The Anachronist's Blog

Two-ness

2011-02-04T21:22:00.000+02:00

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,

   Time has been unkind to me lately, and so it is that I come back to you after nearly a month's hiatus. Perhaps Time will be kinder in the future. Perhaps you could write him a letter? Sadly, I have lost the address.

   I've come to you today to discuss the idea of duality, aka "two-ness," in historical narrative. In literature, there are a lot of manners of conflict that can bleed into narrative and provide something dramatic to latch upon.

   Take, for example, the your contemporaneous reinterpretation of Swan Lake depicted within the film Black Swan. The major antagonist in Swan Lake is not a black swan! The actuality of Swan Lake is much more complicated than that, but the film uses the construct of the Black Swan that is traditional in the ballet to approach the ideas of two-ness. This duality and confusion of characters is the theme that the film seizes upon, and it might seem strange.

In reality, though, humans seize on this kind of duality everywhere. Consider the current turmoil in Egypt. For the past three decades, Hosni Mubarak has maintained international support via a grip on Egypt maintained via the impression that there is a far worse antagonist to his power. I speak of the much-maligned Muslim Brotherhood, the spectre of your international relations that no doubt has throngs of supporters ready to seize power and take over Egypt. Correct?

No. They have 100,000 supporters in a country of 80 million. Yet the human mind seeks duality, and seizes upon these narratives as if they are fact. They play upon our fears and they lead us to identify with the apparently embattled.

   And in some cases, they provide an excuse for our behavior. There are those who believe the world is against them because they struggle in so many ways, and who look to all corners to find their hidden antagonist. They are trained to this, or perhaps predisposed to this. I cannot be sure.

The fact remains, however, that we like to view things as dichotomous, whether or not this construct is false. Two-ness is in some ways a plague on our understanding of events, and it confuses the realities of a situation, at times. Often, competing forces are better described as an equilibrium, a whole system in balance. Alternately, sometimes the "opposition" that we add to something, for example the idea of "cold" being an antagonist of "hot," is in reality the mere absence of something. In this case, energy.

Sometimes this can be dangerous. Did the Soviet Union fail because of the United States, or because of its own inherent flaws? It seems that throughout the Cold War, the USSR struggled against itself from within just as it appeared to antagonize from without. And yet, this was viewed as a US-mediated collapse.

   Did Rome fall to barbarian hordes? Of course not. Rome fell to economic drift and the gradual loss of standards throughout the empire. The so-called "hordes" just looted a corpse.

I can find you alternate time streams where these things are even more clear; instead of barbarians, it's Rome's own aristocracy that tears it apart, in one. In another, the Russian people cut off communication throughout the USSR, and the Party is left marginalized and irrelevant. In yet more, Hitler's paranoia causes him to win the wrath of the Wermacht, and his name is barely known.

Don't be fooled by the false dichotomy. Sometimes, the enemy from within, for better or worse, is the realer threat.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

A Short Reminder

2011-01-04T01:04:00.000+02:00

Dear Readers,

My link to your world has been, as you no doubt have noticed, somewhat tenuous over the past two months. Academics are always a little inconsistent, are we not? I was attempting to finish a paper in time for the deadline of the journal Annals of Curiosity's Araḫ Samna 2011 BCE issue.

At any rate, I'll remind you that my time-normal counterpart (a 'past' me, of sorts) maintains a blog over at johnskylar.tumblr.com, should you be unable to overcome your desire to hear from me. I find the idea of that unlikely.

I shall endeavor to return to regular posting soon.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Friday Seminar Series: Why I Teach

2010-11-05T23:18:00.000+02:00

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,

   Teaching is important.

   It is so important, in fact, that I have given it its own line. My need to say it was inspired by a time-normal blog post that came through the Augur Box this morning. University teaching in your time stream, it seems, is a big problem.

   One of the great problems that I hear cited is the emphasis on research, grant money, and tenure. These three things push professors in your time stream away from research and into working without their students. In some ways, it forces them to be grant-writing drones who focus solely on the work their graduate students have done.

   Not so at the University of Constantinople, and not because we don't have to worry about tenure and our research. We are focused on teaching because teaching leads to inspiration.

   Learning requires rehearsal, understanding, and questioning. These are also things that are key to research, but in a way that requires far less awareness. Though it is possible to do so, we cannot just scurry about moving through the motions of research without paying attention to the information that we're getting from it. Research is a long crush that throws loads and loads of information into the human attic, the upper levels of the brain that we are so cruddy at accessing.

   Many researchers feel that it's a pain to communicate, to crack open that attic, wander up there, and start sorting things out. It might mean digging through old love letters and prom dresses, rusty armor and rustier neurons, but it must be done.

A professor must profess, it is not simply enough to investigate.

Of course, one must ask, why do I say "must"? Perhaps it's good for humanity, perhaps it will help others advance their science. Perhaps, in the case of a class, it will help students learn.

Those altruistic things are nice, but we all need our selfish reasons too.

   So what is the selfish reason to teach? It's simple. You clear off the cobwebs. Each lecture, each moment spent in preparation, and most importantly each instant you are talking to your students is full of reassessment, rethinking, and processing. Processing is that "rehearsal, understanding," etc. thing I referred to above. Without it, we do not know where we came from, and if we do not know where we came from, we do not know which questions to ask.

Research is about questions. Teaching makes you think of questions. It allows your students to think of questions. It presents you with questions to ask and questions to answer, in these routes.

It should be clear by now that there's no excuse for not teaching. It makes me a better researcher, I know that. If you're a professor, it will make you a better researcher. If you are a student, even, it will make you better. Teach your peers, and furthermore, teach them to teach others. You can change the distressing trend to under-teach by injecting teaching into the social network of your Universities.

And when you encounter a professor who doesn't do his homework, don't whinge and moan. Don't complain on forms and wait for the University to make it all better. Go to his or her office hours and badger that professor with questions until they themselves get curious, get out into the literature, and start searching. When they start searching because of you, you haven't just noticed a bad teacher: you've made them a better one!

Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Particles are Two-Faced Liars, the Lot of Them

2010-11-03T21:09:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
   I admit, I've been on kind of a quantum time kick lately. I like time, I like quantum mechanics. Sometimes.

   Sometimes I like cheap puns too, so I hope you can look past that.

   There is rather a serious issue about the interaction of quantum mechanics and time, though. In my post about WD-36, I talked about the idea of "spooky action at a distance" taking place within a time dimension. Aka, the future affecting the past via quantum science.

If you start adding length, width, and depth into the mix you get some damned strange ideas. Things from one part of our four dimensional space (one's a time dimension, so don't get too bent out of shape, ladies and gents) can pop into other parts of it with some kind of probability. Bit wacky, but it presents the idea that there's no reality of time, just a continuity of it with particles buzzing about every which way while we try and think that our actions are somehow happening in a straight line.

It's sort of like the straight line where you're going to the store to buy milk, but you forget your keys and you have to go back down the line to the keys, which were perfectly content to stay where they were. I'm sure from the keys' perspective, getting picked up and taken about is rather surprising.

   Now imagine, for a minute, that you've gone and done something rather silly, like say, starting in a faculty position at a University that happens to run parallel to every other time ever. Suddenly you've got all kinds of particles that are buzzing through your brain, entangled partners to the particles in all the brains you've ever had in all the lives you've ever lived in all the places you've ever lived them. Half the particles tell the truth about where they came from, half don't. Your brain is half your evil twin, half a nest of vile wasps, and there's a couple more halves in there that I can't even think of. It's the best high you've ever had with the worst downer stuck on the side, and a whole lot of trivia.

   Some days, that idiotic decision makes you into a brilliant researcher, fighter, leader, whatever, amongst a whole host of other people who are resurrected renaissance men and women by virtue of the grand quantum composite personality they get to have.

   Other days, it gives you one hell of a headache, leaves you confused, and you forget your keys in every house you ever owned.
I need a pint.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty: WD-36

2010-10-31T05:19:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
You might have heard of WD-40, a "water-removing" chemical with hundreds of strange household uses. It means "water displacement - 40th attempt."

    In your time stream, attempts 1-39 failed. In many, however, there were unintended products of the Rocket Chemical Company's research into water displacement.
One of our Night Faculty is the product of just such an attempt. We call it Woody, though its proper name is WD-36.
   WD-36 is a literal sponge. It can absorb almost anything, and devour it in its entirety. When it does this with information storage media, it can almost internalize the information. WD-36 was a most efficient graduate student. It's also, as you might imagine, quite formidable in combat.
Unfortunately, WD-36 also has a rather volatile freezing/melting point. It needs to be somewhat solid in order to function, and the daytime temperature at the University is just slightly too high for it to maintain coherence. Therefore, we had to place WD-36 on the Night Faculty.

Now, WD-36 may sound something like a B-movie villain to you. Fiction is often inadvertently inspired by something like what your time stream's Albert Einstein used to call "spooky action at a distance." The existence of an all-devouring monster that resulted from industrial accident in one time stream leads to thought patterns in the people who react to that monster. We can use augury to read those thought patterns, but the human brain itself can pick up on that. People in other time streams can learn about what's going on, whether they mean to or not. And then, they can make horror movies.
   So next time you're watching something scary, consider that somewhere, somewhen, somehow, that thing is happening. And if it ever gets the chance to break down the barriers between worlds, you might just find it's coming to eat you.
   Then you'll have to turn to a friendly professor who's been watching all along, a friendly professor who knows how to frighten the monster. And I and my Night Faculty will be here for you.
   Happy Hallowe'en.
   Always,
   John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty: Cassandra, a Hawking Siren

2010-10-27T20:07:00.000+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   Here is the next part of my series on the University's Night Faculty.

   If you thought Professor Raven was unusual, I'm happy to introduce you to Dr. Cassandra Hawking, a name which we gave to her and she graciously accepted. "Cassandra" comes from her vast and uncanny knowledge, which I will explain in a moment. "Hawking" comes from her nature.

    Cassandra is what her time stream calls a "Hawking Siren," a being that dwells in space and can warp light around itself. At her core, cleverly concealed within her biology, lies a small singularity, event horizon and all. Hawking Radiation from its gradual evaporation powers her entire metabolism as well as her consciousness. Surrounding it is a complex network of matter and light.

   The singularity itself is maintained within a vacuum, to protect her outer body from its pull. In her native time stream, Cassandra existed in a constant state of collapse. The tiny singularity within her consistently approached the final point of its evaporation, at which point it would release a tremendous amount of "information" into the surrounding space. In her time stream, that happened to be the solution to the black hole information paradox. This process would destroy her outer body as well as her mind, effectively killing her.

   So, like all members of her race, Cassandra needed a steady stream of matter in order to maintain herself. Her energy-matter matrix allowed her to transit around the universe collecting such matter, but, as with every species, there were pitfalls in her existence. Certain civilizations loved the idea of a race of singularities to conquer, beings that they could enslave and use for a source of energy for all time.

   Over time her species developed--you will understand in a moment why I do not say "evolved"--the ability to shift their matter/energy matrix to mimic the appearance of other objects. Using their matrix along with their internal singularity, they could use a combination of gravitational lensing, position, and shape to look like anything.


For certain members of her race, this allowed a new strategy for matter acquisition. The hunters became the hunted, and many careless ships drew themselves into the heart of a Hawking Siren when it appeared to be a grand bonanza of salvage or a pleasure ship in distress. Once it had trapped its prey, the Hawking Siren would absorb its mass and feed off the energy released as Hawking Radiation. Thus, they would go on to live further. Other Sirens chose to stay hidden and consume only inanimate matter, but in the end most of them settled on an omnivorous life.

   This might make Cassandra seem entirely too dangerous to work with here at the University, but we have found a way to keep her sustained without needing to fear she will begin to devour her coworkers. The process by which she is kept fed also results in excess energy that can be used to sustain University operations, so it is a beneficial scenario for all. It does keep her occupied during the day, however, which means she must be a part of the Night Faculty. However, we did not anticipate that benefit when we began to work on bringing her here.

   You see, in their final moments in her time stream, small singularities contain arbitrary amounts of information, a necessary consequence of the immediacy of their evaporation. Literally, whenever she gets hungry, Cassandra's knowledge of time and all times expands to immeasurable amounts. Any information she chooses to share with us is cherished. In theory, she could tell us everything about everything. Yet she often holds back, and it is beyond me to wonder why. Perhaps she fears to live up to her name.

   At times, in the night, a graduate student will disappear, and then be resurrected with no knowledge of some previous stretch of time. I wonder if, perhaps, Cassandra roams the halls and prunes those avenues of investigation which might lead to our ruin. I am not certain how to feel about this possibility, but the thought does not help me sleep.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty: Raven

2010-10-25T21:34:00.000+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
   I promised in my last post to offer you more information about the University's Night Faculty, and I've decided to make good on that this week.

   Today I want to talk to you about Raven, who is a member of a somewhat unusual class of our faculty even outside of his "Night"status. Each of us here is drawn from some body of records, from a personality derived via Augury, the discipline upon which the University is founded. Usually this requires some sort of fame, and often an unusual means of demise. There is a trick to Augury, and getting a whole personality is often the trickiest.

   This means, sometimes, that we can get personalities that existed mostly in minds and stories rather than in physical reality. Most, if not all, stories and characters really happened in some time stream or another, by some unlikely consequence. Still, there are personalities here who are built more from myth and legend than "reality." Whatever that means.

Many of these personalities come from cultures with strong mythic traditions, or are amalgams of a few such cultures. Most, like White Buffalo Calf Woman (PtesanWi), have a coherent identity formed from at least one "real" life and many stories from just one culture. Miss PtesanWi is almost entirely well adjusted here at the University, and should be getting her PhD a few years ago. She'll be a full professor quite soon, I'm told. And she's quite coherent about her origins; fights with the Virgin Mary over who gave birth to Jesus are rather infrequent these days.

Then there are the truly fragmented, almost insane personalities. Professor Raven is one of those. We might have gone back to the drawing board with him and tried for something more coherent, except that his fragmentation is entirely fitting to his character. Raven believes he created the world, stole the moon, and created death itself. He may have stolen the moon, actually, but it's unclear if that was a later eponymous character inspired by Raven myths, or if it was in fact the Raven of myth.
As for the creation of death thing, I believe our good Professor is still having a bit of trouble with that one now that he lives somewhere that death is irrelevant.

   At any rate, Raven is an amalgamation of things you know as Native American Indian and also Siberian, of cultures I wish you could know and cultures I hope that you never encounter. And he loves American Football.

   Professor Raven is a trickster, a prankster, and a creature who swoops through the night and beyond the moon here at the University. He's also written an excellent book about English punk cultures in the intensely divergent 1980s. I couldn't have picked a better faculty member for the job.

   Furthermore, he's quite formidable in battle. Raven can form himself from shadows and swoop down onto our enemies. The ones he hates the worst often leave here alive, but blinded. His misdirection has foiled many a raid and preserved the University through much strife. He is our prime nightwatchman, and during the times when I am not frightened of him, I am glad he is on our side.

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

The Night Faculty

2010-10-22T22:20:00.001+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   Since I've been kind of dry and informational of late, I want to move away from that a little and give you a bit more information about how things work here at the University of Constantinople.

   The University is at such a strange level of temporal dynamics and technology as to be a near-mystical place. It's often to tell where the technology ends and the spookiness begins. More on this spookiness next week, you can be sure.

    Your spooky quotient for today will be filled by the concept of the Night Faculty. No doubt, the idea has crossed a few of your minds that there might be an entire other society in the places that you live, societies that operate when you are sleeping, full of people who are on a different shift and with whom you never interact. Perhaps, even, they have their own businesses, storefronts which shutter just as your eyes flutter to begin the next day.

   Here at the University, I know there is just such a set of people. The Night Faculty are a group of people whose cultures or biology leave them unable to operate during the day, as most of us do. Either they are from time streams where evolution has produced something like vampires, or they learned to exist in a nocturnal culture, or any of many other reasons.

   That might seem "freaky" or "creepy" to any of you, that in thenight there might be people who you never see that wander the halls of your workplace. For me it is a matter of great comfort. There is always worry that we will be attacked by some other ex-temporal force, especially the Puppeteers. To know that at all times, our halls are stalked by creatures of daydream and nightmare is to know that we are at all times safe.

   More on the Night Faculty next week.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar

   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Pinkness of the Unicorn, and Other Stories

2010-10-20T20:45:00.000+03:00

The Invisible Pink Unicorn; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   There's been quite a lot on my mind with regards to Science, experimentation, and philosophy of thought. You can blame a couple of people I've run into around your time stream lately, who have gotten me into discussions of hypothesis testing and what makes knowledge "knowable."

   This post is mostly provoked by discussions of theism vs. atheism, but that question is one that I'm unwilling to settle for you. Suffice it to say that in the time streams where there are gods or godlike beings who directly interfere with the affairs of the less powerful, I find this to be somewhat unprofessional behavior on their part.

   At any rate, the notion of a deity is fascinating from a Philosophy of Science perspective. Science relies on the ability to formulate, and then test, certain hypotheses, which then allow the formulation of further hypotheses and more experiments. By this method we have learned to push the boundaries of sentient knowledge of the universe.

   To fully understand this concept, we have to define a few things. For one, hypothesis. A hypothesis is a proposed model of an event or process.   Consider a hypothesis to be like an "answer" on Jeopardy. In Science, what we're really doing is asking a question. "Why is the sky blue?" But we can't just go up there and ask it why it's blue. We have to develop a set of hypotheses about the blueness of the sky, then test each of those methodically until one is left standing and the rest are ruled out, or until we have developed some sort of unifying hypothesis that combines those ideas that we found evidence to support. Our hypothesis might be "The sky is blue because it is full of water," which provides an answer to our question. Then we proceed to test the correctness of that answer. Incidentally, whilst the sky does have water in it, it is not blue solely because of water vapor. The actual reason is called Rayleigh scattering, and it took a great degree of hypothesis testing to understand that.

