Time Travel: Only to the Future

I personally believe that time travelling is possible, however travelling back to the past is impossible. No facts or live application is done for this statement. However as for travelling forward in time, it may be possible. To move or travel forward in time, one must accelerate closely to the speed of light as Professor Brian Cox said “as you get close to that speed, time slows down, but only for you, according to Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.” “If you go fast, your clock runs slow relative to people who are still. As you approach the speed of light, your clock runs so slow you could come back 10,000 years in the future," said Professor Cox.
               With the video we watched, and the fact that time moves slower as you go higher from the ground or away from the earth, one can travel time faster than those who are below because of this. The consequence of time travelling is that you can’t go back, as far as I believe and from the given facts. The only thing you did was to see what will happen in the past and you just have to live with it.

I do not believe in travelling back into the past because it has too many things yet to be explained or it couldn’t be explained. If one may alter the past, many events in history and existences would be altered to the present time. It may also possible that the time traveler wouldn’t exist anymore in the present time if he altered the past. Many consequences would come back to mind if one may alter the future and the past, even one tiny event. It may lead to major disturbances and alterations to the present time – If one could time travel back and forth through time. 

The Rhetoric of Cancer

Living alongside cancer. This is something that, I personally, have never heard anyone say. Especially someone with cancer himself. When talking about cancer, we usually use the words "battle", "fight", "survive", etc. These terms give us the idea that cancer is something we should be against, but this podcast from BBC says otherwise. It was mentioned that how can you fight something that is a part of your body? He had a point. Since cancer cells are, technically, pat of us, it would be really hard to be against it. Andrew Graystone compared cancer to other parts of the body. You can't "fight" something if it's a part of you.

Andrew Graystone tackled cancer in a very different way in the podcast. He shared his search for a better language to describe it. Maybe he did this because he felt like he needed something more accurate for him to refer to cancer. He asked different specialists and how they perceived cancer. In the end, I think his point was that we needed to be open to the other side of seeing cancer. Just because something is not doing us any good, doesn't mean we should always act aggressively or negatively.

This was a very enlightening and interesting podcast to listen to. I found it enlightening because we can always learn something new just by listening to someone tell their experiences. This made me realize that to some people, cancer is not totally a bad thing. It opened me to a whole new side of cancer and it made me see it in a new light. I found it interesting because I don't usually hear things like this and I actually found it enjoyable. It made me realize that overcoming something doesn't always mean that you should fight it, sometimes we first need to accept it and just have a positive outlook no matter what happens.

The Fight

The Fight

(A poem as a reaction for the podcast "The Rhetoric of Cancer")

Some people are chosen

To fight a battle within themselves

Most of them are unprepared

Most of them are afraid

A lot of them are in pain

A lot of them do everything to win

Win a battle that only they can fight

But what if it is not a battle

It is not a fight to win

There is no enemy within

Only a part of you that’s confused

That through help

Will become better

That through help

Will be better

This sickness

May not get better

Just by words, just by perspective

But the you who ‘struggles’

The you who ‘fights’

May just get better

By words, by perspective.

Maybe It Is Possible

Time Travel

Time is gold. This is probably one of the most cliché mottos in life. I have heard this line since grade school, and up until now I still hear this statement. What makes time so precious that they even compared it to gold? When I was young, I didn't know yet the answer to this question. But as I've aged, I came to realize the answer. Time is as precious as gold because it is a scarce resource. The amount of time is fixed. Its amount cannot be increased nor decreased. However, the thing about time that makes it so precious is that once it spent, it can never be retrieved or taken back.

This must be the reason why some human beings are obsessed about time travel, especially travelling back to the past. The reason? What else but correcting past mistakes. I admit that in this case, even I would want to travel back to the past just to correct a mistake. It makes me curious how things will be right now if I just didn’t make that mistake. Would things be better? Would things still be the same? These questions are the reasons why people are eager to develop a technology that permits time travel.

Time travelling has always been just possible in movies or any science fiction piece. However, after watching the video, I realized that there are scientists who are working very hard to make time travelling possible and it seemed that they are nearing their goal. They think differently and have their own theories about time. Oddly, as they explained their theories in the film, what they were saying made sense. This gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, time travelling will already be possible to us humans in the near future.

