The 5 Coolest Things You Could Do if You Had a Time Machine
2) Meeting history’s greatest figures: Are you sick and tired of hearing people argue about their interpretation of the Constitution?How great would it be to just go back in time and ask the Founding Fathers what they meant in particular areas?
Have you ever wondered how hot Cleopatra was compared to women today? Wouldn’t you like to see for yourself? What would dinner with Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great be like? What if you could talk philosophy with Socrates or Confucius? Imagine convincing Michelangelo to do a painting for you or sitting in the audience as Ludwig van Beethoven plays. How amazing would it be to talk about writing with William Shakespeare, science with Einstein, leadership with Machiavelli, God with St. Augustine, or psychology with Sigmund Freud?
Niven’s Law on time machines applies.
And it would probably be someone like James Holmes who would enforce it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0qDy0T5WXM
“If either one of us invents time travel….”
What? Killing Hitler didn’t make the list?
Everyone wants to kill Hitler.
At the end even Hitler wanted to kill Hitler.
The trouble with killing Herr Schickelgruber is that it (a) does not stop Nazism from coming to power in Germany (he wasn’t the only one responsible for it), and (b) it leaves power in the hands of competent aggressive militarists with anti-Semitic delusions.
For a real nightmare, look up Reynhardt Heydrich, Otto Skorzeny, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and Heinrich Himmler. Then imagine World War Two in Europe with them calling the shots minus der Fuhrer putting his oar in to gum up the works.
Adolf wasn’t called “the Allies’ best general” (by Churchill, IIRC) for nothing.
cheers
eon
Maybe…or maybe not. Hitler’s charisma was one of the biggest reasons Nazism gained such a foothold. I just finished reading Mein Kampf not too long ago, and the man was every bit as brilliant as he was delusional. I’m not so convinced that he wasn’t the real keystone of that movement just as advertised. Though, I must admit, I read that book to try to find out why he (and others then and today) seem to hate jews so much, and I’m still in the dark. All anybody can say to defend jew-hatred seems to be either weird, unsupported conspiracy theories (a la Protocols of the Elders of Zion), some variation of the blood libel or they have a bad case of Begging the Question. IOW, you hate jews because they are so hateful.
Well, Hitler didn’t enlighten me on that score, but I certainly came away impressed with his political insights. He took a country reeling from The War to End All Wars, and in about 20 or 25 years brought them very nearly to the point of winning the sequel and controlling a huge portion of the planet. I repeat, the man was brilliant, at least in some ways.
“Well, Hitler didn’t enlighten me on that score, but I certainly came away impressed with his political insights. He took a country reeling from The War to End All Wars, and in about 20 or 25 years brought them very nearly to the point of winning the sequel and controlling a huge portion of the planet.”
He did no such thing. The Wehrmacht made excellent use of the element of surprise and of new tactics built around mobility, true. But they were never, ever going to be able to beat the Soviet Union. And given that they couldn’t even manage to cross the English Channel the possibility of posing a real threat to America was remote, at best.
Yeah, they did a pretty good job…
Rolling over outdated cavalry in the teeny little Low countries,
the French…
Gassing the old women and kids.
Quite impressive feats of strength and courage, I must say…
Yeah, them Krauts did real well….
until they fought MEN….
“Hey a**hole, I got tanks and airplanes TOO, lets dance motherf*cker”
And the rest was a smouldering ruin.
“sic semper tyranus”
Brought to you by the average MAN.
A drugged-up Mystic and some flashy uniforms does not make a Sucessful State.
It takes, MEN.
If Geemany hadn’t delayed Barbarosa to pull Mussolini’s bacon out of the fire in Greece the Germans probably would have wintered in the rubble of Moscow.
If the German generals would have been allowed to pull back into defensible lines in the fall they would have fared better in the winter.
If Hitler hadn’t ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb British cities Fighter Command would have been knocked out of the sky in a few months, which would have ment destruction of Bomber Command and the Home Fleet in turn.
The Whermact was the best-trained, best-equipped, most effective fighting force of its day. It owes its failure entirely to simple attrition and idiotic decisions made by the high command, usually starting with Hitler.
