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A nice little musical number capturing the essence of time not as a passing, but as a collection of endless, seemingly meaningless moments.

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NOT THE OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO - i take no credit for the footage shot in this movie, i only compiled it together into a video for my entertainment. i hope you enjoy it as well

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The storytelling mechanism at play here is that Billy is 'unstuck at time', in which he can hop from any point in his life whenever he wants. This is further explained with Tralfamadorian philosophy- yep, there are aliens in Slaugherhouse-Five, but that's for you to discover within the book- but this article more or less covers this 'unstuck in time' theory in a reality based element.

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Is your future already decided? New theory of time suggests that the past, present AND future co-exist in the universe

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of philosophy has presented a new theory of time

Dr Bradford Skow says the idea that time flows like a river is not correct

Instead he claims space-time is a 'block universe' where the past, present and future all exist together

If we were to look down upon the universe, we would see time spread out

But he adds the present is not a 'spotlight' in time - but rather we are in a 'temporally scattered' condition

The old adage that 'time is like a river', suggesting that we move through it like a ship sailing on water, may be wrong.

A new theory claims that time does not move forward, but rather, everything in time is ever-present.

According to the theory, if we were to 'look down' upon the universe, we would see time spread out in all directions, just as we see space at the moment.

The intriguing theory was put forward by Dr Bradford Skow, an associated professor of philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In his new book, Objective Becoming, he examines some of the theories that have been postulated to explain time.

'When you ask people, "Tell me about the passage of time," they usually make a metaphor,' he said.

'They say time flows like a river, or we move through time like a ship sailing through the sea.'

Another theory states that the present is a 'spotlight' that moves from the past to the future, with us being located in the spotlight as it moves forward.

Dr Skow, however, said he 'wouldn't want to believe in that unless I saw good arguments for it.'

Rather, he favours a theory known as the 'block universe', which states that the past, present and future already exist.

Dr Skow said that he does not think events sail past us and vanish forever - instead, they exist in different parts of space-time.

'The block universe theory says you're spread out in time, something like the way you're spread out in space,' Dr Skow said.

'We're not located at a single time.'

Instead he says we are in a 'temporarily scattered' condition.

He asserts that our passage through space-time is not like a spotlight - and the experiences you had yesterday, last week, or even years ago are all real.

But he says time travel between the different times is not possible, as we are now in a different part of space-time.

His theory follows another postulated by scientists back in December.

They proposed that at the moment of the Big Bang, a 'mirror universe' to our own was created that moves in the opposite direction through time - and intelligent beings in each one would perceive the other to be moving backwards through time.

The radical theory was proposed by Dr Julian Barbour of College Farm in the UK, Dr Tim Koslowski of the University of New Brunswick in Canada and Dr Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, also in Canada.

Their research attempts to answer questions that remain about the 'arrow of time' - which is the concept that time is 'symmetric' and everything moves forwards.

They say that at the time of the Big Bang not one but two universes formed - both moving equally in each direction through time, but opposite to each other.

This universe would not be exactly the same as ours, though; it would have evolved and changed in its own way, completely separate to our own.

However, it would be subject to the same laws of physics, so it would likely have planets, stars and galaxies just like in our version of the cosmos.

And Dr Barbour told MailOnline the theory could open up a new way to think about the Big Bang.

'At the moment when people talk about the Big Bang, they more or less throw their hands up in despair and say they can't say what happened,' he said.

'Now our work is beginning to suggest we can actually say more than people thought.'

Which theory of time proves to be correct, though - Dr Skow's block universe, the mirror universe or perhaps another - remains to be seen.

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Theory of time suggests the past, present and future are all 'real'

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A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of philosophy has presented a new theory of time Dr Bradford Skow says the idea that time flows like a river is not correct Instead he claims space-time is a 'block universe' where the past, present and future all exist together If we were

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More than 3,900 tons of firebombs were dropped on Dresden- resulting in more than 10,000 deaths.

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More than 3,900 tons of firebombs were dropped on Dresden- resulting in more than 10,000 deaths.

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Below a pile of bodies await cremation after the firebombing.

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I was unable to record myself talking about this amazing book, but I will still try to formulate my feelings on it in writing. Starting with the summary, Slaughterhouse-Five is the story of Billy Pilgrim, a man who suffers from PTSD from being a POW in WW2, but postieriers an ability to be 'unstuck in time' which is the theory of being able to see his life all at one time. He travels back and forth between his life as a war prisoner, to being kept in an alien zoo and learning about time. It's a ride. Slaughterhouse-Five was one of the most entertaining, cerebral and thoroughly rewarding books I have ever read. It is so boundless and so ambitious it blows my mind how this was even created. It has so much nuance and wit. I haven't been able to take it off my mind. It's funny, heartbreaking, challenging and it flipped my thoughts of everyday reality and I saw the world in a slightly different way after reading it. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely recommended.

