There's a *big* dipper too?

What if you only existed for a week at a time, once a year (say from Christmas to New Years)? And you aged normally during these weeks and lived until these one-week periods totaled a normal human lifespan? So you would live for several thousand years, one week per year. What would you do? If possible, you'd create a cult where successive generations of people could each function as your main contact, updating you on what happened over the past year. How closely could you keep up with what was going on? Would this cult try to manipulate you? You couldn't let this cult control your information too closely. Would you be exceptionally wise or just have no idea what was going on most of the time? What language(s) would you speak? I'm imagining an interaction with the public much like that of The Pope. Would your pronouncements be any more or less insightful or relevant than those of The Pope? Would you take the time to learn to drive? You could probably get pretty rich, or at least sustain yourself in high style, on antiques and compound interest.

It would be nice if you, for example, had met Jesus. But it's not that likely that you would have, given the rate at which people and information traveled back then. Also, I don't think that he was nearly as famous during his life as he is now.

Bad Double Feature Idea

If you were forced to watch Cujo and Beethoven in succession, which would you watch first? Maybe this combination would be better as a hilarious switcharoo farce. Sort of like the end of Bringing up Baby.

The Botwins Must Die

I've been watching Weeds on DVD. It started out all right. It was funny enough. As he rarely has been, even on Weekend Update, Kevin Nealon is reminiscent, consciously I'm sure, of early '80s Chevy Chase. I would even say that the show sometimes provided insight as a clever dismemberment of suburban life.

However, now that I've gotten through the first disk of the third season, I'm pretty much ready for all of the characters (except maybe the little kid) to get killed. Unfortunately, I know there are at least 2 more seasons.

My New Years Resolution?

1024 x 768

Time Travel

Traveling forward in time is simple. You can travel close to light speed, fall asleep locked in a closet, or just sit there (if you're satisfied with your current rate of travel which is one second per second). Backward is another story. The logical problems can be solved if the state of the universe is "saved off" at periodic intervals like a hardDrive backup. Then, when you go to a previous state, all of the states after the destination state are blown away and, if you travel forward again, it's just like locking yourself in a closet. So, the future world you arrive at will only be the same as the one you left if every single coin flip and other random event turns out *exactly* the same as they had in the world you remembered.

This leaves the physical problem of conservation of mass. If you go back in time, the destination universe suddenly has more mass (you are added). This can be fixed by relativity, but the amount of energy to account for something big (like a person) is far too much for any conceivable device to generate. You also need to absorb the energy released by your disappearance in the present. However, something tiny, like a subatomic particle, could be managed this way. Information, for example, in the form of one spinning quark per bit (spin direction = bit value) could be sent. Say, 32 (enough to win the lottery) would be perfectly reasonable for a modern device.

Of course, the problem of random events reoccurring still exists, but if you minimize the amount of time it has to travel backward and the influence of those who know the result, you could probably still win it (though it may take a few tries).