2012: Astronomically not a problem

End-Of-The-World theories and predictions are very numerous, and many dates have already passed, so it is very difficult to take any single one of them seriously. I have a simple rule of thumb -- if religion has anything to do with the predictions -- not to worry. The Mayans made a calendar, it needed to end somewhere because the rock was only so big. It just so happened to end in 2012.

Science, however, has plenty of problems that can keep your anxiety pill bottles emptied.

The year 2012 is only a partial passing from one point in the plane of the Galactic orbit to another. The Sun is so large that it already has passed those points, and the Earth will only share in that passing in 2012. But there is no particular problem that could be identified with that point. No gravity wells, asteroid clouds or hordes of alien space ships. There might be some problems with the orbits of asteroids or comets that we don't know about, but the Mayans probably didn't know about them either.

Right here on Earth, though, there are plenty of problem areas, i.e. the various volcanoes and supervolcanoes that could happen -- the Yellowstone caldera for example. It blows every 600,000 years or so, and is overdue. The Mt. Ranier volcano would be bad enough for people in Washington and Oregon, etc., even though it would be hundreds of times less bad than Yellowstone. Both of these sites are having little spits and groans. Neither can be predicted within any 1 year accuracy, that is for sure, and certainly not to coincide with December 21, 2012 or any other date. If Yellowstone went off, however, there could be Mass extinctions world wide.

There are also undersea landslides and earthquakes that can cause massive tidal waves, which periodically screw up life along many shores. The Pacific Coast from Canada to Northern California is periodically inundated with such waves, as are the South Asian islands such as Indonesia. Low lying areas are the most exposed, of course, but sometimes the waves are so big that even large hills are overwhelmed. Not usually world changing, but certainly bad news for local folks.

The Sun is strangely quiet. This means that less solar wind is blowing, so more cosmic rays are reaching us, although most of them are absorbed in the upper atmosphere. The Sun usually has these 11 year cycles of sunspots, but there are almost no spots lately, long overdue. What this means for us I don't know -- weather might be effected by electrical energy from collisions of cosmic rays, etc. I'm not sure what to think of it.

The Earth periodically passes through thicker gas clouds in parts of the Galactic arm where our Sun orbits in. When this happens there are perturbations of the Oort cloud, which can cause comets to rain down into our orbit. This seems to be the 26 million year extinction cycle, and this effect won't occur again for millions of years, but when it does -- Mass extinctions.

Every few thousand years there is a supernova somewhere in the Galaxy. If it is close enough to us it can emit so much UV and gamma radiation that our atmosphere would be stripped away, cooked and result in bad news on the surface of Earth -- Mass extinctions. Unpredictable.

Bacteria -- and other microorganisms. There are often Red Tides in our shores. We can even go down to the shore at night and watch the glow of those particular microbes that emit light when disturbed by the waves. They tend to kill every single bottom and filter feeder in the ocean, which can spiral into a great die off of fish, seals and whales. This happens on a local scale every 10-20 years. It can happen on a global scale, too, but unknown how often. Sort of a Biblical "sea turns to blood" type of thing.

Our own populations and economic problems can mushroom into a pandemic. We will eat everything we can catch. We will burn anything to keep warm. We can spread strange diseases around the world and have no method of curing them. We will convert the world to a desert with little clean water. But only if our population exceeds some X number. We may have exceeded X already, and we are only just beginning to have the bad effects -- die offs of life forms we depend on, pollution poisoning fresh water sources, etc. Mass extinctions could result from our own idiocy.

Nothing can be linearly predicted. Humans have a self-awareness and unpredictable behavior. We might self-correct many of our problems and avoid the effects of our populations on the planet. Certainly we would not completely die off -- when the population fell to some M minimum, then there would be enough life-support on the planet to support all the life forms we need to survive -- hopefully.

Anyway, for my grand children's sake I hope none of these things happen too soon.

