Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for February 18, 2021

If anyone knows how to wallow, it’s a pig.

I’ll buy one, Pig!

The history of Sci-Fi does not bode well for Time Travelers.

I can prove that time travel† is impossible: Suppose it is, then there will be time travelers. And if there are travelers, they will change things. And, in the fullness of (all) time, every possible thing WILL happen, so eventually someone will make a change that prevents the invention of a time machine. Q.E.D.

† Yeah, I know, we all  travel forward in time, 24 hours to the day. But all the fun stories come from traveling into the past. That’s what I’m talking about.

Pig, make sure to PATENT it or it will be another bad decision.

Deleted my original post because of damn autocorrect!

Excellent idea, Pig. Get to work on it.

We need a machine that slows time down when we’re having fun…

Wait are sec. Are you saying that the chocolate, cheese and ice cream were bad choices?

He was born to wallow.

Just go find Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman and ask to take a ride in the Wayback Machine, Pig. ;-)

Seems like we try all sorts of ways to change and erase a past that if we would pay attention would teach us lessons we can learn from now and in the future. We don’t have to glorify the wrongs of the past but if we erase them we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes! “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.

Maybe Marty McFly can introduce Pig to Dr. Emmett Brown.

I’d buy one.

If I had my time again I would do it all the same, and not change a single thing – even when I was to blame (for the heartache and the pain).

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life” Pig!

Best thing to do about the past is add an ‘a’ to it and mix it with a delicious Parmesan cheese sauce, oh and sprinkle some thyme on it!

Pig do as Goat suggested …. change now. Get rid of those Debbie Downer pills ! …. Croc Power !

It’s called experience, Pig. You learn from your past mistakes and avoid repeating em in the future.

This reminds me of a Star Trek TNG called “Parallels” where Worf ends up experiencing numerous alternate realities where he is still on the Enterprise but his situation and the things around him are all a bit different. In one he is married to Deanna Troi and gives him the idea when he gets back to his normal timeline to ask her out to dinner.

Everybody kills Hitler on their first time-trip.

All’s WELLs that ends well…

Pigs live to wallow.

I got stuck on “wallow pig”. Isn’t that what they do?

George Orwell wrote a story about a society that did/does this back in 1949. It’s a good read.

I’m sure that, given a chance to change the past, I would make different bad decisions. It would probably take me a lot of do overs to get it right.

Hmm, there might be a movie plot there.

If you could go back and correct all the stupid mistakes you ever made then you’d just constantly be going back over and over. Why? Because we’re humans and we’d just end up making a bunch of different stupid mistakes. There would be no present or future, just a constant re-living of the past. You make your future better by learning from the mistakes of your past.

Or…in the absence of time travel, one might simply re-write or cancel history one doesn’t like…

the problem is, he will be too lazy to do it

I’ve looked into the time machine. It’s a scientific impossibility.

I posit that A it is impossible to travel into the future for it hasn’t happened yet, and B if you could travel into the past it wouldn’t be the past but a past because the very act of traveling into it would change it and therefore split the timeline and C once there, you could not return to the present(or future from that point) because of A and, D if you could somehow get around A you would not return to the future but a future because of B and that is why time travel is impossible…it is just too much work.

Pigs wallow. That is what they do.

But pigs live to wallow.

My problem with time travel is you have to match it with three dimensional travel. The Earth isn’t where it was even a second ago. Go back in time ten seconds and, if you’re facing the correct direction, you will see the Earth coming up to meet you and flash fry you on reentry, which you will regret, assuming you remain conscious. But don’t worry, no one will hear you scream in space.

It really won’t. You may possibly not make those original mistakes but you will make others with maybe even worse results. Just don’t make those same mistakes in the future; live with results and go on with life with the lessons learned…..

Because of all of the above comments, I have a terrible headache and I’m out of here.

Well Pig, someone in the Future will do that. But the first attempt was a real disaster and resulted in some really ugly unintended consequences. All the other times have just been trying to clean up the original mess they made. But even those are only introducing more issues and it’s gotten to the point where the entire system of alternate Timelines has become unstable.

Oh if only we could….

Parallel universes.

NO, it isn’t. In the unlikely even you don’t cause what you’re trying to prevent, you’ll only make things worse.

“We’re like millions of strands of spaghetti in the same pot. No time traveler can ever meet another time traveler in the past or future. Each of us must travel up and down his own strand alone….”

—Alfred Bester, “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed”

Yes, but will it be for the better or the worse.

If only……..

actually creating a time machine moving forward in time is possible. Approaching the speed of light does that. However, this doesn’t allow travel back in time.

Pigs often wallow. ;)

But Pig, you’ve never done anything. So, just relax.

It’s impossible to travel to the past because the past isn’t there anymore.

Time, like quantum phenomena, doesn’t exist in and of itself, it need an observer to make it “real” to that observer.

I’d prefer to invent a machine that goes backward and then eradicate from the planet every numbskull who habitually uses the meaningless expression “going forward.”

Well-intentioned advice, Goat, but remember, you’re talking to a pig. Wallowing is their raison d’etre.

If you can actually do that, Pig, your life is worthwhile and then some! On the other hand, another grotesque failure would pretty much seal your initial self-assessment, which does seem closer to your reality….

Built my own time machine. Only problem is that it’s stuck in forward and I can’t get into reverse gear.

Isn’t wallowing pretty much a pig thing?