which book-- time machine

in the original movie(one of my favorites) rod taylor ends the show going forward into the future. but from his bookcase he takes one book. it leaves you wondering what book he took.

what book would you take to rebuild the world if you could take just one. it has bohered me for years as i cant decide on one.

Kind of cheating, but I'd take the complete works of Shakespeare. Ulysses would be my second choice.


John

Das Kapital


KJS

during that time a lot of intellectuals were communists, so i think this and the bible are the best guesses.


brad

toilet paper and firestarter...


the book id take....hmmm....can 1 book really do it? id have to be a book that helps form and consolidate ideas while being general enough for most people to understand.


that or the boyscout handbook. haha


b

Anthem by Ayn Rand.


I also love the orignal Time Machine movie. Has anyone seen the remake? It looked kind of overdone in the previews.


-Glenn

Nobody likes tecnical books, because they're tough, boring reads. But the Bible is a good read, making it the best technical text of all time. It has,


1) Instructions,

2) Entertainment, and

3) Warnings.


And they are marvelously interleaved! Deuteronomy essentially tells you how to run a multi-person commercial civilization. The New Covenant provides a basis for successful commercial contact between alien tribes.


Really, if you ever are in a situation where you have to people an Earth, and there is a serious risk of the race perishing, the Old Testament is the only way to go. People need software just like computers, and Moses is the Bill Gates of the world of mechanized meat!


eLROY

The Bible is obviously a great work of literature, but biases by the authors, mistakes, inaccuracies, etc. our problematic to me.


Jeff

ya wanta know the human situation: study shakespear and the christian bible...it's all there...jmho..gl

The New time-machine movie is good. Not great but good. I never saw the original movie. I read the book years ago.


Technical text. Hmmm. The Prof. was a wiz so he had much technical knowledge. I would guess it was probably some classic of literature. Maybe it was Huckleberry Finn. I would like to think so. Americans made the movie afterall.


To take the bible into the future would be to start the mess all over again.


-Zeno

The Oxford English Dictionary and Diderot's Encyclopedia.


John

maybe a guide to farming and agriculture. or chemistry. medicine. dont you think a book on medicine would be most important. what about a book on inventions. come on whats going on here am i nuts or what.

I could have sworn that, in a previous post, you had listed Ulysses as either over rated, or as a book you could never finish.


I remember thinking at the time that it was a brave admission for an English prof.

I think I would have to go with a book that would provide the basis for all science and engineering. How about a text book covering algebra, plane geometry and the calculus?

Peter Drucker books like Innovation and Enterpreneurship, The Practice of Management, Mangaging for Results, and The Effective Executive would provide society the with intellectual and philosophical tools required to set a vision, set goals/objectives and build individual respecting organizations needed to re-build itself.

id be interested to know just what innaccuracies you have found, and author biases.

He would have to take the above text by Dale Carnagie. He would be traveling to a time,that he knows Nothing about. His vast knowledge of mechanics and science would do him no good in the future,for they are of the past.

In order for him to suceed on the level he has in the past,he would need future reference. And don't give me that crap about the book haven't been written yet,cause I know that.


And Brad...go screw yourself

i thought the question was what book would the author have the hero take.


brad

well, he'd have plenty of time to work his way thru it, now wouldn't he...???lol...gl

A good book on survival skills.


Given man's ingenuity and with some time I'd hope for the best.

Ray,


Diderot's Encyclopedia contained information on building and other matters. The carpenter from the Yankee Woodshop often pulled out his copy.


John

Phat,


You've got a hell of a memory--but on that one I was fibbing a bit. Had to read it for a once a week course, and I managed to get through it twice in two weeks. I've reread it since then. But I just couldn't get through Principia Mathematica. ;-]


John

baggins,


Rather than author bias--although the authors were biased (read Elaine Pagels)--translators have certainly played fast and loose with the Bible. For example, the King James version's translator, comissioned by the king, did his best to support the monarchy through his translation. Other versions, such as the Good News Bible, relect changing times.


John

Baggins - at the risk of starting something I really don't want to, I have a suggestion. Take out the Bible (KJ version), get a piece of paper and pencil. Now turn to Matthew chp. 1 v.6-16. Write down the genealogy of Jesus starting with David. Now turn to Luke Chp. 3 v. 23-31. Write down the genealogy of Jesus starting with David. Compare the lists.


The inspired, scared bible cannot even get the genealogy of God's supposed Son correct.


This is just one, easy and concrete example of inaccurary in the Bible. The Bible is mostly legend, myth, poetry and mock-history.


I have always enjoyed what Mark Twain said about the Bible -


"It is full if interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies"


in Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain.


As an aside, the recent Harper's issure has an interesting article about the made-up history in the Old Testament.


I could add much, much, more but I think I opened the can of worms too wide already. I will close down. I have nothing more to say.


-Zeno

I always thought Ulysses was a complete fraud unitil I got snowbound in a Colorado cabin with the Dragon Lady. Ulysses was the only book there and we read it aloud to each other, making up weird accents for the characters. What high school english teachers call 'theme' and 'hidden meaning' always escape me. If I had to study it, I'd flunk, but it's become one of my favorite books.

