un-OO-sa

Did you know that the United Nations has an office dedicated to space affairs? Indeed, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) promotes international cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space. For the most part, they deal with benign issues - which of course is about all they can deal with, since they have no true authority over the matter. Or so you might think.

For now comes news that the United Nations has appointed a key individual - that virtually no one has ever heard of - to be the world's representative (I don't recall getting a vote) to any extraterrestrial first contact. Forget Captains Kirk and Picard, or even Zefram Cochrane. We have Mazlan Othman (emphasis mine):

Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.

She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.

...

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”

We should all feel tremendously safe knowing that 1) the UN has appointed itself the responsibility to coordinate with ET on the behalf of all humanity; 2) and that Ms. Othman - again, shout if you've ever heard of her - is the nearest thing to a "take me to your leader" person.

I hope she has Bruce Willis on speed dial.

A Charter to Cherish

I'm not sure where or why it came up, but the other day I heard or read chatter about whether the ideas represented in the founding documents of our nation - in particular the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution - are fundamentally outdated, given that we have seen two centuries of modernity, ideas and progress sweep over our civilization. Obviously, I have my own views on the matter, some of which I address indirectly here. The topic got me thinking about a passage I read recently in Matthew Spalding's interesting work We Still Hold These Truths. On page 220 of the hardback edition, Spalding raises the issue of Europe's slow decline from its heritage as the birthplace and home of Western Civilization, and suggests that the statist and socialist nature of today's Europe represents the antithesis of progress and freedom. (As an aside, I mean, seriously: there is a proposal in the UK that suggests that all payroll - private and public - should be administered by the government for the sake of "efficiency." In such a model, it's hard not to see how the private sector could utterly disappear. But I digress). Spalding goes on to relate a portion of a speech given by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. You can read the speech in its entirety here, but below is the excerpt Spalding includes in his book. I'll leave it there for you to ponder, without further elaboration or embellishment.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Getting Outdoors

For the past several weeks, I've been dealing with more than my usual share of physical and mental fatigue. Which in a way is ludicrous, because I work a desk job. I suppose it is stress, and I really don't like making excuses, but the constant neck and back pain is starting to wear on me (not to mention the resulting migraines). And to be sure, the fact that I spend my days sitting at a desk on the computer is probably the primary cause of my trouble. I'm simply not active enough.

Today - Saturday - offered a slight change of pace. I was up before 6am, woke my youngest son, and by 7:30 we were on our way to a nearby state park to join his Cub Scout pack on a 3.5 mile hike. Fall is not quite here yet, but as we walked the trail you could almost hear the trees pining for their leaves to start changing. But although the morning quickly reached the mid 80's, the sky was beautifully crystal clear and blue. In a few more weeks, that same trail will be alive with color. With each passing moment, I could feel the knots starting to loosen, if only a bit.


The blue expanse continued to beckon all afternoon. Even as I was filling my sinuses with flying dust and grass clippings, I found myself constantly drawn to the striking contrast between the earth and sky.


So while I'm in a desperate need for a genuine break, I'll have to be satisfied with these brief moments. No doubt, the outdoor air and activity did me some good (despite my protesting sinuses). I need more of it.

Evening has arrived, and still, I'm taken aback at the endless blue above. What a wonderful, beautiful day.

Patriot Day 2010

Today, I don't feel inclined to craft any major retrospective of the events surrounding 9/11. This may be in part because next year, 2011, will mark ten years from that fateful day. My reticence may also be in part because of the current controversies over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, and the shameful grandstanding of a seriously misguided Florida pastor (and others around the country) and the media's exploitation of his seriously aberrant methods.

As of this morning, the burning has apparently been called off. About this issue, I will only say this. Whatever else he thinks he's doing, this "witness" of his is as far from the Gospel as you can get. Burning the Koran, like burning Harry Potter books or rock-n-roll albums and so forth, do absolutely nothing to further the message of Jesus Christ. And I dare someone to prove it to me otherwise. Beware the wolf in sheep's clothing, because the message he is preaching through this act - if he had gone through with it - looks nothing like the manner in which Christians are called to live. Frankly, I'm disgusted by the focus on this guy, not only because it does damage to true Christian witness, but because I feel it takes away from the proper moment of reflection and remembrance that Patriot Day should represent.

Burning the Koran, and planting a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero, are deeply provocative acts. Under our system of laws, both are legally protected (the latter is somewhat more murky, depending on the source of the funding). I personally approve of neither, but I will resist getting emotionally drawn into either one. I do worry somewhat, though. For instead of a "coming together" on this Patriot Day, we are witnessing an increasing unrest that I can only pray doesn't get out of hand. Future Patriot Day ceremonies may well include large scale protests and counter protests, and heaven forbid, riots.

So today, I may look back over the links in last year's post, and I will post the colors outside my front door. I'll enjoy my family, do some work around the house, and be thankful for the blessings of God and of nation that we have received. And I will remember the fallen and the heroes.