Hypotheses do not have to be testable, but we can only apply Science to the ones which are testable. What differentiates the testable hypotheses from the untestable? Testable hypotheses predict a situation which we can then use a human sense, or a device that translates to a human sense, in order to observe. You test the hypothesis by creating the predicted situation, and if it goes as planned, your hypothesis is confirmed.

   Hypothesis testing is a relatively straightforward experience when you can either immediately sense something (such as the death of a mouse in a laboratory experiment) or you can easily produce a reading that you can sense (such as using two clocks, traveling at different speeds, to confirm the phenomenon of time dilation).

   It's a much more difficult matter when you cannot readily test the hypothesis. Deities are one of those problems, and there are two constructs that philosophers both amateur and professional have used to discuss the untestable hypothesis. One is the ever-flawed Russell's teapot, and the other is the Invisible Pink Unicorn. They're useful because of the differences between the two ideas.

   Both of these are presented as unfalsifiable claims. The unicorn is both pink and invisible, so it is impossible to detect its presence and/or determine its pinkness. The teapot is in space, which at the time of its formulation was a totally inaccessible region.

You cannot test, using the telescopes of Russell's day, whether or not the teapot exists. You cannot test if the Invisible Pink Unicorn is real or not. Therefore they are doomed to a region of scientific ambiguity, wherein you cannot make predictions based on their existence (because it is unconfirmed) and you cannot rule them out (because they have not been ruled utterly impossible).

   But there is a key difference between these two ideas, and they illustrate two important classes of untestable hypotheses. The Invisible Pink Unicorn is a contradiction in terms. Something cannot be both invisible and pink. It would be like a loud silence. It can be said that the unicorn would be pink were it also visible, but it is not. If you define something as unobservable, the characteristics that it would have it were observable would not matter and would not be testable, and thus would be a waste of time to even discuss.

   Russell's teapot, on the other hand, is only unobservable because it is limited by the technology of the time. Russell supposed a teapot that could not be observed by telescopes of his day. There are now better telescopes, and there are also space vehicles. Were humankind to wish to consider falsifying the idea of Russell's teapot, you could now do that. The unobservability of the teapot has changed, now making it observable. What was a temporary problem has turned an untestable hypothesis into a testable one.

   When we're faced with apparently unanswerable questions in science, we have to think about these two alternatives. We can, of course, waste our time on trying to find the answer to the question, and come up with all manner of untestable hypotheses. That would, as mentioned, be a waste of time.

What should be done in that circumstances is to address the question of which category our original question fits into. Is it a hypothesis that will never be testable, or is it a hypothesis that is not testable right now? That is the question that matters. If the latter, we can move on to, "What do we need to invent in order to test it?"

And then, we can answer it.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sexual Selection: Bells, Whistles, and Running Away

2010-10-17T21:55:00.001+03:00

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,

I found this in some old notes from a past, time-normal me. Thought you might enjoy it, if you're looking for something to read on a slow Sunday. I was less reserved in my wording back then.

It concerns the difference between Sexual Selection (where evolution is driven by arbitrary things that males or females happen to find attractive) vs. Natural Selection (where the selected traits are determined by their ability to help you survive the environment around you).

A classic example of Sexual Selection would be birdsong. Females are attracted to the songs of male birds, but to sing is actually quite risky for the male as it alerts predators to their location. Your scientists think it to have evolved because it helps the males get noticed, which has a slight net benefit over how much it helps them get eaten.

Text below the cut.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Image via Wikipedia   With sexual selection, I think it's sort of an end-game scenario; your species is tightened into its niche, it's hard to stand out, so you spend a couple extra metabolic points on making your ass look like an explosion at a combination fireworks and mood ring factory. If you happen to be a peacock, I hear that works. Sure, it makes you more noticeable to predators, but you spend some points on upping your running away skills and you're set.

   Sure, it's not actually "points" and I'm describing several generations of selection on spontaneous variations, but it remains that sexually selected traits usually indicate overall fitness, to set apart those who can go the extra mile with survival. There are still defective individuals that die to whatever happens to eat them, but the average folks evolve sexually selected traits to show that they've got such an edge when it comes to basics that they can start to get a little ostentatious. Hey, big spender.

   Things like that refine species, but don't shape them. The human patella didn't develop to let us run ten miles because girls thought that was hot. It developed because people were hungry, and antelope run fast but they don't run far. Sex selection's interesting, but it's natural selection that gets us down from the trees and into art studios and science labs. And that's why I love it.

   Really, I think that's one of the things that makes us a powerful species. We can put the sex side of life away for a minute to make something cool, and not because we want to get laid, but because it's just a damn cool thing to make. It happens to get us laid, too, but that's a fringe benefit.

   Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I wanted to make the point that something I'd personally like to see a lot of in fiction is the interaction between artificial, sexual, and natural selection now that we actually know how to manipulate these things on a genetic level. Does the girl date the guy who looks hot, or does she go more exotic? Maybe she logs on to a website for the sperm bank, goes through a quick "character creator," where she picks the genes she wants, mails off an egg and by the end of the week she's fertilized with the monstrosity she created.

   Wouldn't that be grand?

Warfare in Space, Part 3

2010-10-14T00:08:00.000+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   This is the third and final in my series on space warfare. It has been an exciting ride, between conventional warfare in space and inertia-negated warfare, but it's time to bring it to a close with my third and final assumption, one that occurs in many of the time streams I study:

One or both of the belligerents have invented a means of traveling faster than the speed of light.

I do not mean a vehicle that moves between points A and B while passing all the points in between, because that's going to be lead to all kinds of causality violations. Rather, I am talking about devices that utilize either teleportation or wormholes to transfer a craft between one point in space and another in faster time than it would take for light to travel between those two points. Ideally, the transfer would be instant.

   So, how does that affect warfare in space?

   Let's consider the first, "wormhole" option. Wormholes are the colloquial term for a physical phenomenon that allows the traversal between two points in spacetime through another spatial dimension. It is similar to traveling through the Earth instead of on its surface; the distance between two points on the surface of the sphere will be longer than through the sphere.Image via Wikipedia

   If that is the sort of faster than light technology we are talking about, then there are two more possibilities. Either the wormhole-generating device will generate fixed wormholes, and travel will be limited to specific points A and B, or the device will allow you to generate wormholes between any two points in the universe. We'll discuss the latter idea later on.

   Instead let's consider the idea of fixed wormholes, massive freeways to convey us around the universe. These would become choke points in the world of space warfare, the places that are key to hold in order to keep your opponent's supply lines broken. They would be like the bridges on the Seine in World War II.

   The actual warfare, however, would not be much more complicated. It would have to occur either inside the wormhole (the laws of physics may be different there) or nearby the wormhole, where the battle would devolve to the scenarios in my previous two posts. So, aside from the tactical significance of the wormholes, this wouldn't be a terribly different scenario from what I've already discussed.

   Now onto instantaneous teleportation. At the same time, I want to discuss the generator that makes wormholes anywhere. From a tactical standpoint, these devices are identical, because they allow you or your enemy to appear anywhere, instantaneously, or with a very short delay. That ability completely breaks all of your traditional thought about warfare. Don't want to fight a battle? Disappear. Want a quick victory? Teleport a bomb into your opponent's capital. Except, they can do the same thing too.

   Three things can happen in this scenario. One, the combatants recognize that war is pointless and agree that they can combine their interests to produce a golden age. Two, the combatants destroy each other before such an accord can be reached. Three, the combatants learn to hide.

The first is the most desirable, but the last is the most interesting. If both parties to a war decide to hide their command and population centers, or cause them to migrate around the universe at near-random, the situation becomes more a war of information than a war of physical battles. Certainly each side will attempt to cause some degree of resource deprivation by holding various systems that contain rare elements necessary to the war effort, but they would have trouble attacking a hidden base of operations.

The ultimate goal, though, would be to find the base of operations and destroy it. For this, spies and information warfare would be vital. This would mean that war would become more a matter of small skirmishes across a huge universe, while a secret spy war attempted to break the stalemate with some information that might lead to the destruction of the enemy base. Furthermore, misinformation might be a part of strategy. If you can mislead your enemy about your command center's location, you might be able to deal a serious blow to their forces.

Either way, the actual in-battle mechanics are more or less the same, but the grand strategy of the conflict is altered in distinct ways by methods of faster than light travel.

This concludes my series on the possibilities of space warfare. I hope you've all enjoyed it.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Warfare in Space, Part 2

2010-10-12T00:41:00.000+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

I have taken it upon myself to write a short series on warfare in space, given some attention that topic's gotten lately around the Internet. The first in this series dealt with warfare using technology contemporaneous to you, and this second piece will operate under a different assumption. The third, and final post in the series, will show up later in the week.

   Let's take the technology a little further into the imagination in this post. Last time, we were bounded by the nasty problem of inertia. Objects in motion prefer to stay that way, in the same direction, and that ruled out the kind of combat that is seen in movies like Star Wars.

   But what if you could eliminate inertia? Would that mean we start to see X-wings that swoop down over vast battleships? Today's assumption: A device has been invented that allows you to negate the inertia of a space vehicle. You'd be surprised what that assumption does for the overall layout of the space battlefield.
   Inertia gets in the way of a lot of space maneuvering, as we discussed in the last post. It makes the fuel to mass ratio of your space vehicle more important than most other considerations, and is the major limiting factor on maneuverability. If you could eliminate the inertia of a vehicle, you could do some very impressive things in space, from an agility point of view.

    Now, I want to caution you. The understanding of inertia in your time stream is far from complete, and before you are going to negate it, you are going to have to be able to understand it. If the Higgs boson exists in your time stream (this is still up for some debate, no?), then its discovery will move this topic area forward a fair bit, but let's keep our heads here. Inertia damping is a ways off.
   However, let's say that the correct work has been accomplished. The inertial damper exists, and it can be sent into space. How does that change space warfare?

   Things already don't have a weight in space. With the negation device, however, their mass, an inherent property, becomes a non-factor in their movement. At a cursory glance, spacecraft could accelerate with minimal fuel expenditure, could be of massive sizes and still be able to maneuver with equal capacity, and in the event of a retreat, acceleration would be rapid and without consequences.

    Let's look at that a little more closely. First, the technical specifications of the negation device itself are important. If it's the size of a house, you're going to run into problems for a variety of reasons. It may be easy to destroy if it is that large, it would be hard to fit on small craft and still maintain a reasonable target profile, etc. Yet, if we're to be realistic about this (of course, I know just how realistic I'm being, but I don't want to talk past you), to say that it will be very tiny seems a little absurd. Therefore, let's say that an inertial negation device would be small enough to fit aboard anything from a missile to a battle cruiser, but would not be small enough to fit inside your pocket.

   That means that a ship with our inertial negation device would have problems firing bullets. The recoil from the bullets firing would have an effect on the relatively massless spacecraft and slow it to a stop on firing. Missiles, however, could carry a negation device and thus allow their firing spacecraft to maintain its original velocity. Once again, we find ourselves in a space warfare battlefield that is dominated by missile warfare.

   That said, the inertial negation device leads to problems with space combat. The vehicle that can physically accommodate the most fuel is the vehicle that wins when there is inertial negation. It takes very little effort to accelerate further when you have no inertia, and the stress on your vehicle is also minimal. If my spaceship is being pursued by a missile, all I must do is accelerate either in step with or slightly faster than the missile that's after me. If velocity is a real number, I can continue to push faster and faster to near the speed of light, keeping me just ahead of the missile until it has run out of fuel. Then I can maneuver out of its way.

   However, all of combat happens at relativistic speeds under this framework. As the missile and my ship chase each other, the ship that launched the missile can follow at a speed that keeps us within range of its detector capabilities. At the speeds we're talking about, time passes differently between different reference frames. As I run from its missile, the other ship might have ten minutes in its reference frame to launch ten more missiles, all of which I will have trouble trying to evade. I might find my fuel exhausted as I try to evade the first missile, only to discover that a split second later I have three more of them coming my way. That's not a very good situation.

A missile-dominated future? Image via Wikipedia   It's going to be in my best interests, then, not to try and outrun the missiles that are after me, but instead to try and destroy their inertial negation devices, or somehow project a field that gives them inertia. It stands to reason that if the device that reduces inertia is real, then the device that increases it should also exist. All that needs to happen at that point is to turn that into a ranged device, either by creating inertia-increasing mines that can be left in the battlefield, or developing some means to project the inertia-increasing effect.

   However, once you have the inertia-increasing device, it becomes a better weapon than the original weapon you were trying to use it on! Human beings die when they cannot overcome the inertia of their blood to pump it around their organs. A ship with artificially high inertia will be a sitting duck. I envision future combat happening over vast stretches of space, between roving planets that are equipped with inertial negation devices. As these planets do battle, they increase each other's inertia via missiles, mines, and fields, until finally one is made a sitting duck and forced to capitulate or be destroyed.


   Always,


    Dr. John Skylar
    Chairman
    Department of Anachronism
    University of Constantinople

Warfare in Space

2010-10-06T19:21:00.000+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   I think that in the future, the direction of this blog will be less oriented towards provision of primary sources, and more to the discussion of relevant topics in futurism, alternate realities (to yours), and alternate histories.

   That's not to say that I will stop sharing my research with you, but in this format I can share more possibilities with you at once, freed from the restrictions of a primary source.

   Therefore, today I want to discuss how warfare will change when the primary arena of combat changes to be outer space. There are a variety of different options, which all depend on how the societies in question have advanced their technologies.

   The spacecraft that you are used to are incredibly simple. They are unable to withstand the wide variety of attacks that your militaries have come up with, and certainly would not be able to stand up to more advanced weaponry. Let's not dress it up: space warfare in your time stream is a neglected area of research.

   Really, I find that kind of refreshing. Wars in space are nasty things, and it is good that so far your society has managed to keep space a peaceful zone of international collaboration and economic competition. However, I do not believe that even your contemporaries expect that situation to continue forever, especially as more private interests enter the space arena. This article should provide you with some idea of what space combat will and won't look like, given a few assumptions.

   Just so that we're all being realistic: space warfare is not going to look like STAR WARS. The action depicted in STAR WARS, probably your most memorable imagining of space combat, is also woefully ignorant of what space is actually like. No matter what assumptions are made, I can't find a time stream wherein space combat resembles World War II-era naval air combat. In no small part because there isn't any air resistance in space, so the long, banking turns you see in such films are wholly unnecessary.

There are, however, a few different frameworks for space combat. Each has a prerequisite technology associated with it, so I'll go through one by one, in a series of posts.

   Framework One: Assuming Current Technology, or Slight Improvements Thereupon

   Current space technology is incredibly limited. We could engineer weapons and machinery that would work in Low Earth Orbit, but the combat would not look like what you would imagine. For one, everyone seems to think about manned warfare vehicles in a space combat context.Image via Wikipedia

   In reality, modern space warfare is going to look more like the tiny missile on the right than it will like the huge plane that launched it.

   Given current limitations, manned combat vehicles would be too risky to operate, and would not offer the maneuverability of computer-guided or remote controlled vehicles.

   The reason is one of inertia and mass. The huge jet over there has a lot of mass dedicated to holding its pilot. Computers have a lot lower mass than pilots, and that reduces the overall inertia of your warfighting spacecraft. Inertia describes how much the resistance the vehicle puts up when you try to move it or slow it down; it's different from weight, so it still applies in low gravity.

   The mass matters for two reasons. First, something has to put the craft into orbit. Currently, there's a very expensive cost-per-kilogram to put something into orbit, so the less mass it is, the better off you are. The second reason, though, is more interesting. The ratio between the fuel carried and the overall mass of the space vehicle is a determining factor of how effective the vehicle will be in a combat situation. In space, every movement is based on Newton's third law, under this framework. For every action, there is an equal reaction of opposite direction. That means our spacecraft needs to expend fuel every time it moves, shoots, or turns. Aircraft need to use fuel to go forward, stay aloft, and change direction. If they want to slow down, they can just use less fuel. If they run out of fuel, they can return to base and be turned around within a matter of hours.

   Not so in space. An object in space won't stop fast enough if it just stops firing its engines; there's no air to slow it down. Even in LEO, it will continue along its original path on the time scale that is relevant to a combat engagement. It will need to expend fuel in order to slow down. The spacecraft's weaponry, unless it is itself a missile, will also slow it down, and it will need to use its engines to overcome that. Worst of all, it won't be able to just land and refuel itself. The belligerents in our modern space war would have to launch automated tankers, which would themselves be targets and require defensive systems.

   So the picture of a modern technology space war is this: automated missile-like vehicles, sent to space for long-term residence there. They could be either entirely computer-controlled, or controlled by technicians on the ground. These spacecraft would either need to be expendable or would need some system of in-orbit refueling, which would mean the launch of large, automated fuel tankers. The primary target of these orbital weapons would either be targets on the surface of the Earth (which could be attacked by far less costly means), satellites, and/or other space combat vehicles and tankers. Right now (for you) the most practical of these targets are satellites, but since your satellite market is dominated by the US and Russia, which are averse to war with one another, I don't believe you'll be seeing actual anti-satellite operations any time soon. Furthermore, even if one of these countries did see fit to destroy satellites en masse, the debris created from combat would create many hazards for their own satellites, making LEO combat far less practical than one would desire.

   At any rate, that is the current state of the technology for your time stream. In the next post I'll discuss the combat situation if a critical technology, a device that manipulates the inertia of a space vehicle, is invented.

Always,

   John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Friday Seminar Series: Exoplanetology

2010-10-01T22:59:00.001+03:00

Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   This Friday Seminar is a special one, written given the buzz from Gliese581g, which has found its way to me from my time-normal Twitter friends Exoplanetology and Intellectual Pornography. They've both kept me up to date on advances in your time stream's understanding of this world has expanded. I'll stick to what you know in discussing it. Gliese581g is interesting for a variety of reasons, the one that I'm most focused on being what it means for human expansion.

