On holiday travels
Having observed the traditional “long drive to the relative’s houses for Christmas visit”, it is good to be back home again. Having observed the traditional “kids opening Christmas presents” this morning, the home is a huge mess again. Having observed the traditional “eat massive amount of things that are really bad for you” over the last several days, my coronary arteries are undoubtedly, equally messy. Ah, well. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
While driving on seeming endless stretches of boring highways, I once again observed the fascinating phenomenon of being “velocitized” It is that feeling that, even though you are traveling at one hundred feet per second, you are moving very slowly. I, often, think about this effect while I am driving down the highway. I ponder whether or not the effect is only a product having grown up in the modern era. Would people from earlier times, before we had vehicles capable of traveling at sixty miles per hour or more, be susceptible to being velocitized? The only way that someone in, say, the sixteenth century, could reach the speed of one hundred feet per second, would be if they fell a great distance. It is doubtful that they would remain at that speed long enough to actually be velocitized. They would also end up very dead before they could communicate their experience to anyone else. I suppose that you could do a study using people who had never ridden in cars before, Amish or maybe, third world residents, to see if they also become velocitized in a car at highway speeds. Boring. My fantasy is go back in time (yes, I know that really smart people say that it is impossible to travel back in time. I am not a really smart person. Therefore, I am allowed to have my fantasy.) and bring someone like Benjamin Franklin back to the modern era. Ben and I would get into the car and go on a road trip. I could see for myself if being velocitized is only a product of having grown-up with the experience of going very fast. He could tell me in some clever homily whether or not he was experiencing the same feeling that he was traveling very slowly.
“You may delay, but time will not”
-Benjamin Franklin
“You are velocitized, but I am not”
-Fantasy Benjamin Franklin
While driving on seeming endless stretches of boring highways, I once again observed the fascinating phenomenon of being “velocitized” It is that feeling that, even though you are traveling at one hundred feet per second, you are moving very slowly. I, often, think about this effect while I am driving down the highway. I ponder whether or not the effect is only a product having grown up in the modern era. Would people from earlier times, before we had vehicles capable of traveling at sixty miles per hour or more, be susceptible to being velocitized? The only way that someone in, say, the sixteenth century, could reach the speed of one hundred feet per second, would be if they fell a great distance. It is doubtful that they would remain at that speed long enough to actually be velocitized. They would also end up very dead before they could communicate their experience to anyone else. I suppose that you could do a study using people who had never ridden in cars before, Amish or maybe, third world residents, to see if they also become velocitized in a car at highway speeds. Boring. My fantasy is go back in time (yes, I know that really smart people say that it is impossible to travel back in time. I am not a really smart person. Therefore, I am allowed to have my fantasy.) and bring someone like Benjamin Franklin back to the modern era. Ben and I would get into the car and go on a road trip. I could see for myself if being velocitized is only a product of having grown-up with the experience of going very fast. He could tell me in some clever homily whether or not he was experiencing the same feeling that he was traveling very slowly.
“You may delay, but time will not”
-Benjamin Franklin
“You are velocitized, but I am not”
-Fantasy Benjamin Franklin
posted by HCaldwell | 6:31 PM
1 Comments:
Those poor people from the sixteenth century. Not only are they DEAD from a fall, but VERY dead. That made me giggle. I hope you're having a very Merry Christmas. In my imagination, you must recieve tools as gifts often.
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