Problems with the end of the world....

Well, by now, we all know the world is supposed to end tomorrow, right?  Well, there's just a few problems there.  Shall we examine them?

(1) The end of the world will come about by some cosmic alignment.  Well, if this theory were true, it would've been mostly true for the last several years because we can only detect these things within plus or minus a few percent.  Worry as much about tomorrow as you did about two years ago, or as much as you will two years in the future.  If it actually mattered, we'd be able to detect it better, so you're better off sleeping without worry.

(2) Nibiru, Planet X, etc...  Well, if a planet-sized object were to really come close to the Earth, it would be pretty awesome from a scientific standpoint.  Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for you, this does not appear to be the case.  Any time soon.  Sorry. I know. It sucks for all of us.

(3) Mega-volcano erupts!!  I don't know enough personally to put your fears at ease (honestly I still tremble a little when I think about it), but I'm assured by everyone I know close to the situation who really knows what's up that we have nothing to worry about.  That was my last chance to be a doomsday conspirator, so now I'm pretty done.  Maybe the world will end tomorrow, but probably, most likely, not.

(4) Black death v. 2.0.  Okay, this could happen.  I've been told that the latest cool way for kids to show their superiority is to lick their palm and then push it against another kids nose.  Then lick that same palm, and push it against another kid's nose.  I don't even know what to say about this.  However, should the black death v. 2.0 show up at our door, we'll all know pretty soon.  The kids are doing their best to make that one happen.

(5) Other small disasters.  Keep in mind that a million small things could happen tomorrow.  I could egg you on by saying that, "and the government doesn't want you to put two and two together!!"  but that would be pretty stupid.  The worst thing would be that something big happens tomorrow, and then you put more weight on the nonesense than it merits.  Try to stay rationale, that's all I ask.

I know it's a tall order when the kids are licking their palms and then planting them on other kids noses.  Seriously.  What's got into them?

I demand a plan....

Others are demanding a plan to help prevent gun violence tragedies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0pQSeCd8VM

I've decided to demand my own plan to curb drunk driving tragedies.  One difference between others' plea for a plan and my plan is that I actually have one:  insurance rebates to drivers who voluntarily install a breathalyzer ignition interlock device.

If you're a safe driver who never comes anywhere close to driving under the influence, this is a great plan for you - you will have extra money to spend on other things, like a new iPad or something.

If you're one of those people who occasionally wonders whether you're actually okay to drive legally or not, this is a great plan for you - your car will tell you when you're okay to drive and not let you screw up and make a potentially lethal decision that could kill other people.

If you're a parent giving an old family beater to a kid going off to college, this plan is for you - you might not know whether little Johnny is getting completely trashed and hooking up with a bunch of loose women at a  party, but you will know for certain that little Johnny isn't showing off to his new loose lady friends that he met at that party by driving your car too fast down the freeway with a cold beer in the console.  Hopefully Johnny's new friends will be kind enough to make him some chicken soup the next morning when he has a massive hang-over.

If you're one of those people who keeps a bottle of "driving whiskey" in the glove box, this plan is also for you.  You should stop.  You should permanently relocate your "driving whiskey" to the kitchen.  You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.  You can keep drinking as much as you want to, but you know as well as anyone else that you shouldn't do it while behind the wheel of a 2-ton projectile.  The plan is voluntary, so you can continue drinking your illegal driving whiskey if you choose to.  However, you'll have extra money to supplement your "staying at home watching Ancient Aliens" kitchen whiskey if you decide to participate, and have much less risk of killing innocent kids.

There are ways around this plan - you can have a sober friend blow for you, for example.  However, why on Earth your sober friend would make out with your car and then not drive you home is beyond me.  Any friend willing to blow your car for you is a good enough friend to make sure you drink plenty of water and stay a few extra hours, call you a cab, offer you a place to crash, or drive you home.

