TV Twerps.

What hell happened to good-quality Saturday morning television? In fact, what the hell happened to good-quality TELEVISION, never mind just on Saturdays?

I'm talking, of course, about the bloody 5:19 show on BBC Switch. There I was, looking for something decent to watch when on bounds a twerp of man-boy going by the name of Tom who insists on jumping about like an idiot and shouting incessantly. The main bulk of his shouting was "I'm well crazy, I am! Oooh, I'm so wacky!" Well OK, it wasn't quite like that, but it was close enough. No, Tom, you're not crazy... you're a twerp, and an insult to those who really are mentally ill.

Second twerp of the day came in the form of Channel 4's The TV Show. This particular episode really got my goat. They were discussing a programme that was recently aired which was basically a Big Brother for children. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Within hours some of the children were in tears and wanting their mums. Did anybody go in to comfort them? No. They left them crying. When fights broke out, did anybody intervene? No. I don't know about you, but I call this child abuse.

Final twerp of the day was Tony Robinson and his men on Time Team. Normally, I love the guy and usually find his programmes interesting, etc... I also have a passion for archaeology, hence my tuning into to Time Team. What bothers me about Time Team, isn't actually Tony Robinson himself - more his attitude and the attitudes of the others on the show. My issue is as follows:

They get upset when they don't find and 'finds'. Archaeology isn't about finding things, it's about learning about the past. So you don't find anything you think is worth talking about? So what! It's still important and it's still data. Jeez, stop moaning about how it's a waste of your time...

Time.

Time is a funny thing. Although time can be measured in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on and so forth... none of us are really all that tied to it - which I will attempt to explain later... I have been wondering of late where time comes from, and who decided how time works. Like, who decided how long a second was? Who worked out that 60 seconds made up 1 minute, and that 60 minutes made up 1 hour, and so on?

Dictionary.com (my best friend when my 'other' dictionary is not to hand) gives the follwing definitions of time:

1. the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) a system or method of measuring or reckoning the passage of time: mean time; apparent time; Greenwich Time.
3. a limited period or interval, as between two successive events: a long time.

Minutes caused me problems when trying to find definitions, in relation to time. As you see from the following explanation - again from dictionary.com:

1.	the sixtieth part ( 1/60 ) of an hour; sixty seconds.

2.	an indefinitely short space of time: Wait a minute!

3.	an exact point in time; instant; moment: Come here this minute!

We can time an exact minute, but when someone says to you - Wait a minute! How long do they actually make us wait? I have half a mind to time an exact minute but then wonder what the repercussions would be - a clip round the ear, perhaps for being both pedantic and childish. The same applies when someone says "Come here this minute" - I wonder how they would react if you took a whole minute to go to them... probably yet another clip around the ear.

Dictionary.com gives these definitions of seconds...

1. A unit of time equal to one sixtieth of a minute
2. A brief interval of time; a moment.
   

Hmmm... very short and sweet. No room for error there, I mean - you can't stretch it like you can a minute. Then again, when asked how long something will take, I have been known to say "Oh, just a second". Never has it taken me 'just a second' though, I always need a few more.

Ok, so all that's pretty straightforward. What about what Einstein thinks of time... According to what my digging has unearthed - time moves differently, depending on whether you're moving or not. Sounds weird? Of course it does. In 1971, scientists in the US used an atomic clock - apparently for it's accuracy - on a round-the-world trip and compared it to clocks that were left behind. Their findings were that the airborne clock had lost time. It has also been suggested that if a clock, in a spaceship travelling at light-speed, the clock would stop. In theory at least. Maybe one day scientists will figure out a way to test it and either prove or disprove it. I hope they do - at least then I'd know and wouldn't have to think about it any more.

Ok, so I failed to find adequate evidence to fully explore the concept of time - mostly because a lot of what I found was either total garbage or complete gobbledegook. Ah well, I guess I can think about that another time... ;-)