Well, we survived. Survived what, you ask? Leap second, of course. Markets didn’t implode, digital platforms didn’t collapse, planes didn’t fall from the sky. And we all got to sleep in a whole extra second.
Leap second is an occasional adjustment made in the way we keep time that addresses a discrepancy between highly precise atomic clocks and the actual diurnal rotation of the earth which is very, very gradually slowing down, thanks to the second law of thermodynamics and entropy.
Don’t ask me to explain further because my head might explode, and we already have plenty of fireworks scheduled for this weekend. I love the Fourth of July—it’s the only holiday when we Americans celebrate ourselves. I think that’s a very good thing.
I’ve written before about us humans and our attempts to influence time, that one inexorable, unstoppable force in the universe, that great cosmic tide outside of which only God exists.
We have time zones and daylight savings and leap seconds. An international airline pilot once told me his life expectancy was reduced by approximately four minutes because of the law of relativity. Again, don’t ask me to explain.
The difference between man and God is time. We cannot escape it, and sooner or later we all run out of it. For God there has never been an hour or a moment or a second, no beginning, no end, no time.
But if we really could control time, if you somehow knew that you would be given one extra second or one extra minute or one extra hour of time, of life, how would you spend it? Call it your bonus time. What would you do with it? Post below please. I’d love to know.
