If I had a time machine, I would first visit...
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Back to the Future (Score:5, Funny)
Give your past self a sports almanac?
Re:Back to the Future (Score:5, Funny)
I'd go back just far enough to beat you to first post ... *sigh*
Re: (Score:3)
Last Tuesday night so I could pay my phone bill on time
(apologies to Weird Al)
Re:Back to the Future (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm Feeling Lucky" is good enough for The Doctor, so it's good enough for me.
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I'd go for stock history for the next 100 years. It's easier to play ;) :)
But yes - and that's the reason travel to the future will never be possible. Big bankers won't allow it
Travel to Future IS Possible (Score:5, Informative)
But yes - and that's the reason travel to the future will never be possible.
Actually travel to the future is technically possible (and not just at the usual one second per second rate). With a sufficiently fast spacecraft time dilation makes any future date achievable in an arbitrarily small amount of local time. There are just two problems. First you will need an unbelievably huge amount of energy to achieve relativistic speeds - far more than the mass-energy of your spacecraft - to go fast enough. Second it is a one way trip, so if you don't like what you find in the future there is no going back.
Re:Blueshift (Score:4, Interesting)
That reminds me of a short story. Who can remember the one where the guy with the time machine was roasting folks with his flashlight?
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Um... mod up maybe?
I wish the MIT Relativistic Ray Tracer page was still up, but here's one from ANU http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/Searle/Obsolete/Raytracer.html [anu.edu.au]
When I was a kid, I remember some picture book that suggested we could send a spaceship to the Andromeda galaxy and back... even at speeds of around 0.5c there'd still be enough relativity for the astronauts to age only about 70 years, but the Earth would age 4 million years. Probably should check the math on that... seems to be a popular physics
Time dilation (Score:4, Interesting)
send a spaceship to the Andromeda galaxy and back... even at speeds of around 0.5c there'd still be enough relativity for the astronauts to age only about 70 years
Time dilation factor is gamma where gamma=1/sqrt(1-(v/c)**2). At 0.5c this gives 1.15 so since Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away at 0.5c the Earth observer will say that it takes 5 million years (one way!) to get there and will expect the astronauts to have aged by only 4.33 million years...so just a little more than 70 years! If you want to travel so fast that only 70 years passes going to Andromeda an back then you need to be travelling at 0.9999999998c which is faster than a proton in the Large Hadron Collider and each proton in your body would have roughly 10 times the energy of an LHC proton. It will also require an energy roughly 70,000 times the mass-energy of the space craft to achieve i.e. if your space craft was 1 ton in mass you would need to convert 70,000 tons of mass into energy to give it enough kinetic energy.
As for relativity there is a ton of evidence that it is correct: cosmic muons reach the Earth's surface without decaying, particle accelerators work (e.g. the LHC would need magnets ~7,000 times weaker were it not for relativity).
Re: (Score:3)
As for relativity there is a ton of evidence that it is correct: cosmic muons reach the Earth's surface without decaying, particle accelerators work (e.g. the LHC would need magnets ~7,000 times weaker were it not for relativity).
Personally, I find the "coolest" example of where we can see relativity and time dilation in effect to be GPS! To quote this site [ohio-state.edu]:
The combination of these two relativitic effects means that the clocks on-board each satellite should tick faster than identical clocks on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day (45-7=38)! This sounds small, but the high-precision required of the GPS system requires nanosecond accuracy, and 38 microseconds is 38,000 nanoseconds. If these effects were not properly taken into account, a navigational fix based on the GPS constellation would be false after only 2 minutes, and errors in global positions would continue to accumulate at a rate of about 10 kilometers each day!
Learn relativity then we can talk (Score:3)
Not really. You have not considered the way that light behaves at high speed. I suggest you investigate the "relativistic doppler effect"...the frequency of the light wave that approaches you increases to twice the speed of light
Might I suggest that you get a basic introduction to special relativity (similar to the one I used to give first year physics undergrads) BEFORE you try to tackle the relativistic doppler shift or suggest that others do so. If you do you'll learn that nothing travels faster than light and, more importantly, light travels at a constant speed in all inertial reference frames - that's one of Einstein's postulates for Special Relativity upon which the whole theory rests.
While you are correct in terms of the
Re:Back to the Future (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Everyone knows you get a sports almanac. Why hit the lotto once when you can hit it multiple times.
