Ants In Your Pants? There’s Plenty Of ‘Em!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

Hi and welcome to fact day which does, as the title suggests, include an amazing fact about the number of ants ib the world. They may not be in your pants, but keep a look out just in case!

And now for the facts.

Enjoy.

.

.

Halloween, which we’ve all just endured another year,

is thought to have originated around 4000 B.C.,

which means Halloween has been around for over 6,000 years

and is one of the oldest celebrations in the world.

.

.

Most vegetables and almost all fruits contain

a small amount of alcohol in them.

Cheers!

.

.

Some scientific studies suggest there are about

10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants

alive on Earth at any given time.

Ants are estimated to represent about 15–20%

of the total terrestrial animal biomass,

which exceeds that of the vertebrates.

.

.

When Pluto was discovered it was initially

believed to be larger than Earth.

Now astronomers know that it’s about

1,455 miles (2,352 kilometers) across,

less than 20 percent as big as the Earth.

.

.

Thomas Stewart Armistead was a Confederate officer

who fought bravely in the American Civil War.

After being wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness he

was captured and placed in a camp near Morris Island

where the Union authorities used him as a human

shield to prevent fire from nearby Confederate artillery batteries.

Thomas Stewart Armistead and 599 other Confederate officers

who had also been captured became known as “The Immortal 600.”

When, on November 16, 1922, Armistead died at the age of 80 he

was the last survivor and member of “The Immortal 600.”

.

.

The American football team the Baltimore Ravens are named

in honor of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem ‘The Raven’.

.

.

The construction of the Great Wall of China took over 2 thousands years,

the very first parts being built as early as in the 8th century BC.

.

.

Table for one, sir?

Amsterdam´s restaurant At Eenmaal,

founded by social designer Marina van Goor,

has become famous because the only type of table

that you can find in the restaurant is a table for one.

.

.

The largest thermometer in the world is 134-feet-tall (40.843m)

and was built by businessman Willis Herron in Baker, California.

The thermometer is supposed to serve as a memento of

the highest recorded temperature in the U.S.

measured in nearby Death Valley

– 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.6 Celsius) in 1913.

The thermometer is no longer in operation,

and was put up for sale in January 2013.

.

.

In 410 A.D. Alaric the Visigoth demanded that Rome give

him three thousand pounds of pepper as ransom,

an amount not to be sneezed at.

.

.

Abu Nasr Isma’il ibn Hammad al-Jawhari was an author of

a notable Arabic dictionary containing about 40,000 entries.

He is also remembered in Arabic history for

his attempt to fly with wooden wings.

He leapt from the roof of a mosque in the old town of Nishapur,

whereupon gravity took control and

he promptly hit the ground and was killed.

.

.

If you spray an antiseptic spray on a polar bear,

its fur will turn purple.

I wonder who got close enough to find that one out?

.

.

The Japanese Empire was the largest maritime empire in history,

spanning more than 7 million square kilometers and gained such

notoriety that it took atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

plus plenty of other battles to defeat it.

.

.

The movie that grossed the most money that was

adapted from a T.V. cartoon is Scooby-Doo

.

.

Quite often when a book is made into a movie a lot of things get changed.

Sometimes this spoils the story for those who have read the book,

other times it can improve it.

In Robert Bloch’s novel  the main character ‘Norman Bates’

was short, fat, older, and very dislikable.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, however,

he was young, handsome, and sympathetic, and one

of the most well-known characters in film history.

Here are a couple of clips….

.

.

=================================

.

Did You Know? Another Rummage Through The Fasab Fact Files

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

Hello again and welcome to another rummage through the fasab fact files.

As random as ever, this selection covers many centuries and many countries so you should find something of interest.

Enjoy.

.

. 

1 in 5 of the world’s doctors are Russian.

. 

.

The Nullarbor Plain of Australia covers

100,000 square miles (160,900 km) without a tree.

.

. 

In 1933, Mickey Mouse, an animated cartoon character,

received 800,000 fan letters.

.

. 

Nerve impulses to and from the brain

travel as fast as 170 miles (274 km) per hour.

.

.

Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows

to mourn the deaths of their cats.

.

. 

