Today marks the 97th birthday of President John F. Kennedy. Ancient history, I know.
I wrote here a few days ago about JFK and a baseball connection:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I'd forgotten that his birthday was so close. And somehow that got me thinking about parallel universes and a TV show I loved, "Fringe." Of course. There's a clear connection that for many of us has to do with a "what if" urge.
I'm not a sci-fi fan usually, but I loved "Fringe." I remember how startled I was by little pieces of the mosaic of the alternate world:
From Wikipedia:
Within Fringe, the prime and parallel worlds are inexorably linked, hypothesized by the characters as the result of a divergent event in the past that formed the two universes. Quantum entanglement of objects between the two universes is significant, having been shown as part of the function of the doomsday device and an electric typewriter used by shapeshifters to communicate with the parallel universe.[7] The parallel universe appears more technologically advanced than the prime one; in the keystone second season episode "Peter", which takes place primarily in 1985, the parallel universe is shown to have cell phones, and zeppelins appear as a common form of transportation.[8][9] In the show's present (2009 and onward), John F. Kennedy is alive as an ambassador to the United Nations, and other figures like John Lennon and Martin Luther King, Jr. are also alive.[10] The United States in the parallel universe only consists of 48 states; while there exists a North and South Texas, other single states appear to take the place of two separate states in the prime universe, such as both North and South Carolina being the single "Carolina" in the parallel universe. Furthermore, much of western California has been lost, suggesting that a large earthquake along the San Andreas Fault has caused much of the coastal region to sink below sea level.[11] Other effects on the global scale have caused sheep to become extinct, and made coffee and avocados valuable rarities. The singularities that plague the parallel universe can lead to destructive voids; to prevent these, the Fringe division there uses a fast-setting amber-like substance to prevent weakened areas from becoming destructive, but with no regard for innocents that may be trapped within it.[8] A mass blight has affected vast areas of plant life, such as the area around Boston.[12] While the September 11 attacks still occurred in the parallel universe, only the White House and The Pentagon were attacked, and the World Trade Center remains standing.[9] Other changes exist in the parallel universe's popular culture; Eric Stoltz stars in Back to the Future,[9] the musical Dogs has replaced Cats as the longest running Broadway musical, the Sherlock Holmes books were never written, and many comic book characters are different or do not exist such as Green Arrow being Red Arrow and Batman being the Mantis. In the Fringe episode, "6:02 AM EST", a radio broadcast of the Dodgers versus the Expos at Ebbets Field can be heard in the alternate universe, suggesting that the Major League Baseball franchises of the Montreal Expos and the Brooklyn Dodgers were not moved from their original cities.
Especially the photo on "Walternate's" desk, of a still-alive and gray-haired John Kennedy. I know, "what-if's" are pretty pointless. But this anniversary of that forever-young President's birthday just got me wondering. Again.