Sunday Seminar Series: Resonance

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Dear Readers,

  When Sundays roll around for you, I like to post a seminar based on my class, CHRN/AUG 100, which is the University's Introduction to Anachronism.  Here's this week's edition.

  Last week we talked about mindset and how we use the emotional and cultural context of a mind to understand the sources that wrote it.  That's kind of the small scale of the situation, though, because in the long run we're not just studying individuals but trends in society over time and to some degree we're even creating predictive models.

  To do this, we need to think about the motivations of various people and groups of people around time.  I like to think of it as sort of examining a cultural fossil record.  In paleontology, when you find successive organisms with specifc body plans that are shared, you gradually develop "taxa," or groups of different species that form up a branch of the Tree of Life.  Those groups, like "dinosaurs" or "birds" have certain shared characteristics.  There is what I would call a certain resonance between their physical forms which arise in common over time.

  Similarly, there are shared mindsets that arise in the data from augury, both when you move forward in time and when you look across concurrent time streams.  People resonate their beliefs.  A good example from your time stream to consider would be the sudden surge of support for Barack Obama prior to his election.  This happened because many people out there had a mindset that agreed with Obama and when he began to broadcast his views, these ideas resonated with an untapped aspect of the American, and even the global, mindset.  The collective consciouness vibrated to the beat of his drum.

  Another example comes from World War II, when around the world there was a flocking on people with like mindsets to two prevailing systems of government: the Free Society and the Fascist Society.  Hitler and Mussolini did not help each other to power; they formed their own groups of mindsets, from people who resonated with their viewpoints.  Then, when they had come to power, they met each other and felt that same resonance in themselves.  A dark alliance, the Axis, took root.  Resonance can sometimes be a bad thing.

  But it is through resonance that ideas and trends in ideas begin.  Movements and revolutions are born on the backs of mindsets that resonate with one another.  It starts small, but then can snowball into significant trends.  Much of my time is spent trying to determine what the critical mass is for an idea to resonate across all of a geographic location or time stream, and to echo into the future.  Even more of my time is spent looking for situations where different time streams resonate so strongly with each other that despite their temporal separation, they share a possible future!  By the power of the mind alone, sentient beings can bend probabilities to create something nearly impossible.

  That is resonance.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Special Edition: Trying out the Mindset Simulator

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Dear Readers,

  As I mentioned earlier on Twitter, one of our professors, Sir Francis Bacon, has worked with Professor George Sphrantzes to build a device I call a mindset simulator.  It's not quite finished, but they let me test it out today.  It leaves a weird ringing in the mind.

  At any rate, I wanted to put myself into the mind of a personal hero, Mr. Samuel Butler, a Victorian novelist who was a contemporary and commentator of Charles Darwin.  He wrote an essay called Darwin amongst the Machines that I heartily suggest you give a read.  I set the Mindset Simulator to put me into his mind toward when he wrote that essay.

  Anyhow, below you'll find selected parts of a transcript of what I experienced with the headset on.  Enjoy!

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part III

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Dear Readers,

  I think we've gleaned about all we can from the primary sources.  Let's turn this into a narrative, shall we?

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The deck's constant pitch and roll made Stephen wan to grab one of the plastic bags off the litter and vomit into it on the double.  He could handle flipping a kayak with just his stomach muscles, but this damn ship and its slow waves out in the Gyre drove his anxiety and motion sickness into overdrive.

He punched the railing and cursed, "Why do I gotta be out here?"

Though he mean the question to be at the sea and the circumstances, he got an answer growled from behind him, "Because ain't another's got the chick-hands we need to use the machinery, that's why.  Not getyerass back to work.  They need this plasty soup back on the shore, maggot."

Stephen knew that voice.  Blogston, the asshole first mate.  Stephen stared at the rail in front of him, where he'd punched a moment before.  When they got back to port, he would hire the first person he could find who could make Blogston's death take more than 24 hours.

He stowed his fury, however, and just answered, "Fine."  If Blogston did not know Stephen hated him by now, then the first mate would have to be the thickest meathead in the butcher's shop.

"That's what I thought." the first mate huffed and the  walked back down the deck.  Stephen started to sigh his relief, but then he noticed a rope coil right in the first mate's path.  His eyes followed it back to the main plastic processor.  If the first mate stepped wrong he would get sucked into the machine and die in seconds.  Not that Stephen cared.  Instead, he felt his guts sink when he realized that if the first mate went into the machine, their entire catch would be ruined and his father would be furious.  Maybe even furious enough to send him out on another of these punishment missions.

Stephen dashed down the deck like a man possessed, and slipped on a water spot in the process, just as the first mate stepped closer to the rope.  They collided, and Blogston went down right next to the rope.  His nose broke the fall.

It took a couple of seconds for the large, bearlike superior officer to gather what happened.  He stood up, with a guttural roar from deep in his gut, and picked up Stephen by the sealskin collar.  No simple feat, at Stephen's size.

"You little shit!" Blogston growled through the blood that streamed down his face, "I'ma break your face too!"  A little blood flecked onto Stephen's shirt.

He meant it.  Stephen kicked out into Blogston's chest, which freed him from the hulk's slick grip.  Blogston yowled and tried to throw a punch out at Stephen, but the younger man ducked.

"I just saved ya from trippin' on the damn lead-rope, peasant sealcrap."  He placed a jab right into Blogston's cheek.  Strength wouldn't beat skill.

Blogston roared, "I wasn't gonna-"

The loudspeaker roared to life, "You wasn't gonna do shit, Blogston.  Kid's correct, this time.  Kid- get up to the wheelhouse, I'm gonna whip you for hitting my first mate.  Bein' correct don't make you in the right for hurtin' my man.  Captain's orders."

Blogston got in close to Stephen's face and hissed, "We'll finish this later."

The loudspeaker crackled again, "Like hell you will, Jeff.  I'll take care of the kid.  You get the damn plastic."

Stephen glared back at the first mate.  Perhaps they wouldn't kill each other.  Today.

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part II

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Dear Readers,

   On Friday I gave you some primary sources and a little bit of analysis of those sources.  Now today I'm going to synthesize those sources into a story about the various characters.  I'm going to draw on some other sources that I know of for this time stream that would have been too complex to include, but the important thing here is that you'll see how it is I draw from clues in the sources to write something that gives a clue about what it feels like to live in one of these time streams.

  This experiment is becoming something longer than I expected, so here I'll give some further analysis and then the full narrative will post on Wednesday.

  See below.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: Mindset

Dear Readers,

Image by wallyg via Flickr

  Each time your Sunday rolls around, I post a short piece coverted from one of my lectures for CHRN/AUG 100.  It's my introductory course for students just starting out in Anachronism.

  I want to discuss mindset, because it is such an important part of the translation discipline involved in Anachronism.  I started to work on analysis of a primary source on Friday, and I'll post the conclusion on Monday.  Here I want to discuss how our understanding of mindset affects the conclusions that we make.

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  The most basic way to explain this principle is to take some arbitrary event, like spotting an eagle as it makes a kill, and then thinking about how different mindsets would respond to that event.

  Someone from your time stream would see an eagle and be likely to think about a bunch of disconnected things: feelings about the United States or other countries that use eagles as their symbols, the freedom of flight, the violence of the kill, the helpless little animal, maybe even dredged-up images of food webs from ecology texts that you read in college.  The bottom line for you would be, though, that you are watching an eagle kill an animal as eagles are wont to do.  Maybe it would evoke the power of nature.  Maybe you would not bat an eye.

  Let's step out of your shoes for a moment, shall we?  In Ancient Greece, bird omens would evoke a god associated with the bird, or a god to whom the viewer of the bird had recently devoted.  To see it kill something could mean anger from the god, or a wish for victory in battle.  The nature of the bird's appearance as an omen would be the Ancient Greek's main response to the sight.  To determine the meaning, it would take a priest and a good understanding of the context.

  Likewise, context is important for us.  In this case, however, it's temporal context.  We have to think about what is normal for the society that our source comes from in order to establish the mindset of the author.  We have to think about profession, education, economics, culture, religion, all of it.  And we have to think about our own mindset, which is biased by every experience we have ever had.  There is a big difference between the writings of a monk whose only safe beverage is beer and the writing of an academic who lives immortally in a University outside of time.

