Monday, April 30, 2012

Your Turn

Do you believe in time travel? This attorney in Seattle not only believes in it but says he has traveled in time and was present when Lincoln got shot. Umm, then why didn't he save the guy?

43 comments:

crila16 said...

Lol!!!

I actually wish time travel was possible. I'd go back and smack my younger self....and since when I was younger I don't recall my older self visiting me. I would have to say that time travel is not possible...at least not in my lifetime.

Anonymous said...

Astral projection or perhaps an unexplainable and insanely vivid daydream.

Beth said...

Maybe he didn't want to alter history.

msgirl said...

I don't believe this guy but I'm positive time exists on all planes in physics. Don't think we can ever travel it.

Connie Willis writes the best time travel stuff.

Anonymous said...

If the govt had/has the ability to collect intelligence from the future then why did 9/11 still happen?

AndrewBW said...

I believe this guy is nutty as a fruitcake.

kim called said...

i'd like to travel back to high school and know then what i know now - esp. about what boys really wanted back then!
* slaps forehead *
then again i'd hate to go through my SATs again or getting my first monthly visitor! uggh, totally embarassing moment!

MadLyb said...

I think the lawyer's story stretches credibility just a tad, but do believe time travel is possible. Anything is possible - once we figure out how to do it, that is. :)

I think right now, people can do some sort of time travel by ingesting psychedelics. There's just so much we don't know about "reality" - I think we'd be surprised, maybe even horrified if we learned the truth before we were ready.

Anonymous said...

No. Just no. Time travel is not possible. This guy is either certifiable or has access to really good drugs.

Anonymous said...

I grew up without television, jet planes, cell phones, microwaves and permanent press. I will never say never. I do like reading time travel books...currently in the middle of 11/22/63.

Maja With a J said...

Hahaha, I believe in a lot of crazy things, but I do not believe that time travel is possible...YET.


My issue with time travel is this (and I get the feeling that I have written this on here before, we must have had a discussion about time travel before at some point. Or maybe I just have too many fucking nerds in my life. Anyway.):

Let's say my husband and I, in present time, are married. We are sitting in our kitchen. My husband decides that marrying me was a huge mistake and decides to go back in time (just like that) and change it so that he does NOT propose to me. He goes to the time machine in the garage (bear with me) and I stay at the kitchen table. He goes back in time, and does not propose to me.

What happens to me? I'm sitting at the kitchen table in present time. When do I change from married to not married? And probably not living in this house or sitting in this kitchen? Or did my husband simply create an alternate timeline by changing things in the past, and our lives in the present stay the same?

This drives me NUTS every time I watch a movie about time travel. Like in Back To The Future, when Marty McFly wakes up after his adventure and goes out to the kitchen and his family is suddenly perfect - when did all that change for THEM? Because THEY didn't step into that DeLorean!

MY HEAD ASPLODE.

cheesegrater15 said...

I wish it were possible.

Maybe Dean Stockwell told him if he changed things he wouldn't be able to leap.

Not A Ninny said...

If I really believed in crazy conspiracies I'd think it a heckuva coincidence that Enty just happens to post about a nutty attorney in Seattle today, but what do I know?

Caitlin B said...

It's gotta be a fixed point in time. No one can mess with that. Not even Time Lord Victorious.

Pogue Mahone said...

I wish it was possible then I could travel back to my happy childhood and relive and revisit that time. Now the only way I can do it is thru my memories or in my dreams at night.

Robert said...

@Maja: You're exploring the so-called "Grandfather Paradox" ("If I went back in time and killed my own grandfather, how could I have been born to travel back in time to kill my own grandfather?") Some physicists theorize that you would, indeed, create an alternate timeline which veers off from the one we're in like the branch of a tree and that ours continues uninterrupted. Wacky!

Robert said...

@crila16: Was that a Charles Fort reference?

Maja With a J said...

@Robert - YOUR COMMENT DID NOT HELP. *L*

msgirl said...

Robert - have you read Anathem by Neal Stephenson? Because that's just what happens.

It's crazy but I like the brane theory.

Robert said...

@maja: In other words, the theory states that your reality would not change, that you and hubby would still be married, but that an alternate Maja and an alternate hubby in an alternate reality on an alternate timeline (of which you would be unaware) would not be married. I think..!

Not A Ninny said...

Er, Heinlein exploded time paradoxes in "--All You Zombies--" a couple of decades before "Anathem", although that is a great novel.

msgirl said...

Don't like Heinlein. Sexist pig. Altho I haven't read his early stuff.

AKM said...

I'm a big fan of time travel fiction -- "Quantum Leap" and SOMEWHERE IN TIME, among others -- but I can't always wrap my head around the scientific explanations for it. I kind of understand the Grandfather Paradox, and some of the other ones like the bootstrap paradox, though.

All that said, I don't believe it can really happen, although I'm not 100% REALLY sold either way.

