Saturday, October 08, 2005
Irony or Absurdity?
When I was a young lad residing in the panhandle of Texas my father was an executive in the oil and gas business. From time-to-time on weekends, my dad would load me in the car and take me to the middle-of-nowhere Texas and show me crews of engineers and drillers making holes in the ground. The purpose of the holes was to find very large quantities, quantities measured in hundreds of gallons per day, of crude oil and or natural gas. If they found these very large quantities they would make very large sums of money. This is a business formula that still works today.
Yesterday I had a very busy and very long day being the engineer overseeing two crews of guys making holes. The purpose of these holes was to sample soil, water and gas to find very tiny amounts of material, which are but components of crude oil. Amounts so tiny that they are equivalent to a drop in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Amounts so tiny that highly sophisticated laboratories with very expensive instruments are required to even know if it is there. If I find these tiny amounts of these materials, that are a subset of crude oil, the people that own the land I was making holes in could go broke trying to get rid of them.
Is this ironic, absurd, silly, or just life.
Yesterday I had a very busy and very long day being the engineer overseeing two crews of guys making holes. The purpose of these holes was to sample soil, water and gas to find very tiny amounts of material, which are but components of crude oil. Amounts so tiny that they are equivalent to a drop in an Olympic sized swimming pool. Amounts so tiny that highly sophisticated laboratories with very expensive instruments are required to even know if it is there. If I find these tiny amounts of these materials, that are a subset of crude oil, the people that own the land I was making holes in could go broke trying to get rid of them.
Is this ironic, absurd, silly, or just life.
