12 Monkeys: Mental Divergence

The Path of the Virus

I love a good time travel story.  I have seen all three of the Back to the Future movies more times than I can remember.  I could tell you precisely how the time travel rules change from one Terminator movie to the next.  I even sat through The Time Traveler's Wife, God help me.  But, my all time favorite has to be 12 Monkeys.  It faithfully follows the principle that the past can not be changed and then takes that principle to the point of absurdity as causality circles back on itself like the monkeys chasing each other's tails round and round, representing the twelve hours on the face of a clock.  The funny thing is, though, in a certain sense 12 Monkeys isn't about time travel at all.  It's about mental illness.  It's about the fine line between insanity and what we're willing to believe.

In the late 19th century a man named Daniel Schreber was treated from what was then known as dementia preacox, a illness which we now call schizophrenia.  He believed that God and his psychiatrist were trying to turn him into a woman.  He believed that God was trying to penetrate his skull with "rays of sperm".  At one point, he became convinced that the outside world had ended and that the people and doctors that visited him were only mere facsimiles of the people they represented.  In 12 Monkeys, James Cole is locked in a mental institution in 1990 following a violent outburst.  He believes he is from the future.  He believes that billions will die in 1996 from a deadly virus.  He believes that he has been sent to the past to collect information, and that the people around him are already dead from his perspective, ghosts of the past living in a world that has long since been abandoned and reclaimed by the animals.  He believes that there is a transmitter in his tooth that transmits his location to the people in the future.  He often hears a disembodied voice when calls him "Bob."  Much like Schreber's doctors, Cole's doctors consider him to be insane.  The difference in 12 Monkeys is that it's all treated as if it's completely true.

There's a statement at the beginning of the film that suggests that Cole's story is based on a real patient's delusion.  The issue the film raises is how do we know what's true and what isn't?  How do we know if a man who claims to be from the future is insane or telling the truth?  We hear all the time from people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, people who claim to be channeling the dead souls of Egyptian pharaohs, and yes, even people who claim to be from the future.  It's easy to be dismissive and declare that these people are either "crazy" or lying to get attention.  But how can we really be sure?  Maybe aliens really are secretly communicating with certain chosen people via their television sets.  When it comes to committing someone to an institution where do you draw the line between someone who needs help and someone who claims something that you "know" is impossible?

Having seen a few cases of schizophrenia for myself, I believe that the defining feature of the illness is the lack of internal logic.  It's one thing to have someone tell you that they've seen a UFO.  It's another thing to have someone show you a jar of chunky peanut butter as proof that Jesus controlled an army of robot spiders.  If you've ever been there, you know the difference.  I'm not saying that you necessarily believe every person that tells you they've seen a UFO.  I'm just saying that don't just dismiss them as insane because you don't believe in UFO's.  If it sounds like it makes sense if you granted the premise that it was true, then you can at least give them the benefit of the doubt, and agree to disagree and remain skeptical until you see some proof for yourself.  

Following the recent shooting in Tuscon, one of my cousins in Arizona posted links to some Youtube videos that this Jared Loughner kid had made a few months earlier.  Most of them feature little blocks of text talking about "conscience dreaming" and "a new currency".  I've watched these videos, and I really don't see the slightest possibility of making any kind of sense out of anything he's saying.  Obviously, I don't need to tell you that I'm not a doctor, and I don't know the kid.  It's hard to make a determination based on a few words taken out of context in an online video.  Is it possible that he has some valid theories about the true nature of reality?  I suppose.  But strictly on the basis of what I've seen, and with my extremely limited qualifications, I think there are definite signs of metal illness.  In any case, I can't quite imagine any insight into the nature of reality that he might have had that would justify the actions he took.

12 Monkeys presents a very extreme case.  True though it is, Cole's story sounds every bit as much like dementia as any story could.  Is the movie simply trying to present a concrete dramatization of a schizoid delusion, or is it just doing everything it can to push the boundary between the possible and the insane?  It's hard to say.  At one point he vanishes from a tiny locked room where he was sedated and restrained to the floor.  One of the doctors speculates that Cole must have slipped the restraints, climbed the high, smooth walls, and escaped through an extremely small vent in the ceiling.  Given what he believes, this is the only logical explanation that he can come up with...and it's just as crazy as anything else in the movie.

(This post is also available in extra cheesy version.)

