Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Okay well this puts things into some perspective doesn't it?

Whenever human beings start to feel  a little too special, or buy into the idea that everything was created just for them, THIS is what they need to remember.

(H/T to Andrew Sullivan.)

22 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:07 AM

    I don't know anyone who believes that. Considering that there are millions of other planets and galaxies in existence, I'm sure we're not the only humans even.

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  2. Anonymous4:27 AM

    Wow, that does put it all in perspective... humans are the garnish on the dish, not the main ingredient.

    BTW, just read that the "Palin Earthquake" in Iowa shook loose all of 15 votes

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  3. Thanks for the chart, Great way to start the day.
    So... I think I will do something significant with my teeny speck of time. Like play with a grandkid. :-)

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  4. Anonymous4:54 AM

    Following the time on the clock, humans were almost an afterthought. Almost an 'OOPS, we forgot about them'.

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  5. Randall5:08 AM

    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at 900 miles an hour
    And it's orbiting at 19 miles a second - so it's reckoned
    The sun that is the source of all our power.

    The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    In an outer spiral arm at 40 thousand miles an hour
    In the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
    Its a hundred thousand light years side to side
    It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick
    But out by us its just 3 thousand light years wide

    We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
    We go 'round every two hundred million years
    And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.

    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whiz
    As fast as it can go - the speed of light you know
    300 million meters a minute and that's the fastest speed there is

    So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
    How incredibly unlikely is your birth.
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
    Cause it's certainly bugger all down here on Earth.

    ---- Eric Idle

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  6. Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head all day, accent and all. Now go listen to Every Sperm is Sacred and get THAT stuck in your head.

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  7. lostinmn5:33 AM

    A little OT but then again - the Minneapolis slobbering TV fools are announcing that Shellie has cancelled her trip to SC - I think the end is here for her

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  8. http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/01/04/bachmann_tells_supporters_shes_staying_in_race/

    dropping out?

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  9. One of my geology professors used to use a cloth tape measure to do this. He would put students at all of the key points along the timeline and then he would hold the very tip of the tape and tell us that the top surface of his thumbnail was the human portion of history. We didn't even make it onto the tape measure. lol. As a geologist, I'm used to thinking in geologic time, but it does tend to make us very very small and inconsequential.

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  10. Anonymous5:54 AM

    The AP confirms that Bachmann has cancelled her South Carolina trip.

    Bachmann has scheduled a presser at 10am CST in Des Moines

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  11. Completely OT, but somebody should send this link to Sarah, the most wonderful mother in the world (that is sarcasm).
    http://hang-on-little-tomato.blogspot.com/

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  12. Happy new year everyone.

    OT. Gryph, can you post Palin's appearance on Fox news last night? I didn't see it, but her hair had twitter's attention. Samples:

    @JackShafer
    RT @keachhagey: Sarah Palin's half-beehive is back!
    @DavidCornDC
    Did I miss the big news of the night? Sarah Palin's hair? #iacaucus
    @JoshTPM
    Wow. Sort of bracing/sad to watch Fox needing to further amortize their investment in the Palin contract. #ouch #losscut #beehivefail

    Tweet URLs:
    http://twitter.com/#!/jackshafer/status/154397518799699968
    http://twitter.com/#!/DavidCornDC/status/154398252882595841
    http://twitter.com/#!/joshtpm/status/154397752892211200

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  13. Re: Eric Idle.

    And the Christianists choose to deny all of this amazing beauty in favor of an unproven, often cranky, blackmailing anthropogenic deity originally worshiped by a minor pre-technical pastoral society.

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  14. Anonymous6:12 AM

    Regardless of the reality of this chart - with which I agree - it won't do a thing to alter the thinking of those who firmly believe that evolution is hogwash. I wonder if they would be convinced if their God rubbed their faces in it?

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  15. Anonymous6:18 AM

    Looking at the clock, it appears that humans were almost as afterthought - almost to the point of an OOPS, ran out of time.

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  16. Anonymous6:25 AM

    Dontcha know humans and dinosaurs walked the planet at the same time?

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  17. Anonymous6:31 AM

    But WHAT created that whole pie? Where did it begin? What made it happen? If it's just forces of nature, where did these forces and nature begin?

    Science is fair; but it still can't answer these questions. One thing that unites every human being is that no one was there to see the beginning.

    It's kind of nice to know that Jesus is the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega.

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  18. Anonymous6:59 AM

    ugh, stupid xian comments...nothing made anything 'happen' it just did -- deal with it. there is no jesus to be alpha and omega -- jesus and god are make-believe and no amount of "believing" will make it true... the only thing you have in this entire universe is the bible, which is so full of crap i can't even bother wiping my ass with it.

    christ almighty!!

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  19. Anonymous7:53 AM

    Ahem, so much for 6,000 years of Intelligent Design. Yet enough people will still deny science.

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  20. Anonymous9:10 AM

    54The creek bed that edges my farm has fossils that are dated from 445 million years ago. I look at them and know I am nothing but small spuds in comparison to all that has gone before. I have several of the sponge fossils found in the creek bed sitting on my computer desk to remind me daily of this fact.

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  21. Here is some geek-speak to mull:
    "Evolution needs to obey Gibbs free energy constraints, not entropy. Furthermore, the entropy associated with a typical DNA genome is absolutely trivial, by a factor of 10 billion, compared with the entropy decrease accompanying the crystallization of a one milligram snowflake from water."
    "The human genome contains 3.1 billion base-pairs. It accumulated at an average rate of less than one base-pair per year. This rate is very credible considering that much evolution occurred within vast populations of tiny creatures sexually sharing mutations, reproducing many times per year, and competing for survival in a huge variety of environments. Furthermore, some of our DNA is useless hitch-hiking junk."
    "Geologists should recognize that creationists are evolving from the 'Young Earth' school towards one espousing 'Intelligent Design': God created a universe in which life was inevitable, and guided the course of its evolution. Geologists cannot refute these more sophisticated creationists. Indeed, 'anthropic coincidences' among the physical consants support the first part of their thesis, unless one prefers the multiverse hypothesis of Andrei Linde and Martin Rees. Of course, creationists will continue to have difficulty explaining why a benevolent God would afflict humans and innocent animals with such a cruel abundance of parasites and plagues."
    Quotes from Donald Garlick, retired geochemistry professor. He said to me more than once that he didn't have a problem with crediting God for the big bang (although he had detailed scientific arguments that support a godless big bang), but that a God who guided the evolution of this planet could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered benevolent, which to him was yet another reason to believe that evolution happened without a deity's guiding hand.

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  22. @6:31

    If science has not explained something, all that means is that science has not explained it. Nothing more, nothing less.

    To say "science can't explain X, therefore the ONLY POSSIBLE explanation is MY religion" is a fallacy.

    And if you think that religion is so much better than science: Then why are you using electricity? That was discovered by men, not revealed by religion. At least try to be consistent.

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