A Drop of Water

I found this over at Tom Paine's Ghost. A lot of his complicated scientific references go way over my head - but this I loved. It reminds me that when we are gone - and if we don't do it do ourselves through climaticide, eventually the earth will orbit into the sun anyway, unless an asteroid blows it up first, so whatever! - the immutable laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics will remain in the universe. Different but beautiful interactions will continue to occur once Mother Nature has purged the Earth of the really ugly things we are doing to it.

It helps to remember that, when mourning doomsday studies like this one which indicates abrupt climate change (a parlor version of describing a violent extinction event) is more the norm in the paleoclimatic record than an aberration.

And meanwhile, there is reality, on the ground, to clamber into my dreams at night, stubbornly complaining: