Dear Dave
Friday, 16 May 2008
Cut-price time travelling
Dear Dave,One of the arguments presented against the possibility of time travel is that, if it worked, we'd know about it - we'd have been visited by bus-loads of very smug people from the future by now.
Personally, I think there are a number of reasons why any successful time traveller would try to remain inconspicuous. More than that, they're bound to be very rare, since there's every chance they'd fail to pass on technical details of their discovery. For a start, travelling in time is extremely dangerous. It's well known that time travel almost always ends in being eaten by a dinosaur, enslaved by intelligent chimpanzees or exterminated by a Dalek. None of these outcomes is really conducive to getting scientific papers widely published.
Then there's the issue of paradoxes:
Thanks to Back to the Future, everyone is aware of the unfortunate consequences of chatting up their own mum. These simply aren't worth the happy side-effect of creating rock'n'roll. While this particular situation is easy to anticipate, other kinks in the chain of cause and effect are harder to avoid. For example, anyone who devotes their life to saving a loved one killed in a tragic pogo stick accident is asking for trouble.
What if, after years of expensive and exhausting work, they manage to make that leap back in time and warn their childhood sweetheart not crank up the spring and go for a bounce through the firing range next to the old, abandoned mine by the cliffs? If they avert the disaster, their past self has no reason to toil away inventing a time machine in order to travel back and avert the disaster. Worst case scenario, the entire fabric of the universe unravels like a toddler's knitted sweater snagged at the top of a helter-skelter. At the very least, someone's going to disappear up their own worm-hole.
Again, publications will to be few and far between.
Even if a time traveller were to avoid immediate mishap, there are only two likely uses for a time machine:
- Travelling back in time and betting on the horses.
- Travelling forwards in time and stealing some cool technology.
Yep, anyone who invents a time machine is going to keep it to themselves.
This is annoying because there are all sorts of advantages to living in the past. You don't have to go back that far at all before the music's better, for instance. Go back a little further and you won't have to worry about the environment because you'll be too busy worrying about nuclear Armageddon. Go back far enough and you can impress people with nothing more than a box of matches.
No matter how far you go, however, it's just plain cheaper:
A month after its release, I saw a computer game second-hand for half the original price. I resisted the urge to buy it and waited another couple of months. By then it was that price new and the second-hand price had halved again. Sure, when I took it home, I was playing a game that had been out for three months, but by living only a quarter of a year in the past, I'd made a saving of seventy-five percent.
It's the same with DVDs. One month a film is fifteen quid, the next it's in a 5 for 30 offer. By linking my home cinema via a time-warp directly to 1996, I save a fortune.
Interestingly, though, it's not the case that the further back in time one lives, the greater the saving made. With computer games, there's a point when older games start being harder to find. Really old games can become more expensive again as supply diminishes. With DVDs, the cheap version may be withdrawn in favour of the premium priced Special Edition.
What's the sweet spot? How far in the past is it necessary to live in order to enjoy the best deals?
For computer games, I'd say it's about three years. For DVDs, it's maybe only two. For music, perhaps it's five years but this is going to increase as digital downloads take over. There aren't going to be many CDs of recent music available to buy in the carboot sales of the future. Choice will be limited to the old, decent stuff bought by people like us. (Shame.)
Clothes require a little foresight. It's more complicated than simply popping down to the charity shop and seeing what fits. Very old clothes are cheap but they're likely to be falling apart and have a totally unshiftable smell of grannies about them. Relatively new clothes will be expensive and look remarkably dated. The trick is to buy clothes from ten years ago but then stick them out of harm's way in a cupboard for another five until they come back into fashion again. It's maybe time to pick up some outfits in lime green and bright orange that are going for a song...
As for fresh food, it's a case of living in last week and buying all the items that are marked down because they're rapidly approaching their use-by dates. Of course, the crunchy food will be soft and the soft food will be crunchy, so make sure to purchase a selection and choose recipes which require a variety of ingredients. It will all even out in the end.
Bear these tips in mind and your ears, eyes, mouth and wardrobe will be living in different temporal eras, but you'll save a pile of cash.
Don't tell anyone, though. We can't all do it. Someone's got to be seduced by the hype and pay over the odds for stuff on day of release in order for us to buy it second-hand later. And think of our pensions - if no one feeds the corporate machine, the stock markets will collapse and we're all doomed.
Remember: Time travel - keep it secret.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
PS We'd all have a Star Trek style holo-deck in our living-rooms if they weren't just as beguiling as time machines. A guy in Pasadena invented the technology years ago. He was going to go next door and tell his neighbour but then he popped into the thing to give it a quick test-drive. That was 1993. It was simply too much fun to come out again. (Of course, he thinks he came out in 2001...)