Sabrina Romasoc, 2011-14690

Language and Perspective

Language truly affects how we live in this world; how different events and happenings influence our way of thinking. From the podcast “The Rhetoric of Cancer”, we have witnessed and listened to how different people can have various ways in dealing with this disease. From battling against it to living alongside of it.

Edward Sapir and Benjamin Wholf might be right in their writings of how language affects (determines) our thoughts. How we deal with the experiences in our lives is influenced by the words we learn and use. And how these life episodes affect our own thoughts and usage of language. Andrew Graystone, after being diagnosed with cancer, observed that the language commonly employed with this disease revolves on the concept of military warfare and battles. The usual metaphors used to talk about this are related to the war between good and evil – light angels and dark angels. He said that these metaphors might have come about because of the culture people have lived in. Because of the different wars we have faced throughout the history of our world, we associated cancer as the enemy of our body and we have to fight against it. In addition, we have given cancer the title as our greatest and reigning conqueror – we created our own “Bogeyman.”

Because of this thought, most people with cancer seem to always think that they have to either lose or win in this battle against their “Bogeyman”. But there are few others, like Graystone, who are adamant not to make their own body a battleground. Professor Michael Overduin of School of Cancer Sciences at Birmingham University has a wonderful view of the collectiveness of the body – accept these rogue cells as part of who you are for they are yours as well. He said that when he hears the word “cancer”, he does not think of a war between the good cells and bad cells. Rather, he visions a troubled part of the body that needs the help of the whole. When you look at it in this way, it’s how you can accept and live alongside your “Bogeyman”.

How we perceive things, how we understand words, and how we use language influences our actions in dealing with the things around us. We might start a battle against cancer if we think of it as a foreign enemy, but we can also start a new relationship with it as an unwanted visitor that needs our help.  Thus, we can say that how we use language to talk about cancer is as important as understanding what we are dealing with in our lives.

Time Enough At Last: Last Man Up

If I were going to write an adaptation of “Time Enough At Last,” I would still want to retain the moral of the episode.  It pictures a string of hope despite solitude and loneliness.

Who? The protagonist of the story is a boy born with a very weak respiratory system that he needed to literally live inside a ball for the rest of his life. This ball is a recent invention of his father who desperately sought for a cure for his son’s incapability. It carried the responsibility of providing him a controlled environment which is safe and suitable for him. It is equipped with a portable oxygen tank and all the other stuff he would need to survive. It is the 21^st century and technology is a big part of the people’s existence.

Sandy grew while suffering from the discrimination of others. He never got the chance to make friends nor to even start a conversation with anyone other than his parents. He is trapped not just in a ball, but in a world full of harsh people, unable to accept his peculiarity. But one day, an unexpected crisis has changed everything about Sandy’s life. That was the day he started believing in what he couldn’t before.

The whole place was ravaged by the deadliest plague. Everyone was infected and soon they all died. Sandy, being the only one living in the most protected environment, was the only survivor. He dreaded that day, and the fact that he felt, for a moment, the comfort he never felt before. He felt lucky that though he had suffered a lot, there he was, totally fine while all else was gone. But as if that wasn’t enough for him to be grateful, he didn’t wish for any of those to happen. Alone inside the ball he called home, he mourned for his family’s loss.

Bon Voyage!

A 1902 French silent film would become a classic that would definitely be written on history books after some time. When people had different beliefs and views of the universe, “Trip to the Moon” had certainly captured its audience and became internationally popular. If I were there when it was first filmed, I’m pretty sure I’d end up dumbstruck and in awe, wondering how they’ve come up with such magic. I could have believed the credibility of everything in the film—the space capsule fired out into space by a huge cannon, sleeping on the moon, a goddess sitting on a crescent moon, Selenites inhabiting the extraterrestrial world.

Lighting, audio, transitions and such wouldn’t be an issue. What would probably be stuck into my mind are the plot and how Georges Melies  interpreted what the universe was like. It would obviously be a product of hard work and patience. After watching the 17 minute film, it would be more than enough to satisfy my curiosity. There would be not much anticipation before I see it other than it being awesome, and sure it is.

