Too Much

[Originally posted on January 22, 2009]


So there was a Big Bang. Then time happened. Now, inevitably, here we are.

There was this guy, let's call him "Ogg", who figured out that you didn't have to wait for a lightning storm before you could have fire. He figured out how to get it whenever he wanted. I'm saying it's a dude because typically women like to keep their eyebrows intact and wouldn't be willing to play with a stick for hours on end.

Then there was another person, we'll call him/her "Ugg", and they thought that round things were pretty super. If you dropped them at the top of a hill, you got to play whatever the human version of "fetch" is. We'll shove our heads even further up our own asses and call it "the search for enlightenment". It seemed (to Ugg) that round things might have other applications. So we have the wheel.

While you're at home, consider that if your ancestors hadn't been out hunting, trapping, killing, etc., you wouldn't be here. Literally. (Seriously, someone explain the rationale of "vegetarianism" to me. Seriously. Because I'm thinking of switching to it not out of a love for animals, but for a hatred of plants.)

Ben Franklin (1706-1790) laid the basis for electrical study by supposedly attaching a key to a kite line. And made bifocals. And an odometer for carriages. And a glass-based musical instrument similar to a harmonica.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) was a theologian, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher. Granted, you don't really need special training to be a philosopher, since you just have to think about stuff. Or a theologian, since you just have to think about a certain class of stuff. But he also was the first to postulate that gravity was the attraction between bodies as they vary by mass.

Henry Ford's (1863-1947) great invention wasn't the car. That had been around for a while when he came around. Ford's great innovation was the assembly line. Before that, cars were hand-made, with specialized artisans moving from car to car to do their work. The assembly line brought the cars to the workers, who performed simple tasks which, as they compounded, replicated the tasks of the artisans. He also paid his workers $5 a day, which was a lot at the time, and was one of the first instances where a factory owner paid his workers enough to buy what they were producing.

What about "Agg"? They're the large-browed ancestor of yours who figured out that you don't need fulgurites (lightning + sand = natural glass) to make glass. Just think! Without lightning, they created things like urns, windows, screens, glasses, spectacles, and laid the basis for light bulbs. Speaking of which...

Thomas Edison (1847-1931), also known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park" or "the only socially beneficial person to ever come out of New Jersey", had a famous quote: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles." There's also a quote that's usually attributed to him that I didn't care enough about to find the reference: "I haven't failed [a number] of times to create the light bulb. I have found [a number] of ways that do not work." Smart guy, smart way of looking at it. It's true to this day in IT: If you can't succeed at something, claim that you just need more time to complete the project. But in addition to light bulbs, he also made some of the first recordable media, the telegraph, the electrical grid, radiography (despite extreme fear of X-rays due to previous experiments' results), TV, and DC power.

How about "Igg"? They were the first to smack a prey's ribs with a bone and create percussion. Good thing they noticed that the smaller the rib or the larger the chamber it's played in, the more differentiated the note. Especially since without reverberation chambers we wouldn't have pianos, guitars, violins, basses, drums, saxophones, or pretty much any other non-electric instrument. And thank you to the sadist who discovered "catgut", insect-part treatments for wood instruments, and horse-hair bows. Otherwise we'd still be catching up.

Have you seen that great ad for the Discovery Channel with the "Boom-dee-yada" chorus? Heard the computerized voice in it? That's Stephen Hawking (1942-present), and he's one of the most influential physicists of modern times. He created the theory that black holes transmit (however garbled) information on all the matter they consume, as well as the idea that theoretical physics should be accessible to the masses, AND that black holes radiate a type of energy so un-thought-of before that it's called "Hawking radiation".

Alexander Graham Bell made the telephone, influenced hydrofoils and aeronautics, the metal detector, and helped create the National Geographic Society. Einstein gave us the theory of relativity and helped create the most efficient form of energy we've created yet: nuclear energy. Marie Curie figured out that Radium shouldn't be played with without the proper equipment. Oppenheimer helped with nuclear bombs and re-popularized the phrase from the Indian Rig Veda "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds". Freud told us that we're all just masturbating monkeys, throwing poop; Jung taught us that we all have a dark side. Charles Babbage started the first computer.

So getting back to the point of this article: What have you done lately? Has there been a recent moment where you've felt you've built upon the backs of giants? It all started with a big bang.

(And my apologies to all of womankind. I'm not anti-woman at all, but haven't heard of any famous female inventors before except for Medea, who invented infanticide. Blame the education system in this country. Yeah that was a challenge. TELL ME ABOUT FEMALE INVENTORS/INNOVATORS!)

Pork

[Originally written May 11, 2007]

There's a joke dating back to the Cold War that says, "Two groups of scientists, one American and one Russian, are given the task of figuring out the problem of writing in space. See, the regular gravity-driven ballpoints just aren't cutting it in a zero-G environment. After spending $6 billion dollars, the Americans come up with a brilliant concept: a pressurized, zero-gravity-capable pen. After spending $0.10, the Russians also figure out the problem: they use a pencil."

Things That Are Pissing Me Off #483,618

[Originally posted on July 16, 2009]

1. NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard. I didn't realize this feeling was so strong in my neighbourhood until I read in the paper that people had made threats against the workers at a methadone clinic that just opened up in my local plaza. Let's go over the other businesses in the plaza and see how they measure up, okay?
   
   Subway - like crack for fat people who want to be skinny, except with more mayonnaise. No complaints about the influx of fat people, despite flagrant displays of roast beef.