Gliese 581g awaits

If you've been staying at all awake, you sense the excitement. Astronomers have announced the discovery of a new planet, one that may be capable of supporting life as we know it. Actually, it isn't the planet that's just been discovered: it's the relatively benign conditions on that planet, based on data from observatories in Chile and Hawaii.

The planet -- known, somewhat unimaginatively, as Gliese 581g because it's a planet in orbit about the red giant star Gliese 581 -- is 20 light years from earth. As cosmic distances go, this is remarkably close. Even so, it would take a photon of light 40 years to make a round trip. With present technology, it would take you and your descendents considerably longer. If you did have a rocket ship that was cool enough to reach relativistic speeds, you might not age all that much while gone, but you would find that a frighteningly long period of time had elapsed here on Earth once you returned. You know about relativistic effects, right? Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger. Blame Einstein.

Our sun will someday be a red giant, just like Gliese 581. It will become much cooler (hence the change in color, like watching bright yellow embers in a campfire cool down to a dull red), and its perimeter will expand out to the present orbit of Mars. (Even though engulfed by a mere red giant, there will be plenty hot times here on Earth.) It's a sad fate for a star, kind of like watching a young athlete slow down and bloat up as he ages. So Gliese 581 has seen better years, as stars go, but he still has the pleasure of having reached the perfect condition to support his child, Gliese 581g.

Anyone living on Gliese 581g will experience a fast year. The planet zooms around its sun in only 37 days, less than one-third of Mercury's very short orbital period. And like Mercury, Gliese 581g's revolution on its axis is coordinated with its orbit, so that it keeps the same side always facing the sun. The average temperature for the whole planet is about the same as that of Antarctica, but with one side much too hot and the other much too cold. There would be a zone between the two in constant twilight, however, where the temperature would be "just right" -- temperate enough to permit water to exist in liquid form, a necessary pre-condition for development of life.

Moreover, the mass of the planet -- about three or four times that of Earth's -- would be sufficient at the temperatures predicted to hold a terrestial-like atmosphere.

One of the astronomers announcing the discovery said that the chances of life in some form existing on the planet were "almost 100 percent."

He's talking about bacteria or lichen, but you know how these things go. One day it's protozoa, and the next day, you've got fish crawling out of the sea on tiny feet. Before you know it -- ZOWIE!! -- you've got dinosaurs roaming about.

The idea of life existing a not-impossibly-distant 20 light years away reminds me of an old Ray Bradbury story I read as a kid, one of the short stories that comprise The Martian Chronicles. In "Mars is Heaven," an expedition to Mars is greeted by a bucolic farming community scene right out of the American Midwest. Furthermore, each of the crew members discovers deceased relatives living on Mars, living in houses and farms identical to those they recall from childhood. The crew appears to have discovered heaven. And they like it a lot.

Until one night, one of the crew members -- after a warm and convivial evening reliving old times around the dinner table with his wonderful relatives -- realizes some odd discrepancies. As he lies in bed, he begins to suspect that Martian aliens are using telepathic powers to make themselves and their environment resemble people and places that they find in the crew members' memories. He tries to sneak back to the rocket ship in the middle of the night, hoping to radio a warning back to Earth, but runs into one of his "relatives" as he tries to leave the "farmhouse."

The Martian reads his mind, of course, and knows that the jig is up. Before the Earthling's eyes, he changes into his true, Martian form. Not a pleasant sight, at least by Earthly beauty standards. It all ends quite unpleasantly for the crew, and the members of Earth's Expedition to Mars disappear from history. As mysteriously as did the Roanoke colonists in Virginia, I suppose.

Anyway, that's what can happen when one civilization finally meets up with another. Ask the Aztecs and the Incas all about it, if you're not convinced by Ray Bradbury.

Life on other planets? Be careful what you wish for.

