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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: If you could travel back in time...
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Pancho
Shipmate
# 13533
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Posted
[Tangent]
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
It reminds me of once trying to drive 500 miles from LA to SF on 'the small roads' ( ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ) and sensing that to me, an outsider, California was pretty self-similar - whereas I can find a lot of (geographic, linguistic, cultural) variety around my city on a pushbike, in a 50 mile trip.
If you had just stuck to cruising around Los Angeles on a pushbike I bet you twenty Korean barbecue tacos that you would've found just as much or more variety as in your city. The same goes for San Francisco (and you would've done a lot more wheezing on those hills).
[/Tangent]
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“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’"
Posts: 1988 | From: Alta California | Registered: Mar 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Sandemaniac: I ccan think of one of my ancestors I'd like to travel back in time to meet, if only to find out where the bloody hell he vanished to in 1832 - he just disappears from the records, no burial, no nothing.
1832 you say? Was that in England? I may have taken him to a party on the planet New Byzantium in the year 5947 and, er ... accidentally forgotten him there.
[ 16. November 2014, 20:01: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Sandemaniac
Shipmate
# 12829
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
1832 you say? Was that in England? I may have taken him to a party on the planet New Byzantium in the year 5947 and, er ... accidentally forgotten him there.
Oh, so it's your fault? Outside - now! I'll give you time travel - I'll kick your backside into next week!
(just kidding, mods!)
AG
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"It becomes soon pleasantly apparent that change-ringing is by no means merely an excuse for beer" Charles Dickens gets it wrong, 1869
Posts: 3574 | From: The wardrobe of my soul | Registered: Jul 2007
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mark_in_manchester
not waving, but...
# 15978
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Posted
quote:
If you had just stuck to cruising around Los Angeles on a pushbike I bet you twenty Korean barbecue tacos that you would've found just as much or more variety as in your city.
I was in a dodgy hostel in Venice Beach, where the proprietor hired me a dodgy push bike. Hollywood Blvd was only an inch away on the map... ... G*d knows how many miles and 10,000 traffic lights and used-car lots later, I reached it having narrowly avoided joining the freeway. The tarmac had been laid with a generous helping of glass particles (to make it sparkle, glamorously?) but to my by-then jaundiced eye, accustomed to inner-city life in a northern UK city, it looked like there'd recently been a riot. Then one of my pedals fell off.
Up around the reservoir by the 'Hollywood' sign was nice, mind. And SF was nice too, in that public transport existed and (sorry Pancho) it wasn't LA! But public loos had no doors. Ah, for the days when I used to travel.
cheers
Mark
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"We are punished by our sins, not for them" - Elbert Hubbard
(so good, I wanted to see it after my posts and not only after those of shipmate JBohn from whom I stole it)
Posts: 1596 | Registered: Oct 2010
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
You need some ground rules here. If you are simply going to survey the past, there is no need for true human travel at all. Any more than there is a need to send a human being to stand on a comet. Send a drone, with a camera, and get a nice view of your church through the ages without any stress.
Accosting Jesus you might get away with -- it says so in the Gospel, that tons of things happened with Him that did not get written down, and why should you not be one of them? But tinkering with the past, especially your own past, should have some interesting paradoxical effects that you might wish to evade. (Long list of SF novels assumed to be placed here.)
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Accosting Jesus you might get away with -- it says so in the Gospel, that tons of things happened with Him that did not get written down, and why should you not be one of them? But tinkering with the past, especially your own past, should have some interesting paradoxical effects that you might wish to evade. (Long list of SF novels assumed to be placed here.)
That is only assuming that you can have a paradoxical effect. But to do that, you have to assume that, when you travel in time, you are essentially seeing a "replay" of history where you can do something different from what actually happened. But history doesn't replay just because you are traveling. As Isaac Asimov (or is it "Isac Aasimov," I can never remember) observed in one of his stories, when you travel in time, you join the history that you inherited. You literally cannot "change" history. That has interesting philosophical issues for the concept of free will, but allows you to time travel with impunity because you literally cannot change what has already happened.