John Titor

There's a little bit of everything on the internet these days.  There are probably forums where people discuss their collection of silly straws, and youtube videos featuring stop-action animation of little stick figures someone has made from their fingernail clippings.  There are probably sites dedicated exclusively to photos of pregnant Siamese twins soaking their feet in yogurt, if you're in to that sort of thing.  Heck, you can probably find a separate site if you insist on the yogurt being non-fat.  It's a real human carnival.  So, it's probably inevitable that sooner or later a time traveler was going to stop by for a visit.

His name is John Titor, and in January 2001 he claimed to be from the year 2036.  He claimed that a third world war will break out in 2015, killing billions of people.  He claimed that he traveled back to 1975 to find an IBM 5100 computer, which they apparently will need in the future to fix some sort of computer problem that's due to crop up in 2038 that's similar to the Y2K problem.  I guess his time flight had a layover in the early 2000's, so he made a pit stop here and shared his story with the world via the internet and the Art Bell radio program.  He even saw no danger in sharing the colonel's secret recipe for time travel. (You'll be happy to know, Doug, he claimed that the multiverse theory is correct.  So, you have at least one possible authority in your corner.)

Do I believe any of this?  Is this the silver jumpsuit guy?  Well, while it would be a tragedy to be dismissive of anyone claiming to be a time traveler, and thereby missing the opportunity to appreciate having one right in front of us, I'm definitely a little skeptical...to say the least.  The story is a little Terminatoresque, don't you think?  Plus, 2036 seems like a fairly ambitious deadline for cracking the secret of time travel, even without a third world war and the death of billions providing a bit of a distraction.  With the struggle to survive and the effort to dig the bodies of loved ones out of rubble, you wouldn't think there would be a lot of time on their hands to figure out how to manipulate the space-time continuum.  After all, there's a reason they weren't splitting the atom back in the dark ages.  Also, since he ascribed to the "multiverse" theory, you'd think he'd be trying to stop this coming world war, instead of mooing about mad cow disease.  At the very least, he could have warned us about 9/11.  I'm just scratching the surface.  These are just a few problems I see at a glance. 

There are plenty of people who do believe him, though.  Of course, there are always people out there that will believe in anything, no matter how crazy it is.  I'm sure there are people that would believe it if someone told them that shoving pyramid shaped sugar cubes into their rectum was the secret to immortality.  You'd think that the fact that the things he's predicted up to this point haven't happened would lay the whole thing to rest, but we live in a society where people are led to believe that it's a virtue to hold fast to your stupidity...errr, I mean faith in the face of reason.  So, really, is it any wonder that some refuse to let it go?

The Titor Time Line

He predicted that the 2004 election would lead to "civil unrest" that would erupt in 2008.  I suppose that all depends on what you call, "civil unrest".  Are people pissed off?  Sure.  Is there war in the streets?  Ehhh.  He claims that he was a soldier in the "Fighting Diamondbacks" when he was 13 in 2011.  Well, the year is still young, but most of the 13 year-old boys I see are still playing their Xbox.  Maybe he was referring to a new Halo game.   He predicted that mad cow would be a "pandemic."  I just ate a hamburger this morning, and I'm not too worried.  He predicted that the U.S. would split into five different territories, but I'm not sure when this is suppose to happen.  Apparently some time before 2015.

At any rate, if it's a hoax, it's a pretty good one.  As a part time fiction writer, I can always appreciate the imagination that goes into a good lie.  I just wish I would have thought of it first. 

(This Post is also available in extra cheesy version.)

Superman & The Wave Model

If you've ever seen the 1978 film Superman, then you may recall a very memorable scene that happens near the end of the movie.  It's been awhile since I've seen it, so you'll forgive me if I'm a little hazy on the details.  Okay, so, Lex Luther had just activated some sort of earthquake-causing machine along the San Andreas fault line as part of the world's most bizzare real estate scam.  A big crack opens up in the earth, spreading across the land.  Lois Lane is driving down the road when it splits open in front of her, and then her car falls into the spreading crevise and she dies.  By the time Superman reaches her, it's too late to save her.  Or is it?  He flies out into space and begins to circle the Earth counter to its rotation.  He flies faster and faster, and as he does, we see the Earth slow to a stop and then start to spin the other away.  As he continues to circle the Earth, we are treated to cutaway shots of everything on Earth happening in reverse.  We see Lois' car fly back up out of the crack, the crack seals back up and recedes from the direction it came, ect.  These cutaway shots establish an important distiction.  Superman is not traveling back in time to save Lois.  He's turning back time itself to before she died.  Naturally, this is a ridiculously implausible concept, and it may seem as though I'm splitting hairs with the distinction I'm making.  But would you believe me if I told that our entire concept of time might hang on this difference? 

