BIG CHANGES AGAIN!
A new planet!.
What will it be called? Is it actually inside our own solar system, or are we thinking and knowing beyond that mark now? This latest discovery of the space-set Hubble Telescope will raise a great many important questions about the Universe and about life.
I have strong memories of being here when they found Pluto, which would have been around 1930, I think. Pluto, a puny planet compared to the new one was announced as Number Nine in counting outward from the Sun.
Textbooks will have to be altered, solar maps redone, all sorts of changes in educational collections around the world and children will now have ten to memorize instead of a mere nine.
A great many questions will be raised once again about the Universe and about life itself. Changes brought about by this new discovery will affect our future in many ways.
What, for instance, happens to the people who write the daily “horror-scopes” in the daily[press and on the Internet?. A question of even greater import: what about the feelings of the millions of people who read and follow those forecasts devotedly concerning coming events in their lives. What happens when a totally new planet - and this time, a really big'un - is plopped down along the edge of their perfect Zodiac charts.
We talk a great deal about space these days, with good reason, too. Then, we contemplate mankind's great discoveries ...entire series of them... and begin to wonder, after a time, if we might be going at it all a bit too fast. We hardly get used to living under one set of beliefs and conditions before they are supplanted by another and, then, on top th of that, additional modifications. We wonder if we have, perhaps, veered too much to one side and are aiming for a vague, questionable destination? You realize you can't always depend on changes in other aspects of life, either, which seem to be affecting the lives of others.
Look at California's political and economic plight, as an example. Right now the state has a real problem with having too many people . They have become a haven for many and are now our most heavily populated state.They are currently in the process of a “recall” to remove their Democratic governor from the office to which they elected him. One cause is said to be the steadily mounting state debt with nothing being done to slow it down. A phenomenal growth in population is another, less discussed factor.
It is now generally agreed that the percentage of foreign born people in California above the thirty percent mark. The figure is being bandied about quite loosely, however, and just yesterday I heard an item on radio by a well-known talk-radio personality which quote that thirty- percent per cent figure. He then said that only ten percent of the citizens of California were born in the United States. He should have said only ten per cent were born in California – as :”native sons”. Even in my miserable mathematics 30% and 10% don't add up to 100 per cent!
These changes snowball. They multiply rapidly, and the discovery of another planet out there among the numberless stars will change many statistical charts and studies concerning the heavens. The population changes in California and “other underdeveloped portions of the earth's surface ( as late night TV comics are almost sure to say several times this week). The population changes are a subject which can be difficult for people living in other less pressured areas to understand.. The public “veto” of the governor is a sort of sign of basic discontent factors which are, perhaps far more widespread than we would like to imagine.
We are living, it seems, in a time of excessive changes. Nothing remains secure. Laws, it seems, at times, are being made with a built-in quality intended to invite evasion. The first thing citizens look for are the loopholes, and they are, assisted often by the very leaders who inserted those possible “outs” in the new legislation.
Time to slow down a bit, I'd say. The roses are still there by the roadside to be smelled. Is there sufficient fold space and pasturage at the end of the path down which we are being led. It may be time for us to curb out curiosity a bit.
A..L.M. July 12, 2003 [c757wds]
