Galactic Bystander Effect...

There is mounting evidence that the planetary arrangement of our solar system is a rare (almost unique) phenomenon in our galaxy. Astronomers have been discovering extrasolar planets since 1995 and are finding that Jupiter sized planets are in extreme proximity to their suns. These large jovian planets generally form beyond the range where water exists solely as ice. What the recent discoveries of extrasolar planets have lead scientists to accept is that these large planets tend to careen towards their suns and in doing so they would obliterate any rocky planet (like earth). This means that the possibility of life in our galaxy (and likely the universe) is even less likely than we previously expected.

The first detection of an extrasolar planet was in 1995. Jupiter's revolution takes about 12 years. We have found (as of 2010) almost 500 of these jovian planets. All of them have orbits that lead us to presume the destruction of any rocky planets. Every day that goes by without a discovery of a farther orbit extra solar jovian planet, means that there is less and less of a possibility for planets as hospitable as ours in other solar systems.

In every interview of astronomers on this subject, they all express disappointment in this new revelation. My assumption is that they expected that the responsibility of maintaining life was not limited to our solar system. Perhaps they consider that our path will inevitably lead to the destruction of life on our planet, leaving a dead rock despite our ideal conditions.

This is an example of a galactic bystander effect. Comfort was found in the assumption that some alien planet would be able to pick up the slack for our absolute ignorance of how incredibly special we are. Gifts can be squandered if they are distributed graciously. But now we learn that we may be unique. That there may be no (or almost no) other life "out there".

This information may prove to enlighten some and encourage them to live more meaningful lives. Suddenly the value of life has increased. There should be no feelings of disappointment, there should be a call for everyone to accept that they have a galactic responsibility and to recognize the value of all life.


Post-script

Idea for a story: Our ideal conditions for life are found to be artificially triggered when a Jupiter expedition discovers that there is a neutrino laser directed at Jupiter and is preventing its descent towards the sun (inadvertently creating the eye on Jupiter).

Discovery...

Angels sing the songs of man

So what's the deal?

I'm ignoring my friends, letting bridges burn, watching the hands encircle me. Excuses? Sure, but what good do they do if my behavior won't change? No, I've created this moment and take full ownership.

So what's next? Do I continue my descent into nuclear solitude? Sheer off all connection to those outside? I doubt that I'm capable of becoming the mechanism I'm so expected to be.

"But it's only temporary," I tell myself. Once a certain threshold is reached, I can distribute focus. I realize that if that was possible I'd have to spend energy to build anew. Established relationships of old have been neglected and those involved almost certainly feel scorn towards such detachment. I'd like to tell them that it wasn't due to coldness but rather discipline and priorities.

That discipline has not only squeezed out friendships and my social life, I've also lost something I've always been quite fond of. Until recently I cultivated a sort of mild omnipresent madness. It blured reality and enriched the present. Everything was a multitude of symbolism, weaving into and over each other and my consciousness danced over the combinations.

Frivilous! A man is meant to work. Every moment should be dedicated to reaching a potential.... What ever happened to those days when I sat on the porch with my coffee and cigarettes and watched the world buzz by? Time moved slower then. I didn't have such debts. I didn't hear the call of genetic determinism. I was able to accept the absoluteness of death.

Those moments have since been distilled to the smiles on my son's face, to ten minute conversations with my wife, to when I'm stuck in traffic coming home from work, turn off the radio and realize that the clouds are still passing me by like they did when I was eight. There are relative constants. But too often my attention drifts to the constant of sorrow.

That tendency is dangerous and risks derailing my plans. I'm all too capable of abandoning those activities that I know deep down as futile. The horrible thing is that I know everything falls into that category. A one-sixth-billionth fraction of a species of a dying planet has an ever decreasing value. But with the new addition that value has doubled.

So I invent reasons to keep excelling. The ideal man creates. We are not made in god's image but rather the other way around. There is something after all this... it's what we leave behind. The afterlife is nothing more than drifting echoes.

Nothing in General...