Here's some concerning the Gospels. The Gospels were written by authors with different purporses who included different interpretations to prove their arguments to their audiences. Some inconsistencies are:


In Matthew, Jesus gives the sermon on the mount.

In Luke, Jesus gives the sermon on the plain.


In Matthew, after the resurrection, the disciples go to Galilee and see Jesus.

In Luke, the disciples go to Jerusalem.


In Mark, the disciples don't understand who Jesus is through the first half of the book, even after he walks on water. When Peter begins to understand and tells Jesus, Jesus says to Peter and the other disciples not to tell anyone.

In John, the disciples confess his identity at the beginning.


In Matthew, Peter has authority over the other disciples.

In John, "the Beloved One" has authority.


Different author's had different sources and purposes. Mark was written first around 70 A.D., a generation after Jesus's death. It would be pretty surprising if all the details were accurate. Then there is the issue of translating between languages and the numerous recopyings. Granted the scribes did excellent work, but mistakes were made.


Seriously, I'm not making judgements on the validity of the messages of the Bible as a whole, it's an incredible piece of literature. However, I've only taken a year long course in the Old and New Testaments and read a few books. After conversations with some fellow Catholics and Priests, you would be amazed at how little people know about the Bible. Check out "The New Testament" by Bart D. Ehrman. It'll teach you about a lot of things you've probably never thought about.


Jeff

If the Bible is the foundation of someone's religion, they should have a better understanding of what it contains and why. For the first half of my life I took what my priest had to say as truth and never looked beyond it. Once I took it upon myself to learn, I disagreed with many of his ideas and found some of his interpretations just plain wrong. I have friends who consider themselves devout Catholics. However, they had no idea that early Christians considered themselves Jews. There's too much ignorance in the world and people need to stop following religious leaders blindly. Just my two cents.


Jeff

'However, they had no idea that early Christians considered themselves Jews.'


early christians. hell, im still pissed because some yid doctor chopped off part of my penis. (and now i guess im the bad guy for saying 'yid'.)


brad

sounds kinky..gl

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.It is the only book to my knowledge that supplies both high literary art and a philosophic system from epistemology to politics.Just Rand's unwavering adherence to a society based on individual rights(no man may INITIATE the use of force against another)provides a clear blueprint for rebuilding society.IMO(and millions of others:it was rated second only to the Bible in influence in a readers digest poll) a must read.

This is getting off on a completely different topic, but there is evidence to indicate that the "yid doctor" may have unwittingly done you a big favor by circumcising you.


How so? you ask. Curiously enough, in regions where most of the men are not circumsised, HIV/AIDS is primarily a heterosexually transmitted disease. In regions where most men are circusised, it is prevalent mostly in homosexual and bisexual men, IV drug users, and their female sex partners. It appears that circumsision greatly reduces the risk of female to male HIV transmission.

Two of the many roles of the foreskin are to


1) act as a vacuum storage bag when cleaning the competing semen out of a woman with multiple recent partners prior to ejaculation, and


2) promoting female-to-male incubation of the human papilloma virus.


The net effect of both of these is to encourage biological monogamy, which predates cultural monogamy, since monogamy offers bioligical survival advantages, in addition to creating a more suitable environment for the transmission of culture and memes, which themselves offer survival advantages:)


The effect of HPV when transferred from a man to woman is to shorten the reproductive life but increase the reproductive rate or the number of offspring during that life of the specimen, by destroying the cervix, and creating a hormonal response in the reprodictive instinct.


The effect when transferred from a female to a male with whom she has offspring, is to limit the number of different-aged offspring competing with hers for immediate resources in the community, by damaging the cervix of other females in the tribe, and thereby securing the attention of the father during the pre-teen years of the off spring.


Of course, once you have cultural monogamy, you want to minimize damage to the cervix, and extend the reproductive life of the female of the pair. So you eliminate the snuffalupogous/gang-bang vaccum, and everybody is much healthier.


Course, the problem is, the cells of the tip of the male penis are still genetically designed to carry and transmit papilloma, so male-to-female transmission is as great as ever. So men with multipe partners in a harem will still have temporally compact litters.


Oh, but wait, now we have modern medicine, blah, blah, blah, don't listen to...


dR. eLROY

heard that and heard it was junky science.


by the way, i get my views on this from dr. dean edell, who is jewish, and with whom i agree on almost everything.


brad

obviously every woman should just get their breasts lopped off. 100% reduction in breast cancer.


brad


p.s. (hope you dont take this the wrong way, im laughing as write this) any advice on how to wipe my ass?

There is a higher incidence of breast cancer in women with larger breasts, isn't there?


I mean, how cruel would that be, if one of these skin-on-ribs girls - who goes through life having to wear padded bars - ends up getting breast cancer?


Another odd question: How come paraplegics don't just get their legs amputated?


eLROY

pretty sure even men can get breast cancer, so guess small woman could too. geez.


remember 'born on 4th of july' with tom cruz. they had that cut legs off argument.


kind of like me (if i had it) with my foreskin. dont care if i dont need it or not. just want it.


brad

Yes, you are. That whole statement is flagrantly anti-Semitic. Its good to know the truth about you.

You are just another pathetic racist.

at least i dont belong to groups whose leadership has been arrested for terrorist acts.


go push your thought crime legislation. make your hate lists.


brad