You don't have any guarantee that the results in the sports almanac would be reliable. The events of the world would start to change in unpredictable ways as a result of your bets, eventually leading to it being wrong, probably sooner rather than later.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd go for stock history for the next 100 years. It's easier to play ;) :)
But yes - and that's the reason travel to the future will never be possible. Big bankers won't allow it
You're looking to get rich? That's way too easy....
Have you considered influencing/changing religious history? How one might prevail to influence the naive cultures of 6000 years ago and forward?
I know it would greatly alter future outcomes, but the introduction of critical thinking and logic into earlier states of our human culture, however possible, would be amazing.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine the world if someone went back and killed Mohammed.
Re:Back to the Future (Score:5, Informative)
It might suck. The spread of Islam on the Arabian peninsula stabilized regional geopolitics, allowing for a blossoming of the academies. Today we enjoy the fruits of the works of many amazing Islamic philosophers and mathematicians, and the Islamic empires linked Europe to Asia, something it hadn't enjoyed for millennia. Without the combined efforts of Indian, Persian, Arabian, and European mathematicians and scientists, the world we know today might be far bleaker.
It might also be far nicer. It's tough to say. But I wouldn't presume that the rise of Islam was a net loss. I tend to think of it as a net gain.
Re:Back to the Future (Score:5, Interesting)
"It would be far more useful to figure out the point where Islam went from progressivet o regressive and prevent that. But I expect taht that would be much more difficult to pinpoint and prevent."
You don't have to go that far. The perceived regressiveness of Islam is a pretty recent phenomenon. Like most religions, there's always been conservative and progressive strains of Islam. I remember reading somewhere that it was actually the European powers that dominated North Africa and the Middle East before the World War 2 which encouraged conservative Islam because it was seen as less threatening than the more "progressive" Islam practiced in the Ottomon Empire. Or maybe it was a little later when conservative Islam was seen as the perfect counterweight to the secular but quasi-socialist ideologies of the leaders of the Arab nationalist movement, religious fundamentalism being seen as the lesser evil when compared to the ideological kin of Marxist socialism.
Re:Back to the Future (Score:4, Insightful)
Well there isn't a single point. However the decline of the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire) and the Europe Colorization of America period I would expect to be a good area.
The Western Roman Empire Fell, Putting Europe in the Dark Ages while the Byzantine Empire flourished, Holding on and expanding their knowledge, and being a central trade route between the Far East and the West.
Then The West started to get out of its slump and started to explore the Americas and find ways to the Far East without using the Middle East as middle men, their economy started to change and the power sources shifted to the east and west away from them. In essence in the terms of world affairs to be relativity minor players.
People Don't Like change. However they got use to being the little guy. Than in the 20th century there was a huge demand for oil, which they have. Now we have a culture that got use to be the little guy now sitting on the pot of gold, However they need to play by the rules of the people in power, creates more changes in their culture, and pushes some people to go back to the old ways, because they are afraid to change.
The United States can suffer the same fate too. I mean just when we get some normal recessions/depressions we fall back to the old ways, WWJD (What Would Jefferson/Jesus Do) Looking back with the old days were the US was underdeveloped and people lived in log cabins, and died of polio. However life was harder but simpler. We crossed the line, we cannot go back, if the US tries to go back we will end up being just as barbaric as our middle eastern folks.
It isn't religion, or culture. It is the fact People are afraid to change.
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Last ditch effort to keep this thread on-topic: http://seclists.org/isn/2003/Dec/82 [seclists.org] Al-Jebr!
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Yes there will be wars and terrorism all in the name of someone else. Religion doesn't cause violence it is mean people who cause it. While religion is currently the biggest excuse, there is political ideology, cultural traditions, money... many many other reasons to be generally crappy to one and other.
The Middle East, once the center of civilization, slowly went down hill. Now countries that once were considered to be barbarians are the new centers and center of civilizations tend to push their culture
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John Titor (Score:2, Funny)
Re:John Titor (Score:5, Funny)
Never back before my own birth ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
At first I voted for a 100 years into the future, but then I realized that one hundred years from now; I'll be dead.
So if you travel backwards towards pre-birth, then you're stuck in this loop forever, and the moment you get into your timemachine; you essentialy commit suicide the very second you decide to loop your life.
I simply would keep it obscure and ask someone to press the red button (marked from age of 3) as a last wish when i'm at my dearhbed. Unless the entire universe would never split of and dev
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PS: "Leave Britn^H^H^H^H^H the time machine aloooonnneeee!!!!!!"
