Musings and Thoughts
 

I was walking around Tamar Lake this morning and noting how low it has become in the last couple of months. The Canadian Geese have all gone, I don't think they like the extended banks which are as much as 60 feet wide now. Herons and Cormorants are dotted about at the water's edge, looking unhappy.

The lake is a reservoir created by a dam that was built I think in the 50's. It's about a 3 mile walk around it. Now the shape of the original valley is starting to emerge as the water level drops. At this I got to thinking how interesting it would be to go back in time, and see what the valley looked like before the dam.

So, given a time machine (which I am endeavoring to construct from an old gas central heating boiler, but it isn't going well) that can travel 10 years per minute back ward in time, so you can have a look at interesting historical times. (Best look only, don't meddle with paradox.) So climbing onto the seat, and operating the brass levers (if they were good enough for Herbert, they're good enough for me) here are some journey times for your voyages.

A human lifetime (let's say 70 years: 7 minutes (making a cup of tea)


World War One say a century ago: 10 minutes (making and drinking a cup of tea)


The Wars of the Roses (middle ages: ) 1 hour (ish) (A nice walk)


The Roman Empire and New Testament times: 3 hours (ish) (A short flight)


Stonehenge and Pyramid building: 10 hours (A long flight)


Emergence of human race (Homo Sapiens, current thinking: ) 20 days. (A sea passage)


Age of the dinosaurs (on average, they lasted a long time: ) 20 years. (Lifetime journey ?)


Life coming onto land: 100 years (You aint gonna make it.)


Emergence of life on Earth: 750 years (Forget going.)

Bob, what a stunning idea!
Sign me up for one of those reconditioned central heating boilers please, happy to contribute a few old PC components and a DVD-VHS re-recorder by way of additional spares should you need them?

I don't suppose you've got a flux capacitor handy ? :sweat:

Looking in my black hole of a loft.........don't hold your breath though Bob!

I'll pay for it. I'll give you the money last week. (A time travel joke … there ought to be more of those … :sweat:)

I don't like long flights so probably a couple of short ones for me:

Firstly to see where I went wrong earlier!

Secondly to be involved in the stories we read about here!

McC

Tried that Bob but when I went back to yesterday I found it was really tomorrow so I didn't go as the previous day was the day after so I headed further back until I met myself going forward again. I had a flux capacitor in a box in my shed but as I haven't bought it until next week you will have to wait until tomorrow when I get back to yesterday before the shops shut to pay for it.

Sorry can't stay longer, there is a man coming to see me yesterday but I won't be at home tomorrow......... your time machine won't work until last week.

.....and if you find something called "The Gallery".......keep going!

geoff

Two paradoxes for the price of one Tmac and Geoff !!! :sweat:

Dear me. That Bright girl has a lot to answer for.

I spotted a few mistakes in punctuation but I can't edit because when I try I keep getting logged out.

Do you think I've disturbed the space-time continuum with my old gas boiler ? :eek:

A gas powered time machine?

That is sooooo yesterday.

Or maybe tomorrow, or even last week. :confused:

There will be a time when my gas boiler time machine will be in a museum (either centuries in the future or last week) and people will gawp at it and say, 'So that's the pratt that shot King Harold in the eye. :eek: '
(It wasn't my fault, I landed on the wrong side of the bloody line, and I'm a crap archer anyway.) :sweat:

If King Harold had minded his own business, and not looked to see what you were doing landing in the battlefield during the contretemps with Monsieur William, he wouldn't have had his optical sphere punctured by a stray projectile fired by a careless archer. The surprise of seeing a gasboiler arriving in the battle probably caused his eyes to open much wider than normal, (under such stressful circumstances,) so that they facilitated the entry of the offending offensive instrument of wounding. :shock:

This is what happens when you mess with time paradoxes. Jeez you'll be blaming me for Richard III losing at Bosworth next … I just happened to land on that site purely by accident, as it happens, on top of the King … BUT IT WASN'T INTENTIONAL … that landing switch has/had been a bit dodgy for ages (before and after.) :sweat:

Bob, you should have used a single 2 way switch to initiate the landing, using a 10 year old thermostat dial was always going to add some degree of randomness to the final location/time/date of touchdown!

It's all I had at the time … you know how it is at sea … if you're stuck for a spare … bung something in and hope it works … :sweat:

Now Varley, you do not have to go faster than light in order to travel through time. (Have you seen the cost of effing petrol lately :eek:)

It's much easier with a converted gas boiler constructed shortly after consuming a couple of bottles of Pusser's Rum. (In fact, you can ditch the bloody gas boiler, the Rum will do it.)

