ad astra!

The first pharmacy I worked in was one of the highest volume retail pharmacies I’ve ever worked in; for a time we were one of only 2 pharmacies in town, and the only one open on Thanksgiving. This was also back in the days when Meijer had no problem paying to have a full staff, so there would be 6 or 8 of us all working on Thanksgiving.

One Thanksgiving I worked we had a great big spread back in the pharmacy. A whole long table full of thanksgiving, all the fixings, and more. Normally we’re not allowed to have food in the pharmacy, but that was a rule that was let slide more than once. We’d just gotten it all set up and opened for business when I turned around and there was Fred Meijer! He’d let himself into the pharmacy. My first thought was we were all going to get in trouble! This wasn’t just a bag of chips or a box of cookies, but a whole spread for all of us who were working.

Fred reads my name tag and says “Hi Paul! Thanks for working the holiday!” I was stunned and could only manage a “You’re welcome, sir.” Then he turns around and sees the our table, back around the corner where customers couldn’t see.

“Why, that’s quite a spread you’ve got there!” He says and my boss invited him over to make up a plate. A little while later Lena came by and got herself a plate, too.

I’d seen Fred a few times before that, and met him several times after that. I’d helped him with his prescriptions (He’d always call in and say, “Hello, Fred Meijer here!” in a cheerful voice) several times. He was always personable, friendly, and while no doubt a shrewd businessman, he always took the time to thank his employees for the job they did.

Fred was proud of the store that had his name out front, and he wanted you to be proud of it, too.

He was a role model for how to treat customers, too; he may have had over 200 stores with his name on them, but he always acted as if the one he was at was his only one, and whatever customers he saw were his only and most important ones.

In the years since Fred stepped down from the day-to-day operation at Meijer retail has become a much more cutthroat, bottom-line business. With the passing of Fred Meijer, the old fashioned friendly neighborhood market are even further behind us.

The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history… the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority… One percent of the nation own a third of the wealth. The rest is distributed is such a way as to turn those in the 99% against each other…

In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers… doctors, lawyers, nurses… garbagemen and firemen. These people–the employed, the somewhat privileged–are drawn into alliance with the elites. They become the guards of the system: If they stop obeying, the system fails. …

At a time when the middle class is increasingly insecure economically the system, in its irrationality, has been driven by profit to build skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children’s playgrounds… Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.

The threat of unemployment has spread to white-collar workers, a college education is no longer a guarantee against joblessness… The poor are accustomed to being squeezed and always short of money, but the middle classes, too, have begun to feel the press.

With the Establishment’s inability to solve severe economic problems at home Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change.

The levers of power [will] have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state–the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators…

Howard Zinn

Here’s my blog entry from 9/11/01:

What I did today was cry. I went to my creative writing class, and saw all of the flags flying at half-mast everywhere. Finally, driving to work on 28th st I was stopped at a red light and I saw one of the big ones we have around flying at half mast, a huge fluttering reminder that our country, our people, our very spirit of freedom had been attacked, forget about what I think about corporations and globalization, because everything that makes us a great nation was attacked along with everything that makes us bad. I bawled. I broke completely down, pounded the steering wheel and stared at that flag, the red-white-and-blue dancing in the wind, and I thought about the people who had jumped from the world trade center.

click to embiggen

Nope, this isn’t the Moon. This is a snap of the tiny world Mercury, taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft currently in orbit. While Mercury has a somewhat similar appearance to our Moon, it’s significantly different in composition, also bigger and obviously much much farther away. Mercury might be the planet we know the least about, both due to its distance from Earth and nearness to the Sun. MESSENGER entered orbit in March and has since been returning not only really great pictures but also compelling science.

From the MESSENGER website:
Date acquired: August 09, 2011
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 221362822
Image ID: 609826
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC filter: 7 (748 nanometers)
Center Latitude: -77.79°
Center Longitude: 300.7° E
Resolution: The surface near the center of the image is approximately 1600 meters/pixel
Scale: Mercury’s radius is 2,440 kilometers (1,520 miles)

Of Interest: This dramatic view was captured as the spacecraft’s highly elliptical orbit positioned MESSENGER high above Mercury’s southern hemisphere. The large basin with the smooth floor near the center right portion of the image is Pushkin.

