Will You Scientists Ever Learn?

A long time is a lot shorter than you thought

You hear a lot of know-it-alls these days talking about how this or that happened "in the blink of an eye in geologic time." For example, earlier this year, a pack of latte-drinking French anthropologists reported that they determined the age of some fossil junk they'd found under a rock in some really poor country to be as old as 7.2 million years. This, they contended, marked the discovery of our oldest ancestors, the first hominids to say "chimpanzees can bite me" before gathering their things and walking across the savanna, unlike their idiot cousins who could not gather anything because they needed all their wits about them for walking on all-fours, the dumb fucks.

Anyway, I hope those French-loving French scientists will have a great time on the Antiques Road Show finding out how much an australopithecene femur would be worth if it were put on auction today. That's not the point. The issue is that one day I'm going to be watching a dumbed-down television program (if you can imagine) about human origins in which the producers and writers will force Liev Schreiber to say, "7.2 million years might be an unimaginable amount of time to me and you, but to the Earth and French anthropologists, why, it's just a blink of an eye."

Is it, professor knows-a-lot? Do seven million years really add up to a geological blink of an eye, Mr. I-have-a-Phd-but-drive-a-19-year-old-hatchback? Because, let's face it, any time you science people want to impress on us nose-picking plebes the vast magnitude of a particular amount of time, your measurement of choice is always the solitary "blink of an eye." This is true whether you're talking about the last ice age that ended 10,000 years ago or the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs (and almost everything else) 65 million years ago.

That is quite a versatile yardstick, isn't it, Mr. I-wear-a-white-lab-coat-not-to-protect-me-from-chemicals-
but-to-cover-a-pizza-stain-I-got-eating-lunch-two-days-ago?
Well, I've got news that's going to knock your knee-high socks right off your studious legs. It's going to change the way we look at geology and time. And blinking. It will make string theory look like monism, and monism look like string cheese and string cheese look like the string section of an all-kazoo orchestra. I have, namely, discovered exactly how long a blink of an eye is in geologic time.

Who's holding the lazer-pointer now, Dr. I-have-no-idea-what-this-asshole-is-talking-about? (If you said me, you're correct.)

Let me explain, and try to follow the bouncing decimal point, if you can. See, the Googles says it takes me anywheres from 100 to 150 milliseconds to blink. That's a blink of an eye in geologic time. But it's also pretty quick when measured against the 75.29 years or 23,759,309,600 seconds that the CIA has given me to live. To find out exactly what that equivalent would be in Earth history, I compared ratios expressed as equatable fractions, dividing a human blink by my life expectancy, while dividing a geologic blink (x) by the current estimated age of the earth: 4.55 billion years or 54,600,000,000 months.

This is the same as saying ".15 seconds is to 23,759,309,600 seconds as x months is to 54,600,000,000 months."

The result was, to say the least, astonishing, if not flat-out wrong. Nevertheless, numbers don't lie, unless they're in big trouble, so according to my math, a blink of the eye in Earth's time is nowhere near 65 million years, or 7 million years, or even 10,000 years. It is, instead, precisely 10 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes.

Isn't that fantastic, Prof. I-surfed-away-from-this-site-ten-minutes-ago? You see how much better it is when our words actually mean something? After all, when we speak with greater precision, we make what we say that much more excruciating to our audience. Why should we smart people be the only ones to suffer?

And just imagine how much smarter we smart people would feel if Liev Schreiber, in narrating a documentary about the last ice age, were to read in his script "15,000 years ago might seem to you like a blink of an eye in geological terms, but to the earth, it's more like a day, so don't you feel stupid?"

Now imagine what he could do with that australopithecus script: "7.2 million years is a heck of long time, isn't it? You bet it's a long time. It's a really really long time. What did you think I was going to say, 'to the Earth, it's just about a year and two months?' You know what? I'm done entertaining you. I'm Liev Schreiber. I was in the remake of The Omen."

And finally, here's what he would say in a Discovery Channel special about dinosaurs: "I bet you're the kind of person who plays along with the contestants when you watch Jeopardy and you think that just because you get a few answers right, faster than the contestants, you would just kill on Jeopardy. But you would be wrong for at least three reasons I can think off the top of my head. First, the pressure on the contestants to respond is much higher than the pressure on you while you're lying on your couch, and that pressure has an impact on response times. Secondly, you're stoned, so you're most pressing concern for the next half-hour will be how to get the cheeze puff dust off your fingers. And lastly, you would have trouble distinguishing a noun from a verb on Wheel of Fortune. What makes you think you could even get past the door on Jeopardy?"

Attoseconds

1 attosecond : 1 second :: 1 second : the age of the universe.

Time on My Hands...

...will be time spent with you looking at uncredited pictures from other people's Websites touting their diorama- and model-building skills. This piece to the left is based on Robert A. Heinlein's novel, Starship Troopers. The detail and craftsmanship impress and depress me. Well, that's shooting fish in a barrel. You see, (cue violins) I was diagnosed several months ago with the worst disease to plague mankind since the Spanish Flu epidemic. Yes, I suffer from Dysthymic Disorder, also known as "being alive" or simply, "Irish."