More Death and Less Resolution

There are few issues in the world that are more problematic than the Israeli-Arab conflicts. It is a problem that transcends generations, and has been going on for centuries. The current issue of the "State of Israel" versus the "State of Palestine" is only the latest page of the latest chapter in a very large book full of tragedy and horror.

Since I am neither Israeli nor Arab, there is little I can directly experience of their affairs. I do have Israeli friends and, at least remotely, I have some Arab acquaintances. I know more Islamic people than Arabs, however, since there is an obvious difference. Although Islam and Judaism have their problems, too, the remoteness of Pakistanis to Israelis, for example, is too great for their to be direct eye for an eye revenge battles such as there are with the Arabs. You might think the same was true of Iran, since Persians and Israelis have not been in many direct conflicts over the centuries.

Yet, due to the Palestine problem, many Islamic peoples have taken up the battle against Israel, and by extension, against all Jews. The fact that Christianity is also "somewhat" related to Judaism seems to damn them as well, although the Arabs are much more related by blood to the original Jews than to most Christians in modern times. But this also extends to Islamic peoples of Indian descent or to Indonesians. They are Islamic by force of belief, not by being Arab. The hatred of the Jews because of their religion is therefore entirely irrational.

The hatred of anyone for any reason is usually irrational, since it is an emotional reaction rather than a conscious choice. There are few people that I could say "I hate", and when I do examine closely why I might say that, I cannot come up with a logical "A is to B as C is to D" kind of answer.

If someone murdered my children, I would certainly be emotionally effected, no question of that. I would probably hate whoever did such a thing. But what would it be that I hated? That person? What if they were also dead, killed by the police or by their own hand after committing the murder. Should I hate the non-existent person? Should I hate the gravestone of that person? The reasoning would be meaningless, but I might still hate that person -- because I would hate the memory I have of my loss and the cause of that loss. I would be hating that part of my brain that encodes the loss of my child at the hand of a murderer.

Many centuries have passed since the Roman emperors wielded their power of life and death over the peoples of the Mediterranean. The Romans killed whoever they liked to kill, whenever they wished to do so, for several centuries. Amongst their victims were Christians, Jews, Egyptians, and even other Romans. Should we all hate the Romans and their descendants? Should we try to erase all the Roman influences within our cultures? We would wind up hating ourselves because our cultures are so intertwined with the Romans (and the Christians and Jews and Egyptians, etc.) there can be no unraveling them.

The current operation in Israel is against the "Hamas" organization. They are Arab, Islamic, and implacably hateful of Israelis. They feel wronged, oppressed, displaced, etc. One can feel some sympathy for their plight. At the same time they are unapologetically guilty of murdering women, children, and anyone else who happens to be close by, using suicide bombs, random rocket attacks, mortars, booby traps, car bombs, etc. These are all the tools of guerrilla fighters.

After so many of these attacks upon the citizens of Israel occur, then the inevitable response from the much stronger, more technically advanced IAF rains massively destructive weapons down upon them, which also kills women, children and anyone else who happens to be close by.

The cycle continues. In the distance, Iran threatens to "extinct" Israel. The Al Qaeda hordes threaten the same. The angry Arabs and Islamic peoples of all the places that hate Israel are increased in their anger and hatred yet again.

Personally, I have asked questions about the problem of my Israeli friends (who live in America, and for the most part do not wish to partake in these operations, and do not wish their relatives or fellow Israelis to be harmed by the inevitable revenge cycles thereof.)

I ask, "Why not just take all the money used to buy arms, buy nuclear materials, buy political influence, and so forth, and use that to buy some land in Canada or somewhere with lots of land and little population, and build your country there? Surely it would be cheaper.

The answer, "Because the Temple of Jerusalem, or at least the Wall, is there. It cannot be arbitrarily moved to the Yukon or even to Egypt. It has historical and religious meaning. You may as well ask Mecca to be moved to Nebraska."