Without Hitler there probably would not have been a Nazi (National SOCIALIST) Party of any consequence.
Hitler was one of the greatest public speakers of all time. He had (very unfortunately) the gift of being able to raise the emotions of his listeners to the point where they would be moved to action. Very few speakers have had this gift (Lenin, Mussolini, Castro all had it too).
Also, like most who rise to the pinnacles of power, he was a very astute judge of character and he had great skill in stroking those that needed stroking, and of course, in murdering those he needed to murder.
He knew what he could get away with esp. in dealing with his enemies, in particular heads of foreign states.
Like most tyrants (though not all) his early successes literally went to his head and he finally over-reached (e.g., Operation Barbarossa- the invasion of the USSR), which was the beginning of the end for him and Germany.
Germany in the late 20s / early 30s did not have a real charismatic party leader other than Hitler. The other Nazis who hoped to rule the roost (e.g, Ernst Roehm, head of the SA) were considered by most Germans to be ignorant, stupid bullies and brawlers. Goering, Goebbels, etc., did not have the persona that would compel people to see them as leaders, even though Goebbels was a compelling public speaker (it is tough to have folks do your bidding if you are a former chicken farmer).
Hitler did. Only Hitler could literally “hypnotize” his listeners to follow his lead.
Hitler is the best example of why listening and watching a great public speaker can be very scary because their ability to motivate the masses to action. If a great public speaker’s goals are malevolent – as was Hilter’s – then watch out.
Obama – at least initially in his carefully prepared and telepromted speeches – was also able to “move” and “capture” his listeners. How many hard edged, tough, experienced business leaders supported this guy in 08, that now regret that decision? How were they so easily fooled by a zero experience, unknown, smooth talking fraud?? A George Bush could never have pulled this off no matter what his views or policies. Obama did.
Yea, if you could go back in time it would be best to prevent a Hitler and Stalin from assuming power; as well as bunch of Prussians prior to 1914. I guess you also could go back in time and make sure all of Obama’s ORIGINAL college applications and transcripts, his ORIGINAL SS CARD and his ORIGINAL FIRST PASSPORT were made public.
“At the end even Hitler wanted to kill Hitler”
Too Funny!
The comic strip XKCD had an episode a while back on this topic, in this case going back and killing Hitler:
http://xkcd.com/1063/
“I’ll kill Hitler!”
Yeah, like there weren’t about a billion or so people trying to do just that for YEARS…
I guess I’m boring. I’d go back 2 billion years and put cameras in high orbits. I’d take a picture every 10,000 years of the continents and super-continents being created and dispersing. Of mountain ranges rearing up and grinding down. Of an entire planet full of alien life dominating the stage and taking their exit (especially the rock which whacks the dinosaurs, that would be shot in real-time). I’d watch the ice sheets descend and retreat and the Great Lakes forming from their passage.
Other cameras orbiting Mars and Venus and Jupiter would catch their stories as they played out too.
Just a thought.
So, essentially, you’re going to watch paint dry, only on a cosmic scale?
That’s what time lapse was invented for.
I would go back and copy the contents of the Library of Alexandria, as well as all films created from the invention of the medium. We have lost fully half of them from the first 100 years of film.
Given what I’ve seen out of Hollywood over the years, the odds are that’s a very good thing.
Watching the evolution of Earth (a frame every 10,000 years) is watching “paint dry”? To watch super continents form and break up? To watch continental chunks move around the planet and re-form back to super-continents?
sigh
My use of the time machine would be selfless and in the service of mankind. I would go back and kill the guy who invented drywall screws.
Just sayin. Nod your heads in agreement, if you know where I’m coming from.
I’d get Phillips, too. Or at least whale on him until he agrees that his frickin’ screw heads will all be deep enough to accommodate the tip of the frickin’ screwdriver.
cheers
eon
See this is where ignorance gets you. Phillips designed the screw head like that to accommodate a manufacturing process that required a certain amount of torque and no more. The screw is designed to cam out at that torque. If you want a screw type that does not cam out no matter how much torque is applied then you must use a square drive or a hex head. They will not cam out and if you apply enough torque it will shear the head off.
Drywall screws have the same design and are to be used with a drywall screw gun. This allows the screw to set to a designed depth and not to tear the drywall paper covering. This allows the finisher to obtain a smooth finish on the wall.
Come on guys, know your fasteners and their uses and requirements for proper use. Don’t blame screw, blame the dummy running the machine.
I’d rather blame the dummies who use those specified-torque screwheads in places that it makes no sense to use them. Not to mention the dummies who insist on making the driver heads with too acute a nose angle to properly engage the screwheads.
The Phillips screw is a nearly perfect example of something being done just for the sake of either (a) a patent, or (b) just being different. Sort of like French and Italian machine gun designs between the wars, and don’t get me started on those.
cheers
eon
“Sort of like French and Italian machine gun designs between the wars, and don’t get me started on those”
Or a vintage Ducati Desmodromic Valve train…
Moto-Guzzi’s (my chosen poison) are not much better.
Quirks indeed, but nothing of the unnecessary complexity for the mere SAKE of complexity, as anything designed by GERMANS.
One word…Torx.
I LOVE drywall screws. especially the square drive heads.
and carpet tacks! Especially carpet tacks!!
Ultimate grudge match — Scipio Africanus vs. Hannibal, both with modern armed forces.
With Belisarius and Julius Caesar giving commentary.
Okay, everyone go back and watch “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” again.
Science fiction story I read a long time ago postulated that the “thousands” in the “loaves & fishes” story was actually only a few dozen locals, plus a whole bunch of time-traveling tourists.
I don’t like it, I LOVE it! Can you remember the title and/or author?
Sorry, not off the top of my head. They say that… something… fails as you get older.
However, this thread has enticed me to dig out my copies of Annals of the Time Patrol by Poul Anderson and A Greater Infinity by Michael McCollum.
Hey, Dr. Helen! Here’s a couple more titles for you…
Don’t know if this was the story or not, but the Wikipedia entry to Robert Silverberg’s Up The Line includes this note:
“Silverberg’s narrative includes some cleverly worked out details about the problems of time-travel tourism. For example, the number of tourists who over the years wish to witness the Sermon on the Mount has increased the audience at the event from the likely dozens to hundreds and even thousands.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_the_Line
I’m sure the concept has been mentioned (at least) numerous times in time travel fiction, some possibly inspired by the Silverberg story.
I would be terrified to meet Jesus – and I think a lot of people would be too if they really, really thought about it.
I would want to check out the library of Alexandria which most likely had history and knowledge that was forever lost to mankind when Julius Ceasar destroyed it.
Except that Caesar seems not to have been the real culprit; the actual destruction happened (strangely enough) after the Islamic conquest.
One SF author (Larry Maddock) thought up a time machine about the size of a small warehouse, the objective being to go back to Alexandria before the Library was burnt (yes, by the Muslims) and clean it out.
A more sensible procedure would be to put one or more “agents in place” among the copyists at the Library, long term. The library got most of its texts by copying existing manuscripts. As Carl Sagan related in Cosmos, Alexandria was the prime seaport of the Med, and had laws stating that any ships coming in the had books on board were required to allow the Library’s staff to copy them. This caused a bit of a hoo-haw with Athens, when it was discovered that the staff were “borrowing” manuscripts of the Greek tragedians, etc., from Athenian vessels, copying them… and then returning to copies, keeping the (valuable) originals.
With all this copyright violation going on anyway, literally for centuries, a few deep-cover agents in the Library staff could, with modern document reproduction technology, digitize and thereby preserve the contents of the Library without damaging the timeline. It might take a while, but it would be a comparatively low-risk operation as per the principles of Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol.
Yes, I’m a devious b******d. I thought you all knew that already?
cheers
eon
I like that about you.
The tie, though? That’s gotta go.
Also done by Kage Baker in many different books…
There were no contemporary references to the Library of Alexandria after the Caesar / Pompey skirmish there. The reference to it being destroyed during the Islamic conquest was not mentioned until centuries after the supposed event. Islam has destroyed vast wealth, rich cultures, and many people. It continues to do so. But the Library of Alexandria was collateral damage in the first century B.C.
Just one thing about most of those options . . .
When will you pick up the Universal Translator you need to understand and communicate in Aramaic, Latin, Greek, German, etc.?
