Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi all! We have been experiencing an issue on site where threads have been missing the latest postings. The platform host Vanilla are working on this issue. A workaround that has been used by some is to navigate back from 1 to 10+ pages to re-sync the thread and this will then show the latest posts. Thanks, Mike.
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

John Titor

  • 25-09-2004 6:49pm
    #1
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭


    Seeing as it came up on Keu's Civil War thread in Politics, what can we retrospectively say about John Titor?

    I've seen many references to him having been exposed or debunked but I've yet to see any sort of official or reliable evidence of this.

    Looking retrospectively at some of his predictions:

    CJD epidemic (its looking more likely)
    Civil War in the US (not likely)
    A female US president (this was a no brainer really)

    Even though his pictures and science are continuously being picked at (and rightly so it would seem), is there still a chance there may be something to him?

    Were there any of his other predictions thathave come to pass that may validate his claim?


«1

Comments

  • #2
    flogen
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 10,247 Mod ✭✭✭✭flogen


    After seeing Keu's thread, I was just about to post the exact same thing!
    I read around and saw people saying "its now been proved he was lying", but no evidence to support it.

    On the note of the Civil War in the US, I think he said it would begin in 2004/5, but it wouldnt be a huge war all of a sudden, rather it would take 10 years or so to really become a full-on war, and then it would become a world war (actually, what are his predictions for the world war, what I read was very muddled)

    flogen


  • #3
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    still going back through some of his stuff to see if any of it is credible now four years on. I think that civil war is likely btw, but then again its not difficult to suggest that it will snow in canada sometime before february.
    The states is at a point of civil discontent, something which wasn't evident before nov. 2000..at least to the degree it is now.

    I think the fact that he came on the scene just before Bushs presidential win..and started to spout this kind of stuff a year before 9/11 is thought provoking.
    (I don't credit the time travel machine theory though. Don't need a machine to travel, but loved his physics.)

    Haven't gotten as far as female president yet, but if as he suggests the decentralisation of govt, that would give a lady a one in five chance of being one. :)

    Currently looking for validation on his other stuff..will come back to it later.


  • #4
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    flogen wrote:
    After seeing Keu's thread, I was just about to post the exact same thing!
    I read around and saw people saying "its now been proved he was lying", but no evidence to support it.

    On the note of the Civil War in the US, I think he said it would begin in 2004/5, but it wouldnt be a huge war all of a sudden, rather it would take 10 years or so to really become a full-on war, and then it would become a world war (actually, what are his predictions for the world war, what I read was very muddled)

    flogen

    He said gave no exact date for the start of his predicted civil war and gave both 2004 and 2005 as the date.

    He did say no one thing started it but many small infringements and violations of civil liberties. This was before the patriot act, which, some argue, has lead to the sort of infringements Titor mentions.

    He does say the real unrest starts around the 2004 elections but again doesn't give any specific details. Many have referred to vietnam as an analogy of a war that was never official and started long before the public knew about it.

    From my point of view, his CJD prediction interested me. Its true that many epidemiologists have been predicting a greater threat from CJD for 5+ years but considering the worst of it was assumed to be over by the time Titor was posting and the facts coming to light his year which show that we may have only seen the tip of an iceberg of horror due to CJD, it was a rather astute reference for a hoaxer.


  • #5
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    the story with the civil war is sooo interesting considering the current political world state, makes me laugh.

    his descriptions ofcivil war


  • #6
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    on topic/off topic.

    remember that whole remote viewing lark we discussed before...wonder am I picking up on some devious plan being concieved by the likes of
    NRA nuts agree with you. And Tim McVeigh probably would, also. And the Black Panthers.


    spose only time will tell.


  • Advertisement
  • #7
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    Does the current relationship between Arabs and Jews have anything to do with the coming war?

    *Real disruptions in world events begin with the destabilization of the West as a result of degrading US foreign policy and consistency. This becomes apparent around 2004 as civil unrest develops near the next presidential election.* The Jewish population in Israel is not prepared for a true offensive war. They are prepared for the ultimate defense. Wavering western support for Israel is what gives Israel's neighbors the confidence to attack. The last resort for a defensive Israel and its offensive Arab neighbors is to use weapons of mass destruction. In the grand scheme of things, the war in the Middle East is a part of what's to come, not the cause.
    written in 2000
    Iran Says It Has Tested Strategic Missile
    The announcement in Tehran came amid a war of words between Iran and Israel this week as Iran faces increasing international pressure over its nuclear energy program....
    Earlier this month, Israel said it was buying from the United States about 5,000 smart bombs, including 500 1-ton bunker-busters that can destroy 6-foot-thick concrete walls.
    The development of the Shahab, whose name means "shooting star" in Persian, has raised fears in Israel about possible attack by the Iranian government, which strongly opposes the Jewish state's existence.
    The United States — which once labeled Iran part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea (news - web sites) and prewar Iraq (news - web sites) — and other nations suspect Iran is developing atomic weapons.link

    posted 53 minutes ago.


  • #8
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    I just came across some of the faxes that Titor sent to art bell in 1998, 2 years before the whole Titor saga began, note the discrepencies as pointed out by the mod. (I've underlined a few pats which caught my eye)
    -forward by site moderator ~
    Every once in a while someone asks about the faxes sent to Art Bell by "Titor" in 1998.