Note to self: Really should avoid posting when drunk.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I have written three time-travel novels, in which I have succeeded in uniting the concept of free will with that of quantum mechanics. I'll let everybody know when they are published.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
I think the best rebuttal of time travel nonsense that I have seen for a while was in a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, when they were talking about "Back to the Future". Sheldon proved conclusively(!) that the whole premise was shot to bits.
I must admit that whilst I enjoy the "what if" ideas of going back in time, I find all films and TV programmes that have time travel to be riddled with absurdities. Some, like BTTF, are fun and so you can suspend disbelief for the duration. But others just leave me screaming at the scream. I could just about take "Quantum Leap", but even then I wanted to ask the question "OK, so you've righted a terrible wrong - but what other things have you thrown out of kilter as a result?"
Although I am a great Asimov fan, I can't remember the story that Hedgehog refers to. But it seems that Asimov (as so often was the case) came to a clever answer to the normal time travel paradoxes. History is history and you can't redo it.
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
Mohenjo-Daro, the great ancient and, I think, remarkably sophisticated city in the Indus alley, vanished for several millennia.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Sandemaniac: I ccan think of one of my ancestors I'd like to travel back in time to meet, if only to find out where the bloody hell he vanished to in 1832 - he just disappears from the records, no burial, no nothing.
1832 you say? Was that in England? I may have taken him to a party on the planet New Byzantium in the year 5947 and, er ... accidentally forgotten him there.
Or my great-grandfather, who apparently shot through somewhere about 1889, leaving his eldest son to bully his mother and siblings until someone put him in an Industrial School.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
Although I am a great Asimov fan, I can't remember the story that Hedgehog refers to. But it seems that Asimov (as so often was the case) came to a clever answer to the normal time travel paradoxes. History is history and you can't redo it.
Oh dear. For a story that I remember so much about, I can't recall the title. I am almost certain it was Asimov. The basic plot is that a group of scientist have developed time travel. A whacko breaks in and gets into the machine to go back and change history. The scientists calculate that the time machine will take 3 days to get back the 500 (or whatever it was) years that the guy was heading for. They sit around fretting that, in 3 days time, the world and history will change because of this.
But then, as the last moments are ticking off before the 3-day time limit runs out, a wise man tells them not to worry. History is made of such little coincidences. How did you meet your wife? She sneezed and I turned around and said "God bless you"--but what if she hadn't sneezed? You never would have met. History would be changed if even a slight thing was altered. A person going back would make a major change. But you are worried about 3 days when the villain is going back 500 years (or whatever). 3 days is nothing in that time. He is already there. Has already been there. Has always been there. This is the future that was created by him going back. Nothing will change.
Yes, this is how my memory works. I can remember darn near everything about the story except the name. And I am a little shaky about the author. But the plot? That I remember in detail. I distinctly remember that the "how did you meet your wife" bit was in there.
Does it sound familiar to anybody?
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
There's one about the G&S play Thespias (or something like that),
And the one where the guy goes back to Greece which sounds like it (except has another twist-which I think gives it's title).
In which case it is Asimov but I can't remember it's name and I thought I'd know it if I see it.
Posts: 1643 | Registered: May 2006
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
For Time paradox fiction, read Wyndham - he posed some interesting questions, and looked at implications.
I too have published a time-travel-type book (Bubbles) - see my sig.
The thing is, you can never really have a paradox, because a)the events have happened, and so our recorded versions are set; and b) our memories of events are very flexible and unreliable, especially more than a few days past. For them to be adjusted, or demonstrated to be wrong, would not cause too much trouble.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
Recently, I really enjoyed Kate Atkinson's, Life After Life with a protagonist who was determined to kill Hitler. She didn't so much time travel as keep being re-born until she finally got it right. We see a bit of how each of her lives caused changes in the lives around her. It was presented as though we had parallel alternative worlds to chose from. It was fiction, not science fiction, so don't judge. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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Sherwood
Shipmate
# 15702
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Posted
If it's a probe being sent, I'd send one to record my paternal Great-Grandfather's life in five year chunks. Not going into detail here, but there are some issues that I'd like to get some more info on as far as my father and his side of the family are concerned.
If it's going in a TARDIS, I'd so go and meet my maternal Great-Uncle Arthur. He was a funny guy and died when I was 2, so I don't remember him at all.