Canadian researchers have found that

Einstein’s brain was 15% wider than normal.

.

. 

Isaac Asimov is the only author

to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.

.

. 

The shortest British monarch was Charles I,

who was 4 feet 9 inches.

.

. 

Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.

(Something to do with his mother no doubt!)

.

. 

Camels chew in a figure 8 pattern.

.

. 

In space, astronauts cannot cry,

because there is no gravity,

so the tears can’t flow.

.

. 

There are 1,792 steps in the Eiffel Tower

 

.

.

A silicon chip a quarter inch square

has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer,

which occupied a city block.

.

. 

About a third of all Americans flush the toilet

while they’re still sitting on it.

 

.

.

Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice president Al Gore

were freshman roommates at Harvard.

 

.

.

In eighteenth century England,

women’s wigs were sometimes 4 feet high.

These remarkable headdresses were dusted with flour

and decorated with stuffed birds, replicas of gardens,

plates of fruit, or even model ships.

 

.

.

In 1976 a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift

officially married a 50 pound rock.

The ceremony was witnessed by more than 20 people.

.

. 

In Tokyo, they sell toupees for dogs.

.

. 

John has a long moustache was the coded signal

used by the French Resistance in WWII

.

.

================================

.

Significant Number Factoid Friday – Today Number Forty-Two 42

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

.

They’ve been ‘beautiful’,  they’ve been ‘big’  and they’ve been ‘unusual’.  Today we have another  ‘significant’ number, forty-two, so-called because of its use and the beliefs surrounding it.

Enjoy.

.

42 Forty-Two

.

In Religion

• In Japanese culture, the number 42 is considered unlucky because the numerals when pronounced separately — “shi ni” (four two) — sound like the phrase, “unto death”;
• There are 42 principles of Ma’at, the Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth. In the judgement scene described in the Egyptian and the Book of the Coming/Going Forth by Day, there are 42 gods and goddesses of Egypt, personifying the principles of Ma’at. These 42 correspond to the 42 Nomes (Governmental Units) of Egypt. If the departed successfully answers all 42, s/he becomes an Osiris;
• 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition; 
• In Judaism, the number (in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled 375 AD to 499 AD) of the “Forty-Two Lettered Name” ascribed to God. Rab (or Rabhs), a 3rd century source in the Talmud stated “The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights”. 
• 42 is a sacred Tibetan number and there is also a 42 armed Hindu God;
• The first book to be printed with movable type, the Gutenberg Bible, is also known as the “42-line Bible”, as the book contained 42 lines per page;
• The Forty-Two Articles (1552), largely the work of Thomas Cranmer, were intended to summarise Anglican doctrine, as it now existed under the reign of Edward VI..

.

In The Bible

• Forty Two, 3½ and 1260 – this is the amount that is given to the wicked or for people to bear fruit. Judgment occurs at the end. It is based on the law that God only expects results after the third year of planting (Leviticus 19: 23-25);
• This time period appears in many prophecies as 1260 days, 42 months or 3½ years. It is the period that God allows the beast to operate. Notice that this is equal to 6 x 7 months. It is man’s portion of the jubilee cycle; 
• Two female bears kill forty two children after they ridiculed the prophet of God. 2 Kings 2: 24; 
• 42 Cities are given to the Levites in addition to six cities of refuge (Numbers 35: 6); 
• 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); 
• Israel camped 42 times in the wilderness during the 40 year exodus. 
• The goat’s hair and linen curtains covering the sanctuary have a length of 42 and 40 cubits. 
• Jesus was forty two generations from Abraham. (Matthew 1).

.

In Mathematics

• 42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester’s sequence; like the first five such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number;
• 42 is a partition number – the number of different ways 10 can be represented as the sum of natural numbers;
• 42 is a Størmer number;
• 42 is a perfect score on the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO) and International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

Simple Magic Cube adding to 42

.

In Science

• 42 is the atomic number of molybdenum;
• 42 is the value of the angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears (the critical angle);
• In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity (also known as Gravity train) always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity’s force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate. (The same idea was proposed, without calculation by Lewis Carroll in 1893 in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.)

Gravity Train Concept

.

