jury duty and relativity

yesterday i was a true american and hung out at the multnomah county courthouse all day serving jury duty. it was really easy because all i did from 8am to about 415pm was sit in the jury assembly room and wait for my name to be called. but my name was never called. i didn't have to do a single thing. i considered bringing a book but then i had the crazy thought that i might actually be occupied while i was there so i didnt. i realized that i made a mistake after i was sitting around all morning so on the lunch break i walked home and got a book.

before i had the book i read through the handouts they gave us about the juror selection process and what happens during a trial and all that. and then i heard people talking to each other and asking questions that were covered explicitly in the handouts but i didnt say anything. also the lady who was in charge of calling our names told us there were books and magazines in the back if we were interested. so i went back to look at the books thinking that with a whole bookshelf full of books there would be something at least marginally interesting to read. but i realized that when she said books what she really meant were romance and other pop novels like James Patterson's The Lake House. and i'll read almost anything but i wasnt that desperate. so instead i sat in my chair and practiced not thinking and just listening to my environment. i really like doing that lately. i think its incredibly relaxing.

so when i got my book i started reading The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene which I have had since last year and just finally got around to starting. i'm really glad i did too because it is really informative and well-written so far and is a perfect follow-up to my summer physics curriculum which ended last friday. and while i was reading about it I realized that another good practice (in addition to the not thinking) is to constantly remind myself that I and everything around me are in constant motion even though we appear to be stationary. its good to remember these things that we all know to be true yet our second nature seems to contradict them. this concept is the basic idea behind relativity i think. and by the way the book said that Einstein published his paper on special relativity in june of 1905 which makes this summer the 100 year anniversary of the world's offical introduction to it. and since the idea that the measurement of something or someones speed will be different depending on the relative motion of whoever is measuring that speed is not so relevant to our daily lives (since for the tiny tiny tiny difference to be noticed in speeds common to our everyday experience the tools used to measure would have to be impossibly accurate), even after 100 years it is still not second nature to us. if it was maybe i could explain it in a way that would be incredibly clear to anyone reading it. i'll just have to keep reminding myself daily so that eventually it IS built in to my personal subconscious and so i understand the way the world really works as opposed to the way that everyone thinks it does.