 The film might have gone beyond what we now think is rather impossible, but we can never tell. It just goes to show how people have been indulged into finding answers about the universe, trying to unravel the truth behind the unknown. Up until now, when technology has improved from nothing, we have been struggling for more. A little more imaginative view won’t hurt.

Time Enough at Last

          Last week, we were made to watch the eighth episode of the Twilight Zone’s first season entitled “Time Enough at Last.” It was a science fiction film, which revolved around the story of a book enthusiast named Henry Bemis. Henry loves to read a lot, however, doesn’t have the time or the place to enjoy his pastime. Set in a post-apocalyptic location, where he was the only person to survive after hiding in a vault, he finds himself blissfully alone with his books after a nuclear war. At first, he became lonely, as there’s no other person to accompany him in his daily life on Earth. It was until he found a library where he began to enjoy and plan what to do for the rest of his life. The short episode ended tragically on Henry’s tears when he accidentally dropped his glasses and was unable to read for the rest of his life.

          If I were to make an adaptation of the story, it would revolve around an ROTC student for example, who doesn’t take the drills seriously and doesn’t necessarily obey the commands of his commander. One day, there occurred a third world war where all the nations fought for their respective survivals. Since this ROTC student is inexperienced and coward, he didn’t have the courage to go outside and defend his beloved nation, and instead opted for his own safety and hid inside a bunker. The world was then destroyed after the collective efforts of the nations to destroy one another, and it was only when he left the bunker when he realized that he was the only one standing. At first, he was lonely as hell and tried to aim the trigger in his head, similar to the temptations Henry faced upon holding a gun. In the end, he found company. However, it also ended tragically as he realized that such creatures were in the form of zombies, similar to the post-apocalyptic nature of 2013’s video game of the year, The Last of Us. Had he taken the drills seriously or obeyed his commanders, his fate would’ve gone the other way around as he was able to defend himself from such zombies.

Suarez, Joshua Philip C.

2013-14904

All the Time Reaction and Adaptation

Time has come

                ‘All the Time’, a movie which portrayed a banker, Henry Bermis, who is of much addiction in reading books with a sad ending was for me a good movie to reflect and adapt on. The movie ended when Henry Bermis—the protagonist—broke his eyeglasses and lost his eyesight making him unable to read the books in the devastated library, that was after a great explosion happened and only him survived.

                My adaptation would not focus on the concept of the ending of the story because I find the ending fantastic realization. I prefer updating the flow and the whole story perhaps with the same situation/realization at the end.

                And it would go like this: A man which I’ll name John has a wife with two children. He is devoted and very committed to his job that it came to certain extent that he’ll risk anything, anyone just for the sake of his job. There come a point when a great extinction of human beings due to a once in a life catastrophic event—a very strong earthquake with great tsunamis afterwards. He was ordered to go to the peak of Everest for some studies and research there when the catastrophe happened. It spared his life thanks to his work but the thing is he is the only person left in their place; everyone including his family was all obliterated by that deadliest disaster. Just then he realized that he missed his family, that he longs for their occurrence, but it was already too late, he can never resurrect them. His life became worthless. Time had already passed, and once gone can never be back again. It is not a movie that you can rewind if you wanted to watch it again. The word is ‘to treasure something’, as long as there is time cherish it because time will come that these opportunities wouldn’t be knocking again on your door asking for you to grab it just because you missed it.

                I guess that would my adaptation and comprehension as well of the movie. My adaptation is quite simple and too dramatic, but I guess we can get lesson out from it.

AT LAST: An Adaption of “All the Time”

               “All the Time” or “Time Enough at Last” is one of the episodes of an American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. This certain episode is centered on the life of Henry Bemis, who loves to read books but is prevented by people around him. One day, when he hid inside a vault to read, the ground shook very strongly and he lost his consciousness. When he awoke and went outside the vault, he only saw ruins and rubbles of the bank, of his house and of everything that stood there before. Because of what he felt as loneliness, he nearly committed suicide until he saw the ruined public library with all kinds of books scattered on the ground. It was heaven for him! For at last, he had all the time he needed to read. But when his glasses broke, not even a second can give him pleasure anymore.

