SIGH. What a Memorial Day weekend. It's taken me this long just to recover. A favored coworker (Ms. S) left for a new life and never even told us goodbye on Friday, starting the weekend off on a bad note. Things picked up when I got to see all of my old college buddies including the newest addition to the post college group, a big fat larva named Rebecca. The weekend then took a turn for the surreal when I got to see my mom sell out what last shreds still existed of her feeble hippy ideals by bragging about her new Lincoln and her facelift (the car was cool, but her face looked the same). Fortunately, my dad was a stoic as ever, plodding happily into old age. On the way home, a bird ran into my car and then I got a kiss-off form letter from a prospective employer with which I had had three interviews.
But that's trifles.
Today I spent a great deal of time when I was supposed to be working (I'm demoralized-sue me) trying to calculate how much energy people use in terms of fossil fuels, specifically gasoline. Such an undertaking sprang from my attempt to debunk telekinesis, particularly pyrokinesis, in which someone increases the temperature of something by mind control. As I believe I pointed out before, it would take the instant burning of about 22 calories to heat a cup of water, which is more than most people expend for a minute of sprinting. Then I got to wondering just how efficient human bodies are when compared to other machines, and the comparison of fuel calories to food calories seemed like a good place to start.
As I worked, my coworker commented that I was a weirdo for figuring out such things. I used to being thought of as strange for my sense for humor, my pets, my taste in film, and the fact that I often walk around without any pants on, but why should it be strange to create a unified energy consumption theory? Heck, at worst, it's merely mental masturbation. At best, it can lay the groundwork for a whole new direction of science and technology. No, I'm not deluded. It's mental masturbation, but since right now my intellect is being used about as well as my mighty schlong, I'm entitled. That's a scary parallel, isn't it?
I think it goes deeper though. That weekend I saw the flick "Deep Blue Sea", the movie about intelligent sharks. Now I would certainly not encourage anyone to watch that pieces of theatric feces, but it illustrates my point. The main chick (Saffron Borroughs-Ahhhh) is the scientist who created the sharks and, predictably killed by her own creation. My dear old face-lifted mother who only scored in the 13th percentile for Analytical skills on her GRE's said the chick was being punished because she was an intelligent woman. "Ha!" Said her brilliant son (ME, doofus!) who scored in the 98th percentile of the Analytical section of the same test. "She's just a female version of Doctors Frankenstein and Moreau, who were likewise killed by their creations!" My mom's cool for an old broad, but she does tend to be a little oversensitive in the feminist hot button area.
How many movies can you think of where an ingenuous scientist, driven only by the desire to improve humanity, is destroyed by his (or her) creation? As evidenced by the flourishing of superstition and schoolyard ridiculing of bright kids, people seem to have an innate revulsion to anything they cannot understand and a resentment toward those who understand more than they do. By exploring such inane things, I scare normal people. I bet you're scared right now, aren't you? Don't worry, I was just killing time, really. Now go back to sleep and dream of cave paintings and flint tools.
By the way, people use the rough equivalent of one cup of gasoline a day. Math available upon request.