Dreams of Persia

I suppose one shouldn't count one's eggs until they're hatched. Don't tell everyone that you're going to ask the cheerleader to the prom, or announce that you're applying for a Rhodes scholarship, or brag that you'll write the great American novel just as soon as the kids leave for college. But, dang it, some things are so exciting -- you just have to shout them from the treetops.

My sister and I purchased airline tickets to Tehran today!

We're gambling (with non-refundable tickets!) that between now and April, Israel won't have nuked Iran back to the stone age, nor will the Islamic Republic have sent its citizenry pouring out of Iran and across the Middle East in a modern day jihad. Nope, we're just hoping that everything stays nice, calm, and peaceful-like -- at least until this trip's over.

My college alumni association is sponsoring what it calls a "suitcase seminar." The announced focus of the two-week visit will be ancient Persian and medieval Islamic architectural and archeological sites, to be studied in some detail as we loop our way around the entire nation. But obviously, we'll be keeping our eyes open wide to the rhythms of modern day Iranian life, and to the thoughts and attitudes of the country's citizens. Everyone who visits Iran says that its people are extraordinarily friendly and hospitable to foreign visitors -- even to us visitors from the Great Satan itself.

Our guide grew up in India and Pakistan, the son of a U.S. foreign service family. After college, he spent 35 years as a career diplomat himself, serving as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, and (before that) Poland, under the Clinton administration. At present, he holds academic positions, specializing in modern Islamic civilization and East-West relations, at both Stanford and Harvard. I trust that his diplomatic skills will serve us well, getting us into and (especially) out of the country in one piece.

I suppose I'll have to remove my Facebook link to this blog, once I apply for my visa in January. As sympathetic and friendly as my feelings have always been toward the Iranian people -- and despite my being neither Jewish nor a disaffected Iranian exile -- I'm sure that somewhere in my 338 posts (to date) I've said something that might offend a rather paranoid Iranian leadership (e.g., this sentence itself). I'll keep holding my breath and trying to stay on my best behavior until I have my visa actually in hand.

More to come on this very interesting trip as the months pass.

September surprise

Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party favorite and Delaware's unexpected Republican nominee for the Senate, is now forced to contend with accusations of youthful dabbling in witchcraft -- and with horrified responses from her conservative erstwhile fans.

Hey, it was just high school high jinx, she states. Now she goes to church. In fact, she went to church on Sunday, after the witchcraft allegations surfaced, rather than appear as scheduled on "Fox News Sunday" and "Face the Nation."

In 1999, according to Fox News, it seems that she admitted on TV that she had

"dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven."

"I hung around people who were doing these things. I'm not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do," she said.

No biggie. Oh there was the occasional odd date.

"One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's little blood there and stuff like that," she said, laughing in the clip.

"We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar," she said.

I guess she didn't inhale. And all this time, we thought "witch" was just a meaningless pejorative.

We Democrats have all kinds of loonies in our ranks. Hell, we embrace 'em! But this latest revelation may not go over well with large portions of Ms. O'Donnell's right wing constituency. As if she weren't already enough of a headache for a Republican mainstream leadership hoping for a Republican Senate come November.

Bless those cats

Loki and Muldoon, my two handsome and sophisticated cats, more or less share with me in the organization and running of our household. Not that they actually dictate terms to me, of course, or remind me when to change my shirt or mow the lawn. Nor have they sufficient manual dexterity to write out shopping lists or throw my clothes out the window when I come home late at night.

In other words, my relationship with them falls somewhat short of marital bliss. But neither are they helpless and innocent toddlers, wholly dependent on my whims for their continued survival. Aside from their small size, excessive fuzziness, and blissful silence, they are more like a couple of pre-teens. Junior partners within the household, certainly, but fully capable of expressing and enforcing their wishes.

Theologians tell us that animals -- even cats -- do not possess immortal souls (although a USA Today poll last May showed that 81 percent of responding readers believed that "good pets go to heaven"). These learned scholars maintain that animals are merely part of the furniture that we've been provided for our greater comfort here on earth, along with trees, brooks and amber waves of grain. Unlike most pet owners, I'll reluctantly go along with the "immortal" part of the equation, but to assert that my pets possess no souls at all suggests that they are automatons -- little machines responding mechanically to stimuli according to embedded programs.

