IF I HAD A TIME MACHINE

[Pumpkin_Man]

Hi Folks:

I was talking to one of my brothers, and we were talking about what we would like to do if we had access to a working time machine. Would we try to change our lives, would we make a journey into the distant past to find out if there really was an Atlantis, or into the distant future to see if there really will be an 'Armagedden.'

I would be interesting in both of those scenarios, but I also have a practicle use for a time machine. I would travel a few days, to when they publish the winning Pwerball Lottery numbers, then go back to the pevious Monday, buy a ticket with those numbers and cash in.

What would you guys do? Would you try to stop the assissination of Abraham Linconl? JFK? OR would you go back and assissinate Adolf Hitler beofre he became famous?

Interesting food for thought.

Mike

[NeverMore]

I would go back to this afternoon and grab my camera off the bumper of my truck before I jumped in it and ran to the store. Anybody want to buy a slightly used camera? Comes in 1000 pieces.

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, I have the time-travel fantasy frequently. For some reason I always want to travel back to the American Revolution and meet those people. The famous ones, I mean, the Founding Fathers. I don't necessarily want to change anything. I just want to hang out with them. In my fantasies I am a servant or something, and they think I'm crazy when I start talking about the future to them, but gradually they come to believe me.

The thing is, I realize that if we could actually know the outcome of whatever we set our hearts on doing, nothing we do would matter. We have to have that element of uncertainty in order for our choices to mean anything. I guess I mean, we can prove our character only by acting without foreknowledge.

I also sometimes fantasize that I can go back in time and meet earlier generations of my own family, especially those my mother remembered, but I do not, like her father, who died before I was born. But then, if I could convince them of my truthfulness, I would know stuff I wouldn't want to tell them, like when and how they died.

I don't so much fantasize about going back to the life of Jesus, because there would be a language barrier for me. (Presumably not with Jesus himself, but with everyone else.) But I do sometimes ponder what it would have been like actually to know Jesus as a man in this world.

[zoltan hound dracula]

HI MIKE,I WOULD TRY AND STOP DISASTERS LIKE THE TITANIC AND SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS

[Li H'Sen Chang]

I would not use for material gain such as lottery or finance. I would use to go back in time to help other people. I learn that people are more important than things you buy.

[Pumpkin56]

I don't think I would go back very far...I would like to go back and meet my paternal great-grand-father and also spend some more time with my paternal grandfather. I know there is Native American ancestry on that side and I would like to ask one of them what particular tribe we belonged to. My great-grandfather would probably have known--dude looked like he just stepped out of a teepee

I'd also like to meet my maternal grandfather and his father and grandfather. I've been told that there's Native American ancestry there as well, but I'd like to get a definite on the tribe.

[Murfreesboro]

Pumpkin, it sounds as if you and I share similar desires. I wonder if you couldn't find out about your ancestry through some serious genealogical research? Things like birth certificates and places of origin, etc., should go a long way toward helping you discover which tribe your family might have belonged to.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Nevermore, I hope that camera wasn't too expensive. I did something simular with my 300 dollar Sony Walkman cassette player. In fact, I had a major bad luck streak with personal stereo equipment back in the 80s. I had a really nice Am/Fm stereo with cassette player, and I dropped it in the bath tub. Then I had a super expensive, professional model Sony Walkman cassette player which played standard bias, Cro2 bias and Metal bias tapes, and I was listening to it while I was mowing lawn at my brothers farm. I was on a John Deer tractor with a huge mower deck, and I noticed that my music suddenly stopped. I looked down, just as the mower deci picked up the unit and was spit out the side discharge in 1000 pieces. Then I had my very first Sony Walkman CD player, and some one smashed the window of my car and stold it.

Murf and others, I, too would like to meed up with some of the founding fathers, I especialy would love to meed Abraham Lincoln in person, all though he's not a founding father per se, but he did keep the U S together in the most volitile time in it's history. I would also love to meed all of my grandparents when they were cohearant.

