Pretty Cold Heavenly Bodies

So now NASA wants help in naming moons for a planet that is no longer a planet.

It should be something that uses Greek myth, though Roman myth seems acceptable also. Not sure why... Pluto was merely Hades renamed and was derived from the Greek Plouton (Greek Giver of Wealth). But I am no expert in mythology.

Persephone (who Pluto shared with the world 6 months each year) is currently a runner-up for one of the names. I lean toward Persephone's offspring (by that randy god Zeus); Melinoe and Eumenides. Neither of these are on the list of candidates.

Here's where you can vote: Help Us Name the Moons of Pluto

Changes

I have always mused. Even as a young child (is that redundant?) I would muse about almost anything I observed. Of course, in those days I called it "pondering" and later in my teens and twenties and thirties, I called it "analyzing." After achieving middle age, I began calling it "musing."

You see, once we attain middle age we begin to realize we cannot do anything about what we observe and, therefore, our mental efforts will be fruitless. I have come to believe that is the point of middle age: we resign ourselves to our fates.

While there are people who have achieved greatness and renown in middle age, it really started much younger. Their gifts were likely recognized much earlier and the gifted were nurtured and mentored. Doors were held open, paths upward smoothed, and futures all but assured.

Of course, that's not how it works today. In the not so distant past, people didn't achieve until they reached middle age. Someone in his twenties or thirties might be an "up and comer" but wouldn't be sitting in the CEO's chair. He (or she) might not have even been a vice-president but perhaps, at best, department head in his/her middle thirties. It took a long time to get anywhere near the "top."

Since the 70's, however, the corporate world has begun to emulate the "Hollywood Celebrity" model. Age is no longer a factor. Youth has become an asset rather than a liability. We have a number of billionaires that dropped out of college and rose to greatness by being in tune with the current generation and taking advantage of it. Well before they hit 35.

It's like a whole generation has become irrelevant. It's like we skipped over that middle generation to bestow the future on the "up and comers" and ignored the "plodders" that were following the previous paradigm.

When I was young, a "boy billionaire" was in his forties or fifties. Wealth of that measure was rarely achieved until one was quite gray and wrinkled.

But I still want to know...

People wonder why some of us want to know the details about the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.  Here's why...

Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, testified that she never saw the request from the Ambassador to Libya for more security. She also got mad at Republican Senators for asking about who decided to blame the attacks on a mob angry over a video (later shown to be completely false) and angrily remarked, "What difference does that make at this point?"

Leon Panetta (Secretary of Defense) testified that he only spoke to the president once during the crisis and that the president told him and General Dempsey (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) to do whatever was needed to protect our people there.

General Dempsey testified that he didn't put troops at the ready to deploy because, though he knew about the request for increased security, he never received a request from State.

So, from the above we can determine that the president was so interested that he only called Panetta (not Hillary at State) once and that State did not follow up on the requests for increased security, that the Secretary of State did not even know about the requests, and no longer cares about the obfuscation of facts.

And no one has identified the people who told the former SEALs who wanted to help at the consulate to "stand down."

Four good men, Americans, are dead.

And that's why I, at least, want to know what really happened before, during, and after the attack.

Rock Painting for Survival

We dodged a bullet, some say, when December 21, 2012 came and went uneventfully. Maybe it wasn't so uneventful in some parallel universe (if you believe in such) but in this reality, we remain in existence.

On the other hand, we exist in a sort of "shooting gallery" of space rocks and comets and the danger of a strike by some large space object is quite real. And we are about to experience a close "fly-by" in a little less than a week. [link] As Chicken Little once said "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" But I don't want to alarm you.

When I was a young'un, I was taught that the dinosaurs died out because they could not adapt fast enough to a changing climate. That the great lizards (not really "lizards", they say, but reptilian all the same) couldn't take the cold of some normal ice age was intimated. The current theory is that they were wiped out by a catastrophic climate change that was the result of a large asteroid impacting the Earth just off the Yucatan Peninsula coast. [link] And this brought about a rapid climate change along with the destruction of most (if not all) vegetation.

In any event, it is a good thing that the dinosaurs went extinct. This eventually gave us petroleum and that literally greased the wheels of civilization  in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The lesson we were being taught back in my young'un days was that dinosaurs went extinct because they couldn't adapt and that humans would persevere because we can. The ugly reality is that we would not have survived that impact any better than the dinosaurs.  Even back then I was skeptical about our long term chances. After all, the age of the dinosaurs lasted some 185 MILLION years (dominant life form for 135 million of those years saith Wiki). We humans have only been around for a couple of million. And of little note until some 50,000 years ago and with no written history until about 5000 years ago.

While we are not yet, presumably, at the top of our game, I find it hard to believe we'll last another 183 million years. Civilization, especially, is quite fragile and could easily be wiped out by a much smaller meteor than the one that doomed the big reptiles. And so we search for ways to deflect impending doom.

Fortunately, it seems, we have managed to survive long enough to develop the technology that could enable us to avoid utter destruction by errant asteroid. One new method was reported recently in this way:

How to Deflect Killer Asteroids With Spray Paint

It could work, it seems plausible enough to me but I am no rocket scientist.

Sincerity: Once you can fake that, you've got it made

Sincerely, oh yes, sincerely
'Cause I love you so dearly
Please say you'll be mine

Sincerely, oh you know how I love you
I'll do anything for you
Please say you'll be mine

Sincerity is a virtue, they say. "They" say a lot of things and we just nod our collective head and murmur... "of course." But is sincerity really a virtue? Or is it a scam?

Actors are very good at faking sincerity. As are politicians, lawyers, most of my ex-girlfriends, and car salesmen. But that's fake sincerity, not real. To which I reply... And just how do you tell the difference?

Sincerity isn't all it's cracked up to be. Look at Henry Winkler pushing reverse mortgages on us senior citizens, for example. He very sincere sounding... especially when he delivers that final line: "Take control of your retirement... Today."

What made Henry Winkler a wizard on financial matters of the retired? The guy got rich pretending to be a juvenile delinquent ("The Fonz") on a sitcom. And played in a few movies and had guest spots in other TV series where he mostly did an imitation of the role he had on Happy Days. How does that qualify him as an expert in financial matters?

My brother had sincerity down pat. He fooled me countless times and, in the end, helped make me the cynic I am today.

The result is that whenever someone starts sounding sincere, I pretty much assume he or she is lying.