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

I am pleased to see that Eric Ashley has posted a new review, this one of a martial arts movie, The Prodigal.  I took the liberty of marking it as “review” rather than “article”, which moved its position on the front page, but I think that’s a better category (and we need reviews as much as articles).  I’m also intrigued by the review, and might have to keep an eye open for this film.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on my own films, having posted Terminator part 8:  a few dead men, which considers the problem raised by the fact that the T-X terminator has a list of John Conner’s lieutenants from the future, including some significant identifying information (a DNA sample of at least one, a retinal scan of at least one other), but it manages to find and kill at least some on the list.  The problem is, if they’re killed in the past, how can they be on a list of lieutenants in the future?  The temporal anomalies Examiner article provides some possible answers to this, saving the series from disaster.

Meanwhile, Valdron’s directors have suggested that we find someone outside the company to give feedback/reaction to the script for the time travel video lecture.  The Gaming Outpost people were mentioned specifically, because some of you understand replacement theory and some do not, but you might be interested.  (It was suggested that I contact people by private message, but apart from the fact that I would not be comfortable putting anyone on the spot for this, we don’t have private messaging ability here.)  I probably need two or at most three people, preferably with very divergent levels of understanding of the theory.  If you’re interested, you can post here, to the forum, or probably best send me an e-mail at the time travel address, and I’ll get back to you.  (Since I’ll probably have to e-mail the script to you, contacting me by e-mail probably saves a step in the process.)

So thanks for everything.

–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

As I post Terminator part 6:  John and Kate to the Examiner temporal anomalies series, I am very much aware that there is another “John and Kate” in the entertainment field, and that I might attract searches for that other couple and their collection of minors and tawdry gutter press adventures.  I’m not worried about it.  The Terminator series has not done so well as I anticipated, and an influx of traffic, even if it’s looking for something else, might help.

I am reminded of a discussion recently on the Christian Gamers Guild list.  There is an online strategy game entirely about very nearly abstract kingdom building.  Its Internet presence is defined by an ad series in which sexy female characters invite netizens to come “play”.  It is apparently a rather effective ad campaign.  Someone I know (outside the guild) who plays says there is a constant influx of new players who are around for about a week and then ask where all the sexy girls are, at which point the regulars tell them no, there are no sexy girls, it’s just a kingdom building strategy game, and about half of them leave–and about half of them stay.  The three main positions in the argument are 1) because the ads are suggestive (some would say pornographic, but I think that’s a bit harsh) Christians should boycott the game; 2) Madison Avenue always uses sex to sell hamburgers, and everything else (seen any Quiznos ads lately?) and our participating in such a game should not be based on whether we approve the advertising techniques but whether we wish to be involved with people playing the game; 3) quite apart from the suggestive nature of the ads, they are misleading, a bait-and-switch technique, and we ought to boycott them on the principle that they are misrepresenting their product publicly.  I was more inclined toward the second view (I am so moderate in everything), but I confess that there is something to the third.

I mention it because I think sometimes I get traffic to pages of people who were seeking something completely different, but liked what they found.  Correct that.  I know that that has happened sometimes frequently.  My song lyrics I Use to Think, which contain the repeated refrain, “Is that all there is”, brings me occasional letters from people who were looking for the song of that title and finding mine instead wanted to thank me for them.  So I know that a piece of a title or a repeated fragment of text on a page can bring traffic that wanted something else, and that this can be good traffic that comes back.  So I’m not particularly unhappy about it–at least until I start to feel like I was intentionally misleading people.

I don’t feel that here.  I thought of the title first, then spotted the connection.  I’m sure that the fact that John and Kate without the eight have the same names as that other John and Kate influenced by decision to stay with this title, but I don’t think it was done deceptively, even if the deception is perceptibly to my advantage.

In other news, a couple months ago someone at Valdron Inc suggested that the company might like to produce and release a video lecture on time travel theory, by me.  One of the directors there is in the field of video production, and considers it a plausible project.  I’m not certain whether all the other hopes are realistic (it has been suggested that we could get it to air on PBS, and I will be very but not unpleasantly surprised if that happens), but the project has officially begun:  I am writing the lecture.  If nothing else, it will foster the illusion that I can teach in public.  I haven’t done that for a few years now, and never from a script, but it’s something new, and hopefully I’m not too old for something new.

–M. J. Young

I anticipate a minimum five to six hour “errand” today.  I volunteered, sort of, and I am not complaining–just trying to organize my day well enough that I don’t wind up regretting it all tomorrow–or at least, so I don’t wind up still regretting it all on Wednesday.

This organization means that having been awakened and asked another favor involving morning transportation, I determined to take advantage of my vertical position by posting the latest Examiner temporal anomalies article and announcing it in those places where I do, Terminator part 5:  square one squared.  This one looks at how the end of Terminator 2:  Judgment Day sets up a beginning for Terminator 3:  Rise of the Machines which is similar to but distinct from the original history.

I am working on The Last Mimzy for the next film.  I knew going in that it would be challenging, but I think I’m managing.

.

