NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s solution to being totally incapable of understanding most of what occurs on planet Earth was a misguided attempt to read Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “Astrophysics For People in a Hurry,”
From the opening paragraph specifying that 14 billion years ago the entire universe was one-trillionth the size of the period “that ends this sentence” to the evasiveness of “dark matter,” the keeper was in so far over his head that there was a defensive yearning to read something he has a remote chance of conceptualizing, perhaps political commentary on how human greed and ignorance killed the Earth.
Rachel Carson”s “Silent Spring” would seem like a place to start: “There was a strange silence. The birds, for example–where had they gone?”