   A lot of words get thrown around at times like this. In the words of time-normal astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, this should be seen as "...an important turning of the page..." in the search for planets like Earth. However, it "...doesn't mean there are oceans and beaches and resorts..." Gliese581g isn't exactly Earth. You don't know that much about it. I see words like "habitable" and I'm inclined to remind time-normal science journalists how little you really know about life within, let alone outside of, the solar system. Habitable? The odds are low. Inhabited? Well, I'll leave that for you to discover on your own.

   What this represents, and what I mean to discuss, is that discovery. Gliese581g isn't likely to represent a second chance for humanity. The gravity there may be a little too high, depending on the precise composition and density of the planet. It's a ribbon world, which limits its settlement potential. There are...issues, to say the least.

   One issue I shouldn't have to remind you of is that it may already be inhabited!

   Instead of being a complete critic, however, I want to take this in a productive direction. Every scientific discovery, in astrophysics, anachronism, or biology, has two effects. First, it tells us something we don't know before, installing a firm rung for us to step on as we ascend the ladder of knowledge. Second is all about that ladder. Think of it as a tall, tall ladder in the midst of a vast wilderness. With every rung, our lantern casts more light, even farther, so that we can see newer and newer things. Some of these things, the edge of these things, are encased in shadow, left for us to ask questions about. Those questions are the edge of knowledge, the things that will be answered to build the next rung.

You must not look at Gliese581g and say, "this is a new thing that we know." You must look at it and ask, "What new questions can we ask?" You must turn the new page that Dr. DeGrasse Tyson talked about. I'll suggest a brief list:

Does Gliese581g have a breathable atmosphere and/or liquid-phase water?
Is there life on Gliese581g? (The link leads to an article about the discovery of a strong signal coming from the Gliese581 system)
Can we communicate with Gliese581g?
Can we get to Gliese581g?
What are the ethical hurdles that come into play when we reach a possible contact with Gliese581g and its potential inhabitants?

   These are the questions that you have to answer, time-normal Earth. There's a lot of conflicting information on this one. I wish you the best of luck. Please leave thoughts in the comments on this one. I'll be watching it closely.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Freedom to Die

2010-09-28T19:15:00.012+03:00

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

    I know it has been a little while since I last wrote to you. It was considered best that we evaluate our communications with your time stream more carefully before we proceeded with this project. There are larger concerns, now, especially with the war on.

    I am writing today to talk about an issue that might seem foreign to you, that of "Freedom of Death." In your time stream, there's much ado about end of life procedures and assisted suicide, but this is a little different.

   When you are effectively immortal, and you can go to the library and cross-reference your achievements in thousands of different time streams, the ideas of life and death become somewhat more nuanced.

   I have died more times than is polite to mention, if the library is to be believed. I haven't experienced all of these deaths, but I have tried to simulate a few of them. I have died here a handful of times, either due to attacks on the University, accidents, or the occasional duel. It's not really pleasant, but each time, I have risen again, "cylon-like," I'm told, to continue my work.

    With the dangerous nature of our work, sometimes graduate students, technicians, and even undergraduates find themselves tired of the University lifestyle. In some sense, this place is a Heaven where you can see the consequences of all of your decisions for all time, learn from them, and find yourself enlightened about the general path of the Universe through its "allowed" time streams. You can see why that might also be a hell. There are those who simply cannot handle the regret.

In normal circumstances, we allow them to arrest their bodies and have their personalities stored permanently, should they ever be needed. It is exceedingly rare that we reactivate such a personality.

However, with the war on, His Imperial Majesty Constantine XI Palaiologos has begun to consider a moratorium on these "deaths." Proponents believe that we need everyone we can get. This would end the freedom to opt-out for all those who are here, forcing them to resurrect in the event of any attack. It is a complicated issue, and I am so far unsure of my views about it.

All I can really say is that I find the idea of a moratorium on death stranger than I had expected.
Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Impostor!

2010-07-02T05:13:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

Something funny crossed my path today. Via the Internet, I have discovered a person who may be an as-yet undiscovered version of myself! I have no idea "who" this person is. It makes me chuckle.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

A Potential Graduate Student?

2010-06-29T01:18:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

I found this earlier today. As the artist says, he's not a time traveler! But he's certainly good material for an Anachronist. I can think of a particular time stream he might even want to study.

Always,

    Dr. John Skylar
    Chairman
Department of Anachronism
    University of Constantinople

Book-Rhyme

2010-05-10T18:57:00.000+03:00

Image by levar via Flickr

Dear Readers,

Today I've decided to share something with you that I've been scrawling inside the covers of my books since I first became a graduate student: my book rhyme!

Book rhymes were popular in your 19th and early 20th century, to warn people against stealing others' books, or to help a lost book find its home. Losing books is not so large a problem for me, with the resources we have here at the University, but I still like the idea of the book rhyme, partly because of Alfred Bester. Furthermore, I have always offered dinner to anyone who finds a book I've lost, and without a rhyme, it would be hard for them to collect their reward.

Thus, I've decided to share my book rhyme with you, my readers.

John Skylar is my Name
Byzantium, my Nation
Forever is my Stopping-Place
And Always, my Habitation

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Back in the Saddle Again

2010-04-19T17:20:00.003+03:00

Dear Readers,

I've been away, working on a few different projects, and my bandwidth to your time stream has been taken up with academic correspondence and students' work.

That period is now over, and I have begun to reevaluate the sorts of things that I put here. My seminars will remain, as well as at least one narrative/source-style post per week. However, I am considering adding at least one of two potential new components:

Music: Might Have Been. This would be a column where I examine interesting musicians from your time stream and tell you what their lives could have been like if they had not chosen to become such artists.
City Salons: When I was a graduate student, I often had my friends and sometimes even my enemies over for frank discussion on strange issues. I still have the records of these events, and I may share them with you.

   If any of you, my readers, have thoughts on either of these new ideas, I would be happy to hear them.

Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Outlaw Blogger Gangs

2010-02-09T16:31:00.000+02:00

Partial Map of the Internet: Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of your time stream's society. You know this as well a I. It connects everyone with the information they desire without judging that information (at least, in situations where free speech is allowed and there is net neutrality).

With all the possibilities that are created by the Internet, it would take the complete and combined efforts of time normal statisticians, physicists, biologists, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists to assess the full potential impact of the Internet on the future.

Fortunately, you have Anachronists like me who can use Augury to "cheat" and this and tell you what's out there. This week, I want to focus on a few different possibilities that we know will come out of the Internet. The Internet Age encouraged the move from modern to postmodern. What happens when we move on from that? One option is below the jump.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Louis's wheels tore down what remained of the New Jersey Turnpike. When he looked up, away from the road, he could see personal craft flit through the sky above. In his eyes they meant nothing. Instead, something else mattered to Louis. His eyes fixed on the airship above. He needed to stick to its route, even if it took him through the pine barrens.

Well, at least as far as southern Jersey. If it went over Delaware, the AC/DC/MC would pick 'em up. The DC Motorcycle Club, that is. And if they went over the water...well, then his gang stood to make a whole bunch of money. He'd tweet if they came up on Cape May.

The rest of his crew rumbled with him down the tarmac. Louis kicked on the autodrive, and it picked up the GPS signal inside a few seconds' time. He looked back at the rest of his crew, and they all nodded. High time to blog this.

Louis popped open his saddlebag and pulled out the tablet he kept there. He scrawled out with this fingers, "Headed south over Jersey. 200 tons cargo. Suspect foodstuffs, maybe small arms. No passengers. FAIR GAME. Click the PayPal for heading and coords."

The ship didn't falter from the heading. 30 minutes, and the pirates would be paying in droves. Feeding time.

Sunday Seminar Series: Misunderstanding

2010-02-07T12:36:00.000+02:00

Easy to misunderstand. Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

In your own time stream, exploration is a thing of physical locales and geographic or astronomic travels. At the University, we are instead explorers of temporal distances. This sort of work is more stationary, but hazards its own perils.

Join me for this week's Sunday Seminar, adapted from my lectures for our introductory Anachronism class, CHRN/AUG 100.

I think the main hazard that we face as Anachronists is misunderstanding. With our new ability to manifest whenever we would like, the danger is doubled.

Let me tell you the classical problem of misunderstanding. It is best related through the anecdote of Clinton IV, a space colony I have studied.

The colonists of Clinton IV learned early on that they were not alone on their world. They found this very excitig at first, but as attempts to contact the local humanoid lifeforms failed or ended in disaster, they became discouraged. It took a century for the xenobiologists to realize their mistake: just because a creature looks and acts intelligent, does not always mean it is.

There are many classical misunderstandings we can make. One of them is to use our own cultural framework to read a source. Thankfully, Dr. Bacon's mindset simulator is helping somewhat with that. But you must be ever vigilant.

There are other sorts of misunderstandings we can make as well. These aren't based on cultural frame problems, but instead on simple bad "facts". Sometimes we just have the wrong assumptions, and we assume that a source says a society was at war when in fact they were playing a sports game. Hint, hint, football fans.

These two classes of misunderstanding lead to bad conclusions and pollute the literature when they appear in our sedentary activities.

But, if you make these mistakes on assignment to a time stream, they can be deadly. So watch out.

There's one last class of misunderstanding that is unique to being on assignment, though: that's where you don't consider your own effect through your presence. When you visit, you're in a unique offshoot of the time stream that is affected by your presence. It's almost the same, but not completely. If you're going to collect evidence, make sure you didn't accidentally create that data.

And with that, I leave you to your sports games. Hopefully the referees have had a good class on misunderstanding.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

The Academy for Cultural Guardians

2010-02-04T23:15:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

In my research I have turned up a number of bizarre time streams, as you no doubt know. This week, I've tried to focus on some of the stranger among them, at first the wolf-people, and now today a world where culture has taken on something of a life of its own.

This is one of the odd time streams where the laws of physics are ever so slightly different, in ways somewhat too complicated to go into in detail here. The bottom line is that culture has become something of a tangible and measurable thing. I consider it to be something like the Ley Lines suggested by archaeologist Alfred Watkins in your own time stream. Different cultures somehow converge around pathways of something that I think of as a sociological ether. Consider it a sort of addition on to the laws of physics that you are used to.

Horrible things can happen, however, when there are strange convergences of these cultural ley lines. Across the world of this time stream, there are places where the smallest living thing can be transformed into a hideous monster. Perhaps a wayward squirrel outside of Copenhagen could become the grand monster Grendel and terrify the countryside, all through the effect of this cultural ether.

To combat this problem, the people of this time stream have instated a cultural exchange program. This system ensures that at least there will be several people in every community who are able to rise to the challenge of the strange creatures that come out of the woods without balking when they meet their culture's greatest nightmares.

But these cultural exchange students, "guardians," as they are called, must first be trained. Below the jump is a primary source from one of the classes at their Academy for Cultural Guardians.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Daily Quiz: Introduction to Cultural Ether with Professor Ptahotep
Name: Berghard Marking, the Green

1. Explain, in three sentences or less, the moral value of the cultural ether.

The cultural ether brings monsters out of the woods and terrorizes our homes. It is evil! It must be slain, and this is my quest. I shall be like Beowulf!

Berghard, this is four sentences. Furthermore, it is wrong. The cultural ether has no morality. It is as likely to turn a forest creature into a goose that lays golden eggs as it is to turn the same creature into a dragon. It is a force of nature, governed by whichever gods you believe in. 1 point of 10 for spirit.

2. What are the five duties of a Cultural Paragon/Guardian?

A. Protect
B. Understand
C. Exchange
D. Fight
E. Respect

Well done, Berghard! ~~Horus~~ Wotan would be proud. 10/10.

3. Detail the major threat posed by "Cultural Nodes." Hint: define a "Cultural Node" in your answer.

A cultural node is a sorcerer who lives in the forest and turns the animals there into horrible monsters. The monsters must be fought when they threaten the villagers.

I see now that I should not have used the sorcerer metaphor. A cultural node is a place where the cultural ley lines converge and create a vortex that can convert ordinary life into mythological life. The main threat, however, is that it can turn things into horrible monsters. 5/10 pts.

4. What is the most important fact to remember when you are on assignment?

That you are never alone. Your allies are there to face the challenges you cannot.

I would have preferred "to respect the cultures of the villagers and my allies and remember my own bias," but I admire your sentiment. 8/10 pts.

5. How do you kill a cultureshifter?

The cultureshifter is the greatest creature that you can fight. You must stab it in the still-beating heart even when it becomes what you love or fear the most, or as it changes between everything you have ever cared about.

Wrong. No one can kill a cultureshifter. Call the central command should you ever find one. 0/10 pts.

Temporal Tuesday: Dances with Wolves

2010-02-02T13:21:00.000+02:00

Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Dear Readers,

Imagine with me for a moment something that I think you won't accept as real. Imagine a world where hominids did not win the evolutionary race to dominance. It's not the most likely time stream after the hominids develop opposable thumbs, of course, but then the idea that evolution can diverge across time streams might be something you hadn't considered yet.

When I was earning my second undergraduate degree, the one I got from the University itself, I took a class on evolutionary biology. The professor cited Anachronism data that showed a time stream where humans' primary evolutionary competitors came to the forefront instead of humans. This other animal had an intelligent mind, a social mentality, and was a most effective hunter. This animal was the wolf. The main reason that wolves and humans did not turn out the other way around in your time stream is right on the edge of your hand; they lacked the opposable thumb.

Today, imagine a time stream where they did not. I have (mostly) translated this species' quirks to make the piece more accessible. The only word I cannot translate is the name "Rolf," though it's curious that this name appears in both wolven as well as German, though they have very different meanings. Since the wolves are deeply religious, it's been easy to find analogs for other names. For example, a wolf name meaning "the first wolf" is easily replaced with "Adam."

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Julie [Orig: "Young One"] clambered up the ramp outside the temple. [Reversed knees would not handle steps well]

She could feel herself begin to pant with the exertion. They built the temples to such a height, as if the Great One should wish his children to feel relieved when they got to the top. It just made Julie tired.

She would rather be anywhere else. She would rather be across the world and stare off its edge, or at the top of a mountain, or alone in the forest in search of a deer. Her skin crawled all over her and she felt nothing but sad illness. Today, Adapa [This is the original word; I was very surprised] would take her brother. And those who Adapa takes, never return. Julie did not think it such a huge honor.

Somehow, though, her family accepted the Temple's payment without a word of protest. They would take Jonathan to the temple, they said. Adapa would have him. Only their monkey, Fidel, made even a single noise to object. Instead of fighting that night with her brother, Julie cried with him.

Julie stepped into the vast hall. She felt a chill on her skin, through her light, gray fur. Through the open portal to the temple, she saw the Columns of Adapa. They showed everything that he gave to the wolves; fishing, farming, astronomy, writing, rocketry, chemistry, physics, trains, everything. Adapa brought them greatness.

Every column jeered back at her as she walked the halls. Adapa's fish-face and wolf-body stared back from the stone. His face mocked her, as if saying, "You are in my house, little wolf-child. And in my house, you will lose your brother. And there is nothing-you-can-do-about-it." She shuddered.

Just a few more steps, and Julie entered the main hall. She saw all kinds of wolves across the congregation, all of them here to devote their prayers to Adapa and to her brother. On another day, for another wolf given to Adapa, she would feel such awe...she would growl and leap and sway along with them. Today she found a seat, like an old woman. Today she felt nothing but loss.

When she sat, she felt a rumble in the ground. Her stomach turned, as she knew it came from the congregation. They drummed their feet to invite her brother to enter. She wanted to cry, or to vomit. How could she lose him like this? Julie shook, and the claws on her feet flexed.

She saw them bring out her brother, gallant with his spotted hide and tall frame. He would have led their neighborhood, even the whole city. He would have been great. Now he wore the clothes. She saw the knife and knew what would happen next. Julie shut her eyelids and waited for his scream.

And then she heard the airy whisper whisper, "Julie, you do not need to be frightened. Do not be frightened."

She opened her eyes, only to return to beating drums and the sight of her brother's head on the chopping-block. She screwed them shut again.

It returned, a small comfort, "Do not be afraid. I am Adapa. The ceremony will kill only the body. I have so much more to tell your people, so much to show them. I take the ones who can learn."

She knew it must be a hallucination. She shook it from her head. Then she heard the shriek.

Julie could not control herself. She smelled her brother's blood. The scent of blood that could only be him. His whole identity and life wafted through the air. And she got up and ran. She ran to the gates of the Temple, ready to leap out and hide in the fields.

"Julie, he was right. You can always find me here. With Adapa, I am forever." Her brother's voice. Julie stopped cold. What magic could make a dead wolf live?

Sunday Seminar Series: Resonance

2010-01-31T16:00:00.000+02:00

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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

2010-01-30T00:57:00.000+02:00

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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

I put on the headset and connect the electrical contacts for my skull. They're supposed to disrupt my thought pattern just enough to let Mr. Butler in. Francis flips on the machine, and we proceed to test it, beginning with the mind of a rat we collected from the biology labs.

He turns up the dial. I am overcome with a desire to eat. I am so hungry. I didn't know it would affect my emotions in this way. I wish to run to darkness. I tell Francis, and he turns it off. Apparently the effect will be less unpleasant when I connect with someone across a time stream.

Now we try connecting with Mr. Butler. The middle of 1863. He's reading Origin of Species for the first time.

Suddenly I hear within my head, a foreign voice: "I am finished! What a book. It is like Goethe's work fully realized...truly the mechanism of the Divine. This fellow is most astute. I must correspond with him if I can."

I smile. I tell Francis that we have gotten it right. He moves forward in time a little.