Anyway, so there's the plan.  It's a tangible, real-world solution to a real-world problem that could save a bunch of innocent lives every year.  It's not rocket science, it's not gun control, it's completely voluntary, and it will do nothing to prevent crazed people from committing horrific murderous acts.  It doesn't solve the primary problem people are focused on right now, but it does solve a problem, and it helps make the world a tiny bit safer for us and our children.

Comment if you like this idea.  Your comment can be as simple as an anonymous, "Yes, do it."  If I get 10 comments, I will commit to making this happen.

Something a little more light-hearted

So, if you've been following the news at all lately, you're probably aware that this is not the happiest of all possible times in this country (nor in China).

In an effort to lighten it up a little bit, I'd like to draw your attention away from all that and to another thing that's been in the news lately:

Armageddon!!!

Basically, this word comes from the plain of Meggido, which according to the New Testament book of Revelations will be the battle ground of the true end of the world when Jesus Christ will come back and battle evil in a (kind of) final showdown that will be quite horrific indeed.  Plagues, blood running several feet deep, etc....  I say "kind of" final because John says that after this Christ will set up a kingdom and rule for a thousand years.  I'm not entirely sure what is supposed to happen after this millennial kingdom, but I'm guessing we'll have some more plagues or something.  (Keeping is light-hearted here.  Maybe in the future I'll do a post all about the Christian version of Armageddon, but for now....)

But I don't even want to talk about that right now.  I only bring it up because it's Armageddon all the time on the mis-named History channel right now, except when they take breaks for another wonderful historical topic: Ancient Aliens.  I actually am a fan of this show, believe it or not.  It goes around to really interesting archaeological ruins, tells you how these amazing structures were created, then, just for fun, imagines all kinds of crazy ways that aliens must have been involved.  As long as you look at it like that and don't take the alien thing seriously, it's a fun way to learn a lot about some really intriguing ancient civilizations.

Anyway, the History channel got back in touch with its roots in one episode and looked at the fun concept of "what if aliens and Hitler were in cahoots?"  Honestly, I could write a whole three-page blog post just about this....  (and you know what?  I will, right after this one.)  One point of evidence given cracked me up, and I have to relate this story....

Werhner von Braun

Werhner von Braun started off as a rocket scientist in Nazi Germany.  It's often been joked that the only reason the US got to the moon before the Russians was because we got the better German rocket scientists after WWII....  Werhner von Braun was one of ours.  Let's not get into too many details there, you can look him up on Wikipedia if you are really curious.  Let's just say he was possibly the best rocket scientist in history.

Werhner von Braun definitely had a sense of humor.  I tried for all of 30 seconds to find a few humorous anecdotes to illustrate this, but gave that up in the interest of finishing my train of thought here.  This blog would be a lot better if I would do a little research, I've often thought, and you're probably thinking that right now too!  (...now I'm thinking about trains....)  However, I think the depiction of him in the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon  displays his goodnatured and kind of geeky sense of humor in a very real and human way.

With that minor bit of background, I'd like to share a little story.  In 1970, an ancient astronaut theorist Rt. Rev. Alan Greenfield was examining UFO files at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.  He was stunned when he sees the famous rocket scientist Werhner von Braun, and he tries to make conversation with him: "How did you develop that much technology so fast?"  Apparently Werhner von Braun takes a look down at the files Rev. Greenfield was poring over, and says, "We had help from them."

Take home message

Sorry, but I can't stop laughing.  That's just hilarious, and it displays Wehrner von Braun's quick wit and wry sense of humor better than any other anecdote I could've found for you.  The message I take home from that is even if you're the best rocket scientist in history, it always helps to not take yourself too seriously.  Also, next time I'm out making small talk with someone who seems impressionable, after I talk about my work as an astrobiologist, I might glance around as if to look for potential eavesdroppers, lower my voice, and say, "You know, I shouldn't tell you this, but would there really be a field of astrobiology if we didn't have some alien biology to study?"  Then I'll finish my drink and walk away.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep a straight face until I get to the ladies room.....  :-)

Stay positive my friends, and tell me, how will you interject a little humor into your life?