Close, but there is a more critical limit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Close, but there is a more critical limit (Score:4, Informative)
Some scientists insist that although you could theoretically build a time machine, you can only go back as far as the moment it is first turned on.
19th century England (Score:2)
I love Dickens' and his contemporaries' work so I'd go to find out what 19th century England was really like.
Re: (Score:2)
Just go to a Foxconn factory in China today to get an idea what life was like in the Victorian era of the UK? People tend to remember the positives of the past and not real life for everyone else. Ancient Greece sounds exciting too, but instead of debating with Plato more than likely slave catchers would find a foreigner an easy subject to work the dreaded silver mines.
I used to romantice about that period too until I took a college level history course. Even in the US life was very rough and if you think t
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> I'd go to find out what 19th century England was really like.
Ugh. I have a fair idea what the nineteenth century was like (London in particular), and I can tell you for free, you don't really want to go there (err, then). Streets literally _running_ with decaying fecal matter is one of the highlights. Also, it would probably take a couple of days for most modern folks (anyone who hasn't studied historical linguistics) to get enough of a handle on the accent to be able to communicate effectively. By
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I love Dickens' and his contemporaries' work so I'd go to find out what 19th century England was really like.
I love Dickens too, and therefore I don't want to find out about 19th century England for myself.
Past (Score:2)
Re:Past (Score:5, Funny)
I'd go back to the points in time when major religions started and make sure to kill their leaders before they ever plant their first poisonous seeds. I'd then make sure the Roman Empire never falls...
Hmmm....your real name isn't Pontious Pilate by any chance?
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Re:Past (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Past (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Past (Score:5, Interesting)
If you count the probable indirect death toll, one of the unintended consequences of the improved trade routes through Asia was the Black Death, which would make the Mongols the most destructive force ever in terms of human loss of life. Bugs coming out of obscure locations to kill millions due to improved travel capacity didn't begin with WWI, ebola, or SARS.
Stopping Mao from the policies that led to the Great Chinese Famine of 1958-63 would have saved 15 to 43 million lives. These policies included such idiocies as killing all the sparrows and small birds that allegedly ate crop seeds, which of course left crops vulnerable to the much more destructive insects; collectivization of farms in ways that put the most loyal rather than the most competent farmers in charge; refusing to use farming methods that were too bourgeoisie, and so on.
Re:Past (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. I'd have to keep having to go forwards and back to knock off the new religions as they would crop up.
The amusing part is that every society would report mysterious happenings -- every time some local priest or shaman started becoming popular, a mysterious stranger would appear and murder him/her. Soon the entire world would be worshipping Psyborgue as the One True God, and he'd have to kill himself.
Depends on the dimensionality of time (Score:4, Interesting)
And really the first order of business is going to the distant future to steal acquire advanced technologies like FTL drives, immortality tech, loyal nanites, etc. After all that, then there is time for exploration. Of course, if my trips to the future are interfered with by my return to the less distant future or present, that result in the disappearance of all my cool stuff, then I would just have to learn how to make it all and rebuild it myself from present materials on my return, and afterwards, time travel would become a "look but don't touch" affair.
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100 years in the future (Score:2)
On a bad day I feel like we don't have that much time left between climate change, oil depletion, bad governments and general idiocracy.
I'd like to see if we're still around in 100 years, if we have done something to change things and if somethings has actually changed.
And maybe a quick peek at how my life turned out, why not?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, good luck with that, I'll be loading up on stock market reports and racing results.
all gone (Score:5, Insightful)
On one hand I'd like to go 10K years in the future, to marvel at the technology we have then. But I'm afraid what it will do with me psychologically if I discover there's nothing there any more...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My fear is that in 10,000 years from now we will be primptives, poor, and filthy. As oil goes away mankind will go back to using horses. With so many people on this planet I do not think we can sustain ourselves and we will have an Easter Islands style tragedy.
Once the inhabitants used up all the wood they couldn't build boats to leave nor nets to fish. They resorted to cannabilism, disease, and mass starvation.
We just keep buying trucks and SUVs like there is no tomorrow and use cargo ships that use 50 mil
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Once we run out of oil, we'll produce it. It'll be more expensive than just pulling it pre-formed out of the ground, but there are plenty of sources to create biofuels and petroleum components.