          If I were to make an adaptation of the episode, I would write about a girl who loves to text all the time. Even when she is facing the other person she wants to talk to, she would still use her phone to communicate. Her parents and even some of her friends would keep telling her to stop her rude habits and change it. But she would insist that what she’s doing is not wrong since when she stops texting the unlimited text she has will go to waste. People should just understand her, it’s her life anyway. She continued doing such, ignoring the reprimands of the people around her, and kept defending herself. Not a single face-to-face interaction. Time passed, and the people she called friends were no more. Her family became cold and indifferent towards her. But then again, she ignored all these. She got a lot of other people to meet, connect and to text anyway! That’s the power of technology! Then one day her world crumbled. Her so-called text friends were gone as well. She could not get any text and replies from anyone any more. She might have the time and loads to waste; but what she doesn’t have are people she could text and who would also text her back. They had turned their backs from her.

         The adaptation I presented is somehow related to what is happening in the world today. We are too engrossed in communicating with other people even when they are near us using media devices. Instead of actually sparing an hour to personally talk to a friend to catch-up with him/her, we resort to use mediated communication that could not truly give that warmth and comfort we mostly get from face-to-face interactions. We may have new high-tech devices to connect with lots of people; but we may also be losing the real touch and feeling of being a human.         

Trip to the Moon

            As the new century begins to unfold, I only have limited knowledge on the real nature of the universe. Even though I am aware of Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the solar system or Immanuel Kant’s paper on nebular hypothesis, there is little knowledge and technology available to reveal the mysteries of different heavenly bodies, particularly the moon. Every night, the moon exposes himself to a chunk of the world in the midst of the dark sky without telling us his darkest secrets.  On a time where the Apollo 11 is yet to be discovered, I would be willing to dedicate a huge portion of my allowance just to be able to go to the theatre and witness the futuristic perspective of director Georges Melies to take its audience to as far as the moon.  

             His 1902 short “A Trip to the Moon” would be a testament to the credit Georges Melies receives as the cinema’s father of fantasy. As the audience at that particular point in time, I would be mesmerized by the film’s use of imaginative editing and photography, giving justice to the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. A truly innovative film, I would say that “A Trip to the Moon” is enjoyable and mind-blowing despite the fact that I would think of it impossible and purely fiction, given the state of science at that time, add to the fact that even the University of the Philippines wasn’t established yet. The film can be considered as the first of the science-fiction genre but I know at that time that the legacy of Melies’ film would reach even beyond the 20^th century.

            As a movie critic, I could consider this a revolutionary film with the power to lay out the blueprint for the foundation of what we now call Computer-generated imagery (CGI) effects. As a future scientist and a dreamer, I can say that this movie ignited my passion to become the Neil Armstrong of my generation and reach for the stars.

Suarez, Joshua Philip C.
2013-14904

No Time At All

If I were to adapt Time Enough At Last, it would involve the person stopped from practicing a skill of some sort, instead of the addiction being books. I wouldn’t change the ending at all, mainly because I like the ironic twist in that the character finally has the time but doesn’t have the skill anymore. And in my adaptation, I’d make it such that the person is the one stopping himself from practicing the said skill. Probably something like dancing, which is a skill that’s time dependent because as your body ages, the less you’ll be able to do a lot of physically rigorous stuff.

I don’t think the episode itself really focused on the science of the atomic bomb; if anything it was just a plot device to ensure that the main character, Henry Bemis, was no longer barred from reading. That being said, my adaptation would be more concerned with the basic themes of the episode. It would kind of be a commentary on the fact that although we have many technological advances, we humans still age and have a limited amount of time on the earth, so it’s important to calculate our moves and grab the chances we’re given. In my adaptation, the dancer would keep doing other things, and putting off his or her dancing career, saying that there are more important things, until, finally, when all those “important things” are done, they are too old and too inexperienced to dance.

I believe that changing the sad ending for a happy one would be taking away the essence of the film, that’s another reason why I don’t want to make it any happier no matter how much the original ending seems wasteful or sad. The original, I think was emphasizing the fact that time isn’t the only thing you need. You also need the ability to use it, because after all, time is pretty useless when you’re not doing anything.

Cadiz, M.T.M.