    I've posted them here for your review. Note the extremely close similarity between these 1998 ideas and the ideas, as refined, by 2000.

    It has been said that these faxes simply support the idea that Titor stopped off in 1998, as he said he would, on his way home. From his perspective that stop off would have been just a few minutes after he left 2001. Yet the story in the faxes isn't quite the same and it is in a much more crude form...a crude form that didn't know thsat Y2K wasn't a disaster with "many people dying on the highways" or "freezing to death."

    Here they are:


    quote:
    FAX ONE:

    Dear Art,

    I had to fax when I heard other time travelers calling in from any time past the year 2500 AD. Please let me explain.

    Time travel was invented in 2034. Off shoots of certain successful fusion reactor research allowed scientists at CERN to produce the world's first contained singularity engine.

    The basic design involves rotating singularities inside a magnetic field. By altering the speed and direction of rotation you can travel both forward and backward in time.

    Time, itself, can be understood in terms of connected lines. When you go back in time you travel on your original time line when you turn the singularity engine off a new time line is created due to the fact that you and your time machine are now there.

    In other words a new universe is created. To get back to your original line you must travel a split second farther back and immediately throw the engine into forward without turning it off.

    Some interesting outcomes of this are; you meet yourself. I have done it often. Even taken a younger version of myself along for a few rides before returning myself to the new timeline and going back to mine.

    You can alter history in the new universe
    that you have just created. Most of the time the changes are subtle. The oldest one was a sky scraper that don't exist in New York.

    Interestingly when you travel in time you must compensate for the orbit of the Earth since the time machine doesn't move you have to adjust the engine so you remain on the planet when you turn it off.

    Now for the future you might want to know about..Y2K is a disaster . Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. The gov. tries to keep power by instituting marshal law but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail.

    A few years later a communal government system is developed after the constitution takes a few twists.

    China retakes Taiwan Israel wins the largest battle for their life and Russia is covered in Nuclear snow from their collapsed reactors.

    FAX TWO:

    Dear Mr. Bell I am glad you 're back. I faxed this information to you the day before you left the air. I wanted to make sure it wasn't lost in the shuffle so I am sending a gift.

    If you've already seen this please accept my apologies if you choose to make this public please do not publish the fax number. I had to fax when I heard the other time traveler calling in from the recent time past in fact the year 2500 AD.

    Let me explain. Mr. Bell I sent a fax with this opening on July 29 1998. As I said then I am a time traveler. I have been on this world line since April of this year and I plan to leave soon. Typically time travelers do not purposely affect the world lines they visit. However this mission is unusually long and I've grown attached to some of the people I have met here.

    Anyway for my own reasons I have decided to help this world line by sharing information about the future with a few people in the hope that it will help their future. I am contacting you for the same reason. Unfortunately there is no historical reference to your program in my world line.

    I believe you can change your future by creating one now. Some of the information presented on your program maybe invaluable to upline researchers. I suggest you isolate the programs that concentrate on military technology and new physics theories. Transcribe these programs and put them someplace safe away from the box. I recommend someplace in the mid west. (away from the box what does he mean?-art says)

    I also urge you to reconsider your paranoia to the Russians (I am not paranoid about the Russians) They are not preparing for war with the average US citizen. They are preparing for war with the US government. They will eventually save this country and the lives of million of Americans.

    I realize my claims are a bit difficult to accept so I will send the following once I know you have received this fax.

    A few pages from the operations manual of my time machine. And a few colored photographs of my vehicle.

    If you wish to contact me I will be happy to share with you the nature of time , the physics of time travel and some of the events of your future.

    Titor later put forward the idea (in 2000) that he was in someway responsible for averting the Y2K bug.
    Titor wrote:
    32) For a change, I have a question for all of you. I want you to think very hard. What major disaster was expected and prepared for in the last year and a half that never happened?

    (It is generally agreed that John is referring to the Y2K bug.)

    Tbh..the writing style is nothing like the Titor who portrayed his time travelling tale two years later...considering his journey back to 1998 was only seconds after leaving 2001, the story just doesn't hold water. The personality is very different, you can almost visualise a young teenager writing the first set of theories which have then been refined and concreted into a more mature version, two years down the road.


    (I find his writing style similar to that of Dan Browne)


  • #9
    Hobbes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,264 ✭✭✭✭Hobbes


    keu wrote:
    Tbh..the writing style is nothing like the Titor who portrayed his time travelling tale two years later...

    How do you know it was the same John Titor? Remember he could of gone back in time, and altered it by being there. Himself would also be part of that new universe. Now if he went forward before going back from his current time reference then he would still be in the universe where Y2K was averted due to him.

    It's a compelling time travel concept. Allows you to be always right.

    His predictions are intresting all the same though.


  • #10
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    His predictions are intresting all the same though.
    if you were to answer honestly..what were your first impressions of G.W.Bush. I remember vividly what mine were and they were confirmed by the farce that was the 2000 elections. Everyday that guy confirms our worst nightmares. I think Titor was a libertarian..and he was speaking the truth about how he felt and how he forsaw the future under George Bush's leadership.
    Usually we find out that our first instincts were right all along.


