All of this Guilt is Making Hungry

Um, pardon me Mr. Darwin, I just want to clarify a few things, well really just one in particular. Upon completion of your wonderful book, The Decent of Man, I see you have come to the conclusion that us humans are really just an extant group of the hominid genera. On top of this, you also say we evolved from a common ancestor...could this be true?!

If we are in fact merely an extant group of the hominid genera, and we share a common ancestor with modern apes, is it safe to assume that our ancestors ate similarly? And if this is the case, what did our ancestors eat? Even more, should we still be abiding by these evolutionary grandfather clauses? Or should we create some sort of omnivorous diet that consists of many different types of food?

So where am I going with all of this? We need a nice backdrop for our discussion, or really just me talking at you, on what we humans are supposed to be eating. If we want to go the route of evolution, which I would like to, we can discuss the purposes of our anatomy and how it interacts with regard to our diet. If we want to just forget about our possible ancestors, or if you are a creationist (Weldon), let's just talk about contemporary problems with the diet most Americans have adopted. I warn you, I will be discussing three of the most debated items in the public's scientific field right now. Evolution, global warming, and vegetarianism (because everyone hates a pretentious, I'm-better-than-you, I only eat non mobile food vegetarian)... Which brings me to the campaign put out by Wendy's to combat this evil vegetarian fad that is quietly taking over our youth: The Meatatarian Campaign


An historical account for the reasons of
my choice to abstain from red meat and pork

or

Pig Slaughter and Cow Farts

The truth is, I don't really hate vegetarians, nor do I think it is a completely terrible idea. Personally I abstain from pork and red meat, but I still take pleasure in eating one form of poultry or another. In a strange twist of fate, while traveling throughout Guatemala my diet went through a transformation. My reasons for staying away from pork is somewhat ethical. The relatedness of a pig to human is uncanny, especially its scream, and if you have ever heard a pig scream during the final moments of its life you might feel the same way as I. Ashley and I were stuck in a desolate "beach town" on the pacific coast of Guatemala. The place was a ghost town, save for the 3 employees and their animal companions who were working to treat us to a less-than-mediocre lunch. During our wonderfully awful meal we were treated to the slaughter of a pig. Thankfully this act was not portrayed in the open, instead it was hidden by a shoddy wooden post fence; all we witnessed was the sound.

That was the day I stopped eating pork.

The cow story is not so traumatic. Ashley and I had made it to a little island town in the northern jungle area of Guatemala, where we stayed in a European-run Hostel. This particular hostel only served vegetarian and vegan friendly meals. Speaking with the owner, I found out the reason for his commitment to not eating meat, and in particular beef...

Where's the Beef (from)?!

The larger farms that most Americans and other westerners get their food from tend to sometimes exploit their opportunities. In the case of the cattle farms, the byproducts of the cattle industry are effecting our environment. "Globally, ruminant livestock produce about 80 million metric tons of methane annually, accounting for about 28% of global methane emissions from human-related activities."
In case you were unfamiliar with methane: "Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period..."




Cow farts can be a real pain, but considering only about 4-6% of greenhouse gases are related to Methane production, I will let that fact slide (even though if we did some simple math we would come to find that because of its effect on the atmosphere, even a little methane is more dangerous than a larger amount of CO2). I won't attack the cattle farmers for having WAYY too many cows hanging out in one area. After all, they are only meeting the demand of their customers, who are eating progressively more and more meat. What is slightly more disturbing comes from the products needed for production of such meats. Would you ever give someone a 10 dollar bill so that he could give you 5 dollars in exchange? I didn't think so, but this is exactly what happens in cattle farming, with relation to energy input versus output. In order to raise a cow unto maturity, that cow needs to eat, as well as drink. "...Beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1." In other words, for every fifty pounds of energy producing food that could benefit humans, only one pound of red meat is produced. Not only is food in the form of grain misused, water is too. "Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water." It is as if we have a really leaky faucet that starts out with a ton of water but only ends up with a few drops when it reaches its destination. There are far too many useful resources being misused on the production of cattle for consumption. The website I have linked above is quite scary, and it is a glaring reminder that we are taking agriculture too far, after all it isn't only cattle and their needs that are causing harm, it is also the crops themselves.

Our current state of agriculture is kind of like losing a hockey game in overtime:

you get a point but you still lose

The Meatatarians are not the only ones to blame for our current situation, anyone who eats any sort of agriculturally grown product also wreaks havoc on our environmental systems (indirectly, of course). When land is constantly being used to grow large amounts of crops, it gets drained of its usefulness. This is where crop rotation comes in handy, the only problem is that not all farms adhere to this theory, and even if they do they lose sight of just how much damage they are doing to the land they hold so close to their heart for survival. We take over large areas of land to grow the crops necessary to meet the demands of humans, however we forget that this land is not ours for the taking. Other animals inhabit this land just as we would like to. I am not saying that we bow down to the bull weevil, but I am saying let us use a little restraint when it comes to Totalitarian Agriculture. Needless to say, land is not ours for the taking, but even if it is we must be responsible. Rachel Carson was a wonderful science writer who got the attention necessary to change things in our world. Like Upton Sinclair and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Carson was able to attract the attention of the public and unleash a firestorm of information that led to huge changes within her country. She confronted the issue of pesticides and their effect on birds and insects within the environment. Because of her efforts, DDT was banned in the USA and eventually banned worldwide for agricultural use. This was a step in the right direction, however just with vaccines, pesticides create newer more resistant insects that require different types of chemicals to be manufactured and released into the crop fields. So before I get too crazy on this whole agriculture thing, just keep one thing in mind: we produce more than we need, we eat more than we need, and we throw away more of what we did not need.

Diets based on global location and access to foods

We are the only animal that is able to live in and exploit every single environment on the Earth. We live in the coldest and highest altitudes, the most dry deserts, the hottest savannas, the temperate zones and the tropics, and we even have the ability to live out at sea for months and even years at a time. We live on coastlines, in rural countrysides, atop mountains, in valleys, and metropolitan cities. There is skeletal evidence of the current human being dating back 160,000 years ago, but we find tools that date back even further. Tools that could have been used by some other hominid, which date back to 2.6 million years ago. Of course, if you are a creationist (Weldon) you don't believe a word I just typed, and you know very well that the earth is only 6,000 years old, after all the Bible told you so. But, putting all biases aside, we take the evidence for the existence of hominids and run with it. If Humans have been around all this time, they must have had changing diets to cope with their constant migrations and environmental changes. Before the current modes of food transport, we were limited to what kinds of food we had surrounding us to feed our appetites.

Home is where the Food is

Just take a step back from your comfortable life where all food is essentially provided for you so long as you have the means to purchase it. Let us imagine a world where we have to go out on a daily basis and search for food. Chances are, had it not been for animal domestication and agriculture, we would not have spread out as we did throughout the world in all different directions. Think about the first humans, then think about what they must have eaten (it definitely was not corn nuts, gushers, and tofurkey). If they lived near the coast they most likely had a diet that was heavy in fish. If humans lived more inland they may have been more of terrestrial-animal hunters or gatherers of some other form of nutrition. Actually, humans were big fans of nuts, root vegetables, and insects based on skeletal remains of our first ancestors. What about fruit? What about large amounts of meat? Our current diet is one that is related to our large pallet of experience founded by the exporting of foods from many different countries. Before the age of enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and even the age of travel and exploration, humans were largely food-slaves to our immediate surroundings. It was only when we met one another, from lands not like our own, that we were able to exchange diets and recipes and agricultural techniques. Humans are a wonderful example of societal evolution and cultural transmission. Even though we are genetically bottlenecked, humans have been able to adapt to a number of situations, especially those that require us to change our diets, which may be why we have been such a successful species.

Sooooo...

The most important thing to take away is that no matter what we eat we need to be conscious of the process of its production. We can also remember that our bodies are made for a wide array of diets that include fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, numerous liquids, and bad things like cupcakes. This site explains the differences in herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores and stakes the claim that humans are built for an herbivorous life, however I think because we can take advantage of such a large variety of diets, we will. It is because of this advantageous adaptation that we are able to live in such different places and eat such varying foods.

So what is your diet?

