[Bill,
October 26, 2008]
Ambiguity
I am sorry. There's a function on my blogging interface called "rewrite history." I assumed that was a noun followed by a verb. But it turns out that it's a special button that allows me to rewrite human history. I have disabled it -- yes, the old story about rewriting the past turned out to be true. I have been up half the night re-establishing the current time line to set right all the disasters I created; fortunately, all those problems disappeared when those time lines collapsed. Well, at least all of them. Unfortunately, there three past changes I made to the time line that we'll just have to live with. I guess in the interest of full disclosure:
1. Actually, the Red Sox didn't trade Babe Ruth. I had to do that ... never mind, it just solved a lot of problems with the timeline, and I had to write in a series of disasters for the Red Sox in the 20th Century to try to counteract some changes I made in World War I -- right now, though, basically, everything is as it was, except that the Yankees won an extra 20 World Series or so. Sorry about that.
2. I couldn't get rid of Jimmy Carter, no matter how I tried. In one timeline I came back to discover Ted Kennedy running for his 7th presidential term. In another one the Red Sox had won a bunch of World Series and the whole WWI changes unraveled and never mind ... you don't want to know.
3. Actually, Y2K was a monumental disaster ... far far worse than the current timeline. I just pretended it wasn't a problem and while we've had a rough decade, it beats what really happened.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'm going to use that functionality again. BTW, you can make many more innocuous changes in the past than you think. I stomped out a whole field of butterflies, just 'cuz. Nothing changed. But change one big thing and pfft! everything's different.
1. Actually, the Red Sox didn't trade Babe Ruth. I had to do that ... never mind, it just solved a lot of problems with the timeline, and I had to write in a series of disasters for the Red Sox in the 20th Century to try to counteract some changes I made in World War I -- right now, though, basically, everything is as it was, except that the Yankees won an extra 20 World Series or so. Sorry about that.
2. I couldn't get rid of Jimmy Carter, no matter how I tried. In one timeline I came back to discover Ted Kennedy running for his 7th presidential term. In another one the Red Sox had won a bunch of World Series and the whole WWI changes unraveled and never mind ... you don't want to know.
3. Actually, Y2K was a monumental disaster ... far far worse than the current timeline. I just pretended it wasn't a problem and while we've had a rough decade, it beats what really happened.
Anyway, I'm not sure I'm going to use that functionality again. BTW, you can make many more innocuous changes in the past than you think. I stomped out a whole field of butterflies, just 'cuz. Nothing changed. But change one big thing and pfft! everything's different.