Drawlled notes upon the steel guitar
Success at work and a rising star
Forget the obstacles and raise the bar
place in my cupboard the sealed jar

But deny the urge to slash and burn
Remember only happiness you yearn
Although neither will help avoid the urn
The later helps the future learn

Capitalist Tool...

Today I was summoned by the call of the great gavel to provide the potential service of judgement. My service would be determined by the competing opinions of the proecution and defense attorneys to whether I could be easily convinced of guilt or innocence respectively.

The day began with an inquest. Three people with latino surnames had died and six jurors and two alternates would focus their experience of CSI and Law and Order to decide if the death was natural. The man from the coroners office made light jokes and warned of gruesome exposure but added that volunteers would b e guaranteed early leave. After asking for a show of hands of those not willing to volunteer with none rising in response, he laughed and said "I thought so." He then proceeded to whittle the list of volunteers by calling out our juror number and asking us to remain in the lounge.

I was the first calld upon not to participate in the inquest. Not being a regular viewer of any of the half dozen CSI spin offs, I wasn't disappointed. I went and laid recumbant upon the soft, low-backed couches aligned beside the great glass wall that overlooked the man-made pond outside the DuPage county court house. There I read the Chicago Tribune, Harpers and five chapters of The Time Traveler's Wife before being released for lunch.

Returning with a full stomach I waited in the security line while tanned attorneys in cowboy hats and members of our domestic army strutted past unhindered by metal detector or surly guard. I overheard a lawyer's lawspeech to the tune of "Lex Loci". Curious to the meaning I powered up my laptop to consult the "online english/latin translator" returned from my Google search. I clicked several results and each acted like a dead link. The probabilities became certainties that the Internet connection was filtering the content.

In desperation I clicked on the sponsored links. Each brought me to a page offering translation services at lofty prices. Being unwilling to pay $5 per word, I left the website unable to find the true meaning of "lex loci".

God's Packet Sniffer...

My wife sent me a forward-- one of those chain emails that data miners release in order to collect email addresses and match them to names. Similar to other chain emails, they begin with an insightful little quote. Most of the time they end with a superstitious threat of suffering if you don't pass it to X number of people in you address book, and if you do then you'll be rewarded by Karmaic fortune for your mouse clicks.

This one was odd in that it didn't warn of suffering, yet did tout rewards... this time for faith. It seems as though chain emails have abandoned the punishing God, so well described in the Old Testament, in favor of the New Testament's loving God. The email offered nothing new since, 2000 years ago an out-of-work carpenter proclaimed the same opinion of a diety. I did derrive one insightful relationship when comparing this to previous chain emails: faith is superstition.

Based on the assumption in the email, God monitors network traffic, sniffing packets to mark the faithful from the porn perusing perverts. Has Cisco Systems given God administrative rights to their routers? Is God limited to the TCP/IP protocol? If we use IPX/SPX can we get away with lying over the office network? What about NetBUI? God represents a major threat to internet sins and I suggest to everyone to use encryption technology when performing any cardinal sin online (based upon the internet's network load, God would ignore venial sins for fear of overloading his holy buffer).

Instead of forwarding this to 8 of my contacts, I display this message here for blog readers that accidentally visit:

"Worry looks around, sorry looks back, Faith looks up."
3 angels are sent to you.
You must send them to 8 people including me.
In 8 minutes you will receive something you have long awaited for.
Have faith

Justified Conditioning...

The row of children, pivoting their hips to the sway of the canary yellow bus, sat singing, two to a bench, all matching the verses with ingrained hand gestures that unearth memories of 50's bop dances. In unison the children sang:

I'll never go to Mexico no more, more, more
I'll never go to Mexico no more, more, more
There's a big bad policeman at the door, door, door
And he'll grab me by the collar
And he'll make me pay a dollar
So I'll never go to Mexico no more, more, more


The song finishes and the children revert to the chaos that plagued the bus ride on the way to the field trip. Kids climb upon their seats and hang over the backs. Half of them are laughing and joking in Spanish, the others in English.

