Not a science post.

With all due respect to some of my readers, who come here for science, it seems that there is an indirect proportionality to how much science I am doing at work and how much I want to write about it here. I am doing some crazy, crazy badass science at work lately and so blogging seems to be veering away, as my mind appears to prefer only a certain amount of it. I'll try to get 'er on course soon enough, but for now...

I never knew my maternal grandfather. I suppose that is a sad thing, because for all the stories I have heard of him I think I would have found him an excellent person. A man's man, if you will. My kind of man. The kind people are drawn to. The kind of guy I want to be.
Obviously he was amazing, because of the fantastic genetics he passed along to yours truly.

But what strikes me the most is that he died, suddenly, before I was born, and that highlights for me how odd and difficult to reconcile it is that human life is so utterly brief. Humans, as it were, live about as long or longer than any other creature on this planet, except tortoises and the occasional whale, and yet, our lives are almost pitiably short in relation to the larger picture. If I live to be 100 years of age (for the ease of math), I'll have only witnessed 0.0000002% of the history of the earth so far. I'll only have witnessed 0.000000008% of the history of the sun. Similarly, the amount of the Universe I have witnessed is absurdly small.

Why then, did God make us so minute, in relation to the rest of the universe? Why should we even bother to eke out a life, if that life is so massively inconsequential to the larger string of events in the world, the solar system, and the universe? Why did God make us...to be blips on the radar screen? If our purpose is in fact to worship God, then wouldn't God be better served with devotees that could spend longer doing it? Certainly if I had to choose the mayfly or the tortoise to worship me, I'd much prefer a lifetime of tortoise than 24 hours of mayfly.


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