Of Time Travel and Ghost – an Abstract

So as the title suggest this post will be a little out there. It is totally fictional and is the start to maybe a fictional book I have been longing to write. Time travel remains one of those few mysteries that remains unsolved. As with all science fiction it is normally based on science fact and normally inspires us to find ways to make the fiction reality. My realization of science fiction to fact started with 20,000 leagues under the sea, we built submarines. I then realized that airplanes had been idealized as science fiction until the wright brothers created one. Phazers turned into Lasers, and whole body scans turned into MRI machines. Even now newer movies like Vanilla Sky have introduced us to multitouch/finger/gesture based computing. So it is not far fetched to think that things like Time Travel will never be possible it is just not possible yet.

Now the other part of my title “Ghost”. The term may throw you off especially since we have a prelude that seems based on science both factitious and real. Ghost have been in many stories and scientist has sought to prove or disprove them for years. Ghost is an elusive term that sit’s right on the realm of science since it is only believed in by those who think they have seen them… or those that want to. Either way I am referring to ghost as being able to see or hear someone after they have passed. I don’t necessarily believe this is possible but that is not relative to this abstract as I am not trying to prove anything just provide an alternate theory as to why they may exist.

So why the two topics together you might ask? I recently watched a movie “The Time Travelers Wife” which gave me the inspiration to this theory of mine. So now I will attempt to intertwine the two theory’s of Time Travel and Ghost in a manor that would explain my peculiar title.

There are those among us with special abilities. Since we humans began to keep record there has been reports of those among us who posses abilities beyond the explanation of science at the time. We see these today with stories of tree people and mind movers. We even watch shows like Heroes that depict such characters. In some of these records there are tell of people who can manipulate space and time itself “traveling” to any destination at anytime they wish. Such was the case of Henry DeTamble a Time Traveler. In his case he could not define the when and where of his travels but he traveled nevertheless. Time Travel was not as sparkling for him as he longed to be part of society but wound up naked in several weird positions. In the end it was time travel that finally killed him as he was shot mistaken for a deer. What I find odd about this is that all through the movie he kept stating he could never travel beyond his own life but yet after he died his daughter and mother saw him briefly in a field. Now I don’t know a specific definition of a ghost but as I defined it previously at this point Henry was a ghost.

So let’s say for a moment that Time Travel is possible by a genetic alteration in a human and that not every time traveler possesses the aptitude to control their ability. Lets also say that like in the case of henry time travel starts with an emotional escape (his mother died in a wreck where he was in the car). Would you not say that it is possible that a time traveler may live their whole lives and never travel until they are beginning the most emotional thing in their lives. death? I think so.

So now we have established three things. Time travel is possible. Some if not most travelers never know they can travel until an emotional, near-death experience. Time travelers can travel outside of their own lifespan. So with that we can hypothesize that maybe ghost are humans that posses the travelers gene. But let me give a little more backround on ghost behavior before I give my full hypotenuse.

Ghost sightings happen quite regularly and scientist have been trying to prove or disprove them for years. Nobody knows what triggers a ghost sighting and no one knows when one will occur. all that we know is that thousands of eye-witnesses have described the encounters differently from strange sounds to full on people able to interact with the living. There have been movies about ghost like “Ghost” and even several tv shows such as “Dead Like Me”. Ghost are normally described as a tormented disoriented soul. The sounds heard are normally of someone in agony. The images are normally of someone old and grotesque. Ghost have never been seen as friendly and ghost if you think about the descriptions normally describe someone near death.

So what if we were to now hypothesis not only that ghost are humans that posses the travelers gene. But also that ghost are time travelers that do not know they can travel and are near death. Maybe the travelers travel repeatedly and only for a second at a time? That would explain why sightings are brief and rarely recorded. Since such a traveler is in the agony of death combined with the disorientation of travel itself would they be portrayed as ghost and not time travelers.

So now you have it. I think ghost are not ghost at all but merely time travelers that did not know they where.

I hoped you enjoyed this little trip of mine down science fiction. If the tweet/comment response from this post is good I will write some more on the topic.
David Bates

Adobe Flash 10.1 The Good, The Better, and The Scary

Today Adobe released their new version of the flash player 10.1 and I will say it was a much anticipated update for me. I love flash and have developed in it since it’s early day when it was another product altogether. Flash started out as a way for me to program desktop apps that looked and felt the way I wanted as I have always loved to be able to create the interface and then program it to do what I want. Since then my love of Flash has faded in and out as changes and flaws where found in the system. I almost completely wrote off flash until YouTube and Air had launched. I had been writing projectors for autoplay cd’s for years and air gave me a whole different type of application delivery mechanism. Anyway I love flash and even though I use Silverlight quite a bit, when someone needs a project completed in a hurry and want it to look custom my default is always Flash. So with that here are my thoughts on the release.

The Good:
As you all are aware Apple recently hit Adobe below the belt saying that security flaws and memory errors. I would have expected that in Adobe’s press release they would have addressed that first. But instead they slyly take on the mobile market slating that performance and low power was their main focus. This should make Google happy as it show them that Adobe is not lying down and taking Apple’s low punch lightly.
Better Hardware video decoding… they already own most of the video market. HTML is too early and silver light is just now hitting the market hard. I would have liked to have seen more about HTML 5 video and how Adobe was going to provide tools for video publishing compatible with HTML 5.
Mac Specific Improvements: this is a straight jab at Jobs. I read this as here you go. You wined and we fixed it, now put us in the iPad

The Better:
Mulitouch: I have been having to use third party apps to accomplish this thusfar it is great to see this come to the mainstream and is also another sideways jab at Jobs
Multi-Tab memory usage: This is much improved and a much anticipated release. If you have a ton of windows open and multiple flash objects they each have their own memory space. Adobe has streamlined this now.

The Scary:

Ok this one paragraph scared the heck out of me:
“Now, content that runs in Flash Player will automatically shut down when the available memory is running low.”
This is scary because what if you are running a mission critical flash app and you run out of memory? They also did not state whether it was physical RAM or paged? Scary stuff.

Hope you enjoy
David Bates

Welcome Samuel Lucas Bates

Baby Sam was born on June 7th at 10:58am he weighed 7pounds and was 20″ long. We are still out on the haircolor as my wife refuses to believe she didn’t get the darker hair she requested but he has big blue eyes and looks like his older brother Daniel. Jess was in labor for about 12hours and did remarkably well. Daniel has taken well to his new duties as Big Brother and has helped us sooth baby Sam several times by giving suggie and holding his hand. My Mother-In-Law has a blog as well with more pictures and description… check it out here and enjoy the pictures below:

Heres to a bright future and much daddy play time
David Bates