Understanding Time . . . and the River
Mayflies When I was a kid, every spring there would be a massive invasion that looked like a snowstorm of big floppy-winged snowflakes. We euphemistically called them "Mayflies." When I was told that these flocks of shadflies only lived for 24 hours, I remember thinking "why bother?" If you are only going to live for 24 hours, why bother living at all? Other "Creatures of a day" Fast forward a couple of decades, and I'm reading Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound . Prometheus is being tortured for giving fire to mankind (bound to a mountainside, an eagle comes to eat his liver every day). The gods ask him, "Why did you give this property of the gods to creatures of a day?" Wait a minute! "Creatures of a day"--that's us; we human mortals. Cosmos Another couple of decades later, I'm watching the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddessy and Neil deGrasse Tyson is explaining that the history of our