[I]f you imagine two NOWs... there will be some difference between them, and if you work out some weighted average of all of that difference... you c… - Julian Barbour

In fact, I once had a discussion with a distinguished astrophysicist who said to me, well, this is what Mach said, and this is what Mach did and what he required. And I said to him, now excuse me, if you don't mind me saying, what you've just told me is your interpretation of Dennis Sciama's interpretation of Einstein's interpretation of Mach. And he said you're quite right. I’ve never read a word of Mach.

[I]n 1898... Henri Poincaré wrote... "On the Measure of Time" and he said... there are two fundamental problems to do with time. One... with the definition of duration... What does it mean to say that a second today is the same... [H]e said there's another issue... [not] so widely recognized. ...[H]ow do you define simultaneity at spatially separated points?

[A NOW] has no duration. ...[I]t's absolutely instantaneous. There is no thickness to it. Nothing changes. ...So these s, in one sense, are truly eternal, because they never change, and on the other hand, because nothing changes, they are experienced as a flash. ...[It]'s a nice contradiction... [T]he eternal is experienced as a flash, because nothing changes.