Lights Out

Does anybody remember this golden oldie of a commercial:


A few years ago, in response to the environmentalist concern that standard incandescent light bulbs were destroying the world, the government passed legislation that makes it illegal to sell your basic light bulbs. Instead, starting in 2014, the only legal bulbs will be the toxic mercury-filled compact fluorescents (CFLs). The astounding thing about this decision, made back in 2007, is that the only reason to ban the incandescent was that it did not meet arbitrary standards of energy efficiency. Heralded as a progressive breakthrough toward "smarter energy," everyone assumed that manufacturing giants such as GE would simply convert their U.S. factories to making the new bulbs. Precisely the opposite has happened, as reported by the Washington Post:

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. …

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. …

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

The "unintended consequences" quote above is laughable, because the government was warned. CFLs take a lot of hand labor to produce, and as a result is cheaper to produce in countries that, frankly, don't require union wages in their factories. So, by banning a bulb, the government has helped to close the book on a manufacturing heritage that's as old as … er … the light bulb.

Of course, I admit to a bias against CFLs. I just don't like them much. I prefer the good old soft white incandescent. I figure I've got about 2 years at best to stock up on them, before they simply won't be available anymore. The ban is simply one measure of "progress" that I could do without. Still, I'm certain that banning the bulb will extend the life of our planet by a least a month or two.

On a lighter note, this trip through YouTube looking at commercials from the '80s is kind of fun. Here's another nostalgic GE commercial I remember well. And one more.

Something's "fishy" ...

From the Chicago Breaking News Center, we have a proactive response to a serious, emerging threat. First, a quote from Sen. Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois:

"This is a serious challenge, a serious threat," Durbin said. "When it comes to the ... threat, we are not in denial. We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed ahead mode. We want to stop this ... from advancing."

What is this threat? To build the suspense, I inserted ellipses in Sen. Durbin's comments above. The federal government has launched a "multi-pronged," $80 million counter-offensive to head off the threat of ... a fish called the Asian carp.

Now, all joking aside, it does appear that the fish is a threat to the existing fishing industry around the Great Lakes. The fish consumes a vast quantity of food daily, which negatively impacts the food supply available to fish native to those waters. Not only that, but these buggers can range from 40 to 100 pounds in some cases. That's a big fish by inland water standards.

Still, instead of assigning someone within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the task of overseeing the $80 million effort, the White House has appointed a "czar." In other words, an individual who may very well be unaccountable to Congress, whose oversight authority extends only to those working for the various federal agencies and bureaucracies (such as the Fish and Wildlife Service) except where proscribed by law.

Honestly, I don't think I have too much heartburn over the initiative. But I do wonder why it takes a "carp czar" to do the job. This just doesn't pass the ... smell test for me.

Non-Starter

Fall, at last, is in the air. While the kids were getting ready for school this morning, I stepped outside as is my wont on some days to find a brief moment of peace before the tumultuous torrent of tedium that is modern life unleashes itself upon my psyche.

Unfortunately the moment passed, as the boys loaded into the car and I reached to turn the ignition. Grind-click-click-click-click-click, and then nothing. Repeat twice. Sigh. I had grandiose plans of getting the car into the shop this week for a 100,000-mile refresh, now that I've hit 115,000 miles. Yet in my imagination, I had hoped to personally take the car to the dealer, rather than having to pay to have it towed there. I'm simply not proficient enough to deal with modern cars. I'm pretty sure that my problem is the solenoid and not the battery, but I suppose the starter cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, I loaded the boys into the van, and left the car in the garage. Before the day is out, I'll figure out my next steps.

The disruption of routine is rarely welcome, and to be sure, I'm feeling rather discombobulated this morning. Yet all of this bizarrely serves to remind me that I probably need to go in soon for my personal 100,000 mile check-up, before I get laid out and am forced to have all sorts of unpleasantness thrust upon my being. Of course, this is quite too much information, and I am most certain that you would prefer I had kept that thought to myself.

All I know is, that if I don't get some deeply restful rest soon, all the coffee in the world will not get me started in the mornings.

But on a lighter note, this morning was beautiful.

Postscript (5:13pm): Not long after I posted the above, something immediately started nagging at the back of my mind. When this happens, it usually means I've jumped to the wrong conclusion somewhere. So I started replaying the sequence of events from this morning. It struck me that the dashboard clock might have been wrong, but I wasn't sure. So instead of rushing ahead to figure out transportation issues for the week, I decided to slow down and take a second look at the car before doing anything else.

I was convinced that I had replaced the battery just a couple of years ago, which is why I was quick to dismiss the battery as a possible cause. Too quick, that is. Lo and behold, it turns out that the battery was over 5 years old. So I took it out, ran down to the auto parts store, and verified that the battery indeed had gone bad. I bought a new one, came home and put it in, and the car is good to go. Well, it still needs the 115,000 mile maintenance, but at least it's not dead in the garage. $75 after a $25 prorated discount. I can stomach that. But I'll tell you what: I remember in the 90's being able to buy a battery for my old Ford Fairmont for $40, tops. $100 for a brand new battery? Sheesh. Must be some environmental disposal tax, eh? Oh well. Car goes vroom again.