January 07, 2004

• Via emptybowl and rocketman from the blue. I have kids, I need an answer.
• Heh. I can prove it isn't. If you'd put the hard work into inventing a time machine, would you really let someone like him have access to it?
• i'm on the john titor mailing list! it's a hoot. also, for some reason i can't get into the site.... anyone else getting kicked out? obviously it was a very well thought-out joke. still keeps people talking.
• Well now, much like John himself, I'm not a physicist (strange that he seemed to know plenty of Y2K-era physics, but was sketchy on anything after that... but I digress) - but I suspect the exchange: Is it possible to send a message through time? Unless the information physically travels with the person; none that I'm aware of. ...shows that he's telling porkies. If you can send matter, you can send information. This in addition, of course, to the extreme unlikelihood that the history of the future should mesh so perfectly with the preoccupations of a communitarian survivalist in modern America. Or how improbable it is that, in a social system based on independent communities of a few thousand, the sort of centralised effort required to build a time machine could occur. Or that this should occur in the country most ravaged by over ten years of war. Or that in a country with such a decimated population, medicine is no longer used to prolong life... Actually, on that topic, I've just noticed this quote: "If you get a serious disease, you die. This however has had a tendency to strengthen the general genetic pool." ...and, while no physicist, I was a human biologist once. And I'm shouting "bollocks" very loudly from the rooftops on that statement. Letting people who contract diseases die has altered the gene pool in under two decades? Hah! Right, bored of this guy now. One of the better time-travel spoofs, I'll admit, but his ideological witterings spoil what fun might be had from it. Back to work... "If I could bring some material thing back to your time from 2036, it would be a copy of the new US Constitution." - Americans in 2036 still ignoring the rest of the world, then? :-)
• >>I was a human biologist once what are you now? no longer human? hee hee.
• Here's what really jumped out at me as completely bogus: There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005. That conflict flares up and down for 10 years. In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), China and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)...thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed. Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska. First, a Russian nuclear attack is unlikely (unless they've secretly been developing Skynet) and if they don't have anything to trade for now before an attack, what would they have after? (and I'm thinking a nuclear war would knock out a *bunch* of infastructure.) Second, if there was a non-terrorist (i.e. organized government initiated) nuclear attack, Omaha would be one of the cities hit. That's where Strategic Air Command is. I went to high school in Omaha--there's no there, there.
• Omaha?
• Exactly.
• >> what are you now? no longer human? Correct. I now work in television. :-) Shame it's not real. I'd have liked to ask if they've worked out Donnie Darko by 2036. "Duh is a product of Fear."
• My eyes are closed and my head is covered in tinfoil.
• I almost posted this a couple of months ago. Here's one attempt to debunk it, and here's some discussion on the time machine itself.
• Why would Russia attack the EU with nukes - it does border them remember - if central Europe is destroyed I doubt Russia would be very inhabitable, either, unless Russia has secretly moved Moscow further East while I've not been looking. But then again, if its bombing China as well it'll be surrounded by nuclear fallout from the west and the south. Maybe they've developed an antidote for radiation poisoning, and just don't care about fallout anymore. (Obviously they've also given this antidote to all the plants and animals in Russia, too).
• There is a civil war in the United States that starts in 2005.... Russia is now our largest trading partner and the Capitol of the US was moved to Omaha Nebraska. I'd have to call a hobby shop to verify, but I'm pretty sure he lifted that whole thing straight from the introductory flavor text from the rules to Gamma World.
• he lifted that whole thing straight...from the rules to Gamma World. Ah Fes, comic gold. Yeah, now that it's 2006, Titor is all the more silly, isn't he?