(I expect only sarcastic and witty comments, if any)

check this out for more information:

http://www.thevegetariansite.com/env_animalfarming.htm

My Adventures in Time Travel III: My Time With Lincoln and Darwin

Now that we've covered how the time machine mentioned in the heading to this blog works (kind of), and how we avoid the paradoxes that seem to naturally occur with such a thing as traveling through time (sorta), I feel it is my duty to share with you my most recent adventure through time. Seeing as how I am one of the most important living beings ever by the time my life is up - trust me on that - I decided to go visit two other extremely important historical figures that I also happen to share a birthday with. On February 12th I decided to take a trip back in time to visit Mr. Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Preparing to go back in time can be kind of a hassle. Much like taking a long vacation, you must pack accordingly. I grabbed my suitcase and loaded up on my leather pants and silver jackets (because that's what they believed people in the future would be wearing and I didn't want to blow their minds too much), grabbed my toothbrush (but forgot my damn toothpaste - and apparently you can't buy any in the mid-1800's; there were only "tooth powders" that seemed kind of unhealthy), charged up my Blackberry and iPod (in case I had some downtime), made sure my audio recorder worked (so I could have an accurate transcript for you, my dear readers) and sat down to choose a date.

In my 3 1/2 minutes of research I learned that Lincoln and Darwin never met, and were in fact barely aware of each others existences. This would simply not do. I photoshopped some fake invitations to a "World Leadership Conference featuring All the Great Leaders of Science, Politics, and Miscellaneous Things", and packed them away with my iPod. The date would be February 16th, 1861 in Buffalo, New York (my hometown, coincidentally enough). Lincoln would already be staying there on his way to accept the presidency so it would make it that much easier. Darwin wouldn't have shit going on, so he would make it as well. Plus, it was around our birthday. Perfect...

I hopped in my time machine and set the date. I decided it would be a good idea to just time travel my way right to Darwin's residence about a month before the date of the "conference" to drop off the invitation. That would give him enough time to show up. So I did just that and then time traveled to Buffalo.

I appeared in the back alley of the American Hotel on Main St. on Valentines Day, 1861. I reached in my pocket for money to get a room and realized I only had $5 bills. I'm not completely sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion that Lincoln didn't have his picture on American money yet. That would give me away as a time traveler, and I ran the risk of being hung as a witch. Thinking quickly, I realized that I'm an expert in 19th century security systems (there not really being any) and could just break into the hotel, kill one of the inhabitants of a room, and steal his identity. I did just that, and ended up finding myself as Hernando Escobar-Gonzalez, a wealthy merchant from... somewhere.

Hernando was a good man. Until I murdered him and stole his identity.

With the pieces now in place, all I had to do was wait. I stalked around the hotel for those two days, wearing Hernando's ill-fitting clothes and pretending I knew whatever language it was he spoke. Spanish? French? Russian? I couldn't figure it out, and soon had ended up killing in cold blood anyone who seemed like they might have known who he was.

Finally, on the morning of February 16th, 1861, Lincoln walked in with his security. He got a room on a floor and headed up. I thought it best to wait for Darwin. He arrived not long after Lincoln, and I felt the nervous gas of a brilliant plan coming together. I stopped at my room to use the bathroom, and then waited for them to knock on the door for the "conference". I had put 7 p.m. Eastern Time on the invitations, and at around 6:30 p.m. both showed up. I answered the door, turned on my audio recorder, and had the following conversation:

Craig?: First off, let me just say happy belated birthdays.

Lincoln and Darwin: Thank you.

Craig?: So... Mr. President, Mr. Darwin, welcome to the "World Leaders Association Conference for Stuff".

Lincoln: I was under the assumption that this was called the "World Leadership Conference featuring All the Great Leaders of Science, Politics, and Miscellaneous Things".

Craig?: Um... it goes by many names. Regardless, welcome.

Darwin: I'm sorry good sir, but I must ask: What are you wearing?

I was waiting for this question and took it as an opportunity to allow them in on my secret: I am a time traveler.

Craig?: Ah! Excellent question Mr. Darwin! I can see why many worship you and your ideas almost religiously where I come from!

Darwin: And where is that?

Craig?: Well, I come from Buffalo, New York.

Lincoln: We're in Buffalo.

Craig?: Yeah, I know. Let me finish. I'm from Buffalo, New York in the year 2010.

