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THE LAMPSHADE CONUNDRUM
i've decided it's time to talk about lampshades. it's something that's troubled me for many years. i've protected you from it long enough, you are going to have to shoulder your share of the burden. i can do it alone no longer.
there are many ways to approach this thing but i'm going to try to do it using only two scenarios, for the sake of simplicity (and your sanity).
so - bear these two things in mind:
one
when lightning strikes, the air around the charge is heated to 30,000o C in milliseconds. there are something like 5,000 strikes cracking off and hitting the ground at various places around the Earth at any given moment (i haven't checked the facts exactly but that's about right).
if we're err on the side of generosity, human beings can exist (if only briefly) at temperatures between, say, -30o C and 80o C. that's a very narrow margin with all those sizzling storms zapping away around our heads.
two
the nearest star to Earth (apart from the Sun) is proxima centauri. it's 4.22 light years away (that's roughly 25ish trillion miles, 40ish trillion kilometres).
a million has this many noughts - 000,000
a billion has this many noughts - 000,000,000
a trillion has this many noughts - 000,000,000,000
any way you look at it, that's pretty far away. so what's between here and there? mostly nothing (no little chefs, no happy eaters), in fact, on average, there's absolutely nothing between here and there. nothing. nothing at all.
and, worse than that, if you consider the whole wide universe - all the stars, black-holes, comets, asteroids, planets, exploding gas clouds etc etc - most of it is missing.
if e=mc2 then something like 80% of the universe is either dark matter or dark energy - which means we think it's something somewhere but we can't detect it in any way.
and so
on this unbelievably friendly, temperate and benevolent planet we call home (because we've nowhere else to go), we are dodging 5,000 killer zaps at 30,000o C every moment of our global existence.
furthermore, this sympathetic and convivial lump of rock and water is, comparatively, less than a speck of dust in the great scheme of things.
therefore
just considering these two things (and there are many, many others we could throw into the equation) - what, in heaven, hell, Earth and nirvana, are lampshades about?
(conceptually, not decoratively)
i mean to say, electric light has got to be a pretty useful thing in anybody's book. but why why why do we make light and then mask it with a lampshade when a) our planet is trying to wipe us out and b) most of the universe is missing?
and that, dearly beloved, is without even considering the particular lampshades which have those little pink tassels.
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