Doom

In the grey Chicago winter, with it's barren trees, cloud laden skies, and shriveled vegetation, it's hard not to turn your mind to the rather more bleak than usual thoughts of one's own impermanence. Life, as we know it, is a fleeting, brief thing, the end spurred on by our fragile, inefficient bodies. When compared to other animals, we are ill adapted to live in nearly every environment. We're hairless. We lack attached weapons. We generally not even that strong. If it wasn't for our over sized brain and subsequent ingenuity, we'd be s.o.l. But we're smart (well, at least compared to say a lizard) so we've adapted to our shortfalls.

So we're okay. Not. We may have evolved to exist tentatively on our planet, but let's talk about those things which could potentially wipe us out. Meteors. There are copious amounts of rocks whizzing around our galaxy. Most are undocumented. The chance of seeing a meteor before impact is slim. The chance of seeing one more than six months from impact is almost none. Chances are, there will be a flash in the sky followed by your death about one second later. Even on the opposite side of the world you'll die, albeit a much more slow death of starvation from "winter" brought on by skies covered by debris. In short it's a lose-lose situation in which the outcome is cockroaches rule the world.

But let's say in this galactic game of Russian Roulette we win, the active super volcano beneath Yellowstone National Park which is 30,000 years overdue to erupt will make sure we aren't left disappointed. With a caldera something like 48 miles across (so big it wasn't discovered until areal pictures were taken). I really don't want to think about the kind of explosion slowly building up beneath the bison and campers.

I've been spooked. Thank you Bill Bryson and your A Short History of Nearly Everything, a very good book which I highly recommend. It's not all scary, I promise. The likeliness of either of these scenarios happening in our lifetime is not very high, but I still catch myself glancing at the sky, half expecting to see a big, burning ball, about ten times hotter than the surface of the sun, hurtling towards me at a speed I can't quite comprehend.

Now that I've gotten all the scary out of my system, here's a picture of a kitten: