Creation's case for irony

I have to admit that sometimes my fascination with my own mortality extends into a curiosity on the mortality of mankind as a whole. And it doesn't help that the Discovery and Travel channels appear to have figured this out and subsequently developed programming that sates this piqued interest.

And as cool as the concepts of the shows are, at the same time they're somewhat disturbingly morbid.

Take, for instance, the Travel channel's 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. I like the premise of this show. There are so many amazing places around the world that everyone (ideally) should have the opportunity to experience. All you have to do is look at these people's photo albums to be convinced of this. But OH MY GOD, the title of the show. Talk about blunt and awkward. I don't mean to imply that death is somehow a taboo subject, or that the mass media should stick the happy-go-lucky side of life, but this is something that's just disturbing.

And then there's the Discovery channel's shows that are centered on the extinction of mankind or the outright absence thereof... due to an implied extinction. There's a show (maybe a series of specials?) focusing on the various forms of natural disasters that can occur which would wipe out life in various ways: animal life, terrestrial life, and even all life in general. It covers freaky stuff that includes the impact of a comet and generic stuff like global warming. They go into detail about how many days it would take for the human population to die out given current technology and infrastructure and have fun with the idea that any of these, while unlikely, are not as unlikely as we would like to think. And then there are shows that focus on premise that humans will kill each other off somehow, and the rest of the world will move on as if we simply packed up and left. They go buck wild with computer generated models of projected animal species if humans were to disappear and CG animations of what ubiquitously urban areas would look like thousands of years into the future, completely inundated in flora and fauna.

They're extremely interesting to watch, but at the same time, sobering in their implications. It's one thing to despair about one's impact on humanity and the "world"... it's another thing entirely to think about the big picture of big pictures, where even civilizations don't matter.


Moving on, everyone should get a Twitter account. Just take a gander to the right. It's like facebook stalking for those of us without iPhones... or until someone else releases a cheap, mass-produced phone that can access websites with the same ease.

Go out and make an account so I can follow you.