OK. "So, do you think you need to kill every single Arab that surrounds Israel?"

Answer; "No, only the violent, terrorists and fanatics."

OK. "So, will you ultimately have to use nuclear weapons against some Islamic country that has a nuclear weapon?"

Answer: "Not any more than when America needs to use nukes against other nuclear powers. Usually there is a balance of power, and sane leaders prevent all out strikes."

OK. "So, wouldn't the same logic apply to Iran? Do we need to stop them?"

Answer: "Well, hopefully they are rational, at some level, and will not actually use such weapons, however there are many irrational acts which countries such as Iran and Pakistan take part in. And to a lessor degree, India and China also take part in problematic enterprises. Everyone must keep an eye on everyone else. Not Israel, not the USA, nor any other country should become irrational and use these weapons. But there is always a chance."

OK. "So, do you think Hamas, if left unchecked, would use such a weapon if they ever got their hands on it?

Answer: "Look at what they do now. They lob explosives into Israel with the full knowledge that destruction will rain down upon them as a result. A nuclear weapon that destroyed Israel and also destroyed Gaza would only be seen as glorious in their eyes, somehow fitting the 'martyr' label, ensuring the 70 virgins in Heaven, or whatever."

This is the typical question answer session. There is no solution using logic or reason. There is only religion, hatred, revenge and that sort of thing. It keeps on going, over and over. I truly am afraid that it will lead to either the utter destruction of Israel and the surrounding Arab states, or to an infinite series of the kinds of wars and sieges that are going on right now, until all eyes are gouged out and all tongues are cut off.

I hope not. This is so tiring to me.

Hamas Mess

I am not an Israeli, and I am not a Palestinian, therefore I can probably have no authority in commenting on the horror of wars in the Middle East between Arabs and Jews (and so many other entities.)

But I do have an opinion, as unwelcome as opinions may be. It has been 60 years since the creation of Israel after the fall of the Nazis and the Jewish war with the Arabs to obtain a homeland. I have not witnessed any of those things directly, since I was not born yet when they occurred. I will most likely be dead when and if there is ever an end to the wars. So far they have occurred during my whole life.

The Arab perspective is always from the point of view of someone whose land has been occupied by outsiders. Naturally they feel wronged, displaced and oppressed. It is probably not fun to be an Arab in Israel or the Palestinian territories. However, there are also other Arabs -- not just Jews -- who contribute to the bad lifestyle of the Palestinians. And they also have themselves to blame. Much foreign aid has gone into those lands, only to be transformed into weapons or gangster kingdoms instead of a better lifestyle for the intended people.

The Israeli perspective is always from the point of view of people without a homeland, driven from every land they wound up in over the centuries, and with many exterminations and atrocities committed against them by their host peoples. This started long before there were any "Palestine" borders. Between the Greeks and Egyptians and Romans and, in modern times, by the Nazis and Soviets, the Jews had always been slaughtered and displaced, and in far worse conditions than the worst of the modern Palestinians.

Although I am American, and therefore am hated by all parties for various reasons, (both true and false,) I still have my point of view. I was born into America, and I had no choice in the matter -- no differently than a Jew in Israel or an Arab in Gaza -- to be born into that world whether one likes it or not is not a choice, it is a matter of circumstance. To be hated merely because I was born here is strange, but more common amongst the world's primitive societies.

If Hamas had a nuclear weapon capable of destroying America, there would be little hesitation before it was used. I am afraid they have such deep hatred for Israel they would use it immediately, right next door to Gaza, even if the effects would destroy most of Palestine as well -- one of those "martyrdom" operations that also wipes out unwitting women and children in a brilliant splendor of religious fanaticism.

Unfortunately, there are such nuclear weapons in the hands of precarious Islamic countries, although in Pakistan the balance of power is mainly between themselves and India, another precariously ruled nuclear power composed of several other religions. Both of those countries are consumed by religious extremism, however there are some rational people in control of the weapons launch apparatus -- so far.

