Round and round and round

As I sat collecting my thoughts this morning, I noticed across from me a tiny bug that was walking around the cap of a jar. As I sat there it made several such journeys, disappearing around the far end of the cap as it moved away from me, and then re-emerging on the other side of the cap as it came back to where it started. It dawned on me that the bug did not realize that it was moving in a circle. From the bugs point of view, it was moving in a straight line, and from it's speed it seemed intent on getting somewhere. Realizing the hopelessness of he bugs predicament, I took mercy it by reaching my giant hand out and killing it. If at that moment a giant meteor rocketed out of the sky and annihilated me, I would be hard pressed to begrudge the irony, though I would be majorly pissed.

Killer DeTocqueville quote

"When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows and to place himself in contrast with so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality that renders him independent of each of his fellow citizens, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to it's beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence."

Alexis De Tocqueville

First time for everything

Let's hope this blog turns out better than my last bike ride.