New Earth and God

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_page_id=1965&in_article_id=450467


As an avid follower of news, I'm always surprised when a huge story breaks and NO ONE I KNOW MENTIONS IT. Embarrassingly enough, I didn't even know about this story till I watched a recent Colbert Report and then made it a point to google search NEW EARTH the next day. Interestingly, asides from unrelated hits and Wikipedia, NO American news sources came up and when searching Gliese 581 c, (the planet's actual name) only one, MSNBC, appeared. You know what? FUCK YOU, "NEWS". "Hey...so, we discovered the closest thing to another Earth hereby upping the odds of discovering extra-terrestrial life or similar civilizations or maybe just having somewhere to go when we inevitably destroy this planet or AT LEAST giving space scientists (like that term? I'm very technical) something to do for a whi...OH NO SHIT, PARIS HILTON IS GOING TO JAIL?" To be fair, i don't know if this story made it to the TV news because I don't watch the TV news because it's garbage.

How is this not the most exciting thing ever?! Sure, its 20 light years away and all we know is that the temperature is Earth-like and its bigger than Earth and if we lived there, an Earth year would equal 13 days and we'd see a GIANT sun and a planet (moon?) with rings when we looked to the sky and there MIGHT BE FUCKING DINOSAURS because we just don't know that there aren't BUT the sheer amount of discovering and possibilities that this allows is mentally staggering.

Not one person I am friends with, work with, overheard in public has mentioned this discovery. Until today when I brought it up to Fritz, who said the planet was too far and also mentioned there could be dinosaurs, which believe me, I have considered.

***** RANT BREAK ******

A non-sequitor on dinosaurs: I was browsing books on Amazon.com today because I wanted to buy a copy of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens specifically because I want to read it on the bus in front of the 21904892 people who read the HOLY BIBLE on the bus EVERY DAY and I sincerely wish the cover font was larger. Plus I dig the subject material. Of course, there is a sub rant here about why people feel the need to read the Bible every day on the bus, which I comprehend but don't understand not being religious myself and with the benefit of being a biased observer.

***SUB RANT***

I sip my coffee and funny enough, I'm actually reading another book about religion (The Master and Margarita, about the Devil coming to Moscow) and think "You know, I've read the Bible. The stories are very interesting, when compacted into Hollywood movies and Simpsons episodes and children's bibles with fancy pictures but the actual Bible is BORING. AND I HAVE LISTENED TO STEPHEN HAWKING READ HIS BOOKS ON TAPE AND ENJOYED IT. AND NOW THE MAN ACROSS FROM ME IS MOUTHING ALL THE WORDS TO *THE BIBLE* BECAUSE APPARENTLY SOME PEOPLE NEVER GET PAST THE "READING SILENTLY IN YOUR HEAD" CLASS THE REST OF US HAD IN *GRADE SCHOOL*. " Now I've had to resort to asterisks because I've already used CAPS LOCK to show how annoyed I am and the restraints of text don't allow me to show you how angry and loud it is increasingly getting in my brain. It makes me want to read Greek Mythology on the bus in the morning. And take it very seriously, maybe pass out pamphlets informing people of the powers of Zeus, like the Korean lady on the 603 who passes out flyers about Jesus in languages I can't read to the mainly Hispanic bus riders and who wears a vest that says something like "Please don't go to hell". I really do find myself becoming more and more "anti-religious" as I age, whereas once, though I've always had disdain for it, it was merely just "something for everyone else, but not me". That said, I still feel comfortable calling myself a Unitarian Universalist should I need to put labels on things and I still feel comfortable calling myself an athiest rather than an agnostic . I'm certain there isn't a god although I still pray to saints when I can't find my keys (Please Saint Anthony come around, something's lost and can't be found) out of engrained childhood habit. Luckily, according to standard debate rules, burden of proof falls on the affirmative or those who are trying to prove that something exists and to counter with "Prove that god does not exist" is an Appeal to Ignorance. Yes, I *was* president of the debate team, thanks. Oh god, I don't even know how to stop talking about this.

