The Aerie
Garrison Keillor turned me on to the diary of Samuel Pepys. Actually, let me take that back. The first five words of this blog should never be written or uttered anywhere in any context, and I apologize.
Anyway I subscribed to the MPR "Writer's Almanac" podcast in the hopes that I would be inspired to remember my writing on a more regular basis (and lookit, I'm blogging!) And earlier this week he reported on the birthday of Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps" for some reason).
It turns out that Pepys was a blogger! Granted, his blog was written on paper in a quaint format called a "diary," had an uncertain audience called "posterity," and racked up even fewer page-views than MY blog for its first few decades. Nevertheless, it has many of the characteristics of a blog. It's as much fun as The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon.
However, much of that has been rectified! Having been translated from its native code several times, some enterprising fellow has converted the daily diary entries of this Seventeenth Century clerk into blog entries! So every morning over a cup of tea I travel back in time 243 years to check in on the life and career of my friend Sam Pepys.
I'm tempted to begin all my own blog entries henceforth with "Up, and to the office." However, I won't start tracking my many affairs in my blog (as Pepys did) until I can come up with some kind of code that my spouse won't be able to translate. Pepys had some kind of code that he used for his liaison, which might have worked to conceal them if his wife hadn't actually walked in on him boffing the maid at least once. But what shall I use? Maybe pig-Latin?
"Oday-tay I offed-bay my istress-may" That will work! Now all I need is a mistress... er, istress-may.
I was reading an article entitled Earth's Final Sunset Predicted when I stumbled across this sentence...
"like all previous hominids and more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, humans will probably go extinct, and it will likely happen sooner than a billion years"
This sentence really jumped out at me, making as it did a billion-year long-jump off of a couple of extremely shaky assumptions. So, of course, being an opinionated bastard, I promptly wrote to the article's author...
Now I recognize that this person is just reporting the news, and is probably not entirely responsible for the sentence in question. Maybe it was assembled following discussions with a number of astronomers - or maybe it was her own, who knows.
Anyway, here's my reply... enjoy!
| Unlike more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, we're self-aware, and arguably intelligent. So one really can't draw a conclusion from the behavior of the other 99% of life.
Additionally, one of the ways in which humans could "go extinct" would be to evolve into something else. So while whatever is around in a billion years might not be "human," it might call us its parents. So that sentence struck me as kind of a reach. You want an interesting article? Here's my layman's theory of evolution. Life has had various waves of evolution: fish to land, cold to warm blooded, for example. I think the next wave of evolution will be self-awareness and intelligence. Basically, I think that a couple million years from now, about as many species of animal will be evolved from human as the ratio of furred, warm-blooded creatures to lizards right now. In other words, as civilizations rise and fall, as human existence extends into geological and evolutionary time, humans and their posterity will evolve to fill different ecological niches. As we have seen with ostriches and whales, evolutionarily expensive but un-needed attributes (flight, legs) will evolve away, but traces will remain (whale finger-bones in the fins). So what kind of creature would evolve from human and fill the evolutionary niche of a squirrel, a pig, or a hedgehog? Will self-awareness, opposable thumbs, or problem solving ability remain or devolve away? Wish I could live to see it! So "humans" may not be around in a billion years - probably won't. But I'm fairly confident some kind of self-aware creature evolved from us will still be here. And, if they truly are evolved from humans, they'll probably be desperately trying to shift the planet's orbit, having waited til the last minute to start... |
I'm 'way overloaded. My job usually calls for ten-hour days or more, then there are household chores, obligations, etc. It does make the time pass quickly, but it's exhausting. A couple of weeks ago I left for work on Tuesday morning, and didn't get a break in my schedule until Friday morning - every hour in-between was me doing something somewhere...
This weekend was no different. My Biology course called for two lengthy lab exercises to be carried out - lab exercises that required days of preparation beforehand, and days of execution thereafter (one of the labs is a fermentation lab). The only problem was, I needed to work on my job over the weekend.
So I spent the weekend conducting my multi-part lab. I cooked spit and crackers with blue solution, and boiled eggs so I could dissolve them in pineapple juice. Then I tried making yogurt, but despite scalding the milk perfectly, I apparently killed the yogurt by pouring the hot milk directly into the jar - although that's what the instructions said to do. By the time I fininshed cleaning up after my kimchee preparations, it was Sunday at 4:00. After a nap and dinner I spent the evening ironing clothes in front of the Academy awards. I needed the clothes ironed - I was out of shirts that didn't look like dried up washcloths - and I appreciated having something endless and mindless to do while ironing. It takes about 30% of my brain to watch the Academy awards, and about 30% of my brain to iron, so 40% of my brain was able to take a nap.
