Do we have TIME for this?

TIME TRAVEL has become, if not respectable, then certainly fashionable in some quarters of the physics world over the past decade or so.

Much of the blame can be laid at the door of the astronomer Carl Sagan, who was writing a science fiction novel in the summer of 1985, and asked the relativist Kip Thorne, of CalTech, to come up with some plausible sounding scientific mumbo-jumbo to "explain" the literary device of a wormhole through space which could enable his characters to travel between the stars. Encouraged to look at the equations of the general theory of relativity in a new light, Thorne and his colleagues first found that there is nothing in those equations to prevent the existence of such wormholes, and then realised that any tunnel through space is also, potentially, a tunnel through time. The laws of physics do not forbid time travel.

This realisation had two consequences.

When Sagan's novel, Contact, appeared in 1986 it contained a passage that read like pure Sf hokum, but which was (although few readers realised it at the time) a serious science factual description of a spacetime wormhole. And as Thorne and his colleagues began to publish scientific papers about time machines and time travel, the spreading ripples have stimulated a cottage industry of similar studies.

Oh Carl, wherefore art thou now??????

Why music should be illegal...

Sometimes I wonder why music is legal.

Music can alter your mood and your body chemistry just like any illegal drug.
The fact that it goes into your body through your ear shouldn’t make a difference. We take drugs via practically every other hole in our body – mouth, butt, eyeballs, nose – you name it.

Ain’t nothing special about an ear.


Music is clearly unsafe.
Suppose you’re in a perfectly good mood and a depressing song comes on. That could make you sad and break down your body’s natural defenses.
You could get sick and die.
Thank you very much Freddie Fender.


Many songs are dangerous to hear while operating a motor vehicle.
For example, anything by ZZ TOP will force me to exceed the speed limit. You probably have your own songs that make you speed. If you believe in free will you might argue that people always have the choice of NOT speeding. But by that reasoning it should be legal to allow drunks to drive because they have the choice of not doing it.

Let me put it another way.
If gum made people more likely to speed, you know there would be a law against chewing and driving.

If it goes into your body through your mouth, it’s a drug.
If it goes in through your ears, it’s entertainment.
That seems random to me.

One way you know you have a drinking problem is if it affects your work.
I don’t know about you, but if I have a song stuck in my head, it lowers my I.Q. by about 40 points. I can sometimes do two things at the same time if those two things are easy, such as humming and walking. But if I’m trying to work or read a contract, a song in my head will turn me into a chimp.
Case in point – I have a song in my head right now and this post sucks.

Don’t forget – music is a gateway drug to harder stuff.
Music attracts dancing.
Dancing attracts alcohol.
Alcohol leads to unwanted pregnancies.
Unwanted pregnancies lead to abortion.
If you believe life begins at conception, you have to believe that music kills babies.

And then there’s the corrosive effect of rap music.
I don't think it's even music, but after hearing three tracks I have an urge to slap a ho.
That can’t be healthy, especially for the ho.

I have a thing about the New Orleans gun confiscations...

I think all of us have been pretty unhappy about that happening.

But what I am unhappy about is how easily they did it.

How easily it was to disarm a whole population. Door to door confiscations went too smoothly... it worked. All they did was go door to door and they took all the guns.

Easy as pie.

That is what concerns me the most.

That is what troubled me the most.

Almost complete lack of resistance - other than some yelling and cussing.

Pathetic.

I would rather have seen a rolling street battle, but you know, I don't think that would happen.

Most gun owners would, like in New Orleans, just roll over.

You ask yourself this... Would you roll over? Or would you stand and fight?

Just ask yourself that.

One day there is going to come a pounding on your door, and your are going to have to have your answer ready.