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With fourth generation liquid lead cooled nuclear technology we have enough energy to power us for thousands of years into the future. The good thing with Gen IV is that it burns old stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel rods, plutonium and americium as well so we reduce the toxic hazard and storage of these resources. On top of that we got thorium too that is four times more abundant in the ground than uranium. The core of the earth is a gigantic ball of molten metal, just imagine the amount of free energy avai
I'm brown... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm brown, so I'll be happy checking out the future. The Western world prior to the 1960s is interesting, but I don't think I'd fare as well as I wish.
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But yeah, failing that, brown people should probably avoid the past beyond about fifty years, particularly in North America (unless you go back _before_ slavery, but going that far back, anywhere, is dangerous for
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FIRST trip? (Score:5, Insightful)
About six hours in the future to see if the damn thing works OK.
Being "stranded" six hours in the future isn't that big of a tragedy. I'm still there to put my daughter to bed if I time it right.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Go back six hours in time, and see your daughter's face when both of you put her to bed.
Re: (Score:2)
How about going six hours ago to test it?
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What a coincidence. I'll be traveling about 6 hours into the future, today! Perhaps I'll see you there!
Impressive. Most of us will be travelling 24!
I'd stop my parents from circumcising me (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd travel back in time to just before I was born and tell my parents to leave my penis intact, thank you very much.
Re:I'd stop my parents from circumcising me (Score:5, Funny)
I'd travel back in time to just before I was born and tell my parents to leave my penis intact, thank you very much.
You're posting on /. so you're probably not using it (much) anyway.
The far future, obviously (Score:4, Funny)
Doctor Who fans ahoy? (Score:3)
I see a lot of votes for the last option and I wonder how many of them are Doctor Who fans.
Personally I'd see little point of going back in time (and scared to due to the "savage" nature of humanity and rampant illnesses)
And I'd be terrified to go forward in time because by then Time Travel will probably be mainstream and regulated and I don't know what to expect from their technology level. (also new diseases.)
I think I'll stay on my couch.
Nice and safe.
Unless the Doctor drops by... Because nobody dies when they follow the Doctor, right? ...Right?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I could get off work on a Friday, go back in time two weeks plus four hours (to a time when my former self was at work), leave on vacation, and not have to be back for two weeks, *without* having to ask my boss for two weeks off work. If I wake up one morning and just don't _feel_ like going to work, I could go back in time six hours, take a four hour nap, read for an hour or two, and still get to work on time. I could get an answering machine, leave the rin
Re: (Score:2)
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Micromanaging your life using a time machine, that's actually a quite interesting interpretation of the theoretical scenario.
Personally I'd do something stupid like cheat at the lottery to A) Not work again B) See what happens to the time streams and (maybe) see if paradoxes are possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the Doctor drops by... Because nobody dies when they follow the Doctor, right? ...Right?
Depends on how indirectly you're talking about. Technically Rose isn't dead, but she did have to start a completely new life from scratch. I forget how everyone else went, and the interwebs tell me that Amy and Rory cease traveling with the Doctor tonight...
A few hundred years in the future, at first (Score:4, Insightful)
My answer, and probably everyone's, is "all of the above". Let me go hunt t-rex, stop by the future to see if they ever do figure out cold fusion, listen to some ancient Greek debates, maybe end the day with a live performance of one of Shakespeare's lost plays. Asking "when would you go if you had a time machine?" is like asking what countries I'd like to visit - all of them, ideally.
So this question only makes sense with two additional qualifiers. First "when would you go FIRST if you had a time machine?" (my answer: Rome, circa 750 AUC). Second, "when would you go if you had a ONE-USE ONLY time machine?"
That's where the title of this comment comes in. It stands to reason that if you have developed a one-use time machine, that eventually someone will develop a multiple-use time machine. So the first goal is to travel into the future to acquire one of those.
The thing with time travel is that you can't go too far without tons of preparation. If you only speak English, you're useless more than 800 years ago or so, even in England, because Middle English looks nothing like Modern English. Same for any modern language, really. And it's foolish to think that the same does not apply in the other direction - 800 years from now, they won't be speaking any of today's languages (although you can likely find an expert who studied the language, much as you can still find people who can speak Latin, or Aramaic, or Babylonian, but that won't be of too much use for you).
So your best bet for doing this is 400-600 years in the future. That's as much time as I would risk - too much more, I won't be able to do anything, too much less, they may not have developed the technology I'm after.
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Read it again.
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The language barrier is probably the most important preparation to consider.
However - they didn't have audio recording in ancient greece. We do today. So a language expert from the future would probably have those available and communication would be quite a bit easier. But if, say, English keeps being a live language, then good luck finding an expert not only in (by then) ancient english, but in ancient english from exactly the early 21st century period.
