"time is hydraulic"

The New York Times has discovered a unique way to state the obvious and call it news. They report on a survey that has been exploring the social consequences of the Internet, and reveal the researchers' shocking conclusions: Time spent on the Internet is time taken away from other activities.

DUH ... I guess this is what people are meant to do with their Ph.Ds.

Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, probably spent thousands of dollars in grant funds ascertaining that use of the Internet has displaced television watching and a range of other activities. As if he's just discovered the wheel, he says, "People don't understand that time is hydraulic."

Time is hydraulic? You mean, like, fluid and, uh, pushes us around?

(According to Webster's Online Dictionary, hydraulic means "Conveyed, operated, effected, or moved by means of water or other fluids.")

Is he claiming we can't do two things at once? There isn't time for everything? We have to make choices? Yeaaaahhh, I think we did figure that out, Mr. Nie.

But calling time hydraulic almost makes it sound like a new religion. Spiritual, and yet so hi-tech.

Thank you, New York Times, for that moment of zen.