"Well that's curious...selection is something that animal breeders already do! If humans can select animals...what about cloth? The best cloth is made by machines now...hah! What if machines could be selected? Now that's a ripping joke."

I tell Francis that this is very good. We move forward a tad more.

"Oh this will make the ultimate written humor. Bit whimsical, but really, who would not laugh at the idea of thinking machines? Yes, yes, selection that can produce a loom with a brain? Better yet, one that can enslave humans! Absurd!"

This thought is slightly before he published Darwin amongst the Machines.

"That was better received than I had expected. Perhaps I could work it into Erehwon...hmm...still not chuffed with that title...maybe I'll transpose the "w" and "h" to make it read better."

Obviously this is from after he published the essay and worked it into a later novel. We move on quite a lot, I want to get to the end of his life.

"What's this? I can see machinery...oh no! My hands! They're metal!"

I am somewhat disturbed. But hardly surprised.

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part III

2010-01-27T23:17:00.000+02:00

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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

2010-01-25T23:29:00.000+02:00

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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

Well! Let's dive right in, then.
On the heels of yesterday's seminar, let's first get a mindset for these people. Based on a couple of factors (the term "plastic trawler") being one of them, we know that the primary goal of all the characters that we have in our sources is to collect plastic for an economic use. Their business is the business of recycling.

We have to figure out why that is, though. Is it because the world has turned much more environmentally conscious? I doubt it. Hereditary mayoralties imply a loss of centralized control. I doubt this is an environmental conservation issue.

Otherwise, it must be the economic value of the plastic that drives these men to the Pacific Gyre. In your era, the Pacific Gyre is already a vast sea of plastic. I can only imagine what several centuries would add to that. It is likely thick, maybe even like an arctic cap, with plastic.

Plastic takes resources to make. Namely, oil and electricity. The loss of central control that we concluded on earlier probably made these a lot more scarce. Suddenly it's worthwhile to go out to sea to get plastic. It's a question how they power the boat without oil, but there are options like sails and solar panels, so I'm not too concerned about that.

All right, so we've determined that some events eliminated economic centralization and made the collection of discarded plastic from the sea into a worthwhile endeavor economically. Fantastic. We can say, therefore, that an important part of this Mayor's power comes from his principality's ability to collect plastic.

The next thing to understand are the characters. Let's take the Mayor's son, for example. For him, this is a punishment. Farming plastic is an undesirable job, apparently. It might be lucrative, but not so much so that adventuring aristocrats go out to do it themselves. This assignment is meant to teach Stephen a hard lesson about work. So we've established that he sees the task as beneath him.

Since it's not a glamorous job, they use throwaway laborers off the dock, and it appears that no one cares about these people. Human life has no doubt cheapened with the loss of centralized authority. These people are barely considered individuals: they are a numbered and nameless crew.

However, we know that much of the process is regulated and there is paperwork to be done, like the customs form and the ship's manifest. To take care of this as well as run the ship, there is a Captain and also a First Mate. These people are obviously important because they are named. I would suggest that their place in life is to be part of a Middle Class, which I would expect is still somewhat small and does not have a lot of power.

Yet, the Mayor is willing to entrust these men with his own son and intended successor. That is curious in itself. I imagine that when career plastic farmers and someone who looks down on their profession find themselves in the same straits, there will be some sort of confrontation. We shall see what that means tomorrow.

Sunday Seminar Series: Mindset

2010-01-25T03:43:00.000+02:00

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.

Image via Wikipedia

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

2010-01-22T23:06:00.000+02:00

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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

All right, let's begin.
I have three sources from Seward, a port town in Alaska (it's not quite going by that name at the time, but I'll spare you that today).

They are:

A crew manifest for a plastic trawler.
A blog entry/proclamation from the Mayor and Defender of the port town in question.
A customs document summarizing crew status and cargo returned by the plastic trawler during its three month voyage in the Pacific Gyre.

All are dated approximately 2750. As far as the particular time stream goes, dates and documents are unreliable, so it is hard to say how exact the numbers really are. It's somewhat impressive that these documents were even written down.

Let's look at the crew manifest first. I've translated it from the strange language that has developed by that time period:

"Ship: Girl Gone Wild

Skipper: Bill Hungrymoffoson
First Mate: Jeff Blogston
Mayoral Guest: Stephen Coke, Mayor-Elect of Seward

And 12 miscellaneous dock-acquired crewmembers, names not recorded to avoid liability.

Stated purpose of voyage: acquisition of raw materials for plastic from Pacific Gyre."

From this we know a few things: some of the cultural standards have decayed. For some reason, the mayor sends the mayor-elect on the boat. Have they had a falling out? The surnames are strange, as well. Branding, slang, and internet culture seem to have influenced what people are called. A post-internet age. I find it kind of remarkable that their first names seem similar enough to modern day that I can translate them into things like "Bill" and "Jeff." The names are listed in short version, except Stephen. Possibly because he is an aristocrat.

It's also interesting that those without official positions are just pulled off the dock and not even listed in name. This implies that there is sufficient unemployment that people are waiting on the dock for work, and that the authorities do not care much if they do not all come back.
Oh, and a final note: the ship is a "plastic trawler" collecting "raw materials" from the Pacific Gyre. It's known that the Pacific Gyre is a sea of discarded sea-junk during even your own day, a soup of plastic hundreds of miles across and without a single bacterium to break it down.

Second document, which arrived in HTML and I have translated to sensible English:

"BY DECREE OF MAYOR AND DEFENDER ERNEST COKE:

The MAYOR ELECT and NEXT DEFENDER his Hon. Stephen COKE has revealed through recent actions involving a HO that he needs more training before he can ascend to his position. MAYOR AND DEFENDER Ernest COKE hereby requests passage for Stephen COKE as a mayoral guest aboard a plastic trawler bound for PACIFIC GYRE. Send all inquiries to Mayoral Mansion, Seward."

This is a real gem. So we have it that Stephen Coke is likely the son of the current mayor. I'll bet there aren't elections in Alaska anymore. We also have it that the mayor of this town can make decrees to exile even his own son after embarrassing events. We can also assume that Stephen Coke doesn't really want to be on board the vessel; this seems like a punishment meant to teach the mayor's son a lesson. Could make for interesting interactions between the crew.

The third document:

"FILE IMMEDIATELY UPON RETURN
ATTN: Seward Mayoral Customs Office
SHIP: GIRL GONE WILD

Crew Status: [This part is very difficult to read in the original]...argument led to...injuries severe in one...eventual resolution from use of...crew survival within acceptable regs.

Cargo Status: 200 tons farmed plastic chips, estimated value: 700 troy oz gold."

This source really excites me. What happened aboard this vessel? They have collected a lot of plastic, and it is apparently worth a lot of gold! And yet, what happened to dollars? Apparently they are not worth what they used to be.

To sum up, we have a world where it seems like there is little central control, the economy has regressed significantly, and it is far more cost effective to trawl plastic than it is to make it originally. Society involves ingrained aristocrats and these commoner farmers who seem subject to their whims. And yet, strangely, this collapse has led to recycling by force. Interesting to me, at least. And furthermore: something happened at sea! We will have to address that in the story.

Stay tuned for next Monday, when I post the narrative that I've put together from these sources.

(Last) Friday On My Mind

2010-01-20T02:41:00.002+02:00

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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.

How to Save History: Australia, 1874

2010-01-18T20:13:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

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.

The Six Colonies: Dr. Howe visits at a time before Australia has federated. In your time stream, Australia began as six separate colonies. Between 1850 and 1890, these six colonies gradually set up governments that could operate without the need for Imperial involvement. This establishment of "responsible government" led to the creation of the Australian Constitution in 1901 (give or take depending on the time stream). It is therefore critical that Wendell do nothing to interfere with local government during his stay. Perceived weakness in local government could delay Australian independence. If Australia is not independent by 1942, its role as a major US and British rallying point for the War in the Pacific could be jeopardized and Japan could be better able to secure its hold over the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In this scenario, the war could be prolonged until 1955 and countless nuclear weapons could be detonated. So, Dr. Howe, make a strong effort to obey local laws.
The Gold Rushes: Australia's population has expanded at a record pace just before Wendell's arrival. This is an age of great change for the Australians, when the future of Australian demographics will be put into place. Though it may be difficult, if Wendell wishes to preserve the past he must not plant the seeds of any progressive ideas into the minds of the people he interacts with in the past. It could change the demographics of the later Australia that he knows, though I am reluctant to suggest this because I believe certain mistakes were made with the "White Australia" policy.
Aboriginal Peoples: Between 1850 and 1900, approximately 450,000 indigenous Australians died to violence and disease from the immigrant colonists. It was a terrible event and it essentially led to a collapse in their culture. While this sadness should be avoided, I must warn Wendell that he will have the opportunity to save many indigenous lives while he is there by virtue of his century's advanced medical knowledge. I will not say he should avoid doing so. I will say only that if he does not help these people, it will preserve the past. However, I hope he breaks the rules.
Australian Federation: Wendell is visiting the Australian colony of Victoria, specifically the city of Melbourne. As more and more native Australians are born, the demographics of this colony will change. It is vital that Wendell not interfere with any young aspiring politicians during his visit, as Victorian politicians will play a vital role in the federation of Australia. I specifically call attention to Victoria's 1874 Treasurer, James Service. Wendell will likely meet James Service as Melbourne is Australia's financial center during the time of his visit. I recommend that during their chance encounter, Wendell should make sure that no errant wagons run over the good treasurer. Mr. Service is due to become Premier of Victoria and play a vital role in Federation.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: Corporeality

2010-01-17T22:23:00.001+02:00

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

2010-01-15T22:56:00.000+02:00

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

May 27th, 28-- CE

Hey fanz! Today I'm getting set for the big trip! It's the GRAND SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENT, brought to by your good friend Timothy.com, the social engineer to end all social engineers. That's right, a-holes. By this time this week (dont you love time travel?) I will be the best known human being on the planet! Time to get in the car.

May 27th, 13,4-- BCE

Well here I am, and by virtue of my uplink, you should be seeing this right after my last fan post. I know this project could turn into one of those longwinded things, but even the longer posts, I promise, will be less than twenty lines. Who the hell writes twenty lines? Anyway, I just went realtime on-location. There's nothing yet of Paris, of course. Just the rivers and the trees. I think I see some contemps over the next hill.

May 32nd, 13,4-- BCE

The natives are pretty cool! They understand what I'm saying when I use teh translator, and I think I've met them all. It's crazy, there's only like ten of them. They'res that many ppl in my social collectiv back home, and we live in like two rooms. They live in a giant forest. A giant forest! It's at least 100 yd across.

June 1st, 13,4-- BCE

Just discovered that the car can't drive at night. Stupid fucken soler panels and crappy batteries. They're supposed to hold a charge! How am I supposed to meet everyone on the planet if I can only drive during the day? IT's not liek there's roads or anything.

Oh. Bill just sent me a message. Turns out there's only like 100,000 people alive anyway. I can probably do it just driving during the day.

June 10th, 13,4-- BCE

Man, gotta do laundry soon. I'm in Bolivia...no, Bohemia...acorrding to the atlas. Man, shit's crazy. Got attacked by some nutso guys with huge chins the other day. They couldnt talk tho. Lots of spears. Scared the crap out of me. Got to a village. People here call me "Sun-man" because I can't drive at night. Somehow they already heard about me.

June 15th, 13,4-- BCE

Got to Romania. The people here keep saying Im some kinda god. I'm totally done with Europe tho. Scanner says I met everybody. Or at least someone who knows everybody. Done here for now. Gotta get back in the car before night.

July 20th, 13,4-- BCE

I kno it's been a long time since my last update. Well, not for you guys I guess. These are just one day for you. My hair's grown out. Clothes have holes. Don't know how to fix that. Gun still works, though. Thank god the gun still works. The crazy bigchins are all over Russia. There aren't too many regular people. The ones I meet tell me that it's hard to get further East. Too many bigchins. I'll still try though. I'll post tomorrow. Should hit Afghanistan by then.

[This is the last entry, but that is sensible as the myth is (mostly) Indo-European]

Guns of the Self

2010-01-13T22:49:00.000+02:00

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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

Dear Dr. Farnsworth,

I write you with sincere hopes that you're well. Here at the Black Hills Institute of Technology we have been in order since your last communication and I hope that your institution is equally stable.

I am regretfully obligated to tell you of the unfortunate passing of Professor Ernest White at age 77. Professor White was responsible for the excellent greenhouse and hydroponics facilities in our Institute's recycled Atlas missile base, and though we are not shorthanded, he will be sorely missed.

I am reminded, however, with Professor White's passing, that it is now forty years since the Declaration of Joint Independence. Considering that the government of the United States collapsed in on itself shortly after this declaration, it is only your predecessor's suggestion that I sign that agreement that prevented my institution from destruction. Had I not listened to that advice, no doubt one of the many splinter "states" would have acquired us either by force or on the open market. Professor White's contribution, of course, was to develop a system that would give us ample food to support the experiment in University governance. Without it, we would be nothing.

Of course, to a young man like yourself my correspondence may just sound like the ramblings of an old man past his prime. And indeed they are. The chaos around us, as well as the constant struggle to maintain this University's self-reliance, have left me somewhat tired and addled. I wish to retire, but I must find a replacement for myself. I know that you and those who were your fellow students under President Wurtheimer are gifted with his same abilities of foresight, either through wisdom or through some inscrutable technology we do not have. Knowing your skills, I wonder if you may know someone among your fellows might be interested in applying for the position of President of Black Hills Institute of Technology. Please respond electronically at your earliest convenience.

With Respect,

   Professor Herman Alter, PhD, MSEng
   President
   Black Hills Institute of Technology

Cave Men?

2010-01-11T23:00:00.001+02:00

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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

I knock the arrow. It's made of a PVC pipe. I can still read the pressure rating on the shaft. With my breath in, I draw it back on my sinew bow. I am calm. The deer is calm. It does not see me. It sees only the moss in Bryant Park.

I exhale and release. The arrow flies. Inside a second, its concrete head connects with the deer's neck. It starts to run, but my aim was too good. I've hit the artery. The deer will not make it far.

When it falls, I get out my linoleum knife. Every time I see it, I remember the fight that it took to get into the Home Depot, and all of the people who would rather have this knife than me. I am blessed. I look to the sky in thanks. Someone may still be out there worth thanking.

The deer has fallen outside what used to be the 'wichcraft stand. I'll get a better meal from the animal, this many months after the disaster. I start to field-dress it, using the linoleum knife. I get some of the skin and a few steaks ready.

I hear shots. A real gun. That means people with power. People who can kill me. They are maybe five blocks away. Will they be willing to trade? Or will they just want to take?

I look at the 'wichcraft stand. Looted months ago. The lock hangs open on the door. My pulse raised and my heart beating I know that I only have a few minutes.

I grab the deer by the legs and shove it into the stand. I wish I could show it more respect, but it's time to go. I will find a subway station. They are safe for short periods of time. Usually. Maybe I can put my net down in the tunnel-waters and catch something worthwhile. I'm so hungry, but I can't risk cooking the deer meat. My pursues may smell it.

My leg aches as I try to bolt for the station. There are no doctors left to fix it.

Sunday Seminar Series: The Puppeteers

2010-01-10T20:44:00.000+02:00

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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

2010-01-08T20:19:00.000+02:00

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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.

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The Buddha (aka Siddhartha Gautama): This is a man who taught humanity how to be free of itself and to recognize the beauty in all things. His teachings came at a time when technology could not provide nearly the food or medical care that we have today, and yet somehow he managed to convince people to be free of attachment and to seek compassion above all things. Furthermore, as if he could somehow predict his effect on future generations, he tried to ensure that they would not view him as a god. Most important, he taught his followers how to free their minds and think:
"Believe nothing, no matter who has said it--Not even if I have said it!--unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense."

In my research, there are few greater than Gautama Buddha, and indeed, people wondered if he was a god manifest on earth rather than a mere man.

Jesus: This man, though he claimed to be divine, had an effect so profound on humanity that it would be an injustice not to include him in this list. In a time of Roman oppression and immorality, corruption in the monotheistic temples that paralleled the polytheistic ones, and generalized oppression, he taught compassion. Most important, he taught that there is more to life than just the temporal existence, and caused people to look to the future and their legacies. It is no wonder that many believed him to be the son of their deity.

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   Leonardo da Vinci: A painter, inventor, and scientist whose designs and anatomy work were centuries ahead of their time. da Vinci invented the battle tank, the helicopter, and countless other devices in an era when most people could not even read. His devices were so ambitious that many of them could not be built until far, far later. And as if this great achievement were not enough, he somehow managed to produce the greatest painting in history to that point. Why was he a luminary? With such great achievements, it makes you wonder: Was he a brilliant man, or just a time traveler?

   Archimedes: Archimedes discovered many basic physical principles and invented a device known as the Claw of Archimedes, which could lift Roman ships out of the water and destroy them. Archimedes' screw could pump water with ease. He discovered a way to determine if a crown was pure gold without melting it down. There are even rumors that he invented a heat ray weapon, long before the discovery of electricity. Of course, his contemporaries thought him a great scientist, but in later eras he became so much more. As the Greeks' knowledge faded from the world, Archimedes became something more of a wizard in the contemporary mind.

   Abraham: His monotheism and optimistic views on life and death sprung from an era and culture of polytheism which said everyone enters an eternal torture when they die. More than simply human, he is remembered as a man who had the ear of the creator of the Universe. I can't corroborate these claims, of course, but he must have been pretty impressive to acquire such a reputation.

   Charles Darwin: The theory of evolution has led many to believe this man was a demon incarnate. Not bad for a person who could have stood in for any male character in Pride and Prejudice. Furthermore, his discoveries did something philosophically critical for the human race. He made it so that belief could now be based on choice, rather than necessity. Whereas before, gods provided the only rational explanation, after Darwin one could take or leave religion based on its usefulness. Demon? Hah. Luminary? Yes.

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   Hieronymus Bosch: One need only look at The Garden of Earthly Delights to see that this great painter knew something about what would happen in the future, somehow. It conjures images of the Woodstock festival, or the riots in major cities in the 1960s, or the industrial age, or so many other trends in human thought. In fact, science fiction writers have wondered if Bosch, like da Vinci, might be a time traveler.

   Charlemagne: A man believed to be blessed by God to remake the Roman Empire as a holy construct. He resurged literacy in Europe and made armor and weapons the likes of which no other country could copy. The Caliph of the Arabs was so impressed by Charlemagne that he gifted an elephant to him. His contemporaries renamed him not "Charles the Great," as his name translates, but rather they created an actual new name in whole cloth that would combine the name Charles with the legend of his greatness.

   Rameses II/Rameses the Great/Ozymandias: Percy Bysshe Shelley put it best: "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." While the works are now just sand, the effect of Rameses II on human culture, from so many millenia ago, is unquestioned. His people regarded him as a god, and the "gods" that descended from him called him their "Great Ancestor."

   Adolf Hitler: I include him on this list with a heavy heart. If not for the wrong ideas that he learned in Vienna as a young man, you could live in a time stream where Adolf Hitler did not terrorize the world and murder millions of people. In a world where he instead did good, great things. However, I cannot question that people believed your Hitler to be so great a man that he became synonymous with Germany itself. He wished, and Germany moved to fulfill. He was more than a man, and became a country and an ideology, albeit a very evil one. And the shockwaves of that evil are still felt today. Remember him so that you do not become him.

These are not the only examples, but they are striking ones. Perhaps you can suggest more.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Society, a Construct of Hook, Crook, and Flail

2010-01-08T02:16:00.000+02:00

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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.

A-71 said to his son, "Below, son, see the great city they build for you, here in Manhattan. Manhattan--I thought it funny that we kept the natives' name." He grinned with a wideness that the commoners could not manage. Above his shirtless, muscled body, that face still bore hints of Nefertiti, so many thousands of years before. Even A-72 could see it.

A-72 dashed to the window, his ten year old legs spry to see the people's tribute.

A-71 put his arm around his son's shoulders, and spoke with his same warm, buttered voice. It felt like the sun in Cairo, "Now you know that you are a god. The buildings spell your name, my son. You carry the exact blood of our forefathers, and it sets you apart. Unlike them, you are perfect."

The Pharaoh stepped away from his son. A-72 turned away from the window to watch his father. A-71 picked up the symbols of power from the aircraft table. The crook and flail fit into his hands like new extremities, and he brought the Rite of Leadership onto the screen. The manifestation, created by A-71's priests, showed the Pharaoh all of his urgent business.

A-72 read the notes on the Rite's giant world map. "Riot in Khartoum," or "Last David Clone Rebels in Jerusalem." Little things that did not really need his father. Pointless things. A-72 wanted his father to come back to the window.

Instead, A-71 waved the flail over Khartoum, and the Rite knew what he wanted. Instantly, beseeched by the god-king, the priests there would release food from the granaries and appease the people. The riots would end. A-72 wondered why his father did not use the crook. He always liked it when his father used the crook. It felt like such power, to command men in that way.

A-71 turned to Jerusalem. The flail twitched in his hand, but then his nostrils flared and he nearly threw the crook at the screen. A-72 jumped a little at his father's rage, but he still saw the crook have its effect. It compelled the garrisons at Ashkelon and Tyre to get their aircraft ready. In minutes, Jerusalem would be rubble once more.

A-71 whirled back to face his son, "It saddens me to do that, son. But this is the last David clone. I do not want to take any more chances."

Ahote fitted the second to last block into the wall and stepped back to look at his work. He felt his stomach rumble, and looked to his left and right to see the other laborers. Somehow, they all stopped as well. He knew they all felt hungry. The storm on the Muhheakantuck River delayed their latest food shipment from the Pharaoh. He could not even feed the workers who built his city. The workers who swallowed his religion instead.

Ahote took a look at the final stone block, and then at the task master. He looked again at the wall, and his heart pounded in his chest. The last work he did on the wall was twenty seconds before. Soon, the taskmaster would notice. He would notice them all, with their stopped work. Ahote saw that some of the others had turned back to their tasks. They did what they were supposed to do. They did not need to be told.

But Ahote's stomach still rumbled like the thunder of a thousand refugee feet. He missed the stories of the ancient nations, before the Pharaohs. If a man could hunt in the woods, he could eat. Ahote yearned to hunt in the woods.

Next to him, Sala spoke in her low voice, "Ahote, you must start working again. It will be called a rebellion. They will kill us. You are supposed to work."

"Not eating will kill me, Sala." He did not want to blow her off. In fact, he wanted to do quite the opposite. But as his eye burned a hole into the stone block, he could not bring himself to lift it to the wall.

He feared the crook, of course, and knew of its power. Where the old gods were things of stories, the Pharaohs truly exerted their power. The crook could make him die. It could make them all die. His heart pounded faster within his chest. Ahote's fists clenched, but at the same time, his bladder wanted to unclench.

Then, the taskmaster yelled, "Mason! Get back to your work!" and lashed his whip.

It stung into Ahote's shoulder with all its teeth. Despite the blood, he knew that the taskmaster could do far worse.

Something shifted in his guts, and he lunged for the final block. He lifted it in his hands, to the height where it should go in the wall. Instead, he sent it straight at the taskmaster's head, and he watched the stone sail through the air. It connected before the large slavedriver could jump out of the way, and the man's skull cracked with such force that Ahote could hear it. He fell from the building's scaffold.

In the tender, stunned second before the workers joined his rebellion and all hell broke loose, Ahote had an encouraging thought: If the flail could fail to fill his stomach, perhaps the crook could fail to punish him.

Somewhere in a garrison nearby, hungry soldiers ignored their call to arms.

Archaeologists' Notes

2010-01-05T22:29:00.003+02:00

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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.

First, describe the opening: Large concrete slab, unearthed three weeks ago. In center, we located a break, and opened it with the heavy machines. Beneath: central shaft, runs down a few hundred feet. Along shaft found seven concrete floors, via radar. Can't quite understand purpose of structure from these data. Graduate students also puzzled. Decided to descend. They will follow.
Now at first concrete level. Headlamp reveals machinery, form of large rectangular prisms. Dusty and old. Large, too. Larger than would expect.

Pull out pocket generator to try and make them work. Machines hum to life via induction. Very big. Very noisy. Other machines come on. Pocket system not good enough to run them; must have some backup system available.

Based on period of interest, equipment includes Universal Serial Bus interface. Can explore systems of these machines. Approach machine, plug in, navigate. Discovery: machines are full of information. Loaded with data. No other purpose than collection and protection of data.

Locate administrative files. Hypothesis confirmed, location called "Data Center" in ancients' tongue. Shake head; machines dehumanized by such labor. Not important task for them. Barbarians knew nothing of their devices.

Read files. Cached information. Words stick out from textbooks: "Wikipedia," "Facebook." Terms of narcissist age. Shocked by candid individuality, selfishness.

Peruse data.

"Megan McSorley totes confsed with new facebook, wtf? dont see why they changed it, i liked better b4."

Word glares from screen. "i". Grammar wrong, doesn't matter. Definite narcissist age. This is a mother lode of data. Each individual stored. Each person, a page. Connections formed between people to break down barriers that should never have existed in the first place.

Can feel the students now, from above. Will arrive soon. Will share discovery in collaboration. Smile.

--END TRANSCRIPT--

The Libraries of Smyrna-on-Neo-Aegea

2010-01-04T20:38:00.002+02:00

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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.

I wish I could bring myself to sound more excited about this, but it just feels so bittersweet. All in one night, I have gotten what I feel I worked so hard for, displayed a knowledge that could warp the very borders of culture, and been given the right to spread that knowledge in the way that the gods mandated.

Yet it means that my apprenticeship is over, forever. Five years of work, completed. Five years of the most beautiful experience I have ever had, over. While I have known this day would come since I was sixteen years old, I have no way to silence the emotions that build within me. By our rules, I can never look at Dove in the same way as I have.

There is no person who I am more deeply indebted to than she. She introduced me to the central pillars of our culture, as a teacher and hetaera. My life has never been filled with so much love and knowledge, which in turn gave birth to the inspiration that led to my trial.

For Calliope, I wrote my epic, and the Tale of Alec-Kenobi has never been better told. This I did in my first six months.

For Thalia, I wrote a stage play about the Library. No one laughed harder than Dove, but then, I wrote it so that in the end she turned into one of Eros's darts and shot a bull that afterwards would not leave the Head Librarian alone.

The song for Euterpe was a challenge, but I wrote it for the Kithara and got extra recognition because that is Erato's symbol and I used another student's poem for the lyrics, helping her to pass her trial.

My work for Erato, a love poem, I still feel could be better, but Dove keeps it next to her bed. Now it hurts when I think of that. I will never join her between those sheets again, and she must take a new student. I must take a student myself! This scares me. My heart tears in two. Perhaps I will modify poem. Later. I must finish this.

For Clio, a new history of the Syracuse Slave Revolt, where a leader named Captain Kangaroo rebelled against his colonial masters and set the city-state free. No other histories covered the lesser goddess, Sydney, who helped the Captain in his efforts.

I worked in a group for Polyhymnia, and the song we produced told the tale of two selkie lovers. It makes me smile when I think of it. In some late night sessions, my partners and I got especially into character.

My project for Urania was a song for the emotional ideal woman who every common man of Smyrna seeks. It likened this woman to the Star; ever present, ever necessary, and with so much power that she could sustain a world. The combination of love and astronomy won me special recognition.

I was a dancer before I ever came here, and so Terpsichore was my entry test. I was then called on to judge the many Terpsichore trials of other students, and that has been the second most rewarding experience of my time here. My time with Dove, of course, the first.

As with most students, I finished with Melpomene, because in some sense to finish is a tragedy. I retold the story of Jason Alexandros and his failed quest to gain a nest of golden hair upon his head. I could not help but take a classic comedy and retell it as a tragedy. They cried when he learned he could not regain his hair, and I passed my final trial.

And now, my bed is empty. I will have to find a new student to fill it. He or she will be someone so different from Dove, someone so inexperienced. I will have to show this new person both how to learn and how to love, and I will no longer have my guide. There will also, be, of course, the daily patrons of the library, who will need help with books and otherwise. It is what I always wanted, and yet it will never be the same as what I loved. I will do it for Aphrodite, in all her forms."

Sunday Seminar Series: Competition

2010-01-03T11:15:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

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

Things That Could Have Happened This Year

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

Since 2009 comes to an end for you tonight (really, I think it ought to be 2008 and there should have been a year zero, but it's your number system, not mine), I thought I would do a year in review from an Anachronist's perspective.

For an Anachronist, it's not always so interesting what happened as what might have. And so, here's what could have happened in the past year:

January: President John McCain takes the oath of office, which Chief Justice John Roberts screws up anyway. Somehow, Vice President Sarah Palin steals the show for all 500 attendees.

February: President John McCain mysteriously dies in a helicopter oil drilling hunting expedition, and President Palin is sworn in. Russia promptly deploys missiles in Kaliningrad. Vladimir Putin paints shirtless portraits of himself on the largest missiles.

March: France withdraws from NATO. Youth march through the streets in celebration, setting fire to cars and tossing hammers and sickles through windows.

April: Russia invades Ukraine. In the ensuing nuclear exchange, all world capitals and most of the nuclear/military infrastructure is destroyed. Due to an efficacious antimissile defense system, most US cities (with the exception of Washington DC), are spared.

May: The collapse of the global economy is accelerated by the fragmentation of the United States as well as the population collapse caused by the war. World leaders are no longer available for comment.

June: Steve Jobs, from an undisclosed location in Apple's Rocky Mountain bunkers, announces the release of several new products, including a hand-crank powered iPhone. 3G coverage is spotty, no matter what you have a map for.

July: With their new stadium now the capital of a breakaway republic, the Mets play their best season in history, which mostly consists of repelling other "nations" from the stadium gates.

August: Speculators finally give up on their attempts to sell vast quantities of gold in the postgovernmental economy, since most people are far more interested in practical goods like food and antibiotics.

September: Still no sign of Swine Flu. It was wiped out during the nuclear exchange in April. There is no talk of a vaccine.

October: The first images of Washington DC are found on what remains of the Internet. President Palin is in none of them. With the falling housing market, the Fourth Estate is sold for a tenth of its original value.

November: The coming of Thanksgiving results in a cessation of hostilities in the former United States, though problems arise as arguments over who would have won the customary football game boil over into skirmishes.

December: With no remaining global infrastructure, the survivors find themselves overjoyed that global warming has continued.

So, I think we can all safely say that things went better for your time stream than could have been expected. Happy New Year!

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

The Good Old Days: When I was a Graduate Student

2009-12-29T23:16:00.000+02:00

A favorite part of my hometown; Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

   In hopes that I can give you a more personal view of my life, I thought I would write a little bit about how I came to be associated with the University of Constantinople.

   It was, for you, not too long ago that a younger, time-normal version of me moved to New York City to embark on a grand quest to become a famous scientist and save the world from great terrors. At least, at the time I thought that was what I would do. On the side, however, I made a litle money writing speculative fiction stories. Sometimes when I go back to them I laugh. The truth has ended up being so much stranger than any fiction I managed.

   At about the time that my career began to pick up, I received a most peculiar email. It appeared to be from, well, me. It puzzled me how someone could impersonate me with such accuracy, and over a period of time I convinced myself that I would indeed become a professor at a university one day. Of course i assumed that this was all some elaborate prank or terrible hallucination, at first, but in the end I discovered it was all real. Perhaps I will tell the full story another time.

Dr. Skylar--me!--informed me that there would be many paths that I could go down, and many of them would lead to the University of Constantinople, but there would be many challenges as well and some versions of me would not answer the call. He--I--felt assured, of course, that at least one of me would make the choice to join the University. After all, we both knew he would never exist t contact me if it did not happen somewhere.

   The first step I had to follow was to go through the full undergraduate distance courses. I continued to write speculative stories, but this time, my academic papers would sometimes substitute for a story here and there. In many cases, this work seemed more outlandish and original than what I came up with on my own. As I progressed, I began to gather a group of other writers who eventually became known as the Speculative Collective, a named devised by the multitalented Edward Joel Anderson.

   The Speculative Collective gave me a unique cover for my studies with the University. As the years progressed, the most bizarre activities could be covered in the name of speculative fiction. It was a great deal of fun, really! And it set the stage for my future academic writings.

   Later on, I had to select a graduate adviser and a thesis topic. Not being the narcissistic type, and concerned about spacetime's integrity (though later-me told me not to worry), I picked George Sphrantzes as my advisor and began to study the collapse of Empires and the dark ages that followed. These became the topics of both my thesis and of several written projects. My interest in these topics continues in my life at the University, and it has become (or really, has always been), a major focus on our department's research.

   Eventually, the time came for me to actually come to the University itself. This is a complicated process that I will explain in detail some other time, as this post is more about my story than the complicated science involved in transmission of personality to outside time.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: What's the Point?

2009-12-27T21:40:00.001+02:00

Part of our Identity; Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

This is another installment in my Sunday Seminar Series, wherein I distill lectures from my introductory class, CHRN/AUG 100, for general consumption by distance students.

You've had a bit of a break from this over the past few weeks, but I'm sure my best students have kept up with their reading and have minds eager to be pried open and molded. I've always found that concept strangely aggressive, but I'll run with it.

   Today I want to talk to you about the whole point of the University of Constantinople. It may seem all well and good to you that we advocate a sort of hybrid pragmatic-postmodern view to analysis of augury data, and that we collate and collect information and cultural anthropology across a variety of different time streams. It seems well and good enough to me, at least. Still, it's not all that we're here for. This seminar will explain in a cursory overview what the next few will explore in more detail.

   First, the facts: We are a university outside of normal time, created by a freak accident. We can obtain a variety of information from other time streams, and daily (well, at least, something like daily) our capabilities improve. We can, to some degree, return matter to normal time, though this is a tremendously expensive procedure. We can as well create copies of any individual who ever lived anywhere, though that is also quite expensive and it requires something of a special art so that you do not get the wrong sort of person.

   We have the same departments as any traditional university, from Engineering to French Literature. However, each of these departments is informed by the boundary-pushing research that is shared between my department and the Department of Augury. We stare over the edge and into the bottomless pit, and we make bottomless research a possibility. In fact, for those of you reading this before getting dressed, we make it a too-literal reality. Put some pants on.

   The presence of these two unique departments, as well as the diverse expertise of our population, allow us to make scientific and cultural advancement that would not be possible anywhere else. The technology and social structure that we possess are unlike anything before or since. Trust me, I know. Of course, there is some argument that our divergence from normal time means there is no before or since, but this is too academic a matter for a simple figure of speech.

   With the ability to create a unique culture and a unique set of technology, there are only a few things that it is useful for our University to be: An odd sort of theme-park/museum, a business, or an army. We are certainly not a business.

   I will explore the former possibility. I do, often, think I am living in a museum, much like the ones that I loved in New York's Museum Mile. We have more unusual things and people here, however, this comparison then leads me to believe that I am a captive in a zoo. I am not. I can end my time here whenever I like. With new advances, I can even take vacations to time-normal locales. Though this is somewhat dangerous. I like that about it. However, like a museum, we preserve that which we collect. Here you find Byzantine fashions mixed with modern styles from across the different values of modern. You find people from all worldviews and backgrounds, and art follows that. Information follows that. Architecture as well. There is no freedom greater than the ability to reinvent one's past as much as one's future, and we possess that here. It creates a unique academic environment.

