my luck would be I'd be the one person who really did that by accident. "Either this kid sat on a lightbulb or his colon had a bright idea," --Perry Cox.

I was stuck on arrow of time (I often am, it's a very pointy arrow) so I posed some of the questions/assertions here to a couple of friends who live and breath these things.

My cosmologist friend says, "In many ways, time is like space; Einstein and others helped figure that out. In particular, in many ways things shouldn't look much different if we ran them backwards in time, just as they don't look all that different if we invert them in space (as in a mirror). And yet they do, as there is an arrow of time but no arrow of space. Some processes are irreversible, entropy increases,and so on. That's the kind of thing David (Albert)and I are trying hard to understand.

"But -- "there shouldn't be any reason why we couldn't move around in time like we can move around in space" is just wrong. There's a perfectly good reason, namely that there is only one direction of time, while there is more than one direction of space."

Scottish vicars would have it much easier when they end up with potatoes in their butts. So would Drew.

And the vicar had to have it removed SURGICALLY. That's a hell of a fall.

"But -- "there shouldn't be any reason why we couldn't move around in time like we can move around in space" is just wrong. There's a perfectly good reason, namely that there is only one direction of time, while there is more than one direction of space."

This was what I was thinking but didn't say anything because I thought it maybe sounded simplistic or dumb or something! Also I couldn't think of a good analogy.

I don't care what y'all are saying: I still want a time machine.

We might need to change our sub-head in Natter from:

"Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics?"

to

"Wanna talk about Vicar potatoes, puppycam or physics?"

In fact, I propose as a matter of general usage, to be promulgated throughout the culture the phrase "Vicar Potatoes" to be applied to any outlandish assertion completely lacking in credibility.

"Awww, that's just a bunch of Vicar potatoes!"

I think the arrow-of-time problem is why my head explodes when i watch Terminator movies.

I think it's cool that positrons (the anti-matter equivalent of electrons) go backwards in time. Or at least that's one interpretation.

"Awww, that's just a bunch of Vicar potatoes!"

See, to me this sounds like a food discussion.

"How would you like your vicar potatoes?"