Still reeling

I'm not a parent.

Apparently that is important if you wish to discuss the Newtown tragedy.

Believe it or not, but I've talked to a few people since Friday, and apparently the defining factor in how your point of view will be considered is whether you are a parent or not.

If you are a parent, I am so incredibly sorry.  I know that ever since you first heard the news images of what life would be like right now had you happened to live in Newtown and send your little boy or girl to Sandy Brook have been playing through your head night and day.  You probably can't keep the nightmares at bay, and you're probably freaking your kid out just a little bit with how much you just want to hold them.

Please go hold them!  Tell them how much you love them.  Make them the center of the world.  They deserve it everyday, and you deserve the liberty to make it so right now.

We, as rational adults, owe it to them to make the world a better place for them to inherit.  It's too soon to call the parents out of their cocoon, so let's non-parents do our best here.  Note that here I'm assuming I'm not talking to residents of Newtown but the people of say Boston, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Providence, Houston, etc...  If you live in Newtown, you have your own private hell to go through, and having been through a private hell once that was made public in a small town (because let's face it, no tragedy is private in a small town), I know the best thing I can do is open my arms, take several steps back, and just let you know you are loved and they are remembered.

Let's take a few steps back.  The people of Newtown, especially the parents of the little babies who were murdered, deserve the privacy to mourn without us watching them.  Mourning means different things to different people, and no one should have their mourning broadcast on public TV.  People act pretty crazy when in mourning, and the mundane ones will be seen running out into the front yard with their pajamas on screaming his name and tearing out their hair or quietly drowning in a half-bottle of whiskey in the back yard.

Give them privacy, folks.  Look away.  When CNN offers you footage of their mourning just a click away, refuse to click the link.  Don't go there.  Try to think how you would feel if it were your baby, your brother, your sister, your niece, your nephew, and the reporters were hounding you, your parents, your family, for a good soundbyte.  I heard that a church in Newtown had to have volunteers escort grieving families to their cars after a vigil to help protect them from the press, and that there were 20 members of the press for every resident in that town right now.  That's probably not true, but it's probably not all that far from the truth.

We can't do that much from where we sit.  We can send money, but that won't bring back the babies.  We can empathize and change policy and hope that we prevent something.  The best thing we can do right now is just open our arms, take several steps back, and let them know they are loved and they are remembered.

People and tragedies

Today two very horrific acts happened in elementary schools on nearly opposite sides of the globe.

In Connecticut, a 20-year-old male with a gun killed 26 people, 22 of them children (as of latest reports)

In China, a 36-year-old male with a knife wounded 22 children (as of latest reports).

In both countries, the children were supposedly at a safe place - school.  The entire globe should take at least a few moments to grieve over these tragedies.

I know I have.

While the rest of the world takes a look at these tragedies from the perspective of "what makes these tragedies different is the fact that in one children died and in the other they were seriously wounded but survived" with side notes of "and what does that mean for gun control," I'd like to look at it from another, slightly skewed, possibly too politically-incorrect too-soon point of view.

Let me preface this with the statement that I lost my brother in a horrific car accident when he was merely 17 years old, and perhaps that's why I choose to "go there" right now.

It's altogether way too interesting how individual people and the general populace internalize the tragic loss or near-loss of life by others.  Individual deaths of young people and children occur all around us all the time.  People, our youth, children, our future, they die all the time.  It's always a tragedy when a life is cut short.  However, it seems like it only really hits home to all of us when it's a lot of lives cut short at one time. It's always bothered me that we choose, collectively, to ignore small, common tragedies, because they are small and common, and instead choose to empathize, get freaked out about, and attempt policy change because of large uncommon tragedies.