In my previous post, I formulated my position on the grandfather paradox by saying, "It would be impossible for a time traveler to change the past."  I knew that I had to choose my words carefully, because I knew where I was going with this.  I needed to keep the statement simple and absolute, without a lot of provisions and qualifications, but it also had to be precise.  I couldn't quite say, "It's impossible to change the past.", because, oddly enough, if you take the time traveler out of the equation, then it MIGHT be possible to do just that...at least in principle and on paper.

Time travel, as we typically understand it, would only work in a certain model of time.  I'll refer to this as the "linear model", because in this model time is...well, like a line.  In order from someone to travel freely on this line, the line itself would have to exist in a completed, static state.  Consider this: Picture time in this model as a long, straight country road.  As you drive along this road, this represents the way you experience time.  You experience the section of the road you cover as a succession of moments that you call "the present".  There is no special point on the road itself designated as the present, rather the present is just your perspective of the road as you drive over it.  Now, if it were possible to pick up your car and move it back to a section of the road behind you, then that section of the road would have to still exist back there in some sense.  If it were possible to skip ahead to a section of the road far ahead of you,  then that section of the road would have to already exist up there in some sense.  If, in all this skipping around, you encountered other cars on the road, they would consider the section of the road they're covering as the present, and you would be forced to conclude that the section of the road that you consider the present isn't a unique perspective.  You would be forced to conclude that there are just different cars driving on different sections of the road.  

In other words, for it to be possible to be able to pick your car up and move it around freely to any point on the road, then the road itself has to be finished product, fixed and complete.  That would mean that past, present, and future have all already happened and we are just experiencing our position on the road from our own subjective point of view.  That would mean that any time traveling that anyone is going to do, they've already done, and if they're going to go to what we consider the past, then they're already been there, and they've already done whatever they did.  This is why a time traveler can not change the past.

If there's a part of you that rebels at this idea, if there's a part of you that's uncomfortable with the notion that the future ahead of you has already happened and that it's as inevitable and unchangable as the past, if there's a part of you doesn't like feeling the stranglehold of fate slipping its icy fingers around you restricting your freedom to make your own choices, then don't worry.  I feel the same way.  There's a way out of all this.  We just have to ditch the time traveler.

We've been looking at time on the linear model.  But what if time isn't like a "line" at all?  What if time isn't a fixed thing that we move on?  What if it's time itself that's moving, sweeping us along like a wave?  In this model, the present is no longer just a matter of perspective; it's no longer a subjective point on a quiet eternal road.  In this model, the present is right now, right here along the cutting edge of the wave.  The crest of this wave is composed of the dynamic flux of everything in the universe, galaxies colliding, mountains crumbling, a ball as it flies through the air.  It's composed of the motion, the evolution, the degeneration, the growth, and the changing of all matter and energy and even consciousness.   In this model, the present is...everything.  It's the advance of the wave.  The past doesn't "exist" somewhere behind it, but rather the past is just a way of describing a prior state of the flux.  The future doesn't "exist" out there ahead of the wave.  The wave is just moving in that direction and things are just happening, moving, changing along the crest.  Now, honestly, doesn't this sound a little bit more like time as we know it?

In this "wave model" you can't travel back and see Ben Franklin fly his kite, because he isn't back there anymore.  The wave has long since swept over him and his kite, and along the crest he grew old and died and men dug a hole and buried him, and still the wave swept on until what was left of his body crumbled away into dust, and then the wave moved on without him.  In the "wave model" you'll never get a knock at your door from a guy in silver jumpsuit from the year 2598.  There's nothing but emptiness out in front of the wave, nothing but the potential of what the flux might become.  There is no man in a silver jumpsuit.  There is no 2598...at least, not yet.