All time machines come equipped with that, as well as with an anti-grandfather-paradox unit.
The whole “grandfather paradox” misses the point. To make really sure that you are not born, you’d have to ice your grandmother.
There’s no guarantee that “Grampaw” is actually related to you, if you know what I mean. (And I’m pretty sure you do.)
cheers
eon
Just make sure you don’t do the nasty in the pasty.
Or you could just learn those languages before you start your trip. We have at least a good idea how those languages worked. All the dialog in Mel Gibson’s film about Jesus was entirely in Aramaic as I understand it.
Memorizing lines is not speaking a language.
See Inglourious Basterds for how that works out.
I got the ability to communicate in Latin forty years ago. And I needed neither a time machine nor a universal translator; I just had to go to school.
That covers watching Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon and discussing theology with Augustine. Well, assuming your accents are mutually intelligible.
What about the rest?
Well, I could always take the time machine forward to 2276 and steal a universal translator from the Enterprise…
But seriously, there are millions of people who know Classical and Church Latin (the pronunciation of which is probably closer to the sermo vulgaris), Attic and koine Greek, Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, and various 1st-millennium CE Aramaic dialects (not to mention Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Heian Japanese). It’s been said that the past is a foreign country…and like other foreign countries, the language is well-known.
I would just assume the Son of God would know what I was saying and be able to talk back to me in a language that I understood.
I think I’d go back and tell my grandpa to go short in early 1929. Then move forward a bit and beat the shit out of the punk kid that thought it would be a good idea to marry my ex wife.
Oh, and swing by Jamestown and see if Pocahontas was as hot as Disney portrayed her.
Number One reason all supposed Time Travelers are bunk: not a one of them remembers to bring back a winning lottery number.
Actually, my theory is that all lottery winners ARE time travelers who have come back. Have you ever talked to a lottery winner? Me neither. I don’t want their money though, I just want the secret to the damn time machine. If we really want to have a time machine, this is where we should start.
I’d go back to a time when there were no people. And I wouldn’t come back.
…. mostly likely because you’d be eaten by some very large predator…..
Your reason #2 is absurd even allowing for the time machine: It was no easier to get access to important individuals then than it is now, if this world is the place it’s always been. Besides, why would the great and good of ages past pay any attention to the likes of us, unless we bring along some grand history-changing means of catching their eyes?
Not really. Socrates strolled the streets of Athens every day. Saying hello in the agora would probably get him to stop and chat, likewise Plato. A simple “Guten Morgen Doktor Luther” outside the Cathedral at Wittenberg would probably get you a quick theological debate. It wouldn’t be hard to find the bars near West Point where US Grant, Custer and Pickett used to sneak off post to have a snort.
while I love the idea of going back and depositing a penny so I can be fabulously wealthy today, I have a feeling that our 21st century sensibilities would be tremendously disappointed when meeting the Great Minds and Personalities of past centuries. They were only people and we only know them today through the distorted lens of other people’s memories and imaginations. Julius Caesar, for all his populism, was the Saddam of his day (albeit a more intelligent, better educated one). Alexander the Great was just a pre-Napoleonic Napoleon. I suspect Beethoven’s masterworks, played with the instruments of yesteryear, and in the opera houses of yesteryear, would have sounded thin to us, compared to our acoustically-enhanced music of today. I won’t touch on the philosophers or religious figures, because they might still have had wisdom to impart (if we could understand them, and if their wisdom was intact without the commentaries and hagiographies of later scholars).
Even so, if I could go back in a time machine, I’d go back to early 20th century Florida and California, buy up all the supposedly useless swamp and desert I possibly could, and make a killing in the latter 20th century. I’d also take back all the successful movie scripts and publish them as my own.
Also, if Cleopatra’s schnozz on the coins of her day are any indication, her sex appeal didn’t have anything to do with her face.
One of the best treatments of time travel I ever read was by David Gerrold – “The Man Who Folded Himself” – http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Folded-Himself/dp/1932100040 – just 2.99 for kindle edition. I greatly enjoyed how he handled the paradoxes, etc, and highly recommend it.
