A Potential Graduate Student?

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

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

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

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

Sunday Seminar Series: Misunderstanding

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