We just watched the time-travel episode of the MegaScience series on the science channel.
My boyfriend (the PhD in physics) was groaning at all the ridiculous theories. I fast forwarded through a lot of it so his head would not explode...
Or, another method of escapism, write a story. I think I'd put My Big Fat Geek Wedding on my Myspace page. The good thing about a never-finished story is you get to update it endlessly, and entertain God knows how many people God knows how long.
I would love to visit medieval England, if I could first be immunized against bubonic plague. I don't particularly believe in past lives, but I feel a "pull" toward that time and place that is not, to me, adequately explained by my trace of English ancestry.
I think if time travel into the past was really possible our future humans would be buying-to-let holiday homes in our present. Also I think if we want to experience our 1st world past all we need to do is travel to central Africa, etc.
Ever wonder where aliens really come from?
I do not believe it to be absolutely true, but rather a possibility that the aliens are not aliens at all. They are our evolved descendants from 100,000 years or so in the future. If they have the technology to build those really cool flying saucers with anti-gravity drive, then they might also know how to travel through time. They have been quietly observing their own development of civilization and technology at thousands of strategic points in space and time in an effort to document such development for the ultimate library of historical knowledge, where all information is gathered directly at the source. (Either that or they're just getting hi-def footage for a hyped documentary on the History Channel Intergalactic.)
But, I'm not sure how abductions and Roswell would fit into this theory. Abductions especially result in deliberate intervention with their own past, thereby disrupting the space-time continuum and jeopardizing their own existence. I suppose they have a rather lax Temporal Prime Directive.
Maybe the past is more advanced than you think.
1. The ancients know more than we in Western civilization give them credit for. Timbuktu and the Muslim societies of Africa (Kunta Kinte) seem really advanced after all. The Muslims were keeping learning alive when we Europeans substituted dogma and superstition for enlightened study. The Muslims in Spain had much to share with the Christians in Spain.
2. When you look at the Bagavad Gita talking of detailed accounts of nuclear fireballs, blast, fallout, firestorms, and radiation sickness, and you find radioactive skeletons in Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus Valley near Pakistan where the ruins look like they were suddenly destroyed, do you think J. Robert Oppeinheimer really thought nuclear weapons were invented before what we call history, when he answered a student:
Student: Were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagaski the first bombs ever used?
Oppeinheimer: Well yes, in modern times, of course.
Conversation reported in a secondary source, Doomsday 1999, by Charles Berlitz, Jr., 1982
As for me, if I could travel through time, I would want to go to Nikola Tesla's lecture before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, NY on May 20, 1891. It was there that he introduced to the world spectacular displays and applications of high voltage, high frequency phenomena. I would also want to see his display at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Plus, I would prevent, or at least warn him of the March 13, 1895 fire that destroyed his lab and ultimately his reputation. Then he might have had the funds to complete his Wardenclyffe Tower for wireless power transmission. If he had succeeded, our modern world might be very different, indeed. I suppose there's no Temporal Prime Directive for me, either.
In the time travel piece I wrote for myself, by myself, I became the boyfriend of my female classmate who was hoping to become a pediatrician. I don't think that would have worked, actually. She had an Air Force dad and had to study all the time. I had no car or license.
I wrote one movie, one sequel, and a TV series.
One humorous snippet from one story:
[context: the both of us and two others are transported from 1987 to 1992 to save our lives, and until we are sent back, we are missing in 1987.]
"Now Rachel's been gone three days." Major Dad said. (Actually I am ignorant of her dad's actual rank) "I hate to think they ran off and got married."
"Maybe his mom knows where they are." his wife suggested.
"That's the ticket, call Mrs. Marsh." She gave him a look. "Rachel Marsh." Another look. "His mom!"
"Hello. Major," the real Mrs. Rachel Marsh said, "you say she's been missing since Saturday, she got a doughnut (failing grade) from Mr. Prevas for missing class and she's missed her first day of school since kindergarten?"
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Time travel and parallel universes are always great. I've always been one of those who's liked to imagine that the stuff I and other people write about might just be real in some place far away.
That would be cool.
My only worry if I time-travelled is that I would be stuck.
I would not go back in time.
To many diseases and uncultivated human beings.
Take 1340-1350
Go to Russia in the 1930s, knock off Stalin, take some 21st Century military/civilian (if I had such things
) technology, establish a Corporatocracy in Russia begin trading relationships with the USA and England, nip Hitler in the bud...
then go back, sit back, and enjoy MY 21st Century
Religion would be tolerated, as with most modern societies.
it would merely be economically different
and with a stronger governmental structure ran in the style of a corporation, everything would be made by the same entity, no competition etc
Is this corporatism, Ian? I heard about it in grad school sociological theory, comparative economic systems. I even had a chance to read John Gurley's books on capitalism vs. communism, and read that Reagan had defeated communism a number of ways, jacking up defense spending, getting the Saudis to flood the world with oil too cheap for the Soviets to match, making the USSR go bankrupt.
As far as i'm aware the only thing Corporatism shares with Corporations is the name, Corporatism is a version of Fascism apparently..
My idea is based on the fact I believe businesses are inherantly more efficient than most governments ;p