The best time travel story ever is by Heinlein. No, not “All you Zombies”, which is the most famous, but “By his Bootstraps”. Also very interesting is “The Very Slow Time Machine”.
Somebody mentioned killing Hitler above. As I understand john’s post you want to avoid doing something in the past that screws up the future. I recall reading a novel years ago where some folks go back in time and kill hitler. when they come back here the Germans have won World WarII and are essentially the Nazis (cannot remeber if they had a differant name). Basically they ended up with a leader who was a lot like Hitler except he did not unleash the full weight of the anti-jewish stuff till after he won the war (so he ends up with scientits who fled here working for him amongest other things).
“…scientits….”
Is that some new-fangled way of saying female scientists?
LMAO! I’ll have to use that with my colleagues.
“Two Dooms” by Cyril Kornbluth also shows that by monkeying around with how World War II actually turned out, ends up having the US lose to both the Germans and the Japanese.
I would put a note that says “Geraldo Rivera sucks.” in Al Capone’s vault.
Outstanding idea!
@WALTC
You’d be disappointed. There is a contemporary portait of her after she married John Rolf and went to London. A great beauty she was not.
Have not given that much thought to the Time Machine gig, but I did catch the Alladin story in second grade. Know-it-all brand new teacher read to the class and then went around the room asking each kid what their three wishes would be. The usual seven-eight yearolds opted for a puppy, a new sled, a baby brother, and all the way up to an airplane for the backyard, and of course world peace and a pony. My monogram puts me at the end of any alphabetical array so at least I had the last word. Having had the time to consider, and exposure to about fifty prior wishes, excluding duplicates, I firmly announced first, a house of our own as doubling up with friends and/or family was widespread during the 1930s depression. Second one was a bit more dificult, and not necessary to repeat here as it was a pretty personal request, and elicited much laughter at the time. When the tittering wound down a little know-it-all teacher started to press for my vision of the Third Wish.
By now I had had time to really carefully apply myself to the best of my abilities and asked for ” If it’s all the same with you Al, please Sir, may I have three more wishes?”
If you could go back in time, which of course is impossible, if you did anything of any consequence, say 1,000 years ago, no one alive today would have been born. It would be a whole different group of people living now.
But if I could “go back”, I would kill Mohammad early and often.
The sci-fi novel “Behold the Man,” by Michael Moorcock, was about a Jewish scientist who builds a time machine to go back in time to find the historical Jesus. What he finds, though, is a real surprise. Some Christians might be offended by it though.
If I had a time machine, I would go Back to the Future to the year 2032:
sinz54: “Who’s the President of the United States in this year 2032?”
Citizen: “Angelina Jolie, of course.”
sinz54: “The ACTRESS????”
As much as I loathe Angelina Jolie, even finding her as President would be (slightly) better than discovering that the President in 2032 was still Obama or some descendent of his in an Obama Dynasty that imitated the Kim Dynasty in North Korea.
I find that story less offensive than “The Man from Earth”.
I’d do several things.
1. Go back to August 1945, off the Florida Keys, with a PBY-5A, get on the Guard frequency, and when Lt. Taylor and Flight 19 got themselves thoroughly lost over the Gulf of Mexico flying on the reciprocal of their radio bearing to Fort Lauderdale, lead them back northeast to safety. That alone would probably have eliminated all this “Bermuda Triangle” BS.
For an encore, go ENE from Bermuda in 1948 and 1949, with another PBY, to either lead the British West Indies Airways Avro Tudors Star Tiger and Star Ariel safely to landfall, or at least find out where they went down.
(Catalinas were built for air-sea rescue and had full radio direction-finding gear onboard with very powerful transmitters and extremely sensitive receivers. I would need a Sierra Hotel radio operator. Anybody interested?)
2. Stand on the Grassy Knoll in Dallas on 22 November 1963, and film the Kennedy assassination, to show clearly that there was no “second gunman”. Just to prove that, yes, the Warren Commission was right, and no, Oswald was not a “patsy” for a “vast right-wing conspiracy”, just a disaffected wannabee Marxist who thought he could make a name for himself like Guiteau and Czolgosz. Can you imagine the seizures the self-righteous left would have?
