Done with D.C.

Photo is of Luke Donald hitting a drive at last week's U.S. Open.

I spent more time lost in D.C. than found. I'll be happy not to return for a while. I always thought it was kind of a petty/small-minded thing for people to say things like, "Oh, I really hate that part of the country, I'd never live there..." Well, hate is a strong word, but I really disliked the D.C./Baltimore area. It also seems that most of the people who live there wished they lived elsewhere. That's saying something!

Anyway, let's talk about my last poll... I wanted to say that I agree with the 8 of you who voted that we wouldn't know color existed, if we were all totally color blind. How would we have a concept for color if we had never perceived color?

Which leads me to my next thought... what are our human brains missing out on right now?

As I take a drink from my beer, how about this one: the ability to sense harmful things that we might consider putting in our body. For example, being able to know, instinctually, that a cigarette was harming you. Maybe a bad example, but only because that one is common knowledge... Take it to a bigger picture... what if you could sense something around you would, over the long-term, going to give you cancer? OK, smaller picture -- the last time you got food poisoning? What if you could have sensed that the sweet and sour chicken would have made you ill?

Some animals do this already... they can sniff out food that's going to cause them trouble... yet some animals will eat poison unknowingly...

If you read a lot of science fiction, you see all sorts of different ideas on things we can't perceive... time, space, color, etc. I read (and by 'read' I mean 'started and never finished') a mildly interesting Isaac Asimov book once where a species of alien could perceive the entirety of its life all in one vision... there was no today or tomorrow, it was just one whole, and these guys knew the day they'd die, but there was really no concept for it.

Anyway, if you're still with me, I want you to know that I believe that there are aliens out there who can perceive much more than humans can... and it was this alien race that designed the highway system in the D.C./Baltimore area, and that is the reason the whole thing is one giant clusterfuck.

Thank you.