In Technology

• The glyph, or character, corresponding to the number 42 in the ASCII character set, is *, the asterisk, commonly known as the wildcard character;
• In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order;
• In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory;
• In the military IRIG 106 Chapter 10 data recording standard, the hex value 0x464F52545974776F (ASCII “FORTYtwo”) is used as a magic number to identify directory blocks;
• The GNU C Library, a set of standard routines available for use in computer programming, contains a function—memfrob()—which performs an XOR combination of a given variable and the binary pattern 00101010 (42) as an XOR cipher;
• 42 is the result given by the web search engines Google and Wolfram Alpha when the query “the answer to life the universe and everything” is entered as a search.

.

In Space

• Messier object M42, a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula;
• The New General Catalogue object NGC 42, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus;
• In January 2004, asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the permanent name 25924 Douglasadams, for the author Douglas Adams who popularized the number 42 and died in 2001; 
• Kepler-42, is a red dwarf in the constellation Cygnus around which orbits the three smallest exoplanets found to date.

Messier-42 also known as the Orion Nebula

.

In Politics

• The 42nd President of the Unites States of America was Democratic Party William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton, from January 20, 1993 to January 20, 2001. Vice President was Al Gore. Remembered more for ‘blow-jobs’ in the White House, Clinton’s Presidency also oversaw the disastrous Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, that repealed the parts of the Glass–Steagall Act which had not already been repealed. This 1999 Act took down barriers to competition between traditional banks, investment banks, and insurance companies, in some cases allowing firms to participate in all three markets thus making distinctions between these categories less clear. It has been held largely responsible for the current financial crisis. 

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America

.

In Sport

• 42 is the jersey number of Jackie Robinson, which is the only number retired by all Major League Baseball teams. Although the number was retired in 1997, Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, the last professional baseball player to wear number 42, is currently still using it;
• 42 is the jersey number of basketball Hall of Famer and one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History James Worthy, small forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, who retired his jersey number in 1995;
• 42 is the jersey number of football Hall of Famer, Ronnie Lott, safety for the San Francisco 49ers, who retired his jersey number in 2003;
• 42 is the jersey number of Chicago Bears legend Sid Luckman, which was retired by the Bears; 
• 42 is the jersey number of Pat Tillman, which was retired on November 13, 2004 by Arizona State University; 
• 42 is the number of laws of cricket;
• 42 is the number of kilometers in a marathon;
• 42 is the number of a NASCAR car owned by Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. It is currently being driven by former F1 star and Indy 500 champion Juan Pablo Montoya;

.

In Militaria

• XB-42
• The most notable aircraft with the 42 designation was the XB-42 ‘Mixmaster’. This aircraft was developed initially as a private venture and an unsolicited proposal was presented to the United States Army Air Forces in May 1943 which resulted in an Air Force contract for two prototypes and one static test airframe, the USAAF seeing an intriguing possibility of finding a bomber capable of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress’ range without its size or cost.
• The aircraft was unusual in design in that it had a pair of Allison V-1710-125 liquid-cooled V-12 engines mounted behind the crew’s cabin, each driving one of the twin propellers which protruded from the rear of the aircraft’s fuselage. The pilot and co-pilot sat under twin bubble canopies, and the bombardier sat in the extreme front behind a plexiglass nose.
• The first XB-42 was delivered to the Army Air Force and flew at Palm Springs, California on 6 May 1944. Performance was excellent, being basically as described in the original proposal; as fast or faster than the de Havilland Mosquito but with defensive armament and twice the bombload. The twin bubble canopies proved a bad idea as communications were adversely affected and a single bubble canopy was substituted after the first flight, a problem that could have been rectified, but the end of World War II changed priorities and the advent of the jet engine gave an alternative way toward achieving high speed.

XB-42 ‘Mixmaster’ and model

 

• AG-42
• The AG-42 rifle (official designation Halvautomatiskt Gevaer 42) was developed by Swedish engineer Erik Eklund while working at company C. J. Ljungman AB. Officially adopted by Swedish army in 1942, this rifle served in Sweden until mid-1960s, when it was replaced in service with 7.62mm AK-4 rifle (license-build HK G3 rifle).