3. Follow the guys who snuffed Jimmy Hoffa. With a concealed camera, and being careful to get good shots of their faces. Not to mention exactly which car crusher Jimmy ended up pressed in iron in. (My best guess is that the reason the body was never found was that inside of 48 hours, it was nothing but trace elements in a smelter in Bethlehem, PA.)
4. Follow Judge Crater for reasons similar to (3).
5. Whitechapel, London, summer of 1888. With a Webley RIC .450. Enough said.
cheers
eon
Or how about follow Ray Gricar.
If you really want to know who killed Kennedy & Hoffa check out I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. Both questions are answered.
I think I’d like to go back and meet my younger self and just mess with his head.
You know, put on a hooded robe and confront him on lonely stretch while he’s coming back from a night of partying and wave my finger at him and make wild and crazy predictions in a moaning voice that come true.
That would be kind of cool.
The last prediction, of course, would be wait to ’98 and buy Apple.
Cut the brake lines on the Choom Wagon.
If one were going back to meet Jesus would not one need to go back a little earlier to first learn Hebrew? Just sayin.
Personally I would like to go back to the 1950′s and inform all the haters that Joe McCarthy while being a jerk was also right.
Actually, you’d need to learn Aramaic, which while closely related to Hebrew isn’t exactly the same;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_language
It’s sort of like the difference between Spanish, French, and Latin.
cheers
eon
I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m pretty sure Jesus was able to speak every language in the world when He walked among us, and I know He is able to now, after His resurrection.
Find the folks who canceled Joss Weedon’s Firefly and stop them!
Watch the great films of the 70s and 80s (BttF, Star Wars, Ghostbusters) in the theatre, now that I’m old enough to properly and fully appreciate them.
The “getting rich” one would be hardest, since you would have to a) Have a negotiable instrument appropriate for the time at which you start, and b) Create a line of “descendants” leading to you, while hoping your property doesn’t fall afoul of eminent domain. (In addition to New York, I would buy property in what is now Central, Hong Kong in 1897, particularly if I could find a series of Chinese frontmen).
Two trips back to August 4, 1961 would interest me. One to Kenya and the other to Hawaii.
The problems of revising history through time travel and intervention were wonderfully spoofed in the close to the Blackadder comedy series starring Rowland Atkinson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder:_Back_%26_Forth
Me? I would go back in time and talk to Illinois politico Jack Ryan and say, “For the love of God man be happy with your hot wife, Jeri Ryan, and stop trying to get her to go swing clubs and have threesomes.” Please, the fate of the nation rests on it. You never know what “confidential material” will be (air quotes) “accidentally” be realeased during a political campaign. For the love of God man, the fate of the free world hinges in you getting elected to the Senate not your opponent.
What would it be like to have dinner with Alexander or Genghis Khan? Nasty, brutish, and short.
First, we don’t speak the same language.
Secondly, they believed in demons and witches, and would almost certainly burn me at the stake for my strange clothes and incomprehensible language.
Thirdly, even if I got to eat something, my body would have no immunity to the ancient bacteria and parasites that are surely in the poorly-cooked food.
6 Time Travel Realities Doc Brown Didn’t Warn Us About
http://www.cracked.com/article_18564_6-time-travel-realities-doc-brown-didnt-warn-us-about.html
If you had a time machine, what could you do with it?
I’d go back to 1990 and start buying modest amounts of IBM stock.
You’d want to go back a bit further than that, as the firm was founded in 1911;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
Fun fact; one of the men who started it was Christopher Miner Spencer, the inventor of the Spencer repeating rifle of American Civil War fame.
About 1912-13, 1919-20, or 1930-31 would be good “target zones” for buying IBM stock. The first zone being when it was a startup, the other two being post-recession and post-Depression “windows”.
Avoid 1929 and any year after 1960 at all costs. Post-1960, IBM stock values went stratospheric due to military contracts, industrial computerization, and the space program.
cheers
eon
Personally, I was thinking about dropping off a printing press with movable type at the Library in Alexandria, along with instructions for making more, and a shuttle loom in Crete during the Minoan period.
I’d probably go back five minutes and skip this article.
LOL!!
Spit coffee all over keyboard — LOL!!
