Why Happy Gilmore Is The Least Accurate Sports Movie Ever

Now, allow me to start off by saying that I am in no way trashing the movie Happy Gilmore.  I consider it Adam Sandler’s best movie (albeit, slim pickings from the ‘good’ category of his movies) and have seen it more times than I can count.  In fact, I have seen it so many times, that although I haven’t seen it in a number of months, I am using my memory solely in conjuring up all the references made in this article, quoted lines included.  I would even go so far to say that Happy Gilmore would make it into my Top 20 favorite movies from the 90’s.

 

That being said, it also happens to be the most laughably inaccurate sports movie I’ve ever seen.

 

Let me allay the immediate argument you as a reader might have.  I am fully aware that the movie is a comedy of Adam Sandler stature—which means that things should not be taken seriously.  We’re talking about the same fellow that, in the same period of time that this movie was made, starred in a movie involving a mentally slow Football player and penned a song where he just listed Jews.  (Wow, I tried my hardest to make that last sentence not sound offensive and still failed—my apologies.)

Still, the idea is this: While the movie follows a situation that is a bit absurd, it still tries to follow a sense of realism.  Even in a goofy comedy, people are familiar with the sport of golf, and for them to relate, the movie’s take on the sport itself has to come close to the actual game.  I mean, if you’re going to make a movie about someone who doesn’t belong in the world of golf play golf, you need to follow by the rules of golf as much as you can. 

 

I completely understand the writers taking certain liberties with the game—they might nudge a rule a little bit from what it really is to fit a situation in order to get a good joke.  However, people are going to think of the movie in a different light if the rules are radically different, to the point where the sport being portrayed isn’t even golf anymore.  In addition, for the plot to make any sense (such as it is), they would also need to portray the characters—really, the whole golf universe—in a recognizable light.  The problem seemed to be that the writers of the movie assumed that most people had never actually watched golf before, and were only familiar enough with the game in what was shown for 30 seconds on ESPN or channel surfing on a Sunday afternoon.  (Sadly, for the most part, they were right.)

 

From conversations with friends and others, they readily pick up on ‘little things’ that the movie got wrong.  But really, when one starts picking apart and examining the movie, the whole movie is on spurious ground.  I spent about 30 minutes jotting down just the immediate things that came to mind, and came up with enough points for this article to begin.  I’m sure there’s even more than what’s listed, but I feel that this argument should be sufficient.  I debated about whether to do this article chronologically or topically.  I finally decided that either way would work, but to make a decent argument, I need to stay on task, so I broke down all the points into three main areas.  The obvious point people first think of is the goofy shot, and I have plenty to say about that, but I’m saving it for last for that very reason.  Instead, point one is…

 

The Rules

If you’ve never actually played golf before, you might easily take everything said at face value in the movie.  It’s kind of the same as any other sport—if you’re only a casual watcher of football, you might know the goal (run the ball into the end zone).  You might know some of the rules (11 men on the field).  But unless you are an avid fan, you won’t know every rule about the game.  (For instance, of those 11 offensive players, 7 have to be on the line when the ball is hiked.)  Golf is the same way. 

 

Do you know how many rules there are to golf?  A lot.  A few years ago, just because I felt like it, I downloaded and printed out the current rules to golf in .pdf format, small font.  I recently threw it away in some Spring Cleaning, but if you were to download it, it would be quite thick.  It amounted to about 140 pages, small font, no pictures or diagrams.  That’s a lot of room for rules.

 

Unlike most sports which have a list of common, universal standard rules and an appendix of situational rules, the entire golf rulebook is a list of situational occurrences, separated into 25 chapters.  I really don’t fault the writers for not wanting to read this thing through.  But at least they could have, I dunno, called up a mediocre pro golfer and just had them proofread the script or something.  As I stated in the introduction, I only spent a short period of time brainstorming the broken rules I could think of in the movie.  I’m sure there’s more than listed, but here’s just a list of the more obvious ones.

 

Club Regulations.  Even if you have never driven by a golf course in your life, the first thing you probably could come up with was that putter Happy uses in the final tournament—the modified one Chubbs gives him.  The one shaped like a hockey stick.  And yes, you guessed it, it’s not legit.

 

One of the biggest rules in the rule book is that the things you can use to play golf in the actual Professional Golf world have to be approved.  Obviously, this mutated monstrosity of a putter would not fly.  But let’s say that it was kosher with the USGA.  If you look at it, you can tell that it would actually severely decrease your putting accuracy.  First and foremost, it’s thin as a piece of sheet metal.  Have you ever tried to hit something ala golf with a piece of sheet metal?  Probably didn’t go very far.  Most putters are thick to provide a solid hitting motion.  In addition, if it really was like a hockey stick, the ‘putting surface’ of it would be slightly curved.  Which, as you would guess, make it insanely hard to hit straight on a putting green.  Third, the angle that the head is on the club is vastly different than the angle on a traditional putter.  Everything said about the putter, you probably would have a better chance knocking out Manny Pacquiao in a ring than sinking a putt with that thing.

