What is reality?

I think the first time I heard that question was about 40 years ago on a Firesign Theatre album, but I have been dealing with it recently in a book I have been reading to my wife at night. Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos" has old non-scientific me thinking a lot more about science than I have since the last time I took a science class in the spring of 1978. I believe it was Chemistry then, but this is Physics.

[caption id="attachment_840" align="alignright" width="98" caption="An interesting book"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/51dL2rs24mL._SL160_.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-840" title="51dL2rs24mL._SL160_" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/51dL2rs24mL._SL160_.jpg" alt="" width="98" height="160" /></a>[/caption]

Anyway, the part of this book that we've gotten through so far has dealt with space, time and spacetime.

Greene essentially seems to be saying there's really no such thing as the past, and there's barely a present since every moment we're in the present disappears as soon as the next one comes along. I know I'm oversimplifying right here -- what else could I do -- but I'm in way over my head.

Except when it comes to the past.

When it comes to the past, I'm a big advocate of Bill Faulkner, who wrote that "the past isn't dead. In fact, it isn't even past."

Greene writes that with spacetime being what it is, "If you were having a great time on New Years Eve 1999, you are still having a great time on New Year's Eve 1999."

So does that mean it's still April 1970 and I'm dating Shelley Marcus and reading the first issue of the<em> National Lampoon</em>?

How's that for a segue? I just received the DVD-ROM containing every one of the 246 issues of the<em> Lampoon</em>, and I've been wading through the first few issues, laughing at stuff I haven't seen in nearly 40 years.

Ain't time wacky?
<p style="text-align: center;">***</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Just for the record, I walked again today, eight miles through the countryside outside McDonough. It's odd because I haven't really found a route I want to repeat over and over again, but I have exercised five days in a row now and that's worth something.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Or am I still exercising?</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Go away, Brian Greene.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;"></p>