I have travelled in time under the influence of Pusser's Rum, but there is a small flaw in my cunning plan. I seem only to move forward :eek: The Rum wears off, and I've been transported into (which at the time seems effing bleak) the future. I'm still working on backward time travel.

I've got backward time travel sussed - get Jeremy Corbyn elected - a sure fire way of transporting oneself back in time - although limited dates available 1960s and '70s, with special offers on a winter of discontent!

Corbyn's a lightweight compared to George Brown. I vaguely recall he promised, in Wilson's first Hundred Days, to nationalise all land, all banks, and that mortgages would be so low as to be almost free. George, sadly missed, could hold his drink far better than Juncker.

The one that impressed me Denis Howell. I arrived back in the UK in August 1976 to find the country in a serious drought. They made Denis Minister of Drought and a lot of national newspapers took great delight in taking the p1ss out of him.

Then it started raining.

Right the way through my leave it never stopped. Those same national newspapers were pleading with Denis to make it stop. Clearly the man had some clout with the weather gods. :jester:

Rather than invite almost certain disaster by getting Corbyn & cronies in, perhaps we can incentivise Bob in his 'Clays Gas Boiler Backward Time Travel Machine Project' with a case of Pussers/Woods made in instalments, with a bonus payment of a bottle or 2 of 'Black Tot' for completing the project in time and on budget?

I have an electric boiler now. I put it in myself and converted the system from part gravity to fully pumped. Alas these meddlings have removed its time travelling ability, now it just heats water and pumps it about.

Still, you can't have everything. :jump:

Bob, I have also noticed that when I try to edit or post something on SH, I get "logged out" I think that your time machine is affecting the running of SH.


Cheers Frank..................:smoking:

Jeez I hope not, Steve will nail me to the wall. :eek:

It'll be MORLOCK time …. :shock:

If you put it in yourself, doesn't the cable get tangled when you walk about?
Of course with the amount of Pussers ('Good to the last drop') being mentioned, walking might be seriously impaired anyway - especially if it's fully pumped.

The Terminator option:

IF you were to go back in time, locate and bump off a person who had an adverse effect upon your life, before they had a chance to do so, then return to present time.

How do you suppose that the 'Historic Crime' would be investigated? Bearing in mind that Historic Crimes are very much the in thing for Police to be investigating nowadays.

The perpetrator, even if seen, would have been much older than you would have been at the time.

The more you think about time travel and paradoxes the worse it gets. I always liked Star Trek's Captain Janeway's lin: "Every time I think about Temporal Mechanics I get a headache."

The Terminator film is a classic example. Answer to the problem of the machines in the future: DON'T SEND ANYBODY BACK IN TIME. It was sending somebody back that started the whole mad affair in the first place.

It does give you a headache … :eek:

Isn't that the after effects of a tot too many?

A old film was about a team of scientists who did go back in time, and were on the point of returning to the "present." The story was based on them having to accurately time their entering the time warp so that they came out at exactly the right moment. If they got their sums wrong, they had to return to the past, and try again. However, when they were back in the past, I think they kept making the same miscalculation.

Does anyone remember this story line, or the film?

I resit my exams about twice per month in my dreams, is that what you mean?

Don't remember that story, but the classic disturbing the timeline short story is 'A Sound of Thunder' written by Ray Bradbury in 1952 !!
A group of dinosaur hunters go back in time for a strictly controlled hunt, but one guy steps off the elevated road and treads on a butterfly. When they return to the present ... well ... it isn't the present they left.
Thought to be one of the origins of the expression: The Butterfly Effect.

Bob,
If you're still needing a new flux capacitor, there's a second hand one on e-bay in 2185.
So if the gas boiler conversion is still working you can get it.
Pretty pricey, but the interest on your account(s) between now and then should cover it.

But I spent all that interest in an alehouse in Athens celebrating the Battle of Marathon. :eek:

Bob, would your time machine boiler work better with coal gas of old rather than natural gas?

Went to a good cause then:bounce:

Best in the Long Run then??

geoff

You've never got a groan-o-meter when you need one. :eek:

In the late 60's Mars ran a competition for Marathon Bars ( pre Snickers era)...you had to send 5 wrappers and got the chance to write a new slogan..for money! I sent in 'Marathon, The best in the Long Run', eventually I got a letter with a voucher for a new bar!...but the slogan wasn't a success. About 5 years later,guess what, same slogan got used!

geoff

You should go down to their offices with one of those Arnold Schwarzenegger type mini-guns and leave them in no doubt what you think of that. :jester: