A friend is writing a paper and preparing a presentation on time. Maybe that is what made me remember that I have a book by Daniel Pink called "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing". I read Pink's "A Whole New Mind" and got some new ideas and good reading.
Pink writes:
For you and me, the biological Big Ben is the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, a cluster of some 20,000 cells the size of a grain of rice in the hypothalamus, which sits in the lower center of the brain. The SCN controls the rise and fall of our body temperature, regulates our hormones, and helps us fall asleep at night and awaken in the morning. The SCN's daily timer runs a bit longer than it takes for the Earth to make one full rotation—about twenty-four hours and eleven minutes.4 So our built-in clock uses social cues (office schedules and bus timetables) and environmental signals (sunrise and sunset) to make small adjustments that bring the internal and external cycles more or less in synch, a process called "entrainment."
Pink, Daniel H.. When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (p. 12). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
I have read in several places that having a similar time to wake up and to go to bed at night helps a person get better sleep.
Various thinkers have cited Yogi Berra on the subject of time. "Yogi, what time is it?" "You mean, now?" Others have advised following the typical dog approach. What time is it? NOW!
This clock is Lynn's handiwork. It is true that the present is all we really have and that the past is memories and evidence while the future is conjecture.
The clocks we have here in the house are funny. When I am watching a good show, a half hour takes five minutes. When I am waiting for five minutes to pass, it takes a half hour.