Labels: computer games, science, stuff
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008
Give them an inch...
Dear Dave,What constitutes a last shot?
That's a tricky question. It's all very well yelling, 'We're going home! Time for one last go!' when you want to leave the swing park but what do you actually mean? Is it one go on everything or a single shot on one thing? What if one child wants a turn on the swings and the other wants to go down the slide? A turn on the swings probably has to be a couple of minutes long to be worth it, so the kid on the slide should be allowed four or five shots to fill the time. Then again, four or five last shots is quite a lot. The kid on the swings is bound to complain that they're only getting one. And that's before they both start wanting a quick spin on the roundabout...
If the weather is nice and you're not desperate for a coffee or the toilet, you may be inclined to humour them but, if thunderclouds or vultures are circling, you may decide to hurry them up. Either way, it's liable to end in tears. Even if you do give them another five goes on the slide, a lengthy shot on the swing and enough time to turn themselves green on the roundabout, there's still a high probability they're going to throw a tantrum as soon as you mention leaving again. Sometimes it's best just to bite the bullet, tell them it's time to go and then go. If you're going to have to carry them off kicking and screaming, you might as well do it before it's started to rain.
Trying to ease through a transition can just prolong the pain. Sometimes a clearly defined and definite decision is the only way. If you're in any doubt, look out the window and try and estimate the distance to the end of the street.
Since, like me, you went to primary school in Britain in the Seventies, I'm guessing you have absolutely no idea how far that is. You're probably not even sure whether to answer in yards or metres. More than that, you know your height in feet but measure things in centimetres. You buy cheese in grams but weigh yourself in stone. Milk comes in pints, petrol comes in gallons and Coke comes in litres.
This is a mess. As far as I can work out, Britain tried to change from imperial to metric units at some point, got halfway through and then everyone who'd grown up with imperial complained that they couldn't be bothered to learn the new system. Concessions were made. We got stuck using both. With all the confusion, I didn't really get taught either.
Given the choice, I'd go for metric. Metric units are a great deal easier to work with than imperial units. I had to do a semester of high school physics in the States and I simply couldn't believe I had to use feet and pounds. It was a nightmare. Still, if I'd been brought up using the system exclusively it would have been second nature and better than the confusing mix I was brought up with. One or the other would have been better than half of each. The Americans did manage to get men to the moon after all.
I, meanwhile, struggle to bake cookies.
Jen over at The Road Less Traveled recently put a picture of some cookies up on her blog. They looked very tasty. She offered to send me some but, worried that Customs would eat them, I asked for the recipe instead. Then, when Fraser had a friend round, I distracted Marie by getting her to make the cookies with me. I imagined an idyllic father-daughter bonding session that had the happy by-product of melt-in-the-mouth chocolate chip goodness. I was prepared for the recipe to be in imperial units. It wasn't an issue. I'm used to chopping and changing between imperial and metric in recipes. 8 oz of flour is roughly 200g. I wasn't expecting to have a problem. I had most of the right ingredients - how badly could it go?
Then I read the recipe and discovered that I didn't need 8 oz of flour. I didn't need 200g... or 300g... or 10 oz... or any other weight. I needed two and a quarter cups.
That's not different units - that's an entire different scheme of measurement. It seems to be standard practice in the States but I didn't know that anyone measured solids by volume (other than Archimedes, of course, and clichéd new neighbours trying to scrounge some sugar).
Under different circumstances, I might have looked up conversion charts online but I already had various potentially laptop-destroying foodstuffs all over the table and an excited child waiting expectantly in an apron. I quickly hunted around and found a measuring vessel marked in cups. Whether these were American or imperial cups, I have no idea, but it was better than nothing. (Americans don't actually use imperial units - they use something closely related but even less wieldy, so all the more credit to them for dominating the world. Having to work in Fahrenheit and fathoms is clearly character building.)
I got Marie to help measure things out. Flour was OK, sugar was easy, but when it came to the butter, well... that wasn't so good. The recipe seemed to acknowledge that measuring butter in a cup wasn't the best plan, however. It happily told me that a cup of butter is equivalent to 'two sticks'. This wasn't all that helpful. I can only assume that a stick of butter is more than a twig and less than a tree but none of this really helped with the cookies. Everything became somewhat less precise at that point. It's hard to imagine anyone doing any lunar exploring using this particular system.
Apollo 13: We've fired the thrusters but we're still off target!
