Friday, January 2, 2009
Unless you're being carded, no one even asks (I haven't been carded in
some time). But as Richard Dawkins likes to point out, Jesus of Nazareth
and Isaac Newton share the same birth date ? except they don't. The
British insisted on sticking with the old Julian calendar long after
everybody else had switched to the Gregorian, which would put Newton's
birthday on January 4. As for Jesus of Nazareth, assuming he represents
an actual historical figure, it's anybody's guess. December 25 was picked
by the early Church either to coincide with the Roman feast of Saturnalia,
which kept moving, or the Winter solstice, but they managed to miss even
that by four days. In any case, birthdays are just a way of keeping score
and an excuse to have a party. Like who needs an excuse? In any case, WN
readers agreed almost unanimously that we should commemorate the birth of
Jesus and Newton by comparing their impact, and so we shall, starting next
week.
On Tuesday, a humanist group filed a complaint in U.S. District Court
meant to block prayer at the swearing-in of President-elect Obama. Chief
Justice John Roberts Jr. will administer the oath at the January 20, 2009
ceremony.
According to Science magazine, the Picawer Foundation announced last month
that it would "cease all grant making effective immediately." This after
20 years of operation. The Picawar Foundation endowment was managed by
Bernard Madoff who is now charged with operating a Ponzi scheme. Since
its inception in 1989, Picawer had distributed more than $268 million in
grants.
In discussing NASA's future on Tuesday, the NY Times was mesmerized by
the "gap" between the end of the shuttle and the launch of a new bus to
transport astronauts. Forget the damn gap. The 21st Century will be
focused on planets around other suns, and on the bad news about what's
happening to our own planet. Astronauts can't go to other stars, but we
can build better telescopes and get a better look at them. Astronauts
will be no help either in studying our own Sun and our own planet, Earth.
We need to finish what we set out to do a decade ago, but were stopped
from doing by the Bush administration: launch an updated Deep Space
Climate Observatory. There is still time, but we urgently need to get
started.
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