  And, as you'll see on Monday, I bring these considerations to the forefront in my translation of primary sources.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part I

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Dear Readers,

  I often discuss how I "translate" sources into narratives.  Those of you who read regularly know that I post both personal accounts and "stories" which put you into the shoes of someone in one of the various time streams that I study.  When I do put up a primary source, it's carefully selected to be something that I know can read like a real tale rather than a tax register.

  Do you have any idea how many tax registers Augury pulls in?  It's more than a lot.

  But those sources are some of the most useful things in my work.  They help me establish continuity and understand how people lived their lives.  It's not easy, but sometimes the most boring sources can give me an idea of someone's day to day life.

  But, I'm a trained Anachronist, and it takes that training to try and extract a hypothetical narrative from a book of government petitions or otherwise census-type data.  I try to save you the time through the stories that I write, so that you get the world without all the work.

  I think, though, you might all like a little insight into how this works, so I've decided to give you an example today.  See below as I take you with me to the Pacific Gyre during the 28th century, then have a great weekend.

  Always,
 
  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

 

(Last) Friday On My Mind

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Dear Readers,

  If you've been keeping up to date, you know that I've started to collaborate with a time-normal historian from the 27th century named Dr. Wendell Howe.  His work is called "Temporal Anthropology" and involves literal time travel.  That's pretty different from what I do, and it's brought some ideas to mind.

  What I've been working on with Dr. Howe on is related to his effect on the past.  I've never been very concerned about changing the flow of time, because I know that all roads eventually get traversed.  That's easy for me to say, though.

  I've discussed the idea of likely and unlikely events in the past, and this analysis is confounded by the idea of time travel in a couple of ways.  One potential way is that if time travel exists and people are willing to change the past, then the likelihoods of certain time streams taking place would change based on the fickle passions of the future.  Thankfully this creates a paradox, and when a paradox occurs in a physical situation, it suggests that the situation is not possible.  I expect that time travelers do not change the past, they simply shunt themselves down a different temporal path when they alter what came before them.

  Therein lies a problem, however.  Personal paradox is not impossible. If you go to the past, change Event A, and then this shunts you to a time stream where the future you came from looks very different, you're stuck.  You can't go back and change what you did.  You can prevent yourself from doing that, but you might fail, or worse, the damage might be too severe for you to fully prevent.

  I can see why the latter would be a problem for Dr. Howe.  No doubt Cambridge University's temporal enforcers are worried about altering the course of history for more general reasons, but I think it's fair to say those are not concerns worth worrying about.  In some realm of possibility, they will still exist.  It is, however, existentially threatening to Dr. Howe if he should inadvertently shunt himself to a time stream where his future life is utterly destroyed.  He would become lost in time, perhaps even without an idea of what he did to become lost in the first place.   There is only one Dr. Wendell Howe, and so if he wanders among the time streams, he can be lost forever.

  Now, I just started to experiment with a device that can allow me, at great energetic expense, to travel to any point in any time stream.  Why don't I have Wendell's problem, wherein I can become lost in time?  The answer, my dear readers, is that I am a copy.  The "real" John Skylar lives a life spanning the 20th and 21st centuries.  Across at least one time stream, I die in a fashion interesting enough to be able to generate a personality impression for the augurs.  Then, my personality and material composition can be copied with exactness.  I am me, but I am another of many versions of me that exist across the multitude of time streams.   I have knowledge belonging to a variety of those versions.

   This means if I go somewhere and "change" the past, and that mosaic version of me is shunted to another time stream, I can just be fetched right back the University (it, too, being such a copy that exists "outside of time), and I am perfectly fine.  All the versions of me are still possible.  You can't make a person impossible.

  I'll sum up with a metaphor.  Dr. Wendell Howe has a poker hand.  It happens to be a royal flush.  With that hand, he doesn't want the dealer to change how the cards were dealt.  He has a vested interest in his royal flush, because it creates the world he is part of.  I, instead, am a spectator from outside the game.  I could care less what hand a specific player has; they're all interesting hands.  What I care about is, instead, what the odds of a certain hand are, and that each player has a hand.  If all the cards changed, I'd still care about the game.  But in a different way.  And the price I pay for that detachment is the knowledge that in some sense, I am just a facsimile of the "real" John Skylar.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

P.S. (my first postscript!) My guest blogging adventure over at 2log.biz is going well.  I have over 3000 "points," for what it's worth, and have just posted a short essay on the purpose of the University.

