Fox News - Astronomers have created a vast cosmic map revealing an intricate web of dark matter and galaxies spanning a distance of one billion light-years. This unprecedented task was achieved not by observing dark matter directly, but by observing its gravitational effects on ancient light traveling from galaxies that existed when the Universe was half the age it is now. Constructed by astronomers from the University of British Columbia and University of Edinburgh, this is the largest dark matter map ever built and took five years to complete.
I can say this pretty definitively, if the world was made up more people like me, we wouldn't have gone anywhere, just been stuck right back in medieval ages I'm guessing. I just don't think like this, I don't give a shit about the great beyond. Hearing that these guy just spent 5 years mapping some dark matter a billion light years away in space just seems like such a waste of time. Do you realize what guys (maybe a girl or two?) this smart could have done in 5 years if they weren't busy trying to track down Captain Picard and Jaba the Hut? We'd probably have an alternative to oil and flying cars...and those really cool metallic jumpsuits with the V in the middle that we're all supposed to be wearing in the future. Instead I'm still pumping nearly $4 gas, my car is sadly land bound, and I'm forced to shop at places like, The Gap and Kohls, instead of having one, pre-planned, homogenized outfit.
But I'm getting off topic now. None of this is to really take away from what these guys have accomplished, sure I can't understand it, and yea it probably won't affect my life, or my grandchildren's lives in any way, shape or form, but still they're really smart and figured something out that I guess is important to their little circle of friends, so kudos for that. It's just that I've never been curious about things that don't affect me, or I feel I won't be able to put to use.
I've never woken up wondering what all the matter in the universe was made up of, quarks, god particles, and string theory. Doesn't cross my mind in the least. My daily break down of wonderments and thoughts is something like this; Alarm Goes Off - What time is it? I wonder if I should call out of work? Do I have any blog material planned? I wonder if the milk in my coffee is expired or not? What's going on in the news? Oh (that's my reaction to the news, if you're wondering). What are today's lunch options? What are today's snack options? What's going on this weekend? What am I having for dinner? When's the last time I took a shit? Is Revenge on tonight? What's tonight's prime time tv lineup? Wonder how the internet's doing today? What time do I have to get up tomorrow?
That's about it. My standard day of curiosity. I read and absord a lot of news along the way, but I really just skim, just a headline deep kind of person. I'm curious to a point, and that point is knowing something well enough to sound smart, and maybe talk down to a few people on a specific subject, but nothing more. I'm not going to waste my time mastering a subject or anything, I just don't see the need. I'm just more of a mile wide, inch deep guy when it comes to knowledge (as opposed to an inch wide, mile deep, get it?). Basically I'm everything that's wrong with the internet generation, I don't really care about anything, but at the same time I care about knowing about everything. And I'm more likely to spend 30-45 minutes perusing the comments section of some Love Letters column on Boston.com or stalking rando's I've seen in the news on Facebook so that I can get a feel for their personal lives (sadly serious) than reading an entire article on a new discovery of dark matter or our country's debt-to-GDP issue. (I only read the first few paragraphs of the column that started this diatribe).
Tying it all in, and back to my original point, if the world was made up of strictly of people with my line of thought, I think it's fair to say we'd be stuck somewhere between the stone ages and medieval times. I think I'd be curious enough to discover and maintain the knowledge of fire and the wheel (for warmth and convenience, my laziness would definitely have brought about the development of the wheel), I'd probably also figure out couches too, since they're easily my favorite furniture invention of all time. But I don't think we'd have much else. Our dwellings would definately be stone castles and huts, no insulation or anything, and certainly no microwaves. I can't imagine in-door plumbing would exist, or electricity either. Basically I think we, as a society, would more or less be like the characters in the below scene of Monty Python's Holy Grail. An autonomous collective, just toiling away mindlessly, and arguing on senselessly to kill time. It wouldn't be so bad.