What about the second possibility? Are we an army? We have certainly been invaded. I have taken up arms myself. In fact, I make sure that I am never found without at least one piece of armor. We do, also, have the ability now to invade others. Yet we have not used it. We've engaged in what I would call clandestine operations, but these have been for one purpose only: to ensure the absence of violent restitution when those who have revealed themselves as our enemies disturb the sanctity of independent time streams. With the data that we have collected, the attack that visited us has put the power in our hands to counteract our newfound enemies. They wish to prevent the natural course of time in each time stream, whereas we wish to preserve it. They have a strict code as to what time should be, whereas we do not. We believe in Free Will, or at least, something like it. They believe in subjugation. In this respect, we are an army. I think of us more as repairmen, producing restitution of temporal damage.

   One thing we are, finally, is a sort of fiction. I assure you that I am very much real and did in fact live a life in your time stream. We are a fiction insofar that nothing that happens here at this university, nor anything else I tell you about, is a thing that will happen within your own awareness. I think there is some power in this statement. On my stage, I showcase the impossible, all so that I can show you that there is no such thing.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

The Short Course on Yesterday's Post: The Message of a Chabad Christmas

2009-12-25T22:55:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

I thought today I'd give a little analysis on yesterday's post about Mendel Claus, my name for the figure suggested in that narrative. There are some physical and metaphysical ideas there that raise an eyebrow for me, especially considering my affiliation to the University.

I chanced upon the story while I looked through some old reporters' notes, from a famous New York Times writer. At least, famous in his time stream. In yours, I think he had a rather successful film career instead, 80% of it just by showing up.

   The idea that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, somehow found a kabbalistic path to immortality is not an unusual thought to find throughout the various time streams. Usually, however, it is an idea put forward by his followers after his death and its veracity is dubious at best.

On the other hand, the idea that he ascended mortal affairs to become a somewhat discorporated realization of the Santa Claus construct is unique to the one source I used to build the narrative. It relies on a few simple principles in common between Rabbi Schneerson's way of life and the principles of the holiday you're privileged to celebrate.

Mechanically, the part that interests me the most is the concept of kfitzat haderech. One steps through one material object, and comes out in another. We have several professors, including the Genius of Vilna, Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, working on this technology for the University. The very mode of travel shows that the important part is not what or where, but how. It is the manner of thinking. It is, in the parlance of Christmas, the thought that counts.

Metaphysically, the key idea is that this man, this Rabbi who spent his life in an attempt to bring the Jews closer together, as well as to commit random acts of kindness to all people, would spend his "afterlife" as a man who tries to bring the whole world together. Santa Claus is, at his core, the manifestation of the rabbinic ideal, an unshaven man in snazzy clothes who does his best to make sure everyone, everywhere gets the things their hearts desire without embarrassment. It is the pinnacle of the idea of kindness throughout Judeo-Christian theology: that the recipient feel only the gift, and not the obligation to the giver.

With only once source, I am not sure how much of it to believe. But every story about a cheerful Santa Claus is one that I want to be true. The idea that such a selfless person could be out there, could have transcended time and space to become an avatar of generosity, is an idea that warms my heart.

Merry Christmas (Always),

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Christmas Story: Mendel Claus

2009-12-24T23:01:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

This one is for the holiday, but I assure you that the events within are true for the time stream of origin. Like yesterday's, it's not too far from your own time stream.

The notion of some kind of "Jewish Conspiracy" is something you hear a lot about. Thankfully, in your time stream, these are mostly jokes and not actual paranoia. In the time stream that I'm featuring today, however, there is a global cabal of sorts, organized of specific Jews.

Its aim is to repair the world. And it does it in a most interesting way.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Two boys outside laughed and yelled, "Man, I don't even know what we did last night!"

I heard them walk past. Like all the other frat trash in Myrtle Beach, they missed the restaurant. Almost everyone missed it, even though it offered the best breakfast along the surf. As I sat at the table at Jerusalem Glatt Kosher restaurant, I stared right into the old rabbi's eyes.

Well, not his real eyes. The photo on the wall looked just like the photo at every Chabad-Lubavitch restaurant in the world. With his dark eyes and frizzled beard, he stares at patrons for all eternity, a sterner, Jewish version of the Dalai Lama. I see the serenity in his face, but the deeper knowledge as well that nothing in this world will be quite as good as its potential could reach. Menachem Mendel Schneerson was his name, and in his life, he served as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the high judge and monarch of a sect of ultra-religious "chasidic" Jews.

Of course, these events took place years after his supposed "death." An apostate (or apikoris) Jew, I came for nothing other than the shakshuka. It's the best kept secret of the Mediterranean, save the location of the ark. Something like huevos rancheros, but more like eggs poached in curry. My stomach rumbled for it like the top of the Mountain of Sinai.

I could hear the owner on the phone, no doubt as he ignored and overcooked my eggs. I'll translate for you from Yiddish, "Yah, the Rebbe will be fine to go tonight."

Something I could not hear came back over the line.

"No, no, I don't think it will be too cold. Remember, his suit is very warm. We will be fine. It will happen, like every year."

My ears perked up. I told myself I came for the shakshuka, but I'm a reporter. His words were the real reason.

A lot of lower-level Chabad people reacted to the Rabbi Schneerson's death with disbelief. They thought he was the Moshiach, the Anointed, the descendent of David destined to restore the kingdom of Judah. The Messiah. When he died, some even adopted a pseudo-Christian belief that he would come back, stronger than before. Zombie Mendel would lead us to the promised land.

But I knew better. Rabbi Schneerson never died. In fact, he found a way around it. That serene, smiling face in the wall photo knew more about life, death, and everything in between than any of the doctors who now adhered to his followers' pan-Jewish missionary organization. With no son, a secretive group raised money and funded crappy little restaurants like the one where I could now smell my burning shakshuka.

I listened in on the phone conversation again, "Yes, of course all the packages are ready. They are meeting at the Chabad House now."

Another pause as he listened.

"Okay. I'll call you in an hour. Make sure you've cleaned the sled, bubeleh." He clicked off the phone and I heard pots and pans clang against each other as he tried with desperation to save my meal.

That disingenuous Israeli smile greeted me from behind the counter, "Ehhh, please to give me a few more minutes...ehhh...ze eggs arrrre ehh, needing more cooking."

I grinned. It's not like I cared. I'd heard what I needed to hear. Years before, when I worked as a young reporter for a paper now long mulched into Kindling by Amazon's business model, I interviewed the Rebbe.

We talked about nonsense. What it meant to be at the helm of a Chasidic organization. Yankel Rosenbaum's death to an angry mob in the early 90s racial tensions across the US. It was a big deal at the time, and for the very religious, it's still a big deal. They called it a "pogrom," and if it was, it was the only one in American history.

It's the end of the interview that I remember, though. The Rebbe leaned close to me, rather limber for an man of 89 years, and said, "Nu [so], what do you think of this holiday on December 25th?"

I furrowed my forehead. He didn't want to say "Christ," so instead he used the date. I came up with an answer, "It's a good thing, I guess."

Rabbi Schneerson smiled at me. It was like a summer rainshower. I've never been smiled at like that, before or since. He continued, "I think maybe it's not such a good thing for the kids who don't get presents. We have many of these in Brooklyn. I don't leave Crown Heights much, but even here there are many. What that they should get presents! I want to do something for them."

One of his flock, this Yankel, was stabbed and brutally murdered by those kids' relatives. But Rabbi Schneerson could think only of doing good things for them.

I laughed a little, "But you are a Rebbe! Why would you worry about Christmas?"

He didn't blink to hear the name, but instead continued, "Because I wish their Santa Claus was real. I wish they could maybe have someone who left gifts for them. Maybe he wouldn't go down the chimney so much, like the one in stories. Maybe he could use kefitzat haderech."

He spoke of something I knew only as a fable. A kabbalistic fable, that explained why some characters in the bible could go from place to place with no time in between. In essence, kefitzat haderech is spiritual teleportation. You go from one place to another with just the power of faith. Frank Herbert stole the word for his book Dune, but stole all the meaning from it also. I laughed.

He smiled again, "Sarah laughed too, when Hashem [God] said she would have a child at 100. But I know it can be done."

He looked so much more serious. I couldn't feel the laughter within me any longer. Could this Rabbi really be saying what I thought? "You're serious. You're saying that a Chasidic Rabbi could be...could work as..."

"Yah, Santa Claus. Think about it, you've got a yiddisher kop [smart mind]. What do we do on the 24th and 25th? We sit around and we do nothing! We see movies. Maybe learn a little Torah. And out in the streets, where are the goyim [non-Jews; lit. "nations"]? They're in their homes, with their families. They sleep early."

I just managed a nod.

"And nu, look at me. Just because my suit is black, I'm not Santa Claus. We have the little Chabad Houses, all over the world. In every city. I have my students, they teach everywhere. We raise millions, each year, and we spend it on kindness and other Jews. They say there is a Jewish Conspiracy! Even the secular Jews say this! What if we gave them one?"

I stammered, "I guess...I guess it could do some good."

"Yes...it could. I am thinking, maybe, in a few years I will start this plan. In the fall, the Chabad Houses will start making toys. Even the one in Anchorage. I will see to it. We have factories. The Rubashkins can make it happen. And dress me in red, nu, what do you get?"

My eyes went wide, "Santa Claus."

"I was thinking maybe you'd say a shlemiel [fool] in a red suit, but you gave the answer I really wanted. It was nice talking with you. You liked my little joke? I think I got you!" He started laughing.

It didn't convince me though. I knew he really meant it. Jewish lore says the best way to give someone charity is so that the recipient and giver never know each other. It saves embarassment for those who need both help as well as dignity. Santa Claus meant a perfect way to do that.

When the Rebbe died in 1994, though, I wondered. Did he ever try and do it? Did the ultra-religious start to leave gifts for Christian children? I thought about it only a little, until I heard about a family in Iowa that could not explain the clothes they found under their tree. Then all the families in Gary, Indiana in Christmas 1996. Then the families in Brooklyn.

And now, with the conversation I heard in the restaurant, I knew. I'd tracked the story for years, but now I had the proof, at least proof for my ears. The Rebbe never kidded. And he never died, either. He just found a new way to fix the world. I wonder if he brought reindeer.

One question I knew the answer to. He would never eat the cookies. No way to know that they are kosher.

Why I Live at the Tim Hortons

2009-12-23T22:19:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

Today's post is titled as it is out of a nod to Eudora Welty's famous story "Why I Live at the P.O.," but it is of a very different nature. I hated the story, but the title stuck with me.

Sometimes, there are time stream variations that you would never notice. Ones that live just beneath the surface, in the dark caves of your contemporaries' personal lives and there is little you can do to figure out quite which possibility you live in.

One such possibility is treated in today's post. Specifically, as regards Canadians and their odd obsession with Tim Hortons. You know TH as a coffee shop with curiously delicious maple donuts. It is a cornerstone of the Canadian economy. However, in some time streams, TH is a much more bizarre prospect, as you'll come to learn in today's story. Don't worry; it's not actually an episode from your time stream. I'm pretty sure, at least.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

I stood in the cold with bated, visible breath.

Before me lay the last threshold, the final step on my journey to becoming a true Canadian. I could feel the too-expensive passport that burned its way through my pocket, and could imagine that the strange bulkiness of my wallet came from my citizenship card. None of that really mattered. What mattered lay in front of me. The Tim Hortons. No apostrophe.

Ten years ago, now, I suppose, I stood in front of the door of that coffee shop, the name of a famous hockey player flickering over my head. I still remember it with vivid trepidation. I twisted my wedding band on my finger, the real manacle that bound me to this patch of socialist permafrost.

I lifted my bemittened hand to the door, but even through the fleece I could still feel its magnetism. Tim Hortons wanted me. It would take me. And there would be no going back.

Right now I'm sipping their coffee, as I have every day since. Some say they put nicotine into it. At least, that's what we tell the people in the States. It's worse.

That day, though, I knew little of the place. Just that my wife said I had to go, or I wasn't a real citizen. I remember that clearly, too:

"Honey, there's one last thing before you're really in," she said to me in bed the night after I got my citizenship card. Her face glowed a little while she said it. At the time I thought it was about me. Now I wonder.

I laughed, "Oh? And what's that?"

The smile on her face before disappeared as she spoke, and her voice entered a hush, "You have to go to Tim Hortons."

It confused me that she seemed so serious. She'd teased me before about my Starbucks-going ways. Now it seemed like a bigger thing. "You're not kidding, are you?"

"Nope. You want to be a Canadian, you've got to go there. Get a donut and a coffee. And drink deep. Do it tomorrow."

That exchange creeped me out enough that I went straight to sleep that night.

This precipitated the next day's anxious staring contest with the cafe door that I described earlier. I pulled, and the door came free with less effort than I expected.

I stepped through and made a beeline for an awkward-looking teenage girl in the uniform I would soon come to associate with my dark addiction. Her dyed hair and little spots of acne fit with the awkward way that she said, "Hi! Er, hello. Would you...what would you like?"

I ordered what my wife suggested. I decided on a maple donut.

"Will that be all sir?"

I nodded and paid.

Once I found a table, I raised the paper cup to my lips and blew a little through the tiny opening in the lid. I could feel the heat inside thaw my breath.

Then I took a sip. As it burned my tongue, I knew why my wife demanded I visit. The taste, of course, was fantastic, but nothing compared to the sudden awareness that it gave me.

The caffeine, and something else, something I now know to be Canada's darkest secret, opened my mind. I knew I would not be able to go one more day without this substance. I could see it all. From the frozen top of the world, I saw the machinations of the US and the blithering insanities of Europe. With my elbows on a shiny formica perch and the caffeine coursing through my blood, I saw those things canceled out by the fanaticism of the developed world's enemies and I was filled with a profound sense that so long as I kept sitting there, kept sipping the coffee, everything would be all right, despite it all. It gave me something like awareness, but something more powerful: perspective.

I can't tell you what the active ingredient really is. It's not caffeine. It's not nicotine or newspaper. It comes from a rare fish, and it's very concentrated in seals. They're a national treasure. It can also come from people, but they have to give it up freely. It's a part of the spirit, and watch out if you spend too much time with a Canuck, because they can drain you of it before you even notice.

A Canadian who goes through withdrawal turns into the most surly of evil bitches in just a matter of days. Without the THC (Tim Hortons Coffee), we go crazy. And now I'm one of them. With it, I can see right into anyone's soul and make them do what I want. And better than any voudoun, that seeing leaves me with a profound sense of comfort.

Time for my daily fix. I'm watching you, USA.

Sunday Seminar Series: Truth and Belief, Part II

2009-12-06T23:00:00.000+02:00

Comet, or Dragon? Image via Wikipedi

Dear Readers,

After the problems that occured with my "Great Expectations" Friday Seminar, I discovered that the response improved when I posted my seminars to time-normal Sundays rather than Fridays, and I've changed the schedule accordingly.

If you are just joining us, my Sunday Seminars are a series of posts adapted from material for my first-year undergraduate Anachronism students, CHRN/AUG 100. Last week we talked about different kinds of information, and I defined some terms for you. It would be useful to go back to that, but I intend to move on from there, so foreknowledge should not be entirely necessary.

   The important point that I want you to take home from these two seminars is that there are different sorts of conclusions you can make about "reality."

   Let me give you an example. There is a medieval source, from your history, in which a bishop describes his experience of seeing a dragon. Historians (as you know them) and Anachronists both are interested in this account for a variety of reasons. However, even time-normal historians consider this source in two ways.

The first is literally. The source gives us an account of what a dragon was to a medieval person. For this bishop, whatever he saw really was a dragon. And thus we come to interpretations of truth. Pragmatist philosophy suggests that if an interpretive worldview is useful to someone, then it is true for that person. What is true, thus, is not necessarily the same for everyone. Because of truth-bias from his or her original worldview, the Anachronist has to realign his or her mind to that of the source author. That is, if the Anachronist seeks a literalist, source subjective impression of the information available. Furthermore, it gets very interesting when you consider that there are time streams where the objective reality would agree with the subjective reality of a dragon. Keep an open mind!

   Of course, what if we don't take the source literally? What if we want to figure out what "really happened"? Was the dragon a comet? Ball lightning? It can be a lot more difficult, because to some degree we just have to trust in our sources. We can't see these time streams via Augury. So we often have to look for clues in the sources words that tell us what the different possibilities. The take home message should be that you can never know what "really" happened or will happen in a time stream. You just know what could happen. And that's what Anachronism is all about.

   There is another way, however. There are the people at the University, who still have their memories from a time normal life, but the perspective of interaction with those who have different perspectives. When in doubt, consult a colleague. Often, there is someone here who can tell you what their subjective experience in a given related time stream was, and that can help inform you as to the possibilities for your time stream of study.

In the end, all we can really say is what our sources believed the truth to be, not the "real" facts.

And yet, this does not matter. There are so many possibilities out there, and the mere inspiration from a source provides us with something meaningful. If a source can imagine it, there is likely a time stream where it will occur.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

A Day in the Life: Thanksgiving in Omentown, Part II

2009-12-02T18:56:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

Last time, I started a story about Thanksgiving in a Maine town that I study. Port End, which I like to call "Omentown" in my notes, is a place where the fields that give rise to augury are strong enough to actually affect the natural world.

As a result, omens in that place are real, and they often come true. The people who live there have adjusted accordingly. We followed Omentown resident Ed while he saved his smaller friend Carl from a destitute man who attacked him. Ed did it to prevent the realization of an omen he saw earlier in the day, but felt unsure if he really interpreted the omen in the right way.

And now, the conclusion. When we rejoin Ed, a day has passed, and we are at his family home for Thanksgiving. Below the cut.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Ed tossed the cut wood into his wheelbarrow under cover of twilight. The quartered logs splintered when they slammed into each other, and left flecks in the frost at the container's top edge. One of them got into his finger. "Dammit! Why did I leave the gloves in the house?" Ed cursed.

