Seymour Edits Time Travel

 My "editing gone wild" pet rock, Seymour, has been off his game lately.  He hasn't found anything worthy of his editing acumen.

Until now.

A post from the Business Insider addresses the possibility of time travel once again.  And not from the stand point of simply avoiding 2020.

Seymour was all over that one.

Being timeless hisself, Seymour thinks he knows how to edit a thang like this:

Time travel is theoretically possible, new movie scripts show. But that doesn't mean you could change the outcome of a bad sex change choice or replace a burrito from the past.

By Seymour PetRock/The Cladipus Licker 3 hrs ago

---

• Time travel is possible based on the laws of The Green Skewed Deal, according to new calculations from researchers at the Eunuchversity of cnn. But time-travelers wouldn't be able to alter the past in a Scott Bakula way, they say — the future would remain whatever Ziggy or the 8 ball response to your questions is. 

• Imagine you could hop into a time machine, press a button, and journey back to 2016, before the polls proved to be so sandpoundingly stupid wrong. What if you could find a sports book that would give you a million to one on Trump winning the election and put down a grand? Theoretically, the IRS would say “WTF?” right? 

Not quite, because then past-you wouldn't have known what you know in 2020. Unless you were psychic, in which case you might have opted to spend that grand on stockpiling toilet paper.

For decades, physicists have been studying and debating versions of all sorts of paradox: If we could travel back in time and change the past, what would happen to things like maligNANCY Pelosi if hit with a bucket of water in 2017?

A new study offers one potential answer: she'd have been mopped up. The unsettled-settled science of climate change would provide hundreds of thousands of other potential answers that range from “erab a loob a lure” (a huge change in the evolution of language and communication) to a future of no farting cows, cats inheriting the Earth, and perhaps our being spared thirty-three sequels to First Blood.

"Events readjust around anything that could cause a paradox, so the paradox does the same, causing a quantum ad horkunum that non sequiturs accordionly," Kraut Sauer, the study's author and a student at the Eunuchversity of cnn told two drunken Antifa gutter dwellers in Portland recently.

His work, published in the journal  Classical Bidumb Gaffes last week, suggests that according to the rules of theoretical paragiraffes, anything you tried to do in zero gravity could be substantively changed by one ill-timed fart.

Put simply: It's theoretically possible to go back in time, but you couldn't change the fundamental ingredients of a burrito.

The “if your aunt had a mustache she'd be your uncle” paradox

Physicists have considered time travel to be theoretically possible since Einstein came up with his theory of bagels and beagles not being relative to English muffins. Einstein's calculations suggest it's possible for an object in our universe to behave as stupidly as Alyssa Milano, eventually ending up at a point on its journey where she thinks she can cast a spell on a Supreme Court nominee and it'll actually work.

Still, physicists continue to struggle with scenarios like how wrong the pundits were in 2016, in which all the fraud and wishful thinking of leftist nincompoops proved only that they could fool themselves but not 63 million voters.

We could cite a famous example, but would rather opt for a vastly more obscure one: if a sheep is a ram and a donkey is an ass, why is a ram in the ass a goose? Would going back in time change anything there? Probably not: ramming an ass with a goose would only make the goose mad. At that point, who would ponder why Noel has an “L” in it?

Exactly.

A take on this paradox appears in several books and movies, none of which answer the original question that leaves many pondering how a goose is both a water fowl and a “whOOO” at the same time. It didn't keep James Farentino from attacking Katharine Ross on an island after the Graduate and before Sam Elliott.

To address the paradox, Sauer and his supervisor, Dr. Noah Counting, used the "Antifas peeing on an electric fence model," which imagines cause and effect as a series of basement-dwelling idiots trying to figure out how peeing on an electric fence brings such pain an pleasure all at once.

Imagine a bunch of low level electrocuted Antifans laid out across a pasture's electric fence, and what the bull thought of it all.