 

There’s another issue with Happy’s clubs, though.  He uses his grandfather’s old clubs when he shows up at the qualifying tournament.  It’s apparent he still has the same clubs when he starts the tour.  I’m going to wager these ‘old clubs’ his grandfather used don’t fit in with those golf standard regulations.  The rules change every so often concerning what is allowed and what isn’t allowed with club shapes and whatnot.  About two years ago, as an example, about one-third of all the wedges were disallowed because of the deep grooves on the backs of the heads.  This is why you don’t see other professionals today carrying around ‘their grandfathers’ clubs when they play golf.  Truth of the matter, I’m surprised the stupid things don’t break when Happy clobbers the ball with them.

 

Wardrobe.  Happy never looks like a professional golfer.  What most people don’t realize is that there are certain rules governing what golfers can and can’t wear.  There’s a very good reason everyone you see on TV playing golf wears khakis and collared shirts.  This is actually more egregious than you might think at first, as the rules regulating what is worn is not a USGA or PGA rule—it’s one that the golf courses themselves enforce.  Which means that even if you weren’t a professional, but just some Joe wanting to play a round on a professional-quality course, you too would have to wear that.  Happy’s wardrobe of tattered flannel jackets and blue jeans would have him escorted from the snack bar long before he ever set foot on the course.

 

Wildlife.  Speaking of rules given by the local courses, the escapade where Happy retrieves his ball and decapitates a crocodile (thankfully, off-screen) would probably have him barred from ever playing that course again.  A number of golf courses actually are built adjoining to wildlife habitats and are very strict about interaction with them.  Players who play professionally are bound by the local course rules just as much as the USGA rules.  I’m quite sure that removing the head of an animal residing on a golf course would not be looked kindly upon by, well, just about anyone.  (All of this ignoring the fact that the rules prohibit players from jumping into the water to retrieve a ball.)

 

Obstructions.  There’s a fairly big plot point in the movie concerning the cover-all rule of golf: “Play it where it lies.”  This is mostly true.  However, when I mentioned above that the rule book of golf is chocked full of ‘situational rules’, it is because there are so many possible situations that could come up that the judges have to be prepared for them.  There are literally multiple chapters concerning what is called ‘Obstructions’ that give exceptions to the ‘play it anywhere’ rule. 

 

In the movie, Happy’s rival Shooter McGavin hits the ball into the crowd (which happens multiple times in a tournament in real life).  Said ball strikes Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me on the foot.  Shooter asks if he can “get a drop”.  The judge simply says, “The rules say, ‘play it as it lies’.”  Technically, this kind of thing has happened a few times before (really) and, no, the player did not have to hit it off of the person—they got ‘a drop’.  This is supported by the rules, so the judge actually fell down on the job.  Chapter 21 mentions that a player can “replace” the ball if it is resting or strikes a “movable obstruction”.  I would consider a person’s foot quite movable.  Of course, though, if the movie allowed that, we wouldn’t get that wonderful physical threat to a golfer (which, I’m sure, would have gotten Richard Kiel thrown off the course).

 

What about when the tables are turned?  At the end of the movie, a radio tower falls smack in the middle of the final green, blocking Happy’s putt to the hole.  Shooter appears and reminds Happy he has to play it like it lies, just like he had to do.  (At which point, one could make an argument that this was a different circumstance altogether—just because Shooter had to do something didn’t force Happy to do something completely unrelated.)  The judge affirms Shooter’s statement.  Now, there couldn’t possibly be a rule that governed this bizarre circumstance, could there?  Indeed there is.  Chapter 25, really an appendix chapter, deals with “Abnormal Golf Conditions”, which a radio tower laying in the middle of the green would qualify for.    In fact, it specifically mentions a situation where something would impede the putting line between the ball and the hole on a green.  In such a case, the golfer would get a free ‘relief’, moving the ball within one club length of the closest point where the obstruction is no longer an obstruction.  Yes, they really did think of everything, didn’t they?

 

We could nitpick rules, but we should move on.

 

The Villain

 

Shooter McGavin is a professional golfer.  He’s a crowd favorite before Happy shows up.  However, he’s pompous.  He’s impulsive.  He’s a jerk.  He’s low and underhanded in many cases.  And he’s usually absolutely right.

 

The worst thing a movie can do is portray a villain as a bad guy, giving him mean qualities, developing him like a jerk, making him an overall unlikeable character—but forgetting to make him wrong.  On the surface, the writers try to make him out to be a bully who tries to strong arm Happy out of playing golf, attacking his credibility and whatnot.  However, when you look at what he says, without much exception, he’s usually on the ball.  The main problem in this case is that when Shooter says something, the audience is supposed to assume that he’s manipulative or just plain wrong, whether ethically or actually (and sadly, the movie tries to make that happen).  But, objectively, the opposite is true.  Some examples:

Scene: Happy is at a bar after his first tournament as a professional.  Shooter approaches him and makes small talk, saying, “You sure crush the ball at the tee.  You'd be great in one of those Long Drive competitions.”

The idea that the movie conveys is that Shooter is trying to dissuade Happy from playing golf on tour. Happy tells him to get lost because of this. But let’s look at this from the plot’s standpoint:

Happy is only playing golf (originally) to raise $275,000 to get back his Grandmother’s house from the IRS. In fact, immediately after telling Shooter off, Happy says this—“I was only in this for one reason: Money.” However, if Happy would have looked into it, he would have gotten his $275,000 quicker doing precisely what Shooter recommended.

