View From the Bushes

I'm always impressed by what people can do when they really put their mind to it. Especially at what people can do with no hope of monetary reward, no promise of fame and no guarantee of happiness. For an example take a look at this Map of Springfield that someone compiled. Given the level of detail I would guess that this person watched ever single episode of the Simpsons, made meticulous notes, cross-referenced various episodes, slaved over details. He probably posted to newsgroups to get opinions on possible conflicts, debated minutia, spent time piecing all the disparate parts into a grand hole. I'm taking a stab in the dark, but I would guess this would be at least 100-150 hour project, and for what?

I have spent quite a while looking at it (I had to find the Android's Dungeon) and though that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this, I have no idea why people do these sort of things, I don't know why I do these sort of things. One of the major reasons for the Renaissance (and I realize that this is a vast over simplification) was that improvements in the production of food finally allowed people enough time to focus on things other than surviving from one day to the next. As such we get Shakespeare, Leonardo, Raphael (if you haven't ever seen his School of Athens you should really check it out) and Erasmus.

These days we not only have enough free time to produce art we have enough free time to produce maps of locations peripherally referenced in a tv show which is a satirical homage to all of the assembled works of art which came before. Is this cool or what?

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross