass last, how many passes is that? The swiping wipes the slate, the swipe moves the page, the moving finger having written is no longer part of time.

I realise that information, once discrete and chunked, is now indeed a flow, a river, a torrent like the one which rampaged into the Mediterranean Basin when Gibraltar gave way. There is no thinking about it, and even the coasts are drowned.

Many centuries later, Phlebas the Phoenician learnt something about that. Very, very briefly did he know it. And then, it was all pearls and coral.

Passers-by

It seems like such a long time ago. A quarter-century has passed since I wrote, "Time, pass us by, pick on some other pair of lovers." Last night, watching Captain America, I remembered those lines. Sometimes, two people are meant to only ever be passers-by.

Tick

Onomatopoeia. The quick flick of a second hand, the tic of a talking clock. Or a second-hand clock. It sucks the life out of you, a second per second, time for time.

Time Unreeling

It's on a spool, and it unwinds. It unreels itself, like an undance, or something fishy.

I am running out of it; it is running out on me. All my yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. That is life, reel life.

Julian

Here we go into the second half of 2011. It will be so much more interesting than most of the last few years. That, in itself, is also interesting. I love my life.

The Work of Time

Time is not just time, a dimension, a quantity, in units. Time is also the medium that carries the associated burdens of increasing entropy and the other unwindings of the tapestry. Time, like a river, carries sediment until its weak unfolding carries it no more. Then things fall and are dumped. Or dump and are fallen.

Still not a Blog

Still. Distill. Not a blog, no no. I remember the days when I was told blogs were evil. The very next year, the local Priesthood of the Book declared an inter-school blogging competition. So, not evil.

But this is still not a blog, no no. This is a sequential scrapbook. Of random thoughts. Of mice and beets, of cheese and dates; of history, myth, and potato chips; of distant encounters and disasters. Not a blog at all.

The last time I said so, I also said that there would be nothing here by January. Then people scolded me, as if I had said a small island should be sunk into the sea. So I left it floating here. But not, so not, so not a blog.

In other news, the mills of God continue to grind. The time of the Pharaoh's officers draws to an end, as Exodus 15 says.

Latitude

My mind covers many time zones. It is not distracted, but dispersed. It sees night and day, both and severally. I watch my mind, and my watch minds me. I do not mind, and neither does she.

The gears grind on, as the delicate machine of men and minds restructures the Citadel. We are inexorable tools of the Highest. We chip away at the accumulated calcifications. We polish away the crude adornments of the last faddish minutes of the previous insanity. Slowly, slowly, canter the horses of the knights. Faustus has left the house.

It is 4 am. The coffee hasn't woken up yet. I have to wake it up. I have become a post-caffeinate organism.

It is 8 am. Time to go into the market and trade some ideas.

It is noon, neither am nor pm.

It is 4 pm. There is honey still for tea. But not for long, and not for me.

It is 8 pm. Is it supper, or dinner, or neither?

It is midnight, and here we are again, between night and day.

Echology

The words are roundly distorted by the smooth walls we have placed around them, but their message is clear. The list of the faithless, of those who disdained the Dauntless, of those who mocked even our memories of him — that list is sealed unto the Lords of the Citadel who have received it in utmost formality.

We listen to the reverberations in the deep. From this day onwards, let the guilty beware. For though all have sinned, all have fallen, all are unworthy, those who continue to make use of their ill-won gains will be purged. We are all at drawn swords and daggerpoint.

If you are ignorant, confess it now. If you are unworthy, admit that. If you are lost, seek guidance; if in darkness, seek a light. For we are all sheep, but some have learnt to listen to the shepherd or allow themselves to be driven by his dogs.

Slowly, the shape of the new comes forth. There is still dishonesty, incompetence, nastiness. There will be recriminations and retribution. But light rises even without a sun, for light is beyond time and seasons. As it was in the beginning, so also through all time. Amen.