Mission Control: Oh shoot! We figured everything out on the basis you'd be coming back with 513 cups of moon rock. Hang on a minute while we recalculate everything.
Half an hour passes...
Apollo 13: Come on, we're heading to Mars here!
Mission Control: Yeah, yeah, we're working on it. Hey, by the way, do any of you guys know if it's three sticks of basalt per cup or four?
We got there eventually:
I think I may have used half a branch of butter rather than two sticks but the cookies were pretty tasty nonetheless. I made some with nuts and some without but all the children then point-blank refused to eat any of the nutty ones.
Shame.
Munch... Munch, munch...
Anyway, I'm sure it would have been easier if I'd grown up measuring things in cups. Just as I'm sure that my life would have been simpler if some government official in the Seventies had stubbornly decided to ignore the whingers and press on with metrication. If they'd told the European Commission to get lost and gone back to imperial that would have been fine too. Hopefully our kids will only be taught metric but I will probably never know how far it is to the end of the street or be able to estimate how many limbs a bag of Pic'n'Mix is going to cost me before I reach the checkout. ("What do you mean, 'two arms and a leg?' Hang on while I put these Strawberry Laces back...")
Yep, sometimes an easy transition isn't worth it. A clean break is what's needed.
I like to give my children fair warning of where we're going and what we're doing but I've let them wheedle 'another five minutes' or 'one last extra, extra shot' out of me a few too many times. They've come to expect it. Getting them to appreciate that we really have to leave right now is very difficult and tends to involve me having to shout. I've started being much firmer. There's still some shouting involved at present but, if they can learn that when it's time to go, it's time to go, life will be less difficult in the long run. There'll be fewer tears and we'll get soaked less often. Hey, you never know, there may even be more cookies...
Oh, no, my mistake, I've eaten them all. Mmmmmm...
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: science
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Wednesday, 7 March 2007
What do you mean we're out of wipes?
Dear Dave,We had a family day on Saturday.
Yes, that's right, that's one of those occasions where we drag the kids kicking and screaming away from the TV and computer and force them to have an exciting trip to somewhere cold and wet. This lasts from the moment they've finished their breakfasts until a time well after they were supposed to be in bed and long since they have ceased to be civil. The trauma helps us bond together as a unit and is a good excuse to drink a bottle of wine when it's all over.
On this particular occasion there was a deal where we could buy a special train ticket to Glasgow and then go to lots of attractions for free once we got there. Being cheapskates, this appealed to us and we set off early in order to visit as many places - and thus save as much money - as we possibly could. Of course some of the most expensive things in life are free, and our pockets were steadily drained of cash by cafeterias and giftshops thoughout the day. Still, we saw plenty of things we would never have got round to otherwise.
We ended up at the Science Centre. (The home of Nina and the Neurons, CBeebies fans!)
This is a fantastic place full of hands-on experiments and exhibits but our first concern was grabbing lunch. It was pretty decent. Marie refused everything apart from milk and Hula Hoops but the rest of us tucked in. As usual, though, the boys finished their food before drinking their drinks - their vast, brimming cups of chocolate milk. There are only so many times I can say, "Drink your drinks before they get spilled," without giving up in despair, however. That's something I need to work on. Quite how Fraser managed to launch his beverage container a foot into the air while still creating enough rotational motion to splatter all of us is a mystery.
After we'd cleaned up the mess, I went and got Fraser another chocolate milk and I picked up some fruit for later. He gulped it down and we headed to the vast hall full of wonders. Sarah let the younger kids press buttons until they were bored and then pointed them in the direction of something else. I vainly attempted to explain to Fraser the polarity of magnets, the fundamentals of flight and the propagation of sound. He ignored me, pressed buttons until he was bored and then ran off to find something else. I gave up. I taught him to do a Towers of Hanoi puzzle, added a couple of extra rings made from a key fob and a wrist strap, and sat down for a long rest. A very long rest.
Later we went to the giftshop. It was crammed with brightly-coloured exciting looking things packed full of educational potential. I quickly tried to hide my wallet in my sock but Fraser was too fast. He grabbed a pack of plastic bobbly things.
"Can I get this?"
"What is it?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"How much does it cost?
"Five pounds."
"That's a little expensive for something when you don't even know what it is."
"How about this then?" he said, grabbing a smaller pack of different plastic bobbly things.
"What's that?"
"I don't know."
"How much is it?"
"One pound and fifty pence."
"OK," I sighed. "I guess that's more reasonable. Go and give the money to the man at the till." He went off happily just as Lewis approached, a board game clutched to his chest. From somewhere else in the shop I heard the familiar voice of a little girl scream, "You don't touch it! Pink dinosaur mine!" I sighed again.
