Open Letter to my Future Self

Hello UrsusCetacea,

I’m going to assume that you’ve kept this blog going and congratulate you for sticking to your guns with this. I’d like to say I’m sure it’s going good but of course we both know there’s no way I can be sure of that so I’ll say I hope it’s going well and if so, you’re welcome because I’m the one that will decide to carry it on rather than giving up and of course it’ll be your fault if you give up and let this blog die.

So, why am I writing to you? Because it’s been over a week, almost two since you were supposed to have written a blog post so that, while you aren’t posting often, you are posting regularly. Well congrats buddy, we both failed that one. Well, at least I’m writing now aren’t I? What have you done? Let me know in a couple of years.

The blog post that you missed was supposed to be about your dissertation and all the ways that it’s going wonderfully (If you remember, it’s not). I hope that you managed to get it all done well and you’ve found a job and everything. OH, if you could let me know some crucial fact about the future to make me rich that’d be nice?

Yeah, I know, it won’t really work but still… It’d be nice. Which I suppose presents an obvious but interesting fact about time travel, that is, we are ALL travelling through time, most of us at a rate similar to each other, except for those plucky astronauts and mountain dwellers (the ones on the top not the bottom obviously). If you don’t remember, take a look at MinutePhysics on youtube.com, you favourited them so you should just watch that video about GPS, get hooked and watch them all over again.

Wow, writing to yourself in the future is proving harder than I thought, I would just stick bunches of references to nerdy things because we both know how much you love those (if you’ve stopped loving them: Why? Do you want to increase world suck right now?).

So what to say, well it’s Easter today, hey, wait no it’s not, It’s ZOMBIE JESUS DAY! Yeah, awesome, we celebrate the belief that a Jewish subject of the Roman Empire became one of a bunch of dudes from way back then who were in not so such a brazen way declared themselves (or people declared them) zombies.

Which reminds me if you haven’t bought Atom Zombie Smasher or Kerbal Space Program you should because Sips on the Yogscast demoed them on his Evenings with sips and they both looked awesome so you should get them. And if anybody actually reads these and knows what I’m talking about: I am Dave! Yognaught (Sorry Lewis, I like the both of you but naught seems natural despite naut making more sense) and I am here to kick ass and teach about Science and I’m all out of Science to teach… Okay that’s not true I’m not going to kick ass because animal cruelty is by definition cruel but I am here to teach Science because it’s awesome.

So anyway moving back to science and deeper into nerdom, to capitalise or not? Should science be capitalised or not? I don’t think it should be, hold on let me google it.

+++INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM FUTURE URSUSCETACEA+++
In formal writing capitalise the first letter of a sentence or a proper noun (that is a name of a unique identity) and so science being a concept which while unique isn’t really a proper noun so shouldn’t be capitalised unless you’re ascribing special significance to it such as in one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, I can’t remember the word he used but people were doing Things which is different to doing things.
+++END TRANSMISSION+++

Thanks future me, and thank you google, and thank you science for giving me the ability to do all of that. Isn’t time travel fun? Of course it’s all internet wizardry which is an interesting phrase, reminds me of the quote from the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Which I believe would suggest as science advances, as it does, so too will psuedoscience, woo or woo-woo (See rationalwiki.org if you’ve forgotten about it, great fun). The reason for this is of course that as science advances, so too will technology which becomes as the late Sir Clarke says less and less distinguishable from magic. This opens the door for woo as people don’t understand the technology, they turn to woo for an explanation. A vast oversimplification based on little and anecdotal evidence, prime candidate for woo, like the decline in society or the the idea that people are getting more stupid etc.

Anyway, try not to do this again, let it get really late before you write another blog post, you’ll only forget about it and I really don’t want that to happen because it would be nice to add my voice to the blogging choir. As they say “Never have so many with so little to say said so much to so few” and as Spock said “Since my normal farewell would appear oddly self serving:”

Live long and prosper,
UrsusCetacea