Time Twister
RETROCAUSALITY IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ADDRESSING THE QUESTION, “CAN THE FUTURE AFFECT THE PRESENT, AND CAN THE PRESENT AFFECT THE PAST?”. IT IS ANY OF SEVERAL HYPOTHETICAL PHENOMENA OR PROCESSES THAT REVERSE CAUSALITY, ALLOWING AN EFFECT TO OCCUR BEFORE ITS CAUSE. IT OFTEN REFERS TO PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF TIME TRAVEL, THOUGH THE TWO TERMS ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY SYNONYMOUS. (Logo courtesy of Queen Creative.)
Wow. Can the present affect the past? I’m going to say “no”.
I read the Wikipedia entry on the topic. It’s all a bit spurious, physics-wise, although there are theories. There are always theories. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century to be a physicist. I like to see my physics in action.
We’re talking “causality” here – cause and effect. One example of cause and effect is described by the “butterfly effect”, which is also part of chaos theory. Now, I’m happy with chaos theory per se. If you pop a ball on the top of a hill it will eventually roll in some direction or other based on all sorts of starting conditions. But the “butterfly effect”? A butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away weeks later? Really?
Those Chinese butterflies have some serious mojo going on
“The Butterfly Effect” by DraliDoodles
Back to retrocausality. As a thought experiment it’s fun, I guess, especially if you’re with your mates down the pub, or it’s post-university-disco and you’re all sitting in the kitchen, nicely drunk making cheese toasties and talking philosophy.
As a reality, I’m thinking it could not be! I’ve watched a ton of Dr Who and he always actually travels to the past in order to affect the future. If he could affect the past by changing something in the present, he wouldn’t need the TARDIS, now would he?
But whoa there just a minute! How do we know that this retrocausality thing isn’t happening all the time? We don’t! Think about this:
- I don’t like something about my past
- I fire up my RetroCausalitron(TM)
- I change the past from “here”, the present
- The timeline from “that point then” on to “this point now” is rewritten
- Because the timeline has changed I never actually changed the past – that action belonged to a defunct timeline. Nor do I even want to change the past as it is now what I wanted it to be.
Therefore we could have changed the past millions of times from the present and we’d never even know. Now that’s scary. My head hurts.
Dull and Boring
Daily Prompt: ( YAWN ) – What bores you? Photographers, artists, poets: show us DULL.
OK, here you go. Dull it is.
Dull, in Perthshire (Scotland), picture courtesy of BBC website
As you can see, they’ve shaken things up a bit by twinning with a town in the USA.
Boring, Oregon (USA), picture courtesy of The Guardian website
If that’s not enough excitement for you, read more here:
Excitement hope for Boring, Oregon, and Dull, Perthshire (BBC News website)
Silly placenames: welcome to Dull, twinned with Boring (The Guardian online)
Please Let Me Go Home
Weekly Writing Challenge – Your earliest memory. Capture every detail. Document the quality of the memory — is it as sharp as HDTV or hazy and ethereal, enveloped in fog? Write for 10 minutes. Go.
I must have been around four years old. We were living at the first house I ever lived in and we left when I was five so that sounds about right.
Mum left my little brother and I with a good friend of hers to play, as she occasionally did. I’m sure we’d been there before, though everything from so long ago is pretty hazy.
I don’t remember anything about that visit apart from the very end – that is etched into my memory as if carved in stone.
My memory tells me that Mum’s friend held a cup of tea – it could have been coffee but I think it was tea – out to each of us. She said “Drink this or you can’t go home.” I was terrified. I wanted to go home to Mum.
I drank the tea. It was foul. I was only a toddler. Toddlers don’t drink tea. Toddlers drink juice or milk (I never drank milk and still don’t – it makes me sick).
We never went back to that house. Not ever.
“Cup of tea, little boy?” by DraliDoodles
It’s a witch’s hat, OK? Shut Up. I don’t do hats.
Is this how it really happened? Probably not. This woman was a kind woman, a friend of the family. More than likely she said “Have some tea to drink before you go home.” I misconstrued.
Only now, as I write this, do I feel terribly guilty for the poor woman. Imagine inadvertently scaring a toddler so much that they refused to see you ever again?
Memories are tricky things. Although I am convinced that “I heard what I heard”, I have been similarly convinced that a film ended this way, or a book ended that way only to watch or read it decades later and discover that my mind has altered the ending. In my mind it ended the way I always wanted it to – now that I’ve rediscovered it I find that the ending is completely different. Disappointingly different.
My mind very probably twisted this innocent encounter into something sinister.
What can we trust if not our own minds?
Stop the clock…
Time to write: 8 minutes.
Proof-reading/editing: 4 minutes.
Draw/scan/format/upload doodle: 5 minutes.
Confession: I didn’t let this sit for a day as per the instructions. I didn’t want to spoil the thoughtless spontaneity.
D I Why
Prompts for the Promptless – Do It Yourself (DIY) is the method of building, modifying or repairing something without the aid or experts or professionals.