I wanted to kill myself when I found out I was depressed. And I was appalled when I learned first-hand just how little our society pays attention to my suffering. Did you know the government spends billions of dollars every year on research into things like cancer, but not one penny on why I don't like going to work after a three-day weekend? I was as outraged as you are, no doubt, but unlike you, I decided to do something about it.

Dysthymix is the result. It calls attention to a plight that effects so many people, for all I know, but more than that: it calls attention to me, and if it's true what they say, that what excites the writer excites the reader, then you must be on the edge of your seat by now, like I am, wondering what I'll say next.

My blog will save your life. You see, around the time that I received my terrible diagnosis, I also gave up smoking. I found I no longer had the attention or focus to work on my usual fiction. In a manner of speaking, I wouldn't have even thought to start Dysthymix.com if I hadn't given up cigarettes, so ironically, quitting smoking may turn out to be the best thing to happen to me after all. Because when I realized I couldn't concentrate on writing my serious pornographic short stories anymore, I discovered the composition and verse you read in my periodic "Poems Worth (a) Shit" series. But my favorite thing of all is my whimsical musing, which includes, as of today, some entertaining, yet vital insight into scale-models and dioramas.

The scene depicted in the picture below is part of a relatively large diorama at the Artillery Ridge campground in Gettysburg, PA near the site of that self-titled Civil War battle fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863. Artillery Ridge is a place where you can sleep in a tent, ride horses and have a history lesson crammed down your throat while you attempt to enjoy your vacation. Artillery Ridge brags that it's "the closest campground to the battlefield!!!" and features a diorama, "800 square feet of model display!" with "Roughly 20,000 hand painted soldiers, horses, buildings, etc!" and "a bird's eye view of the battle in its entirety!" not to mention an embarrassment of riches in exclamation points.

Setting aside the spatial-temporal paradox of instantly viewing, in its entirety, a battle that was fought over the course of three days, I really think this idea has wings. Artillery Ridge makes history fun again!* And realistic too. I can almost smell the putrification of 50,000 decomposing bits of cannon fodder of the profiteering merchant bankers and plantation-owning slavers. Although, that might just be my upper lip. Anyway, I digress. History isn't about analysis. In the case of this diorama, it's about neutering carnage by the miniaturization process, which either transforms horror into hobby-horse or, considering the diorama's exquisite attention to uniforms, troop movements and pickets, solemnifies death and destruction in its reliquary echo of the battlefield to which it refers. Or it's a way to get some free air conditioning for a few minutes in preparation for the short, but nevertheless excruciating trek to the visitor's air conditioned SUV in the parking lot.

Editor's note: Today's blog is dedicated to my sister. Happy Birthday Jessica!

*Exclamation mark courtesy of Artillery Ridge.

W Stands for Women

Seeing those fireworks last night got me to wondering how people in other countries celebrate July 4th. But then I realized, with all the pyrotechnics we export to the world, it's pretty clear that for some blessed people, it's July 4th every day. The thought brings tears to the eyes, like so many cannisters of mustard gas dropped on a Kurdish village with the technical assistance and tactical blessing of the U.S. Government.

But Independence Day isn't only about bragging! It's also about a different kind of fireworks, the stuff of romantic conquest, the kind that President Bush induces in the leading ladies of the world. Check out my three-picture commemorative album of the Lothario in Chief in action:

Just look at the Prez here sweet-talking New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark back in March, 2007. "We talked about the South Pacific, and I praised the prime minister on her leadership in these difficult issues," Bush said. I bet it really impressed Clark that Bush was even aware of those "difficult issues," especially how come the toilets go the wrong way when you flush them down there. The Prime Minister was knocked off her feet as you can plainly see.


And who will ever forget our Smooth Operator charming the pants off Filipino President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo just one month ago. "I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation...in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans," President Exlax cooed. "They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House..And the chef is a great person and a really good cook, by the way, Madam President." Oh, how President Arroyo's knees fluttered, how her heart buckled. "Thank you," she said, then spent the next two hours in the White House kitchen cooking up some Adobo before fetching the president his slippers. Bush, what a dawg.

Bush's strongest suit in the romance division has to be the classic "I give a great massage" maneuver. It works every time. What chance did German Chancellor Angela Merkel have at the July, 2006 G-8 summit when Bush showed the world that, yes, he DOES have opposable thumbs, and he's not afraid to use them. Bush explained his gesture in a press conference. "It's important for you to understand we're really trying to figure out how to work together to 'solve problems,'" he said, adding, "I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig." Nobody could be certain if he was referring to a state dinner scheduled for that evening, or the Chancellor herself, and if it were the Chancellor, what exactly he meant by "slicing the pig."