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1928 Time Traveler Caught On Film?
Many of you have submitted a story about Irish filmmaker George Clarke, who claims to have found a person using a cellphone in the "unused footage" section of the DVD The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. To me the bigger mystery is how someone who appears to be the offspring of Ram-Man and The Penguin got into a movie in the first place, especially if they were talking to a little metal box on set. Watch the video and decide for yourself.
Who was she talking to? (considering the lack of cell-phone towers)
Ugh.
I wonder what network the were using in 1928? Marconi Wireless? (snicker)
Seriously, this has been in the media for days now. It's almost certainly someone using an old-style hearing aid.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
On their best day, Slashdot readers would think of cell phone towers. I don't think there are any days this rabble would be intelligent enough to realize that any species or members of humanity from a time traveling society wouldn't need towers for their communication devices. Or would have very rapid means of deploying them from relatively small devices.
Slashdot reminds me of ignorant atheists who attack creationism on the same logical level that creationists attack atheism on.
There is no clear device in the hand. It looks like they're talking to someone in front of them or themselves while holding their hat.
They had to have Schizophrenics back in the 20s, didn't they? Maybe she was just talking to herself and cupping her hands over her ears in an attempt to block out the voices?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The "cell phone" theory is a golden example of people projecting their own limited conception of the world onto something they don't recognize. Someone 40 years ago probably would've imagined that they saw someone singing along to a transistor radio. Someone from 120 years ago would've thought they saw someone listening to a seashell and chewing gum. If she's really holding something (IMO the video isn't clear enough to be sure), it's almost certainly a contemporary hearing aid.
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How do you know? Maybe without his involvement the Depression would've played out differently. Maybe he set events in motion that changed the outcome of WWII so that the Allies would win. Could've changed anything or everything; it's not like any of us would "remember" how it was "supposed to be".
Actually, if he was so open about using anachronistic technology that he got caught on film on a movie set, I'd say he did a pretty piss poor job with the whole 'leaving no trace' thing.
This is genius. I've never heard of this guy, George Clarke, but now by mentioning his work at the beginning of the video, he's got a great viral marketing campaign!
Of course he doesn't believe a word of it, but he managed to get word to spread of his silly little video, and thus free advertising for his work. Pure genius!
Who was she talking to? (considering the lack of cell-phone towers)
Ugh.
Not that I believe in this, but if you were time-traveling to the past to be an extra in a Charlie Chaplin movie (which is a plausible thing for any film buff), it's perfectly reasonable that such a person would whip out their cell phones just to be filmed pretending to talk on it. They could then point it out to their friends once they return to their time.
If they did that, only idiots would read it!
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Really? Really???? Just scanning the multitude of /. posts I see at least three plausible possibilities. Are slashdotters that much smarter or are people in Belfast mentally defective?
You've got to admit that the circumstances of the 9/11 incident were fairly suspicious. A few days prior to the attack they had an evacuation drill in the towers that was out of the ordinary, the attack occurred during a time of day when most of the people who worked in the towers were not in the building, another building that was not struck by a plane collapsed, and the buildings collapsed in a way that was consistent with the way that buildings collapsed during controlled demolitions when there are explosives planted on each floor at key structural points.
I would seriously not be surprised if the Bush family helped the terrorists co-ordinate their attack in order to create a pretense for war that would allow them to tighten the federal government's hold on national security and drive oil prices through the roof.
The problem with this and most claims of the paranormal is that people just don't understand how common coincidences are. The woman in that film is just holding her hand coincidentally like the modern cellphone.
What's funny is that this was never noticed before because cell phones never looked like that until fairly recently. If it was 1983 then that wouldn't look like a phone at all, it would look like a woman holding her scarf funny because cell phones were twice to three times the size with big honking antennas. Or if it was 2030 it wouldn't look like a phone at all, we'd probably just have them implanted into our bodies.
This is an old sci-fi trope which I like to call the "unsophisticated sophisticate." A time traveler would of course know not to use a piece of technology like that in public or even possess it, but audiences like the idea of "Aha! I caught the time traveler because I'm smart and the traveler is dumb or careless!" We see this also when aliens step out of their spaceships and die from the common cold or future archeologists can't fathom what a 'car' is or when aliens land and don't know what love is, etc. In other words, conspiracy theories not only exploit of ignorance but more so our vanity. It makes us feel good to "know whats really going on" or feel superior to threatening things. Unfortunately, humans seem drawn to feel good bullshit and sometimes go to war about said bullshit.
They were making hearing aids years and years before this footage was shot, considering the age of the person I would place my bet on that.
The DVD conversion certainly is a lossy process... if they could get the original film to look at frame-by-frame, you could certainly see a ton more detail, which might let you clarify if she's holding anything at all.
Contact the studio. It'd be great promo for them!
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
You would think people with the technology to travel through time wouldn't even need a phone. Hell, we don't even need to hold a phone to our heads today. A nearly invisible headset will do the job just fine. I suppose it could have been a voice recorder, but again why the need to hold a device to the head?
What it looks to me is like an older woman shielding her eyes from the sun and some guy with a hyperactive imagination. Or a guy with quite a talent at special effects and a good sense for keeping things just subtle enough that people wont be quick to dismiss it. And in either case the guy is likely looking for his 15 minutes of fame and a springboard for his career.
So if it was a cell phone, the guy walking in front of her doesn't notice her talking to somebody? This day and age, someone just talking and nobody is there you readily assume that they're on their phone. Back in the 1920s she would have been considered a mad woman talking to spirits.
But if this really was a time traveler on a cell phone in 1928, isn't that how it would work out?
What if the footage was of a lady wearing a "I love Joss Whedon" baby doll t-shirt, or a shirt that said "All your base are belong to us!" or t-shirt that said, "I'm a Slashdot Karma Whore!"?
30 to 40 years ago we wouldn't have thought anything about a t-shirt like the above if we saw it in old footage. We'd probably just assume it was some saying or something from back in the day.
If there was a time traveler, there's a span of time where we wouldn't see anything out of place with the footage, but then we pass a point in time where we would recognize that their is something in the footage that is out of place. Then our brains would recognize the t-shirt for what it is and say "How did that get to 1928?"