3.25.05

Why?

To me, there's nothing worse that not understanding why something is happening. Except perhaps food poisoning, but that was last week.

I was working on some flash ads for KFC today and had an animation that I know should have been smaller. It was made up of very simple shapes, didn't involve a ton of keyframes in the animation or anything, but somehow it came out to be 12k instead of 4 or 5, and I have absolutely no idea why and it's driving me nuts. (update: my friend Andrew figured out how to get it smaller, but still no real why this new way should make any difference)

My sister, for example, works at a science museum and she knows how a lever works, but when she asks "why" it works I don't know what to tell her. Once you get beyond the mathematical formula of how a lever converts distance into force on the other end, "It just always does" is the best that I can do for a why.

Taking this up a notch and you get to the big 'why's. Like why did 120,000+ people have to die in a giant tidal wave last year. This is the kind of stuff that gets people running to their nearest church for an answer. It shows that everyone wants a 'why', and some are willing to believe in an invisible man in the sky in order to quench their thirst.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I'm suspicious of people who don't really care why things work they way they do. I think they take too much for granted. These are the people you don't want stuck with you on a desert island after a plane crash. They're just not the ones who get things done in this world.