where ignorance prevails

I had an English and philosophy teacher in my first and second year of university who viewed time as a sphere, each point touching all others. All moments occurred simultaneously and our perception of them sorted them out. Something like that. He was an astonishing man, Dr. Morgan was. My mind was never as sharp as when I was studying under him. He seems now to have passed out of existence; I left that university in 1983. An internet search includes yields only two solid results, one dated 1986. But if time is a sphere, then I am writing this at the same time I am seated in his classroom, marveling at his wit and intellect.

It is tempting for me to write that time is not real, instead only  a concept existing in people's heads and on their wrists. There are no clocks in a lion's den. But nature observes cycles and the seasons, so an argument can be made that time is not the sole property of humankind.

Not so, justice.

I have been a poker player for only about a year, but have driven cars for much longer, have been victimized by a break-in and have observed from the sidelines the public chatter about the downfalls and shortcomings of our legal system.

The guy who passes you on the right while you're observing the speed limit makes the light that you stop for. The player who calls you before the flop with only 2 8 suited hits his flush to crack your pocket Kings. Lou Pai  makes millions as a CEO in Enron while little old ladies die in the heat of energy-deprived California. The good and the innocent who die young.

I wrote earlier in these pages of how I have an overtly acute sense of justice - how minor and petty injustices provoke disproportionate response feelings of anger and outrage.

My intellectual self splits from my emotional self to advise that justice (perhaps like time) is an artificial concept, created by humans, imposed on the universe and existing absolutely nowhere else in nature.