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Irrelativity is © 2008 by Barry Smith. All rights reserved. No commercial use may be made of the material without prior arrangements with the author. And so on and so forth. If you want to put one of my columns on your web page, or include it in your employee newsletter, or use parts of it in your speech before the U.N., it would be so cool and considerate if you would email me about such things beforehand so we could discuss it.

Barry Smith’s “IRRELATIVITY” appears weekly in the Aspen Times.

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Just when I managed to finally wrest myself from the time-wasting grip of Wikipedia (because who doesn't suddenly have the urge to read lots of flimsily cited information about, say, Mr. Magoo?) I land directly in the clutches of YouTube.

Out of the www.fryingpan.com and into the www.fire.com.

I've been perusing YouTube for an average of about 13 hours a day for the better part of a week, and I've gleaned three very important facts about myself and the world in general.

They are, in order:

1) Given a forum in which one can, with a very limited budget, create and present a video that has the potential to literally reach millions - and given the topics available to be addressed in video format, like education, uncovering social injustices, political corruption exposes and pressing local and national issues - most people opt to post videos of their dogs barking at vacuum cleaners.

2) When it comes right down to it, I like to watch videos of dogs barking at vacuum cleaners a lot more than I like watching videos about social injustice, etc.

3) The YouTube comments section is a very good argument against the theory of evolution.

After a particularly nasty YouTube binge, I had a Twilight Zone-like thought: what if YouTube had been around for a long, long time, and some of the more important moments in history had been captured on video and posted there? What sort of comments would people have posted?

No, really...what if....

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YouTube Video #1 - A static camera captures the time lapse creation of the great pyramid of Giza. The second half of the video is an interview with the architect and building contractor, who each reveal the secrets of the brilliant and mysterious construction technique.