SO
***Back to Dinosaurs***
While I was looking for my book on Amazon I saw another book plugged on the Daily Show or Colbert called The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden which I think is a fantastic idea (I'm in fact, calling my mother right now so she'll buy it for my younger brother) despite saying nix video games...granted, I spend too much time at my consoles and not eonoough (seriously, I just made that spelling error) time building tree forts and making secret codes nowadays and he is correct. But anyway, he said in the Amazon interview that his favorite dinosaur is a shark or a crocodile or something and I just felt that was a cop out and I consider neither to be "dinosaurs" and he might have well had said "A chicken". And somewhere in this paragraph I realised that 80% of my internal monologue revolves around how much other people annoy me, possibly. So back to

****NEW EARTH***

and my point, that I don't understand why people aren't flipping their lids over this. And a possible explanation? At a certain period in my life, and I think in the general public discourse, extra-terrestrial life was a fascinating realm of possibility, alien/space movies dominated and people cared what we were discovering on Mars. UFOs, Roswell, the X-Files, listening for ET contact on giant satellite dishes...amazing! Are people as a whole losing their fascination with the science of space or is this just a low point in a cycle of popular obsessions? Or do I just talk to the wrong people? I wonder if the more possible something becomes, the less appeal it has to the public imagination...

An excerpt I'd like to point out:

"Interestingly, Gliese 581c is so close to the Earth that if its putative inhabitants only had our level of technology, they could - just about - pick up some of our radio signals, such as the most powerful military transmitters. Quite what would happen if we for our part did receive a signal is unclear.

"There is a protocol, buried away in the United Nations," says Dr Shostak. "The President would be told first, after the signal was confirmed by other observatories. But we couldn't keep such a discovery secret."

It may be some time before we detect any such signals, but it is just possible that today we are closer than ever to finding life in the stars.

William Hill said it had shortened the odds on proving the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence from 1,000-1 to 100-1. "

100-1! And the U.N. is long since unprepared! And the President would be told first?! And they don't mean the president of the U.N., as the U.N. does not have a president but a secretary general, none of which my broadcast journalism classmates could name 4 years ago.

At any rate, i would have assumed that this discovery would have spawned a renewed public interest in space travel and the future and science and instead, it seems to have already been swept into the cobwebby annals of public memory where it can join Absolute Zero in the "Things we know about but can't do anything practical with yet" section where I like to browse and imagine in my time off from thinking about how much I can't stand people who use the wrong sides of escalators and moving sidewalks or talk loudly on their phone on public transportation.

So I finished God is Not Great yesterday after about a week of getting dirty looks (and not the good kind!) while reading it in public...and it's extremely well written (slightly dense in parts, Hitchens isn't one to dumb it down) with well structured arguments that, while I was aware of the basic ideas of, I hadn't heard so eloquently put before. He also has an incredibly acid tongue and I was pleased to note we share many of the same favorite philosophers...Anyway, I consider it a must read and thanks to Hustler interviewing him next week, the features editor there is having him sign my copy of the book which I am very excited about.
However, Hitchens supports the war in Iraq, and whether or not he feels secular humanism is an acceptable reason for us to be there, I don't, and I was fairly disappointed to discover that he does. Interestingly enough, he doesn't mention this in the book, but at the end, starts to talk about current affairs and 9/11 and Islam. His remarks about Islam are disparaging enough (although no faith escapes his harsh criticism in the book) but he makes an interesting point, that, as the newest of the "big 3", Islam has not had to go through the period of reformation Judaism and Christianity have and is therefore the most backwards. Fair enough. But it feels like Hitchen's is skirting the larger issue of his opinion on the war in the Middle East which I attribute to one of two things.

1. He doesn't want to alienate his largely leftist audience right at the end of the book after they've agreed with him the whole way through.
2. He felt it was subtopical and would detract from the main focus of the book.

Frankly, I think it's a combination of both, but I have no doubt in my mind he thought about his audience and decided it was best to let them discover his current political leanings elsewhere. Not to say he supports the administration, because it's apparent that he doesn't, but..do I sense..maybe a bit of negative utiliarianism here (my high school boyfriend did say that *I* was the most utilitarian person he'd ever met, and I sense an awesome rant about utilitarianism and social contract theory and blah blah blah coming on but I'll spare you in favor of torturing Brian, Fritz or Brett with it later) where rather than trying to create the greatest good in society, you try to prevent the most harm.

Anyway, it's a fabulous novel and I really hope more of my friends will read it. My mom wants to borrow my copy, and I may buy one for my dad, for whom I think it could do a lot of good (Guess what? No more having to go to church twice a year because thats all your religion requires of you not to end up in hell!).