Take a look at our old friend Relativity, which remains our best and only hope for manipulating time in the real world.  If you look carefully, you'll notice that Relativity suggests nothing about people occupying seperate points in time.  Relativity only suggests that someone could observe time running at a different rate in a different frame of reference.  The twin on Earth sees time run slower aboard his brother's ship, but yet they're both still contemporaries.  They can maintain eye contact, even as one grows old and the other stays young.  They still agree on what "now" is, even though their clocks disagree about the speed of its passing.  If anything, this only gives further evidence that time is not a fixed and rigid line, but rather something fluid and dynamic.  This may not be useful information to Dr. Stumblebum puttering around in his basement, but it can be useful to us.  It tells us that the sweep of this wave is not constant and relentless.  It tells us that the wave is flexible.  All you need is a lot of speed and a lot of gravity.  As to why that is....well, what do think I've been trying to figure out?

So that leads me back to my original point.  I said that it might be possible in principle to change the past, if you took the time traveler out of the equation.  What exactly did I mean by that?  Well, suppose it were possible to push the wave itself back, so that the motion in the universe's dynamic flux moved in reverse, so that everything that has happened up to a certain point can be made to unhappen.  What if, instead of traveling back to yesterday, it were possible to push time itself back so that today never happened, or rather could be made to have unhappened, and every change in the flux reversed?  This is why I say "in principle".  Clearly, the magnitude of such a thing is unthinkable at this point.  But hypothetically, suppose it were possible.  First of all, the mere act of pushing the wave back, as momumental an undertaking as it would be, wouldn't be enough to cause a change.  Without introducing some new element, some new factor or piece of information, the dynamic flux would simply repeat the same motions once you released the wave and allowed it to run forward again.  Yesterday would play out the same way it did before and we'd be right back here all over again.  There would have to be some way of carrying back on the wave some kind of premonition of what the flux was going to do once it ran forward again.  Only then could someone act on this information and change the outcome.  In effect, they would be changing the past, even though they might not realize it.  Would the grandfather paradox still be an issue?  Would any paradox be an issue?  I don't know.  I've taken this line of thought as far as I'm going to today.

Does this mean that the linear model is dead?  Not necessarily.  Personally, I prefer the wave model.  I think it makes more sense, but I'm in no position to make any solid claims.  As far as  time goes, we are all like the citizens of Flatland.  Without any freedom of movement or control over the 4th dimension, it becomes difficult to be certain of its true nature.  I present this "wave model" hypothesis simply for your consideration, just as means of showing you the different possible ways of looking at time.  The silver jumpsuit guy could still concievably show up at my door any day now, and we still have the rest of the month to consider the possibilities.  

(This post is also available in extra cheesy version.)

Stop Trying to Kill Your Grandfather

If you're familiar at all with the concept of time travel, then chances are good that you're also familiar with the concept of the temporal paradox.  This is where a time travel scenario leads to a situation which violates the rules of logic and the laws of causality.  In spite of what you may have read in books, seen in movies, or been told by a certain goofy, bearded blogger in his last post, the problem with these paradoxes is not that a time traveler might inadvertently cause one, threatening the integrity of the space-time continuum or the existence of the universe.  By its very definition, it's impossible for a temporal paradox to happen.  There's about as much danger of you causing a paradox, as there is of you eating your own head.  It just can't happen.  Paradoxes do pose a legitimate problem for time travel, however.  As long as it can be demonstrated in any conceivable way that time travel could potentially lead to a paradox, then either the issue has to be resolved, or you're forced to reach the inescapable conclusion that time travel is impossible.  The problem is solved at the source.  It would be like someone trying to build a house from an M.C. Escher drawing.  The problem isn't that the staircases that loop back on themselves or the support beams that connect this corner of the floor to the far corner of the ceiling would destroy the universe if you built the house.  The problem is simply that the house can't be built.  So, before you go packing your extra plutonium, these paradoxes have to be addressed.

There are three basic types of temporal paradoxes: the predestination paradox, the ontological paradox, and the grandfather paradox.  As the title suggests, it's primarily the grandfather paradox that I want to deal with in this post, because it's based on a very common misconception about time travel.  Once the misconception is laid to rest, it should take the grandfather paradox into the ground with it, leaving no ghost to haunt us.  Unfortunately, it's the resolution of the grandfather paradox that makes the other two paradoxes an issue.  Those two are a little trickier to deal with, and quite honestly, at this point I'm not sure that they can be resolved.  We'll just have to see where we're at when we get to them.

