Author Topic: EP175: Reparations  (Read 36265 times)

Baldessarini

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Reply #75 on: October 11, 2008, 08:28:05 PM
Another question about time travel:
Why didn't all four (laura1+ slaura2 + boy + man) go back - if the counter doesn't work, why should laura 2 be able to take 2 others with her, but laura1 can't take all of them back?

I liked the story and I didn't think there'd be such a heavy discussion about politics - although I was also surprised that the main discussion was about time travel, because originally, that wasn't what struck me about the story...



gwalchmai munn

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Reply #76 on: October 24, 2008, 07:57:29 PM
Wow! Great story. I won't worry about any political implications, but I would like to discuss some practical matters.

I'll call the narrator Laura40, since this is her 40th trip. I therefore think "injured Laura" is Laura41, due to L40's comment about her realization of the urgency that she save the man and boy. So, L40 waits until she can go back at the alternate pickup and the returns ASAP to a location which is safe, but as close as possible to where she can locate the boy and man (easy to do because injured Laura can tell her where they can be found). She then returns to where she already knows L40 is and the loop closes. (Yeah, I understand the inherent paradoxes of this, but such things exist in time travel. See the Terminator's arm mentioned above.)

Now, a practical consideration. On the day (we don't know if it's the 6th or the 9th) there are at least 41 Lauras near the city. There are also a whole heap of other time travelers. If they continue sending back folks, at some point there is going to be saturation.

Also, what about duplicate matter? I remember that whenever Superman traveled back to Smallville, Superboy would be automagically sent to Superman's time in order to satisfy the Laws of Thermodynamics.

And twonkys? The "doctors" are using modern medicine. And leaving doctors' bags in the past. Bad juju.

But overall I liked the story and appreciate EP for bringing it to the interweb. ;)



Zathras

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Reply #77 on: November 03, 2008, 05:52:15 AM
After Steve's outro in EP 182, I thought that this quote from B5 was quite fitting.  It's from "Confessions and Lamentations," a 2nd season episode.

Delenn and John Sherridan are referring to the Markab, who are all infected with a disease and being quarantined.  John is trying to talk her out of entering the quarantined area.

Delenn: They are in pain. Frightened. Dying. Minbari are taught that, at such a times, the afflicted should be ministered to, comforted.
John Sheridan: They're not your own people, Delenn!
Delenn: I didn't know that similarity was required for the exercise of compassion.

Thanks for running this one, Steve.



Aaron

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Reply #78 on: November 03, 2008, 06:33:54 PM
I'm with you Steve.

Great story, I enjoyed it immensely.  You really know how to pick them.



Cerebrilith

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Reply #79 on: November 08, 2008, 03:14:38 PM
This story didn't do much for me, but I wanted to voice my support for Steve's obvious good intentions.



yicheng

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Reply #80 on: March 27, 2010, 11:01:12 PM
I just heard this story, and I have to agree with Evo.Shander.  The story has "Western Guilt" dripping all over it.  While I do realize that "every american should do this" came out of the mouth of a newbie character, it just smacked so much of western-liberal "white man's burden" (e.g. american-european civilization are the only ones who can save the rest of the heathens from what terrible injustices that the american-europeans have wrought, blah blah blah).  Evo.Shander already had some good points about Nanking, Dresden, Bhutan, etc.  Heck, take any major battle along the Russian front, and it's likely to be ten times the terror, civilian casualties, and brutality that Hiroshima weathered.  More to the point, none of the other powers (Japan, German, Russia, heck Britain) would have hesitated one microsecond to nuke New York or Los Angeles if it came down to it and if they had the ability.  War is war, and guilt is a selfish emotion.  Better to spend that energy on doing something useful, like preventing future wars.




Unblinking

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Reply #81 on: April 06, 2010, 05:19:57 PM
This story was really good, as long as I just laid my nitpicking aside and didn't look for paradoxes and inconsistencies, such as:
1.  The supposed reason for not bringing residents to the future is because you can't alter the timeline, but they ARE altering the timeline to save people who might not otherwise be saved.
2.  If she violates orders by having her future self bring back residents, why would they send her back again?  Which would be necessary if future self has to show up.
3.  Why save those two and leave everyone else to die?

The concept itself was great.  I can kind of see Evo's point about the title, I would've liked something with a bit less guilt in it, but the concept itself is great.  I thought it was interesting that it never revealed who is sending them back and who made the decision to start this program.  I thought that lack of information was actually a good thing in this case.

I've never been very comfortable with the bombing of those two cities.  The thought of slaughtering of so many million civilians makes me sick to my stomach.  I'm just not convinced that wholesale slaughter on that scale can ever be the right thing.  Do I feel guilty?  No, because feeling guilt over something that occurred when my dad was only 6 months old is pointless.  But I'd like to think that I would volunteer to go back for at least a couple trips to do what I could to help.

I don't think that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a good comparison to 9/11, and that probably would've bothered me if I had listened to it on the original pub date of 9/11.  But since I listened to it for the first time in mid-March, it probably bothered me less.



yicheng

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Reply #82 on: April 10, 2012, 04:59:17 PM
Apologies for resurrecting this old thread, but Dan Carlin recently did a podcast episode that was very apropos to the topic at hand.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/dancarlinhh/dchha42__BLITZ_Logical_Insanity.mp3