At this point there was a long, awkward silence. Darwin and Lincoln both looked at one another, looked at me, and then just sat. I waited for one of them to say something, but neither seemed capable of digesting the insanely awesome information I had just given them.

Craig?: 2010. You guys caught that, right? I'm from the future.

The Future, as they thought it would look like. Probably.

Again, there was a silence. Darwin stood up and started making his way toward the door.

Craig?: Where are you going?

Darwin: I'm leaving. This is clearly some kind of a joke.

Craig?: But don't you want to know what the future is like? The three of us are the most important figures in World History! At least that's how it is in the year 2162.

Lincoln: I thought you said you were from 2010?

Craig?: I also said I was a time traveler. I'm here now, aren't I? Stop cherry-picking things to call me on.

I heard my door slam and realized that Darwin had gone. My hopes dashed, I thought I would make due with Lincoln. I turned around to find him standing, his 6'3 frame fairly imposing.

Craig?: Well Mr. President, I guess it's just you and I.

Lincoln: My sincerest apologies boy, but I have much more worthwhile things to do with my time.

I stepped in front of him.

Craig?: I don't think so, Mr. President. The 3 people who read my blog in my present, before I'm practically the savior of mankind, want to know what you were really like. Who the man behind the myth really -

At that point Lincoln grabbed me and put me in an arm-bar. The most intense pain I've ever felt shot through my body and I lost control of my bowels. This was the worst possible scenario that could have happened. I passed out from the pain and awoke to find myself in jail. I jimmied the lock (they were pretty simple back then) and escaped to find my time machine. Upon securing it again - murdering several guards in the process - I returned to 2010.

And now here I am, ashamed and beaten for my journalistic failure. However, I hope that my few moments with Lincoln and Darwin gave you a sense of who they were as men, and not as giants of history. I also hope that any time travelers reading this prepare better than I did.

I know I learned that lesson.

"if people don't know who you are, nobody cares" -anonymous

Isn't it funny when people say college career? Did I completely miss the boat, we got paid to wake up early, drive to a place where you are almost guaranteed to find no parking spots, sit uncomfortably in a room where old people talk at you, and be depressed most of the semester and suicidal during finals?


...I digress, in fact college wasn't a huge butt plug, I enjoyed most of the time I spent there. College was a means for me to sort through all of the crap I had been fed, and discern for myself if it was indeed straight booty, or factual in some dubious, convoluted way. Every single day facts and figures are thrown my way via the television, newspaper/magazines, internet, and friends and family. Most statistics that are shown in popular media outlets are really just used for shock factor. They are attention grabbing, and hopefully life altering. But let's be clear, not everything you read, see, or hear is accurate. Not everything in our surrounding environment is as it seems. It is imperative that you understand that critical thought is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal of life-living and decision-making.

Unfortunate or not, we are a product of our environment and we pick up on each other. The current population of humans is all thanks to generations and generations of failed-and-learned-from mistakes; Social evolution, all thanks to our ancestors. I am a firm believer in building off of one another, learning from one another, and creating new thoughts for ourselves. Just look at all of the information and technology booms in the last few decades. We must keep in mind, however, that we must bring a commitment to accuracy and understanding in order for us to excel and move onto the next generation of learning.

Just because something is in quotes doesn't give it merit, plain and simple. If there is a statistic for it, it doesn't mean it is truthful. Let's get together and talk about some things that you think are so stupid but still exist in people's minds.

Let's bring creativity and critical thought back, cool?

The Fact is, there are no facts.

p.s.
I am the one to credit with that quote, so don't go posting it elsewhere unless I get my royalties!!

The Future of Print Research: Really Heavy Loads of Paper v.s. Endless Lightweight Virtual Pages

I work with children between the ages of 7 and 13 on a daily basis, and often times the kids get stumped on a particular word or topic of discussion. In the room I work in, we have access to a collection of encyclopedias from 2003, the World Book collection, as well as a large assortment of atlases, dictionaries, thesauruses, and random primary school text books. I often suggest that the children consult these references if they are in need of any information, and I almost always get a blank stare. The kids have never seen the World Books before, and you can forget an atlas. They, on the contrary, suggest we search for the answer on the internet.

