how time flies

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (trans. Fitzgerald)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
-attrib. Groucho Marx

It's interesting how we perceive time. It initially crossed my mind to title this post Time's Arrow - the reference is both to Arthur Eddington's 'arrow of time' and to the mindboggling Martin Amis novel (which is frankly not worth the tedious hard slog through the book) - but then I realised how pretentious it'd be. But yes, it's amazing how difficult it is to rigorously define what is future and past. (I do mean rigorous; "that which is to come" doesn't cut it.)

Physicists have a neat way of doing it, using the second law of thermodynamics (which states that the amount of entropy in a closed system increases with time). Therefore following that, the future is that period of time where entropy is higher than at present, assuming of course that the universe is a closed system. Unfortunately it does seem to be a rather circular argument - essentially, entropy increases as time passes, and time passes when entropy increases. But then I'm not a physicist.

-----

Another neat idea, this time from economics. It's about the distinction between price and value. As I was telling ZH just now while we were out for a coffee =P (yeah, I am that pedantic. But so's he, so there) there is actually a difference between these two concepts, despite how often they're conflated.

I assume you've all bought something at least once in your life; for the sake of argument let it be an Ice Blended from Coffee Bean (for even more specificity let's make it a White Chocolate Dream, cos it is truly inconfutable proof of the existence of goodness in this world). Now backtracking a little, let's question: why on earth did you buy it?

Cravings, urges, spurs-of-the-moment, addictions... all these reasons don't cut it. The truth is simple but stark: you bought it because (at that point in time) you valued the ice blended more than anything else the $6.20 could have bought you. The price is secondary; if you were willing to pay anything up to $10 for it, that means it was worth $10 to you regardless of the list price. On the other hand, if you chose not to buy it, that implies that you think you could have put the $6.20 to better use - maybe by getting a caramel latte instead, or a meal from macs, or by cabbing home.

The distinction between price and worth is possibly one of the fundamental things in economics that very few people fully grasp. And it has implications for all kinds of things - even psychology (why do I feel the pinch in my pocket after finishing the White Chocolate Dream, for instance.) Good ideas are fascinating things.

-----

So much for pedantry and ideas. It's been a tiring week - a navigation exercise on Monday, field camp Tues-Thurs, and Happy Hour on Friday night, after IPPT and SOC. On the bright side I only have 6 more days left to survive before I officially get my rank and pay hike. Happy Hour was a disaster for me; I was one of the emcees, and therefore expected to keep people entertained. Big mistake; to most people my jokes are as funny as a funeral. You guys know me... it was excruciating by the time the night was up. Geez... bad.

I'm not looking forward to my posting; just hope it's not something too siong or sucky. But there's nothing I can do about it now; time's arrow is relentless and unforgiving. Oh well... This post was supposed to be longer, but it's late and I'm so sleepy that it feels as if my eyelids are getting weighted down by lead weights. Shucks. Goodnight all.