Let’s compare.  Right now, the average taking by a pro golfer in Happy’s placement range is about $25,000.  This means Happy would, if he played every weekend and placed high enough each week, take about 11 weeks to get the money (which, honestly, does fit in with the time frame of the movie).  However, the winner of a Long Drive tournament took home (by 90’s standards) somewhere between $75,000 and $100,000 per venue.  Now, I’m not sure how many Long Drive tournaments are held—probably not every week.  Still, Happy would only have to win 3 to get the money (and given that the movie mentioned his 400-yard driving ability, probably would put him in the top running at each event).  By all intents and purposes, Happy would have gotten the house back before the auction if he would have actually taken Shooter’s advice.

Scene: After Happy gets into a live fist fight with Septuagenarian Bob Barker, he is told he will be suspended for his actions.  Shooter, also in the office*, is disgusted with the ruling and wants Happy kicked off the professional golf tour.  Shooter, however, is told that the penance is only a suspension since the event was the highest ratings that the USGA had ever received on television.

(*There is absolutely no reason why Shooter should have been in this office; he wasn’t involved with the altercation at all.  This was a disciplinary meeting with the head of the PGA tour.  The only reason he’s in the room apparently is so that he can learn about Happy’s grandmother—purely a scripted reason.)

Now, this might not seem so strange to someone watching a mainstream sport such as football, where players can get away with murder.  (No pun intended, because there was no pun involved.)  Even jail time doesn’t stop some players from playing.  It would seem that punching the host of The Price Is Right would only require a suspending—if this were football.  However, this being the game of golf and surrounded by centuries of decorum, Shooter is probably closer to being right than the PGA head.  After all, Happy should be indicted on assault charges after his fist fight; at one point, he brandishes a club, which makes the charge even worse.  Ratings shouldn’t really come into play.  (Not to mention some of the sponsors would probably want to pull their agreements, for fear of being associated with an organization that tolerates beating up old people.)  The reason Shooter is more right than not leads to his next line:

Scene: Same. 

 Shooter replies, “He’s destroying golf, Doug.”

And again, he’s right.

The underlying plot of the movie is that Happy is making golf more likable for the common man.  Throughout the movie, his fan base looks like the cheering crowd for the Pittsburgh Steelers.  They bring beach balls and throw them while blowing on kazoos—all while Shooter is trying to putt.  This is played for laughs.  If you were Shooter and trying to concentrate, however, I’m sure you’d agree a bouncing beach ball hitting you in the back of the head would be a little irritating.  In all honesty, according to those ‘local golf course rules’, everyone involved would be escorted off the course immediately.

The examples of this are countless throughout the movie.  Shooter mentions fans mooning him and… well, copulating right on the course. These are actions illegal in Wal-Mart, let alone a golf course.  The fact that the movie is in favor of individuals making a ruckus and being Rednecky during a sport that requires concentration is laughable at best.  They make Shooter seem ‘elitist’ for denying this cultural change, but in reality, the new culture is destroying centuries of established culture.  And concerning Shooter himself, it’s not so much elitism as it is justified rage…

Scene: Happy’s love interest who works in PR tells Happy not to worry about Shooter.  “He just feels threatened.  He feels like you’re going to steal his thunder.”

For one, Happy is stealing his thunder, but it isn’t just to make Shooter look like a spoiled child.  Shooter is mad in the same way you might feel if you worked for a company for 10 – 15 years and watch the CEO’s nephew get promoted above you after six months on the job.

Why is Shooter the crowd favorite at the beginning?  Because he’s been playing awhile.  In fact, Shooter’s character has a little salt-and-pepper hair; there’s a good chance he’s been around a long time.  At one point, he tells Happy, “It’s Shooter’s time, now”.  Ignore the pompous 3^rd party speak for a second—he’s absolutely right.  To him, he’s paid his dues.  He’s played awhile, built his character, refined his game.  Now, here comes some schmuck wearing a Penguins jersey, swearing on camera and punching old people.  And the crowds love him for it.  All of Shooter’s fans have even disappeared—by the end of the movie, the entire crowd is comprised of bikers on their way to Sturgis, SD, none of them cheering anyone else but Happy Gilmore.  It’s hard not to feel for the guy.

In all, the movie portrays Shooter McGavin as the Snidely Whiplash of golf, where in reality, Happy is more like Dennis the Menace.  It’s not so much that the movie is giving us a view of how golf should be, but rather just giving us someone to relate to (Gilmore) and someone to hate (McGavin).  In the process, however, they forgot to make sure it made any sense.  Again, these might seem like small issues.  And they might just be, except that the entire plot and structure of the entire movie revolves around Happy having some incredible gift of golf, i.e. his swing. 

And they just ignore the entire game of golf outside of it.