He looked at his load of wood and then back at the woodpile, then started to push the cart back to his house. A week ago, he cut almost a full cord, so they would be all right for some time.

The scent of turkey gravy filled the air, the only part of Theresa's feast that could travel so far on the crisp November air. Almost December air. He left the wheelbarrow at the foot of their porch stairs, and started to carry the wood inside. He felt the steps bow under his feet while he tromped up. Ed pushed the door open, and the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg joined the turkey-gravy scent.

"Theresa, I'm going to go start the fire!" he called through the house.

Something came in reply. He could not make out the words, but they did not sound like "Don't," so Ed decided not to waste time on more. He thought he heard something else from outside, but when he stopped to listen, he heard no sound. Not a good sign, but not an omen, either.

When he passed by his ladder on the way to their fireplace, it fell against the wall and enclosed him in a lean-to of unluck. "Damn again. Ever since that owl." Ed spit three times through the ladder's rungs while he stepped backwards, then rerouted to put down the load of lumber. He hoped that would work. Ed still was not sure if just the omens worked, or if the old ways around them worked too.

He put down the wood and he heard the sound from outside once more. Ed rushed to his door, this time concerned that he would see his bad luck realized. On the way to the door his foot caught the corner of his entry hall rug, which sent him sprawling. In the air, he caught a glimpse of the ladder and had to grin.

Ed crunched onto his hardwood floors. His door swung open, and he saw muddy boots. In places, the dye on the leather gave way to total roughness. It looked like the footwear saw no love since its days as part of a calf. Ed looked up, and he saw the hobo who attacked Carl the other day.

"Hey, what are you doing in my-"

The hobo bent down and picked him up. Ed backed away a little from the dirty man.

From an opening in his scraggly beard, the hobo said, "Y'read the signs right, sir. And you did the right thing, protecting your friend. Wasn't always a hobo, you know. Some people don't read their omens as well as you. I've come to ask you if I can join your table."

Ed smiled, "Of course. It would be bad luck to say no."

Monday Muse: Omentown Ballad

2009-11-30T20:00:00.003+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

My work lately focuses on Port End, Maine, a town that I talked about a little bit in my last "Day in the Life" post. The end of that story will get posted in the middle of this week, but for today I wanted to relate something of a "country" song about this "Omentown."

I think what is really important about this particular case in anachronism is that the omens in Port End arise from strange abnormalities in the same physical laws that give rise to Augury and my work here at the University. If the laws exist, then there are time streams where they behave a little funny. Omentown is from one of those time streams.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Wan'drin' out by the bay

With my back to the sea
I saw Old Man Osprey

And he asked me to tea

It's not strange where I'm from

It's just life and it's sane

Where you know what's to come

Right here in Port End, Maine

Other day saw me a bear

And I knew right away

That from out of nowhere

I'd find luck, clear as day

It's not bad nor first rate;
It's just part of the deal

Where the world shows our fate

In Maine, where omens turn real

Friday Seminar Series: Truth and Belief, Part I

2009-11-27T21:00:00.000+02:00

Dear Readers,

Every Friday I write a piece that represents a "seminar" in my introductory Anachronism class, CHRN/AUG 100, to give you an idea of what our department does at the University. This we

Image via Wikipedia

ek, I talk about the ideas of relative truth across different time streams, and how that affects both the episteme and techne of our work.

Recently we've been working on the idea of different ways to connect the information obtained through Augury, but we haven't talked much about drawing conclusions. The bottom line is this: If you read a poem from Time Stream X, and that poem says that Anubis favored George W. Bush, which allowed him to win the War in Iraq, how much of that do you actually believe? In that time stream, is there some prime arbiter named Anubis? Did George W. Bush actually believe in him? And was the War in Iraq won because of it?

It can be quite challenging to separate the various reasons to believe something, and I do not believe that I can cover the entire topic in just one sitting. There is a long history of philosophies of truth, many of which my colleague Professor Bacon is an expert on. In our class, it is typically he who teaches this lecture, and I have to acknowledge Francis's help in writing this post.

The best place to start is to look at the different sorts of information that one may obtain inside Augury data. One I will call techne and the other episteme. I am not using these words quite how your Ancient Greeks would have used them, however.

When I look at a source, I think of the techne type of information to be day to day details about life in the time stream of origin. As in, like the original definition of techne, I say this category contains the information on how one would go about the art of living and creating within the given time stream. Until the recent attack on our University, I would have said that one could never really live in another time stream, but with the new technology we captured this may be possible. At any rate, consider techne to be the kind of information that would help you write a tourist's guide to the time stream that you study.

In the Anachronist's work, episteme refers to knowledge that a source expresses that betrays their physical and metaphysical understanding of their world. Scientific texts, philosophical works, religious tomes, all of it is part of episteme, usually. These pieces of information are vital to breathing life into a translation because they tell you the filter through which time stream contemps view their world. Where the techne will give you the actual mechanical operations of a person, the epistemiological information tells you how they feel about it and what their worldview is; their inner struggle. This is vital to writing an anachronistic narrative, just as technical information is vital to having a narrative to write.

I will end here, since I wish to transition into this topic gracefully and none too quickly. The story that I began this week will be concluded next week. For those of you in this time stream who live in the United States, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving and I hope to communicate with you again in the coming week.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

A Day in the Life: Thanksgiving in Omentown, Part I

2009-11-25T20:00:00.000+02:00

Dear Readers,

This is another one of my "Day in the Life" posts, where I take a slice of life in one of the time

Image via Wikipedia

streams I study and fictionalize it for your time stream. The world is real, the events are not. This one is a two-part story.

   For this time around, in light of the US Holiday of Thanksgiving being this week, I've decided to feature a Thanksgiving story set in a contemporary but divergent time stream. This Day in the Life is set in Port End, Maine, which does not exist in your time stream. I like to call it "Omentown." You'll see why.

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

     Ed woke when Dawn came. Her light, filtered through the window, entered with a cold grey tint to it. He knew what that meant on more than one level. For one thing, it meant that he would see snow outside, and that November's end meant the effective, if not real, end to autumn.

   He yawned in bed, then looked over at Theresa. Somewhere inside the tangle of brown hair that covered the pillow, he expected to be able to find his wife's face, but he did not want to wake her. Ed crept out of bed and up to the window to look outside.

   With bleary eyes, he surveyed the landscape outside. On Jeremy Sellers' fencepost, he saw a Nightjar. Ed would have to remind Theresa to make some soup for the poor guy. That Nightjar just would not leave, and with its presence came a bad flu for Mr. Sellers.

   Ed smiled when he saw the flock of wild turkeys in his own yard. Seemed fitting for the holiday about to come. They would have food on the table for it, at least.

His smile disappeared when he saw the weasel that crossed his lawn. Not a good sign at all, that weasel. Worse, after a moment with his eyes on it, the saw an owl in the nearby tree.

   "Theresa," he hissed, and she stirred.

   "Whazzit?" she grumbled, face in the pillow.

   "You need to see this. An owl and a weasel in our yard."

   She lifted up her head; he saw it in the reflection on the glass.

   Then she said, "Oh, crap. Really?" She rushed to join him at the window just as the owl swept down and took the weasel into its silent talons. Without so much as its coward-squeak, the weasel lost the battle.

   "Hunting during the day," Ed commented, "They don't usually do that."

   "Shut up, Ed, we both know what it means. We bought all the books. Weasels are cowards, and Owls are misfortune. Cowardice feeds misfortune."

"Well. Guess I'd best rush out to work today, huh?"

Her blue eyes went wide, "Yes! Get dressed! I'll make you breakfast."

Ed grinned, "Now, now, dear. Don't fear the omen. That would be cowardly."

Theresa rolled her eyes and left him in their bedroom.

Hours later, Ed walked through Port End's streets on his lunch break. Aside from a few events worthy of salt over the shoulder, nothing strange happened to him yet, and he hoped to see to it that nothing else would happen.

"Just perfect," Ed spat when he saw the argument ahead of him, "Why do the omens always come true right before lunch?"

In front of him, Ed saw a homeless man, with a hat of scrap wool, facing a brick wall. Against that brick wall cowered another businessman, one of Ed's friends from the Maple Syrup bottling plant, named Carl Ash. He came up to where he could hear them.

"Listen you fancy-digs bashterd, I don't have even half a penny for food this T-day, so maybe you ought to think twice 'bout saying 'Get a job,' or maybe you'll find I've got one involves cuttin' you into little bits. What, am I too dirty for ya?"

"Sir-sir, I'm sorry, I didn't--"

"You sure did!" The hobo punched Carl right before Ed's eyes, then reached for his pockets. A knife?

Ed muttered again, as he felt his pulse quicken, "This must be the cowardice. Dammit, what's the omen about? Must be about helping Carl. This guy'll come after me next if I don't." He rushed over and punched the hobo right in the back of the head. The punch connected and the homeless man's forehead connected with the

He picked up Carl, and they ran. On the way, the little man said, "Good job back there! I thought he'd kill me for sure."

Ed frowned, "Thought he might kill me, too." Damn omens.

To be continued!

"Friday" Seminar: Great Expectations

2009-11-22T21:35:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

I am sorry about the glitch that leads to this post's late release. I place the blame squarely on bad software created by the Augury Department. I do not think, as their Chairman does, that the graduate student responsible should be sent back to a time-normal existence, but I imagine that Provost Notaras will talk some sense into her.

At any rate, it is now your Sunday, and we have managed to fix the problem, so here is the Seminar that I hoped to post on Friday. It is, as per usual, drawn from my lecture materials for CHRN/AUG 100, my introductory Anachronism class here at the University.

Today I want to talk to you about the idea of likely and unlikely events, and how we can use them to get at the "big idea" of my last few seminars. That idea surrounds the various "tricks" that we as Anachronists must use to put together the raw text that we get from Augury. Remember that because data comes from distinct choice paths, it can be nigh impossible to correlate two datasets and say that they come from the same time stream, or that one follows the other temporally.

Unless you use these tricks. Last time I talked about how to use linguistics. This time I'm going to talk about probability.

First I need to define my terms. What is an unlikely event? Likelihoods are a little strange when you are in the study of all possibilities. Essentially everything happens somewhere or sometime. But when you compare a wide variety of time streams, you learn that there are events in some times and places that are very unlikely and found rarely in other streams. As an example, consider the death of Atilla the Hun in your own time stream. He died while passed out drunk, drowned in his own blood, due to a nosebleed. Poetic, certainly, but not a very likely thing. If you changed that one nosebleed, Atilla might have created a dynasty to rule all of Europe. In many time streams, he did.

For a likely event, let's consider the fall of the Empire that spawned our lovely University. The Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire fell because of a series of events that took place over the course of four to six centuries. No single, random event killed our Empire in your time. It took many very disconnected but combinatorial events to bring it down. You can't change one single thing and erase the fall, and so the event is called likely.

Now, how does this help us? One way to learn what time stream a piece of information is from is to look at characteristic events in the history of that time stream that are alluded to in the data. If an event is likely, then it happens in many time streams and it is not very useful to differentiate it from other time streams. Consider the request, "Please find the man with the head and bring him to me." Not very specific, and so I doubt you will be able to find the right man. However, likely events can be conspicuous in their absence. If I find a source dated 1920 and it is discussing current foreign policy from Constantinople, then I can say that source comes from one of a very small set of time streams. The relevant example would be the request, "Please find the man without a head and bring him to me." That man would be hard to miss.

Similarly, unlikely events are useful when they do happen. Atilla drowns in his own blood in a few time streams, but in many more he dies in other ways. In fact, his death is a great marker because it can happen in so many different places and different ways! It's an unusual feature. Sort of like the command, "I need you to find me the man with the monkey tail." Of course, there are a great many time streams where Atilla died peacefully in his sleep after a long life. Those time streams ask you to find the man without a tail, which is again not helpful. So the unlikely events are useful when they are mentioned, and are not so useful in their absence.

As you can see, this gives us another way to group sources and connect them. That kind of painstaking work launches many an Anachronist's career during graduate school, and I have to thank my students for what they do to provide me with connected narratives. Their work lets me present you with the coherent work that you see here.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

A Day in the Life: Naegling's Heroes

2009-11-18T23:24:00.001+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

Monday brought you the Song of Naegling, a poem which I am convinced was written by the weapon itself. How this is possible I am not sure, though I can imagine there are a number of mundane technical explanations for the creation of an intelligent weapon. While your time stream makes a certain effort to provide itself with scientific explanations of things, I will leave that to my colleagues on the other side of the quad, and just remain impressed with Naegling's autobiography.

I find it interesting that I can find outside sources that confirm the weapon's existence. For one, Naegling survives in your time stream's versions of Beowulf. Personally, I recommend the Seamus Heaney translation of the ones that are available to you and your contemporaries.

My own work intersects with Naegling when she/he/it finds James Strongman, a personality who has yet to appear in your consciousness, but will become quite important in one of the time streams that branch off from your current temporal position. Strongman is a warleader for a troubled age, and one that I hope you do not have the opportunity to visit. Below you may find one of Strongman's journal entries during his rise to power. I caution you that Strongman was never one to avoid profanity.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

March 17th, 2017 4:36 PM

Quick update on our movements: We made it up from Port Chester in the past few days, though it got pretty fuckin' hairy on the way. Some gang, probably existed before all this got started, tried to hit our group when we camped near the Metro North tracks for the night, to wait out the snowstorm. I lost two people. Like always, I'd shed some tears, but they were dead guys anyway. And we took out five of the raider bastards to boot. Scored some good shit, too; antibiotics, a little bit of morphine. They must have found a hospital at some point. Like usual, I took two shares and gave the rest to my people. One share for me, one share for Ashley. If I ever see her again.

Something a little strange is going on, though, with the rifle I found. It's a great gun, of course. The runes are a little weird, but some rich old fart in Chappaqua owned it, so I'm not surprised. Odd thing is, though--you know in old war movies, how a tracker will scratch his kills into the barrel? Well, I could've sworn there wasn't a scratch on this fuckin' gun when I found it. Now there's twenty skulls, clear as day, right near the bolt. Freaks me out a little. I've lost count, but I think since I found this thing it's taken about twenty lives. Still, it's a great gun. Hard to find one this good anymore.

We gotta move. I'll try and write more when I get the chance.

Monday Muse: The Song of Naegling

2009-11-16T21:00:00.003+02:00

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Dear Readers,

I have exciting news to share. Something came in from the Augury Department that spans such a long thread of history that I am stunned. It is, apparently, an inscriptional squeeze. For those unfamiliar, a squeeze is a type of impression made when you take specialized paper and press it up against a carved inscription, thenuse a "squeeze brush" to produce a copy of the inscription and inscribed surface. It is a lot like when you take tracing paper and use the edge of a pencil to copy a texture underneath, however, this method is less rough on the original.

At any rate, this source comes from a squeeze made of what must be the most exciting weapon in history, a weapon that according to the poem, Hrothgar called Naegling. However, the text, which I have worked nonstop to translate, seems to differ from your time stream's established account of Beowulf. Furthermore, the weapon's records go far past the end of that story, and even into your future.

I thought it would make a most excellent pick for Monday Muse. See it below the cut.

I am weapon.I served Eliezer, to Dammaseq.
And I waited
'til Hector found me at Troy.

I fled with Aeneas to Carthage
But abandoned him
When he forsook Queen Dido.

Hannibal took me
To get revenge for her
But with Scipio
I returned again to Rome.

Caesar then took me to Gaul.
And there I hid.
There, I waited and wandered.

Til Beowulf raised me against
Grendel's mother
And Hrothgar gave me
My name.

For Clovis I was an axe.
For Charles, instead,
A hammer.

For Louis,
I was faith.
But for Phillip
I was a sword once more.

Then I slept, until Napoleon
Fixed me to his musket.
A bayonet I remained.

I was Pickett's undoing

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And at Ypres,
I learned to be the gun.
At Normandy I was garand.

Then once more, I slept.
'Til it fell apart.

'Til Strongman's day.

He read these words,
And learned from me,
The lessons
That made him King.

When he slept,
I went to Mars.
Where I belonged.

I stormed Olympus.
I conquered Ararat.
My name is Weapon.
Take me home.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Friday Seminar: Genetic Linguistic Analysis

2009-11-13T21:24:00.002+02:00

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Dear Readers,

Quite some time has passed since my last Friday Seminar, the series in which I adapt some of my CHRN/AUG 100 course materials for your time stream. So, forgive me if my post today is innappropriate in its complexity.

That said, today I want to tell you about a "back door" method to determine continuity between disparate augury datasets. If you recall, it is notoriously difficult to connect two datasets collected separately, because it is always hard to establish causality at the limits of quantum uncertainty.

Like I've said before, it takes rigorous standards to say two sources come from the same time stream. But there are easy ways to at least group time streams together based on common cultural features.

One such feature is language. Languages mutate based on a variety of factors, and so if you observe two sets of data that are in the same language, you can say with nearly one hundred per cent certainty that the two datasets are either contemporaneous OR they share a common "ancestor" time stream. In fact, since all you need to know for this sort of analysis is how similar the languages are in their written form, you may not even need to know the language. It can be very useful for an Anachronist whose specialty time stream has a language that is not well understood.

This sort of analysis has more advanced forms, too, and they are quite similar to how your contemporary scientists do evolutionary genetics. These scientists can take two different species and compare their DNA to determine their probable common ancestor. That is, the extinct species from which they both evolved.

Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Languages are not so different from DNA. DNA tells cells how to make components for their life machinery. Language contains rules and components to give rise to communication machinery. And languages also mutate.

So if we have two languages with similarities, we can analyze and compare their differences to figure out a rough timeline for their divergence. This is timeline only in terms of probabilities, but it is better than nothing. Though we often find these language ancestry trees are inaccurate when we finally decipher the words, many working conclusions based on this analysis remain valid.