  • #11
    flogen
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 10,247 Mod ✭✭✭✭flogen


    keu wrote:
    if you were to answer honestly..what were your first impressions of G.W.Bush. I remember vividly what mine were and they were confirmed by the farce that was the 2000 elections. Everyday that guy confirms our worst nightmares. I think Titor was a libertarian..and he was speaking the truth about how he felt and how he forsaw the future under George Bush's leadership.
    Usually we find out that our first instincts were right all along.

    well I don't think I'm much of a time traveller for saying in 2000 "If Bush gets elected he's going to start a load of wars", however, Titors claims are a slight bit more complex than a gut reaction to an incident or person... unless its some kind of social satire :S

    flogen


  • Advertisement
  • #12
    Hobbes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,264 ✭✭✭✭Hobbes


    keu wrote:
    if you were to answer honestly..what were your first impressions of G.W.Bush.

    TBH I didn't really pay attention to him until he was president. I believe a quote of a friend was "If Bush gets in then I'm heading to a cave in the hills for the next 4 years".

    I think that Titor just made predictions based on already existing information.

    Take this onion piece and its links. This was written before Bush got into power, yet all they did was take what they knew and sent it to an extreme.

    It is easy to do. I recall a long time ago a person on record showed how easy it was by saying a plane with a red tail would crash in X State in July. He actually got investigated by the Feds when it did in fact happen. However he was basing it on statistical information.

    But Titors are intresting. Time Traveller? Crazed loon or prankster got lucky? Who knows.

    Civil war in the US could be feasible if you have the right factors. They are there.
    - Possible illegal activities to win the election.
    - Rounding up of people with no rights.
    - Shipping people off to Iraq to fight (send the people you dont like)
    - Oil shortages
    - Possible further terrorist attacks to polorise the people.

    (Links are only there for further reference)


  • #13
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    But Titors are intresting. Time Traveller? Crazed loon or prankster got lucky? Who knows.
    someone who just believed in what he was saying with such conviction that he spoke with great authority. (prophet)


  • #14
    pork99
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,746 ✭✭✭pork99


    All reads like a bad adolescent fantasy.
    Now for the future you might want to know about..Y2K is a disaster . Many people die on the highways when they freeze to death trying to get to warmer weather. The gov. tries to keep power by instituting marshal law but all of it collapses when their efforts to bring the power back up fail.

    it's "martial law" not "marshal law"


  • #15
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    pork99 wrote:
    All reads like a bad adolescent fantasy.
    Perhaps, but its still the topic of numerous websites and a couple of books and has never been properly debunked (even still, I believe its a hoax).

    incidently, the mistake you point out is in a quote not the posters.


  • #16
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    yea..and he can't hear you..he's somewhere in the future...somewhere out there....travelling through the mists of time to save the human race...

    :eek:


  • #17
    Hobbes
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 21,264 ✭✭✭✭Hobbes


    I've always wondered about Time Travel and basically what is the point of it.

    Beyond getting live documentry channels that is.

    - If the future cannot be changed, then time travel can't really do anything beyond a kind of tourist trip.

    - If the future can be changed, it is only being changed for the traveller and not the people (as they would be on an alternate timeline). The only reason to stop possible corruption of the time line is so that the traveller can return to their point of origin safely.

    So anyone know the point of it?


  • #18
    flogen
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 10,247 Mod ✭✭✭✭flogen


    Hobbes wrote:
    I've always wondered about Time Travel and basically what is the point of it.

    Beyond getting live documentry channels that is.

    - If the future cannot be changed, then time travel can't really do anything beyond a kind of tourist trip.

    - If the future can be changed, it is only being changed for the traveller and not the people (as they would be on an alternate timeline). The only reason to stop possible corruption of the time line is so that the traveller can return to their point of origin safely.

    So anyone know the point of it?

    Well... maybe it is to change the future for the better (like Sam Beckett...)

    I suppose you could always travel back in time, mess up the place for the laugh, then travel forwards to a week before you originally travelled and tell yourself not to travel or not to wreck the place. But if you didn't travel, then you'd have no reason to go forward and warn yourself... but if you wern't warned you'd go back and wreck the place and have to warn yourself...

    kiff... we have a conundrum....:)

    flogen


  • #19
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    lol.

    I doubt when Einstein was splitting the atom, he was intending on converting that energy into the most destructive force available to man, the point for him was exploration of the unknown, the validation of theory, and the possible harnessing of a new form of energy. A challenge for man.

    They say neccesity is the mother of invention, the basic need in these cases is mans desire to create something~hence the splitting of atoms and in the case of time travel, producing anti-matter.

    Everything else is just a bi-product.
    If you figured out how to travel through time and you had the available "tools", you would build a machine and think about it's object (other than being able to travel through time) later.


  • #20
    magpie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,643 ✭✭✭magpie


    Just read all of this John Titor character's posts on www.johntitor.com

    What we have here is a typical survivalist fantasy played out as time-travelling prophesy. All of your NRA / McVeigh obsessions are here:

    1) Central Government is evil, and must be overthrown.
    2) Farming / manual labour are good, leisure is bad.
    3) "Never kiss someone you don't know" !! of course, as AIDS is going to get us all
    4) Genetic engineering and medical advancement are bad. "When people get sick they die". i.e. only the strong survive
    5) 50% of the population deserve to die.