The Swing

 

Happy Gilmore is the story of a guy who was taught how to play hockey, but failing in that endeavor, discovered he could use his power shot to hit a golf ball “400 yards”.  The ‘shot’ involves him standing about 3 good steps behind the ball, skipping foot over foot and giving a full swing, launching the ball.  The concept is that with his running start, he can put more power behind it and send it further.  At first, anyone who has seen the movie might state, “Sure, just because he has a cool shot doesn’t mean he’ll hit it that far.”  But the problems stem much deeper than that, and really break away the whole movie.  Let’s break it down piece by piece.

 

The first and most obvious point, which we could honestly just stop with, is this: Just because you can hit the ball far doesn’t mean that you can hit the ball straight.  The whole logic of the movie falls apart with that one statement.  The entire reason why he failed at hockey was because he couldn’t hit the puck in the net.  A golf hole is much, much harder to hit than a hockey net. 

 

Worse yet, hitting a golf ball straight is something even professionals can’t do every single time.  (Most can’t even hit 75% of the fairways on one round off the tee.)  The way to win golf isn’t how hard you can hit it, but how few attempts it takes to get the ball into the hole.  This takes a combination of not just hitting the ball hard off the tee, but finesse in getting the ball onto the green when you get close.  (More on this in just a second.)

 

When you examine Happy’s approach-to-the-ball technique, it is a physical impossibility for him to hit the ball straight.  In order to hit a ball straight, a number of factors come into play, one of the more important factors is the solid placement of one’s feet on the ground.  Hopping around as you hit the ball would literally send the ball 90 degrees to the left or right once it is in the air.  This is because the impact of the club head to the ball puts a certain spin on it, and if the spin has any left or right degree to it, the ball will curve accordingly.

 

But let’s say for the sake of argument that Happy’s technique miraculously works and that he can hit the ball straight.  He couldn’t always use that technique.  No golfer has one type of shot that works for every situation.  In one scene in the movie, Happy is shown hitting the golf ball out of a bunker, using the exact same swing.  Though they don’t show it exactly, it’s sort of obvious that the bunker is right next to the green.  In the next shot, they just show the ball rolling on the green.  However, if he just used his super power hockey shot on the ball, it should have done one of two things: launched the ball right into the wall of the bunker and buried it, or shot it into the parking lot of the golf course some 250 yards away.

 

Also, on a traditional par-72, 18-hole course, there are 4 holes that are par-3.  These holes are almost always less than 220 yards (even for pros).  His mighty slap shot won’t come in handy there.  Here’s another point—look at a map of a golf course.  Just type in a browser search engine “golf course hole map”.  Generally, a golf course will have at least 7 or 8 holes (if not more) that have doglegs in them.  A dogleg is where the hole starts one way but then breaks at an angle at some point.  Generally, a player will have to estimate how far to the dogleg and aim for that point, which could mean any number of tricks or skill shots—none of which Happy Gilmore is capable of.  Take a little power out of the swing?  Nope.  Controlled Spin?  Nuh-uh.  Lay up?  Not with that running start thing.  Golfers develop and learn how to utilize different stances and postures to accommodate different circumstances.  Just running willy-nilly at a ball can’t be effective if you want to win (which, surprisingly, Happy does in the movie).

 

How about the shot that he does use in the movie?  Watching the trajectory of the shot, Happy uses what’s known as a ‘stinger shot’, where the ball heads in a straight line, raised, flying like it came out of a cannon until it reaches an apex, then falls.  Tiger Woods made this shot popular a little over a decade ago, though it’s been used for a while.  Again, this type of shot takes planning and skill to pull off.  Looking at the way Happy swings the club when he contacts the ball, even if the shot went straight and even if it went 400 yards, it wouldn’t travel in that pattern.  It would have considerable backspin and look parabolic (starting low, before rising quickly, travelling a little bit, then falling).

 

Even if we ignore all of this, to be frank and honest, a 400 yard tee shot isn’t really that horribly amazing.  The idea is that Happy’s shot is so amazing that it compensates for any other part of his game; he can simply put the ball on the green from the tee.  In the last 6 or 7 years, though, a lot of young upstarts have improved on the techniques of their golf forefathers.  The ‘power hitters’ in today’s PGA can actually put the ball 340 or 350 yards off the tee on a straight fairway.  Because of this, course owners have lengthened their courses considerably.  Even if Happy could tee 400 yards, he would not be able to reach the green on the majority of the holes in any tournament.  Which means he still would need to know how to use a pitching wedge, which he obviously isn’t equipped for.

 

Let’s face it, the writers of Happy Gilmore said, “Hey, what if we wrote a golf movie about a guy who could hit the ball really hard.”  And that sufficed for the research for the entire script.*

* For more poorly thought out scripts ideas see the blurb "Worst Star Trek Moments."

-Zerom

9 Reasons Why Time Travel is Impractical

A few months ago, I came across an interesting article discussing the problems with time travel.  I agreed with a number of the points and thought them to be humorously true, while there were a few other points I thought could use some refinement.  So here’s my stab at the same topic, with a couple of extra points I added in for good measure.

9. You may age much faster in relation to "normal time".

 

Of course, this is a selective problem—it depends on a number of factors.  Since we still don't know if 'time travel' is entirely possible, we don't know if the procedure of traveling through time would age us faster in the same way that stress does.  Doctors say that individuals in high stress careers or lifestyles often 'age' faster than the average person.  It's uncertain what sorts of physical stress a person would go through to break the time barrier, but the possibility exists that doing so could be taxing on us.

