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Posted on 04/21/2005 6:44:57 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
New verse:
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Upon the hearth the fire is red, |
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Still round the corner there may wait |
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Home is behind, the world ahead, |
I like the multi-worlds idea; it's nicely futile. And leaves the great possibilities of lots of different worlds to visit... my favorite "Let's go back in time and stop Hitler" novel, "The Proteus Operation", uses that sort of idea. They come from this bleak, mostly-Nazi-conquered timeline, see, and then go back in time and create our world... and hey, it's got young Isaac Asimov popping in a few times, what's not to like.
But I like the idea that any changes a time traveller might make were meant to happen, and had to happen, better.
...or that of all the possible outcomes of the 20th century, the one that we all remember was the best of all the alternatives that were attempted.
Yeah, that was the general idea.
Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog" is another favorite book about time travel of mine. Her heroes blunder around making an awful mess of things (getting guys engaged to the wrong girls, rescuing cats from drowning, nearly letting the Nazis figure out about Enigma) but it all works out in the end as what had to happen. And was very funny along the way.
I've always had a great resistance to the time-travel motif... just because it is always the last resort of the desperate writer. Only rarely is it done well.
I can suspend disbelief for a little while every now and then. But in the end (so to speak) I figure if time travel is ever invented then it has by definition always been there. Therefore... it never gets invented.
But that's only what my future self came back to tell me. But I think he's just trying to get me to join some pyramid scheme. He keeps telling me to buy stock in some company called "Apple" because in another twenty years I'll be a zillionaire.
What a goof. :-)
Heh, the church I went to in California used real wine for communion too. A very interesting conversation with my Mom ensued when I told her about that, LOL. Actually, now that I think about it, it was while I was in California that I began to learn to drink wine, go figure.
Food and drink are the main topic of conversation! ;-)
Heehee... Which is as it should be in any proper hobbit hole!!
Just had an interesting exchange here at the waterin' hole. Dude was some national corporate droid for Hertz. Being the database guy that I am at heart, I've always had a fascination for really, really big tables. Also, having an accounting and systems background, I have a natural interest in really hairy systems problems.
I'm also a Hertz Gold member, and have been consistently amazed by the systems that must be running in the background, that let me just walk up to my rented car and drive it away.
There are few systems issues that are as hairy as the fleet management issues that an outfit like Hertz might have. It made for an interesting exercise. Some factoids I learned that were interesting:
- Hertz has an inventory of about 10 million cars at any point in time. This inventory is changed out somewhat faster than a yearly basis.
- The average life of any car in the inventory is 8 months.
- Hertz buys all of their cars new from the factory, but at a substantial discount given the volume that they buy.
- The average rental car only gets about 8,000 to 10,000 miles per year, compared to the average vehicle use of 15,000 to 20,000 miles per year.
- After the 8 month life cycle, Hertz sells each car in the used car market for about $4400 more than they paid for it, on average. This margin per car is well in excess of the per-car profit of any new car dealership.
Interesting stuff.
Are we semi-polite society?
The bastiges. :-)
I take a "quantum physics" view of time travel (actually, alternate universes). As with a particle/wave duality, the exact time state of the universe is unknowable. At the lowest quantum level of time (the chronon), tiny alternate universes diverge and converge on the main universe timeline. Trillions of parallel universes are spun off every second, but 99.999999999999% of them are indistinguishable from our own, and so are unknowable.
Every great once in a while, a significant change will occur that spawns a viable parallel universe. Even there, the secondary universe is closely parallel to our own, with just one single significant difference. If my 1968 Chevelle was black rather than gold, the rest of the universe would unroll the same way. When both versions of the car were scrapped, the two timelines merged, with nobody the wiser.
Bigger random events are even more rare. These are the ones where someone kills Hitler, or something like that. If George Washington never existed, the world would look vastly different today. Some timelines would develop enough "escape velocity" to "leave orbit", and diverge forever. Others with less "velocity" would merge seconds, years, or millenia later.
This is also handy because it gives rise to the idea of "temporal inertia", where the big things usually always happen, giving more-or-less the same results. It also does away with the concept of the "butterfly effect".
All this talk of time travel makes me want a TARDIS.
Good morning everyone!
No work for me today! Yippee!
I'm watching Bear in the Big Blue House with Alyson. Becky is off to school and my mom has gone to her doctor's appointment.
It's so peaceful, I could cry. *smile*
Anyway, speaking of old cheesy flicks....
You can't go wrong with CLASH OF THE TITANS and TIME BANDITS. *grinning*
Good morning everyone!
Hey there, sis.
I am currently being subjected to The Wiggles.
*groan*
Whoa! ;o)
Good morning! Izzit Friday yet??
Not yet, but we're almost there.
Thank Heaven.
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