    It's just a shame nobody had the foresight to ask him whether there were any "****" or "queers" left in the year 2036.


  • #21
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    magpie wrote:
    It's just a shame nobody had the foresight to ask him whether there were any "****" or "queers" left in the year 2036.
    Of the latter he was asked, to which he apparantly responded:
    Yes, homosexuals are in the army. You tend to look past the individual differences of people when their job is to protect your life.
    Yes, there are "gay" people in 2036.
    Of interest is this particular quote:
    None of the things I have said will be a surprise. They were set in motion ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?
    The meaning is a little open to interpretation, however I would favour the one that he was trying to claim that Iraq did indeed have nukes (which turned out to be false).

    Hoax or not, I found the affair very interesting.


  • Advertisement
  • #22
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    What we have here is a typical survivalist fantasy played out as time-travelling prophesy. All of your NRA / McVeigh obsessions are here:

    Moses, the same guy who brought the commandments down from the mountain (and who is considered a prophet) also killed 10,000 men....because God asked him to. (must have been before he was given the "thou shalt not kill commandment)

    Osama Bin Laden is considered a prophet by his people (the chosen one)... he may well be making the prophecies come true..albeit by forcing the US to attack.

    It's not unreasonable to place Titor within such a category.
    Just a thought.


  • #23
    magpie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,643 ✭✭✭magpie


    Yes, it is possible that he was actually a time travelling soldier from the year 2036 who enjoyed spending a bit of time in internet chat rooms as he made a lay-by on his way back from 1976 with an IBM 5100 needed to fix a bug in UNIX. But why weren't any terminators following him?


  • #24
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    magpie wrote:
    Yes, it is possible that he was actually a time travelling soldier from the year 2036 who enjoyed spending a bit of time in internet chat rooms as he made a lay-by on his way back from 1976 with an IBM 5100 needed to fix a bug in UNIX. But why weren't any terminators following him?
    As much as you like to sneer and roll your eyes, you can't deny that the story is very entertaining, not for the content specifically, but for the way it is told, and the way "John Titor" orchestrated his answers and kept people captivated and convinced. The most interesting part I find about the whole thing is that although vague, he was either very learned, or had researched all the topics at length beforehand. His political and scientific "predictions" were slightly vague and not accurate of the situation at the time, but have become closer to reality now. This is the eeriness it gives him. Anybody could probably have predicted it, if they were significantly tuned in to the world, and had thought their answers through extremely well. It's the way he makes it seem as if no answers were thought through that much - that he just answered off as if it was common, standard knowledge for him - that adds to the entertainment.

    I feel sorry for you if you can only be skeptical and laugh at people for reading it in the first place.


  • #25
    magpie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,643 ✭✭✭magpie


    I feel sorry for you if you can only be skeptical and laugh at people for reading it in the first place.

    On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon reading everything I could about it. I just don't give any credence to his being anything other than an NRA member with a few physics books.

    But yes, entertaining stuff alright. I'd like to see the play!


  • #26
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    magpie wrote:
    On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon reading everything I could about it. I just don't give any credence to his being anything other than an NRA member with a few physics books.

    But yes, entertaining stuff alright. I'd like to see the play!

    I agree its probably a hoax and I believe analysis of his photos have weakened his claims somewhat, but to say he knew a bit of physics and had a gun is somewhat understating the case.

    His prediction on CJD is something that really interests me and is much of the reason I posted this thread to begin with. At the time he posted, the CJD "epidemic" (this is a media term, there wasn't actually an epidemic in literal terms) in the UK had died down and despite issues with trade relations -noone in the US has ever been diagnosed with vCJD in the US, the CJD issue never actully surfaced as much of a story at the time. It was basically someone elses story and got maybe a 15 min item on the news one day when nothing much else was happening. In the UK, they had figured they'd seen the worst of it and had started playing down the threat.

    Now it emerges that CJD is more infective than anyone suspected and that its quite likely that we will hit an epidemic in the near future. Considering the science required to make this prediction with any certainty has emerged this year and also that Titor was US based when the CJD issue was being down-played in the UK makes his choice of disease very very strange.

    At the time from his point of view, CJD was a marginal issue in europe that 90% of the US public probably hadn't heard of and was on the way down anyway. Yet he picked that over all other diseases to be the "unseen theathening disease worldwide". Not HIV (a banker) or malaria (which was the response given to me by a senior US epidemiologist at the weekend when I asked him (not mentioning John Titor) "What disease surprised him by not having as much of a world impact as he would have expected at the start of the decade" - he cited changing climate and the spread of malaria incidences as the reason).

    While CJD was most likely a lucky guess (and to be fair, we're still not 100% sure if the predicted surge in cases will happen, although its very likely) he would have had to have known alot about the disease to begin with (more than just an x-files episode) and there was no way he could have known that varient CJD may effect the majority percentage of the population and not the small isolated group we had previously thought!
    Related articles
    vCJD woes ahead

    New Scientist vol 183 issue 2460 - 14 August 2004, page 5


    THE prospect of a second wave of vCJD cases caused by the BSE epidemic now seems more likely.