Voyage from the Moon

I’ve always loved watching films, especially ones done with good special effects. If I had the privilege to watch the opening screening of of Melies’s Voyage dans la Lune, I think I’d fixate on the effects they used and try to figure out how they make it happen. These days it’s easy to dismiss all special effects as CGI, but before CGI people had to improvise. However, that’s not true for all special effects. For example, in filming Star Trek XI, during the scene when Kirk and Sulu were skydiving on to the Romulan drill, they just had the actors surrounded by reflective surfaces jumping around.

Based on the film, they made use of the fact that a film is fundamentally many pictures taken one after the other. The way they made things suddenly appear was by stopping filming and suddenly inserting the object or person into the frame then continuing filming. This technique is still utilized in amateur videos.

I’d also comment on the coloring of the film. This was made before color filming, meaning that this movie is colored because people took the time and effort to hand-paint each of the thousands of frames in this movie. That would explain the color inconsistencies, too.

The film would probably make me think about an actual voyage to the moon. Some movies are really there to propose ideas, and even if they might seem far-fetched during the period before the first World War, it makes you think. If people back then thought that a voyage to the moon is impossible, what concepts and ideas do we have now that are proposed in films but that we think are impossible? For example, this movie called Sunshine directed by Danny Boyle is pretty interesting. It’s about a group of astronauts on a spaceship towards the sun. They even make it past Mercury! Like right now, it might seem insane, but you never know.

Cadiz, M.T.M.

All the Time: An Adaptation

All the Time or also known as Time Enough at Last is a film surrounding Henry Bermis, a banker who has the addiction of reading books. Because of his job and his wife, he can’t have all the time to himself reading. Until one day in the bank where he is working at, he spends his lunch time in the bank vault until suddenly he heard a loud boom. This made the vault shake, making Bermis unconscious. When he got out of the vault, he sees no one on sight, all just rubble and destroyed building. As he is alone in a shelter where he is eating, he fell in despair that he is ready to commit suicide when he found a revolver on the way. His despair became joy when he saw the library destroyed but the books are still in good shape. When he was about to pick up his glasses and to start reading, his glasses broke and without those, he couldn’t read.
               An Adaptation of this story would go like this.

               Once there was a student who was fond of playing computer and video games. He would always play any video game in his free time at school or even at home. Even through breaks where there are many chances of socializing with one another he would still insist on playing these games. He would cut his expenses just to save up to buy a new game one after the other. He barely talks to his parents and spends most of his time at home staying in bed playing video games. Every time when it comes to dinner time, he would always be disturbed to come to the dining table forcing him stop his game play. He wishes also that there would be no more school so that he could have all of the time in the world to play his games. His wish also implicates that he wishes he could play his games when he wants and anywhere he goes. Just a past few days have passed and he got full of these. He now skips classes just to play and even does not eat dinner or breakfast with his family anymore. He even shouted back to his parents and never spoke to them. Then there he says “Ahh! At last all the time I need to play has come”. Not so long after this happened, his game console broke. He felt loneliness and realizes that he would have no future with just spending his time playing games. He realized the value of having the family together even it was a small time. 

All the Time Reaction Paper

            Recently, we watched an episode of a television series where in a man became the last man on Earth because a powerful bomb exploded. He felt depressed at first, but then he realized that he got all the time in the world to do whatever he wants to do. He found the public library and started to schedule the books that he was going to read. Unfortunately, he broke his glasses and thus he could not read anymore because of his blurred vision. And that ended the episode.

            I think that if the scientist’s family owned a vault that protected him from the explosion, it is possible that other people somewhere owned a vault as well and that he was not really the last man on earth. It is also possible that that powerful bomb is not the only catastrophic event that can occur at that time. Famine, a great flood or a viral disease can also cause an extinction of the human race. Then, it would be normal for any person to go mad at his discovery that he is now the only person left on Earth. It was a good thing that he discovered the positive side of his current situation. For the ending though, I would not have wanted it to be a hopeless case for him. He has only himself, and it turned out that he might have even lost himself. The thing he needed the most, which is sight, left him, so how is he going to live after that? I would have hoped for a different ending wherein he makes use of his time and intelligence productively. And even though he would die without anyone acknowledging his accomplishments, at least he died knowing that he made a difference to the world. He created a greater impact than that event that almost destroyed him in the first place.

2013-49311

Bernardez, Richelle M.