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...it's fascinating to me that Kurt Vonnegut wrote this book with himself inside the book. Firstly, he is the narrator, and in the first chapter speaks from first person as himself before we go on to the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. What's fascinating to me is that for one, what I think is the idea, is that Kurt is playing with the idea of traditional story structure. Kurt recognizes many times within the book that it is just a book, and on top of that the book begins with the lines, "All of this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true."  Slaughterhouse-Five is semi-autobiographical, as Kurt Vonnegut himself was there in WW2 and was a survivor of the Dresden bombings. Chapter 1 is literally his account of the actual events that occurred. Kurt also interrupts the story in some moments to interject that he was there. By literally putting himself inside the book, recognizing it is just a story, and telling the story completely out of order, he tears down all writing conventions to create something wholly new and uniquely cerebral.

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Edgar Derby is a middle aged school teacher who becomes a soldier in the war, and then becomes a POW with Billy. He is introduced at the beginning of the book, but only action is getting executed near the end simply for stealing a teapot from the rubble of Dresden. The point being that his death is so anticlimactic that Billy's only reaction is, "So it goes," a remark on the passivity of fate. Since the protagonist Billy Pilgrim is 'unstuck in time', he sees all time all at once. The future cannot be changed and so then free will is nonexistent. Things just happen, and that's life. So it goes.

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The last words of the book are spoken by a bird Billy encounters, "Poo-tee-weet?" is a senseless phrase that symbolizes the senselessness of war itself, and namely the 4,000 bombs dropped on Dresden. Considering the absolute madness that the book goes over in just around 200 or more pages (give or take depending on the edition read) with the narrative springing all over time with no linear timeline, what else could be a more fitting response than, "Poo-tee-weet?"

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What Billy says to his daughter when asked what it was like to be in the war. Of course, ironic, as a way of dealing with his PTSD. Using large generalizations is also a way to shy away from detail- a technique Vonnegut uses here to relay just how unspeakable the horrors of war really are.

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Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away.

Dresden had been spared the destruction suffered by other cities like Berlin and Hamburg, and Renner clung to the hope that the Saxon capital would stay off the target list with the war so clearly near its end.

Even as air-raid sirens started screaming 70 years ago Friday, Renner's father dismissed the attack as another reconnaissance mission.

Then a bomb fell into Renner's backyard. It blew the thick oak door off the shelter where the family had taken refuge, slamming him and his mother to the ground. Somebody yelled that the roof was on fire, and they ventured out into the streets as the bombs rained down.

The Allied decision to firebomb Dresden - immortalized in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five" - has long been a source of controversy.

At the time, the Allies hoped the attack on a city deep in the German heartland would hit hard at civilian morale and help force the Nazis to capitulate. Some historians, however, said the destruction was a tragic waste of human life and cultural patrimony - with little to no effect on the outcome of the war.

Speaking at a memorial event in the rebuilt center of the city Friday, German President Joachim Gauck assured dignitaries from Britain and other former Allied nations, "You should know that we bear no lasting grudge."

The raids, which began on Feb. 13, 1945, left the city littered with corpses. Tens of thousands of Dresden's buildings were turned to rubble, including its famous opera house and museums in the historic old city. The baroque Church of Our Lady, appeared to have survived but, weakened by the intense heat, it collapsed two days after the bombing.

As Renner wandered the streets, he saw a dead body for the first time in his life. In the days to come, he would see many more. Renner remembers the streets still being littered with bodies a week after the attack and coming across the corpse of a woman in a square.

"She was burned to a cinder, had become very small, but her hand was held up, and on it was her gold wedding band - shining, not blackened at all," said the 82-year-old retired architecture professor. "I will never forget this scene."

It was not just the bombs dropped by the waves of British and U.S. bombers that wreaked devastation. The fire made superheated air rise rapidly, creating a vacuum at ground level that produced winds strong enough to uproot trees and suck people into the flames. Many Dresden residents died of collapsed lungs.

Renner's family made it safely to the home of one of his dentist father's patients. They were able to stay the night and regroup. After that they moved in with an uncle.

Nazi propaganda from 1945 put the death toll at 200,000. After the war, some scholars estimated as many as 135,000 had been killed - more than the combined total of those immediately killed by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After neo-Nazis began inflating the figure further, talking of 500,000 to 1 million victims of a "bombing Holocaust," the city established an expert commission to investigate. It concluded in 2008 that closer to 25,000 people were killed in the attack.

Whatever the number, Renner mourns the victims as friends, schoolmates and neighbors. Even if the Allies thought it would shorten the war, he thinks the bombing was unjustifiable.

"To sacrifice 25,000 woman and children, innocent people for that? That's a war crime," he said. "We started the war, but it is a war crime."

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Dresden bombing 70 years ago is still fresh for survivors | The Japan Times

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Soviet troops were pressing into Germany from the east and the other Allies from the west, but for 12-year-old schoolboy Eberhard Renner the war seemed far away. Dresden had been spared the destruction suffered by other cities like Berlin and Hamburg, and Renner clung to the hope that the Saxon capital would stay off the target list with the war so clearly near its end.

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The body of a Nazi Stormtrooper lies inside the bomb shelter of an apartment building on John Street, Dresden, Germany, 1945.

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The body of a Nazi Stormtrooper lies inside the bomb shelter of an apartment building on John Street, Dresden, Germany, 1945.

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Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the
Promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue
Sky?