In Iraq and Kuwait, at least partially radioactive materials are laying about on the ground in the form of depleted uranium, used by anti-tank weapons, A-10 Warthog munitions, and the armor of tanks and other vehicles.

I am not sure how easily one can collect such stuff, and fortunately it is "mostly depleted" and cannot be formed into nuclear weapons or power station fuel pellets. It is radioactive, however, especially when collected into unshielded piles. It is especially dangerous when vaporized and breathed, since it is also quite toxic - like many other heavy metals.

People who are living in poverty may be quite happy to collect the stuff for small amounts of money, obtained by some bad actors who may be more capable of using it in a dirty bomb, or making their own armor piercing weaponry. We should always be careful what kind of stuff we take out of Pandora's Box and scatter about in foreign lands.

I do wish that Israel and Hamas would find some sane balance, in which both entities could live more peacefully. But I know it is just a wish, some mistaken belief that people everywhere can be rational, to live and let live. Since my wish cannot come true, then, since Hamas only feeds the fanaticism of terrorism, which is also directed toward my children and my future -- I can only hope that Israel quickly "wins" their war.

But I know it will be just a temporary win, on whichever side, and in some future time it will be perhaps my grandchild who writes a similar opinion as this, in a future war of insanity, only to be followed by another, and another.

$100 Toilet Paper Bills

There are many issues that peeve me in today's chaotic world, but the recent wave of economic disasters have gone far beyond the minor worries of yesteryear. There are bail outs for the super-rich, bail outs for the banks, bail outs for the crooks who spent our tax dollars on lavish bouts of prostitutes and murderous rampages (otherwise known as the War on Terror), and bail outs for everyone except the people who work for a living and generate the taxes.

And none of these bail outs will really work. Why? Because the problem isn't like a boat that is taking on a little water, where bailing out the water will keep the boat from sinking. These bail outs are like pumping gasoline into a fire, expecting to put out the flames. Or spraying the crops with herbicide to kill the weeds, but killing all the crops along with them.

We are spending money that isn't real, wasn't real and never will be real. It is fake money, made by printing presses, with fancy lettering and counterfeit-proofing and the signatures of government officials. But it is no more real than Monopoly money. It is just a certificate of value, but is based on nothing but promises. The same promises that politicians repeat to get elected, but never keep. The same promises that party boys use to get into the pants of young ladies.

But there are real things in the world -- food, medicine, houses, cars, computers and lots of other things. Those things have real value, but only relative to each other. Let me trade so many potatoes for a bottle of blood pressure pills. This computer that I'm typing this on must be worth at least as much as a set of tires for my car. And my car is worth at least a years rent in an average apartment.

But in terms of dollar bills? I have no idea what this computer is worth. Someone might pay $100, someone might pay $500. I don't really know what it is really worth in dollars, because I don't know what a dollar is worth. It keeps changing. It might be that today's dollars are about the value of a dime when I was a child. Maybe only a nickel. I don't even use pennies anymore -- they are a nuisance when shopping. I suppose if you saved enough of them they might be worth their weight in watermelons.

Yet, a penny is really worth more than a dollar bill. That is because I can pound a penny into some shape, like a strip or a wire, and it will conduct electricity. I can use the zinc or copper in the penny for some chemical purpose. About the only thing I could do with the dollar bill (or even a hundred dollar bill) would be to roll it up into a tube and snort something with it. Or I could burn it and keep my hands warm for about 10 seconds.

But, just recently, there was a wall street guy who admitted that he was a crook, and that his $50 Billion business was only a Ponzi scheme. Just a pyramid ripoff. The only good thing about that is that mostly rich assholes were burned by that guy. I certainly don't make enough with my software jobs to invest in that kind of stuff. Lucky for me. I may be poor, relative to those jokers, but if you got nothing, you can't lose much. Imagine losing like $7 Billion, or "only" $100 million. What does that feel like?