No, how dare we, the internet is full of pages made by average, every day people, how can they be even remotely scientifically accurate?

I have been taught to be very cautious when approaching the internet. I am to make sure, if reading any form of scientific literature, that it is peer-reviewed or under the authority of a University or highly regarded research group. God forbid I elicit the help of, one of my favorite websites, Wikipedia. Throughout my college "career", I was told that Wikipedia was one of the deadly sins of research, and to stay very far away from it. It was nice to find that Wikipedia may not be so bad after all. In 2005 the journal Nature put forth some interesting figures regarding the validity of Wikipedia. They found that the accuracy of science entries found on the Wikipedia website, was nearly on par with those entries in Britannica. The link is here,but you will need access to the site through a subscription, or perhaps you can gain access if you are a college student (just use the portal found in your libraries web page). Now, this article was written almost 5 years ago, and the popularity of Wikipedia has soared since. Many people will fetch up the typical debate against this wonderfully gathered website: anyone can edit it, so there must be falsehoods, Right? Upon further analysis, you will find that most pages on Wikipedia, at least the important ones, can not be edited. If, in fact, the pages can be edited they go through a rigorous moderation period, in which time the page can be reverted back to its original state.

So am I archaic in principles of research, or have I just been taught the archaic ways by old guys who can't get with the times? Maybe I SHOULD steer clear of Wikipedia, but then again, this idea that we can build off of one another, and learn from one another to create one all encompassing, literal World Encyclopedia, is incredible. After all, some really smart guy once said that "We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants." even if those giants are made from a bunch of little smart guys. I would like to think that we could all learn something from one another and this crazy thing called Wikipedia, even if it is in a location surrounded my porn, Facebook, and the World of Warcraft.

Well, at the very least, and most cautious, use Wikipedia as a starting point. Use it to get an understanding of the topic, and then go from there.

My Adventures in Time Travel II: The Paradoxes

We'll See About That

Welcome to the middle section of my highly acclaimed trilogy on time travel! How do I know it's highly acclaimed when I've only written two of the three? Think about it, silly. (I'm a time traveler.)

Last post I discussed how time travel might (or might not) be possible (for someone other than me, who doesn't already have an awesome, quite functional, time machine). This article is about the paradoxes involved in time traveling. Or, rather, some of them. There's quite a few depending on which avenue of time travel you wish to explore. And most have existential and historical ramifications that can change who you are at the most fundamental levels one can think of.

Here is a good primer on some of the paradoxes one might be confronted with. Of the ones mentioned there, perhaps the most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox. The grandfather paradox states that if you were to go back in time and murder your own grandfather, would you still exist? Logically, why you would want to do this is beyond me, but I'll buy into the initial premise.

As outlined in Michio Kakus book, Physics of the Impossible, there are a few possible solutions to this problem. If you don't believe in free will, but rather some sort of destiny, then whatever happens in the past is the way it was meant to happen. This would also hold true for what happens in the future. This is a closed time loop. Whatever happened, happened. If you go into the past to change it, that means you were already there trying to change it and everything is going according to plan. Whose plan? I don't know, someones somewhere. Possibly the man?

Oh God I Hope This is The Man

There is also the idea that there is some natural law that would prevent you from ever altering the timeline in that fashion. If you were to point a gun at your grandfather, state you were going to kill him, underline the reasons for why you felt it necessary to kill him - perhaps he told one too many stories of this time a guy claiming to be from the future tried to kill him - and then tried pulling the trigger, something would happen.

The gun would jam. You'd have a crisis of conscience. Your grandmother hits you in the head from behind with a shovel. Your grandfather is actually Ozymandias from Watchmen and he catches your bullet before beating the snot out of you. Point being, some natural occurrence prevents the death of your grandfather from happening, and nothing major changes. This still allows for the fact that you have free will, as it only states that the past cannot change. For example, you may in you heart of hearts wish to fly, and you should be able to because of your free will, but you can't because of gravity.

The solution to almost any paradox is likely to be alternate universes. If you were to pull the trigger and shoot your grandfather dead, it wouldn't matter in your universe because it never happened there. You simply traveled along a different timeline where your grandfather did get murdered by your evil doppleganger.

