The Gaming Outpost

I am seated next to a printout of a poster announcing a concert on Friday, April 16, 7:00 PM at the Abundant Life Assembly, 44 Route 50, Ocean View (Seaville), New Jersey, where the headliners are a duo completely unfamiliar to me, Tal & Acacia, but where Baxter and I will also be performing two songs under the name Collision, included in the poster listing as “along with exciting up & coming area bands”.  Lift FM (locally WZFI) is sponsoring the concert effectively free, although those who attend are expected to bring a non-perishable food item to be used by the local food banks.  So I guess I’m playing a benefit concert.

Meanwhile, the temporal anomalies articles on The Examiner continue with Terminator part 15:  bad dates, which examines the hidden problem with the birth of Kyle Reese.  Kyle appears to have been born sometime between 1997 and 2004–which means that he was born in the relatively peaceful period before SkyNet destroyed the world in 2004 and in the post-apocalyptic chaos following SkyNet’s destruction of the world in 1997.  The odds of the same person being born in both histories are incredibly low, yet it must happen to avoid an infinity loop.  This article considers how it might, but leaves another answer for next time.

I was also offered a copy of Hot Tub Time Machine, which if it comes I will probably prioritize, as someone already asked about it.  I am told it is perhaps a bit irreverent, but the Bill & Ted movies were certainly irreverent, and so was Time Bandits, so that’s not new in itself.  (I’ve done analyses of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and found interesting original concepts explored in both, so I know that irreverence does not necessarily mean worthless.)

So things keep moving.

–M. J. Young

O.K., so I still have trouble coming up with titles.  It will suffice.

I have a major drive errand slated for today, and only hope to get everything else done; however, I got an early start to clear as much of it as possible before I hit the road, which will be within the hour and after an intervening errand.  I should be back in about four hours, and might be able to finish everything else when I return.

I have already uploaded the latest Examiner temporal anomalies article, and posted the primary announcements apart from this one (it goes to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and IMDB as soon as I can get it there, and gets uploaded to my own site, but since I spend more time on this it usually gets posted here later in the day).  Terminator part 14:  fixed or replaced? examines the claims of certain fans that the films ought to be understood as fixed time stories, not replacement theory stories, which I of course reject.  My reasons are outlined in the article.

I’ve also stolen some time to practice the music with Baxter, but we need more practice in the little time remaining.  I’ve also heard of another venue looking for an act, and submitted our name for it.  I answered a Terminator question in an article to run after the series, and began reworking some of the articles on The Last Mimzy so as not to be quite so harsh.  Time is short, though, and I’ve got to run.

–M. J. Young

The Examiner’s temporal anomalies series continues with Terminator part 13:  killing Niven’s grandfather.  Niven’s Law at least implies that once something has been changed in the past it stays changed, even if the future is so altered that it cannot become changed.  John Conner disagrees, or at least does not want to take the chance that Niven is wrong; Skynet, on the other hand, appears not to want to take the chance that Niven is right.  Thus we have the interesting flirtation with paradox discussed in this entry.

I’m thinking that I’m going to have to redo a fair amount of my Mimzy analysis, because I think I was too hard on the film, and not for any good reason.  I just started seeing how very implausible it was for things to work, and wrote it off as an impossibility; but it is only an extreme implausibility, and I don’t know that I made that clear.  Anyway, hopefully I’ll find some time to do that before time expires.  I also have to write a bridging article, probably an answer to a question someone raised already about the Terminator timelines, but I think I can do that easily enough.

Meanwhile, a friend and gamer who thinks that I am most alive when I do my music has extended an invitation to me to perform an acoustic concert somewhere, and I’ve invited Baxter, the last remaining vestige of the band Collision, to duo with me.  That’s going to require some practice time, but I do think there’s something about performing that brightens my days, so I’m going to prioritize this.  Already I’ve inquired about another potential venue for us, and we’ve had a quick rehearsal to see what songs we could muster in two and a half weeks.

So I remain forever busy and never wealthy.  It is, perhaps, my own curse.

–M. J. Young

Indeed, in a recent comment to a previous Blogless Lepolt entry, John Cross asked the question I was prepared to answer in today’s Examiner temporal anomaly article, which is how SkyNet new that Kyle Reese was John Conner’s father.  That, though, assumes facts not in evidence, as my Evidence professor would have said.  An effort to get to the truth of the matter is found in Teminator part 12:  paternity test?, released earlier today.

It is a good thing I did that then, as today got eaten by tigers, I think, judging from how swiftly it vanished and left me nothing but scraps.  But that happens sometimes, and we just push forward.

–M. J. Young

On Friday I completed a draft of the full upcoming series on The Last Mimzy for the Examiner’s temporal anomalies articles, ten installments covering everything from Tibetan Mandalas to civil engineering.  Then on Saturday I was bedridden by what appears to have been a nasty but brief influenza hit.  I went as far as the bathroom several times, and a bit farther once or twice, but I will spare you the biological details.  I was adequately recovered by Sunday to return to work, and my wife half-joked about how well I’d planned my illness to cripple me on my day off.

I also realized, in the midst of the sickness, that I had missed an important detail in the Mimzy examination, and so had to return to the series, insert a new article at number 7, and renumber and relink all the other articles.  But I am now satisfied with the overall series, which will require only minor editing (I hope) between now and its launch next month.  The outline of the articles is already posted to The Examiner Connection, the page where I index the articles.

That page also shows that today I posted Terminator part 11:  wrong or Wright?, which considers the implications of SkyNet’s statement that its best machines had repeatedly failed to kill John Conner.  Does this indicate knowledge of events in the past that have not yet been initiated from the future?  That is, does SkyNet already know that its T-800, T-1000, and T-X, which it has not yet even invented, have already failed to kill Sarah, John, and Kate (Brewster) Conner in the past?  That would be a significant anomaly, and would force us to ask why SkyNet doesn’t change what it is going to do in response to that knowledge.

Which is what the article asks, and what I hope it adequately answers.

–M. J. Young

The latest installment of the temporal anomalies articles at The Examiner has been posted.  Terminator part 10:  resequencing considers the peculiar aspect of the position of the film in the lives of those around it.  For John Conner, Skynet has already tried to kill his mother, and him, and his lieutenants, and is now after his father; for Skynet, the attack on Kyle Reese comes first, before the attacks on Sarah or the young John or Kate and company.  That raises some interesting questions about the film, some of which will await next week’s post.

I’ve received some feedback on the time travel lecture script, but could use more, particularly from someone whose understanding of the theory is considerably weaker or non-existent.  Again, drop me a note at Traveler@Multiverser.org if you’re interested and have a spare hour or so you can devote to reading and commenting.

Thanks again.

–M. J. Young

On Friday I did not do more than scan the forum here.  My excuse is that I ran out of time; the cause of that is that I got caught up in finishing the draft of the script for the time travel lecture I mentioned last week.  It took something between three and four hours to write, proof, and time what look to be about a one hour lecture, and now I’m awaiting feedback from the people who are producing it.

I have not thereby fallen behind on the temporal anomalies posts for The Examiner, but today posted Terminator part 7:  the Kate escape, in which I consider the problem posed by the fact that Kate sends the T-800 back to protect her in Terminator 3, but in order for her to do so she must survive and escape from the terminator sent to kill her before that.  There is a solution, which I think I’ve covered.

There’s more on my plate, though, so I’d better wrap up here and head for the rest of the work.

–M. J. Young