4-minute read
Some content-producers (now there’s a sexy job-title, eh?) have adopted the helpful reading assistance tool which I have deployed just above, indicating the amount of time it is expected you will need to invest to read the piece upon which you are about to embark. That bit of intel provides you with the opportunity to abandon the reading exercise, justifying your decision by concluding that you simply can’t spare the time required to read it.
The ineffectiveness of this tool, to me, is that it fails to acknowledge that not all readers are created equal. As an example, I am a quite deliberate reader, one who savors the word-choices put forth by content-providers; Evelyn Wood devotees (i.e. speed-readers) might complete a reading exercise in half the time it takes me. Not to mention the many distractions which are lobbed at us as digital readers today. How many times have you charged into reading an article, when your attention is diverted by links to other articles, or advertising of some sort, including: “billboard,” “banner,” “leaderboard,” “super leaderboard/pushdown,” “portrait,” “skyscraper,” “medium rectangle,” “20 x 60,” or “interstitial,” ads? Don’t think you’ve encountered them? Spoiler alert. . .you have.
All this activity takes a toll on the accuracy of the reading assistance tool mentioned above. Perhaps the 5-minute read header ought to be recast as, “5-minute read, except that two minutes needs to be added, if you click on any of the embedded advertising, and twelve minutes is to be added if you click on any of the linked articles, and thirty-eight minutes needs to be added if any of those links features cat videos.”
From time immemorial, we have been obsessed with time, both keeping track of it, and attempting to determine where it went. In order to conduct a complete examination of time in our society, I think it appropriate to cite three examples of its usage in each of three segments: music; sports; and philosophy.
Music
Meredith Willson, included in his Music Man, a character, Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn, the mayor’s wife, who declares, “Tempus fugit,” which I recognize to mean, “Time flies,” in Latin; I took three years of Latin in high school, which enables me to translate mottos inscribed on many government buildings, and to decipher archaic sayings such as this one. The Shinn character was quoting Virgil, which is too high-brow even for me. Plus, she mispronounces it, with a soft “G,” rather than the proper Latin, hard “G”. By the way, Music Man is my favorite movie musical - you?
Jim Croce, with his hit, “Time in a Bottle,” ably represented 1970’s singer/songwriters. Croce, who died tragically in a plane crash at the age of thirty, also appears in my own personal, “Rock Stars who are Best-Served Appearing on Radio Only” list. That list would probably also have to include: Keith Richards, and Steven Tyler.
Dave Brubeck, whose classic jazz record album, “Time Out,” released in 1959, included Paul Desmond’s iconic, “Take Five,” which proved definitively that jazz could still swing big-time, in a time-signature other than 4/4 time. I performed, with a jazz band in high school, a composition by a trombonist named, Bill Watrous (who appeared with us as a guest soloist), entitled, “t.s., t.s.,” which was written in 11-1/2/4 time - now that was weird - I can’t even count that high.
Sports
Timeouts are common in many sports, enabling athletes to catch their breath, and allowing television networks to make money (by selling time). Upon Googling, “timeout,” I learned that in beach volleyball each team is allowed one thirty-second timeout per set, and there is a second thirty-second technical timeout in sets one and two, when the sum of both scores is equal to twenty-one - I’ll bet you didn’t know that, right?
Overtime is an exciting conclusion to a game which has ended in a tie, in major sports, such as basketball, hockey, and football; baseball utilizes its own personal label, “extra innings.” Sadly, most stadiums and arenas cut off beer sales in overtime and extra inning games, severely dampening fans’ overtime enjoyment.
“Time in the forty-yard dash” has long been a key metric at the NFL Scouting Combine, which is conducted to enable NFL teams to judge college player talent, in advance of the draft of players. In reviewing the top ten list of the fastest times in the forty-yard dash, I am able to recognize only one NFL player name, Champ Bailey. So, I’m not sure that this metric is really a meaningful judge of NFL success; fast is good, yes, but it seems that other things are probably more important, including throwing, catching, and tackling. By the way, the all-time fastest-time in the 40-yard dash recorded at the NFL Scouting Combine was logged by a guy named, John Ross, in 2017 - who?
Philosophy
Benjamin Franklin first said, “Time is money.” Now, Franklin is famous for having said many things, but I wonder how his contemporary, Alexander Hamilton, who is credited with founding the U.S, financial system, would have applied Franklin’s suggestion that time could be substituted for money in business transactions - “Can you make change for twenty minutes?” Wait, what?
Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” I believe some of Abe’s successors as president have put that theory to the test, and have proved the fallibility of his premise.
Andy Warhol, when he wasn’t busy painting Campbell’s Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, waxed poetic. His most-famous quote about time was, “They say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” Perhaps you’re more familiar with his suggestion that, “In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” I’m still waiting for my fifteen minutes, Andy.
If you made it all the way to the end of this column without abandoning ship, congratulations! That shows solid intestinal fortitude. And, if you accomplished it in less than four minutes, good for you - that’s how long it took me to read it.
Ah, well. . .time’s up.