If my cat -- who looks longingly at me with soulful eyes -- is merely an automaton, how do I know that my fellow humans -- Republicans, especially -- are any different? Theologians, whose intelligence is far subtler than mine, have thought through all of this, no doubt, because they agree that cats and dogs do have souls -- just not immortal souls. (Do goldfish then have souls? Ants? Bacteria? Viruses? Computer programs? Shut up! You're making my head hurt.)

My mind races today in these peculiar channels, because I see that churches are already giving advance notice of services for "the blessing of animals" on October 4, the day commemorating St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of many of the better things in life -- animals, certainly, and also the environment, Italy, San Francisco, and stowaways. I've never attended such a service, but I understand that people bring animals of every description to the church to be blessed. During inclement weather, the animals may actually be brought into the church itself.

The prescribed prayers are rather dry -- they ask God to grant that "these animals may serve our needs and that your bounty in the resources of this life may move us to seek more confidently the goal of eternal life." The prayers thus seem carefully designed to avoid the slightest suggestion that the animals, once blessed, will one day join us in Heaven. More disturbing, the prayers don't even petition that the poor animals be granted happiness during their short time with us on earth. The church's concern is all for the welfare of the human owners. The blessing might as well be for the continued high performance of the parishioners' BMWs and Porsches.

But whatever the official theological objective of sprinkling holy water on the tiny heads of kittens and puppies, I suspect the great majority of pet owners are themselves praying that their four-legged companions be granted long life and the greatest happiness of which their strictly mortal souls are capable -- not for the sake of their human owners, but for the sake of the animals themselves. As an understanding Franciscan writer -- displaying more of the spirit of St. Francis than does, perhaps, the dry language of the official liturgy -- comments:

As the prayer is offered, the pet is gently sprinkled with holy water. Believe it or not, most pets receive this sacramental spritz with dignity, though I must admit I have seen some cats flatten their ears a bit as the drops of water lightly pelt them.

But the owner is happy, and who knows what spiritual benefits may result?

I believe every creature is important. The love we give to a pet, and receive from a pet, can draw us more deeply into the larger circle of life, into the wonder of our common relationship to our Creator.

Exactly! It's a nice ritual. I'd take Loki and Muldoon to be blessed, but they refuse to be spritzed by any church that deems them inferior to humans.

And I, in turn, refuse their pleas to be taken to Wiccan rituals. It's a standoff. We'll just have to continue living together without benefit of clergy.

Small stature, big heart

Maybe I've mentioned this before ... well, yes, I know I have. But I was the tiniest boy in my class, all the way through grade school. In class photos, I was the one standing in the bottom row -- far left or right -- who held the sign: "Miss Leghorn, P.S. 67, Grade 3, 2009-10." Excessively crew cut, face all askew, as I squinted into the rare Northwest sun.

It would be overly dramatic to say that being a dwarf child cast a pall over my entire life. No, I suspect there were other factors as well: My alumni magazine this month, for example, features a lead article discussing how physical attractiveness (or lack thereof) affects virtually every aspect of one's personal and vocational life. Frankly, I'm amazed I even ended up an alumnus. If it weren't for my generous annual $15 donations to the alumni fund, they probably would scratch me off their mailing list.

But I digress. Being elevation-challenged myself has always led me to empathize with the little people. In the hope -- curiously in vain, as it turns out -- that the little people would occasionally return the favor. And so, my heart leapt with joy and excitement when I read today's news article about a Yorkshire cow named Swallow.

Now, cows aren't generally my favorite animals. "Bovine" doesn't connote -- to my mind, at least -- sharp repartee and a quick wit. But Swallow, as cows go, is remarkable, if for one reason only. She is only 33 inches long, nose to tail. That's little. If she lived in my back yard, god forbid, she could easily wander into the house through my cat door and curl up on the couch. (Cows do curl up, I've seen them, but usually way out thar in the meadow.)

