Entropy

Another thing that I take as a sign of the impending apocalypse is the troubles with the Washington metro system. They’re constantly raising rates while they can’t meet their budget. At the same time, service gets worse and they’ve had a string of tragic (perhaps preventable) accidents in recent years. Safety is in question while service is cut, people use Metro less, Metro loses more money, service and safety suffer further. It just seems… untenable. Unsustainable.

I’m not looking to get into why or how or who’s to blame. My point is just that WMATA is not the only instance of this happening. Airlines? Failing banks? Doesn’t it all seem to be falling apart? It all makes me think that entropy is winning.

Dutch coffee at the Inkwell

So this morning on my way to work, I was thinking about Starbucks—more specifically, how much I would like to stop and get an Espresso Truffle with hazelnut. But I talked myself out of it because I'm going out to lunch and dinner tonight, and really don't need those empty calories.

This got me thinking about how much I could get away as a kid without gaining weight. When I was in high school, we used to go to this place in Long Branch called The Inkwell, and I would get Dutch coffee. The Dutch coffee was not very different from the stuff we get at Starbucks these days (complete with "whip"), except that it only came in one size and I think it actually had butter in it, too. I wasn't really any more active as a teenager than I am now (maybe even less so), but I could eat French fries whenever I wanted, or half a tuna sub for lunch, or Dutch coffee every weekend, and I didn't gain weight. I guess our bodies are designed to work more/sleep less as we get older, and on less food, too.

This got me to thinking about how eating, like everything else in our civilization, has become so complicated. Instead of eating directly from the land, we sauté and soufflé and a la mode and au gratin. Don't get me wrong, I think smothering things with cheese is usually an improvement. We've done fantastic things with our food, but maybe that's our problem. If the tastes weren't so varied and textured and layered and complicated, maybe we wouldn't overeat.

So I wonder how Mother Nature knows it's time to wipe out civilization and start over. Is it when things get too complicated? Are we ripe for an extinction level event because we've so altered and modified and massaged our planet to make it suit our needs, instead of altering our own habits? At what point will the planet just shake us off and go back to a species that's happy with nuts and berries?