AG-42B Rifle

 

• MKb.42
• In 1939 HWaA (Hitler’s army Weapons command) issued a contract for the development of a “Maschinen karabiner”, or machine carbine (MKb for short), chambered for the new 7.92×33 Kurz cartridge, to the company C.G. Haenel Waffen und Fahrradfabrik.
• The famous designer Hugo Schmeisser led the Haenel development team, which produced the first working prototypes of new weapon by 1942. The new weapon was intended as a replacement for submachine guns, bolt action rifles and, partly, light machine guns for front troops. The MKb.42(H) could be fitted with standardbayonet, and has a wooden butt. 

mkb 42h-1 ri

 

• MG 42
• A cheaper to produce but much more reliable replacement for the MG 34, the MG 42 was officially adopted as the MG 42, and production commenced in 1941.
• In general terms, the MG 42 was a great success. It fulfilled the roles of a light machine gun on a bipod, a medium machine gun (on a newly developed Lafette 42 tripod), and an anti-aircraft machine gun, mounted in single and twin installations, ground and vehicle-mounted. 
• After the WW2 the MG 42, unlike other wartime designs, lived on, as in 1958, the FRG (WestGermany) re-instituted its official armed force, known as the Bundeswehr. 
• The simplicity, low manufacturing cost and high effectiveness of the MG 3 attracted several other countries, which either bought the guns from Rheinmetall (such as Denmark), or obtained manufacturing licenses and build (or at least have built in the past) the same guns domestically (such as Italy, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia). In total, at least twenty armies have used or still are using the MG 3 and its versions.

mg42 machine gun

 

.

In Books, Movies & TV

• The 42nd Parallel is the first of a trilogy of books, (the others being 1919, and The Big Money), written by John Dos Passos and acclaimed by many to be the great American novel;
• English author Douglas Noel Adams popularized the number 42 in his best known work called the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. The number 42 and the phrase, “Life, the universe, and everything” have attained cult status on the Internet. If you type the answer to life, the universe and everything into Google (without quotes or capitalising the small words), the Google Calculator will give you 42; also, if you go to Wolfram’s Computational Knowledge Engine and type “answer to life, the universe, and everything”, it provides you with the result 42. Microsoft’s Bing search engine will also give you 42. Alphasmart 3000’s calculator, when given any equation that results in 42, will display, “The answer to life, the universe, and everything”. In the online community “Second Life,” there is a section on a sim called “42nd Life”;
• In the Stargate Atlantis Season 4 episode “Quarantine”, 42 are the last two digits in Rodney McKay’s password. After John Sheppard explains to Teyla the meaning of the previous twelve digits, she asks him what 42 is. Then, John says, “It’s the ultimate answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything,” at which point Teyla looks confused;
• In the TV show Lost, 42 is the last of the mysterious numbers, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42;
• In Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Alex browses through records in a record store and we see a record of the, at this time fictional, band Level 42;
• “42” is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real time lasting approximately 42 minutes;
• “The Kumars at No. 42” is the name of a 2003 BBC television series; 
• A made for TV movie 42: Forty Two Up – an installment in a series of documentaries wherein the director revisits the same group of British-born individuals every 7 years;
• On the game show Jeopardy!, “Watson” the IBM supercomputer, has 42 “threads” in its avatar;
• On the Unusuals TV-show there’s an episode called “42”. Detective Leo Banks recently turned 42. On account of his father, uncle, and grandfather dropping dead at 42, Leo is convinced he’ll share their fate. There were 42s all over the episode.

42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos

.

Other Stuff

• In New York City, 42nd Street is a main and very popular two-way thoroughfare. Landmarks on it include the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the main branch of the New York Public Library, and Times Square; 
• Tower 42, originally called the NatWest Tower because it was built for the National Westminster Bank, is the tallest skyscraper in the city of London and the fifth tallest in London as a whole;
• +42 is the historic Country calling code for the former country of Czechoslovakia; 
• 42 is the number of US gallons in a barrel of oil;
• 42 is the number of spots (or pips, circular patches or pits) on a pair of standard six-sided dice;
• 42 is a free tabloid devoted to technology news in Huntsville, Alabama. It is published by the Huntsville Times and is named for “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”;
• Fictional comic book superhero Miles Morales is bitten by a genetically altered spider with a red 42 marked on its abdomen. Morales later assumes the role of Spider-Man as a result of the bite and following the death of Peter Parker in the Ultimate Marvel universe from Marvel Comics. Morales also wins a coveted spot in a prestigious charter school after his number (42) is chosen during a lottery.

Miles Morales Spiderman

 

Punchy Punitive Punditry Today? – No, Just More Puny Pungent Puns!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 .

Yes it’s another selection of those groan-making jokes carefully wrapped up in the thing we call puns.

Enjoy, if you can.

 

 

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

 

What did the grape say when it got stepped on?

Nothing – but it let out a little whine.

 

A criminal’s best asset is his lie ability.

 

Be true to your teeth, or they will be false to you.

 

If you give some managers an inch they think they’re a ruler.

 

Gravity is studied a lot because it’s a very attractive field.

 

Old lawyers never die they just lose their appeal.

 

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

 

When women enter middle age, it gives men a pause.

 

Prison walls are never built to scale.

 

There was a guy who was fired from the orange juice factory for lack of concentration.

 

We were so poor when I was growing up we couldn’t even afford to pay attention.

 

I used to be a tap dancer until I fell in the sink.

 

When the smog lifts in Los Angeles, U C L A.

 

The poet had written better poems, but he’d also written verse.

 

There was a ghost at the hotel, so they called for an inn spectre.

 

Ancient orators tended to Babylon.

 

What do you call a melon that’s not allowed to get married?

Can’t elope.

 

For plumbers, a flush beats a full house.

 

Did you hear about the guy who sent ten puns to friends, in the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh.

Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

 

=====================================

 

Another Tuesday And Another List Of Those Questions

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 .

Another Tuesday and another list of questions so important that no one seems to want to ask them –  except here of course.

Enjoy.

. 

Where does the toe-tag go on a dead person if they don’t have toes?

. 

If you dug a hole through the center of the earth and jumped in, would you stay at the center because of gravity?

Gravity elevator

 

 .

Why is there a disclaimer on the Allstate Auto Insurance commercials that says “Not available in all states”?

“Not available in all States”

 .

Do they bury people with their braces on?

braces

 

 .

How far east can you go before you’re heading west?

 .

Do dentists go to other dentists or do they just do it themselves?

dentist

 

 .

If, in a baseball game, the batter hits a ball splitting it right down the center with half the ball flying out of the park and the other half being caught, what is the final ruling?

 .

Why do people think that swaying their arm back and forth would change the direction of a bowling ball?

Bowler

. 

 

Why is it that everyone driving faster than you is considered an idiot, and everyone driving slower than you is a moron?

 

.

If pro and con are opposites, wouldn’t the opposite of progress be congress?

 

.

Why does grape flavor smell the way it is when actual grapes don’t taste or smell anything like it.

 .

If girls with large breasts work at Hooters, then do girls with one leg work at IHOP?

 

.

If a kid refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting a rest?

 

.

Is it rude for a deaf person to talk (sign) with their mouth full of food?

 

.

If a transvestite goes missing, would you put their face on a carton of Half and Half?

 

.

When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?

partly sunny? – or – partly cloudy?

 .

Are eyebrows considered facial hair?

 .

If a baby’s leg pops out at 11:59PM but his head doesn’t come out until 12:01, which day was he born on?

 .

Since bread is square, then why is sandwich meat round?

The square bread – round meat conundrum

 .

Why is the Lone Ranger called ‘Lone’ if he always has his Indian friend Tonto with him?

Lone Ranger and Tonto

 

 

==================

Everything Is Relative, Even Your Granny!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 .

A man trying to understand the nature of God asked him: “God, how long is a million years to you?”

God answered: “A million years is like a minute.”

Then the man asked: “God, how much is a million dollars to you?”

And God replied: “A million dollars is like a penny.”

Finally the man asked: “God, could you give me a penny?”

And God said, “In a minute.”

 

I had originally called this post ‘Time And Relativity’ but I thought that would put some people off reading it. But that’s what it is actually about.

