I have long held the belief that washing machines can on occasion become accidental portals, which in turn allows travel to other dimensions. It would explain the missing sock phenomena which states that given enough time, you’ll end up with just one half of each pair.

A possible explanation for this, may be due to the centrifugal forces that are created inside a washing machine when it is in spin mode. That, and the combination of all the amazing advancements they’ve integrated into washing powders to give us cleaner than clean clothes. Together. they may be powerful enough to create mini worm wholes, large enough, that something like a sock could disappear in to it. It’s also possible that larger items of clothing might disappear in the same fashion. But because they usually don’t come in pairs, we rarely notice that they were gone in the first place.

A universe filled with missing socks

In other words, it’s more than likely that a universe, in a dimension other than ours, has been turned in to some kind of giant landfill, full of unmatched socks and other missing items.

It then raises the question, if we can build a washing machine big enough, could we send a person through it? And who would volunteer? There’d be no guarantee that one would be able to return back to our world. And spending the rest of you life between mismatched socks is hardly anyone’s idea of paradise.

Traveling back and forth between dimensions

Well, since yesterday, I may have proof that two way travel between our dimensions is possible! Bear with me: I’ve been missing a pair gloves for over a year now. Yesterday, I decided to conduct a full scale search party in the hopes of finding them, but to no avail. Failing to find them, I decided to collect the clothing items that needed to be cleaned, and placed them in my washing machine.

This morning, as I proceeded to empty it, I was surprised to find my missing gloves between the rest of my clothes! The only plausible explanation is that they traveled more than a year ago to another dimension, and then returned this very morning. Two-way inter-dimensional travel therefore must be possible! I can’t imagine the things my gloves have seen, the places they’ve been. But they did return in good condition, so I imagine that were ever went to, it can’t be that hostile for man.

A small spin for man, a giant cleaning for mankind

So if anyone has any ideas on how to build a giant washing machine, it would be greatly appreciated. For if all goes well, it’s very likely we may be on the verge of discovering new worlds and other dimensions. Or at the very least, all our missing socks.

A young man sitting in a departure hall – hurting over broken dreams – is approached by a traveling salesman. With him, he carries a unique proposition: he sells the future. The young man, skeptical of what he is being offered, and puzzled how seeing the future could possibly repair events gone wrong in the past, takes a peak into our salesman’s attaché case. His face turns to amazement.

At this point, I was expecting a MacGuffin, a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock. It’s a plot device that has no other use than to further the story along. So I was expecting a Pulp Fiction moment, were the case is opened and starts emitting a golden glow as bystanders look at its content in amazement. But to us, the viewer, the contents is never revealed. It’s merely a prop that gives its characters a reason worth killing for. So in the end, it doesn’t matter if it is gold or a fresh batch of tasty Royale with cheese.

So great was my surprise that in this little short, we actually afforded a peek inside the case. And I have to admit that I too watched in amazement. He actually was selling the future. Our young man decides to seize the moment, but at what cost?

I’ve always had this nagging feeling that certain places, even though they are physically quite close, always seemed to be so far away. Further even than distant places, simply because they are more time consuming to reach thanks to a lack of direct highways or too many traffic lights along the way.

So while the shortest route between two points may be a straight line, the quickest route on the other hand is determined by the fastest mode of transportation at your disposal. To illustrate this, I created a time travel map that positions cities relative to Brussels based on how long it takes to reach them using only public transportation.

The first striking thing is the effect of high speed train travel. Distant places such as London, Paris, and, in a few days from now, Amsterdam, are now a lot closer to Brussels than ever before. With Thalys and the Euro-Star, Paris is actually seems easier to reach than many places within Belgium. It’s actually quicker to reach Amsterdam with the Thalys, even though it is more than 200km’s away from Brussels, than it is to get to Riemst at only half that distance from the capital.

The time distortions between near by areas can be quite great too. Take for example Hasselt where I live. It’s just under an hour away from Brussels thanks to a direct train line. Zonhoven, which neighbors Hasselt and is only slightly further away from Brussels, but doesn’t have its own train station. So travelers to this town need to switch to a bus on their last leg of their journey. The result of this is that it actually takes them longer to get home than for a Parisian to get back to Paris.

And if you live in Peer, but work in Brussels, you better make sure you have a car. Otherwise you might as well move to Amsterdam if you have to rely on public transportation. I’m also glad I don’t live in Chimay, though this map might explain why they had to brew their own beer. It simply took them too long to get their alcoholic nourishments elsewhere.

While this is not a travel map, but a travel graph, the distance between Brussels and Amsterdam is relative to the transportation mode used.