Mike

[NeverMore]

Nah, Mike. The camera was one of those pocket digital video cameras. I only paid 150 or so for it, but I just bought it so I'm bummed.

As far as going back in time and meeting historical figures? I don't think I'd want to do that. Seems like our heroes never measure up in real life.

[Murfreesboro]

As far as going back in time and meeting historical figures? I don't think I'd want to do that. Seems like our heroes never measure up in real life.

Well, I've read a lot about the Revolutionary generation, so I don't think I'd be shocked to learn that they were just men. That is what interests me about them, actually. That they accomplished so much, seemed so preternaturally wise about governance, yet were really just people, not demigods.

I've come very late to an appreciation of Abraham Lincoln. Being from Mississippi and having deep Southern roots, I was disinclined to pay him much attention when I was growing up. But I started reading about him during his bicentennial year (2009), and I found both him and his generation quite compelling, though very tragic, of course. That was a very complex era. I think we have flattened out the causes of the Civil War, or have mythologized it to make it seem that it was only about slavery, when in fact it was about a number of issues. Even the attitudes toward the slaves were complex, up North as well as in the South. That is not an era I would wish to revisit, however. I am content to leave that one in the history books.

[Li H'Sen Chang]

Slavery here is very negative views but it really was just how things worked back in 1800s and even still like that many places to this day.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, it's negative here because it's wrong, and it flies in the face of all our stated ideals in our founding documents.

But it is true that slavery has been an accepted part of the human condition in (many) (most) societies since ancient times, and it is certainly true that it sill exists in certain parts of the world today. The fact that it has existed and continues to exist doesn't make it OK.

I guess, as a Southerner, I kind of feel as if we got scapegoated for that American problem. Southerners weren't the only people who practiced it; when it began to be "politically incorrect," many Northerners sold their slaves South rather than free them, as they would have done if they had been sincerely convicted of the importance and rectitude of abolition. And there were draft riots in NYC in 1863, after the Emancipation Proclamation, because many poor city-dwellers didn't want to fight and potentially die to free the slaves, who they feared would become their competition for work after the war.

Not saying that freeing the slaves wasn't a good thing to do. Just saying that nowadays, it seems people believe that the North was on the side of the angels, and the South was the devil incarnate. It was much more complicated than that.

[Li H'Sen Chang]

Wars are started for 2 reason either religion or money. The US Civil War was for money, and any reading about the north starting the war to free slaves is wrong. I read an article about someone crazy who wanted to make slaves legal again and to enslave all illegal immigration in United States.

[Murfreesboro]

I read an article about someone crazy who wanted to make slaves legal again and to enslave all illegal immigration in United States.

That's not going to happen, unless in some subtle way we are all enslaved--say, by our money becoming valueless, as in the Weimar Republic. I do fret about that to some extent, since the very thing they were doing in Weimar--printing more paper money to pay their exorbitant national debt--is what we are doing, too. But it's not like I personally can do anything about it.

As for the illegal immigrants--I think they are more vulnerable to being enslaved by the people who help to bring them here. I am not well-read on the subject, but whenever I hear about a <deleted>-slave ring, something like that, it seems many of the young women are illegal aliens. And I suppose illegals can be forced to accept sub-par wages by employers who know they can threaten them with deportation.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Slavery was undoubetedly one of the most devicive issues which faced the U S. The only more device issue that can even come close is that of abortion. The Civil War, however, was more about Federalism (Alegiance to the United States as a whole) vs Confederalism (Alegiance to one's home state as a "country." ) There were many in the South, and to a lesser extne, in the North, who thought of th eir home state as their nationality and country. They saw the United States as nothing more then a loosly tied together coalition of countries.

So it was more about Federalism vs Confederalism then it was about abolitionist against slavery. AND, I really do believe, that if we didn't have the civil war, and the Confederate army didn't fire on Fort Sumpter, I believe that slavery in the south would have ultimately been abolished anyway.