 

Outside of a theoretical spectrum, any trip through time, whether for a few minutes or a couple of years, would make you age faster than everyone else who have never strayed from the 'normal time path'.  When you return from a 6-month trip from feudal Japan, your parents, spouse, children, friends, and every other human who did not accompany you on the trip will all be the exact same age from whence you left; however, you will be 6 months older.  Abuse the gift of time travel enough and as the old song goes, you could very well end up being your own grandpa, though not in the same way as is described in the song. Why is this the case?  From a physics standpoint, the body's aging process is completely unrelated to the revolutions of the Earth (days) or the position of the earth in its rotation around the sun (years).  Astronauts that have visited space or the moon are not any younger or older than they otherwise would be for having left Earth's orbit.  The way we count time and the way our bodies age are two completely unrelated scales.  An often overlooked fact is that the way we count time is relative to our astronomical location.  Which also presents another risk for time traveling...

8. Getting the location just right.

 

In the book Lightning by Dean Koontz, the main character travels through time using some sort of mumbo-jumbo machine.  The kicker, though, is that you can’t just push a few buttons and go wherever you want.  It takes the character days using a complex computer system to get the ‘figures’ just right.  He explains that, to properly travel to a day in time, you have to know where the Earth is located in the fathoms of space on that day—else you’ll just warp yourself right into an endless black vacuum and die on impact (arrival?). 

 

This is just one example of how travel is handled.  As eluded to above in point 9, we often use the terms ‘time’ and ‘space’ together, but view them separately.  Truth is, if we did break the time barrier as a civilization, distance is just as much of a variable as time.  Even the most basic formulas in physics class often have both of those variables to determine something.  So, before you saunter back to Woodstock in 1969 to see The Who rock the grounds, you’ll need to know where specifically on the Sun’s orbit Earth is located, what side of the planet to warp to (since you obviously won’t want to end up in Asia somewhere), and a very specific point for good measure, since winding up in the middle of a tree isn’t very desirable either.

 

Time travel doesn’t seem as much fun when you turn it into a NASA math problem, does it?

 

“But those are problems we’ll iron out when we discover time travel.  Once we have that down pat, it’s all smooth sailing.”  Or is it…?

7. You have to return home to get anything food/money related.

Let’s say you want to go to see England during the Elizabethan age—you know, catch a Shakespeare play when it was the rage, view some fine art during the time it actually was painted.  You’ve planned it all out just like a normal vacation: Stay for a week, take in the local culture, grab some souvenirs.  So you go to the local town’s inn and ask for a room for the evening, dishing out an Alexander Hamilton. (That’s a $10 bill, for those who don’t know the funny haired men on your money.)  Depending on the inn’s reputation, you will either be laughed at or thrown in the local jail.  See, funny thing about money—not only is it localized today, but even throughout history it changes quite frequently.  If you plan on doing anything at any point, you will need money.  Unless you visit the poor farmers of feudal England and play a real-life game of 'Catan'.  (Will you take Sheep for Wood???)

You remember that scene in Back to the Future II where Doc Brown pulls out a little briefcase full of different types of money and gives Marty some 2015 money?  He’s on the right track.  (How he got that money is anyone’s guess—more on that in a minute.)  The United States has been around for about two-and-a-quarter centuries now.  Did you know that the $1 bill changed 12 times between 1862 and 1923?  That’s an average of once every 5 years or so.  Most of us have seen it change a few times in our lifetime as well.  Imagine trying to use a 2002 $1 bill to pay for your tab at a 1920’s café.  Not likely they’re going to take it.  They’ll probably look at it like it was Monopoly money.

 

How about food?  Food has been around ever since edible things.  Yet, an interesting point made by anthropologists and archaeologists is that while the concept of eating is important for survival, what people eat has changed over the years, as has the quality of food.  Want to go back and eat some food 1,000 years ago?  There’s a better-than-average chance you’re going to get dysentery.  Even if you go back just a few hundred years, our stomachs have an interesting quality that adjusts it to certain types of cuisines—if you give it something too radically different, it takes time to adjust.  If you go from meat-eating to vegan, it might be a little hard on you.  If you go from eating roast beef to mutton, you might never feel ‘fine’ again.  Additionally, your stomach hosts what are termed "good bacteria" to aid in digestion.  These have surely mutated hundreds if not thousands of times over the past millenium.  Many of these bacteria enter our bodies through the food we eat and the water we drink.  Any strain that is radically different will give you the worst GI attack you can immagine as a battle of the bacteria takes place in your gut.  If you want to know what that feels like, drink some tap water the next time you visit Honduras or Indonesia.  How much will you enjoy your visit with Leif Eriksson from inside the explorer ship's head?

 

“Alright, already,” you say to yourself, “So I’ll have some issues with money and food.  That still doesn’t mean I’m going to run into problems.”  Well, that’s what you think…

6. No one knows who you are—and you can’t prove your identity.

 

Let’s face it, going through time is like taking a vacation.  But think about being on vacation somewhere.  You’re a total stranger, true, but you still have some form of identification.  If you stay in the country, you have your normal driver’s license or Social Security card or something to let people know you’re legit.  If you travel out of the country it’s mandated you have a passport, which does pretty much the same thing.  You’re probably picking up on the problem—travel through time, and you just simply don’t exist.

 

“Cool,” you might initially think, “I’m like a phantom or something.”  The issue is if you plan to interact with people of the time you visit there’s a better than 99% chance you’re going to end up in jail or dead.  Consider going back in time 10 years in this country—your driver’s license would have an issue date in the future and thus look like a well crafted but poorly executed fake ID.  “But people didn’t carry ID’s in the 1500’s,” you might argue.  This is true.  Thus why communities were so important—people knew one another and could vouch for each other.  Strangers in pre-common sense times were the biggest target for thieves, because they had no one to rely on, and the local law enforcement didn’t know them from Adam. 

 

This gets back to the problem mentioned with Doc Brown above.  It’s not even easy to go to another time, especially recent past or future, and get a job of any kind.  Have you ever gotten a job without showing any form of identification?  (At least a job that wouldn’t get you arrested for tax evasion or break your back within 4 hours.)  To acquire money you would have to be able to talk your own grandmother out of her teeth, or steal it. (This is another nasty side-effect of time travel. The increased temptation to steal.—See the movie Groundhog Day for more details. [(Phil Connors slowly walking across street toward armored car) "10...9....8....car...(car drives past)....6....5...quarters....(roll of quarters breaks open and falls onto ground)....3...2...." (Phil reaches over stooping armored car driver and takes bag of money.)  (Moments later One armored car driver to the other.) "Felix, did I bring out two bags or one?" (Felix scratches head.) "I dunno."]

 

At the very best, the concept of time travel would provide you with a window to see how things were back or forward in time, but any interaction would be perilous to your freedom or life.

 

“Well, alright, but there are still little things I can do to use time travel to my advantage,” you snidely retort.  “What about making money on interest?  The whole concept is based on time—and I have the advantage of just skipping ahead.”

 

5. Going to the future to collect that interest?  Not so fast.

 

This has been used as a story plot (or mentioned, at least) in dozens of stories where time travel is a possibility.  Take the movie Time Chasers where the following statement is made:

 

“You know, if you go back 100 years and deposit $100 dollars in a bank, then came back 100 years to the present… gosh, the interest alone would make you a millionaire!”

 

Ignoring the fact that this man has the worst math skills in the universe (I ran a quick amortization schedule—being generous and assuming you can get 2% interest in a savings account would garner you $724.46 after 100 years), this device has floated around in people’s minds for decades.  Sadly, most people have never worked in the financial industry—because if they did, they could tell you it can never happen.

 

Bank accounts can be considered inactive if no contact has been given to the bank after a number of months or years.  Once an account has been inactive for 5 years, an account is considered dormant and is subject to a number of money-depleting activities.  Banks are allowed to charge fees on accounts while inactive, and dormant accounts can be seized by the state if certain guidelines are met.  Disappearing for 100 years is almost a signed guarantee that those funds will be gone.

 

But let’s say you bank at the Totally Trustworthy and Awesome Bank—guess what probably won’t exist 100 years in the future?  The vast majority of banks created in 1911 have ceased to exist, and all banks have been purchased by less trustworthy and awesome banks since.  While your money (at least now) is protected by the government if a bank fails, waiting 80 or 90 years to claim your money probably will be looked at oddly by the State.  (Not to mention if 20-year-old you deposits $100 dollars, then 20-year-old you withdrawals the money 100 years later, that will most likely be flagged as ‘probable terrorist activity’ according to the PATRIOT act—no lie.)

 

“Fine!” you say out of desperation.  “What if I just, like, go back 500 years and get something and bring it to the present and sell it as a mint-condition antique!  Any problems with that?” 

 

Yup.

4. Law of Conservation of Energy and “bringing something back”

 

We get a little into physics now.  You remember that famous formula by Albert Einstein?  E=mc2?  We have all quoted it since we were 6.  But that simple formula would prevent you from doing exactly what you want—bringing objects back from the past/future.

 

How so?  Einstein’s ‘Law of Conservation of Energy’ states that energy is “neither created nor destroyed”—simply ‘redirected’.  Burn an ant with a magnifying glass?  You’re simply transforming those little ant atoms into something else using heat energy.  You haven’t destroyed an insect so much as transformed an insect into gas (which actually sounds pretty awesome). 

 

So, let’s say we go back to Ancient Egypt and bring back a brick with a hieroglyphic on it.  According to Einstein’s law, you have removed energy from one time and added it to a future time.  Now, we don’t exactly know how the manner of time travel is going to work, but according to physics as we understand them now, your very existence in another time is in question, no less than the action you just performed. 

 

This isn’t the whole ‘step on a butterfly and kill the dinosaurs’ time argument (though that’s an entire other chapter in the fallacy book).  This is simple physics: You cannot remove energy from another time.  It’s very possible that the discovery of time travel will change this law, or even make it obsolete.  But there’s a much better chance that even if you can travel through time, only what you bring with you (self, clothes, etc) will be able to travel and come back—nothing else.  So, sorry to burst another bubble for you.