Of course, this is a static time map. A true time map would naturally have to be dynamic. It would have to be linked to GPS, so if I were in Hasselt, all cities would be positioned relative to my new position. It would also need to be time sensitive. During rush hours, Brussels for example would then grow further away from me as traffic jams would increase the time to get there. For a public transportation based map, a city would grow closer by the second until the next scheduled bus or train arrived. If however you missed it, and there is for example only one bus, your destination would all of a sudden jump an extra hour away from you.

If this data was made public and easy to access, It would make for a nice up to date interactive map you can always carry with you on a smart phone.

As one Belgian – the first European to do so – handed over the command of the ISS back to the Americans, and will be returning to earth shortly after a six month stint in space; another Belgian was handing in his government back to the king, so he can prepare to become the first president of Europe in January.

And I would, for the first time, be visiting the European Parliament in Brussels. As this event pales in comparison to what my fellow countrymen have lately achieved, don’t expect to find my little excursion mentioned in any history book; not even as a small obscure footnote on page 527 or other. But I was there for a reason though. The TEDx Brussels event, also a first, was being held there, an independent spin-off the TED events that have brought world inspiration since… well, since its inception. While the official TED event is by invitation only, they do post videos online of some of their most inspirational speakers and their ideas about the world. Definitely worth a visit if you haven’t heard of it yet.

The European Parliament

The first Parliament building I have ever visited was in Dhaka Bangladesh as child. It was during a school trip shortly after it was completed. It’s an amazing building that probably got me interested in modern architecture. But the European Parliament (EP) doesn’t fail to impress either. As we walked through the Leopold park towards it, a huge complex of post-modern glass and steel emerged from behind the trees. Once inside, it was understandable why our ministers are always so enthusiastic about being seated in the EP. The place has an open, transparent and organic feel to it with rich details and enhancements everywhere. Nothing seems to have been left to chance here and is almost a city in itself. As we were guided thru its labyrinth from one building to the other, I couldn’t help but think: I wouldn’t mind chatting in one of the many open spaces with colleagues about trading tariffs with East Tuvalu if I could work here. Maybe explains why the British tabloids are so green with envy when it comes to the EU. :-)

Due to heavy traffic interfering our journey as we headed to Brussels, we missed the speakers and weren’t allowed in until after the first break. The conference itself was held in one of the smaller hemicycles, but still able to fit in more than 400 guests. The room was surrounded by almost 30 translation booths, seating two interpreters each. It’s an impressive amount just to manage all the different official languages spoken in Europe. Within the half circles center of attention, a simple stage was erected where speakers would advocate their points.

Many guests were apparently TED addicts who seem to live on a regular diet of the inspirational talks you can view on their site. So expectations were high. Many were expecting to be blown out of their minds, or as one of the visitors put it: he wanted to be kept awake at night.

TEDx Brussels

The first session I saw focused mainly on the problems of Africa. While I had the impression that for most, this was a far-from-my-bed-show*, I found the first speaker, Dambisa Moyo, quite interesting. She went on to explain something I had long suspected. That aid to Africa was in fact not helping it, but actually making things worse. The way I see it, anything that is advocated from the top down has no long term benefit. Those at the bottom will eventually become disenfranchised. I believe this is true in politics, urban planning, business and also aid. A bottom up approach has better chance of success. And from my experience when I was last in Malawi, it was from the individuals who were starting to take responsibility for their own future that gave me hope that things will and can get better. But the road is long and the problems faced still plenty.

One good thing about the TED sessions is that they are kept short. Each speaker has twenty minutes to get their point across. Unfortunately, not everyone was able to put together a coherent message and pretty much left their audience behind more puzzled then inspired.

So some of the more memorable talks were from Conrad Wolfram – creator of the Wolfram Alpha search engine – about his vision on how mathematics should be taught. Catherine Verfaillie gave us a down to earth explanation on the state of stem-cell research, the difficulties still faced, and how it will and will not help us in the future once we are able to regenerate cells of our own choosing.
The sessions I found most inspirational was that of time travel by Serguei Krasnikov, which now has gotten me pondering on how to build my very own time machine and how to test it, if it is ever completed.

The second session was by Marc Millis and his search for habitable worlds. That one was a real eye opener. The time, distances, resources and energy needed to reach other planets outside our own solar system is staggering. If you look what we’ve already accomplished with the ISS, we’re still in our baby-shoes*. So simply packing up our bags, and starting a new life on another planet – after we’ve completely messed things up over here – is not really an option right now. And hopping over to the next closest solar system in a timely fashion would require so much energy, we would have to sacrifice our own sun just to have enough fuel. In a way, it is hard to say if this talk was inspirational or more of a disillusion popped by a reality check. I therefore regret to inform you that it looks like we are going to be stuck on this rock a little longer than planned. In the mean time, be patient, make yourself comfortable and just try to make the best of it all.

*I’m finding that translating common Dutch phrases into English has a strange yet lovely appeal to it.