As for the beginning of things, the Universe began forming a long time before the Earth came into being. This order will be reversed for the end of things, when the Earth goes out in a fiery blaze long, long before the Universe becomes a sea of dark atoms. If you are religious then you might quibble with this view, for all things might have been made at the same time, or in short order thereafter. An apocalyptic view of the end might see all things being extinguished at once, something physically impossible, though theology apparently can enable it. Even a change in the vacuum state of the Universe can only happen at the speed of light, so some phenomena get upended later in the day, so to speak.

Which brings me to the world. The watching world. Rarely a week goes by without some media head telling us that the whole world is watching some event. I have often wondered at this, especially when I was a child. It seemed to me that at least half the world or more did not have a TV set or a radio, nor much loose change for a newspaper. I thought it unlikely that they could watch even if they wanted to, yet still I was told that the whole world was watching. It was puzzling indeed.

I suppose that someone should have told me that this was merely idiomatic. It also may have reflected the Western worldview, one in which a group of countries in what was then the First World dominated the narrative. Today there are more voices from outside this formerly ascendant group. No doubt somewhere in Beijing, a news editor is writing up a headline about how the whole world is holding its breath, and some child is scratching her head, wondering why it is so.