Have you ever sat in traffic listening to your favorite CD and wondered "is anyone else in the world sitting in their car listening to this exact song at this exact moment?" What are the chances?
Well there are nearly a billion cars on the roads of the world and, assuming that your favorite CD is at least a gold record, one million of those cars could contain that CD. Even if only one tenth of those CDs made it into cars, and only one one hundredth of the cars containing the CD are currently being driven, that's still 1,000 cars simultaneously being operated with the potential of listening to your same song. That's not terrible odds... of course you could add levels of complication like "...driving a Buick with a busted front end and heading North by Northwest while listening to..." and make the odds go way down.
There are also times when what you are doing is so strange that the question becomes "has anyone in history ever done this?" (which, by the way, if you can immediately, with confidence, say 'I am the first', you should probably stop right then... there's probably a good reason why no one else has done it). Some people get this feeling when walking on freshly fallen snow. I hate to burst your bubble but that snow has been walked on, peed on, sweated out of someones forehead, evaporated, shaken off a wet dog, boiled, drunk, and spit out millions of times over thousands of years. I, however, did something yesterday that has never been done before. I didn't realize I had done it till after the fact, but I am convinced that my actions were unique across time, space, and multiple duplicate dimensions; I watched the film The Remains of the Day while wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt.
Let that soak in.
You might be tempted to think that it's not really that strange. I assure you, it is. You think, "well, I'm sure some random guy wearing a Bruce Lee t-shirt could have, spur-of-the-moment, decided to walk into the theater." But no, that never happened. I am the first, and may well be the last. I am a unique individual dang it.
PostPost: The image at the top has nothing to do with this blog entry.
2 comments:
Ben,
This was an awesome post, I was seriously laughing out loud at your movie viewing experience.
It also made me remember a story I heard on NPR about some geeks, I think it was at MIT making an equation figuring out what their chances at true love would be. They calculated the number of eligible members of the opposite sex in the surrounding metro area. They then narrowed down the possible candidates using certain deciding characterisics, like education, age and interests. It was amazing how small the pool became as they added new factors. Then you have to address what are the chances of actually meeeting one of those few people who could be your true love? The funny part was when they brought in a female co-worker and ran her numbers, it was even more depressing for her.
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