![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Life, the Universe and milk quotas
May. 19th, 2004 10:37 pmLooking at the National Statistics site this afternoon (don't ask), I calculated that I have approximately 47 years left to live. Digesting statistics like that gives me a feeling similar to what I imagine the Total Perspective Vortex to be like. It's too hard to comprehend. An arrow in the vastness of space with a sign saying: you are here.
Bill Bryson does something similar in Notes From a Small Island - to paraphrase from memory: one of the reasons that you should never be truly miserable about how terrible the Archers is, is that for this one brief dot in the incomprehensible hugeness of eternity, you are privileged enough to exist, and very soon you won't exist anymore. Enjoy it while you can, is the underlying message, I think. Don't listen to the Archers if you can help it. For those who don't know - the Archers is a radio soap opera originally based around farming issues, but now far more to do with adulterous sex and gay kissing, although milk yields and arable crops are still shoehorned in, sometimes.
Instead of looking at the UK Total Perspective Vortex, look at the CIA World Factbook instead. It has useful area comparisons. The UK for example, is described as being 'slightly smaller than Oregon'. That puts things into perspective nicely.
Bill Bryson does something similar in Notes From a Small Island - to paraphrase from memory: one of the reasons that you should never be truly miserable about how terrible the Archers is, is that for this one brief dot in the incomprehensible hugeness of eternity, you are privileged enough to exist, and very soon you won't exist anymore. Enjoy it while you can, is the underlying message, I think. Don't listen to the Archers if you can help it. For those who don't know - the Archers is a radio soap opera originally based around farming issues, but now far more to do with adulterous sex and gay kissing, although milk yields and arable crops are still shoehorned in, sometimes.
Instead of looking at the UK Total Perspective Vortex, look at the CIA World Factbook instead. It has useful area comparisons. The UK for example, is described as being 'slightly smaller than Oregon'. That puts things into perspective nicely.