Talk:2013-01-18 49 -123

I don't want to disrespect the deer when asking about another detail that appears to be far less significant, but still is making me curious: Robyn was three minutes early to pick up Wade, and consequently waited two minutes and thirty seconds for him emerge from the building to board the vehicle. Thirty seconds seem to be missing in this calculation. Is it because (a) anything up to 30 s doesn't count as waiting, or is it because (b) there is a rule not known to others saying that Wade is always 30 s ahead of a schedule, especially when the goal is getting out of work ;-) --Zb 09:16, 19 January 2013 (EST)

I guess it just means he left the building at 17:39:30, escaping from work half a minute earlier than announced. --Calamus 10:13, 19 January 2013 (EST)

I emerged from the building 30 seconds before the pickup time because I went straight to my motorcycle, locked my helmet to the bike and took my snow pants out of the pannier before getting into the car. This action was expected to (and did) take 30 seconds. I may have left the building 30 seconds before the expected pickup, but I was exactly on time. ---Wade 12:22, 19 January 2013 (EST)

I think my watch was 30 seconds behind Wade's I think he got to the car 30 seconds early. Robyn 13:26, 19 January 2013 (EST)

Now it starts to get confusing all the more and I feel like I get it all the less. --Zb 16:14, 19 January 2013 (EST)

Without loss of generality, we'll call Wade's watch the actual time. I arrived at 17:37:00 by my watch, which was really 17:37:30. Wade left the building at 17:39:30, which on my watch was 17:39:00. He spent 30 seconds walking to his motorbike and mucking around with stuff on the bike, then got in the car at 17:40:00, which was 17:39:30 by my watch. I then spend about 90 seconds waiting for there to be no pedestrians on the sidewalk and no cars in the curb lane so I could pull out and continue to Rhonda's. And then later we hit a deer, which really screwed up our timing.

Actually, it's pretty straightforward if you take into account (a) the gravitational time dilation induced by all the buildings around, (b) that Robyn moved at high velocity while Wade was mostly stationary, resulting in a different subjective time pace, (c) that there is no reality outside of human perception and (d) that Robyn's watch is off by half a minute relative to Wade's. In two words, measurement error. --Calamus 16:56, 19 January 2013 (EST)