The Icemen Cometh

 

A Cosmic Joke?

As billions of dollars continue to be spent by superpowers on space travel and valiant efforts to get from here to someplace called Out There, it's interesting to note that more than a smattering of scientists are reconsidering the origin of life -- human life in particular -- and the very real possibility that life did not originate on Earth.

Decades of scientific studies involving asteroids, meteorites and comets have discovered what appear theoretically to be the "building block" chemicals necessary to create living matter.  The beginnings of human life may indeed have come from Mars via a meteorite impact which flung chemical substances into space and onto Earth -- but the basic chemicals and necessary interactions likely occurred billions of years ago far elsewhere, raising the obvious conclusion that pieces of space rock have always transported and likely continue to convey said building blocks of life throughout the universe.

If we came from someplace else (which I have long believed, circumstances unknown), isn't it funny how we labor and strive essentially to go back to where we started?  A place or places which likely don't even exist anymore?  Are we ultimately just shooting ourselves in the foot with the potential futility of space technology?  Wouldn't it be something if we really have nowhere "new" to go, despite the vastness of space?

Chip away:  As long as I'm in pursuit of a negative course today (if not always) -- what's with building all of these expensive digital chip plants and crushing perfectly good farmland and animal habitats, when based upon much of our technological experience it should only be another three or four years before we can produce the damned things at home in our basements?

Warm Letters and Form Letters

 (A pre-election note regarding NY City:  The far left of the Democrat Party is drooling over the more than likely prospect that a democratic socialist with clear Islamic ties is poised to assume power as the mayor of a once great but quickly declining city.  As others have warned far more eloquently than I could, when you (Democrats, I mean you) invite the Third World into a country without borders this is what you get.  I've heard that some 50 percent of NY city dwellers are from somewhere else, and obviously these folks will vote for that which closely approximates their core values -- or they're just swallowing promises of "tax the rich and get free stuff."  As goes New York City next week, so goes the rest of NY eventually, and then the rest of the nation, should California and other pathetically progressive states latch on to this madness.  Sharia Law (look it up) already seems to be making inroads into American society, absolutely in opposition to our constitutional freedoms and rights, and with the help of outside and inside influences the possibility of utter chaos in the streets one day is not a nightmarish fantasy.  In NYC the obvious choice for mayor is Curtis Sliwa, but in panic mode the nevertheless execrable Andrew Cuomo should be the winner.  But neither is likely to take the NY mayoral oath of office, pushed aside as they probably will be by a presumed Marxist-socialist-radical Islamic philosophy destined to threaten all that we hold dear.  Trouble is, a large segment of NYC voters either don't have a clue -- or they do, and if that's the case we're in terrible jeopardy.)

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We've long bemoaned society's estrangement from letters written specifically and personally from one sender to one receiver.  Instead, the computer has replaced the personality of an individually targeted word, and simply by directing a digital device to send the exact same letter to thousands with only names and addresses added, those receiving such documents often falsely believe they're receiving the personal touch.

As a kid, one Christmas in the early sixties I received a basic manual typewriter as a gift and as years passed I used that marvelous instrument to pound out letter after letter to government representatives and others in my quest to raise public interest in the UFO issue.  Yes, there would be other typewriters and when, as an adult, I could actually purchase a couple of IBM Selectric typewriters I was literally in keyboard heaven.  Unfortunately, in so many ways, the computer sprung into use and my previous existence requiring ink to be imbedded on an actual sheet of paper as I typed character by character was shattered all to hell.

And so it had been in the sixties and even into the seventies that I could typewrite a letter, stick it into an envelope, add a stamp and mail it off, confident of a response in kind.  As readers of this blog, you know only too well of my "correspondence flood," as I've posted oh so many scans of letters received, particularly in the earliest years of these entries.

On one occasion, when one could write any congressional rep in the country and get a reply (now, of course, we're pretty much confined to communication with our own representatives, especially when e-mail is used), I wrote the late Illinois Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen.  Admired and respected throughout Congress, Dirksen was noted as a pretty fair orator with a voice commanding, yet as smooth as warm butter at a summer's day picnic.  Indeed, my mother, not particularly intrigued by politics but certainly aware of the country's historical foundations loved Dirksen's voice.

Nor did Dirksen let his vocal talents go to waste.  In the sixties he joined with a record company to produce his LP album, "Gallant Men," a recorded version of American history events read by Dirksen himself.  I was actually unaware of the LP until a fellow Air Force airman and I visited a department store one afternoon and as I thumbed through their record section I became aware of its presence.  Marc saw the record, too. "My dad would sure like to have that," he remarked.  Hmm.  Should I turn it over to him as a gesture of kindness?  Wouldn't it be the Christian thing to do, I wondered for a moment?

No, I decided to risk burning in hell and insisted I was keeping the album, and I did.  I hope Marc found another copy, but it surely wouldn't happen at this store because their records appeared to be a mix of cast-offs -- new and sealed, but apparently not popular in regular record stores.  Sorry Marc, I loved you like a brother. . .

