Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for September 18, 2013

It’s funny because it’s true.

Oh, hasn’t this happened already?

The German government of the 1930s cancelled a lot of constitutional rights for the “Protection” of the German people. Sounds a lot like the U.S. government over the last 12 years!

Here’s a paradox for us to ponder…What if there really is time travel. How would we know if the government, or goodness help us others, kept going back and changing things until they got the result they wanted? Would anyone in the ‘current’ now even know?

I read a sci-fi story once where (as best as I can remember—it’s been a long time) the hero went back in time and killed his grandfather … nothing happened. So he went back and killed a bunch of important historical figures … still no change. Finally he met a fellow time traveler who explained that all the lines of history were separate , sort of like spaghetti. The final zinger of the story came when the hero asked why he couldn’t affect anything anymore. He was told that if the time lines were like spaghetti, time travelers became the spaghetti sauce.

Of course time travel to the future is possible its called aging.

The NSA snack machine is definitely not stocked with human growth hormone.

Wait around. The future will come soon enough.

The future usually doesn’t look all that much different than the recent past….

For a novel about government-funded time travel that’s at least partly about it being misused, try Jack Finney’s Time and Again.

Good one Wiley. Most people don’t stop to think what could happen if they add, subtract or delete from the Constitution!

Watch it, Wiley! They’re monitoring your strip daily.

Wiley’s GOT to be on a list now…Theoretically…..

We are all time travelers… moving into the future at the rate on one second per second.

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday”

The concepts of parallel time tracks and multiverses have complicated the time travel story business. Quantum theory is the new spicy seasoning to be used. .A good thick science fiction novel in this genre is THE TIME SHIPS, by Stephen Baxter. Previous comments mentioned “All You Zombies,” which is a dizzy, disturbing story as are the best by Heinlein before he wrote best selling novels with page after page of clever, but confusing dialogue: My opinion.

It isn’t the NSA that turned it into a police state, we already had the FBI, DEA, ATF, USMS, SS, and a plethoria of other agencies in the “Alphabet Soup” to do that for us!

Josie Bauer approvesNabs Al Phee…

Well, theoretically.

If the NSA, CIA, etc. could publicize their successes, many of you “the sky is falling” types might change your tune. They can’t do so because it would expose methods and assets. Failures, of course, are front page news.

Actually, the sky is falling. But don’t you worry your little head about it. I’m certain your favorite reality program is on tonight. Enjoy.

Just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me!

PS: Mark, one of my most frequent sayings is “that reminds me of a Robert Sheckley story”.

There is a theory, reviewed on the Discovery channel many years ago, a quantum foam composed of untold number of tiny wormholes exists. With enough strange matter, by which read about the size of the planet Jupiter and itself a highly controversial theory, you could enlarge one of those wormholes until a man could fit through it. Put one end of the wormhole on a rocket ship traveling at near light speed and keep the other end on Earth. After it reaches it’s destination, someone could step into the Earth end and exit the far end in the future or, step in the far end and exit of Earth in the past..I’m wondering what the physicist who came up with this theory was smoking at the time. =)

What? You mean someone hasn’t yet changed the constitution? Thought that was justice Roberts or…Adolph….???

I think that would cause them to make good decisions, and as we know that hasn’t happened much.

There was an interesting article in Discovery News regarding the theoretical possibility of time travel. Physicists believe, if we had a fast enough propellant, a spaceship traveling at or just under the speed of light would actually be moving forward in time. Also, assuming we could find a wormhole, we could, like in Star Trek, destruct our molecular systems in one place and reconstruct them in another.What most theoretical physicist agree on is that while it is possible to go forward, getting back isn’t, so all those time travel tales about going back in history are just that, tales…for the moment !

Unh-unh, Gauntsy. I’ve kind of retired from having to think of things like that.

Oh, time travel happens all the time! We are under constant study by chronohistorians, but you don’t normally see them because of strict ethics rules. .However, there are very subtle clues left behind by graduate students in the field when the professors aren’t looking. The ubiquitous Kilroy graffiti were one indication. .And very soon there might be a syntax change in the Second Amendment that will stop all the present controversy. (That probably won’t be allowed to stay long.) .And for an amusing little thing that got through and will (what the heck) remain, see this link:.http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/spider-guarding-eggs_pod_image.html.How do I know this? Gee, I’m not allowed to tell. Got to be going. See you last year!

Well, before it gets to this point just remember this, yelling at Government Bureaucrats doesn’t make them any smarter. It only wastes your breath and pisses off your neighbors.

Maybe it’s me but I think the drawing of the short rotund NSA gent is reminiscent of an Alice In Wonderland character. Great drawings and great fun Wiley.

Duh guys. The Wright Brothers flew in 1903. That would be 110 years ago. A century is closer to Snoopy and the Red Baron.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I knows this guy who knows this other guy who says he already went back in time and changed things. We been trying to get him to go back and fix what he changed..Sorry. Sorry. He is not listening. Something about comets and stuff.

It’s dangerous because military intelligence will get hold of it. They’ll use it to kill their enemies’ ancestors, & their ancestors’ enemies. Military intelligence always leaks, so the other side does the same. This destroys the entire timeline & all civilizations. That’s why the world ended in 2012 in a prior timeline, when someone invented the damn thing. The only reason we’ve heard of Atlantis is that it was a Caribbean backwater that no one bothered to eliminate. The aliens have Earth under quarantine to keep the temporal distortion localized.

Good science fiction

Well, let’s hope the time machine creators are smart enough to storm harden their creation…

Heinlein played with time a lot. ‘The Door Into Summer’ was another of my favorites. Time to run them down and read them all over!

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Sounds like even the leftists are concerned about executives ignoring the laws. Refreshing change if they apply those thoughts to the world today.

Dead on, Wiley.

Per Larry Niven (the author), if it is possible to go back in time and change the future, then the only stable timeline is one in which nobody invents a time machine.