I will die soon enough -- I'll live another a decade or two at the very most. But my grandchildren will probably die of old age before our debts (created by the rich assholes that are stealing us blind today) are ever paid off. They may never be paid off. But even if they are paid, someday, it will only be in those worthless scraps of paper anyway. Go ahead, roll off another billion sheets of those hundreds, guys. And pay off the Saudis and Chinese with that stuff.

Those Darn Terrorists

This is the age of terror. No doubt about it.

Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski was the "unabomber" and he considered that technology was basically the bane of mankind. His writings, in the form of a manifesto (which was written sometime within the 1980 to 1995 range), described a future world where terrorists use high technology. That is a great problem, of course, and the governments of the world would use any and all high technology of their own to counteract it.

Of course, this technology would give police states ever increasing policing ability, thereby able to relieve man of all freedom, permanently. The unabomber manifesto was extremely detailed and seemed to ramble or rant, at least in my opinion. It was not inaccurate, in fact it seemed pretty much on target so far as the world of bad guys is concerned.

But the manifesto was definitely the work of somebody with a personality disorder, not to mention being exceptionally critical of capitalism and authoritarianism (although that was not his madness, only his politics.) Certainly, he was paranoid, at least in the street meaning of the word. Supposedly he does have real disorders of the mind, but anyone who feels like murdering other people on some whim of a manifesto must be implicitly irrational.

I don't want the terrorists to win - nobody wants that except them. People that murder other people indiscriminately can't be allowed to keep doing that, no matter what. In Texas they might say, "they need killing" - obviously the terrorists need to be terminated. Yet, anyone who could terminate all the terrorists would surely be able to terminate anyone at all, at whim. Those who did such things would become terrorists by definition.

If someone was fighting a war in our back yards, and if our children were harmed in any way, it seems that just about any technique that can "get those guys" would be acceptable. Yet, any actual success would probably result in a similar number of their children being harmed. The cycle of revenge would thereby repeat indefinitely.

The war is actually in our front yards, where the WTC stood and the damaged but repaired Pentagon still stands. It is something we cannot ignore. It is a real danger to our survival. The only fly in the ointment is that we have to only fight a war that wins, not a war that kills everything on the planet. Nor do we wish to live in a world similar to THX1138, where all aspects of emotion and mind are controlled by biochemical and cybernetic means.

If wars can be won without shooting, such as by countering their logistics or confounding their communications, and so forth, then that must be tried as far as it will work. It can at least minimize the amount of shooting necessary.

In terms of bullet cost alone, it would be cheaper to kill only those terrorists who are actually guilty of terrorism. The problem with that is that it may be extremely costly to put the one bullet to use, needing extremely difficult pinpoint locating techniques. In that case the solution tends toward using larger, less accurate bombs.

So we cannot win a war with an unremitting enemy, who will not fear death nor be deflected by rational argument, unless we become as unremitting and free of deflection. We must always become as terrible as our enemy or we will be defeated by them, one or the other.

If we must be defeated, but merely serve as the vanquished and not be tortured (perhaps we treated the Japanese as such after WWII) then defeat would not be so important. The Japanese have not suffered so badly at our hands. They have thrived. It would be better than death, at least, even in the spirit of Samurai.

The more likely result from defeat at the hands of Islamic extremists would be a bloodbath, with mass beheadings, etc. And all in the name of some weird sect of Islam that doesn't make any sense to the rational mind, and indeed pours gasoline on all fires.

Religions can be good or bad (from a certain frame of mind) but they cannot be rational. Anything that demands belief without some degree of proof seems to be sheer folly and cannot be rational.

If one wishes to believe in invisible pink bunnies then that's OK, but believing that Allah wants my head on a stick is not OK. To me it is a very clearly defined problem. I already have problems dealing with modern religions, which, though irrational, usually have found ways to live with each other peacefully. I can never live with an irrational AND violent religion.