–M. J. Young

Yesterday had me running an “errand” which was expected to take not less than six hours and ultimately took near eleven, with part of it pushed into tomorrow (could have been today, but I was still recuperating from yesterday), followed on the heals by another errand which is very unpredictable in length and took another couple hours.  Between the two I determined that the M. J. Young Net website had been restored, so I casually downloaded the backlogged e-mail–which even though most of a week of it is missing totaled over seventy letters in the primary box alone, all of which is awaiting my attention today.

Consequently, I seriously doubt whether I will get through all of today’s work given that I have that still waiting, and it will take me most of today and maybe part of tomorrow.  Meanwhile, I did manage to post today’s temporal anomalies article at the Examiner, Terminator part 4:  sidestepping infinity, dealing with the problem created when Sarah Conner uses information from the future to change the future on which her information is based.  Fans of the old site will probably remember how that was accomplished, but it’s restated here as part of the reconstruction of the history for the analysis of the new film.

So I left something for you all to read, even if I don’t get to the games today.

–M. J. Young

The third post in the Examiner’s Terminator temporal anomalies series posted today, and again it, Terminator part 3:  history repeats itself yet again, is about how Sarah Conner must have been killed by a terminator or no one would have come back to protect anyone, this time a T-800 to protect John.  It’s all building a background for the introduction of the consideration of the new Terminator Salvation, which is temporally complicated even without being a time travel story per se.

I have run into web site trouble, this time with the M. J. Young net site.  It’s complicated; it’s being fixed.  Meanwhile, all M. J. Young Net pages (temporal anomalies, martial arts, whatever) can be accessed as Multiverser.org pages, simply by replacing the one domain with the other.  The e-mail accounts are not so fortunate, but they should be restored soon enough.

I have a time-consuming errand slated for tomorrow.  Hopefully it will not consume more than time, however, there has to be some prep for it tonight.

I’m sure I wanted to mention something else, but since I can’t think of it and don’t have time to ponder, I’ll end here.

–M. J. Young

I sat here for several minutes attempting to come up with a title for this post that did not contain the word slut; my first idea was That Slut Sarah, and as I tried to work it into a more acceptable title, I couldn’t seem to get away from that one word.  The problem is, continuing The Examiner’s temporal anomalies series on Terminator, I’ve come to the second article, Terminator part 2:  Sarah Conner’s child, in which it is evident that whether or not Kyle Reese comes to 1984, Sarah Conner is going to become pregnant by somebody right around this time.  There has to be a child for SkyNet to want to kill before there can be one for Kyle Reese to protect, so she must have had a different child who John Conner replaced.  Well, that’s the main point of an article which attempts to summarize all the significant temporal events of the first film.

In other news, I am pleased to see that Eric Ashley has published a new article, a set of book briefs he recommends.  I have been of late encouraging Gaming Outpost regulars to contribute to the articles, reviews, and blogs of this site, in the hope that we can build a fresh interest in what is already here and perhaps rebuild the community to some degree.  Consider this your engraved invitation to participate.

Cold and snow have been the defining factors this year.  I’m sure that by some argument that makes perfect sense to die-hard believers the latter will be blamed on global warming.  I blame the former–my cold–on the latter, that I have been outside moving the white powder far more than I would expect for these map coordinates.  It snows here almost every winter, but rarely does it stick for more than two or three days at the outside, and shovels are more for clearing the deck so there’s a place to sit outside in the sun.  I hear its worse south of here in D.C., but we’ve had a few feet already since December started, and it has not entirely been absent since that first whiteout.  It’s also cost us power a couple times, but the crews around here are sent out to patrol as soon as the severe storm warnings are issued, so they usually have things back faster even than they expect.

Got to run–things to do.

–M. J. Young

I have wrapped up the temporal anomalies examination of Butterfly Effect at The Examiner with my conclusions, Butterfly Effect part 18:  where it fails, which gives you my conclusion in a nutshell.  Oddly I received a note yesterday from someone who apparently had only recently found the Temporal Anomalies site and wanted me to do a full analysis of Butterfly Effect; I sent him to the new series.

My big concern at the moment is that my Terminator series is not yet drafted, and I keep failing to have enough time to watch the film again.  If I don’t manage to squeeze in a viewing tonight (which is looking somewhat doubtful) I won’t see it probably until Saturday evening, which is pushing close to the Monday start date.  The Valdron directors meanwhile are trying to figure out how to push me forward on other projects, recognizing that my involvement in running the forum game takes several hours from every day and trying to find ways to reduce that.  Well, it appears that that’s been a problem for a long time, last mentioned in August of 2007, and not closer to being resolved now.

So let me see what I can resolve now.

–M. J. Young

As I post the penultimate Examiner temporal anomalies article in this series, Butterfly Effect part 17:  the other Evans, about the missing doppelgangers in the altered histories, I am concerned about whether I will finish the Terminator Salvation analysis this week.  I expect to go live with it seven days from today, and I am not ready.

Well, no point hanging around here worried about it; there’s work to be done.

–M. J. Young