More Things to Worry About
More things to keep you up at night. Worrying, chewing your nails, tossing and turning. If the bird flu, West Nile virus carrying crows, Ebola you pick up on your all expense covered family vacation to east Africa, Tsunami while you are relaxing on the beach, avalanche while skiing down the Alps, etc. does not get you, Asteroids, Gamma rays and Comets will.
It Came From Outer Space Ronald Bailey is fascinating reading. Puts life in perspective. We are all just specks of dust floating through space for who knows what purpose.
If you were to believe George Carlin, one of the funniest and most foul mouthed comedian ever, who died recently by the way, we exist so nature could have plastics. Now that we have invented plastic, our time is up. Time to go.
I miss George Carlin already!
Check out Will Humanity Survive the 21st Century? by Bailey too. Reconfirms one of my favorite realisations, “the universe is non-linear”.
Global Catastrophic Risks seem to be a bunch of cool, paranoid people. Not sure how they sleep at night. Knowing all the dangers lurking in the night sky. Do some of these guys walk looking at the ground, scared to look up? Just curious.
Amazing how many different institutions there are, how many people are willing to start and fund it. How many people spend their lives studying things we don’t even think about. Thanks to all of them.
One of my gyan (wisdom) I shared with someone: Love it or Hate it. One of the reason west in general, US in particular is so powerful and advanced is that there are some people in every town and village who are paid to think. Every state and city has a bunch of think tanks. Left, Right, Up, Down.
You could be a left handed, partially bald, half Mexican, half Eskimo, with a slight limp in the right foot, who loves to mate with sea gulls. If the society hampers your freedom or puts barriers to your intimate relations with sea gulls, there will be a group of thinkers, lawyers, think tanks, etc. that will come to your rescue. They would have studied and documented your behaviour. Had a bunch of conferences. Analysed your DNA, psycho-analysed you, written papers from an anthropological perspective, etc.
There will also be groups opposed to you. Many of them with well articulated reasons, studies, etc. They will probably defend it from the sea gulls’ right perspective.
A third group would argue that since you are slightly bald and limping in the right foot, Section x.y, clause z.r protects your lifestyle.
Fascinating world we live in.