D E A T H ' S L A S T B R E A T H
In the end each is alone.
Another one? Another lachrymose article? When is he going to
pullout of it? It really is getting repetitive. It moves from death to dying,
to the end of life with nothing in-between. I'll bet that ...
Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. I admit it again, I have been writing
downer article after downer article. But don't worry, I'll pullout of it,
someday …
The end is a funny thought. What does "The End"
mean? Are there different types of ends? Can there be a new beginning after…
All right. All right. That's it! I'm going to pullout of it now! I'm done (for
a while anyways) contemplating things such as "To be or not to be, that is
the question…"
Speaking of that famous line written by Shakespeare, did you
know that William R. Bent, Jr., a Yale Professor, once used a computer to show
that a trillion imaginary monkeys, all typing rapidly, would take more than a
trillion times the age of the Universe to come up with that line from hamlet,
"To be or not to be, that
is the question."
It seems to be that Mr. Bent might have put the computer to
better use, even if it was to play video games… But then as Mack McGinnis hit
the nail on the monkey’s head when he said,
"Progress isn't always for
the best. Smoke signals never got an Indian out of bed at 3 a.m. to answer a
wrong number."
Speaking of computers, we all think of storing bits of
information when we think of computers. But then brain isn't too bad at computer-like
tasks. Human memory is roughly estimated to be capable of retaining 100 billion
bits of information, which means that a typical adult brain holds 500 times the
information in a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
That's some computer! It would seem that we don't need computers
if we just used the natural tools we have. But we do need science and progress
because like Bill Vaugham said,
"Thanks to science you can fly almost anywhere in half
the time it will take for you to wait for your luggage after you get
there."
How about contributions from people like Californian William
McLellen who built the world's smallest motor? It weighs one half-millionth of
a pound and is smaller than the head of a pin, measuring a sixty-fourth of an
inch on all sides. It has 13 parts and generates one-millionth of a horsepower.
It can be seen in operation only through a microscope. It was built using a
toothpick, a microscope, and a watchmaker’s lathe.
What can this motor be used for? What would one-millionth of
a horsepower drive? It could probably move a nose hair. It could probably drive
a turntable made for fleas. It could possibly pass undetected through an
airport metal detector, that way, in case the plane has engine failure in
mid-flight you could replace it with Mr. McLellan's motor.
The only drawback to this wondrous device is that it
probably takes 500 volts to power it. What type of power cord would it have?
How many quarts of oil would it need? Would it take only lightweight oil?
What is the source of the most power available to man in the
known Universe? It is static electricity from rubbing your shoe across a rug
and touching someone's neck. A close second is a transistor battery when
touched to the tip of your tongue. How about the jolt of a first kiss? All
these rate high above a wall socket for delivered volts. Did you ever go
swimming? Hopefully, not during an electrical storm. Nor near an electric eel,
as they can deliver a shock with more than four times the voltage of a wall
socket. That's a hot fish!
Did you know that the temperature at the center of the earth
is nearly as hot as the sun (5,000 - 6,000 degrees Celsius)? Sunshine bears
down upon the daylight side of the earth with a pressure of two pounds for
every square mile, but the earth only receives 1/2 of one-billionth of the
run's radiant energy. In a few days that's the heat and light equivalent to
burning all the oil, coal, and wood on the planet. But we can get much hotter
than then sun and the center of the earth. A lightning bolt generates
temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun. If we could only
use the power around us in nature there would never be an energy shortage, for
the energy equivalent of just one ounce of anything is enough to keep a 100-watt
light bulb burning for almost one million years.
I think I'm personally going through an energy shortage.
It's a real possibility that I'm getting senile. Symptoms of aging can appear
early. By the time we're twenty we may already display an age related drop in
intellectual ability. The brain of an eight-month-old human fetus is actually
estimated to have two to three times more nerve cells than an adult brain does.
Just before birth, there is a massive death of unnecessary brain cells, a
process that continues through early childhood and then levels off. So no
wonder I've been complaining of headaches the last few years.
I take 200 vitamin pills a day, and people wonder why I look
so unhealthy. But after my stomach is filled with these vitamins there is no
more room for food. So unwillingly I am on a diet of 50 calories a day.
Truth is the bitterest of pills to swallow, and now that I
have rambled on, from one subject to another I have lost all the readers before
the finish once again.
In the end each one of us is alone.
'nother one,
èim
Uhr
P.S. Progress is relative. When a person becomes a
millionaire he moves from his modern downtown apartment with all the latest
contraptions to a nice older home in the country for a bit of the simple
living, and calls it progress. Progress is what brought television to even the
lowest income families. Research has shown that watching T.V. causes rats to
become listless and apathetic. Thus they are less prone to biting the children.
