>From my new best seller by KKK > We are a minority species, living in a thin zone on the surface of a >ball of rock, metal and water, hurtling through a vacuum along with an >assortment of dangerous flying objects, bathed in deadly radiation. A >fickle, feeble magnetic field is our only shield against the radiation and >the loss of our atmosphere to solar wind. We build fragile homes on a >violently mobile planetary crust that surfs a hot, glutinous mantle. The >fractured plates of the crust are exceedingly dangerous near the edges... >where we've built cities because it is beautiful. > > Billions of years ago, the Earth and Moon were ripped apart by a >huge impact, and then pounded into roundness by billions of flying rocks. >We didn't fully understand the power of these high-velocity impacts until >1994, when we saw a comet fragment crash into Jupiter, creating a scar as >large as Earth. The impact theory of dinosaur extinction now has wide >agreement. > > There are 100 million asteroids larger than ten meters that cross >Earth's orbit. Forecasting their complex movements, even if we could find >them all, is impossible. One the size of a house could destroy a small >city, and would likely give no warning -- invisible until it hit the >atmosphere. > > Our dynamic planet's past is marked with innumerable geo-traumas. >Supervolcano eruptions, six mass extinctions, tidal waves, earthquakes, and >massive asteroid impacts. These are big things that could have wiped us >out... but there is also the small stuff to sweat. > > We are walking, talking, bags of bacteria -- with ten times more >bacterial cells than human cells in our bodies. Think about that (or don't >-- if you're squeamish). We are totally a product of this planet's >environment, symbiotic with it, and utterly dependant on it. We live in a >sea of bacterial life that occupies more space and contains more biomass >than all other living things combined. Bacteria live everywhere we have >ever looked on Earth – in the hottest, coldest, most acidic, basic, and >radioactive places. What good fortune we have, that most bacteria are >beneficial to us. > > And then, consider that we have also survived how humans have >treated each other. We still herd into war, persecute minorities, encourage >immigrants then decry immigrants, use religion to separate instead of >unify, wave nuclear weapons like a firebrand in a lifeboat, and set poor >examples for our children. Sorry to mention it, but that part doesn't seem >to be getting any better. It's supposed to be a good thing that we're now a >“global village,” but it appears that one of the first spectacles of our >global New Year will be a “public” hanging. > > OK, OK... here is the positive part. We are somehow the inheritors of >this beautiful, tumultuous planet, survivors of the remorseless culling of >evolution and human folly. The odds against any one of us being here to >enjoy this brief spot of time and place are incalculable. As author Neal >Stephenson writes, any organism that has survived up to now is an >absolutely “stupendous badass.” > > We made it. We have each other, music, food, love, and laughter. We >have an unprecedented awareness of what, where, and when we are -- and if >we could have chosen, we might not have been able to pick a better time to >be alive.