Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Thursday music link
"A stopped clock is right twice a day". But is it?
For what proportion of a day is a stopped clock wrong? It is wrong at all times during the day except when the position of its hands happens to correspond with the current time. But since time is continuous, this point has no duration. So there is actually no part of the day during which a stopped clock is right.
In general at this stage in my argument people object that most clocks don't usually move continuously; they tick. That can actually be disposed of similarly - such clocks are always wrong by the same argument (you could have a proverb "ah well, at least a clock with a discrete second hand is right 86,400 times a day, unless it is out of sync or phase in which case it is never right").
We have to also take into consideration though that human beings can only discriminate both time and the movement of clock hands with a certain degree of resolution. So there will be a short period of time twice a day when the fact that a stopped clock is wrong will not be observable. I therefore suggest the proverb "A stopped clock might appear to be right twice a day, but is actually still wrong". But I could be wrong about this.
Call Me. Ahhh Blondie were a great band.
this item posted by the management 4/01/2010 01:37:00 AM
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