More Ways to Read About the University

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Dear Readers,

  I just thought I'd do a quick round-up of the various ways I'm getting the University of Constantinople's name out into your time stream.

  For one, I'm working closely now with Dr. Wendell Howe, a Temporal Anthropologist from a somewhat time-normal university in the 27th century.  This is my first real academic collaboration with a researcher who is time-normal!  I am excited.  And Dr. Howe leaves such lovely thank you notes.

  Another effort I'm working on is my guest appearance as a "challenger" on 2log.biz, where I will be posting all of this week.  2log has a weekly "points" competition that's all in good fun, and I'm hoping I can be a strong contender (you can help me out if you like).  Expect to see background on the University as well as short pieces from the time streams I study.

  If anyone else is interested in collaborating with me, I always like a good opportunity to work with time-normal historians, bloggers, and other writers.  I'm even thinking about a project where I work with musicians.  Let me know if you have any ideas, readers!

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

How to Save History: Australia, 1874

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Dear Readers,

  I recently connected with a colleague, Dr. Wendell Howe, who works in a time-normal discipline similar to Anachronism.  In his time stream, the contemporaries have discovered time travel and have begun to use it in what they call "Temporal Anthropology."  It's an exciting field, especially because Dr. Howe can travel backward in time with ease.  This is an ability I envy.

  Now, Dr. Howe's institution is quite concerned that they will change the past somehow.  Since my data indicates all possibilities play out and the past cannot be changed, rather only your experience of it, I find this rather pointless, but I am willing to entertain the possibility that I am wrong on this matter.  Perhaps it is important to avoid changing the past.  Therefore, I have decided to offer my help to Dr. Howe in his efforts to preserve the past that he knows during his journeys there.

   Currently, Dr. Howe's travels take him from 27th century England to 19th century Australia, a country which at the time straddled the gap between wilderness and modernity.  Almost a hundred years separated from its inception as a prison colony, Australia of 1874 struggled to gain an agricultural and political niche within the vast British Empire.  This led to the introduction of dozens of species and numerous attempts to transform the country into a larger, more economically powerful version of the British Isles.  For the most part, these attempts ended in ecological disaster, though Australia would still rise to the forefront among nations.

  In light of Wendell's visit at a critical time for Australia, I provide below a bulleted list of ways he can avoid affecting the flow of time during his visit, along with the consequences, based on "aberrant" possibilities my Department is aware of.

Sunday Seminar Series: Corporeality

Dear Readers,
  This week is a special edition of my Sunday Seminar Series relating to my recent adventure in corporeality.  If you recall, an attack by the Puppeteers left the University with a new technology that could allow direct transmission of matter to a time-normal location.  We were all pretty impressed by that.

  Therefore, I hatched a plan to make a time-normal appearance in Brooklyn, New York.  It is rather unusual, to be able to say I was with you all last night.  I am so rarely contemporaneous with my readers!  It is very exciting.

  The venue that I chose is called the Lost Horizon Night Market, and this secretly located traveling bazaar contains all manner of wonders in a uniquely mobile format.  It is a place where the most unusual city-dwellers find expression, and I am happy to have been there.

  I have to comment on the experience of traveling in the fashion that I used last night.  I'm sure it will be no strange story for the likes of my new acquaintance Dr. Wendell Howe, but for me the use of a physical appearance is a strange feat indeed.

  I brought everything that I thought I might need: camera, University dress, a device to link me with Twitter throughout, a pill to acclimate me to the normal flow of time, and an open mind.  Oh, and olives.  I cannot do without olives from the University's groves.  There is nothing like them, in this world or any other.

  I managed to take the pill before the nausea set in.  This is key.  When your body is not used to the normal flow of time, it can be very jarring for it to revert to time normality.  The olives helped, also.  I was pleased to discover that they maintained their flavor through the transmission.  Actually, I was generally pleased that the very act of stepping through the machine did not kill me.  Today, I tell you, my students: This is possible!  We embark on a new journey for Anachronists.