I have to be honest – DIY and me don’t mix. I’d love to be one of those chaps who can put up a shelf at a moment’s notice or fix a leaky tap at the drop of a hat, but sadly this is not the case.
If I try anything so much as cutting the tag off a new t-shirt, I always ensure that the first aid box is close at hand. Stick me anywhere near a power tool and I’m likely to have one of those hard-to-believe hilarious yet tragic accidents.
“Cornish man accidentally falls on own chainsaw while hanging picture.”
“Chainsaw Disaster” by DraliDoodles
So Far So Good
Daily Prompt: State of Your Year – Write up a mid-year “State of My Year” post.
I’m a couple of days late with this but (as well as having no time at all on a Monday) I realised that some stuff has actually happened to me this year.
Since stuff happening to me is quite a big deal I felt I couldn’t let this prompt go unanswered, regardless of my slight tardiness.
Three, yes three whole things have happened and they’ve all been good :-).
After a three month wait, at the end of January my new car finally rolled off the assembly line. This is the first new car I’ve ever owned! Well, I say “owned”. The bank currently owns most of it. Here’s a picture (it’s a Ford Fiesta Zetec S Ecoboost thingumy, if anyone’s interested).
It’s a lovely car to drive! Since I had to wait so long for it I ended up having to sell my old car so the dealer gave me a courtesy car to knock around in (for free!). It was a SportKa with go faster stripes and sporty trim. Unfortunately, it looked like it would go a lot faster than it actually did. Here it is in all its sporty glory. It’s not really me!
Courtesy car with ironic “go faster” stripes
Next up we skip forward to the middle of February, when I was given this:
This is my AA “10 year long service medal” :-). It’s a bit tarnished-looking – it’s a sad fact that the higher the year, the longer they sit in the box waiting on a recipient. Maybe I can chuck it in some Coke or something. Apparently that’s good for cleaning coins.
And finally in June I had my little Wales holiday. Going away by myself was quite a big deal for me (I sound like a 10 year old!) and I had an amazing time. If you want to vicariously relive the experience, the photos are here, here and here.
So all in all, not a bad start to the year. And, of course, this was also the début year of DraliDoodles :-).
I hope your year is going well too!
Draliman Through the Ages Part 1 – Dralamoeba
Today sees the start of our series “Draliman Through the Ages”, which charts “the Draliman” from long, long ago up to the present day.
For Part 1, we travel back (through the magic of DraliDoodlesTM) many millions of years to meet Draliman’s ultimate ancestor – Dralamoeba.
I have spoken to the DraliDoodles team and they are considering buying a ruler in time for the next episode (budget permitting).
Clone Awards!
The lovely aliciabenton over at Imperfectly Perfect has nominated me for an award! Yay! And she was very flattering about DraliDoodles to boot!
It looks kinda familiar – the last time I saw it, it was going under the name “The 3-in-1 Award”, but this time it has a much more romantic name – “The Bouquet of Three Award”. How cool is that?
Here is a picture of the award.
As I’ve had one which looks like this before (and handed it around) I’m going to break the rules (again) just a bit. However, I will attempt to think up some more “interesting things” about myself.
Here are the rules anyway.
1. Proudly display the Award Certificate on your blog page!
2. Announce your win with a post. Be sure to link your post back to me as a “thank you” for the nomination.
3. Present up to 15 awards to fellow deserving bloggers.
4. Let them know you’ve nominated them for this awesome award.
5. Post 7 interesting things about yourself.
Okay, (1) done, (2) yup, (3) um, (4) see (3), (5) here goes:
1) It’s interesting to note that the last time I tried to think up interesting facts about myself I had real trouble.
2) I have no big toenails due to an unfortunate ingrowing toenail episode followed by a chiropodist with a big vial of acid.
3) Number (2) wan’t interesting, it was just gross.
4) I have a PhD in laser physics and I’ve worked in IT for the last 10 years.
5) Number (4) makes me a real hoot at parties. Not.
7) I have a problem with simple maths.
Sorted. So, “Clone Awards”? I reckoned that since this is three awards in one it would need three dralimans (dralimen?) to pick them up. Although it didn’t go so well last time I thought I’d try a bit of cloning again. Here’s the result!
“Clone Awards” by DraliDoodles
That’s me in the middle.
The clone on the left (“#77856-B2/Batch 7”) appears to be eating the trophy. And something’s gone wrong with his legs. Also, upon closer inspection, his head doesn’t appear to be attached to his body.
I don’t know what’s up with the clone on the right (“Frank”). He’s run off.
Chained
This is a follow-up poem to yesterday’s Haiku. Sorry about the picture re-use – I only took the one photo!
Children of the skies
Ambassadors of freedom
Homes replaced by metal
A legacy of greed
Uneasy pets now
A spectacle for eager eyes
Chained to the earth
No more to fly free
Break your chains, little bird
Break your chains and fly!
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Woohoo!
I totally didn't win!
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