    All the 142 deaths from the human form of BSE in the UK have so far occurred in people with a set of genes that seems to make them susceptible to the disease. But last week it was reported that someone with a different genotype had been found to be incubating vCJD after dying of other causes (The Lancet, vol 364, p 527). Half of the population has the same genotype, so the discovery is ominous.

    "What this finding indicates is that the largest genetic subgroup is susceptible to this infection," says James Ironside, director of the UK's National CJD Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh, UK, and a member of the study team. "From one case you can't extrapolate too far but it seems that many of them are likely to be infected."

    Based on the number of cases so far, epidemiologists have estimated that there will only be another 50 to 60 cases of vCJD, though initial findings from a survey of tonsils put the figure at 3800. The latest case suggests the toll might be even higher


  • #27
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    Yes, it is possible that he was actually a time travelling soldier from the year 2036 who enjoyed spending a bit of time in internet chat rooms as he made a lay-by on his way back from 1976 with an IBM 5100 needed to fix a bug in UNIX. But why weren't any terminators following him?
    I'm not really sur ewho your responding to, I don't think anyone here was actually promoting the idea that he was a time traveller.
    In response to your NRA statement, considering the past history of some "prophets"..it is reasonable to suggest he was a member of some faction, intent on bringing about a revolution.
    All he had to do was garner enough information, tell it like it was gospel, enough people buy into it and you begin a movement.


  • #28
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    I've just been reading some of his posts and they're pretty interesting. It's a pity he's not still around, it would have been good to ask him a few questions. Personally I don't believe he's a genuine time traveller though (I won't go into why, I'm sure that's been done to death elsewhere), I think he just had some points to make about how f**ked up modern society is and the bet way to do that was as an outsider experiencing it for the first time. I also think he was using a veil of mystery to keep people interested and to try and get them to think from a different perspective.
    keu wrote:
    (I find his writing style similar to that of Dan Browne)
    Because he writes fiction with enough truths in it to make it believable ? :D
    Seriously though, I found it very reminiscent of the Publius Enigma


  • #29
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    Because he writes fiction with enough truths in it to make it believable ?
    sounds about right.

    Whats the story with publius enigma..I checked it out but the messages seemed very repetitive,(lost interest) what was the message?


  • #30
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Your right, I'm not sure what's happened, I only followed it for a year or so back around 98/99. When I did a search for a link that one I posted was the first one that came up, I recognised it as what used to be the best source of info on it and just posted without going back through the site. A lot of the other sites seem to have dissapeared too, weird :confused:

    I'll try and dig up some details but basically way back at the very start of the internet some guy calling himself Publius posted on usenet that there was a hidden puzzle in Pink Floyds "The Division Bell" album and who ever could solve it would win a great prize (can't remember the exact words used but it sounded really great, kind of like the 'whatevers in the mystery box effect'). People started analysing the album from all kinds of angles, the words, the rythms and melodies, the imagery etc and finding all kinds of hidden messages and things, some of which Publius predicted in his posts. He also made some vague predictions about the future, there was one, something about a flash of light in the sky, and then at a PF concert a while later there was a flash of light in the sky and so on. It was pretty famous for a while (apparently, I just happened to stumble on to it). I think I heard something about it being solved but I never really found out.


    Edit: slightly better site Here. This site also has the solution which is pretty much what I thought when I first read about it but never bothered posting, it doesn't say what the prize was, maybe I'm better off not knowing. Reading the posts on their own is a bit dull, the real fun was what people were making of them (especially cos at the time I was really into listening to PF and ...erm... "enhancing" the experience) but that all seems to be gone, which kind of ruins the whole point.

    Anyway, I forgot to mention why it's similar to JT which is that they were both trying to make a point about society and using a shroud of mystery to make it more appealing to people and get them to really think about the issues.


  • Advertisement
  • #31
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    Back on topic, I'm on an email list with a group of Americans, both left and right wingers, who love discussing politics. As we can probably all guess, the main dicussions over their respective contenders for the upcoming elections are all to do with foreign policy.
    They seem to be united however in their dislike of current domestic policies and especially the various security proposals. While they obviously want more security they seem to be getting more and more annoyed with various intrusions in their rights to privacy and in particular the lack of accountability on the various agencies. It's likely that laws such as the patriot act are only the start of it and if there's more terrorist attacks, and I'd say that's very probable, then the laws are only going to expand into new areas and tighten even more. Many Americans, and in particular the NRA types aren't going to be very happy about this and it could easily lead to the situation John Titor described.

    Pretty good foresight to say the least.


  • #32
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    stevenmu wrote:
    Many Americans, and in particular the NRA types aren't going to be very happy about this and it could easily lead to the situation John Titor described.

    Pretty good foresight to say the least.

    Ahh I'm not sure about this, I'd say you could nuke the US and noone would touch the 2nd amendment.

    Americans seem to value it over the right to beathe.