The modern, peaceful religions are usually merely argumentative, however, not prone to hack off my head at the hint of disbelief in their particular view of Allah. I am not so afraid that Lutherans will bomb my house if I express some doubt in the views of Luther.

We will not win using religion, such as Baptists vs Sunnis. That has never worked. They will use any technology as a weapon, believing that Allah has blessed any and all weapons, however demented, against us. So we must use even greater technology as a shield, to protect us from such irrational extremists. But where the best or only shield might only be an even more demented weapon, then the irrational extremists will ensure that we must use it against them.

That is suicidal of them, no doubt. Ours is a choice then, between the bodies being either us or them. We may or may not be deserving of victory, but I think we must make sure that the bodies will be theirs. Hopefully I am wrong, and that rationality might prevail - no need to light up the nukes.

The Soul

There are myriad stories in history about the Gods, hints of forces of nature that cause all events big and small, plain or mysterious, for pauper or king.

At some point, perhaps in Sumeria or Babylon or somewhere else in the ancient birthplaces of civilization and language, there became the concept of the "soul".

Many definitions of the soul involve a kind of separate being than our physical body, that lives inside it, or borrows it for at time. Others merely suggest that it is the motive spirit, that which makes our body move and feel and want to do things.

Yet, as a container of "holy spirit", such as in the Bible, the soul has been elevated to some divine place, where one's life after death will be lived, whether in eternal damnation or in eternal bliss. This seems a bit excessive, both in scope and content. I do not personally think of myself as being divine in any way. I have no connection to God that isn't shared by trees, insects and galaxies.

Spirit is an abstraction, so the soul is nonsubstantial. It was once "weighed" in the sense of having some mass, which upon death, was lost. Of course, simply expelling one's last breath would also expel some mass of water vapor which could account for this "soul" mass.

People are so attached to their ideas about the soul. It is an insult to suggest that it is just the same stuff that you feel in your brain somewhere, much like vision and sound. There is no physical "mind", only the temporary states of atomic interactions, the chemical soup of the brain as it is orchestrated by the fibers of nerves and neurons.

Upon death, one's soul may be lost forever, not to be missed by the previous owner, because there would be no consciousness to feel the loss. Otherwise, the soul may be passed on to the next generation, or just live in Heaven or Hell or some other place, in between, in a Purgatory.

But I do not believe anything. I only know that I am alive right now, and my "soul" exists as my mind and feelings right now. Whatever happens after death has never been proven to me, one way or the other. And I am patient. I will find out soon enough.

Bonfires of The Universe

On the surface of the planet Earth, in the 5 billionth year of the existence of its parent star, the Sun, on the edge of a continent near a vast ocean of saltwater, in a little house upon a hill, a man sits in a little room rattling the keys on a computer. In this man's head are trillions of little fibers, little organic wires, that interconnect all the billions of neurons and myriad worker cells. Collectively, these fibers and cells are called the brain. The man does not concern himself so much for this brain, except that it provides for his experience of life.

Inside the computer he clatters upon are thousands of little parts, and within the parts are thousands of other parts, and thousands more within those, until there are billions of little bits of dirty sand which bounce quadrillions of electrons back and forth to create the illusion of mathematical precision required to induce the colored surface before his eyes to display an image. That image is the picture of these very words.

Within the man's brain, somehow encoded by all those trillions of tiny fibers, there is also an illusion upon which the display of imagination is played. That illusion is the same whether the man is asleep or awake, and it is sometimes difficult to know whether the dream is real or reality is real, or if neither is real. The fleeting bits of light in our imagination combine into a picture of the world so realistic as to compete with the actual world itself for the label of reality.

Only a few fleeting lifetimes before his, there was no knowledge of this thing called the brain. Certainly it was known to be connected to life somehow, and in some ways it was thought to be a place where devils might reside, whispering evil deeds to the witless owner. Conversely, it was a place where God might whisper holy commands to counter the evil spells. Yet, more weight was given to the heart as the seat of consciousness, of life, of emotion and thought.