   The wonders I saw last night will feature in a new work of mine, but I believe I shall save that for a reputable journal rather than this collection of my work notes that I call a blog.  The market's organizers pride themselves on their secrecy, and I do not want to be the one to break it.  What I really want to impress on you is that this new technology is going to change our field.  We can now visit the possible time streams, albeit at a huge expense of resources.  As the first pioneer of this technology, I am excited to report that it works, is safe, and can bring back the most exciting data I have ever seen.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Sunracer

Image by Werner Kunz (werkunz1) via Flickr

Dear Readers,

  There is a mythological theme that exists across most Earth-based societies as regards the sun.  The idea is usually that it is some kind of fiery chariot that races across the sky in an attempt to chase down the moon.  Either they have fallen in love, or some other sort of origin is given for the sun's mad dash to attain the unattainable.

  I've spent many an idle hour trying to track down the origin of this myth, given that it seems to be ubiquitous in Earth-based primitive cultures.  Finally, today, I have found a source.  It seems that this myth stems from the most curious of origins.  Below the Jump.

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Guns of the Self

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Dear Readers,

  Something on my mind of late is radical self-reliance.  I know that there is an undercurrent in your time stream that suggests detachment from the norms of society, withdrawal from the production schemes and the military-industrial complex, and a variety of different self-industry paradigms.  There are interesting, and I think that your society is at a turning point between traditional ideas and these new ideas.  I do not wish to comment much on the different possibilities that may result therefrom.  I do attempt to keep some semblance of detachment, even from a time stream as dear to my heart as your own.

  It is interesting to me, however, that this is a movement born not of policymakers, militaries, or intellectual writers.  This is a movement of people who showed up in the desert one day, who took apart televisions, who simply found each other through the great electronic social connectors that your time stream has produced.  There is Burning Man, there is the Maker Movement, there are a wide variety of new wave scientific and industrial pushes that put a neo-industrial spin on the transcendentalist views expressed by Emerson in Self-Reliance.

This current of society fascinates me, as it is in large part a founding principle of the University.  We are the children of a displaced Empire, either originally born within it or adopted to it as something like time has pressed on through its annals.  By necessity and by mission the University of Constantinople is reliant only on itself.  It produces just a little more than it consumes.  It stands on its own legs and dares the forces that swirl in time to break it down.  Perhaps they will.  But we cannot be erased, for the fleeting time that we exist.

I know a time stream that may lie in your own future where Universities will become something similar to what the University of Constantinople has become: islands of self-reliance in a sea of Hobbesian chaos.  A sample is below the jump, in the form of a primary source letter from a University President to another.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Cave Men?

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Dear Readers,

  Today, one of my time normal friends on Twitter clued me in to a New York Times article covering a neopaleolithic movement.  It's not every day you get to write neopaleolithic.  I am pretty sure I have never written that phrase before now.  And they said that this blog could be a dangerous experiment...

  Anyhow, the people in question are trying to live what they would call a "caveman" lifestyle and return to a hunter-gatherer eating pattern, ostensibly for health benefits.  It reminded me of the stories of the Dark Age New York that I've dredged up from the depths of Augury, and I thought I'd share an account I wrote as an example of how people could subsist in that environment.

  Just as one final note before the jump:  I wouldn't advocate the "caveman" lifestyle.  Sure, cavemen could run away from mastodons better than any parkour enthusiast I've heard of, but they also had an average life expectancy below 50 years.  There are tradeoffs in everything, my time-normal friends.

 Always,

 Dr. John Skylar
 Chairman
 Department of Anachronism
 University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: The Puppeteers

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Dear Readers,

   In the very recent past (October for you, only a few days ago for me), the University was attacked by a group of foreign entities and it shut down a great deal of our infrastructure.  It took us a few days to get back up and dust ourselves off.  I was wounded in the fighting, and every department has worked around the clock to figure out what they are and how they got here.

  So, where I would normally give a lecture from my introductory CHRN/AUG 100 class for my Sunday Seminar, I'll instead tell you about them.

