Time and time again

The kids were watching a stargate episode, where the people were going back in time. It's interesting to think that this possibly could be something that happens. But, I would fairly doubt it considering there are no... physical law's that would cover the state of time . It's not like time has physical properties that we can tell (right now). Sure, we measure it by how long it takes for the planet to revolve around the sun, or the rotation of the planet. Even the crude timepieces we have only measure by the physical movement of a mechanical machine, or measure the vibrations of a molecule in some isotope. Even the measurement of the age of the universe is made by determining the amount of residual background radiation in the space around the planet or photon bombardment. There is no way to measure time like gravity, mass, or distance. There are just no physical properties that we know of. The thing that compounds the confusion is that the planet is hundreds of thousands of years old and we are only listing on the yearly time cronometer as 2003??? (Don't write back about how old the planet is, I don't give that much of a crap and it is not my point anyway) Eh', it will not matter a 100 years anyway. Who knows what will thought of in future times? They'll probably think that the local area network is so antiquated and that how we ever were able to function in such a way. To think of just right now there are people who are implementing wireless wide area networks which cover entire cities with tens of thousands of users all connecting to little boxes placed around you at various distances. Probably then , the space shuttle will be thought of as nothing more than the covered wagon is to us now. Or at least I hope it is. hopefully by then, we will not have killed ourselves and damaged the planet so much that we will be able to survive further . Right now it's hard to tell what will happen in the next two years even. Will the east (Middle or Far, your choice), destroy the west? Or narrowing down the incidents, will Korea contaminate north America with radiation from a dirty bomb or possibly someone destroy another massive metropolitan center killing perhaps, (lets say for the sake of agruement) 50,000 people all at once? Or, will we destroy them or possibly neither?, or even both? It's too hard to tell (today). I just hope it's safe for the kids when they grow up and become parents. I remember listening to my Grandfather speaking of his Model A Ford, and how they (He and a couple of his friends) drove all the way to Yellowstone park from Cincinnati. He told us how they worked in their way across, how they paid their way by working odd jobs at farms or whatever businesses were along the way. nowadays , you can't even walk down the road without a police officer stopping you to find out "what's going on", or "what's wrong", or "why you're walking along there". I can not imagine just getting a car in going and doing whatever it takes just to get to your destination. Today, you can't even the leave your house without first gathering all your CD's, your satellite radio, your GPS, and all of your map and online directions. not to mention the DVD player for the back and a small collection of Disney videos for the kids. The strange part, if you did go back in time, and you change just one of those tiny little details, theoretically, everything would change. Now isn't that a hoot?!?