This image was acquired as part of MDIS’s limb imaging campaign. Once per week, MDIS captures images of Mercury’s limb, with an emphasis on imaging the southern hemisphere limb. These limb images provide information about Mercury’s shape and complement measurements of topography made by the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) of Mercury’s northern hemisphere.

The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft’s seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System’s innermost planet. Visit the Why Mercury? section of this website to learn more about the key science questions that the MESSENGER mission is addressing. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS is scheduled to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER’s science goals.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi
Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya LVI, 11: Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma
Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at
Baranasi in the Deer Park at Isipatana. There the Blessed One
addressed the bhikkhus of the group of five thus:

“Bhikkhus, these two extremes should not be followed by one who
has gone forth into homelessness. What two? The pursuit of sensual
happiness in sensual pleasures, which is low, vulgar, the way of
worldlings, ignoble, unbeneficial; and the pursuit of
self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, unbeneficial.
Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata
has awakened to the middle way, which gives rise to vision, which
gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct
knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.

“And what, bhikkhus, is that middle way awakened to by the
Tathagata, which gives rise to vision … which leads to Nibbana?
It is this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right
intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right
effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, bhikkhus, is
that middle way awakened to by the Tathagata, which gives rise to
vision, which gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to
direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is
suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is
suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation
from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is
suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are
suffering.

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of
suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming,
accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there;
that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming,
craving for disbecoming.

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of
suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of
that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom
from it, non-reliance on it.

“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the way leading to the
cessation of suffering: it is this noble eightfold path; that is,
right view … right concentration.

“‘This is the noble truth of suffering’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard
to things unheard before, there arose in me vision, knowledge,
wisdom, true knowledge, and light.

“‘This noble truth of suffering is to be fully understood’: thus,
bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in me
vision … and light.

“‘This noble truth of suffering has been fully understood’: thus,
bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in me
vision … and light.

“‘This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering’: thus,
bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in me
vision, knowledge, wisdom, true knowledge, and light.

“‘This noble truth of the origin of suffering is to be abandoned’:
thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in
me vision … and light.

“‘This noble truth of the origin of suffering has been abandoned’:
thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in
me vision … and light.

“‘This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering’: thus,
bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before, there arose in me
vision, knowledge, wisdom, true knowledge, and light.

“‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering is to be
realized’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before,
there arose in me vision … and light.

“‘This noble truth of the cessation of suffering has been
realized’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before,
there arose in me vision … and light.

“‘This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of
suffering’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things unheard before,
there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, true knowledge, and
light.

“‘This noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of
suffering is to be developed’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things
unheard before, there arose in me vision … and light.

“‘This noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of
suffering has been developed’: thus, bhikkhus, in regard to things
unheard before, there arose in me vision, knowledge, wisdom, true
knowledge, and light.

“So long, bhikkhus, as my knowledge and vision of these four noble
truths as they really are in their three phases and twelve aspects
was not thoroughly purified in this way [*], I did not claim to
have awakened to the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment in this
world with its devas, Mara, and Brahma, in this generation with
its recluses and brahmins, its devas and humans. But when my
knowledge and vision of these four noble truths as they really are
in their three phases and twelve aspects was thoroughly purified
in this way, then I claimed to have awakened to the unsurpassed
perfect enlightenment in this world with its devas, Mara, and
Brahma, in this generation with its recluses and brahmins, its
devas and humans. The knowledge and the vision arose in me:
‘Unshakeable is the liberation of my mind. This is my last birth.
Now there is no more re-becoming.”

This is what the Blessed One said. Being pleased, the bhikkhus of
the group of five delighted in the Blessed One’s statement. And
while this discourse was being spoken, there arose in the
Venerable Kondanna the dust-free, stainless vision of the Dhamma:
“Whatever is subject to origination is all subject to cessation.”