So, yeah, going forward in 100-year steps or somethin
Re: (Score:3)
But if, say, English keeps being a live language, then good luck finding an expert not only in (by then) ancient english, but in ancient english from exactly the early 21st century period.
I think you're overestimating the difficulties of two people not speaking the exact same language.
Personal anecdote (because that's totally valid evidence): When I was a teenager, one of my first jobs was at a Brazilian restaurant. I was probably the only native English speaker there - actually, besides the manager and one of the waiters, everyone spoke only Portuguese.
I had my formidable English skills, my three years of Latin, and the smattering of Spanish any American picks up naturally. Oh, and the four
Re:A few hundred years in the future, at first (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, I *did* learn Latin. My middle school offered it as one of the foreign languages needed to get an advanced diploma, so I did my three years.
We actually have a fairly solid grasp of how Classical Latin (as opposed to Medieval Latin or Modern Church Latin) was pronounced (and it helps that public schools teach Classical pronunciation). There are some ambiguities, some that we suspect changed over time, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out - it's just an accent. You'll never pass for a native, but you can still speak the language fine.
As an aside, Medieval Latin was basically pronounced using the rules of whatever your native language was, so a Frankish Latin speaker would pronounce it differently from a Saxon Latin speaker (and yet it was still usable as a lingua franca). It's actually much more complicated than that, but that's a rough simplification.
I am a time traveler (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have been traveling through time for dozens of years until I finally arrived at the chance to make this post, but now I forgot what I was going to say!
You were going to mention how you wish you could go back 13 years and get a 2-digit Slashdot UID.
Missing option: the beginning of existence... (Score:5, Funny)
...6000 years ago.
I'm an irrational creationist, you insensitive clod!
Anyone ever do this fun exercise: (Score:2)
One time use? (Score:2)
If it's a one time use machine, I wouldn't use it at all. If it's multi-use, I'd check out various parts of the future and find a new home.
3 years back (Score:2)
and I would tell myself not to do all the stupid things I did. Maybe also tip myself off on the lottery numbers.
Short story reference ... any help here? (Score:2)
TARDIS (Score:2)
Observe, but don't change anything (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the posts so far assume a time machine would force you to interact with the past/future.
If I had a time machine that would just let me spectate, I would love to examine details and reasons behind many historic events without altering anything and creating messy alternate time lines. Changing the present might ruin the entire reasons for examining a piece of history in the first place!
Examining the future in such a way would be interesting too. But then it would only be one possible future as observing it might change it.
There's no point in going into the past (Score:3)
Unless your "time machine" is also a "place machine". At least for those of us in the US.
I suppose if you were to go back 100 million years, it could be interesting - but if I went back, say, 500 years - I'd be sitting in the middle of a forest without much in the surrounding area.
Just a decade or two past. (Score:2)
To do things like buy Apple at $2 and get in on some IPOs. Gotta pay for the time machine somehow.
And then it gets interesting...
Really not a simple choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Inputting a figure of 10,000 years into your time machine is pointless. You'd have to be *very* *very* accurate with your jump times to end up in exactly the same physical spot you were when you set off.
In 10,000 years, not only will the orbit of the Earth have expanded out slightly around the sun, but the position of the sun relative to the gravitational centre of our galaxy will have changed also. Likewise, our galaxy will have moved out slightly from the centre of the big-bang too.
Chances are with all these options you'll end up floating dead in space.
The RNA world (Score:4, Insightful)
Dinosaurs? Pah! A mere 65 million years away - practically on our chronological doorstep. I'd send a (very very well sterilized) robot back to bring me samples from the RNA world. [wikipedia.org] Then I'd try to find out what preceded the RNA world, jump forward a bit to try to find the origin of the eukaryotes [wikipedia.org] and maybe then go for filling in the minor details, like observing the Cambrian explosion [wikipedia.org].
Brief explanations:
The RNA world is a hypothesized (but very plausible) stage in evolution where RNA performs the functional roles currently filled by proteins and the genetic role currently filled by DNA.
Eukaryotes are the complex cells with a nucleus, including all known multi-cellular life plus some single celled life (e.g. amoebae.)
The Cambrian explosion was a period about 530 million years ago when multi-cellular life suddenly appeared in a great profusion of forms.