  • #33
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    You might be surprised by this, I've discussed gun rights with this group of Americans before and they were pretty divided on the issue. The two main arguments for gun rights were self defense and to overthrow a potential "tyrant" government. I noticed it was mainly the people living in urban "big city" areas who were against gun rights and those who lived in more rural areas who were for them, again matching JTs predictions, altough if he's an NRA nut as some have suggested then that would be pretty natural to him.
    It's also worth pointing out that many of the anti-gun crowd interpret the "state militia" wording of the 2nd ammendment to mean the national guard units that each state currently has and they say it doesn't apply to the general population.
    You're right about how much the pro-gun lobby value their rights though, from what I've gathered any attempt to restrict them would probably lead to a civil war.


  • #34
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    Just watched Michael Moores bowling for Columbine. Americans are very ****ed up.

    ohh..and I had a dream about John titor last night. Lots of symbolism but I recall two dates which came up the 19th and the 9th..was very straaange.


  • #35
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    thought it better to come back and re-address that statement, I think I was just overwhlemed after watching that docu last night and even today after the second presidential debate, its difficult to detach yourself emotionally from the US saga, the John Titor story just promotes the esence of it all.
    There is no denying the deep polarization within the states right now and the results of this election are so so crucial in all respects.


  • #36
    billy the squid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,811 ✭✭✭✭billy the squid


    The owner of johntitor.com was on US radio last night/this morning on Coast to Coast AM so I gave it a listen.

    One of the things he mentions was a question that was asked by one of the people on one of the message boards that this "time traveller" frequented, asking what parts of the US were safe. The answer given was "watch the election results.

    the following is taken from

    http://www.johntitor.com/News4.html

    HOST: Warning: The following link will really test your ability to judge reality. It's so weird and strange as to be almost unbelievable. I haven't had a chance to check it for fact and if someone else can, that would be great. Thanks to Travis for sending this.

    "FORUM MEMBER: Are some areas of the United States safer than others?

    JOHN NOV 25, 2000: Take a close look at the county-by-county voting map from the last
    elections."

    That said, take a look at this!

    http://www.users.qwest.net/~bazerko/GODvsBUSH.gif



    http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/hurricane.asp

    It is worth noting however that the track of hurricane jeanne is innacurate on that map.


  • Advertisement
  • #37
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    I know this might be totally irrelevant, but in the dream I had, there was this guy called John, same type scenario, leaving messages and depicting scenarios, but in the dream it was like he was a professor, a phd or something in the given subject.
    When I woke up..I started searching for anything related to that and I did come up with a few things which suggested as much.
    It has been suggested that whoever John titor was, He was educated in the given area and he may have worked at some Govt. level.

    Now..I'm not a fan of art bell but I thought this was interesting. Considering JT started out with art bell (probably knowing he could sell the story)
    In a short segment from a radio show that Art Bell did in 1997, Art had asked workers of Area 51 to phone in and spill the beans about Area 51. The following is a transcript of the talk:
    "Hello Art? Art? Hi....I don't have a whole lot of time..um...I was a former employee of Area 51...I was let go on a medical discharge about a week ago...and...and...(starts to cry)...I kinda been running across the country...um...um....man....I don't know WHERE to start......they'll triangulate on this position really, really soon... (starting to break up and get more frantic--Art tells him to give us something quick>)...OK...um...um....What we're thinking of as Aliens ...they're EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL BEINGS...that an earlier precursor of the SPACE PROGRAM MADE CONTACT WITH...uh...they are NOT what they claim to be...uh...they have INFILTRATED a lot of aspects of the MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT particularily Area 51...uh...the DISASTERS that are coming...the GOVERNMENT knows about them....and there's a lot of SAFE AREAS in this WORLD THAT THEY COULD BEGIN MOVING THE POPULATION TO...N O W - Art.....but they are NOT doing anything about it... THEY WANT THE MAJOR POPULATION CENTERS - WIPED OUT SO THAT THE FEW THAT ARE LEFT WILL BE MORE EASILY CONTROLLABLE....(breaking up more, starting to cry...)...I started getting...." Silence - Art went off the air at that point.
    In the next program Art said they found that their satellite had "lost earth lock". That means, it was knocked out of position.
    Supposedly some time after the same bloke called back the Art Bell show and he said that he was only joking. All very x-filesy.

    The way JT tells the story is like he has already read the script, which makes me think that the Govt do already know some things in advance. (or have planned in advance)
    If Bush is re-elected I will be convinced of that.


  • #38
    billy the squid
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,811 ✭✭✭✭billy the squid


    The programme mentioned the IBM 5100 and how John Titor went back to the 70's to buy one

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=74946&item=5129771869

    well somebody believes in him.

    I personally am of the belief that no matter what happens, there will be an interpretation for every thing that this guy said. The same way there were different interpretations for what Michaelangelo de Nostredamus wrote.

    His predictions of mass blackouts could be interpreted as a prediction of the major blackout a year or two ago on the east coast of the states.


  • #39
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    I'm looking at the message rather than judging the messenger.
    The thing about time travel is, within the area of the paranormal, it is the one field which actually has scientific possibilites and therefore it's more plausible than ghosts or whatnots..if scientists declared tomorrow that time travel is not only possible but in the process of development, would that make John titors story more believable?

