Adam Serwer is out reporting today, so here's another nerdblogging post to make up for his absence.
Earlier this week, Marist released a poll showing the results of the question, "Which one of the following super powers do you wish you had?" The choices were invisibility, flying, teleportation, telepathy (the ability to read minds), and time travel. The winners -- with 28 percent each -- were telepathy and time travel.
Really?
I'm not sure that Americans are really thinking through the power to read minds and alter the space-time continuum. In more recent depictions of mind-reading, writers have focused on the fact that it is impossible to turn off. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is instructive:
After the initial thrill of reading your boss' mind or winning a game of poker, you'll be left to deal with an uninterrupted stream of inanity, punctuated by occasional vulgar or disturbing thought, and of course, your own desperate attempts to assert some control over the contents of your mind. Eventually -- unless you have supreme control over your mental state -- you'll either go insane, or kill yourself.
As for time travel, I shudder to think of what will happen when millions of Americans are empowered to alter history. Sure, some will try to go back and try to "kill Hitler," or save Bobby Kennedy. But assuming a random distribution of superpowers, it's not unlikely that someone will try to strangle Abraham Lincoln in his cradle, or accuse a young Martin Luther King Jr. of raping a white woman. For the sake of the space-time continuum, our only hope would be government-sanctioned "time police."
Basically, for the good of us all, Americans should be more open to low-impact powers, like invisibility or super strength.