The researchers calculated that even if you mess with the bull's perception by feeding it LSD at some point, future interactions with the semi-electrocuted Antifans and the wasted bull would find creative outlets in memes on the Internet.

"Regardless of the choice, Hellary would still be coming up with all sorts of people, things and excuses to blame for her losing an election rigged in her favor in 2016," Dr Yasumota Jones, a theoretical professor at the theoretical eunuchversity EC Berkeley, told the Cladipus Licker.

Sauer's model, in other words, says you could travel back in tyme without rosemary, but you couldn't change how Simon and Garfunkel wrote the song Bridge Over Troubled Molars, Jones said. Applied to the devolution of cnn, then, this would mean that something would always get in the way of cnn trying to become relevant again as long as it remains staffed and run by abject morons.

Or at least by the time some nipplehead at cnn figured it out, they'd be fired and beaten up by semi-electrocuted Antifans who had fried balls and no hope of claiming to be octosexual orthopod non-binary douche nozzles. 

Back to the coronavirus example. Let's say you were to travel back to 2019 and intervene in a Corona beer factory. According to Sauer's line of thinking, the pandemic would still be drunk and face down in its own vomit.

"You might try and stop maligNANCY from traipsing through Chinatown and preventing all the Wuhan bat eggrolls there from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become the target of a vaccine study from a doctor that looks like this," Sauer told EU Berkeley.

Jones said that although the model is too simple to represent the full range of cause and effect in our universe, it's a good starting point for future pandumbic creators.  

Seymour had his heart set on a Pulitzer for this one, but the best he'll rate is going to be one of his own Seymour awards:

"Oh PHFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!!!"

Quantum Horsefeathers

I suspect that science -- or at least, some scientists -- just lurve peeing in Hollyweird's tofu.
And not just Hollyweirds.

From the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, comes the revelation that Albert Einstein was right: you can't make a bagel travel back in time.

Claiming to have proved that time travel is impossible, a team of researchers at the aforementioned university -- whose credibility is lacking amongst scholars who hale from universities where binge drinking took up all their free time -- say that they have proved Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Using a single photon -- because a married one has too much baggage -- they claim to have proved that this unit of light "obeys the traffic law of the universe", and cannot exceed the speed of light.

This means, according to the Hong Kongians, that time travel is a scientific impossibility.

I mean...WTF?

No Quantum Leaping; no warp speed whiplashes around the Sun; no 88 mph back 'n forths in a 1.21 jiggawatted DeLorean; no Time Tunnel, no magnetic storms at sea hijacking aircraft carriers, Guardians perpetually awaiting "a question", or cyborgs from the future, open to learning hip phrases and wrecking about everything else.

Not even a chance to send Grandma's oft-regifted fruitcake back to the Stone Age, only to find it as one of the foundation blocks in one of the Egyptian pyramids.

Only in Hollyweird or literature, can time travel "be".

Man, this sucks.

I was all set to unveil to the world my newest invention: a time machine that allowed one to travel back in time to observe actual events as they really happened, but not interact with them and screw up history or today.

And dang it all, them darn fool Hong Kongians claim it doesn't work.

Eh...they're way better educated than me, so they're probably right. I'm sure that my first test case 'time traveller' -- my pet rock, Seymour -- didn't really go anywhere in that cloud of smoke.
On the other hand, he ain't back yet...

Given To The Sky

If you've read much of this blog, you'll know that one of my sci-fi fascinations has always been with time travel.

In many an adventure in time travel, the time travellers go back in time, flirting with the possibility of forever altering the future, by an action -- or an inaction -- that changes not only the past, but the future outcome as well.

Though -- Hollywood being what it is -- sometimes the future, the present, and the past, can all be jacked with at once, and things turn out okay despite the time tampering.

Even if a Delorean, or a transparent aluminum formula, get respectively screwed up and revealed in the process.

