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Time Flies · 1 March 2025

Time flies. Whether or not you are having any fun.

It is not really an aha moment or anything like that, but time really does fly. When you are having fun. I know. The saying is supposed to give you a little perspective that when you are having fun, it seems that time is going so much faster than normal. Like you are in a time warp or something. One moment you are starting to do your fun thing. The next moment, it is time to be done. Bed time or suppertime or quitting time or something. You need to stop doing whatever fun thing it was that you were doing.

But even though it might seem like time drags when you are not doing something fun, it is really flying then too.

Think about it. No matter how much fun you are having doing anything, when you look at the clock, the second hand goes around at the same rate all the time. One… Second… At… A… Time… No matter what. That second hand keeps spinning and spinning and spinning. At the same rate. All the time. Just watch and see, if you do not believe me.

Of course, popular media would have you believe otherwise. I remember some movie or TV show where the clock ticked slower and slower and slower because the person watching was bored stiff. And it sure seems like time drags on when what you are doing is drudgery. But time marches ever onward. It flies.

I think that you get this perspective as you age. You realize that time is precious and that you should not waste it. Make every second count. Not that sitting and just looking at the sunset or watching your kids play or doing something relaxing is a waste of time. Quite the contrary, those moments are the ones that really matter. Often more than those times when you are supposedly being productive. When you are churning out the words for your next great novel. Or whatever your choice of productive time is. You do not need to fill every waking moment with something “productive” in the sense of work or even play. You can just be.

Maybe that is the key to slowing time down a little bit. I know. Not everybody wants to slow down time, but we do need to stop and smell the roses. We need to relax. We need to just be. Not always, but at times. Because we know that time does indeed fly. Faster than we ever imagined.

Yes. The saying is correct. Time does fly when you are having fun. But the deeper truth of the matter is that time just flies. Period.

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Do or Do Not · 22 February 2025

Do or do not. There is no…

We have all heard Yoda’s quote from The Empire Strikes Back. “Do or do not. There is no try.” It is a great motivational quote. I tell athletes this all the time. Actually, I tell them that “can’t” is a naughty word and it will cost them 25 pushups. But the notion that we are either going to do something or not do something is certainly a truism. We might try. And we get away with trying. But that does not cut it in reality. We either do or we do not. There really is no in between.

But Yoda’s quote is an interesting from a different perspective too. It is interesting from a logic perspective.

Now I know that logic and reason are not in vogue these days. You cannot tell somebody they are being illogical because feelings rule the day. We feel this or we feel that. So we do this or we do that because our feelings are what matter most. So to even have a notion that logic and reason might play any part in decision-making is ludicrous these days. Or so it seems. Even so, I want to tackle Yoda’s quote from a logical (albeit tongue in cheek) sort of way.

The “do or do not” part of the quote is a wonderful notion. Feeling-wise and logic-wise. After all, we feel that it is true. We can only have it one way or the other. We either do or do not. It feels right. It also makes logical sense. You can only have it one way or the other. Do or not do. The negation of do is do not, which is what Yoda says, and it is the logical way to say it. There are even symbols that show the logic, but I will not get into that here. The point is that a statement or its negation can be true but they cannot both be true. At least not at the same time in the same sense.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Something ought not make sense both emotionally and logically. (Either that or you were thinking about food. Or maybe that is just me.) But Yoda’s statement of doing or not doing makes sense in both ways. We feel it emotionally and we understand it logically. And there are probably other things that are right from both perspectives. Even if it might feel wrong. In fact, I would say that there are definitely many other things that are right both emotionally and logically.

But back to the rest of Yoda’s statement.

I never really thought of the logic of “There is no try.” But I should have. If there really is no try, then Yoda’s statement ought to read, “There is no…” After all, if there is no try, then not only could you not try, you could not say “try.” Try would not exist. Not in essence or principal or linguistically. No means no. Period. So if there is no try, there is no try. You cannot even say try.

I suppose it makes no difference in the long run whether there exists such a thing as try or not. We all try. We do. We may or may not succeed, but we do our best to get there. And maybe that is what Yoda was saying. Try is synonymous with not doing. We say we try when we do not really mean it. We say we try when we are just going through the motions. So perhaps Yoda was not saying that try does not exist, but that he expected Luke’s best effort. Of course, we know this is true. Just like when we say always and never in sentences. We use hyperbole to make a point. There are so few always and never statements that are true that we may as well say that we can never make never statements. Although there are always exceptions. (Neither of which makes sense from a logic perspective.)

Well, I hope that you do not feel you have wasted your time on this post on logic. And I hope you understand the notion that we really ought to do or do not. After all, there is no…

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Typoglycemia · 15 February 2025

Can you raed tihs? Of course you can.

It is interesting that we make up words to describe phenomena that we observe. Typoglycemia is a term that somebody made up to describe the phenomenon that at least some (dare I say most) people can read words even when you scramble the letters. Especially if the first and last letters are in the correct places. (By the way, apparently when you make up a term for a phenomenon, it is called a neologism. Who knew?)

Now, I had heard of the phenomenon before. The phenomenon that people can read words where the middle letters are scrambled. It makes sense. People’s minds are incredible. They can decipher all sorts of crazy things. Sometimes just by looking at them. They recognize patterns without really thinking too hard about them. It is just amazing.

At any rate.

I learned about typoglycemia after I wrote about correctly spelled words looking like they were misspelled. (By the way, “misspelled” is truly spelled with two of the letter s. I used to misspell it as “mispell” until I figured out that it was misspelled. But it does not really matter if I misspell “misspell” because the computer often fixes misspelled words for me. It certainly tries to correct “mispell” everytime I misspell it on purpose. Sheesh.)

I am not sure why whoever made up the term typoclycemia named it typoglycemia. It seems strange. After all, hypoglycemia is a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels go too low. And hyperglycemia is a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels are too high. So to me, typoglycemia would be a medical condition where a person’s blood sugar levels have been typed incorrectly, whatever that might mean. But I do not make up terms for normal human consumption. I just make them up for myself.

At any rate.

I suppose that I really just wanted to spell “misspell” a bunch of times and comment on the strange word and phenomenon called typoglycemia. Then, I was going to try and write a bunch of sentences with words where the inner letters are scrambled, but that would be way too much work. Especially since I am used to using simple words, often much less than the four letters required to scramble inner letters. Okay. Maybe not often much less than four, but often enough. You get the idea. (See, only one word in the last sentence had four letters.)

Wlel, I hpoe taht you ejoenyd my bolg psot tdoay. And if you conant raed the wdors in tihs lsat praapgarh vrey wlel, you may not be pvriy to the phenomenon claeld typoglycemia.