Once upon a time when I was but a wee lad, when televisions were fatter than their viewers and you had to rewind things, I watched a lot of documentaries in primary school. Documentaries about things that we studied in primary school: the ocean, whales, climate patterns, really just science on its most basic, understandable, sticking-things-to-other-things-with-gluesticks level. And a common feature across all these documentaries apart from their terrible picture quality and the twelve dollar animations was the frequent use of an old guy. One pensioner with white hair and a growing bald patch and cream coloured shorts with a matching cream coloured shirt. This man is venerated much as some tribesmen in the Kalahari desert might venerate a shaman, for he possesses knowledge which they do not. And invariably, this man DID indeed possess knowledge which we did not, because, as a youthfully exuberant voiceover informed us, this man had been counting the number of seals on that island over there in the background for the last 16 years.
Really? 16 years? Are we celebrating this fact? That this man, not only learned to count, but also learned to identify seals, and then, in a stroke of genius, decided to combine the two fields of study - into counting seals. And while he is a master of this craft, do not be fooled into thinking it is easy. Because there is more, so much more, to it than counting and knowing what on earth a seal is. This man has honed his skills for sixteen long years, to bring you the picture of seal-counting perfection before you today. Not only this, but he has written down how many seals he's counted for the last sixteen years as well. Yes, curb your excitement people, this man learned to write as well! I had previously stored away this memory, and unlocked it only recently when a friend asked what the most irrelevant branch of science was, to which I responded: "counting seals".
And OK, I'm being quite harsh and a bit of a dick. You might say that the man probably enjoys counting seals. It's his hobby.
But it isn't. This is his JOB. SOMEONE IS PAYING THIS MAN TO COUNT SEALS. SOMEONE OUT THERE IS GIVING THIS MAN MONEY TO COUNT THE DAMN SEALS. WHO NEEDS THIS DATA? WHO IS SITTING AT THEIR TABLE, WITH PAGES AND PAGES OF SQUIGGLY INTEGRAL SIGNS AND DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS, SLAMMING THEIR FISTS YELLING "WE NEED TO KNOW THE DAMN NUMBER OF SEALS ON THAT ISLAND!"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is some vitally important data which will lead to the discovery of magnetic monopoles and the elixir of life. But somehow I doubt it. I can't help but feel that maybe this man's 16 years worth of data is not going to change anything, and that the money invested in his 'research', while probably negligible, could have perhaps been directed elsewhere.
Ultimately, if nothing else, one thing I took from all the documentaries I watched is that somewhere out there, there is at least one person who has too much money and really fugging likes seals.
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