Time Travelers' Convention 836
usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmmm.... Explanation??? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:zerg (Score:5, Informative)
-- Reaching the exact coordinates at the right instant, considering rotation and revolution of the planet, solar system, and galaxy.
-- Matching the velocity of that location (and timeframe) exactly.
It's not only useless to appear at the right instant in the right room if your body doesn't exactly match the inertial frame -- it would be fatal. Forgetting to account for just the earth's revolution around the sun would slam the traveller against the wall at 30km/sec.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:2, Informative)
These kind of blanket "I know everything" comments make me cringe. Just because you quote a 300 year old philospher does not make it so. And invoking Homer Simpson does not help your cause.
as a matter of definition
There are very few definitions in the world of phiolpsphy and free will is certainly not one of them.
every process is either deterministic or random
Are not all things that happen in life, the universe and everything built upon previous events? And if this is the case, is there not a chain of causality (from Buddist tradition) which denotes a non random behavior to all things (psedo-random)? Existentialist thought suggests that we have some sort of nebulous/public "free will" (i.e.- we're all in this together), ala Martin Heidegger's [wikipedia.org] Das Eine.
Not that this is necessarily correct, mind you. That's the beauty of philosophy.. it's a securlar "religion"(at least the non religious part:)).
Please refrain from assuming that any methaphysical subject is without question, correct, in the future.. at least giving better arguments than "Doh! Free will is an illusion."... because some old dead guy says so... Or at least giving some credence to you "argument". Try not to assume everything your professors harp on is true.
Just my thoughts.
Asimov Worked That Out Before Niven Did (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Freedom of speech is a good thing (Score:4, Informative)
This has nothing to do with free speech (or even Free Speech) whatsoever. Free speech guarantees your right to hold and voice an opinion, unmolested by the powers that be. This concept is often warped into the notion that it obviates the need to defend such an opinion, or that merely holding it requires others to recognize it as valid.
Nobody is even remotely pondering curtailing the "Titorites"' rights to self expression. What I have a problem with is that the editors of the particular article, in their treatment of the subject matter are giving far too much credence to this particular crackpot theory. They do this in the laudible pursuit of neutrality, but in this case that leads to a product that reflects negatively on the project as a whole.
Free speech does not mean the abandonment of objective reasoning. Neutral point of view does not mean that wikipedia editors should parrot everything they read on the internet.
Oh and thank you for providing a link to the article on free speech - how deliciously patronizing.
Not true... (Score:3, Informative)
The wall slams into the traveller.
It's actually greek... (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, if you want good alternate history regarding Jesus - I highly recommend Chrisopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
They don't. Tachyons were a weirdness created by some of the early attempts at String Theory. Later work at correcting the mathematical holes in the theory eliminated the possibility of tachyons.
Time Travellers Hate us (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Temporal Cold War (Score:1, Informative)
Dude, nobody watches TREK anymore. If you are going to reference *The Time War,* then reference the proper one on a television series that people actually are watching. DOCTOR WHO.
Trek is dead, Jim.