Dick with a time machine in an alternate timeline.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m posting this as a sort of counterpoint to this thread: You're a Dick With a Time Machine-what do you do? - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

Imagine that we’re in an alternate timeline other than the insanity we currently live in and you’re posting what you would do if you had a time machine and wanted to act like a real dick. The idea is that your dickish move should result in our current timeline. They should be things that sound so insane and unlikely that a dick with a time machine could almost be a viable explanation for their occurrence.

For example: (Yes, I posted something similar in the other thread.)

I’d screw with the 2008 election so that President McCain ends up choosing a ditsy former beauty queen for a running mate; likely losing the election.

2

I’ll go back in time to around . . . 1928 with my cellphone and get in a movie shot so it screws with the media when someone finally notices me.

3

I’d be on the Board of Admissions at the Vienna Academy of Art, and reject that no-talent assclown Hitler. His art is unimaginative and puerile.

4

I’d walk into a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio and ask the two dudes working there if they could make me a flying bicycle.

5

I’d go to 1947, and convince all the major newspapers in Chicago – especially the Tribune – to switch their nightly production method to a new method, that would require them to start their press run hours earlier than before. Sufficiently early, in fact, that in the next year’s Presidental election they would have to go to press before any state’s polls had closed, forcing them to predict the winner without the benefit of results.

Then make sure Truman wins the 1948 election.

Hilarity will ensue.

6

I’m going to go back about 3,000 years, find some shepherd, and dictate several spiritual books to him in Hebrew. I’ll sneak a code in there that predicts all kinds of stupid stuff.

7

I’d go ask Torquemada why he was being such a pussy about letting heresy thrive in Spain.

I’d tell the driver of Franz Ferdinand’s limo to be sure to drive slowly so that Archduke and his lovely wife could enjoy the sights.

I’d encourage Amelia Earhart to do some crazy stunt, like fly around the world.

I’d tell Gene Roddenberry that he was a lousy cop and he should try some other line of work, like screenwriting.

I’d tell Bill Clinton that it’s not cheating if Hillary never finds out.

8

You guys are thinking too small.

You remember back in '89, when all those stories about submolecular heating in palladium alloys hit the science press? Fleischmann and Yukihara were going around in circles trying to figure out what was happening. Of course, eventually IBM, Apple, and General Motors got involved and we started to figure out what was really going on, and that led to the new materials we enjoy now.

But what if someone (heh heh) had convinced Fleischmann had gone with his original idea, called a press conference with Pons, and announced his original conjecture? Nobody would have been able to replicate the experiments, and it would have discredited the field for a generation or more, maybe even put it into crackpot territory, up there with the Kennedy shooting and the Iraq invasion.