And when the Wheel of the Dhamma had been set in motion by the
Blessed One, the earth devas raised a cry: “At Baranasi, in the
Deer Park at Isipatana, this unsurpassed Wheel of the Dhamma has
been set in motion by the Blessed One, which cannot be stopped by
any recluse or brahmin or deva or Mara or Brahma or by anyone in
the world.” Having heard the cry of the earth devas, the devas of
the realm of the Four Great Kings raised a cry: “At Baranasi …
this unsurpassed Wheel of the Dhamma has been set in motion by the
Blessed One, which cannot be stopped … by anyone in the world.”
Having heard the cry of the devas of the realm of the Four Great
Kings, the Tavatimsa devas … the Yama devas … the Tusita devas
… the Nimmanarati devas … the Paranimmitavasavatti devas …
the devas of Brahma’s company raised a cry: “At Baranasi, in the
Deer Park at Isipatana, this unsurpassed Wheel of the Dhamma has
been set in motion by the Blessed One, which cannot be stopped by
any recluse or brahmin or deva or Mara or Brahma or by anyone in
the world.”

Thus at that moment, at that instant, at that second, the cry
spread as far as the Brahma-world, and this ten thousandfold
world-system shook, quaked, and trembled, and an immeasurable
glorious radiance appeared in the world surpassing the divine
majesty of the devas.

Then the Blessed One uttered this inspired utterance: “Kondanna
has indeed understood! Kondanna has indeed understood!” In this
way the Venerable Kondanna acquired the name “Anna
Kondanna-Kondanna Who Has Understood.”

HOUSE REPUBLICANS: You guys got elected because 50%+1 of the people in your district who bothered to show up and vote believe it’s better to let elderly people die and poor people starve to death than it is to pay more taxes and/or cut out other spending in the federal budget.

Please take a stand. it’s time you let everyone know, including the House and Senate Democrats and the President, that in your vision for a Conservative/Tea Party America the elderly and disabled are no longer entitled to / do not deserve their government sponsored health care and/or income benefits. It’s time they got back to work or got busy dying and stopped being a burden to society and wasting the tax money of people who make over $300,000 per year. The federal budget should more closely follow the laissez-faire economics of the 1880s coupled with the defense spending of the 1950s (15% of GDP instead of that dove-ish 6.5% of 2010). Coincidentally, Federal social policy should also closely mirror that of the 1950s as well.

DEMOCRATS INCLUDING PRESIDENT OBAMA: You guys got elected because 50%+1 of the people in your district who bothered to vote suddenly woke up in the middle of 2006 and realized that eight years of Republican control of congress had left us with a deregulated financial system primed for crisis, a federal budget neck deep in a trillion-dollar illegal war in Iraq, and social policies that made the Gilded Age seem progressive.

Please take a stand. It’s time you let everyone know—including the Republicans, grumpy Tea Partiers, and Fox News viewers—that your vision of America is an America where we’ve actually learned the lessons from the past 200 years; that war is not always the only solution; that we have a responsibility to each other and our children; that what’s good for working people is good for business; that a strong economy needs more than just an invisible hand to guide it; and that it is, in fact, the year 2011 and most of the world has actually accepted the Liberal idea that we are all in this together. Dwight Eisenhower has been out of office for fifty years and Ronald Reagan for twenty-two.

***

I think this way we can agree to call this whole thing a stalemate and declare that there is no longer any room for compromise in American politics. Let’s dig up Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush and have them duke it out. Let’s have Bill Clinton spar with Newt Gingrich all over again. Is Henry Kissinger still alive? Someone wake him up and have him play a cribbage match with Madeline Albright. (I mean the last time the Germans started a fight with the Czechs it was the Americans who came out on top.) Even Richard Fucking Nixon was forced to give up the Gold Standard and needed to institute price controls and wage freezes when the going got tough. In a democracy leaders must remember that they were elected to govern not just squabble and hold a party line.