That's how busy i am, my brain is taking naps in shifts.
So I came into work today with none of my preparations ready for my 9:30 meeting. Oh well, I thought, I'd fake it.
Then my boss pulled both of us off any project related activities, because of internal billing problems...
So here I sit, my schedule cleared, able to blog, with none of my preparations necessary, at least till this afternoon when the billing issues have been worked out...
Not that I'll be ready then, either! Still, every hour that passes is one hour closer to my three-day weekend writing retreat... yay!
Oh yeah, I wanted to mention this when I was talking about my recent cold...
It's Saturday, and I'm lying in bed in the afternoon feeling miserable. My spouse is off at a writing class. My chest feels like I'm gargling hot glass, and my head feels like a kernel of popcorn about to pop. I make the mistake of breathing, and erupt in phlegmy hacking.
When I can hear again, The Boy calls up from the steps up to the attic bedroom.
"Dad, are you okay?"
"Grawwwk" I reply, "Just this dreadful cold."
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
Would I like a cup of tea?
You know, it's funny. When I tell people that I'm the dad of three teenagers, eyes roll, and knowing glances are offered. "How's THAT going for ya?" are the questions. Teens, the consensus seems to be, are SO hard to raise.
I keep slient. It seems cruel to tell people with screaming, door-slamming relationships with their teens that I like all my kids - that we all seem to get along.
Sixteen years old is stereotypically a selfish, demanding angry age. Teens humiliated by their parents sneak out to drink and smoke and who knows what else.
So here I am, lying miserable in bed, and my "selfish," "angry," "uncommunicative" sixteen-year old says "Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Yes, please, that would be wonderful." I croaked.
A few minutes of happy anticipation later he brought up my cup of tea.
"Thank you," I said gratefully, "I really appreciate it."
I laid there, carefully sipping my tea, thinking that it was well worth a couple of ground-glass coughing fits to discover what a fine young man I'm raising...
I was at the O'Hare airport when I noticed a very weird thing. It was a set of outdated brochures for my own company, in a display on a counter in one of the stores. Since they were outdated I thought I'd better collect them up, all the while wondering how they had managed to remain on display all this time. And also that they had, as far as I knew, generated absolutely no business.
Well I carried them back to the seat where I had left my computer bag, and discovered my bag was missing.
This was a disaster. Both my heavy, bulky work laptop AND my personal lightweight Vaio laptop were in that bag! My mind started racing: what was on those laptops that I hadn't backed up? How was I going to explain losing my work laptop to my boss? How was I going to explain losing my personal laptop to my spouse?
I wandered around O'Hare airport with my outdated brochures in my arms, trying to fathom some means by which to locate my computer bag, or some person to help me find it. Finally I wandered down a wing of the airport that was under construction, feeling very lonely and anxious...
...and then I woke up.
ZOMG! I have NEVER been so relieved to wake up from a dream, even if it was to discover that my fever had not yet broken.
Yes, it was literally a fever dream which I had on Saturday morning, as I woke up with my throat full of yellow-hot broken glass and my sinuses trying to expand into my brainpan.
From the point of view of timing, it was either perfect or completely wrong - I got sick very quickly on Friday afternoon, and Monday morning here I am back at work. In the middle was a weekend that felt like being fast-agitated in a hot-water washing machine
Along the way I was bound and determined to get some work done for work - which I did finally on Sunday evening. So basically when I wasn't hallucinating under the covers or staring glass-eyed at the TV machine, I was down in my office trying to manage the security for a multi-billion-dollar retail enterprise.
Sounds about right.
What else is new? Well, my spouse bought new window shades to replace the dessicated vinyl Target blinds that needed replacing - and then our her cat bit right through the drawstrings on two sets of them.
I haven't blogged because I've been THAT busy, BTW. Days and days on end where I'm booked from waking til sleeping, stressing over my job and people demanding results and the banshee sound of deadlines dopplering past. Gosh, I wonder why I've gotten sick?
But I'm actually HAPPY that I'm sick right now. Why? Because that means I likely WON'T be sick two weeks from now, when my writing group heads of for a retreat a the cabin of an acquaintance of mine! Yep, our writing group alum from San Francisco is flying in, and we're all heading to the woods of northern Wisconsin for two nights of intense writing exercises and moderate drinking.
Well, I've got work waiting for me, so I'd better get back to it. Just remember to keep your luggage near you in O'Hare...