As it happens (or happened), the iPod was introduced twenty years ago today, which modern historians (if there are such things) are apt to declaim as the beginning of the end of social interaction for civilized society (which I suppose begs a question).
But such talk pales in the face of the fact (well, assertion) that today marks 6025 years since the creation of the world, or at least as Bishop James Usher concluded in 1650. Specifically, by interpreting the Bible and other works, he wrote that time began on the nightfall of October 22, 4004 B.C. (or as now preferred, B.C.E.). The first day, therefore, was October 23, from which he marked the start of creation.
Some rightfully compare his effort to counting the number of angels who could stand on the head of a pin, but Usher was, in fact, a serious scholar and put equally serious effort into his calculation, going so far as to determine that time must have been created before the Creation began, thus the evening before the Beginning.
Stephen Jay Gould, the modern writer and evolutionary biologist, credited Usher’s effort as sincere for its time and a worthy effort, which is more than faint praise from the famous religious skeptic. The fact that Usher’s now ancient work is still claimed as support by modern Creationists, however, is sad at best. Even Usher, in what amounts to a forward to his work, tinkered with the timing, ultimately concluding the Beginning as beginning at 6:00 P.M. on October 22, 4004 B.C., which I presume was Greenwich Mean Time (or U.T.C.), though that was not created (if you will) until 1884.
Perhaps someday when computers replace us, they might date the dawn of their creation to twenty years ago today, in honor of the iPod.
