Time Travel Cheat Sheet

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• That would fit right in with the map of online communities I got from XKCD :)

• Reminds me of the story "Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague DeCamp.

  In that story, the protagonist is thrust back in time to Rome in 535 AD with just the clothes on his back and a few pieces of silver and nickel money in his pockets. He has to figure out how to make a living and, hopefully, change the course of history so that the Dark Ages never happen.

  Since he has no resources and isn't really an inventor or super genius or anything, he comes up with some easy-to-make things to get ahead in 6th century Italy. It all starts with Brandy and double entry accounting...

  Great story, I highly recommend it.

• Oh no! He's screwed time travellers on one score: "Polaris is just about the brightest one in the sky..." So very wrong. Polaris is actually a small, dim star, nearly impossible to find in settled areas unless you know where to look.

• BJWest: I didn't notice that bit about Polaris (a.k.a "the North Star")! You're right -- it's not bright -- that's why we find it using the Big Dipper and Little Dipper (a.k.a. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor).

  Sirius, a.k.a. "the Dog Star", is the brightest star in the sky.

• Also, penicillin is a LOT harder than it looks:

  http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743488601/0743488601___9.htm

• is there a walkthrough for the time machine trapped in time