How Do You Fight Yourself?!

This would ostensibly happen every time you traveled to the past or future to change something. However, the biggest flaw I see in this theory is that it's not actually time travel. It's simply going to a parallel universe where things have changed only slightly. Unless, because of your dicking around in the past changing things, you created a new universe with just your actions. But how would that work? Considering what a universe physically is (lots and lots of energy and a tiny bit of matter), how could one persons actions create an alternate timeline where things were the same up until the moment they changed them, and dramatically different thereafter? Seems to raise more questions than it answers if you ask me. This is one of the major issues with time travel my esteemed colleague, Anthony, has. We've spent countless hours in our smoking room drinking whisky discussing how it could be possible that our matter is transfered to a time before our matter existed. Or, how the matter of anything in the past can still exist if it's in the present.

Imagine this situation: You want to go into the past to stop your best friend from contracting herpes from this girl he met at a club one night. Now, let's ignore the impossibility (in my experience) of a girl actually being at a club for something other than dancing. You head back in time and see your best friend - but how? How could he exist in the past if he is still existing in the future? I proposed a few solutions that I admittedly pulled out of my ass. Obviously I went to the alternate universe theories first, Anthony countered with the fact they're parallel and therefore running on the same timeline as our universe. I was skeptical of this stance, but whatever. I also proposed that time is constantly repeating itself, somewhere and somehow. Kinda weak, that one. I moved on to the fact that matter has always been around in some form or another, since the big bang. I brought up wormholes, and the curvature of spacetime. I said, relighting my corncob pipe, which had gone out in our breathless debating, that perhaps because of this curvature, there is only a displacement of matter. I asked him to picture how a tornado tube works; The water in the top half of the tube can only go to the bottom half if there is a displacement of air. That's why it works, and that's why time travel works! Anthony took a long, pensive sip of his whisky, sent our servant to the kitchen for a fake steak dinner (he's a vegetarian), and wondered how there can be a displacement of matter in that way. I countered that it probably has something to do with quantum entanglement and I conceded that I did not know. My, what a tangled web of intrigue these paradoxes weave!

The April, 1976 issue of American Philosophical Quarterly tackled some of these same issues, to a less humorous effect. The author, David Lewis immediately throws away the alternate universe theory. What he does distinguish between, instead of a multiverse, is a difference between what he calls "external time" and "personal time". External time, in the way he describes it, is time as we know it. It's whatever is happening in the present. Personal time is whatever is happening for the individual in their present. Even if their present happens to be someone else's (even their own) past. It can be equated with biological time, but it does seem to encompass more than that. This would make it possible for things to be happening along different planes of time, but it still glosses over the fact that our matter would still be existing and interacting in two places at once. However, Mr. Lewis does insinuate that perhaps it's not the same matter that is interacting. Do our atoms change into something else over time, as we grow older in our personal time? This seems a likely answer, as people do biologically and, dare I say, atomically change over time.

So what is the grand answer to the question of paradoxes? I don't know, what do I look like? Bill Nye the Science Guy? Jeez, leave me alone.

Be sure to tune in soon for the exciting conclusion to this three-part series on time travel!

My Adventures in Time Travel I: Introduction/An Explanation

I Only Watched The First 3 Minutes

Almost everyday I'm bombarded with emails asking me about our heading, because it seems most people don't read past that. Most are a lot like this email from reader n00b$f8: "i notised that u say u guys have a time machine. 1st off, tiem machines rnt possible. 2ndly even if they were u coulnd't use one because of the paridoxes involved. i saw in that movie butterfly effect how badly you can screw up the past if you mess with it!!!11!!"

Usually my response goes something like this:

"Dear n00b$f8,

Thank you for reading our blog! It's so nice to see that the youth of the great undeveloped nations of the world (judging by your somewhat tenuous grasp of the English language) has an interest in what we're writing about! Now, on to what you said in your email.

While I can see why you would think that time travel isn't possible, as it seems counter-intuitive to how we perceive time and the natural world (as Newton thought, progress only ever moves forward through time in a straight line, right?). However, because we live in a spatial universe where time is interwoven into that fabric, certain physical laws can be bent. But, as you'll see if you come back and read my blog post on this very subject, there are problems with that if you believe at all in free will.