Because my family suffered a small, common tragedy, and statistics show that you are much more likely for your baby to die in a car accident than in a school shooting, it seems to me that it would benefit us all greatly more from better road safety than more stringent gun control.  Obviously both are needed, but as long as we're looking at tragedy influencing policy, let's not stop at a gun control discussion but also look at the other things that are killing our youth in much greater numbers than random shootings by crazed people.

While we're looking at road safety, let's look at drunk driving.  While the Freakonomics crew showed in their Super Freakonomics sequel that drunk walking kills more drunk people than drunk driving does, they also freely proclaimed that drunk walking does not typically kill innocent passerby while drunk driving not only can but all too often does.  It's been demonstrated time and time again in jurisdiction after jurisdiction that harsher punishments, stricter sentencing, etc... do not serve as adequate deterrents against driving drunk.  It appears that people who are too drunk to drive are also too drunk to conduct a simple cost-benefit analysis on the whole "getting home from the bar" thing, no matter how high the cost could be from not simply calling a cab.  A simple, but effective, deterrent from driving drunk would be for insurance companies to voluntarily reduce rates, potentially for only a small "at-risk" demographic, for insurees who chose to voluntarily install an ignition interlock device in all their insured vehicles.

For those of you unfamiliar with IIDs, these are apparently unwieldy but very simple things that hook into your car and require you to conduct a breathalyzer test before the car will start.  I've never even seen one, but once I heard about them I knew they were a pretty great idea.  My friends and I fall into two rough categories: those who think they can have up until they "start to feel it" and still drive, and those who rigorously adhere to the strictest measures of "I can have one beer then wait three hours and then drive," rule.    Life would be a lot easier (and a lot safer) for everyone if our cars just told us when we should go drink some water and dance for another hour before hitting the road.

Anyway, all I wanted to do tonight was remind people that small tragedies occur all the time, and that we should remember to try to prevent them as we also try to find ways to prevent the large tragedies like what occurred today.  Both types of tragedies are horrific to those that experience them, but apparently the larger public only recognizes large-scale, uncommon tragedies.  I'd like it a lot more if we could recognize and prevent more than just the uncommon ones.

My heart goes out to all who experienced tragedy today, particularly to those in China and Connecticut who have an unfortunate thing in common today: that nearly two dozen of our children in each place were either hurt or lost entirely to a madman.

Happiness

I'm a huge fan of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner and their Freakonomics exploits.  I enjoy them so much that I chose to play their lectures today while I was attempting to clear out two years of clutter from my desk.

Anyway, while listening to one of their lectures, I heard something.  It caught my ear enough to cause me to stand up, walk over to the computer, hit pause, rewind, and actually listen to something I'd already heard.

Anyone who grew up with the internet will understand why this means I was really intrigued.

It turns out they have a collaborator who did some studies over the last couple of decades that observed that as women have earned more and have gotten more power in the workplace, their general happiness seems to be declining.  They were at a loss for explanation.

Well, let me explain.

Once upon a time, we were all relatively egalitarian hunter gatherers.  The introduction of agriculture meant that agrarian societies could house more people on less land, and thus take land from hunter gatherers.  Agriculture also meant that your best means of survival was to produce as many offspring as possible to help cultivate the land and fend off hunter gatherers.  It's a simplification, but a fair one, to say that we have been living in this mindset since then, and that the primary role of the female of the species since the invention of agriculture has been to rear the young to survive in this world.  If the household's primary currency is able-bodied people, then the role of child-rearing is essential to the survival of the family unit and the tribe.  Additionally, when the tribe got large enough to require state-level institutions to survive, it would make little sense for already-taxed-to-the-brim females to take up that role when there are plenty of males around to do the job.

I think I know why female happiness is declining despite increased earnings and power.  It's because we're expected to do it all.  We wanted real jobs, and we got them.  However, we still have the remnants of our past demanding internally and externally that we be good at mothering, housekeeping, and nailing down a real job.  Our husbands could always come home from work guilt-free and ask for a dry martini and a foot massage because they had "worked so hard."  Anything we did was just "cute."

I want a wife.