Michael R. Barrick's blog

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As I start writing this it is 11:11 on Remembrance Day, the moment of silence on the anniversary of the end of the Great War in 1918, the "War to End All Wars", the war too horrible to repeat, the day to remember that. The day to remember the sacrifices and the horror and to not do it again.

"Lest we forget" is from Rudyard Kipling's poem Recessional. Written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee as a reminder of the impermanence of empires in the grand scheme of things. It's the same sentiment as Carl Sagan's "Pale blue dot" quotation:

Some back-story:

1. I hate link-bait crap posts.
2. Several of my friends reposted the same "99 Life Hacks" crap post in rapid succession.
3. I am on vacation and, in fact, have time on my hands and nothing more pressing to do.

It starts like this:

Jesus Christ. I think I had minor stroke reading those and realizing how little practical "common" sense most people must have. Now I want to run through the street with a cricket bat because the zombie apocalypse is clearly already upon us. Seriously. I want to hurt people after reading that.

If the world were reduced to the size of an apple, the crust of the earth—the solid ground and seemingly immutable mountains that we take for granted—would be thinner than the apple's skin. Below that, a seething sphere of liquid rock diabolically roiling at a searing 1,000 °C (give or take 300 °C.) In reality our "solid ground" is the pudding skin on fiery death. When it skids a tiny bit or slight wisps of nearly nothing breathe through, these are the disasters that level cities and the magically minded point to as the power of omnipotent gods.