We left as closing approached and caught the open-top tour bus (another part of the deal) for a scenic trip back to the station. We all piled upstairs and sat along the back. The boys were starting to wilt and I gave them the fruit to keep them going. This was a mistake. After they'd already gorged themselves, I bit into an apple and discovered it was quite sour. There was nothing wrong with it as such, it was just not very sweet in a way that suggested it might take some concentrated digestion. I suspected it was not really the thing to give two boys prone to travel sickness while they sat on a bus twisting and juddering its way through the Glasgow traffic.
"Are you feeling OK, Fraser?" I asked nervously.
"Yeah," he replied. "Why?"
"No reason," I said. "How about...?" I began turning to Lewis but I was already too late.
Everything happened at once.
My younger son leant over the back railing and spewed mightily, somewhat to the surprise of the cyclist directly behind us. I called down an apology but I had more immediate concerns: the sight and smell of Lewis' titanic chunder had started Fraser gagging. I grabbed the plastic bag containing our souvenirs, emptied it in Sarah's lap and then held it under Fraser's chin. I was barely in time to catch the geyser of chocolate milk which erupted from his mouth and just kept coming. There was so much, and it was under such high pressure, I expected it to spray out his ears at any moment. Then, finally, the seismic activity eased and I sighed in relief - I had caught every drop. I held the bag aloft in triumph.
Unfortunately, it had a hole in the bottom.
I stared at the hole, my eyes wide in horror, and time slowed. The trinkets falling at Sarah's feet hung in the air, I could hear my own heartbeat and I suddenly noticed the warm, damp feeling around my knees. Reality spun round my outstretched arm...
...then snapped back into place. I dumped the bag on the floor and hunted for the wipes. The previous chocolate milk incident had seriously depleted our supplies and a couple of nappy changes had left us very short indeed. We had one left. One wipe to last us nearly two hours. One wipe to see us through over three hundred and fifty child-minutes. That's not a lot of back up. I decided to save it in case of a real disaster and cleaned up as best I could with my scarf. By the time we reached our stop, Fraser and I looked nearly presentable.
We were left with that age-old dilemma of whether to leave the leaking bag of sick on the top deck of the bus or to carry it the full length of the bus, down the stairs and out the door, leaking a trail of sick behind us. Tricky. In the end, I put the bag inside my woolly hat and made a break for it. I hurtled to the door, leapt onto the pavement and barged my way to the nearest bin, the crowd parting before me like the Red Sea before Moses. (Though I doubt he yelled "Let me through! I have a hat full of sick!" to get the job done).
I was tempted to dump the hat with its contents but instead stowed it with my scarf in the net carrier under the buggy, as far from anything else as I could manage.
We cleaned up a bit more in the station and headed home. We'd had a pretty good day, even if some of us did smell faintly of curdled chocolate milk. Marie fell asleep on the way and the boys played with their new toys. I spent most of the journey rescuing multi-coloured bits of plastic from obscure crevices of ScotRail seating. Some of these little gaps were unpleasantly sticky but I did score a two pound coin, a return journey from Falkirk and a Lego Darth Vader complete with light-sabre. Result!
It was extremely chilly when we got back to Edinburgh and by the time we had walked half way home I was freezing. I peered under the buggy in an effort to see if my hat and scarf had gone crusty yet. Sarah rubbed her hands against the cold. "Don't even think about it," she said without even looking at me. Marie was snuggled cosily under a blanket so I stole her pink, fluffy pixie hat and jammed it down on my head. It's possible I may have looked like a lunatic but it's only a real lunatic who walks around with cold ears when they have other options.
It was late. We got home and bundled the kids into bed before putting on a load of washing and settling down in our pyjamas with a bottle of wine and the TiVo remote.
"You did well today," said Sarah as we cuddled up on the sofa.
"You did too."
"Want to go to Dundee next week? I got this leaflet in the Science Centre about... What?"
"More wine..." I muttered. "More wine..."
"Never mind." She kissed me and then poured me another glass. "I'll tell you tomorrow."
"Good idea," I said and reached for the remote. "Now which is it going to be - Vegas, New York or Miami?"
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed.
Labels: children, favourite, science, sickness
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
Sunday, 4 March 2007
My children are doomed
Dear Dave,Fraser is very good at maths and has learnt to speak Pokemon. I've been thinking about whether I've turned him into a geek or whether it was just inevitable. I think the answer is probably just 'yes'.
Yours in a woman's world,
Ed. Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here. 2:07 PM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post
