Occasional Tales

With the lovely Cassandra. Cassandra is forecasting great losses for the Greeks if the sea battle ( ναυμαχία , as they say in Greek) goes ahead. But since the enemy had already sent the Greeks an invitation to which they’d RSVPed, the admiral thought it would be rather rude of them not to attend. [ Paraphrasing scenarios is one thing, but you're just making this up . –ed.] Unfortunately for the Greeks, Cassandra’s forecast was accurate, and when the accuracy of subsequent prophecies became known, the Greeks took to consulting her before any military engagements. But the admiral wasn’t so pleased and got a couple of sophists and a couple of philosophers to undermine Cassandra’s credibility. As Euthydemus proved, sophists were idiots, but the philosophers had an idea. They suggested that because the future hasn’t happened, Cassandra’s forecasts must be false. Also, if the admiral had conducted the battle a little differently, the outcome would’ve been different, thus invalidating the...

Mr Megasoft gets ticked off. Mr Megasoft buys a pair of atomic watches, one for himself and the other for his girlfriend, Charlene. They’re meant to be synchronised to the nearest nanosecond. Every day, when Mr Megasoft arrives home, he’s gratified to see that the two watches remain in harmony. But after a long trip, Mr Megasoft arrives home to find that the watches are no longer in sync. He takes them back to the shop, but after the shop tests them, they find nothing wrong and refuse him a refund. Mr Megasoft then goes on another business trip and when he returns home, the discrepancy between the two watches is even more pronounced. Mr Megasoft isn’t pleased, but is he entitled to a refund? As far as I’m aware, no. Experiments with atomic clocks have shown that this is exactly what happens when you fly one of these things around, although according to the book, the effect is from gravity rather than the motion of the plane. Anyway, that's enough about time. I’m officially calling ...

Does Who know Wenn? Now the daft Dr Wenn thinks he’s seen time go backwards. He has some water. It freezes. Then it thaws. And later, it freezes again. Time must be going backwards. So is my patience with Dr Wenn; and Lucy’s. She notes that there’s more to this than the reversing of physical effects. True. If Dr Wenn were to scratch his name in the ice, it’d disappear when the ice melted and wouldn’t return when the ice froze. But perhaps if it was possible to reverse time, things wouldn’t necessarily happen in precisely the same way they originally did. If time has no aetiology, then forwards or backwards there should, perhaps, be no guarantee that what’d been done the first time should necessarily be undone because of quantum level uncertainty. Yes, I know I have no idea what I’m talking about, but surely time isn’t like some sort of recorder remembering where everything once was. For example, would time reverse the effects of gravity? If something has crumbled off a building when ti...

Why use a machine when boredom and anxiety will do the job nearly as well? Dr Wenn now unveils a machine which can stop time and does (through the agency of the mischievous Lucy) for a thousand years. Of course, nothing has changed and Lucy is, again, unimpressed. Dr Wenn says that the time machine can be used in conjunction with the time stopper. Lucy asks about travelling backwards in time, but Dr Wenn says that it’s not possible because the past doesn’t exist. Lucy disagrees. Dr Wenn explains that the past is a memory of present moments, and the present is infinitely small. He thinks that the only thing which is real is the future, which ceases to exist the moment you arrive. Lucy continues to play the sceptic. The present exists and even although it’s infinitely small, it adds up to something, which is the past. No one would get very far trying to deny past indiscretions. Who’s right? I was thinking that we travel through time all the time. I don’t mean with regard to two or three ...