The teacher tries to resurrect the singing, but the din of the children is too powerful to overcome. Accepting defeat she sits back down in her first row, pleather lined seat. Glancing at the large mirror above the head of the driver she caught his fleeting eye contact laden with pity.

A little girl trots up to the first row and plops herself down next to the teacher. Her feet dangle and bounce over the edge of the cushion but are unable to touch the floor. Smiling down at her, the teacher expected Angelica to keep her company as she has done during most bus rides.

Angelica, who is the star pupil of this first grade class asks her teacher in a shout to overcome the roar pouring from the back of the bus, "My papa is in Mexico right now. He writes to me from there."

The teacher senses that the song she regularly has the children sing may cause a scandal. She had overheard a couple girls singing it while jumping rope her first year at the school. The song became a regularity for class bus rides and she never protested. Eventually she joined in and now she encouraged it. Bringing her attention back to Angelica, she looks down at her with concern and asks, "Is that right?"

"Yes, and he will be coming back a mule."

"Don't you mean he will come back 'on a mule?'" the teacher tries to correct Angelica.

"No, he's coming back on an airplane."

The teacher has heard that term before. Angelica's father would be returning to the states with his intestines lined with heroine or cocaine. Her family wasn't a favorite amongst the faculty.

In kindergarten Angelica was scratched during a fight with another girl. Her brother waited after school for her teacher and confronted her. He stepped out of his glossy Cutlass G-body with 20" rims and told the teacher in broken English that she would pay the price if Angelica were to come home again hurt. He lifted his shirt to emphasize his point by exposing the handle of a pistol tucked between the waistband of his pants and boxers.

The parent teacher conferences were useless. Both her parents spoke little to no English. The teacher would have to manage with whatever phrases that they picked up from the children. Luckily Angelica had no real issues to discuss.

Unlike most of the other children who were horridly supplied for class and rarely dressed properly during a Chicagoland winter, Angelica wore brand name clothing and had expensive accessories. While the other children lived three families to an apartment with every adult working, Angelica's family had an address that didn't end with a solitary number or letter. The teacher understood that the deprived child's parents sacrificed their children's luxuries in order to support their families in Mexico. Angelica's parents were exceptions.

Many of the first grade boys were known to steal from the other students. Kids lost hand held video games, cell phones, money and even their lunches. Angelica, who was regularly equipped with healthy lunches, a camera phone, and a purse full of gadgets, never had an item stolen from her. Both the girls and boys kept their distance, which is assumed to be the reason why she befriended her teacher.

This past Christmas, Angelica gave her teacher a present before leaving on winter break. The teacher opened it to find a portable DVD player. In January when the kids came back, the teacher told Angelicathat the gift was too nice to accept and told her to bring it back to her parents. Upon hearing this Angelica cried causing the teacher to fear a visit from her older brother. The teacher soothed the situation as best she could and never brought it up to Angelica again, but that nervous feeling remained when the intimacy level grew too comfortable.

Now Angelica was rambling that a boy named Manuel was throwing rocks at geese during the field trip. The teacher was barely listening. Instead she was staring out the window at the large homes that lined the road they traveled through the affluent town of Elmhurst. These mansions crammed onto the maple lined boulevard. They seemed to belong more on postcards than passing across her window.

Gradually the mini-estates transformed into apartment buildings. They crossed the border into Addison, it would only be a few blocks before the bus pulled into the school parking lot. The children took notice of their proximity and their behavior worsened and the volume increased. The teacher could no longer hear Angelica's ramblings. She could only hear the vibrating bass of the occasional SUV or low rider that passed by.

She didn't want her students to stain her reputation, so she stood up and walked down the aisle of the bus quieting the students. She returned to the head of the bus and saw the order rapidly decaying. She raised her hands and waving them to the rhythm began singing, "I'll never go to Mexico no more, no more..."

---

These are actual events witnessed during the end of the school year field trip for the first graders at a public elementary school in Addison, IL.