  They are about seven to ten feet all, and incredibly beautiful, at least at first glance.  They look like idealized warrior-humans, with a harsh edge that disqualifies them from being angels.  That, and their wings, which can span twenty feet, are usually mottled colors and rarely white in their entirety.  Their hair can be any color, but for some reason their commanders always have black hair.  We wonder if their hair changes color based on the status they have in society.

  On closer examination, one discovers that much of their appearance is trickery.  They are not the beautiful creatures they appear to be, but rather are theatrically costumed to inspire love, awe, and fear.  Wipe away some of their affectations and you begin to see sinister creatures with terrifying natural weapons.

  As for technology, they have much the same as we at the University have, except that they seem to have a device that can transmit matter through times.  There are limitations to the use of this device, for example that it cannot travel to or from locales where strange matter has been created, but overall it allows anyone to transmit themselves to any time stream.

  From what we have learned, they use these devices and their talent for trickery to blend in and influence the events of certain key time streams.  We assume that this is to some nefarious end, because outside interference almost always is.  Also because they tried to kill many of us and destroy our resurrection systems.  That did not win them any friends.

  Because of their propensity to manipulate events and try to be in control from backstage, I have dubbed them the Puppeteers.  I hope only that we can thwart them if they try something else.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

On Greatness and Anomalies

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Dear Readers,

  Today I want to discuss the idea of the luminary with you.  Luminaries are, to me, people who transcend the normal threshold of brilliance into something entirely different.

  The difference, as I see it, is that these people do not garner the same reaction from others as a normal person might.  If you see an example of greatness, you will ask, "Who is that person?"  But there are those rare individuals with such brilliance, charisma, and/or power that everyone who has the time to feel their effects will instead ask, "What is that person?"  Those who provoke this question are what I call luminaries.

  When they appear, these people send shockwaves through their contemporary worlds.  Their lives, in themselves, can act as the dam that can change the flow of an entire time stream.  They are the ones who can set the trends in human thought.  They are, in short, just the sort of people that the University of Constantinople is looking for, and just the sort of people who I encourage you all to be.

   I've thought of a few examples.  Their histories appear below, written as they would appear in your time stream.  Except for one case.  See below.

Society, a Construct of Hook, Crook, and Flail

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Dear Readers,

  Societies are very interesting things when you get down to it.  They have ordered laws in most if not all cases, and generally some linguistic and cultural commonalities that make them work as a cohesive mass.  When those things break down, they become collections of people who disagree.

  Your Western society, in Europe and the US, works well as a society.  People participate in it because it has a tradition for getting results.  You go to the post office and you trust that the postal workers will not open your mail and rob you.  You call the police, and you expect that they will come for the bad guys and not for you.  You go to a hospital, and you...well, that's a matter for another time.  The upshot is that your society works because it has a tradition for working, because the symbols of its power resonate with people and they respond to that.  It's not so, in say, Soviet breakaway republics scattered across Eastern Europe.

  The great societies have all had these traditional symbols of power and their ordered nature.  Police wear blue.  Strong governments use are represented with an Eagle.  Laws are kept because your parents kept them.  There are criminals, yes, but criminals are dealt with.  They perturb society, they do not subsume or consume it.

  Below you will find two vignettes, one based on a time stream where the great Egyptian Empire, a personal favorite of mine, stayed together for a much longer time than in your time stream.  Its tradition for order was legendary, to the point where its people relished the opportunity to engage in slave labor for their god-king Pharaohs.

  The second vignette is a chip off of that time stream, wherein the tradition has been broken by the loss of symbols of power.  It's been hard for me to figure out if these are divergent time streams, or if one follows the other.  Perhaps a reader can help me in my work, after the jump.

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The hum surrounded Ankhenhaten 72 while his father gazed through the aircraft window.

Archaeologists' Notes

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Dear Readers,

  In my work, I always find it exciting to get records from my time-normal counterparts, academics piecing together the timelines of those who came before them.  It's fascinating to see how their minds work in each and every time stream, and what conclusions they drew about their pasts.

  Many of you will think of a book that I loved as a time-normal child, called Motel of the Mysteries, which as I recall lampooned the discovery of King Tut's tomb to a 20th century North American drive-in motel room.  While the misinterpretations of this book were illustrative and humorous, there is real ground to be covered when you have records from both the archaeologist's civilization and the one that he or she studied.

