As species go, we humans waste a lot of time living. Even decomposing bacteria and disease-causing virus have a better sense of their raison d’être . But not us. What with Netflix, Grindr, Amazon, and other apps that rule our quotidian lives, we are merely good for preparing snacks and fetching drinks while the next episode buffers.
Which is why we turn to science for even the smallest factoids. Scientists today are no more discovering new elements, and scholars aren’t studying semantics and etymology with a view to advance linguistics and programming languages. No sir, instead they are wasting millions of grant and scholarship dollars on figuring out things which people should have already known, or will never need to know, or, maybe were curious about but couldn’t benefit in any way, personally or as a civilisation, from knowing. For example:
1. A woman was injected with semen to find out if she was allergic to the Brazil nut proteins her boyfriend had previously ingested. Regardless of the finding, the couple broke up.
2. How about the one where people drank their own blood to find better ways to monitor inflammatory bowel disease.
3. Down Under, people swallowed Lego to see how long before it turned up and out from their other end.
4. We don’t even leave the animals alone. Someone gave an Octopus ecstasy.
In case you were wondering, the time for #3 was between one and three days. But you could have asked a drug mule that instead of putting people through it: and we thought stepping on a Lego piece was the most painful way to interact with them.
All this made me realise that by sharing some insightful... well, insights, I could save all this money, which could then be redirected to me so that I could stop writing pithy columns like this one to entertain you all for the sake of a livelihood.
Again, don’t worry, my editor doesn’t pay me that much.
Meanwhile, here are a few studies that you will never need to conduct or be a part of or have to write a cheque to.
1. There is no perfect coupling. Okay, maybe in chemistry but with humans, all people deserve each other. There is no “better” out there. Reconcile to this and all counsellors will have to line up at the unemployment centre.
2. Time is not a constant. It speeds up when you are running late. It just knows that you are and decides to go all Aesop on you, teaching you a lesson and all that. Google Maps is an accomplice of time and only exacerbates the deed.
3. Artificial Intelligence will never overtake humans. The reason is simple: no matter how much AI evolves and auto-learns, it was first written by a human and that makes it inherently flawed. Wait till the silicon chip wants to get it on with a motherboard but the latter has a headache or catches it messing around with that media card.
4. Art will never be fully understood. Artists weren’t in it to define things. They were in it for the kicks and giggles. Nobody gets it but everyone wants to and this is what keeps any art for going. It’s like a medicine that you take socially and with everyone else watching so nobody can really make a face.
There you go. Want some more? Let me see that cheque.
This column is for anyone who gives an existential toss.
