Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Time Travel


If you could travel in time, would you? Would you go back, to be with someone who is no longer here? Or maybe go back to relive your childhood, either because it was pleasant, or because you wanted to change something? Perhaps you would like to travel into the future, so as to see what's going to happen, in order to prepare for it. Of course, we’d all like to go just far enough ahead to see the winning lottery numbers before we select ours! But haven’t you heard about the danger in messing with the fabric of the space-time continuum? If you’ve never had a discussion about that, then you haven’t hung around such geeky people as I have.

You'll enjoy at least some of these Photoshopped anachronisms.

A chiropractor claims he can go back in time.

Time travel spam.

The Time Travel Fund wants you to invest in “the future”. Or a bridge in Brooklyn.

This game is called Slow Motion, but the only thing slow about it is the load time. Its was fun, and easy to figure out.

A review of a new clock turned into a mini-seminar on the nature of time.

The Time-Travel resume. I guess someone had to do it.

Californian Temporal Discontinuities


It is widely held that time passes at the same rate everywhere, except as predicted by relativity theory. Anyone who has sat in a dentist's waiting room will realise that this is false. Dentist's waiting rooms are specially equipped with a device which slows down time in order to enable the patient to savour the anticipation fully.

It is my belief that the device used in the aforementioned waiting rooms was developed as an artificial version of the natural effects seen in California. Yes, in California time passes at different rates depending on the location. The granularity of this effect varies. A particular 'temporal bubble' may range in size from a few square inches to several tens of square miles. Within each bubble time passes at a different rate from the surrounding area. The bubbles do not remain stable and predictable, however--they come and go. Some seem to last longer than others.

I have many examples to support this theory, and I present a few of them now:

1) In my garden I saw a Narcissus come into flower in November. I contend that it was not 8 months late, nor 4 months early. For the bulb it *was* springtime.

2) Continents most certainly do drift. But the earthquakes that are so common in California are due to variations in relative drift rate caused by temporal discontinuities. The 'fault zones' actually mark the boundaries of the bubbles.

3) Very often at traffic lights the person at the front of the queue remains motionless, despite that fact that the lights went green ages ago. This is not because California drivers are a bunch of comatose cretins (as is commonly believed), but because the driver in question is caught in a small area, short duration CTD . For him, the light has not changed.

4) How else can one explain why computer manufacturers (so many of them based in California) publish speed ratings for their products which never seem to be achieved in the field? The manufacturer is not lying, the measurements were made in a CTD.

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time goes backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again."
"OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

5) There is some evidence that some CTD's may be so intense that time travels backwards in an affected area. This can result in events happening multiple times. For example, the same conversation with Sears three times:

"Would you like an extended warranty on your vacuum cleaner?"
"No thanks, and don't call me about it again." "OK."

This explains (in California at least) that terrible feeling of 'deja vu'...

It is important to realise that, while many Californian peculiarities can be ascribed directly to this phenomenon, the phenomenon itself has an unsettling effect on the human psyche. Thus those who have been exposed to the effects for a protracted period of time may appear to the rest of us to be 'a little strange'. This is to be expected, and the victims deserve our sympathy. I, for one, do not plan to place myself at risk, so I will be returning to the UK in August--unless I am offered a massive grant to research this fascinating subject in greater depth.

*****

You seen fake movie trailers before, but you’ve seen nothing like Titanic II. Prepare to be impressed.




Thought for today: When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil. -Jack Handey

14 comments:

  1. Back to the future? Nah. I'd probably screw something up and end up in a far worse place than I am.

    Whoever put that movie trailer together did an awesome job! Can't wait for the DVD to hit the shelves!
    :)

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  2. Interesting you assume time travel only works backwards, especially given that time travel forward is not only possible, but seems to be a proven fact.

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  3. But if I could travel backwards in time, I'd stop somewhere around the 14th or 15th Century, and reclaim my family's throne and my rightful place in royalty.

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  4. That Titanic spoof is VERY impressive. There are all sorts of scientific proofs that travelling BACK in time is impossible, but I'm not scientific enough to discuss them! All I know is that I'm too sensible to wanna go back, anyway. Well, not back before the 1950s.

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  5. Once again one of my favorite subjects. I have given a great deal of thought to this, beginning in my teens. A couple of books I loved: Time after Time, and The Time Traveler's Wife. Also loved the movie Somewhere in Time, and Happy Accidents. I often cry at the end of the Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever. Loved Terminator and Terminator 2. I'm a big time travel fan.

    If I could go back in time, and be young enough to enjoy it, I would go back to New York, 1929. I would make a killing shorting all the stocks in the stock market crash of 1929. I would then live in France (Paris and Nice) during the most of the 1930s, New York in the 1940s, and San Francisco during the 1950s (maybe NY also in 50s). These were great times to be alive and living in these cities. The arts were thriving, poets, painters, intellectuals. 'Course it ain't gonna happen, but it's fun to think about sometime.

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  6. Oh, I forgot the movie, Retroactive, with Jim Belushi. Funny, and thought provoking.

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  7. Carl, where did you get the idea I asssumed you could only travel backward in time? Did this post contain something like that? I travel forward in time every day!

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  8. Hi Miss Cellania, I'm not into time travel, forward or back, I am however nostalgic about the past, at my age there's been so bloody much of it !!

    Re your comment on Peters Pictures, sadly Jacaranda blossom? flowers have pretty nearly no smell/fragrance, but the purple carpet as the flowers fall is something to behold.

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  9. 12 Monkeys/La Jettée
    Back to the future, etc

    Love that time travel.

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  10. When my periodondist operated on me (for three hours), he gave me amphetamine to make the time seem to pass quicker.

    I don't view déjà vu as an unpleasant experience. ( I experienced it big time when in California in 1987)

    Regarding your extended discussion of California, I like California a lot, and that (CTD) must explain the reason why.
    Ed

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  11. bull poppy my friend rob's 45 and he's on myspace... given he's the creator of a cartoon show and acts 34, dates even younger, but still...

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  12. Ms. C. ~ I'm still trying to get "BACK TO THE PRESENT!" ~ jb///

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  13. Miss Cellania said...
    I travel forward in time every day!


    Technically, not quite: you are in the present. It is time that moves.

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