I love it on Star Trek when they go back in time. They do it constantly, too. They find some alien device that they don't understand but for whatever reason decide to use anyway, or they slingshot around a star, or they just mumble something about "chroniton particles," which was always the coolest because it sounds so scientific but requires no further explanation. You just hear "chroniton particles" and think, wow, now that's science! And you can tell because you have no idea what it means.

But unlike most of the science on Star Trek, chroniton particles aren't just made up. Well, they are made up, but not by Star Trek. They're made up by real scientists. The idea is that if all matter is made up of subatomic particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) and all energy is made up of subatomic particles (photons), then so is time (chronitons) and even gravity (gravitons). This is actually funny to me. I mean, atomic theory I can accept because its a theory that is supported by observable and repeatable data. And they say that light behaves as both a particle and a wave, but they still have this theory of photons that seems to be pretty well accepted, so whatever.

But "chronitons" and "gravitons" are kind of funny because there is absolutely no way to support the theory. I mean, maybe they do exist, but there's no way to know, and anyway how would you even test for that?

You know, what's really funny is that somewhere there is a scientist whose whole career is built on this theory of chroniton particles. And yet there is a school of thought in Quantum Theory, and probably just as well-regarded, that time doesn't even exist except as a means by which we've come to describe the passage of events.

I wonder how far I would get with my theory that cows are made up of "Beefiton Particles".

Scientists are always doing that, though; building their careers on theories that contradict each other, I mean. In the 1920's a German guy named Werner Heisenberg came up with what he called "The Uncertainty Principle" which expressed the relation of atomic mass times velocity, and was really a fancy way of saying "I really don't know". This is the theory for which he is most famous. Lots of people disagreed with him at the time because they said it was all based on "matrix mechanics", whatever that means, but all these theoretical physicists used to get so upset with each other it seems like they should've just resolved it all with a bare-knuckle cage fight. Another guy named Schrodinger based his work on more familiar "wave mechanics" and everyone got in an uproar.

Anyway, when the war broke out, Heisenberg was so famous that Hitler put him in charge of developing an atomic bomb. Obviously he failed, although a lot of people who knew him say he did it on purpose, but whatever. The thing is, he didn't just fail, he failed miserably, not just in building the bomb but even in sustaining an chain reaction. People still fight about "why", but at least Heisenberg could cover his ass by saying "I didn't know".

The point is that we remember him now for two things: 1) The theoretical equivalent of "I don't know," and 2) not developing the atomic bomb. As far as the first one goes, well, I'm pretty sure there are 3-year-olds who are accidentally just as brilliant as Heisenberg was. And as for the second, obviously, there were lots of people who didn't invent the atomic bomb.

Hitler Tries To Invent The Atomic Bomb

Anyway, Heisenberg was a theorist, an "idea man," not a nuts-and-bolts guy, and Hitler was an idiot to put him in charge in the first place. But I wonder how much Hitler had left to choose from anyway.

Hitler: I need a team to build mein atomic bomb!

Rudolph Hess: Ja-wohl, mein fuehrer! I vill haf a team of 25 of the greatest minds in all of Germany here within...

Hitler: And make sure none of them are Jewish!

(long pause)

Rudolph Hess: um...I vill haf 11 of the greatest minds in all of Germany here within....

Hitler: And no pacifists or undesirables!

(long pause)

Rudolph Hess: I vill call Heisenberg and see vhat his plans are!

Now, the Americans understood the difference, which was why you never see pictures of Einstein in the New Mexico desert trying to build an atomic pile; it was guys like Szilard and Fermi who got their hands dirty. Einstein was like Marlin Perkins on that old Wild Kingdom show, who would sit in a chair pointing at a diagram of a lion's jaw while some guy named "Bob" or "Jack" would go into a cage and wrestle it to the ground.

Idea men always get all the credit. That's why it wasn't called Jack & Bob's Wild Kingdom.

Idea Men Through History

Karl Marx was an idea man. He sat around and wrote about class struggle as an agency of change and came up with the idea of the "historical dialectic" which stated that, just as serfdoms gave way to monarchies and monarchies to democracies, eventually all democracies and capitalist states would be superseded by some universal, classless utopia. In other words, he had this idea of how things should be, and then came up with a fancy theory to show that when humanity had evolved sufficiently, everyone would agree with him. So basically, Marx's Communist Manifesto can be summed up in one sentence: "Karl Marx is smarter than everyone else". And, oh yeah, there is no God, in case you were thinking He was smarter.

Marx didn't have a clue how to implement any of his ideas. He was like some fat guy in an armchair swilling beer and yelling at the football players on TV that they suck. He just kind of sat around and thought "Hey, wouldn't it be great if everyone got along and there were no leaders?"

Ideas In Action

A century later a bunch of crazy Russians were sitting around reading about it and one of them says "Yeah, that would be great. But first let's establish a well-armed militia of revolutionaries and stage a bloody coup!" So they killed the Czar, overthrew the government, and put Lenin in power.

Up to this point, Lenin had kind of been an idea man, too, and a motivational speaker. People say he wasn't such a bad guy, kind of an idealist, and that all the purges and forced labor camps and mass executions came later after Stalin took over. I think that's crap. I think Lenin was a pragmatist who knew exactly what it was going to take to hold power, and anyway Lenin chose Stalin to replace him and knew what kind of guy he was. If he didn't he was a dumb ass. So its either/or.

Because its great to have all these ideas about working for the common good and everyone planting trees and holding hands, but the reality is that, to accomplish anything, everyone has to agree what the common good is and how to achieve it. People just aren't like that. Just ask anyone who's ever been married, and argued over which way to unroll the toilet paper.

And then of course theres the Bully Principle. You know like when you're in 8th grade, even if you get 99 out of 100 kids to agree to put on their Sunday best and come to a dance, there's always going to be that one muscle-head who shows up in his jeans just to push the other kids down and call them sissies. That's all Stalin was. He was like, "You're a counter-revolutionary! *push* You're a Jew! *slam* You're a Cossack! *spit*"

That's the problem with being an idea man: That is, ideas are great, and may work on paper, but reality is a bitch most of the time. Marx had it easy, all he had to do was think of stuff. The Russians and the Chinese had it hard. I mean, they know what their goal is, and all they want is a peaceful humanist utopia. But then, what about the people who disagree with you, like the Russian Cossacks, or the Kaomingtan in China? Do you lock them up, ship them to Siberia, kill them all? What about other countries that disagree or work against you? Do you gobble them up, or "export revolution" and destabilize their governments? And then you have wars, and law enforcement, and all kinds of unrest, and suddenly its not so peaceful anymore. Ask any Cuban over 50 how that works.