At least we think we know that there'll be humpback whales in the 23rd Century. At least in the hopes of someone in Hollywood.

I -- and most of you -- are familiar with The Twilight Zone (TOS). There were approximately 163 episodes of it, from 1959-1964. As with another sci-fi series that would come along later -- The Outer Limits -- the show packed a great deal of science fiction, theory, and current science, into a wealth of possibilities for humankind, from the absolutely worst case, to the absolutely amusing.

In many of the episodes, with an underlying 'human life lesson' theme woven in, and remarked about in the show's closing narration.

I haven't seen all of The Twilight Zone episodes, but I saw one for the first time this weekend. A classic on the conundrums of time travel and humans wrestling with inner fears, from Season 1, Episode 18: The Last Flight.

It begins with Flight Lt. William Decker, Royal Flying Corps (UK), flying his Nieuport biplane fighter over France, totally lost in a mysterious white cloud. Suddenly, Lt. Decker sees beneath him an airfield, and he goes in at once to land.

But it is like no airfield he as ever seen before, with aircraft parked upon it, completely alien to him, save for the national markings of the aircraft: US.

Lt. Decker has arrived at a US airbase in Reims, France. With a casual remark to a US Air Force major about "I didn't realize how advanced you chaps are", Flight Lt. Decker is slow to realize that he is more lost than he knew.

For Flight Lt. Decker, and his missing wingman, Flight Lt. Alexander "Leadbottom" Mackaye, took off on a mission on March 5, 1917. And Lt. Decker has arrived at the airbase in Reims on March 5...1959.

For a while, it's not clear who is more confused: Flight Lt. Decker, or the USAF brigadier general and major, who aren't convinced that Decker is some kind of prank...or worse.

Perhaps, they think, Decker's arrival is some kind of salute or stunt regarding the pending arrival of an Royal Air Force Air Vice Marshal at Reims: Air Vice Marshal Alexander Mackaye.

Impossible, insists a disbelieving Lt. Decker: when Decker had last seen Mackaye, his Nieuport was surrounded and under attack by at least seven German Fokker fighters. No, the Americans insist: Air Vice Marshal Mackaye had survived not only World War I, but had been a hero during the aerial Battle of Britain, during World War II, and in so being, having saved hundreds of lives with his heroics.

Decker is at once both stunned and confused. Confused enough to reveal a little known story to the American major about how Flight Lt. Mackaye had obtained the nickname of "Leadbottom".

Shortly it becomes a concern to the Americans that Mackaye's arrival at Reims is unaccountably delayed. And Decker -- under minimum security 'confinement' because the Americans remain skeptical of his story -- confesses to the American major, not only had he become separated from Flight Lt. Mackaye because Decker "was scared and running away"...but now, learning what he had of Mackaye, Decker has come to realize that if he doesn't overcome his own personal cowardice, and take off back into that mysterious white cloud to assist Flight Lt. Mackaye, hundreds of lives saved by Mackaye will be lost, and there will BE no Air Vice Marshal Mackaye. Suddenly, Decker's own fear of dying is overcome by a greater fear of what Decker's desire for self-preservation will mean to not only Flight Lt. -- and future Air Vice Marshal -- Mackaye, but to those hundreds of lives Mackaye saved in a future Decker would, himself, never see.

When Lt. Decker's efforts to convince the Americans to let him go come to naught, Lt. Decker breaks himself out, gets to his plane, and takes off again, finding and disappearing into the mysterious white cloud, never to be seen again.

A short time later, Air Vice Marshal Mackaye arrives at the airbase, and once with the American officers, is asked if he ever heard of a Flight Lt. Decker. Mackaye relates how Decker had been his wingman back in 1917, and had "run off" during a tangle with a group of German fighters...and just when Mackaye thought he was a goner, Decker suddenly returned, and shot down three of the German planes before being shot down himself, saving Mackaye's life while losing his own.