Swallow seems to have swallowed her diminutive size with equanimity. It never caused her to despair of success in life. Or in matters of the heart. In fact, her romantic liasons have already resulted in nine bright-eyed youngsters, with a tenth in the oven, as it were. This does raise a question or two, if not an eyebrow. I've seen lots of, to be delicate, boy cows. They're pretty tall, huge and husky. Think "linebacker." But let's avoid idle, salacious curiosity. In her eleven years of active life, Swallow's somehow managed to experience nine blessed events, and all her youngsters have grown up to be normal sized cows, with normal cow-like intelligence.

I've seen photos of tiny Ozark women with broods of huge, cow-faced teenage sons, so I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, she's a happy mama, living a fulfilled life, and I rejoice for her. She reportedly spends her time, when not giving birth, out socializing in the fields, chewing the cud with her cow friends -- and, um, "listening to BBC radio in her cowshed." Seriously. I quote verbatim from the Associated Press.

God bless her, I say. An inspiration to us all. Be proud. Stand tall, albeit small.

Separation anxiety

Three more weeks until classes begin at the University of Washington. I walked across campus a couple of days ago, a beautiful late summer day, and noticed the various orientation activities for new students already in progress.

Last year at this time, I mentioned my bemusement at parents' increased involvement in the launching of their kids' college careers. I wasn't certain -- I'm still not, completely -- as to whether this is a good or bad thing, all things considered.

When I left my small home town in Washington for school in California, parental involvement was simple. My dad took a couple of hours off work to drive me and my three suitcases to the train station. My mom, who also worked, had already said her goodbyes earlier that morning. We shook hands, he told me to study hard, I boarded the train, waved, and that was it until Christmas. Just like the Norman Rockwell painting!

This year, there has been a flurry of news stories describing the difficulties parents are having in "letting go." My parents' farewells would seem incomprehensible at best, criminal at worst, to many parents today. My folks were very concerned with my education and my happiness. I would never have described them, however, as "helicopter" parents, hovering overhead.

Grinnell College in Iowa has taken the desperate step of conducting a formal "Parting Ceremony." Welcoming speeches are given to both kids and parents. Then the freshmen march through the college gates, which swing shut after them, leaving the parents outside. The separation is symbolic, but effective. Other schools, such as Colgate and Princeton, state bluntly in their program materials that orientation events are intended for students only.

Obviously, a problem exists that has colleges concerned.

College administrators tell anecdotes of parents who attend classes with their offspring for the first week or so, and take them to the registrar to help them change schedules where needed. Parents will ignore barricades and signs designed to ensure that only students handle class registration and attend orientation events. Less egregiously, but still bemusing, today's parents and kids expect to be in daily contact -- often multiple times per day -- by phone and text message.

What's a parent to do? Especially after reading The Happiest Kid on Campus: A Parent's Guide to the Very Best College Experience (for You and Your Child). You're supposed to let him or her attempt to have the "very best" experience all by him or herself? I don't think so!

Not being a parent myself, it's easy for me to laugh and pontificate. But I can empathize with today's parents, parents who have been far more involved in every aspect of their children's lives all along than parents dreamed of being even twenty years ago. It makes it hard now to cut -- or even significantly loosen -- the cord. But if the cord isn't going to be cut when the young people (not really "kids," any longer) are 18, we shouldn't complain a decade from now when we find ourselves increasingly alarmed by a "Seinfeld generation" of young adults who still can't make decisions or enter into commitments with any degree of self-confidence.

"I'm supposed to shed a few tears and then send her to the world, right?" asked one incredulous mother. Yup, I'm afraid that's the way it's always worked.

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Factual information and parental anecdotes from New York Times (8-22-10) and Seattle Times (9-4-10)