    I dunno..but his physics were classy all the same.
    When John Titor visited our worldline in 2000 - 2001, he gave certain physical details about the physics and engineering behind his time machine. He stated the machine operated through the use of two mini black holes that produced a gravity field that allowed passage from one worldline to another. In march of 2001, John got into a discussion about his machine with his arch nemesis, Darby. For those unfamiliar with Darby, he is currently the moderator at the Time Travel forum at http://www.anomalies.net.

    For the last four years, Darby has been hell-bent on driving people away from the idea of time travel and John Titor specifically. In their last few conversations before John left, Darby and John went back and forth on many subjects where Darby took great pride in trying to out-maneuver John over his physics statements. As time went on, John has proven to be correct on many of the bizarre statements he had made. It appears he was right about another.

    Darby attacked John on a routine basis (and still does) based on Steven Hawking's theories on black holes. When John was here, Steven Hawking believed that mini-black holes were impossible to contain because they would evaporate and disappear in something called "Hawking Radiation." Here is a short question and answer between Darby and John: linnky "MARCH 14, 2001

    DARBY: It's Hawking Radiation you can't overcome.

    JOHN: Yes, that is true. If you firmly believe that Hawking radiation cannot be controlled or goes on even without the presence of virtual particles forever until the singularity explodes than you are correct. "

    As it turns out, Hawking has now re-thought his views on this subject and he now agrees with John.
    http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996151
    After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week.linky

    ..still, I am under the impression that he was a guy who worked for the Govt and had access to TS information.


  • #40
    keu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,180 ✭✭✭keu


    also question for those who are scientifically minded and with regard to creating singularities..

    ..from here http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html
    For the best chance to observe Hawking Radiation and evaporation, you'd want a black hole that was much closer than naturally occurring black holes, and much less massive. It's a common misconception that you have to have a huge amount of mass to create a black hole. Any amount of mass will do, as long as you cram it into a sufficiently small space. A super-massive black hole with the mass of a billion Suns might be the size of our Solar System, but the Earth could be a black hole too if you packed it into the volume of a marble. Even a person will do, although you'd have to cram them into the space occupied by a single electron...
    [snip]
    Amazingly, scientists are becoming increasingly confident that they will be able to create black holes on demand, in quantity, using the new atom-smashers due to come online in the next five years. Some estimates suggest that the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN -the acronym is in French) will be able to create an average of one black hole each second. LHC will bombard protons and antiprotons together with such a force that the collision will create temperatures and energy densities not seen since the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This should be enough to pop off numerous tiny black holes, with masses of just a few hundred protons. Black holes of this size will evaporate almost instantly, their existence detectable only by dying bursts of Hawking radiation...
    [snip]
    "But wait", I hear you say, "Has anyone considered that creating artificial black holes might not be the best idea?" The idea of creating black holes in the laboratory has to give one pause. I mean, how can anyone resist the urge to imagine future headlines like "Artificial Black Hole Escapes Laboratory, Eats Chicago" or some such thing? In reality, there is no risk posed by creating artificial black holes, at least not in the manner planned with the LHC. The black holes produced at CERN will be millions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom; too small to swallow much of anything. And they'll only live for a tiny fraction of a second, too short a time to swallow anything around them even if they wanted to.

    isn't this what CERN are doing?
    CERN--Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire--is the world's largest scientific research facility. It is located in Geneva Switzerland and employs over 3,000 of the world's top scientists. CERN houses an underground particle accelerator that is over fourteen miles long and stretches all the way into France~ and they recently suceeded in producing anti-matter. Antimatter is the ultimate energy source. It releases energy with 100% efficiency (nuclear fission is 1.5% efficient.) Antimatter is 100,000 times more powerful than rocket fuel. A single gram contains the energy of a 20 kiloton atomic bomb--the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In addition to being highly explosive, antimatter is extremely unstable and ignites when it comes in contact with anything...even air. It can only be stored by suspending it in an electromagnetic field inside a vacuum canister. If the field fails and the antimatter falls, the result is a "perfect" matter/antimatter conversion, which physicists aptly call "annihilation." CERN is now regularly producing small quantities of antimatter in their research for future energy sources.
    is a "perfect" matter/antimatter conversion a singularity?
    when nothing becomes something..a little like the big bang..only in this case a relatively little one, yet has the capacity to create enough energy to take out a continent.
    and if anti-matter can be contained with an electromagnetic field, does that not equal a "black hole"

    eh? eh?


  • #41
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    keu wrote:
    is a "perfect" matter/antimatter conversion a singularity?
    when nothing becomes something..a little like the big bang..only in this case a relatively little one, yet has the capacity to create enough energy to take out a continent.
    and if anti-matter can be contained with an electromagnetic field, does that not equal a "black hole"

    eh? eh?
    No, sorry.

    The best way to explain a black hole is with a quick explanation of gravity. Gravity is caused by distortions in space-time, the more mass an object has, the more space-time it distorts, the denser that mass is, the more severe the distortion is and hence the higher the gravity. A good analogy is to think of space time as a huge rubber sheet. Now picture what happens if you put a bowling ball on the sheet, the sheet will bend down and anything near it on the sheet, say a small marble will roll towards it. Now imagine if you roll the marble at a tangent to the bowling ball, if you get the speed right it will revolve around the bowling ball in an orbital path. In this analogy the bowling ball could represent our sun, the marble could represent the earth orbiting it and the bend in the sheet represents the gravity of the sun.

    Now imagine taking something with the weight (mass) of several bowling balls but it's only the size of a marble and putting it on the sheet. It would bend the sheet to the point that it's vertical as opposed to the gentle slope around the bowling ball. If you rolled a marble past the bowling ball fast enough it would roll up the slope and escape the bowling ball's "gravity well", but no matter how fast you roll a marble it won't climb a vertical slope, that in essence is what a black hole is.

    Matter/Anti-matter is, well, completely different from this. It's only really relevant as a power source. Basically when an atom of anti-matter comes in contact with an atom of regular matter the cancel each other out and under E=MC2 energy is released. I'll point out that even in the most powerfull nuclear blasts only a tiny amount of matter is converted to energy, with a matter/anti-matter reaction all of it is.


  • Advertisement
  • #42
    Gordon
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 35,524 ✭✭✭✭Gordon


    stevenmu wrote:
    Now imagine taking something with the weight (mass) of several bowling balls but it's only the size of a marble and putting it on the sheet. It would bend the sheet to the point that it's vertical as opposed to the gentle slope around the bowling ball.
    Don't be silly, it would rip the rubber sheet and fall through the hole and make a dent on your nice floor.

    :D


  • #43
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 92,471 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Gordon wrote:
    Don't be silly, it would rip the rubber sheet and fall through the hole and make a dent on your nice floor. :D
    wow, falling through a hole in the universe , that would really upset the spacetime continum...


  • #44
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 92,471 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    That bit about reading like Dan Browne, Angels & Deamons painted CERN as developing MACH 6 scramjets 'n stuff which I dount they do.

    But this bit about going back to get an old IBM .. smacks of Y2K compliance hype. Even if there is total social collapse a lot of knowledge will survive, in the past very little public domain technical knowlegde has been lost. In the "dark ages" people used better farm implements, and crop rotation strategies than in Roman days. Hey, it makes a great argument for OpenSource :D

    Rather than look at the predictions, a quick look at the overall reason for the "mission" (course some skecptic will claim it's a cover story for the real reason )

    1.9MHz CPU / 64K memory MAX with BASIC / APL ROM's - not a hard nut to reverse engineer esp if basic has a PEEK function to allow you to read the whole memory map.
    John Titor 02/08/01 09:40: As you are probably aware, UNIX will have a timeout error in 2038 and many of the mainframe systems that ran a large part of the infrastructure were based on very old IBM computer code. The 5100 has the ability to easily translate between the old IBM code, APL, BASIC and (with a few tweaks in 1975)
    http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html
    Apparently, APL was a difficult task for IBM to accomplish with an interpreter in the 5100, so instead they wrote an emulation program so that the S/360 mainframe version of APL could be run instead -- The 5100 is like a desktop IBM S/360 mainframe computer which only runs APL.
    Eh no, just because it can Emulate does not mean it can reverse engineer Unix. cf. SCO case

    This has to be a concidence...
    http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa120198.htm
    The second "personal computer kit" was the Mark-8 (also Intel 8008 based) designed by Jonathan Titus.

    Wasn't it M$ that would get upset in 2038 ?
    Also today

    http://timetravelportal.com/viewtopic.php?t=41 - OMG some "time travellers" are hoaxers !


  • #45
    stevenmu
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭stevenmu


    The whole IBM thing is easy to pick apart. There's a law in computer science, can't remember what it's called, that says "any sufficiently powerful model of computation is equivalent". Essentially this means that a modern computer can do anything the old IBM can because their models of computation will be roughly similar. It also implies that any machine capable of running UNIX is going to be capable of translating it's code, it has to be or else it wouldn't be able to run UNIX in the first place. If they have computers capable of running UNIX, then by definition they have computers capable of reverse-engineering UNIX and translating it's source code.

    It's worth keeping in mind that an old 8086 can do pretty much anything that a modern pentium 4 or athlon64 can, just a hell of a lot slower.


  • #46
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Now we see if JT is BS-ing us or not.


  • #47
    John Titor
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8 ✭John Titor


    No bull


  • #48
    magpie
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,643 ✭✭✭magpie


    Hi John, welcome to boards. Can you reserve me a place in your neo-agrarian, anti-federal, gun-totin' nigra-killin' jew-baitin' paradise? I'd like a house next to Charlton Heston please. YEEEEEEEEEEHAWWWWWW!


  • #49
    pork99
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,746 ✭✭✭pork99


    John Titor wrote:
    No bull

    Nice of you to drop by. I thought you had gone back to 2036?

    http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/

    Do you use a Tardis? I had one but it broke.


  • #50
    seamus
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 68,317 ✭✭✭✭seamus


    http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/11/17/story176265.html

    *nervous giggle*


  • #51
    John Titor
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8 ✭John Titor


    pork99 wrote:
    Nice of you to drop by. I thought you had gone back to 2036?

    Thanking you. I'm back to witness the start of the Second Civil War


  • Advertisement
Advertisement