So anyhow, the grandfather paradox is the basically the idea that a time traveler changes the past in such a way that it negates the cause of the change.  The most famous example, and the one from which the paradox gets its name, is a scenario where a time traveler goes back in time and kills their own grandfather when he's a baby.  I'm not sure why someone would ever want to do this, but hypothetically, if they did, it would mean that the time traveler had just canceled out his own existence since without his grandfather he never would have been born.  This would mean that he would never have been around to kill his grandfather, which means he couldn't have canceled out his own existence, which means that he would have been around to kill his grandfather, which means...Well, I'm sure you can appreciate the can of worms this opens.  Although this grandfather murdering scenario is one of the more drastic versions of the paradox, it's hardly the only one.  Once you introduce the concept of changing the past, it becomes practically inevitable.  One could even make the argument that any successful journey to the past with the deliberate intention of changing anything at all, would automatically result in a grandfather paradox.  After all, why make that trip back in time to stop Kennedy from being shot if he's already alive and well this time around, thanks to you?

Some people have tried to solve this paradox by postulating the existence of separate parallel universes for every possible outcome of every event since the beginning of time.  Then they cast our grandfather murdering scenario with a couple of different actors from different universes to play the part of our time traveler and voila', paradox solved.  Yeah, nice try.  Not only does this messy idea have more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese, but the actual solution is so much simpler, and we don't need to resort to an absurd multiplicity of countless universes for all the infinite places where I could have set my glass on a table or all the infinite ways I could have put my socks on this morning.  To be consistent, every slightest fraction of a micrometer difference would have to be accounted for by these continuously spawning universes.  Luckily, we can ditch all of this tedious redundancy once and for all.  These parallel universes were brought into the picture to solve a problem that doesn't exist, because, you see, it would be impossible for a time traveler to change the past.

Now, I'm certainly not the first person to realize this.  I'm just here to explain it, so buckle up.  The first thing that you need to understand is for a time traveler to change even as much as the position of a blade of grass in the past, it would be necessary to assume the existence of two separate time lines: one in which the traveler visited the past, and one in which he did not; one in which he touched the blade of grass, and one in which he did not.  This concept is usually presented to us in such a way that the problem with it escapes our attention.  First, we have history running its natural course.  The cavemen draw some bison on a wall...fast forward...Julius Caesar rules over Rome...fast forward...Benjamin Franklin flies his kite...fast forward...Hitler kills a lot of people...fast forward...We land on the moon, etc.  Then one day Dr. Stumblebum builds a time machine in his basement, and he decides to go mucking around in history.  He knocks into Ben Franklin, ruining the whole moment with the lightening and the key and forever changing one of our treasured moments of history.  See, did you catch the problem?  Probably not.

Again, we have two versions of the time line.  We have the original version, where Franklin flies his kite in peace.  Then we have the "new" version where Dr. Stumblebum shows up and ruins the whole thing.  Here's the question, though: When was this new version created?  Well, that's easy enough to answer, right?  It was created the day Dr. Stumblebum decided to load his clumsy ass into his time machine and travel to the past.  It makes sense, or at least it seems to as long as we keep looking at everything from Dr. Stumblebum's point of view. 

Let's try instead to look at from Ben Franklin's point of view.  It's a cloudy day, somewhere in the middle of the 18th century.  Storm clouds are rolling in, and Ben decides this would be a great time to fly his kite.  From his point of view, the day is today.  What else would he ever consider it?  Anyway, he grabs his kite and heads out.  Lightening hits the key, Ben craps his pants, and all is right with the world.  But, wait a minute?  Where was Dr. Stumblebum?  Well, that was a different time line, and it doesn't get created for another 200 years or so.  Oh, okay then.  Wait, hold on.  I've got another question.  Exactly when is that day he flew his kite ever going to be 200 years in the past from Franklin's point of view?  I guess Dr. Stumblebum can't show up from the future until the future happens.  When's that going to be?  I don't know, but I have a feeling Ben's going to be waiting for a long time.