But -- Dirksen.  The point is, I sent a self-typed letter and received one back.  Some secretary had to sit down at a typewriter and bang out real words intended for one person, moi!  No form letter intended for the masses, no wordy campaign speech woven around my reason for writing, no bull crap.  What I received back was exactly the answer I needed and nothing more 0h-- with a penned signature!  At that time, I don't know that autopens were in fashion, so either I had a letter signed by the senator himself or by a trusted office secretary authorized to do so.  In any case, the letter seemed real, warm and to the point.  No more, those days!

Yes, it would have been great if Dirksen had taken another step and brought the UFO issue up in the Senate -- but maybe he or his office communicated with other officials as a result, leading to further interest in the future (I'm trying not to picture the Colorado UFO study disaster as a fruit of my labor. . .).  Actually, if you dig up a copy (or visit the NICAP tribute site -- see my link) of NICAP's "UFO Evidence" report, given to every member of Congress in 1964, you will find a section devoted to numerous comments about UFOs by congressional members.  If only they had formed a powerful coalition then -- though it is amazing that several modern congressional folk have finally taken UFOs seriously and into the conference room.

Nonetheless, I so miss those earlier days of friendly interpersonal communication via the post office, pretty much lacking a hidden agenda.  If we anticipate something better from artificial intelligence and the magic of computer chips, I fear we shall be profoundly disappointed.  Then again, it's quite true that if one never had something in the first place they tend not to notice its departure from long ago.

No Kings Performed by No Brains

As far more involved people than I have mentioned, the "No Kings" demonstrations, obviously intended as just one more attack on President Trump, his money and his influence, were apparently paid for by influential America-hating billionaires on the political left (surprise!).  To get this straight -- members of the billionaire class organized funding to pay for posters and all the usual street trash paraphernalia condemning billionaires named Donald Trump. Hmm.  All one has to do is take a good look at the well-organized crowds of hysterical or plain-crazy protestors and there must be an immediate realization that all of this is just bad, very bad drama.  These are the events which make radical Democrats proud.  Unfortunately, these are also the events portraying the street trash and leftists as insane, stupid or deluded almost by trademark.

Match the "No Kings" nonsense with brand new findings that FEMA under Uncle Joe Biden actually DID -- by intent -- deny or inhibit aid to disaster survivors if they were known to be Republicans or Trump supporters and what do you have?  You have all the fascism for which one could hope when coordinated with all the other actions that consistently failing Democrat leaders subject the American people to when opportunities arise.

Republicans and Trump are not perfect, but anybody searching high and low for the threat of a fascist government usurping the country and its Constitution must look firmly to the left, the "modern" Democrat Party whose very roots are being chomped into a black void by extremists dedicated to an ultimately demonic form of "hope and change."  Their hope and change, not ours.

Or as former president Obama, that grand old master and supreme leader of the Democrats once said in a moment of declarative health care ("Obamacare") brilliance, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.

Concurrently then, we assume that under Democrat rule sometime in the future, if you like your country you can keep your country?  Don't bet on it.

Outcasts and Infighting

While Taylor Swift sings (for those who care) and captures the attention of swooning female fans and horny teenage boys, going unnoticed by those anchored in brief and ultimate irrelevance are strange things speeding through our solar system from some far, far place in the universe.  If it isn't an asteroid seemingly controlled by unusual propulsion qualities (Oumuamua) it's the more recent 3I/ATLAS comet, a most peculiar visitor -- never to return -- announcing its coming with peculiar and wildly unexpected attributes.  That this ancient (three billion years old?) gigantic artifact appears to be spraying out actual water, quantities large enough to equal what a fire hose would blow out 24/7, has set conventional cometary theory on its ass.

One might wonder whether our little corner of The Vast Somethingness is poised to receive even more and stranger outcasts from a place and time long far away.  Are we in receipt of the flotsam and jetsam of some long dead solar system whose remnants are finally making their way toward ours?  Comets are generally believed to be among the earliest fragments of the universe's creation, the witnesses and watchers of all that is or was -- yet this one appears all but equipped for overnight camping out, complete with H2O and whatever resources of which we still know little.

Actually, taking a ride on a comet (echoes of a reviewer's praise of Charles Fort's books come to mind. . .) out and away from planet Earth doesn't sound like a bad idea, now that American business people (Ford Motor Co., etc.) have returned from a tour of Chinese factories in shock, astounded by China's immense progress in robotics, energy production, inexpensive automobiles and other futuristic plans -- while we in the USA sit on our hands, intimidated and slowed in our efforts by politics, absurd mountains of legislation and unions, unions, unions.  Are we dead yet?

But impressed we are with President Trump's efforts both in the Middle East and on the ground with I.C.E. in America.  

Trouble is, in trying to negotiate anything, when we look upon radical Islam and say oh, my, what a backward, brutal ancient religion you are -- and then Islam or those of a similar mind might respond by saying, whoa dude, your Christianity is also an ancient religion with its faults, so who are you to tell us we're inferior?  Simply put, whether the name is Jesus, Mohammad, Zeus, Thor, the goddess Diana  or a wooden god on a post constructed by some old jungle civilization it's all confined in the same bubble o' craziness, and the only escape is to grab onto the next comet or asteroid and get out of town. Oh, and speaking of comet riders -- be sure to say hi to Marshall Applewhite and the gang.