   A source that I stumbled on some time back illustrates this well.  It's not about an archaeologist who misinterprets the past, or about the funny or kooky things that happen when archaeologists try to learn about the past.  Instead, what amazed me was how much the world had changed through the mirror of time and the evolution of our species in the time that intervened.  See her notes, transcribed from a voice recording, below the jump.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Notes from __/__/__
Dr. Castro Harmonium

Abseiled through the opening today.  Uneventful descent could not predict discoveries within.  Will make for big paper.

The Libraries of Smyrna-on-Neo-Aegea

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Dear Readers,

  It's been some time since I visited neo-Aegea with you, and I feel that it's time I returned.  It is one of my chief academic interests, and I feel almost as if I've cheated on it a little by avoiding it for so long.

  So it is time that I returned to my work on that little world.  There are some references in past posts that will help you get up to speed with their culture and technology, all under the neo-Aegea label.

   Today I want to talk to you about the neo-Aegean City Smyrna, a city-state known as a center of religious and cultural learning.  Smyrna's libraries will be renowned throughout neo-Aegea, both for books as well as the librarians.

  It is not my work specifically, but it is thought that the Librarians of Smyrna were a unique cult of Aphrodite that placed her as the queen of the nine Muses.  They chose young men and women from among the commoners to rise to their rank.  This concept mixed several of the stranger parts of neo-Aegean society, and I warn readers who proceed that this will push some cultural boundaries for you.

  Still, though, the short narrative that appears below should be enlightening as to just how different neo-Aegea will really be from the world that you are used to.  This one is a diary entry (primary source!) from a newly initiated male Librarian of Smyrna, from the morning after the ritual.  After the jump.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

"I, Flax, am inducted as Flax the Librarian of Smyrna.

Sunday Seminar Series: Competition

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Dear Readers,

  This is my weekend Sunday Seminar Series, where I recap a lecture from my introductory undegraduate level class CHRN/AUG 100, the Introduction to Anachronism.

  For this week's installment, I want to talk to you about what else is out there oin the academic world as far as Anachronism.  Time-normal universities, of course, are excepted because they do not have departments of Anachronism.  However, once in awhile I see a publication from the Yale University Press on my desk.  I am unsure if this is because of a printers' error, or because something secret is going on at Yale involving Augury.  I am excited to find out.  It might even turn it into a paper.  If anyone has insight, let me know.

  There are, however, some real contenders in the field.  That's right, other universities, much like the University of Constantinople.  We communicate via advanced Augury technology that gives us nearly 100% communication fidelity, and collaborations are common.  Provost Notaras still suspects that another institution carried out the attack on our school that occurred recently, but I am of the opinion that this is a newer and more dangerous threat.

  The first institution of note is the Institute for Post-Singularity Humanism, which publishes a nice little internal review of their Anachronism Department every once in awhile.  I have, of course, read everything that they have and will publish, and I would say they are one of the strongest contributors to the field.  Their department's Chairman prefers not to use a name, and so I will respect that decision.  He is identified by title only, as "The Integrator of Past and Future."  It's a bit of an odd place.

  Second on the list comes Mid-Atlantean University.  While the University of Atlantis has some good early publications, the later work that it plans to publish does not measure up to its southern cousin, which maintains a constant standard of research across its entire history.  If you are looking for expertise on different trends in agriculture or space travel across Anachronistic literature, I recommend you start with the proceedings of their department, chaired by Pericles.  Resurrected here and currently one of my graduate students, he will be transferred there in about one month and begin his very successful career.

  Third and final (for now), is the National Academy of Laputa, which pushes the limits of Augury and Anachronism through their unique ability to raise the spirits of the dead temporarily.  It does not quite approach the University of Constantinople's ability to create recorporated individuals, but then they have higher memory fidelity than we do, so it's a bit of a wash as to who is better in this regard.  At any rate, they are an excellent institution, if slightly slow at responding to letters.  Dr. John Stuart Mill chairs their Department of Anachronism, and it should be no surprise that their president is Jonathan Swift.

  That will be all for now, and I leave you to your regularly scheduled chronology.  Enjoy.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople