Desuetude

The universe, they say, is headed for a heat death. Actually it's more akin to an absence of heat, since everything, all activity, will be on an invariant isotherm. There will be no cold to define hot; no up to define down; no black to define white. Without opposites there can be no identities. The universe will just be! A tepid cosmos, a vapid place, if one can assign the word "place" to ultimate ubiquitousness, the mother of all everythings which, of course, will be everywhere, with energy and matter evenly distributed: There will be no differences, every thing will be the same as everything. According to information theory, there must be a varying level of energy (which is just heat, after all) present for any meaningful communication to occur. This is the difference that makes difference possible. Camus was right. It will be a grandly indifferent macrocosm. Vive la différence!

On a more narrowly local level, technology and evolution notwithstanding, things are destined to decompose. We know the gist will wither. All our physical constructs will dissolve into debris and disorder, dust and rust.

It is therefore instructive to view evidence of this encroaching entropy as it manifests itself on a typical traipse through Milwaukee.