Day 930

I actually hadn't realised almost a thousand days had passed between Monday 18 March 2008 (Day 000) and Monday 4 October 2010 (Day 930). Time's winged chariot hustles along, outpacing the doom of the Shining One by a goodly margin, and two and a half years have zipped by.

In between, I've written quite a bit. Poems, papers, presentations. I've been a busy person, earning my own keep, enjoying my own time, living with wonderful people and taking pains to look at all that I missed in the dim years of Egypt.

It occurs to me, though, that there is so much more I could have done in 930 days if I hadn't been watching the heavens so frequently. But that's where the signs were, so to speak, the auspices (bird-watchings) of a better time.

The Space Machine

When you set up scheduling software to create a timetable for an organization, you have to first define all the entities and their properties. According to the timetabling guide I wrote, you begin with stuff you are sure will be there — classrooms and their capacities (and availabilities, since not all classrooms are available at all times); other facilities such as canteens (and how many classes ought to be free at any given time); timeslots (bearing in mind that people should have breaks and that school must come to an end within a reasonable time).

Then, as the CEO makes up his mind about how many classes to have, and how many students will be in each class, and whether certain departments (ahem) should be allowed to split classes so that each teacher gets a class of about 10-15 students instead of 30, you colour-code everything.

What was unusual about preparing for 2006 was that nobody knew how many classrooms would be available; in fact, nobody knew where some of those classrooms were, and whether there would be equipment, air-conditioning, or even desks and chairs when you got to the place where a classroom was supposed to be. Even more unusual was the assertion made by a member of senior staff that students only needed a 20-minute break between classes.

Well, there's nothing wrong with a 20-minute break. I used to have breaks that short. However, the new school was a massive place. I used a pedometer to find out effectively how big — and I found I was walking 5 km at least, every day. Somehow, space had been folded into a rather peculiar topology which looked big, felt small, and was even bigger than expected. Ho ho; students were always late for classes, unless they weren't and their teachers were.

The Time Machine

Many years ago, I wrote up a set of guidelines for timetabling one of the more complex educational schedules in the country. It was nowhere as complex as a university timetable, but it was pretty messy as high school schedules go. I included guidelines such as not allowing teachers or students to go more than about three hours without a break, guidelines for not having too many periods of the same subject in the same day, and so on.

Although the timetabling itself was done mainly by software, the point of the guidelines was to reduce the number of possible software-generated outcomes which were not human-friendly. For this, humans had to think about what constituted human-unfriendly, and where rules had to be broken if no outcome could be found by the software. We also had to gather data which would make us knowledgeable enough to break constraints, eliminate pointless constraints, or alter constraints that were 'nice to have' but were making the job literally impossible.

When I produced my first timetabling report, the boss remarked that he had never seen a timetabling committee produce a timetabling report. This made me feel uncomfortable. I've always believed that any committee set up to carry out a given task or function should report on its ideas, considerations, actions, follow-up and other relevant matters. Minimally, such reporting ought to be submitted to oversight every six months. I used to do this for every committee I chaired.

But then, I was told that my report was controversial because it contained too many details and ruffled too many feathers. I suspect this was because I had included a section highlighting inefficiencies and what could be done about them.

One such inefficiency was the hiring of teachers in excess of the number required for the teaching periods available. This allowed the offloading of teachers for undefined general tasks. Some departments were more culpable than others. The more 'innocent' or naïve departmental heads were actually allowing their teachers to absorb the workload of these departments. Some struck back by counter-offloading.

I assessed the cost to the school budget at a fairly large figure. It would have been enough to pay for a hefty bonus for everyone, if we had not hired so many extra teachers. It would have been more than enough to pay for the science lab equipment which I had been told there was 'insufficient budget for'.

When I highlighted this particular fact, I was waffled at and told not to worry. After all, it wasn't my money, they said.

Two years later and after my second round of timetabling committee reports, I was 'rotated' out of the chair. Fortunately, I kept records. I had been a good 'time machine'.