Today’s agenda

“When you and I were born there were 6,000 languages spoken on Earth. Now, fully half are not being taught to schoolchildren. Effectively, they’re already dead unless something changes. What this means is that we are living through a period of time in which, within a single generation or two, by definition half of humanity’s cultural legacy is being lost in a single generation.”

Interesting and depressing. Half of all human languages gone in our lifetime. (Via my buddy Lee Barstow.)

The good news: a decent-sized meteorite is headed our way very soon (give or take 20,000 years) and will wipe out human life (and most other life) anyway, so we’ll be amply punished for our stupidity.

Which isn’t to say we should drop our moral compasses and start tossing Milkyway wrappers in the park, letting our kids watch American Idol or read Wonkette, drinking martinis before noon or stealing quarters from blind beggers.

But we humans shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re a passing ripple on an ocean that is 1 million light-years across.

Agenda for today: enjoy t-Ball and Harry Potter and a sweet carbonated drink and a cheesesteak sub, and also try to do some good things — lasting 5 seconds or 80 years — for other people.