In truth, there can be no life without both the heart and brain. And even with both intact, life can be hard to maintain – there must also be blood and stomachs and all manner of bones and complicated devices, all working in concert to provide for our lives. Life is the unification of all the cells and mineral deposits within our bodies, and all the electrical signals which operate them, and all the conceptualizations we perceive in our spirits. There are only very tiny differences between the body of a healthy conscious man and that of a dying man in a coma.

Although many wish to deny the fact, we are a kind of animal. The concept of animal is often limited to beasts, such as dogs or cows. No one likes to think of themselves as a kind of ape. But there is no denying that we share nearly every aspect of our lives, our bodies and our minds, in one manner or another, with the other animals on this planet. We have blood, we have cells, we have molecules of DNA, we have pains and pleasures, we have hunger and fear. We share all those things and more with the other living creatures, and moreover we share many of them with plants and even microbes.

Then, to dispel the unpleasant concept that we are merely animals, we try to distinguish ourselves by the differences. Primarily, above all else, it is said, we have souls. Animals do not. We alone in the world gathered our souls around bonfires to celebrate and wonder of the mysterious facets of life.

I cannot prove whether or not other living things have souls. But, to avoid needless argument, I will just concede that a soul is unique to mankind. Surely there are qualitatively superior methods to our survival that no other living things seem to master. We can build cities and machines, alter the climate, repair our bodies with medicine and surgery. We certainly are a clever kind of animal, no doubt. The vast complexity inherent in being a human is certainly beyond casual comprehension. We seemed blessed by God, indeed.

But termites and ants can build cities. They, as well as mere microbes and plants, alter the climate. Our bodies and theirs have always been able to repair themselves within limits, or to supplement themselves with herbs and minerals to aid in healing. The main difference is that we can be aware that we are doing those things, rather than just accidentally doing them as a result of the trial and error of cellular evolution over billions of years. Instead, we can pass our observations directly to our children in the form of codes and signals, such as the words in this document.

That mere collisions of quadrillions of quadrillions of atoms accidentally clumped into something like ourselves is difficult for some to grasp. However, we are quick to attribute that effect to bacteria or viruses – mainly because we can watch it happen. It is too slow to watch it happen in more complex creatures. Yet, there is no line which absolutely, neatly divides the continuum from organic molecules to astronauts. The line seems to exist between living things and machines, although machines are merely an extension of our human bodies, like our bones and muscles are extensions of our nerves and organs.

Still, no other animal other than mankind (and whatever little critters hitchhiked with us,) has been able to travel across the deadly radiation and void of space to the moon and back, alive. That is something, certainly, that widely separates us from the other animals and plants of Earth. It is a grand accomplishment that no dinosaur or whale or tree had ever done in the billions of years of ever changing lifeforms before us.

Yet, with all our intelligence and curiosity, perhaps unique amongst the vast expanses of our galaxy, (or perhaps not,) we might be snuffed out in an instant by the random passage of some leftover rock careening about the local star system. Or we might snuff ourselves out in millions of degrees gamma ray bursts with our nuclear weapons. Or we might just starve to death by poisoning the world with garbage. I hope not, of course.

Beyond those possibilities, every day another star snuffs out somewhere amongst the heavens. Perhaps another is born from the vast clouds and ashes of other snuffed out stars to take its place. But whatever lifeforms, similar to ourselves or not, which may have called that dead star their Home, will have been snuffed out as well. All their art and history and cities will have vanished, completely erased from reality, just as mysteriously and completely as before they were ever created.

Unless we can reach into the heavens, and spread our fragile thread of life amongst the galaxies, amongst the life-giving and life-destroying bonfires of the Universe, our future in life is doomed as certainly as the day turns to night. This may be God's will or not, I don't know. Yet so far, though it seems very, very difficult, God has not prevented us from at least trying.