As for big events:
1. Coronation of William the Conqueror.
2. Go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury before the Reformation.
3. Watch the dramatic reading of 'Dracula' at the Lyceum with Bram Stoker.
Posts: 62 | From: Finland | Registered: Jun 2010
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sherwood:
2. Go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury before the Reformation.
That could be good. You'd need to travel in a large group to avoid being robbed, and try not to stay in dodgy taverns, but interesting otherwise.
I wouldn't mind doing one to Jerusalem. (Famous last words, as I'm suddenly transported to the Med and faced with a rickety old boat with a drunken crew as the only means of getting there.)
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
Recently, I really enjoyed Kate Atkinson's, Life After Life with a protagonist who was determined to kill Hitler. She didn't so much time travel as keep being re-born until she finally got it right. We see a bit of how each of her lives caused changes in the lives around her. It was presented as though we had parallel alternative worlds to chose from. It was fiction, not science fiction, so don't judge.
I think it is a debatable distinction - a wonderful book, but I would call it science fiction. Constant rebirth - with some residual memory - sounds like SF to me.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
Well good then. I'm glad you liked it too, I was afraid all the SF fans on board would find it too fanciful and lacking in hard science.
Posts: 6817 | Registered: May 2002
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
By definition time travel (and FTL) are at the very borders of hard SF. Since Einsteinian physics says they are impossible, you know. (But! there are always wiggles. I wrote an entire novel around the idea that if you could prove time travel, you could prove FTL. And a time machine is cheaper to build than a star ship....)
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I'd love to meet some of my Scottish ancestors, the ones who made the decision to sail to NZ, but before they left. Most particularly I'd like to meet Catherine Wilson Sellar, who made the decision for her husband and children, booked passage, found him a job and then cheerfully set about learning to live in a raupo shack on the shores of Lake Taupo, with not another European woman within 400 km. My mother just remembers her, and family legend says she was kind and very funny.
I'm guessing I wouldn't be able to understand her very well, so I'll need a babelfish.
In a sadder way, I'd like to go back to 1898 to find out what happened to my paternal grandmother, whose mother was sent to prison for mistreating her. She was a very difficult character, and having discovered the court case, I have begun to see why.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
I'd go back and try to get my mother to realize that drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes incessantly aren't the innocent pleasures she thinks they are...somehow, perhaps posing as her guardian angel, I could counsel her about the depression that runs in her family and tell her what her life will be like if she continues to drink...
![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif)
I suppose I'd have to try to talk some sense into my dad, as well. Both smoked like chimneys and drank alcohol like it was going out of style.
How come no one has said much about going back in time and meeting Jesus? I wouldn't even necessarily go up to him and introduce myself...fear of Him saying, "Now, 5thMary, you know you don't belong in this time. I love you bunches but you can't stay here." But, it would be comforting to be a few yards away from Him, anyway...
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
Posts: 3451 | From: Tacoma, WA USA | Registered: Aug 2007
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Lord Jestocost
Shipmate
# 12909
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
How come no one has said much about going back in time and meeting Jesus?
Maybe there's something wrong with me but I can't really say that I'm that interested in meeting him.
And I think he would feel likewise. He was firmly of the view that his contemporaries had all the information they needed about him; I doubt he would be more forthcoming to someone from the future. He was also master of the put-down that goes precisely to the heart of what you're doing wrong and how you need to change; I wouldn't want to run the risk of being on the end of one.
Though it would be quite cool to peek over his shoulder as he drew in the sand and see what he was writing. Possibly "go away", in English ...
Posts: 761 | From: The Instrumentality of Man | Registered: Aug 2007
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I am not sure I would actually want to meet him, in person. I do meet him is all sorts of other people, but I suspect that if I were to time travel to tourist him, he would be scathing. That missing piece of the gospel, where he turned to someone dressed in strange clothes and said "fuck off".
I would like to hear him, to be in a crowd and listen to him. To get a sense of what he was like as a teacher. To experience his care and passion for others.
But I think he came for his time, to teach and pass on the presence of God for all time. We can meet him today through others, but I think he has a sens of time and place that mean going to hear his would be wrong, broken. "You ask to see me," he said, "and yet don't recognise me in those around you. If you cannot see me in them, you cannot see me."
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
I'd like to meet him - I'm curious about what he looked and sounded like, and I'd love to be present at one of his open-air gatherings while he was speaking; but also I'd bring along a sick relation and ask him to heal her.
I wouldn't want to be present at the Crucifixion, but would be interested in being in the garden when the stone was rolled back from the tomb.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I can only urge you (and others who want to hear Jesus) to start studying Aramaic and Greek right away.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I can only urge you (and others who want to hear Jesus) to start studying Aramaic and Greek right away.
What do you mean?
Jesus spoke Queen's English, didn't he?
And if he didn't, then I'm sure that if time travel is invented, then the Babel fish will also become a reality.....
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Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
It's cracking me up that so many of us are wary of meeting Jesus for fear of his tongue (yeah, me too). And to think there are people out there who say the Gospels give us no sense of his personality!
Really, though, he goes for motives--and is very good at knowing what they are. I suspect the mere time tourist would get the rough edge of his tongue, but those who come for reasons of love or need would find a better reception.
ETA: screwed up my tenses!
[ 18. November 2014, 18:48: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
And that opens up a broader theological question. Does Jesus want us to approach Him on his terms, or on ours?
Assuming you could get past the very high hurdles of TT and the Aramaic, you would have put enormous effort and some expensive technology into sitting there at the feeding of the five thousand, or wherever it is you wind up.
I think, given His past record, that Jesus will meet us where we are. (If He insisted that we were perfect before approaching Him, the halls of Heaven would echo in their emptiness.) And therefore there is hope that if you show up with your smartphone for a selfie, that He might oblige you in a way that, say, Brad Pitt might not.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I think the problem is that meeting Jesus in the here and now is fine. But if I went all fan-boy on him, which I would be doing by travelling back in time to meet him, I suspect he would be unhappy. He would imply something like "Why didn't you go and help someone instead?" I think the disappointment, and realisation that he was absolutely right that I should have used the chance to do something worthwhile, would be chilling.
"And the time-tourist went away very sad, for he was extremely rich, and had squandered his chance."
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
It does feel a little like you would be making yourself rather like King Herod (Luke 23:8):
quote:
When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort.
Jesus was unimpressed by the fan-boy attitude.
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
Posts: 2740 | From: Delaware, USA | Registered: Sep 2008
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Pigwidgeon
Ship's Owl
# 10192
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Posted
So I guess there would be no autographs -- or selfies.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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"...that is generally a matter for Pigwidgeon, several other consenting adults, a bottle of cheap Gin and the odd giraffe."
~Tortuf
Posts: 9835 | From: Hogwarts | Registered: Aug 2005
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chive
Ship's nude
# 208
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Posted
I'd like to go back to the twenties and meet my Great Aunt Peggy as a young woman. I only knew her as a grumpy, sarcastic old lady in her late eighties, early nineties before she died and I was never very fond of her.
Then, when we were clearing out my Gran's house when she died I found some photos of her and her sisters when they were young. Included amongst them were some photos of my Aunt Peggy sitting topless by a burn in Deeside. I would love to meet a woman who was comfortable to be photographed like that despite the social constraints of being part of a very middle class family in a very small village in the Scottish Highlands. A whole new side of her I'd like to have known.
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'Edward was the kind of man who thought there was no such thing as a lesbian, just a woman who hadn't done one-to-one Bible study with him.' Catherine Fox, Love to the Lost
Posts: 3542 | From: the cupboard under the stairs | Registered: May 2001
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I can only urge you (and others who want to hear Jesus) to start studying Aramaic and Greek right away.
Borrow my babelfish.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chive:
... photos of my Aunt Peggy sitting topless by a burn in Deeside ...
Bearing in mind your Ship title, does nudity run in your family? ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Oscar the Grouch:
... Jesus spoke Queen's English, didn't he?
Absolutely. Cranmer's matchless prose.
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The5thMary:
I'd go back and try to get my mother to realize that drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes incessantly aren't the innocent pleasures she thinks they are...somehow, perhaps posing as her guardian angel, I could counsel her about the depression that runs in her family and tell her what her life will be like if she continues to drink...
