A creature called 'Science'

Science is a curious thing. There is some science out there that leaves me speechless, and there is some science that is still, at heart, the exact same thing we've been doing right from the start. There is no fancy finagling Stargate Athosian way to light a fire: we're still just rubbing two sparkable objects together and hoping for the best. There are no fancy Farscape dentic worms that remove all dirt and leave a minty after taste: we're pretty much still using soap and a brush to manually scrape off all the yuck. Granted, the fine-tuning has gotten better, but it's still very basic.

And don't get me started on space exploration - which, after all, is one of my main interests. We've been sciencing the heck out of the universe, throwing enough maths at the basic building blocks of the universe to pose theories about what it's all made up of, but when it gets to actually going up in space, we still basically just strap a big rocket to the back of something and hope that the controlled explosion creates enough thrust to boot the front end out of the atmosphere. Yeah, there are fancy alloys and sensors and computers and we can even launch some types of shuttles off the backs of big airplanes, but when you strip down the pimp, it's still just the same lick and a prayer that got Buzz and Neil (but not Michael Collins) to the moon and back.

So, rockets are just big jetpacks, then?

Speaking of explosions: do you know how an internal combustion engine works? Do you? First of, where's the beaming technology, the portals, the warping of space? At this point - as in the entirety of the human history - the only way we have to get from one place to the other is by traversing the space between those points as fast as possible. Now, granted, airplanes are pretty cool, but the vast majority of 'going fast from point a to point b' is still on good old terra firma, and is by strapping ourselves into something that gets flung forward at insane speeds off the back of thousands of little explosions per minute. Are we crazy? As if that alone isn't enough, we have created the greatest part of our planet's economy not on food or something useful like that, but on earth explode juice. Are. We. Insane?

On the other hand, we have cellphones and computers...

...No, wait, before I get there, please let me add the WTFery that is the Hadron collider. A mechanism that throws the building blocks of matter at each other, creating strange and unknown effects, always hoping the thing is in optimal condition and the collider doesn't tear the entire planet apart. A machine that, in its infancy, was cleaned by a weasel. No wonder the aliens are avoiding us like the plague!

Okay, back to computers and cellphones. I can open my cellphone using my fingerprint to scroll through data that connects the entire world to me, but also play silly games where I have to match 3 coloured objects in a line. It is amazing. Everything about computers is fantastical, yet this wondrous, insanely magical item is so commonplace, most of us have at least one of them that we carry with us at all times. How are we this backwards? We carry magic with us like it's nothing special, but the magical - such as space travel - is still beyond us, because we're still stuck in its technological dark ages.

Anyway, go brush your teeth with some bristles on a stick, play your mindless games on the magic brick and be glad we still count money in things we can touch...

...Oh, wait, never mind. We don't do that, either.

Really, no wonder the aliens are avoiding us. I would, too, if I could, for we are upside-down crazy and just thinking about it makes my hair stand on end.

So, keep your chin up, you're not the only crazy one out there!