When Air Vice Marshal Mackaye becomes irritated and demands to know exactly what this is all about, the Americans hand him the personal ID and other items Decker had left behind, and suggest to "Leadbottom" that he be sitting down, to hear the rest of the story.

Imaginative, romanticized science fiction? Perhaps.

But, as we've seen many a time in real life, some of the most unselfish acts by Man on behalf of his fellow Man, come at a knowing cost to the former.

The overcoming of one's own fear, of self-sacrificial heroism in behalf of others, time and again, is not merely a lesson of -- or in -- The Twilight Zone.

From 'What If and Back', to Surreal...

Are these two photos somehow analogous? Follow along, and find out.

I found this piece of World War II trivia a tad interesting: in 1943, the US Navy was kinda busy. Seems they had a boatload of issues in two oceans, with ancillary concerns in a few others. Funny how a world war might make it so. But, busy as the US Navy was -- doin' that righteous and thank-God-they-did defendin' the flag thang -- they somehow managed to find time for some sci-fi incidentals.

Seymour, my pet rock, would love this, only to wind up hiding under the loveseat. But I digress.

Ever hear of the "Philadelphia Experiment"? It is also known as the 'Hutchison Effect'. At which time, one of our destroyer escorts went "missing". But apparently, only briefly. The truly interesting thing about it was, 'where' and 'how' it went missing.

It seems that the US Navy -- through magnetic field experimentation -- "tele-transported" a US Navy warship from Philadelphia Navy Yard, to Norfolk, VA. And back. The USS Eldridge (DE-173). The effects on the 181 person crew were more drastic and less desirable than the three hour tour of the SS Minnow, and subsequently never made the '60s sitcom circuit, as did the latter.

It apparently didn't go so well for one Philadelphia-area dog, either: Bozo the Beagle.

At the time of the then highly secret experiment, Bozo the Beagle had recovered from having been hit by a car, and being an early veterinary recipient of his hip being surgically repaired with metal plates. Happily back home, a lopsided-walking Bozo -- at the same instant the USS Eldridge was going from a shadowy outline in the Philly Navy Yard, to a blue flash and *ZAP* arriving at Norfolk -- suddenly *vanished* from his owner's yard. And was reportedly observed by incredulous observers in Norfolk's naval base, stuck to the side of the "Where The F*** did that come from?", highly-magnetized USS Eldridge.

Moments later, when the Eldridge just as suddenly *vanished* from Norfolk, returning to the Philly Navy Yard, Bozo landed abruptly on his owner's porch, a bit worse for wear. Story has it that the cat -- upon witnessing Bozo's remarkable *gone & back* journey -- tossed away all of his catnip, and hid under a bed muttering "nuh UHs" to itself, the rest of its days.

Be that as it may...

If y'all remember, in the late '70s/early '80s, there was a movie about the nuclear carrier USS Nimitz. The ship had just left Pearl Harbor for routine patrol. And a strange anomaly -- perhaps a natural electro-magnetic storm -- overtook the ship, and *POOF*...with a bit more CGI fanfare, the Nimitz found itself in the same position as heretofore. But not in this chronological hereabouts. Suddenly, a 1980s US Navy warship was west of Pearl Harbor...on December 6, 1941.

Date ring a bell? It would to Pavlov *ducking boos and throwd psychology books*

It did to the primary characters, too. And what an amusing -- and not so amusing -- moral and ethical problem it posed for the characters. One that was finally solved, apparently, by the 'captain' deciding to react as the captain of a US Navy warship would be expected to, when he saw a threat to his country.

But just when the audience was rooting for the 1980s US Navy to kick the 1941 Japanese task force's ass...here came that pesky perhaps natural magno-electrical anomaly again, and with some more CGIesqueness, took the USS Nimitz -- and her airborne strike force -- back to the 1980s.

End of the story, other than a weird twist with three plot characters, one of which was a dog. But not Bozo.

Perhaps in the 'Philadelphia Experiment' back in the summer of '43, the US Navy -- intentionally or not -- discovered a 'doorway' into the space-time continuum. Just not how to control it, or make it work without creating basketcases of much of the crew of the USS Eldridge. Not to mention, one banged-up beagle, and the cat that forevermore swore off of catnip.

Perhaps the writer of this 1980s sci-fi movie, had the 'Philadelphia Experiment' in mind. Perhaps not.

In any event, I bring this weird, not well-knowd episode up for....well, 'cuz it was interesting. And ... or ... maybe ... because it has some relevance to a later anniversary this year.

Not that I think a repeat of the 'Philadelphia Experiment' might be actually tried with a US nuclear aircraft carrier. I mean, a nuclear aircraft carrier is not exactly something that leaves a miniscule footprint, even in a giant ocean, even in 1941. And to cover up it's sudden 'disappearance' from 2011, might be more than any fed officials could blow off officially.

BUT...a nuclear attack submarine -- perhaps a Los Angeles Class 688 sub, one more equipped as the ocean-going equivalent of a 'stealth ship' -- now, that might prove a more effective, manageable option. A vessel that can stay submerged for weeks...even months. A vessel that can sail faster submerged, than almost any surface craft of an earlier era. A vessel that can dive deeper, and hide in thermoclines, becoming truly 'invisible' to sonar technology of an earlier time.

And a vessel that can carry more sophisticated and lethal ordnance, than any task force. Maybe not today, to be sure....but it would certainly pack an earth-shaking, bring-enemies-to-their-knees wallop in 1941.

Perhaps just such a sub will leave Pearl Harbor in late November or early December, 2011. Destination: history, by way of years of enhancements to the 'Philadelphia Experiment'.

Perhaps that captain and crew will also find themselves with very real moral and ethical considerations to weigh: witness history as it happened, and leave the future as it has played out? Or, prevent a disastrous national historical event...without knowing what effect on history thereafter? And to do so, with technology possessing a lethality not known to the world in 1941.

What to do: leave the known intact, or try to 'tweak' the future, by way of correcting the known mistakes, with no idea of what the subsequent changing of history will mean? Prevent Pearl Harbor? Prevent the Bataan Death March? Take out Berlin before the Nazi-inspired Holocaust can get truly underway? Save thousands of American lives -- and millions of other innocents who found themselves in the path of the Nazis, Russians, Japanese, and later the American and British air, sea and land counteroffensives -- that were lost in the early, and later, stages of World War II?

OR....change history, by killing some of those who survived, and who then would not contribute to humanity with what they learned from the catastrophic destruction they witnessed, and lived to rebuild from?

Rewrite the past, at the cost of making what was subsequent history, now a huge unknown?

What's more...could the 'Philadelphia Experiment' have contributed -- by accident or design -- to the rumors about the coming of the end of the Mayan calendar, and what it potentially means for 12/21/12?

Perhaps.

Makes for a good sci-fi book or movie idea, eh?

Sure does...if it is just an idea.

Finally, It's About Time (To End) Bonco Products

*The 7th of 3 Christmas shopping ideers from the labs and retrievers of Bonco, UnInc, in time to make a mess of your holiday gift shopping list*

Time is an issue unto itself. Time travel, a whole nother ball game. One that my friends at Bonco, UnInc., should never have taken me seriously about.

It all started when I closely examined my regular commute to work: by bus, an average of 90 minutes, each way. If I drove -- more expensive -- it was 45 minutes each way. Then, of course, there was the shift itself. A busy shift, eh...time flew. A slow shift...time was a weight upon the soul of the clock-watching man/woman.

So what if...just what if...a device could be created to accelerate and decelerate time, according to the needs of the person?

Yeah, I know....my pet rock, Seymour, just gave me a *that's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard in the last five minutes from you* look. He patiently explains to me that time is what it is, and to mess with time is to play with space-time-continuum fire. When I ask how is that, he goes back to watching The Outer Limits, and hiding under the loveseat.