As far as your other comment goes, I would first like to point out that Ashton Kutcher is not a good actor. I would also like to say that the paradoxes are avoidable, if they exist at all. Check back sometime to see why.

Thanks again for your time,

Craig?"

So here it is, my explanation of how our time machine works. Later this week, just in case there are some non-believers out there (like I would ever lie to you, my dear reader), I will post the meticulously recorded transcript of one of my time-traveling misadventures in honor of the greatest day in the history of the world, February 12th. Now, on to how our time machine works.

There are a lot of different theories about time travel, and how it can possibly be achieved. Most have to do with Einstein's Theories of General and Special Relativity. Special Relativity details how the speed of light is constant for all observers, because nothing can travel faster. What this has to do with time travel is simple, and it's called time dilation. Time dilation is similar to the story of The Tortoise and the Hare, except it's nothing like that at all. Supposing I'm traveling close to the speed of light (as I'm wont to do), and you're not, you will age quicker than I will. This has already been done with astronauts in orbit, who age nanoseconds less than people on Earth. So, if you can travel at or close to the speed of light for an extended period of time, when you slow down the Earth will have progressed past you and you'll be in the future. There is also a theory that says if you can travel past the speed of light, you may be able to go into the past. Almost like in Richard Donner's original Superman, when Superman finds out that he couldn't save Lois Lane in time and he freaks out and decides that he'll break every known law of physics and turn the Earth's rotation around in the vague hopes that maybe he'll reverse time and have a second chance at saving her which - thanks to the fact that it's only a movie - totally works and he totally saves her and totally ends up with the girl eventually, maybe, I've never actually seen it.

The Best Picture of Superman I Could Find

Of course, traveling anywhere near the speed of light with current technology isn't possible, let alone surpassing lightspeed in order to travel into the past. It also defies the laws of physics, as in order to travel past the speed of light one would need to have infinite mass. We know that kinetic energy is converted to mass thanks to E=mc2. To have infinite mass (and also apparently stop in time) just doesn't make sense according to Einstein, so we'll have to count that one out. Not to mention that method requires a lot of waiting. I'm not interested in that. So what other options do I have?

There is the other theory of relativity, the less fancy sounding General Theory of Relativity. This basically states that mass displaces spacetime, which is in itself a cause of gravity. If the gravity is strong enough, it may warp spacetime enough that you can travel through time (remember earlier how I mentioned that spacetime is like a fabric, all interwoven and shit? Well it can also bend like a fabric). Black holes are massive enough to do this. However, black holes are also massive enough to tear you apart atom by atom. That, to me anyhow, just doesn't sound too pleasant. Not to mention the fact I couldn't afford the bus ticket to get there.

A similar idea to traveling through a black hole is to go through a wormhole. What's the difference you ask? Well, according to Michio Kaku's book Physics of the Impossible, black holes are "non-transversable wormholes" while a wormhole is, in fact, a "transversable wormhole". What this means is that black holes are a one way trip (because they destroy you at their event horizons) while wormholes in the sense time travelers like myself discuss them are not. The trick to using wormholes (besides generating one) and surviving the event horizon of one is a little something called negative energy. This is not the same as antimatter, as it doesn't destroy any matter it comes into contact with but, rather, repels it. Which is why it would be so perfect to get through the event horizon of a wormhole.

So what's the issue with this theory? A few things, but mostly the insane amount of energy it would need to work. At least the equivalence of the energy that wants to tear you apart. Even if you were able to harness that energy, there would be enough radiation generated by the wormhole to kill you instantly if it were stable enough to stay open at all. These are a lot of variables for me to be worrying about as I have my sexy adventures through time.

And yet, I do have sexy adventures through time. All because of the time machine that n00b$f8 mentioned in his email, and we've written about in our heading to our blog. But how does it work? Well allow me to ask you this, n00b$f8 and others like him/her/it, do you know how your iPod works? Or do you just use it, thankful that it does work? Because I've never read the users manual to my Time Machine either.

Our Time Machine Looks Like Santa's Sleigh

Check back soon for Part II: The Paradoxes and next week for Part III: My Time with Lincoln and Darwin!