Time Machine

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Nu uh. Edison invented hamsters. Al Gore invented the Public School System.

[Jackie "the Librarian", Cool Star Trek Nerd]

He keeps it in his lockbox, with the blueprint for the internets...

[Ruth]

What fun, Charissa. I'm glad you looked it up. And you're exactly right. I can take off my Art History Lecturer hat right now.

[Sarah]

Mmmm smarties.

[Dave]

Then why are you calling it the Mundi? Mundi is genitive, Axis is nominative. It should be called the Axis. Or the Ax if you want to be hip.

[Jackie "the Librarian", Cool Star Trek Nerd]

Somebody's been eating TOO MANY smarties...

[Varmint]

the idea of hebrews building the pyramids is mostly from cecil b. demille. but there is ample evidence for a semitic presence in egypt from the 12th to 18th dynasties.

but the timeline is all confused, and wether they were the hebrew/semites is a too long argument with no conclusive end.





back to the time traveling...

i'd convince noam chomsky's mother to have an abortion.

pay some kid to take rosie o'donnel to the prom, so she wouldn't grow up such a bitch.

go ahead a generation and get me some of the superhero like genetic enhancements i'm sure are coming.

live out my WW1 pilot fantasy.

[Sarah]

I like the orange ones and the yellow ones and the white ones.

David Cook's kinda hot.

[Dave]

What's with David Cook's hair though? He looks like he combs it forward to make people think he's not going bald.

[Sarah]

I don't know. But I think he's kind of hot. Did I mention that already?

[Sarah]

That dude from One Republic is kinda twitchy.

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Noam Chomsky.... ::snicker:::

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

and Ruth... I love having my facts challenged... I get to learn something new!

[Sarah]

Yeah, the Bible doesn't say anything about the pyramids. I mean, it says the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt but there's no real mention of which Pharaoh was reigning at the time of Moses or what the Hebrew slaves were doing exactly. So I'm not disputing anything. I just had always thought it was the Hebrews.

[Lori]

Wasn't Ramses mentioned by name?

[Sarah]

Rameses the city was mentioned. Not the king.

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

Despite the widely held belief that Jews built the pyramids, the Haggada is very clear about what they actually did build-the cities of Pithom and Ramses. (When Joseph arrived in Egypt-by biblical reckoning 400 years before the Exodus-the great pyramids of Giza were already ancient, perhaps as old as 1,000 years.)

-from Hadassah Magazine

[Lori]

Huh. Learn something new every day!

[Lori]

Now those women of Hadassah know their shit!

[Sarah]

OK, well, that does contradict the Bible.

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

Exodus 1:11.

[Not Bill]

Oh c'mon Charl..gently refute? Scorched earth baby...scorched earth. No? How about slightly charred? Singed? Warmed? Oh c'mon!

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

NB... if I spent some time studying the subject instead of grazing information on teh interwebz I might flame someone... but as it stands... it looks like a point of contention, so... all I can do is offer others my only slightly informed opinion. and a mint.

[Not Bill]

Would that be an Andes mint? yummmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

It's wafer thin.

[Sally]

Charissa - Thomas Jefferson was involved as an early proponent of what we know as the public school system. From my Schooling in the United States textbook: "Thomas Jefferson...viewed the education of common people as the most effective means of preserving liberty." He created a plan for all children three years of reading, writing, and arithmetic for all white children. His plan was unsuccessful, but he was the founder of the University of Virgina. Not public, but revolutionary at the time. Public Education wasn't truly "invented" for another hundred years or so, around 1852.

[Charissa, That's Ms. Obnoxious Twat to You.]

All well and good, but in the context of the conversation with my mom, factually irrelevant I assure you.

[Sally]

hahahaha, I can imagine.

[Sally]

At the 1984 Olympics I'd be rooting for Nadia.

[Jackie "the Librarian", Cool Star Trek Nerd]

We can shop? I didn't know we could shop!!!!

First editions of Jane Austen's books for me, please!
And I will be commissioning a Vermeer, Girl with a Black Cat in Her Lap...

[Sally]

While in Paris high on absinthe I'd go shopping for silk stockings and a garter belt with a corset and bustier to match.

[Reads with Scotch]

I would like to use my time machine to watch historical moments play out. I think it would be interesting to see how accurate our interpretation of the past is. I have a heavy interest in the ancient world (Roman Empire) in particular. Something tells me they were a lot more sophisticated then we think. Looking at the complexity of the machinery they implemented was a shock to me.

As an example I would like to sight trebuchets *(Trebuchets were first made by the Chinese around 40 BC… or was it 40 AD?), the amount of math and the intricate design is impressive. With a solid mathematical understanding a society can accomplish great things. A lot of their lifestyle was probably fashioned of wood or less pure metals and thus we know nothing of them.

I would also like to fast travel into the future just to see if we straighten our shit up… I would advance slowly though, could you imagine how embarrassing it would be to exit the event horizon into a radioactive landscape thus killing yourself. Curiosity killed the cat. DAMN YOU CONN!

[Dave]

Hey that's my dodo sandwich! Give it back!

[Lisa]

Now that I've caught up again...did I mention hanging out with Jefferson? He may be my favorite historical figure, Renaissance man but all full of contradictions. Failed at growing pineapples at Monticello, but grew a bunch of other interesting things. So I'd totally hang out with TJ.

(And before anyone brings up the Mr. Liberty keeping slaves thing, he totally agonized over that, based on his writings, and it's one of the big reasons I'd be interested to sit down to dinner with the guy and see what he had to say about it.)

[Dave]

Give them back!

[Sally]

Mmmm, these sandwiches are fantastic. Will you pass the mustard, please?

[Dave]

Done. [Steps back into the shadows]

[Sally]

I've been reading back through this thread and I can't find the original Dodo Sandwich (tm) mention. Is it here? Help!

[Dave]

Message 14