 

Now that you’re completely dejected, you decide that you’re just going to do something simple.  Let’s see what the Earth looks like in 30 years.  Well, cross your fingers…

3. Boy, I hope everything is alright with the ozone in the future.

 

Do you know what the difference between Hiroshima, Japan, July 1945 and Hiroshima, Japan, September 1945 is?  If you answered ‘a city that exists’ and ‘a city that is 60% crater’, then you’re right.

 

 Now, imagine you lived in Hiroshima in July 1945 and you built a time machine.  You kiss your wife and say, “I’ll be right back, honey.  I just want to see how the flowers I just planted look in two months.”  Now, imagine the look on your wife’s face when you come back with 2^nd degree radiation poisoning from your short excursion.

 

See, the problem with wanting to know what the future holds is that we don’t know what will happen in the future.  What if your time machine was on the top floor of the WTC South tower and you went from the year 2000 to the year 2002?  This poses a new issue. In this instance the area isn’t radioactive, however, the ground you were once on is no longer there and your time machine will be plummeting into the crater that was left over 1,000 feet straight down.  I hope your time machine was built with a deployable parachute!

Go into the future, and it’s a dice roll whether the place you arrive will be at war, irradiated or if it even exists anymore.  And those are just the risks we can foresee.  No one fifty years ago wondered if the ozone layer was going to be a problem in the future.  We have dozens of problems that could affect civilization that we never would have guessed 100 years ago.  For all we know, the year 2112 will have a severe Godzilla problem, and here we are warping ourselves right into the middle of it.  And pray that you don’t get stuck in a Godzilla future, because…

2. More than a little bad if your time machine is stolen.

Again, we don’t know exactly how this time travel process is going to happen.  If science fiction has taught us anything, though, it will mean swirly portals and cool gadgetry.  Tangible objects.  You know, the kind that can be broken or stolen.

 

Of all of these points, this is the one that is used the most in stories that actually have time travel devices.  This is a great sub-plot for storytelling, because it creates drama and can be resolved by the end.  But the only reason it gets resolved is because the story would not be as good if the good guy was stranded in front of Hannibal’s army while the bad guy gets the girl and the money. But in all honesty, that’s about the way it probably would roll in real life.

 

See, there’s really no recourse if you go to another time and the method of travel is disrupted.  At best, at best, your hope is that someone can recreate the means of traveling through time in the era you find yourself stranded in.  Even if you were the inventor of your lost machine and know how to make another, if you go into the past you most likely won’t have the means to remake it (assuming that you didn’t make it out of coconuts). If you go into the future—well, we’ve discussed other issues that could be going on then.  Similar to the overall plot in the Back to the Future trilogy, you’ll probably be spending months trying to fix all of the problems you made just in your initial jaunt through time.

 

The possibilities of problems are endless.  But besides all the logical problems or even the cultural issues that could be faced, the last reason is perhaps the most unavoidable…

1. Just like all of our toys, eventually, it just gets boring.

 

“Oh, Come on now!” you say defiantly, because you already have a long track record of talking back to me in this article.  “How on Earth could I ever get bored with time travel?”

 

Very, very easily.

 

Are you bored with this article yet?  Because I’ve used at least three different types of technological miracles in designing it (by 1990’s standards).  If you would have even described what this article is to someone in 1985, they would be astonished.  I used a word processor on my Dell computer to type it and spell-check it.  I e-mailed it to our blog Editor.  He posted it on our blog Web page.  All things that didn’t even exist 26 years ago.  But you probably didn’t even think twice about any of that.  It’s humdrum to you, because you have gotten used to these things existing.  Things just simply get old.

 

Think about it.  Imagine your favorite place in the world—a place you might have gone to on vacation before.  Let’s say you’ve been planning it for a year—seven full days in paradise.  You have all of the days’ itineraries filled with fun and excitement: museums and attractions and lots of relaxing.  After the seven days are up you might even say to yourself how you wish you never had to leave.  Yet, deep down you kinda miss being at home; where you felt grounded, where you were in control of things.

 

That’s the difference between a vacation and moving somewhere.

 

Where have you always wanted to visit?  Civil War-era United States (for some reason)?  Alright, so you go and you get to talk to lots of interesting people and do interesting things and take interesting pictures and eat interesting animals.  How long do you stay before you realize that you’re a little homesick?  One week?  Three weeks?  I guarantee it won’t be more than a month, even for an American History major.

 

Then you come back and are excited to go somewhere else.  Perhaps you select a visit to ancient Rome.  So you go there for a week.  Then you come back and make plans for your trip to Ankor Wat to witness its construction.  Eventually, you’re going to just run out of ideas and imagine yourself at home playing Rummy with your next door neighbor while American Idol plays in the background.

 

The truth of the matter is that what we really want is a new experience.  But after a little while of experiencing it, the exhilaration dies down a little.  That’s why musicians retire—not because they don’t like what they are doing, but because they’ve converted a hobby into a living, and they want to move on to something else.  Sure, you might keep the time machine around for a rainy day, but in all honesty, it will soon sit in the corner neglected while you continue your World of Warcraft campaign and sell your Farmville vegetables.