We have all heard about Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity, which is when he basically demolished Isaac Newton’s theories of mechanics and replaced them with the theory of relativity and how time can be effected by space, gravity, velocity and so forth.

Albert Einstein who formulated the theories of relativity

Like Einstein (who am I kidding LOL) I have two theories of relativity, a General Theory and a Special Theory. That I am afraid is where the similarity ends because being neither a physicist nor a genius my theories are of necessity much simpler, although I would argue no less valid.

If you’ve got the time read on….

 

1. The Fasab General Theory of Relativity

The Fasab General Theory of Relativity simply states that the more interested you are in something the faster time passes.

Contrary to what a lot of people have been taught and believe, widening your variety of activities and experiences will not slow down your perception of time passing, it will in fact speed it up if you are interested in and enjoy those activities and experiences.

We have all experienced this phenomenon. Sit down at your computer and get engrossed in the fasab blog 🙂 , do a bit of work on your own blog, or just look for information on something you are interested in, and hey presto two hours have disappeared before you know it.

Same if you are watching a really good movie or play or show. It may last for two hours or more, but it seems an awful lot less.

And there are people you know and meet who are great company, are funny, tell good stories, and/or can hold interesting conversations on a variety of topics. Time seems to pass so quickly and so pleasantly when you are fortunate enough to be in that sort of company. 

Conversely, the more uninterested you are in something the slower time passes.

Ever gone to see a film that was particularly bad and that you thought was never going to end? Or a lecture by a boring speaker who made an hour seem like a day and your bottom give up and go to sleep? If you have you’ll know exactly what I mean.

I used to have an old aunt who had Alzheimers and occasionally I would go to stay with her to give my cousin a few hours break. Her sensible conversational skills were approaching zero at that stage in her disease, tv seemed to irritate her and so on, so there was little to do to pass the time.

I would go in to her house, sit down and glance at my watch. It would be something like, say, 7.30pm.

I’d try to coax a little chat out of her and fail; then read the newspaper for a while; then just close my eyes and have a rest or a think about what I needed to do tomorrow; and then after what I thought was at least a good 30 minutes or more I’d check my watch again.

It would say something like 7.34pm! Those 4 minutes had taken a half hour to pass. It was awful.

Then there are the drones, people who seem to be able to slow down time with their excruciatingly boring and meaningless conversation. A friend of mine from University days who went on to become an accountant turned into to one of those, obsessed with whatever budget he was trying to perfect he droned on and on and on about it. I don’t see him much these days. 

And that is the Fasab General Theory Of Relativity.

 

2. The Fasab Special Theory of Relativity

The Fasab Special Theory Of Relativity is a different concept to the General Theory just outlined. It is also harder to ‘prove’ in that the ability to experience it is not quite so immediate. But once again we have all experienced it, so here goes.

The Fasab Special Theory of Relativity states that time is perceived to pass faster the lower the proportion a unit of time is, when compared to how long we have lived.

Have you ever heard people say, or even said yourself, that the older you get the quicker the months and years seem to pass?

I’m sure there is a complex mathematical formula for something like this and if anyone cares to send it to me well and good. But for now let’s not bother complicating things.

The Fasab Special Theory of Relativity in simple terms can be summarized as Y/L = P, where ‘Y’ is a period of 1 year or 12 months; ‘L’ is a person’s current life term or age stated in months; and ‘P’ is the proportion of your current life that 1 year represents. The older you get the lower is the value of ‘P’ and the faster time is perceived to pass. 

For example, when you are a child a year seems like a long, long, long time. That is simply because when kids are five years old, twelve months is a large proportion of their lives, 12/60 or 1/5 or 20 percent.

However, by the time you reach 50 years of age, a year or 12 months is a much smaller proportion of your lifetime, 12/600 or 1/50 or just 2 percent.

Therefore the older you get, the quicker a year, or any unit of time for that matter, seems to pass.

I’m not happy about this. Time appears to be going in far too fast already. But like everyone else I seem to be stuck with it.

 

And that is a summary of the two Fasab theories of time and relativity.

 

It might be interesting to speculate how the two theories combine and what effect that has but, oh my goodness, is that the time? Must go!

 

===================================