The greatest gift to humanity and modern civilization would be to go back in time to Medina in 622AD and decapitate the founder and ‘holy prophet’ of Islam, Muhammed, with his own bloody sword of his demonic god Allah.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Everyone always assumes that if they went back in time, they’d have easy access to the important people. Hell, it’d be even harder to have access to them than it is to have access to important people now! And the all-important language/accent barrier has been mentioned.
My fantasies are modest. I’d go back a few years and 1) put my son in a different high school, 2) warn Andrew Breitbart in 2009 about his heart condition – but that’s assuming I could get access…
I read a time travel book years ago–it was called “The Time Tunnel,” but I don’t know if it was the source of the old TV show. But in it, the chief time traveler carried inexpensive synthetic gemstones back in time to provide himself operating capital.
We Jews have had a ” time machine ” for more than 3000 years. It is called The Torah. Not only does it allow us to experience the past it also allows us to experience the future. It does not allow us to correct our mistakes , from which we learn, but it does teach us how to atone for our mistakes. That is far more important.
Nice way of putting it.
I was going to say:
We dont need a Time Machine, if we heed the Wisdom of our Elders.
But Menachem Ben Yakov beat me to it
The problem is that Tanach records the fact that the history of the Jewish people has been them utterly failing to do that, except for a precious few generations and a small faithful remnant. Ignore that at your peril.
I’d go back to Iowa in Feb. 1959 and make damned sure Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper didn’t get on that plane. No big deal in the “great, grand scheme of things,” but the music world would have benefited from decades more of their talent, especially Holly’s.
Of course, Don McLean’s career would have taken a hit, but such is life (and death).
This is fun…just so you know I already have a TM, and went back long ago and made things today the best I could…its complicated, but it was worse “before”. Have a great day…
This is fun…just so you know I already have a TM, and went back long ago and made things the way they are today the best I could…its complicated, but it was worse “before”. Have a great day…
Messing with history is dangerous. Remove Hitler early, aborting Nazi Germany, and you remove the chief incentive for democratic countries to spend billion$ on the Bomb. Many of the scientists involved were pacifists or Communists or sympathizers, and would not have done it without the Nazi threat. Which means that Stalin could get the Bomb first. Oops.
No, my thing is something Robert Silverberg suggested – go back to ancient Rome and record Mark Anthony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar. It must have been brilliant, because it was absolutely decisive (turning the Roman populace completely against the assassins), and it was also impromptu – made only hours after Caesar’s death.
Another thing would be to go back to Elizabethan London and record the first performance of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In particular, the scene with Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes…” speech. Shylock is the villain, and anti-semitism was the default position of that era, yet that speech is such an eloquent call for equality and respect. It seems impossible that it was meant ironically. Only a period performance could answer that question.
Third thing (I’m a techie): Somehow persuade Motorola to agree to IBM’s terms for supplying the 6809 processor for the IBM PC. Moto turned down IBM, which adopted Intel’s 8088 instead. This lead to Intel’s near total dominance of the PC market (AMD makes Intel clones). I hate Intel’s processor architecture. OK, that’s meddling with history, but I don’t see it possibly leading to any catastrophes.
The problem is that as a time traveler, as many have noted, you are an addition to the past. That’s why I prefer the “Quantum Leap” scenario, where you take over another person’s life. Of course, it would be nice if you could have access to all their memories and knowledge, so no one would be the wiser. Plus, not limited in time like the TV show was.
I’d jump into Gavril Princip and not assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. I’d jump into Kaiser Wilhelm II and tell Austria-Hungary in July 1914 that it’s understandable to be upset at the assassination attempt, but Germany will not back any war or threats of war in the Balkans.
In fact, all my “jumps” would be focused on preventing World War I and on nipping communism and fascism in the bud. I don’t know if I could prevent it, but I’d sure try by taking out Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, and a host of others in “tragic accidents.”
Perhaps a far better theme than Time Travel would be a personal and complete Tour of the Universe given by God.
Across the Universe, back and forth, through time from beginning to end, from the Cosmos to the Micro Cosmos, with all your questions answered, even the ones you haven’t thought of yet!
Time travel? How One Dimensional!!!