 

Don’t believe me?  Invent a time machine and prove me wrong.

-Zerom

What's That Jargon?

I am always amazed when someone who's second language is English accurately incorporates a witty idiom into one of their conversations. It's a true sign of fluency and a merit to the hard work they invested in learning variety of expression. Many who's mother tongue is English cannot even fully grasp the import of most jargon. So to me the flawless use of second-language provincialism is quite a marvel.

Although I do know the roots of some idioms, hearing other's accurate use of simple phrases stirred a desire to dig deeper into this vast realm and acquaint myself with some I was unfamiliar with. While I previously had known the proper context in which to use the following phrases, I had to admit I was unfamiliar with their origins. Here are some I found interesting:


Chance one's arm: (take a risk)
Soldiers sometimes chose to engage in conduct they knew was against regulations or they would disobey an order which could lead to punishment. They could receive a demotion and lose the ranking stripes on their arm, thus 'chancing their arm'.

Alive and Kicking: (lively and active - used in response when asked how one is feeling)
Fishmongers coined the phrase to advertise the freshness of their product. The fish are so fresh they are clearly alive as they kick (flap) about.

John Doe: (stand-in name for an unknown person)
During the rein of King Edward III of England there was a legal debate over the Acts of Ejectment. A hypothetical name was given, John Doe (Doe was used as pronoun in those days and John was by far the most common name in England), for a man who leased his land to another hypothetical man, Richard Doe. Richard Doe is said to 'eject' (evict) John Doe from the land. The debate was an essential turning point for legal theory and the names continued to be used from that point forward in legal settings, eventually spilling into more common usage. Even today John Doe is the first name given to an unidentified person in legal proceedings while Richard Doe is given to the second.

Let the cat out of the bag: (spoil a secret or ruse)
After Muslims invaded Europe in the 1700's their conquest reached all the way to the British Isles. Under their dominance the consumption/sale of pork was outlawed. Therefore, farmers would put a pig that was to be sold in a sack often tying it closed. Some farmers would deviously substitute a valueless animal, such as a cat, instead of the pig. An unwary buyer would make the exchange without ever looking in the sack to check the animal. However, if the buyer opened the sack before making the purchase or if the seller didn't secure the sack well enough they might let the cat out of the bag, revealing the trick and ruining the sale.

Axe to grind: (ulterior/selfish motive or [the word later included the meaning] private grievance)
To make a point in his book Too Much for Your Whistle, Ben Franklin told a personal story about his childhood. As a young man he once complied to turn a heavy grindstone after a man flattered him into doing so. Really, the man was only interested in grinding his axe. So, after the man had sharpened his axe his attitude toward young Ben changed. The experience taught Franklin to be wary of 'smooth talkers'; maybe they just have another axe to grind. (Perhaps the later meaning of the word sprung from the viewpoint of Franklin since he was tricked into doing something for nothing and now had a private grievance with the man.)

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth: (don't be picky when given a gift or encountering a chance benefit)
A young horse is much more desirable than an older one. To quickly tell the age of a horse you can look at his teeth. As they age their gums recede just like humans who take poor care of their teeth. If you were to receive a horse as a gift it would be considered bad manners to inspect the horse's mouth to try to determine how old (and thus how valuable) it is. Similarly...

Straight from the horse's mouth (reliable source of information)
This is also referring to the method of inspecting a horse's teeth. For a potential buyer there is no more reliable method to determining the truth of a seller's claims regarding the horse's age.

Go berserk: (act wildly or frenzied)
Berserkers were Norse warriors acclaimed for intensity and rage in their fighting. They also proudly wore bear skins (bear-sarks in Icelandic) instead of protective armor.

Apple of my eye: (a cherished person or thing)
Originally it was thought that the pupil of the eye was orbicular and solid like an apple. The part about it being precious or cherished comes from Deut. 33:10 which says in part: "He began to encircle him, to take care of him, to safeguard him as the pupil (apple - KJ Version) of his eye" - New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.

Sleep tight: (sleep well)
Before box springs many beds had criss-crossing ropes tied tightly between the bed frame to hold the mattress up. If the ropes loosened it would make sleeping very uncomfortable as the mattress began to sag. Many beds had a tool which looked like an iron peg that could be twisted to tighten the ropes. So those going to sleep were reminded to tighten the ropes on their beds before going to sleep.

Bite the bullet: (undergo a difficult situation/make a hard choice)
Before the days of anaesthetic, soldiers were given a bullet to clench between their teeth when surgery was required, especially amputation.

Blow a raspberry: (imitating the sound of breaking wind with one's mouth)


See a man about a dog: (something one says when unwilling to tell their true destination)
This was a line from a long-forgotten play in 1866 called Flying Scud. The eccentric old jockey is looking to get away from a sticky situation and says, "Excuse me Mr. Quail, I can't stop; I've got to see a man about a dog."


These are just a few of the hundreds of English idioms, some older and some very recently adopted. What are some of your favorites? Do you know what they mean? Feel free to leave a comment.


- Axon