Tempestuous Grape said...

I do not believe it's possible, but I wish it was in a way. I would do ANYTHING to go back to when I was 8 years old and change my course. That's every wounded persons dream though, I suppose...eh, I really do wish though.

Not A Ninny said...

Heinlein's only a sexist pig if you read him narrowly to ignore that he was a bisexual socialist who envisioned same-sex marriage as a societal norm. Heinlein fanatics like to ignore that fact, but so do Heinlein haters.

Maja With a J said...

@Robert - so he would just come back from the garage as if he'd just gone out there to get a tool or something/ How long would he be out there for? WOULD I EVEN NOTICE??? *L* This is the part that drives me crazy - the idea of being able to bend time, or the thought of alternate realities is not that mind-boggling to me. It's the seconds in the present when someone else leaves the present time and goes back, but I'm still in the present...and then there is the whole concept of time not changing for everybody, like everyone has a personal timeline that would be altered, that time is not a universal thing.

Now I need to go for a walk...*L*

iheartjacksparrow said...

I just watched a television show about time travel, and according to what they were saying, it is possible. Stephen Hawking says all you need is a wormhole and the Hadron Collider.

msgirl said...

Heinlein - same sex love = women on women only. Utter male fantasy - 1 man with 2 women. In Stranger, that's all we got folks! So much for broad thinking!

Laura said...

da fuq did i just watch

Del Riser said...

There are so many things we don't understand.

I'd be afraid to change even the horrible parts of my childhood and life for fear that the lessons learned would keep me from meeting and appreciating the wonderful man I married.

I believe we are all exactly where we have chosen to be.

I would like to have deja vu explained to me though.

Bit dams said...

no. he's nuts.

if i went back in time it would be kind of a disaster, because i would just feel like "who cares? none of this matters. high school? please. ohhhh, i inhaled! having sex, yeah, happens sooner or later."

"Ibelieve we are all exactly where we have chosen to be." well, i AM on the couch right now...does that count?

car54 said...

I don't know if I "believe" in it but I love books and movies that involve time travel and I'm with the posters who would like to go back in time and undo my past mistakes or change my course in life.

MadLyb said...

I love time travel stuff. LOVE it! I think anything the human mind can imagine is possible.

Not A Ninny said...

@msgirl--Like I said, you have to read him thoroughly. In Time Enough For Love most of the characters are bisexual, and even ultimo-protganist and alter ego of Heinlein, Lazarus Long, kisses men romantically. We now know that Heinlein himself was bisexual, and probably so were his second and third wives.

You really can't fit him in the square hole that you're determined to wedge him into. I understand why, but he don't fit.

Not A Ninny said...

Oh yeah, and LL goes back in time to bang his own mother. Heinlein had some weird mommy issues...

Del Riser said...

@Me, sure the couch counts.

Life is a series of choices, not easy choices mind you, but choices all the same.

Marry, don't marry,abstain, partake, have the kid, have an abortion, give up the kid, die yourself rather than make the choice, all choices.

Every choice brings us to where we are today.

Even not choosing, is ultimately a choice.

Which is why my pet peeve is people who are not willing to accept responsibility for their actions.

Enjoy the couch, it's a good comfy choice.

Maja With a J said...

"...all you need is a wormhole and the Hadron Collider".

You mean, high speed and a Flux Capacitor, right?

ardleighstreet said...

I believe it is possible but we haven't figured it out yet. I'd certainly love to go back and change my parents both dying. I'd tell my younger self to be a better student and to get a better job. It's that damn butterfly effect though. What would it change for the worst???
(most people only consider what it would do better.)

mooshki said...

It might have been easy to save Lincoln's life. From the location of the bullet, some experts have speculated that he might have been able to survive the shooting, and that it was the surgery to remove the bullet that actually killed him.

astrogirl said...

As a long time sci fi maniac I have read many theories, and yes I believe it's possible.

Robin the Mad Photographer said...

I don't know, Mooshki; I could swear I'd read that the particular kind of head wound Lincoln received would in all likelihood still be fatal today. Now, Garfield could definitely have survived if he'd been shot in modern times (the bullet was actually in a fairly harmless area, but all the poking & prodding by the docs led to a massive infection which killed him), and I suspect McKinley could have pulled through as well.

feraltart said...

B.Profane, I like Heinlen too and I am female. Time Enough For Love is a book I really enjoyed.
I am one of those people who wonders what I could make worse if I tried to fix things. For example, if I kill Hitler, does someone else come along who manages to exterminate a race of people? If I know what I know and don't kill Hitler, how do I justify that?
It is like the London fire, if that hadn't have happened, the plague would have killed more people. Or, did someone go back in time to stop the plague by starting the fire?

EGB said...

Pouge Mahone, I totally agree, love the dreams I have when I am back in my ny neighborhood, seeing my childhood. And unrelated, love your name, it is the same name as all of my childhood pets!

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