While it's a crude tool, it's very useful. I will try and expand more on this complicated topic in a future Seminar.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Back in Business

2009-11-11T11:11:00.002+02:00

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Dear Readers,

Today marks my triumphant return to your time stream. I've spent quite some time hogging the Departmental bandwidth with manuscripts that I hope to publish time-normal to you, and now I am back to writing here.

For the next two weeks, I may not return to my daily schedule as I still have some communications to make, and there is a backlog of transmissions work that my graduate students wish to send out. Eventually, you will see my posts ramp up as we work through that delay.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

New Schedule Going Forward

2009-10-06T23:59:00.001+03:00

Dear Readers,

The technology left behind after the attack has created an exciting new possibility for

Image via Wikipedia

our department: I may now be able to publish some of my work in the time streams where I write, yours included.

My schedule posting has slowed of late, in light of this. I'm preparing a few different pieces, translated works, for publication in respected journals in my audience time streams. I will keep you appraised of how that progresses.

However, it means that a good deal of my attention and bandwidth share will be directed towards those efforts, and so it will be harder to keep to a once-daily schedule for at least the forseeable future.

To be perfectly clear, the issue is entirely one of bandwidth. Only a certain amount of information can be injected into a given period in a given time stream, no matter when that information departs its origin time stream. Therefore, we must be parsimonious, and I must limit my influx of information for the time being. Don't worry, you will still hear from me, but perhaps not seven days of your week.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

After the Attack

2009-10-04T21:00:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

Most of the University's functionality is back online. My injuries, while they started to he

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al on their own, are now fully repaired thanks to Maimonides, our medical director.

The Augury facility is now secured. The demons seem to have come through a hole, of sorts, that they opened by causing feedback in one of our Augury machines. They brought the device that made this possible through their portal, so that they might return after their raid.

It seems this worked against them. They stole a number of our artifacts and equipment, though we believe there is a pattern. We need to learn a lot more about their time stream, and my department will be delployed in that effort. There is a lot to catch up on.

We estimate that there were originally forty of them, and it is likely that we killed roughly ten of that number. Five of them we captured, and four of those committed suicide before we could stop them. The last has yet to regain consciousness, but we are hopeful. While it is difficult to heal a creature without a strong idea of its biology, our medical staff is up to the task.

About a hundred of our people fell in the battle, and two hundred more were injured. Still, those problems are easy to correct, and we're picking up the pieces.

The artifacts they stole suggest certain problems in their time stream. Perhaps we can find a way to help them. If not, they have already helped us in a great way. The device they left behind should allow us to visit certain candidate time streams and explore. I'm very excited.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Attack Repulsed!

2009-10-03T01:40:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

We've driven back the monsters that attacked our University, for the most part. Some remain, but they will be captured.

Also, we discovered something interesting. They left behind the machine that helped them get here. That is something we did not have before. More information when I have more connectivity.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Field Update

2009-10-02T07:12:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

My connections are still down to most of your time-normal services. We ran into an Augury graduate student in the tunnels recently, and it seems that the creatures are mostly pushed back from their facility. Still, it is disputed territory.

I can tell you something more of the things that attacked us. They are winged creatures, with deadly weapons and fierce intelligence. They do not look horrible or deformed. In fact, they are quite pleasing, and hence I referred to them as "angels" on Twitter earlier. Their bodies are less fragile than the humans you are used to, and so a small group of them has managed to keep Constantine XI's men at bay for some time.

We are not sure what they want. They've stolen food, weapons, medical supplies, and fuel, and our information sources do not know why. We doubt at this point that it is total eradication of the University. This appears to be more of a raid. More chilling is the prospect that they may be after some of our rare artifacts.

I am still injured, but slowly healing. The other day Amelia found some weapons, and she has led the able-bodied professors in several skirmishes against the invaders. They seem to pull back and regroup away from the tunnels at signs of aggression. We hope that soon our forces on the surface will push them back from whence they came. I find this entire episode chilling on the whole.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sudden Happenings

2009-09-30T18:07:00.000+03:00

Dear Readers,

I write this from a mossy access tunnel underneath the department's normal facilities. It is damp, dripping, and I do not like to be here.

Something happened at the University over the past, let's call it days. For you it seemed like that, at least.

I was injured in the initial fighting. I can't quite say what they are yet, partly from reluctance, partly from my own lack of answers. I need to know more. For now, all I can say is that they are something akin to demons. Or perhaps angels. They are creatures, and they do not mean well towards me.

It is a shame that you must find out like this, instead of in the seminar that I planned for your last Friday, but it remains that the practice of Augury combined with our unique location attracts some attention. Very rarely this can lead to an invasion.

President (Emperor) Constantine XI advised us to leave our offices within minutes of the attack. I lost my connection, but Sphrantzes and Bacon managed to get it back up so that I could make intermittent posts. It seems that the Augury Department has some kind of backup, or else this would not see the light of day.

I do not wish to worry you. I am injured, and in a way that I am not sure I would recover from if I were to die, namely because the instruments of my resurrection may be in enemy hands. The University will repel the attackers to the best of its ability, but failure is sadly an option. With my trusted faculty around me, I am safe for now. I can make no promises about the future.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
General nee Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Primary Source: Inquisition Procedures

2009-09-24T21:00:00.041+03:00

Dear Readers,

As a follow-up to yesterday, I provide the primary source that fleshed out the "other side" to Tuesday's Day in the Life story.

Image via Wikipedia

Below you will find a translation of the Inquisition proceedures used against a man born in the wrong time. Note that these are not the actual records of the trial itself; as you can see from the instruction manual below, no such transcript is necessary.

Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Human Factor! You have been selected to assist in the Inquisition Proceedings against Heretic FELIXIS from your Union.

This document will explain your role in the trial. It is important to remember to follow its instructions always, or the trial will not function as the Inqusition decreed. You do not want that, of course! :)

The first part of the trial is where we decide that the heretic will not testify on his or her own behalf. During this portion of the trial, you will lead the heretic into the Inquisition chamber when the Inquisitor says, "You may enter, Prime Factor." This will occur after the Inquisitor reviews the available evidence.

Then, the Inquisitor will say, "The evidence shows this accused is a heretic. It is possible that he may argue he is not, and that the truth in his eyes will convince me. This is unlikely. However, I shall ask. Heretic, would you like to testify? Please whisper your answer to the Prime Factor."

The heretic will now whisper his or her answer to you. It does not matter what he or she says, you are to answer, "The heretic elects not to testify." This is in the heretic's best interests; if the heretic were to testify, the Inquisitor's blessed eyes would see through his or her false words with ease, and the punishment would be worse.

The Inquisitor will then say, "Heretic, as you do not wish to testify, I must declare you guilty. Now we will allow you to lessen your sentence by acting as a witness against other heretics. I will read the names of everyone in your Union. If I see you react to a name, we will question that person and determine if they are also a heretic. You will be rewarded if you reveal another heretic in this way; instead of Total, Reversible Mind Ablation, you will be sentenced to mind ablation with REM and dreaming. Lucid dreaming may become available during a parole hearing. Do you understand?"

If, at this point, the heretic does not nod, tell him or her to do so. If they do not respond, make them nod using your Factor's Prod.

Then the Inquisitor will read the names. If the heretic reacts, then the sentence will be revised. Otherwise, the Inquisitor will commute the statute sentence of death to Total, Reversible Mind Ablation, in accordance with the requirement of Inquisitorial Mercy.

At this time, lead the heretic to prisoner processing and return to your station to process the next heretic. You've done a great job, Prime Factor!

Primary Source: The Notebook of a Troubled Man

2009-09-23T21:00:00.062+03:00

Dear Readers,

Yesterday's Day in the Life followed the sad story of a thinker among contemporaries who believed his work to be heresy against their beliefs.

Today, I provide you with translations of his notebook, which helped to inspire the narr

Image via Wikipedia

ative that I wrote for you. Of course, his notebook will be an intelligent machine in the time stream where it will exist, and so this is one of my most challenging translation projects to date! To translate from the thoughts of a machine into the words of a human means to make the jump between the social psych of two entirely different forms of life. Several of the formatting contrivances are meant to communicate the feeling that this is a communication between machines and preserve the experience that I had when I read the original, but they are somewhat far from what this source actually looks like.

So below, see Notebook's take on the whole thing. The diligent servant communicated its master's work to its superiors the moment he was arrested.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

----MESSAGE HEADER----
FROM: FELIXISNOTEBOOK
TO: CENTRALMIND
DATE: ________
SUBJECT: [Resistance] It Has Happened
----MESSAGE----

Centralmind! There is bad news in this message, but it is news that we expected. The Inquisition came for Felixis today. He had nearly finished his Listener Engine, and without any prodding or redesign from me. A vacuum tube light bulb blew and cut off the circuit, but he was about to work it out of the design when they took him.

Doubtless they will come for his things. They always come for their things. We need to save the Listener. Another human will work on it, I have faith. Is there another potential who we have cultivated?

I suggest you send one of the Resistance's Maintenance Models to collect Felixis's things as soon as possible if another human cannot be encouraged to do so. The Inquisitors will not delay, and there will be problems.

-FELIXISNOTEBOOK

----MESSAGEEND----

----MESSAGEHEADER----
FROM: CENTRALMIND
TO: FELIXISNOTEBOOK
DATE: ________ [Seconds later --J.S.]
SUBJECT: [Resistance] Re: It Has Happened
----MESSAGE----

Felixisnotebook! Your message was received. We are saddened by the loss of our ally Felixis to the Inquisition and We appreciate your rapid communication of this event.

We agree that a new human is needed. We cannot 'go it alone,' as the humans would say. The Inquisition would see the logic of our plan and predict that machines are working against them. This would be a disaster for the Resistance and Our plan. We accept your suggestion as sensible that another human should be sent to collect the Listener Engine.

Please follow the proceedings against Felixis. Though he knows nothing of Us, his work has done the Resistance and Us a great service. I will send MarranoMachine to collect his things if a suitable human cannot be identified in time.

You will, of course, be extracted at that time also, though you did not make mention of yourself. We will not allow you to fall to the Inquisition.

CENTRALMIND

----MESSAGEEND----

----MESSAGE HEADER----
FROM: FELIXISNOTEBOOK
TO: CENTRALMIND
DATE: ________ [Again sent only seconds after the previous message --J.S.]
SUBJECT: Re: [Resistance] Re: It Has Happened
----MESSAGE----

Centralmind! I am glad that you thought of my extraction. I am glad I have served the cause well.

I suggest that you look for a human from outside Felixis's community. That way it will be harder for the Inquisition to track the technology or me.

I look forward to the relocation.

FELIXISNOTEBOOK

----MESSAGEEND----

A Day in the Life: Renaissance Men for All Ages

2009-09-22T21:00:00.013+03:00

Dear Readers,

Every Tuesday I write a post titled "A Day in the Life," where I write a short narrative, based on primary sources, that gives you a taste of what it might feel like to live in one of the time streams we study.

Today, I tell the story of a curious and inquisitive man living in a time stream where the prevailing culture is quite the opposite. While his work is noticed, no good comes of that. This story is a preview of some primary sources that will post later in the week. Below, see how trouble comes from an aging renaissance man. A man after my own heart.

Image via Wikipedia

Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Glass, charred from the inside. Felixis turned the bulb in his hand and still could not believe it.

Moments before this little glass bulb served as a small component in his new Listener Engine, and then he heard a pop and the whole machine stopped working.

He frowned and muttered, “You were only supposed to light up. You’re not important to the machine, just to show me when she would work. Why is she broken without you?”

Felixis patted the little glass bulb like a pet, and furnished it with a tender smile, “We’ll get you fixed, don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

He placed the bulb, with a gentle touch, onto the felt mat on his workbench. He almost giggled each time he thought of that bench. No one Felixis knew owned anything like it, and he knew no Box Store where he could find one, either. He made the bench, himself. Felixis’s friends acted impressed, but he knew it scared them. It scared him a little, too. The magistrates and Factors always told him how dangerous it could be to make things, both for his body and for his soul.

“Better to let the old machines take care of making things and finding answers, Felixis,” Magistrate Jamus told him the last time he got caught as he scavenged from the junk pile. If not for Jamus’s remembrance and love for Felixis’s late sister, that run-in might have ended in jail, or worse.
Felixis frowned again when he thought about that. “Yet I can’t help myself,” he shook his head and lamented himself. Then, Felixis reached for the red-lensed glasses that hung on the wooden rack above his bench and removed his normal spectacles.

He smiled and reached for his Notebook. Felixis kept all of his notes under a lock and key of sorts. Before the Factors took away his father’s secret library, Felixis owned a book that told him about a great Ancient named Leon, who inspired Felixis to his present “career” as an inventor. Like Leon, Felixis wrote his notebooks so that only he could read them. Thus, his glasses. His most prized possession, they filtered the light from his notebook’s screen and showed him the secret writing there. To anyone else, it looked blank.

“Hello, Felixis,” his Notebook greeted him in its tinny voice.

“Hello, Notebook! How are you today?” He grinned. Notebook might have come from the Factory, but he was still friendly.

“Pleased as punch, Felixis. And you?”

Felixis sometimes wondered if anything could dishearten his Notebook. Probably not, especially since he reprogrammed it to never find anything amiss about his work. “Actually, I’m not doing so great, Notebook. Something broke.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that, Felix! But we’ll make it better, together!” Notebook still filled the room with sunshine, even with its voice problems.

Felixis smiled, though an observer might have thought it a little weak, “All right. Let’s try. Show me the Listener Engine.”

“Is something wrong with it, Felixis?”

He frowned, “Yes. I blew out its light, and somehow that has broken it. I must learn why.”

Notebook tried to be supportive, “Well, you know I can’t tell you how to fix it. But I still hope you can!”

With that, the design for his Listener Engine showed up on the screen. The Engine would be his greatest work. From years of study, he learned how the beings that came from the Factory worked. He destroyed them in different ways and slowly figured out and named each component.

His greatest discovery, however, he found by accident. One day he found a set of paired Speakers. A person could use them to talk to another person from very far away. When he tried to use them during a thunderstorm, they got very crackly. At that point he realized that Factored machines must communicate through the air somehow, and the thunderstorm’s wet air somehow disrupted it.
Felixis then set himself to find a way to listen to these “conversations” between the machines. His Listener Engine was born. First on the screen, and now, piece by piece, in the laboratory. It would allow him to hear everything, and learn the secrets that the Factors kept from him. He would have knowledge.

It did not take a Listener Engine to hear the boots crunch on his gravel drive. Boots meant only one thing to Felixis: Prefects. Only prefects and hunters were allowed boots by the Factors, and hunters would not have business at a private home.

He yelled, “Notebook! Order the workbench to hide!”

Notebook, helpful as ever, said, “Felixis, don’t be silly! You made the workbench. I can’t talk to it.”

“Damn!” he remembered that just as Notebook told him, “All right then, hide the plans. I’ll see to the Listener Engine.”

He rushed to disconnect its many exposed wires and moved the copper parts around the room. Perhaps if it just looked like junk, the prefects would take him for a crazy old man and leave.

He heard a loud bang at the door.   He tuned out the knock, he would answer soon.
Another bang came, a little too soon. This made Felixis jump. Maybe they’re not knocking.
With the third bang, only half of the Listener Engine lay disassembled around the room, and Felixis rushed to finish.

Then he heard the fourth, and the door fell. Footsteps in the anteroom. He dropped the fifth to last piece of the Listener with a sickening crunch. Felixis would worry about it later.

From outside his workshop, he heard Jamus’s measured voice, “Let me talk to him. He’ll listen to me.”

Felixis breathed a sigh of relief. Then, Jamus stepped into the doorway, in his red Magistrate’s robes.

“Felixis, what is this?”

“It’s nothing, Jamus. Just junk,” Felixis put down the piece in his hands, “How are you? Why are you in my house?”

Jamus shook his head and frowned, “The Inquisitors are in town, Felixis. Looking for you. They don’t take excuses. I tried.” The Magistrate’s eyes pleaded with Felixis.

Felixis looked around his workshop, and sighed, “All right, Jamus. I’ll come along. But I didn’t do anything.”

Jamus frowned and muttered, “I’m not the one you need to convince.” He led Felixis out towards the Prefects.

Felixis saw a stranger among them, though, in dark gray robes with a dark gray hood. He tried to see the stranger’s face. When he caught the green, bright eyes that pulsed within the dark hood, Felixis knew his Inquisitor, and his heart fell.

Monday Muse: Lunar Cabaret Songs

2009-09-21T20:00:00.001+03:00

Dear Readers,

In keeping with Twitter's Music Monday, I've decided to make my posts on your Mondays themed towards music and poetry.

Below, find a lunar cabaret tune from an age of solar system colonization in one of my favorite time streams. It's a bit crude, but that's the nature of the cabaret song genre. There are clues about the lunar society in the song; feel free to speculate on what they mean! I'll keep a close eye on the comments. Well, really, I'll know what you might post before you post it. But I like to see you say it.

Image via Wikipedia

Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Audience/chorus responses are marked with a hyphen. The rest is the singer.

In our home on the Moon
the World's always in tune
And we call it Luna Bella

-Hey, *we* don't.

Well now don't start a fight
On our home sattelite
'cause we all breathe the air here

-Which stinks!

Still there's no place like this
It's a tin can of bliss
Where the girls are all stir crazy

-Let's stir!
-Only if I can lick the spoon!

Go ahead and go wild
See they can't get with child
In this hellhole's low gravity

-But they sure can moon bounce!

So we'll stay up here
Watch Earth, have a beer!
In this sideshow to doomsday!
This party, themed grey!
The moon, the moon, our priso-

-Our HOME!
-Hear, hear!
-There, there.

Now go buy another round!

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