Still not seeing it, huh?  What does Ben Franklin know, right?  He's too stupid to even know that it's really 2011 and he's been dead for hundreds of years.  So, let's try a different example.  Let's say that there's a knock at your door right now.  You can go get it.  I'll wait.  You open the door and a guy in a shiny silver jumpsuit gives you the Vulcan hand sign and tells you he's from the year 2598.  What the hell?  I guess that must mean it's really 2598, because this new time line couldn't have existed until then, right?  But then, where were you when it was really 2011?  How did you miss it?  Did you oversleep?  I tell you, you have one extra White Russian and you wake up and find that it's six hundred years in the future and you're living six hundred years in the past.  Ain't that a bitch?

If all this seems just a little too confusing, don't worry.  It's not supposed to make the slightest bit of sense.  That's the point.  You see, once you put time travel on the table, the "present" is no longer a privileged, objective position.  It becomes entirely a matter of perspective.  To Ben Franklin, the day he flew his kite is the present.  To you, as you're reading this and rubbing your temples it's the present.  To our silver jumpsuit guy, 2598 is the present.  None of us are in a position to prove the others wrong.  So, when the silver jumpsuit guy shows up at your door, it's not a new version of today, six hundred years in the making.  It's just the same old today it always was and everything's going to turn out the same way it always did.  On Feb. 2, 2011 a man from the 26th century showed up at your door.  It may be ancient history to him.  It may be the present for you.  It may be the future for Ben Franklin.  But no matter who's point of view you look at it from, it's still the one and only version of this day that it's ever going to be.   

There is no new time line.  There is only one time line, and it happened the same way it always did, and it can not be changed.  If Dr. Stumblebum gets into his time machine and travels back to the day when Benjamin Franklin flew his kite, then he was always there that day.  He can't ruin Franklin's experiment, because he didn't ruin it.  The kite flew just like it was supposed to, and we all read about it when we were kids.  For some kind of change to take place in the time line, it would have to happen from some point in time that the universe itself considers the present, and I get the feeling that the universe is staying out of this one.

So does that mean that this isn't really, really the present?  Not necessarily, and in fact, we'll be considering that very thing in the next post.  For the moment, what this means is that once you grant the premise that someone can move around in time, backwards and forwards, then time has to be viewed as a line that one can travel on, and the position that we call the present is only one possible point on that line.  If you can land in the 18th century and meet a man that thinks the date is today, or land in the 26th century and meet another man that thinks that date is today, then the mere fact that you're the one with the time machine hardly puts you in a position to argue with them.  When in Rome, it's today in Rome.  As for your grandfather, you can't kill him because you didn't kill him.  The day you tried only happened once, and you clearly failed.  If you can figure out when you'll ever be able to make a new version of that day, be sure to let me know. 

(This post is also available in extra cheesy version.)                                    

Time Travel Month

This month I thought I'd do something a little different.  Instead of the random assortment of nonsense that I usually post, I've decided to post a random assortment of nonsense with a running theme: Time Travel.  I've been planning this for a while.  If you recall way back, I mentioned that time travel has been an obsession of mine since I was a kid and that I was going post some thoughts on the subject one of these days.  Well, today is one of these days.  Actually, it's a whole month of these days.  So, let's get things started off on the right foot.  In the spirit of this theme, I'm going give you the links to all the posts for this month so that you can go into the future and read them before I write them:

Time Travel Month

Stop Trying to Kill Your Grandfather

Superman & the Wave Model

John Titor

12 Monkeys: Mental Divergence

Correspondence with My Future Self

The Infinite Pocket Watch

Possible Methods

Of Fortune Tellers & Predestination

If I Had a Time Machine

Grant Me the Serenity

Trying to Understand Relativity(part 8)

Ah, so you're back.  How was it?  Wait...don't tell me the details.  It's probably better if I don't know.  I'm sure you can well imagine the temptation for me to click on the links myself.  I could take a peek, see what I wrote, maybe even just copy and paste the posts as "new posts" as I go along.  That would certainly save me the trouble of having to think of what to say and the effort of having to write it.  Unfortunately, this would result in what's called an ontological paradox.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Literally.  Hmm, I wonder if maybe I could just take a quick glance at that first link, just to see how this post is supposed to end.  Ahhh...Really?....Like that?....Well, that's lame.

(p.s. Doug Stevens @ I Like Cheese has decided to match me post for post on this, doing his own riff on the above titles.  I'll post the links to his versions at the bottom of each post.  Atypical Scott @ Atypical Read is also doing...something.  It involves insanity, I know that.)