Present Imperfect

Save Us, Tama-Chan

May 14, 2003

There's an article in the New York Times today about the Japanese cult Pana Wave Laboratory and its assertion that the world will end tomorrow when the earth's magnetic poles reverse, causing massive earthquakes. To protect themselves and their camp from electromagnetic waves, members of Pana Wave dress entirely in white, drive white vehicles and drape everything (including the trees) in white sheets.

Luckily, there may be a way out! Pana Wave insists that the apocalypse can be avoided if only Tama-Chan, the seal who strayed from the Bering Sea into a Tokyo river last year, is "rescued." They're building pools to house Tama-Chan, just in case.

But Tama-Chan is embroiled in his own controversy, as human foreign residents question the Japanese government's bestowal of a residency certificate upon Tama-Chan when they themselves are not eligible for the same certificate. (Even though they, unlike Tama-Chan, pay taxes and contribute to the labor force.) It should be noted that Friends of Tama-Chan do not protest the seal's resident status, only that they believe in the "equality among mammals in Japan."

Oddly, last night I was contemplating the end of the world. I wrote in my journal that if the world must end (and just about everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, agrees that it must), humanity ends with it, therefore knowledge to be gained from the study of human endeavor (history, literature, architecture, music...in short, the humanities) is finite. Though with each passing moment, the sum total of that knowledge grows exponentially larger. Is it not true that scholars 100 years ago had 100 years less knowledge to accrue? Knowledge to be gained from the study of math and physical science, however, is infinite. That is, the knowledge itself is infinite, but our time to gain it is finite.

Anyway, if Tama-Chan doesn't come to the rescue tomorrow, it's going to be a hell of lot more finite than I posited last night. Maybe I should take the rest of the day off.