Dinosaurs, just to piss off Ken Ham (Score:3)
I'd go back with terabytes of memory cards and film for as long as they lasted (and making sure to bring along spare battery packs and solar rechargers).
When done, come back and show Ham and other creationists there were no humans when dinosaurs existed.
And I guess I'd take along some air sampling equipment so scientists could get a firsthand look at what the atmosphere was really like, and a thermometer as well. You know, for the real science.
Try his dad. I read somewhere he was sadistic (Score:2)
I read that he often beat Hitler senseless. I think gelding his dad would be a nifty plan.
Obligatory XKCD reference onRe:Evil Baby Orphanage (Score:5, Funny)
(obligatory xkcd reference)
Re: (Score:2)
But the real problem with all this travel-back-in-time-to-kill-hitler business is that Hitler didn't invent facism or scientific racism. It's quite likely that those theories would have kept gaining traction around the world if Hitler hadn't come along and started a war that made them look so bad.
Time for the Godwin post (Score:2)
I thought that the whole Ford/Reagan/Bush thing was just a continuation of that. We can't call it fascisti anymore as you said, but the Government working for corporations and run by criminals working for the "New World Order" seems rather familiar to those of us who read.
Re:Evil Baby Hitler (Score:2)
My son's mother was born of Ukranian slaves from a Nazi labor camp. I reckon that might complicate his existence.
Re: (Score:3)
What too few anticipated, all the new weapons would completely change the way this war would be fought. There was to be no quick glory, only a big bloody mess.
When everything was over, t
Re:I'd go back to about year ~570... (Score:5, Interesting)
Further, without the history of warfare, the middle East might have been more easily conquered by the Mongols, which might have allowed them to push even further into Europe than they did. Also note that when the Khans sacked Bagdad, the Greek knowledge held there would have been lost forever.
But hey, at least your made up enemy of the month wouldn't exist, and the non-existent US would be oppressing Zoroastrians in their continuous search for more oil and gold reserves to steal. Damn, evil Zoroastrians. If I had a time machine, I would go back to 2000BC and kill Zoroaster, effectively doing humanity a great service.
Re: (Score:2)
I like the go back to the beginning of time thing. best way to settle the origins debate onces and for all
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
FTFY.
Re:Why would anyone *not* go to the distant future (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, for starters you wouldn't be able to speak their language. In fact, they might have evolved to not even be your species any more. That's assuming humans are even still around. Maybe some other intelligent race beat us to FTL and wiped us out. In any case, you're most likely to end up in a lab or a zoo.
The best you could hope for would be for there to be no dominant race at the time and place you show up, which would just be vaguely depressing rather than disastrous.
Why would anyone *not* go to the distant past? (Score:2)
It is by far the most interesting place to be. Imagine being able to see a braided, mountain river meander down the valley. No dams, no roads, no RV campers. Being able to see the world before we started to ruin it.
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I would certainly go to the distant past. But I would go the future first to gear up.
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1. Past, within 100 years. My second choice. We know the history, but can we take anything as tools back with us? And where would we end up? Location, location, location.
same could be asked of all the listed options
2. Future, within 100 years. Heck yes, Back to the Future 4! Anything we collect mentally, we can take back as leverage! We can go back, right? Right??
Its been a hundred years if the tech on you time machine won't let you odds are the tech has advanced enough to let you now whether or not the ocupants of the future let you go back is another question
4. Future, within 10000 years. Large asteroid takes out the whole mess in Dec 2012, as predicted by the Mayan calendar. Game over.
so much for option 6 then
5. Dinosaurs. Good luck with that, meat pop-sickle. Randall Munroe's fear of Velociraptors is well earned. Go forth and feed the masses.
shotgun
6. Galactic Empire. You are found to be severely mentally challenged, lacking the man made gene that allowed higher clock speeds with lower power consumption. You are filed away in cryostasis.
or are experimented on and given psychic powers (see Pebble in the sky by Isacc Asimov) on the other end of the spectrum he may have split into a stupid dosile vegetarian race and evil carnivorous subterranean race of morlocks (ala Ti
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I'd do the same, but for different reasons. I'm atheist, but the historical record is pretty convincing that a man named Jesus really lived 2000 years ago, and that he was a rabble-rouser, and had a bit of a following. Looking around me today, I have a hard time naming a single person who has had a deeper impact on the world. Think of it: from the Roman persecutions, through Charlemagne, the Medieval church, the Crusades, the great thinkers and artists and musicians and architects who helped shape the weste
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You need some serious help, you fucking psychopath.