Then, I reckon I goofed by discussing the idea with my friends at Bonco, UnInc....a really bad *TOING* and months later, they tell me they have designed a prototype device to do all I came up with, and more. They call it.....Bonco's All About Time Accelerator/Decelerator & Travel Device.

This has all the sound of another bad AlGore scam to it.

According to the theories* espoused in the technical hypotenuse (Seymour, that's what they called it...stop pointing & laughing at me), this highly-technical-yet-user-friendly device will allow the user to, after logging in various and sundry biorythems and other bodily information**, set parameters for time acceleration and deceleration, according to the needs/desires of the user.

For example: your work day -- from commute there to commute home -- is, say, 14 hours. Set the accelerator on the AATA/D&TD, and wha la, your work day passes at 6 times the normal for the average human. SIX TIMES!*** And when you arrive home, set the auto-reverse feature on the AATA/D&TD, and wha la, your leisure time goes by at one-sixth the normal time for a poor sot not equipped with Bonco's time wonder. ONE-SIXTH!****

Just imagine: your leisure weekends can now seem longer***** than your work week to get there! And imagine vacations! And all, at the touch of a few****** buttons on Bonco's wonder device, the All About Time Accelerator/Decelerator & Travel Device, by Bonco.

You noted the '& Travel Device' at the end...this was a special touch******* added by the innovative scientists in the R&D section at Bonco. They had a notion to add in a time travel feature, so that the proud owner and user of the Bonco AATA/D&TD could go back or forward in Time, using various and sundry calculations garnered from various time/space experiments********, and allow the lucky few********* to own and operate the AATA/D&TD, and view history (or the future) as it actually happened, without being able to interfere with it**********.

And all for the very reasonable price of $1,999,999.95 (this was said with a straight face, I might add). I reckon the marketers at Bonco reckon some folks can print money as readily as the government is now.

Unfortunately, there is one wee little glitch in taking the AATA/D&TD from testing and refining into production and distribution: the test team that took the AATA/D&TD out for a "spin", hasn't been seen, since. It isn't known if they went backward or forward.

I was, uh...asked to inquire amongst you readers out there...have, uh, any of you seen a funny-looking "flying platform", with three white-coated, hysterically-screaming technicians, go flashing through your or your kin's past or recent present? Or if you see them tomorrow, next year, or sometime in the future when you still remember having read this...would you please tell them (a) to return the device to September 1, 2009, and (b) they're fired.

* a mix of theories collected from The Time Tunnel, Quantum Leap, Lost in Space, Star Trek (TOS and IV), Back to/from The Future, and Einstein's discarded theory of Relatives From Hell overstaying on Holidays.

** including for reasons unrevealed but probably revealing in and of themselves, your belch/flatulence frequency and propensity, which I was told can cause tears and ripples in the space/time continuum elevator

*** in the as yet undrafted Disclaimer, there IS a warning about operating at six times the normal speed, and how something as simple as a cut can cause the person to..er.."ignite" or something like that...

**** in that same undrafted Disclaimer, it is recommended that you stay out of places where vehicles are running 6 times faster than you can...just a bit of an inconvenience

***** especially if your wife is big on "honey-do" lists...

****** it's really only a few, after you've made the primary instrumentation calibration and necessary 97,869 inputs and calculations into the on-board computer and collision-avoidance travel system, which I'm told by Bonco is as easy to learn as calculus without a calculator or scratch pad

******* which can't be rated on how well it's working until the prototype returns from wherever it went...

******** see the first *

********* pricey? Eh...what's a couple million against being able to watch some rich liberal tree huggers go back to prehistoric times, and get eaten by a triciploplotz? Good entertainment is, after all, worth the price of admission...

********** an assumption still under review, and will be until the prototype team returns...if ever...