The September issue of "Scientific American" is usually/always devoted to some special theme. This issue is ostensibly devoted to "Time" and problems associated with it. Articles include some physics articles, some perception/psychology articles, and one or two on clocks and timepieces.
Sad to say, "Sci Am" has fallen far from its once lofty perch. Flipping through the issue at a boostore, I found the first _half_ of the thin magazine devoted to advertising, general news, and a special 20-plus-page insert devoted to Italy and its industries, blah blah. Once the articles started, they were of course no longer the meaty, detailed dozen or so solid articles. (Used to be the special September issues were thicker than usual!) The articles were short, filled with colorful graphics (but with less content than the SciAm graphics of the 1950s-recent), but carried little information. The articles may be of use in introducing people to notions like "block time," but the entire idea is covered in just a few paragraphs. Not much to go on. Paul Davies does one of the physics articles on time...nothing in his article not covered in much more detail in the books by Huw Price, Julian Barbour, Kip Thorne, and others. I didn't buy the issue. Meanwhile, my study of lattice and order continues. I'll say more in the future (if it exists, that is). --Tim May (.sig for Everything list background) Corralitos, CA. Born in 1951. Retired from Intel in 1986. Current main interest: category and topos theory, math, quantum reality, cosmology. Background: physics, Intel, crypto, Cypherpunks