I suppose I'd have to try to talk some sense into my dad, as well. Both smoked like chimneys and drank alcohol like it was going out of style.
How come no one has said much about going back in time and meeting Jesus? I wouldn't even necessarily go up to him and introduce myself...fear of Him saying, "Now, 5thMary, you know you don't belong in this time. I love you bunches but you can't stay here." But, it would be comforting to be a few yards away from Him, anyway...
I'd be much, much more worried that he'd say "Sorry, KLB, but those fundies are actually right about me, and you're gonna fry!"
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Pancho
Shipmate
# 13533
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mark_in_manchester:
quote:
If you had just stuck to cruising around Los Angeles on a pushbike I bet you twenty Korean barbecue tacos that you would've found just as much or more variety as in your city.
I was in a dodgy hostel in Venice Beach, where the proprietor hired me a dodgy push bike. Hollywood Blvd was only an inch away on the map... ... G*d knows how many miles and 10,000 traffic lights and used-car lots later, I reached it having narrowly avoided joining the freeway. The tarmac had been laid with a generous helping of glass particles (to make it sparkle, glamorously?) but to my by-then jaundiced eye, accustomed to inner-city life in a northern UK city, it looked like there'd recently been a riot. Then one of my pedals fell off.
Up around the reservoir by the 'Hollywood' sign was nice, mind. And SF was nice too, in that public transport existed and (sorry Pancho) it wasn't LA! But public loos had no doors. Ah, for the days when I used to travel.
cheers
Mark
Hmmm, I'm just saying there's a whole, whole lot of variety and things to see in the U.S's second largest city that you somehow missed between Venice Beach and the Hollywood Hills. I mean, are there Korean taco trucks in Manchester? Oil fields? Speaking of which....
I'd like to travel back time and see the La Brea Tar Pits as they were in ancient times. I want to see all the prehistoric animals that gathered there like ground sloths and mammoths and saber-toothed cats.
Obviously, in this fantasy I'm invisible and guarded by a powerful force field that would keep me from being stomped on by a mammoth or chomped to bits by a saber-toothed cat.
Fun fact: "la Brea" means "the tar" in Spanish so that anytime you say "The La Brea Tar Pits" you're really saying "The the tar tar pits".
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“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’"
Posts: 1988 | From: Alta California | Registered: Mar 2008
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
I'd rather be able to move around on a part of a steam-powered railway system, UK in the 1950s or Us in 1930s or Canada in the 1940s.
Having said that, I want to offer The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy's discussion of Time Travel which attempts to define the tenses needed to even discuss the idea of Time Travel.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Piglet
Islander
# 11803
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Posted
Thank you, HB - that was (is/willan onbe) very helpful. ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
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Rev per Minute
Shipmate
# 69
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Piglet:
quote:
Originally posted by chive:
... photos of my Aunt Peggy sitting topless by a burn in Deeside ...
Bearing in mind your Ship title, does nudity run in your family?
Given the average temperature in Scotland, I would imagine that early death runs in the family... (How did she persuade the chemist to develop the photos, or did someone have a darkroom?)
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"Allons-y!" "Geronimo!" "Oh, for God's sake!" The Day of the Doctor
At the end of the day, we face our Maker alongside Jesus. RIP ken
Posts: 2696 | From: my desk (if I can find the keyboard under this mess) | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pancho:
Hmmm, I'm just saying there's a whole, whole lot of variety and things to see in the U.S's second largest city that you somehow missed between Venice Beach and the Hollywood Hills. I mean, are there Korean taco trucks in Manchester? Oil fields?
Los Angeles is the American city with which I am most familiar. It is one of the easiest large cities in the world to misunderstand. Everything is there, but finding it takes effort. Everything is spread out and the space between filled with blandness, either urban or suburban. Even many of the locals are clueless.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Accosting Jesus you might get away with -- it says so in the Gospel, that tons of things happened with Him that did not get written down, and why should you not be one of them? But tinkering with the past, especially your own past, should have some interesting paradoxical effects that you might wish to evade. (Long list of SF novels assumed to be placed here.)
I am really, really loving the image of Jesus swatting away a drone. Like he didn't have enough problems.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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