I just thought that I would formally introduce myself via Blog.
In case you missed it on the side, my name is Jack. I'm 62 years old, and currently reside in Vancouver.
I will admit that I'm not the biggest television watcher, but this season I decided I'd try a bit harder. I've just started watching Desperate Housewives, and from the start of the season I've been watching Reaper, Pushing Daisies, Journeyman (which I dropped, for the reasons in my first blog) and Back to You.
My favourite show before this season was Gilmore Girls, but that's over now. I'm also watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD (partway through season 3) and intend to watch Angel alongside it, when the time comes.
So, if I'm not a huge TV fan, what drew me here? I don't know, to be quite honest, but I'm very glad I found it. For the last several years, since I retired, I've been rather lonely. I didn't have a whole lot of friends at my job (warehouse foreman, all my workers were 20 year old guys) and it's very difficult at this age to make new friends.
So perhaps I'm here to find friends. I realize this process takes time, but I feel I'm on the right path. The Buffy forum in particular has welcomed me with open arms, and I really look forward to forging some dear friendships in my time here.
And I'm a lifelong bachelor, so I don't even have a wife to argue with :).
*Sparkle45_62 Blog
Why Time Travel Should Never Be Used in TV and Movies
by *Sparkle45_62 on Comments
I've watched a fair bit of film that deals with time travel. Although some truly stand strong against the test of realism, for the most part, they just do not physically work.
Time travel, believe it or not, is something that one day will be possible. There will be actual rules to it. Right now, the most likely belief in the scientific community is that it will not be possible to travel back to the time of the dinosaurs, or back to meet Shakespeare, or even to the year 2007. No, time travel will only be possible back to the date that its conception was realized.
Now, I realize that SciFi is all about things that have not yet happened, or even never can happen. So it's allowed to present the situation where time travel back to any date is possible. Fine.
But the rules of time travel are more intricate than any other world. Time travel may not be possible for reasons other than physics. What I said above, that one day it will occur, well, I mean that physically. Physics allows time travel to happen, assuming we can find a way. However, there may be reasons other than physics that stop us. What does that mean? Well, take the grandfather paradox.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the grandfather paradox, read this paragraph. If you know of what I speak, skip down to the next. The grandfather paradox is a paradox created through time travel where one goes back in time, and kills their grandfather before his own father has been concieved. Naturally, this means our time traveller was never born, and never able to go back in time and commit this crime. But, if he never went back, then his grandfather DID concieve his father, and thus, our trime traveller was born, and able to go back to kill his grandfather. The circle continues infinitely.
What does the grandfather paradox mean? Personally, I believe that (physics aside) time travel cannot happen. Such a paradox would throw the universe out of alignment. It would simply cease to be.
I can't even BEGIN to explain the paradoxes that Journeyman brings up. Well, I'll explain just one. He reads a paper that says 57 people killed in earthquake in 1989. Our hero goes back in time. Tries to save people, fails. Comes back to present day. 57 people were killed ine Earthquake in 1989. He feels he failed. Theoretically, he shouldn't know that. Say originally it was 59. So he saved 2 people, but he SHOULD NEVER KNOW. Since those people never died now, what he'd remember is reading a paper that presents that truth!
I hope that makes sense.
To all aspiring story-telllers... if you plan to write anything to do with time travel, either stop now, or realize that you are going to have to spend years and years verifying physical facts about how time travel could theoretically work, because problems like the one(s) in Journeyman blow holes in the entire plot.
(For the record, I believe the third Harry Potter book, and movie, are VERY good examples of how time travel should work)
Time travel, believe it or not, is something that one day will be possible. There will be actual rules to it. Right now, the most likely belief in the scientific community is that it will not be possible to travel back to the time of the dinosaurs, or back to meet Shakespeare, or even to the year 2007. No, time travel will only be possible back to the date that its conception was realized.
Now, I realize that SciFi is all about things that have not yet happened, or even never can happen. So it's allowed to present the situation where time travel back to any date is possible. Fine.
But the rules of time travel are more intricate than any other world. Time travel may not be possible for reasons other than physics. What I said above, that one day it will occur, well, I mean that physically. Physics allows time travel to happen, assuming we can find a way. However, there may be reasons other than physics that stop us. What does that mean? Well, take the grandfather paradox.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with the grandfather paradox, read this paragraph. If you know of what I speak, skip down to the next. The grandfather paradox is a paradox created through time travel where one goes back in time, and kills their grandfather before his own father has been concieved. Naturally, this means our time traveller was never born, and never able to go back in time and commit this crime. But, if he never went back, then his grandfather DID concieve his father, and thus, our trime traveller was born, and able to go back to kill his grandfather. The circle continues infinitely.
What does the grandfather paradox mean? Personally, I believe that (physics aside) time travel cannot happen. Such a paradox would throw the universe out of alignment. It would simply cease to be.
I can't even BEGIN to explain the paradoxes that Journeyman brings up. Well, I'll explain just one. He reads a paper that says 57 people killed in earthquake in 1989. Our hero goes back in time. Tries to save people, fails. Comes back to present day. 57 people were killed ine Earthquake in 1989. He feels he failed. Theoretically, he shouldn't know that. Say originally it was 59. So he saved 2 people, but he SHOULD NEVER KNOW. Since those people never died now, what he'd remember is reading a paper that presents that truth!
I hope that makes sense.
To all aspiring story-telllers... if you plan to write anything to do with time travel, either stop now, or realize that you are going to have to spend years and years verifying physical facts about how time travel could theoretically work, because problems like the one(s) in Journeyman blow holes in the entire plot.
(For the record, I believe the third Harry Potter book, and movie, are VERY good examples of how time travel should work)
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