Great leaders must have the strength, at times, to resolve a crisis and govern not by doing what their constituents think is best, but by doing what their wisdom-and the wisdom of their forebears-suggests is best for America. A great leader knows that popular opinion and the whims of an electorate are merely the fashions in which history is dressed. The foundation—the bedrock—of good government and the democratic process is cemented with the stones of wisdom, insight, and experience learned from the history of a nation.

The end of the Shuttle program does not mean the end of space exploration for the United States. NASA is continuing to go places where humans can’t yet travel by sending robotic missions.

I’m very pro-robotic missions as they’re much cheaper, practical, and easier than human-crewed spaceflight and allow us to go places where it’s extraordinarily hazardous to send humans. While it’s pretty to think of human explorers walking on Mars or seeing Jupiter rise from the landscape of Ganymede I think our notions of exploration are still too fantastical for our technology. Space exploration by humans is a daunting task. From a practical standpoint is ridiculous to even consider leaving the planet—everything we need we must take with us: food, air, water, shelter—so it’s best to let our machines (that have far fewer needs than our fragile bodies) make the trip. On the other hand, of course, all human voyages since the birth of our species have been impractical, from our first travels out of Africa, pre-columbian migration to the Americas, the exploration of Antarctica and the moon shot all required extraordinary courage, skill, and perseverance.

There are several challenges when it comes to getting to Mars and while I don’t think they’re insurmountable they do make a touchdown on the surface out of our reach for right now. A voyage to the outer planets would be even more challenging in terms of time and complexity. I do believe we’ll make it one day, if not in my lifetime. We also have a great many problems here on Earth that need addressing, as well, and robotic missions spare us the resources (would that we used them) to work out the problems humans having living and working on Earth, let alone in outer space.

But I digress. Until we’ve overcome the difficulties of exploring space in person we can send machines to do the work. Which is exactly what NASA will be focused on in the next few years.

There is an amazing amount of work being done by space probes right now. Here’s a list of current space probes, both by NASA and other space agencies:

Mercury — MESSENGER
Venus — Venus Express
Moon — Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Chang’e 2
Mars — Opportunity rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, Mars Odyssey
Asteroids — Dawn (Vesta and Ceres)
Saturn — Cassini
Pluto/Kuiper Belt — New Horizons
Comets — Rosetta
Beyond — Voyagers 1 and 2
As a side note, Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object in history, and the fastest space probe with a velocity of 38,400mph relative to the sun.

But that’s not the end of things. NASA plans two exploratory launches yet this year: Juno and Curiosity.

Juno is the next mission to Jupiter. The spacecraft will carry 7 instruments to examine the formation and evolution of Jupiter. Not only will this mission give insight into the formation of our own solar system, it will also shed light on the numerous extrasolar planets that are thought to be analogous to Jupiter and the other gas giants of our own solar system.

Juno will launch between August 5 and August 26, 2011 and arrive at Jupiter in 2016.


Due to advances in solar panel technology Juno will also be the first mission to the outer planets to use solar power, rather than a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Each of Juno’s three solar panels are more than 30 feet long.

Curiosity (also know as the Mars Science Laboratory), on the other hand, will use an RTG, like the Viking landers before it. This will allow the Mini Cooper-sized rover to operate during any season and in a variety of weather.

As I mentioned above, MSL is the size of a Mini Cooper automobile. It’s by far the largest rover ever to be sent to Mars. Curiosity’s enormous size will allow it to carry the most robust suite of instruments and experiments ever brought to Mars. NASA has assigned Curiosity the tasks of determining whether life ever arose on Mars, characterizing the climate and geology (areology) of Mars, and preparing for human exploration.
Curiosity launches between November 25 and December 18, with a Martian landing in August of 2012.

Curiosity will weigh nearly a full short ton and, illustrative of the problems of a Mars landing, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has come up with an ambitious landing scheme in which the rover will be dropped out of the sky by a crane. If all goes well, Curiosity is expected to explore the area around Gale crater for over two (Earth) years.

These two missions highlight the future of space exploration, both human and robotic, and point towards a promising future of exploration in our solar system and beyond.