What if time actually speeds up and slows down, but we don’t know it because we are inside time?

For example, suppose you and I are standing in the back yard and I toss a basketball to you. It goes up in the air and comes down in your hands.

Now suppose that time slowed *way* down as I tossed it, and suppose that time then zoomed like lightning just as you caught the ball. But because you and I are both inside the same time, we just saw the ball go up and come down at the usual speed, because you and I with all our perceptions were slowing down and speeding up inside the same time span.

How can we know this is not happening?

I mean, perhaps right this minute! time might be slowing to a standstill, and you will never, ever reach the end of this paragraph! But you will never know it, because you are inside the time and so you think you’re moving forward as always.

Or what if the entire Universe is right now suddenly vanishing in the flash of an eye! But you and I think we’re living all the rest of our lives, seeing movies, driving the car, growing older, making a sandwich, laughing at a joke, making an appointment to visit the dentist, watching a sunset that seems to take forever.

And yet, really, it’s all over already.

Next week: How a refrigerator works.

December 4, 2006: After being off the air, awaiting repairs after hacker damage — apparently our server was needed to assist in sending important viagra spam to needy individuals in Brazil and Portugal — the Adventures of Bloggard has again returned to the this spot on your internet dial. A new carborator, air in the tires, a coat of wax, and this weblog’s as good as new. Maybe.

My last post was September of 2005. A year has passed. My how time flies when you’re having fun. Maybe even when you’re not.

During the year, Cowboy Charlie showed up, a beagle-border collie mix, and is now a part of our morning ritual. Charlie and Daisy Dog tussle, while Lizzie barks and barks and barks. Ah, the gentle morning.

A major upgrade in the Megatar shop is nearing completion, installing machinery of greater precision and volume, because we were falling behind on orders.

More to follow, from time to time.

“A man of 20 who’s not a liberal has no heart, and a man of 60 who’s not a conservative has no brain.” — variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill

Is it true? I don’t know, but it sure describes my experience.

We in America, lulled by years of prosperity, find it difficult to believe that barbarians still exist in the world.

But, yes, Virginia, there are humans who are not “civilized” as we know it. People who will kill you for your sneakers, and people who will torture you for the giggles of seeing you twist and scream. These are facts.

In our shrinking world, the far-away barbarians are now next door. With our transportation, communication, information, and weaponry, they’re here among us.

We got trouble. That’s a fact. And talking liberal at them won’t do a bit of good.

Some folks just need killing to dissuade them from their foolish ways. Maybe we don’t like that, but we don’t get to tell the Universe what’s true. We must have the humility to listen. The Universe will tell *us*.

And it’s telling us loud and clear, soldier.

February 9, 2006, Mount Shasta: Adrienne took two dogs to the dog park, but came home with three dogs.

Charlie is a cross between a beagle and a border collie. He has the dark eyes of a beagle, looking very much like Rudolph Valentino. We almost named him Valentino, because we carried him to the Humane Society for the mandatory one week, and then adopted him on Valentine’s day.

But he’s a rugged young fellow, and ‘Charlie’ sounded more down to earth. Not that he stays down to earth. He runs like the wind. When she takes him to the dog park, he leaps the fence like it was nothing, and runs far, far to the east, in and out of the bushes, and then far, far to the west. Now you see him. Now you don’t.

Other dog-park visitors call out, “Look! He’s over there!” and point. And then they cry, “And look! Now he’s way over there!”

Adrienne just smiles.

And, so far, he always comes back.

It’s wonderful to watch him run. He flashes across the field, hardly seeming to touch the ground.

How wonderful to be an animal. He helps me to remember.

San Francisco, 1977: Last Fall, after I’d started Network Answering Service in my studio apartment at 495 Third Avenue, the company began slowly to grow. I’d hired Bob, first just to relieve me, but as clients increased eventually I had to increase his hours, and then we began hiring Operators, which we called “OPs.”

During that same time, Doug Faunt wired up my new Cromemco computer, and I wrote a new bookkeeping program, for sending out the bills to this growing number of customers. One of my OPs named Hugh, a lanky jazz pianist, came in all excited about a dream he’d had, in which our Cromemco computer was called “Mr. Suitcase.” And from then on, Hugh insisted on referring to the computer as Mr. Suitcase. Soon everybody called the computer Mr. Suitcase.

And before long, I needed to hire a bookkeeper to operate Mr. Suitcase and my new bookkeeping program.

When we advertised, in walked Pankaj.

He was a young man, dark and serious, from India. He seemed a bit apologetic and uncertain in the rough humor from Texas and Tennessee with which Bob and I taught him the job. Pankaj was an accounting student, sent by his father to get a degree in America, because, he said, “you get the better job if you have a degree from the United States.”

The odd thing to me and Bob, thinking it over, was that he was attending a tiny trade school then located on Masonic Boulevard, called Lincoln University. It had about three buildings. The main building might have been a large restored victorian, or even a converted mortuary. We couldn’t imagine that the school had more than a few hundred students. So what would be so prestigeous about attending a small trade school in San Francisco?

Pankaj did just fine with Mr. Suitcase, and had no difficulty with the bookkeeping. He was by nature incurious, somewhat passive, and a bit gullible to the stories clients told, but he grasped the concept that his job was to make the money come in, and did his best with collections, though being pushy made him nervous. He lived with two other Indian students, in a dump in the tenderloin area, which is a rough part of downtown frequented by hookers, pushers, hoodlums, and the eternal poor.

We found Pankaj a bit mysterious. For example, he always fasted on Tuesdays. When asked why, he said evasively that it was a religious thing, that he’d always done it. On certain days, his forehead broke into beads of sweat, as if he suffered fevers.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

His full name was Pankaj Sewal, and given our egalitarian presumptions we therefore called him Pankaj. We told him to call us Bob and Richard (my name before I changed it), but the closest he could bring himself was to call us “Mr. Bob” and “Mr. Richard.” Soon, we also called each other Mr. Bob and Mr. Richard.

Finally, one day Mr. Bob asked him why he’d gone to all the trouble to come to this side of the planet to attend Lincoln University. Pankaj smiled ruefully.

“It was a mistake,” he said. “You see, there is another Lincoln University, and it is a famous school, very prestigious. My father intended that I go there.

“But when I applied, I got the wrong school, and sent off my application to San Francisco. Then, when I got here, I saw that it was the wrong school, but what could I do?

“When my father finds out,” he said mournfully, “I don’t know what he’ll do.”