Cool project, but also dumbest?

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/02/...ear-clock.html

Going to put this on Front Porch and hope it can stay here.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, has put $42 million of his own money into a project to build a clock in a 500 meter shaft in a mountain that will mechanically count in years for the next 10,000 years. The cuckoo will come out ever 1,000 years.

OK I'll admit that's cool, my mechanical and historical sides think it's neat. Yes the idea that it will likely transcend the United States and probably several other eras of human history is intriguing.

But the stated goal of this is to get people to think "longer term". Uh, past the timeframe of meaning of anything anyone may do seems a little too long to me. Just how will this clock in the mountain get people to do that really?

Meanwhile, what could that money have done to really help people? This is the part I don't want to turn political, and Bezos is not a huge political guy but he has been involved in a few political causes, but he's also given a lot of money to various true charities like cancer research etc.

So for $42 million couldn't we find something a bit more constructive for those entities? I think the clock is cool, but it seems so awfully self-indulgent to me even for a billionaire.

Just wondering what everyone thought. Like I said it's cool, but seems like there are better projects out there for the money involved. Lots of rich people build monuments, but dang.

For example, he's very concerned about net neutrality I'm sure. I wonder how much GOP support $42 million would buy for such a thing. I bet a lot.