An interesting experiment - or perhaps it is merely an optical illusion - has been circulating around the internet and cultivating an interesting discussion surrounding the nature of time. Try it here.

Therein, one stares at a clock, any old-school big-hand / little-hand / second-hand style will work. Without too much practice, one can observe that the second-hand becomes "sticky". It will literally stop dead on the clock for several seconds -and this phenomenon has caused quite a bit of reaction and speculation. The best and most cognizant of these theories are summarized in the follow-up post, Why Did Time Stop? Further explorations in tachypsychia, a term used by psychologists to describe the subjective experience of time, can be found below.

Last year’s tsunami claimed 300,000 people’s lives. However, the Moken – or sea gypsies (explore National Geographic’s interactive feature on them) – of Thailand, have a tradition which warns that when tides recede far and fast then a man-eating wave will soon head their way: so they should run far and fast. Last December they did – and survived. (Full story at The Observer.)

Scientists have recently found special neurons in the brainstem of rats which focus exclusively on new, novel sounds and help them ignore predictable and ongoing noises. These novelty detector neurons, as researchers call them, quickly stop firing if a sound or sound pattern is repeated. They will briefly resume firing if some aspect of the sound changes. The implications are, as usual, that we humans may be like rats.

Good art has the power to move us beyond our normal modalities. In this particular case, our experience of letters —the elemental units of words and thoughts— just might mutate, or perhaps merely shift, ever so subtly, after exploring Andreas Müller’s For All Seasons.

Similar to Maeda’s calendar work these typographical forays into the four seasons are a wonderful answer to the melancholy of a rainy, cold, windy autumn day.

This month’s Discover magazine features a colorful and well-written cover story about the Clock of the Long Now, a clock that’s being masterfully engineered to remain on Earth for 10,000 years (that’s twice as long as the Great Pyramid of Giza) and to keep impeccably precise time along the way. It has yet to be built although an extraordinary prototype is currently on display at the Science Musuem in London. It is a unique clock not only in function and scope but in almost every other way: design, power system, mechanics, placement, and philosophy. Just a small example: it tracks leap centuries. Think about it. In our disposable culture, something that lasts 400 human generations is almost incomprehensible.

There’s a great little article in last week’s New York Times, Down For The Count which overviews recent scientific research on sleep.

“Sleep has attracted a tremendous amount of attention in science, but we really don’t know what sleep is.”