Lost, But Not So Much

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s topic: If you were to become stranded on a remote, tropical island, where would you choose to become marooned – and what would you bring with you?

I recently finished reading the book The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost.  It was fantastic.  The guy has a writing style that reminded me of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore – highly entertaining.  The premise of the book?  The author and his wife decide they are sick of life in the West and that living at the ‘edge of the world’ is just what they need.  So they go to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.

This got me thinking.  If I were to do the same thing – pick a random, far-flung island to basically become lost on for an indefinite period of time, where would I go?  The Caribbean was immediately ruled out, because it is not nearly remote enough for what I picture when I hear “remote tropical island.”  Or maybe it’s just not exotic enough for my taste.  I don’t know.  Anyhoo, after some consideration, I decided it would have to be somewhere in the Pacific, preferably somewhere in the vicinity of Bora Bora and the rest of French Polynesia.  I spent nearly 2 weeks in French Polynesia a couple of years ago, and I would go back in a heartbeat.  Seems as good an area of the world as any to be stuck.

Obviously a place like Tahiti is too commercial to qualify as remote.  But the Cook Islands, which are about halfway between French Polynesia and Fiji, can certainly be classified as remote.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I have vaguely heard of Rarotonga, the main island in the Cooks, before.  But I have never before heard of PukaPuka.  It’s a coral atoll in the Northern Cook islands.  It’s inhabited, but hard to get to and definitely remote.

So, off to PukaPuka I would go.

The next question becomes, what would I bring with me?  It’s self-imposed marooning in this hypothetical situation, which to me means I must have time to pack for my idyllic, nearly-deserted island.

After much consideration, I have decided I would bring six vital items with me, in addition to clothing, shoes, and toiletries I suspect may be unavailable on PukaPuka.

Item #1: Books I know I can read over and over again.  To be specific: the entire Harry Potter series, Sahara by Clive Cussler, Death By Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins.

Item #2: yarn and knitting needles, to make myself blankets when I get bored of thinking.  I get cold when it’s cooler than 75 degrees outside, so while it may seem odd that I would want blankets on a tropical island, for me it does make sense!

Item #3: my trusty Celestron binoculars and a star map of the Southern Hemisphere, because in addition to being an ideal place to star-gaze, I’m also providing myself with a fantastic opportunity to learn the constellations of the Southern sky.

Item #4: Moleskines and a lot of pens, so that I can write about my experiences on PukaPuka (perhaps returning home one day with my own version of The Sex Lives of Cannibals!), and also so I can keep track of my musings in the absence of a personal computer.

Item #5: An internet access card, just in case I find a way off PukaPuka and want to contact the rest of the world via email or Twitter or Facebook or… you get my point.

Item #6: My boyfriend, because he always keeps life interesting, which I am sure would be especially true on a remote tropical island.

To read where Whitney would strand herself and what she would take with her, go here.

I Shall Call It… A Time Machine!

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s topic: If You Could Time Travel, Where Would You Go, and Why?

First, I have to write a disclaimer.  The topic of this post, while interesting and entertaining, is something I currently believe resides in the realm of science fiction.  I also currently believe it is likely to stay there.  I am not a physicist, nor do I have a terribly firm grasp on Einstein’s various theories of relativity, which are supposed to govern things like the possibility of time travel.  But I don’t think there is much convincing evidence in the world of physics that human beings will ever be able to time travel.  Perhaps particles will be sent forward in time by a few seconds.  But the physics powers that be have not yet convinced me that people would be able to follow the particles.

That said, if it were possible to time travel, it seems likely the only direction a person could move in time would be forward.  You may wonder why I say this.  Well, I watch this super-cool show on The History Channel called The Universe.  They did an episode on time travel, and one of the scientists on there made an excellent point: It would only be possible to travel forward in time, because if you tried to go backwards, there would be no time machine in the past for you to “arrive in.”  The farthest backwards you could ever go would be to the moment the time machine was created and functional. 

This makes sense to me, so I am very sorry if I just burst anyone’s bubble.  If you have an argument against this line of thought, I am all ears.

So now we have arrived at the part of the blog where I’m supposed to say where I would travel to, and why.  My own skepticism on the topic aside, I had a lot of trouble deciding what I would use my nifty time travel device for.  I’m perfectly happy with my life in the present, so other time periods hold little interest to me.  Besides, there was no indoor plumbing until very recently in history – no bathrooms?  No thank you!  After much thought, though, I have come up with two places/times I would travel to in the future. 

The first place/time I would go to is my own house in 2041.  I would be 60 years old.  I want to know what my life will be like at age 60.  Do I have children, or grandchildren?  Am I crotchety, or am I an entertaining person?  Am I still a scientist?  I figure being able to get some answers to these questions might eliminate my ever having to say the phrase, “If I knew then what I know now…”

The second place/time I would want to go to is the year 2509.  It can be pretty much anywhere on the planet, although I would probably prefer the East Coast of the United States for comparison purposes.  2509 is 500 years from now.  I think it might be interesting to check out what humanity has become 500 years in the future.  Did global warming become the huge issue people say it will?  Did a massive asteroid the size of Manhattan hit the planet and wipe out life as we know it?  Will ET finally have made contact? Did we wipe ourselves out in a nuclear holocaust? Or is everything peaceful and happy, a utopian society?  Without my time machine, I will not be around to answer these questions, which bums me out sometimes.

And just for fun, if the time machine could go back in time, not just forwards, I think I would set it to go back the moment life arose (or arrived) on this planet, and put that whole question and debate to rest.  Then I’d stop off in the Cambrian period on the way back to the present so I can check out all the kooky animals swimming around at that time.  Those would be some kick-ass vacation pictures.

To read Whitney’s take on time travel, go here.

Want to Beat Up a Dinosaur? Here’s How.

Back in December, I shared a quiz with you all entitled: How Long Would You Survive Chained to a Bunk Bed with a Velociraptor?  In case you missed that post, you can read it here. 

The quiz generated a bit of controversy (again, for full details, follow the link to the original post).

This post is intended as a follow-up to the velociraptor one.  Nicole sent me this article, entitled Seven Dinosaurs You Could Take in a Fight, from Cracked.com.  Since it’s generally acknowledged that raptors and T-rexs and such are terrifying and not the type of dinosaur an average human would feel good about meeting in a dark alley, the writer of the article has kindly complied a list of dinosaurs we… would… feel good about meeting in said alley.

Case closed?