To the biggest of the big... to the smallest of the small, God's love for us says it all.

That's the full moon about a half-hour before sunrise... and if you look near the top of the photo, that little white dot cupped by the wisp of cloud; that's mars.

The moon is a mere 238,900 miles from us; about 24 times around the earth... not that far.

Mars is 29,438 million miles from earth; about 1.17 million times around the earth. It takes 22 minutes for the reflected light of mars to reach us. So in effect, when you see mars, you are looking 22 minutes into the past.

But if you consider, we are just a small dot, a mere planet in orbit around our sun, a star, which is one of about 100 thousand-million stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, which is one of an estimated 200 billion galaxies in our universe.

And if you've the mind for it, as far as is scientifically known, the universe continues without end. Imagine that! Now, if legendary Chuck Norris is so impressive, his tongue-in-cheek followers said that he once counted to infinity... twice, and we can believe one or the other, I go for universe without end. 

I would say that is BIG!

Now, about small: Scientific research shows that the human body has 37.2 trillion cells, most invisible but within the makeup of the body cells we can microscopically see. And (to match that Chuck Norris thing), it is ecclesiastically told to awe little kids, an infinite number of angels can fit on the head of a pin. If we can believe one or the other, I'll take the 37.2 trillion human body cells... because look what that has produced; every one of us now, then and forever, with all of our miraculous features and abilities. 

Since God has done all of this for us, how come we humans have seemed to mess it up to where we are today? It is because we have been blessed with free will! God has given us creatures free will to exist and go and do as his creatures in his world. Sadly, we haven't always done that well. Everlasting wars and conflict for sure, meanness and racism and intolerance and are human made... and give us room to do better, I suspect. 

Did Adam and Eve do all that? Maybe Eden should have been in Indianapolis. (Indian-Apple-less--get it?) 

It all comes down to what you believe... but no one has any better understanding as to how all of these miraculous happenings have come to pass. It is unfathomable to believe this started from nothing. We can hardly fathom the miracle of a tree (see below) let alone everything and us. 

Disclaimer: If you've read this far, you know where I stand and that not everyone in the world believes this or that. Some think the world is flat. Some believe there is no God. Some have different rites that focus on an alternative deity. Some believe science... or not. That really doesn't alter the facts: We, and all else exist, so there!

Personally, thank you God. (And to the infinite number of angles, forgive me for not choosing you.)

Bonus poem:

  NOW GO OUT THERE AND VOTE! 

Both are unbelievable but one is true, one is false. Any guesses?

We were thrilled when Henry bicycled across the moon with ET in his bike basket.

 We were also thrilled (sort of) when the red Tesla streaked past the earth on it's way past Mars.

OK, everyone knows ET will never reach home in the basket of Henry's bicycle. But could a red Tesla ever speed past Mars, with David Bowie's Space Oddity blasting on its audio device, and drive forever into space? Most incredibly amazing, it could. That IS an actual photo you're looking at.

Is there anyone today more interesting and inventive that Elon Musk? Truly this South African born

Elon Musk

Canadian American billionaire at age 48 has done more than even the best fiction writer could imagine... but it's true. He founded Xcom which became Infinity which bought PayPal which was bought by ebay. He founded the automotive company that developed the Tesla automobile and founded SpaceX which developed the most powerful rocket booster that put his red Tesla with a manikin driver behind the wheel into space forever. Even more astounding, two of the three rocket boosters on the most powerful rocket actually returned to base, landing as if reverse of the take-off. Take that NASA.

So his failure is that the space-bound Tesla that was supposed to land on Mars but missed, is destined to drive forever, at 25,000 miles per hour, into outer space for infinity. It joins with NASA's two Voyager missions to infinity. Imagine the incredible gas/electric mileage per gallon and what would happen if it was ever pulled over for speeding by an alien patrol officer with radar. "Sorry officer, I was running late for Mars so I stepped on it and didn't realize how fast I was going."

Consider that perhaps, eons from now, a distant civilization will encounter both Voyager spacecrafts with their golden records of us saying 'Hello" in 140 different languages and also the Tesla playing David Bowie's Space Oddity and wondering who in the hell those people are/were.

Well, that's space for you.

From Then to Now: A journey by a story teller who held the nation in his hands.

 



MARS ATTACKS!
(A true story)

On the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners across the United States heard a startling report of a what was initially thought to be a meteor strike in the New Jersey countryside. With sirens blaring in the background, announcers in the field described mysterious creatures from outer space, terrifying war machines and thick clouds of poison gas moving toward New York City. As the invading force approached Manhatten, some listeners sat transfixed while others panicked and ran to alert neighbors or to call the police. Some even fled their homes flooding the roadways with cars and accidents.

All of this was reported by wire services and appeared in newspapers from coast to coast. There was only one hiccup. It was actually a radio program.

The next day, the Boston Globe's banner headline read: "Radio Play Terrifies Nation."

Orson Welles broadcasting

Yep, the play was a fake newscast... a tale spun by 24-year-old Orson Welles who, later in his remarkable career, was seen by many to be the greatest movie director of all time.

At this moment though, radio was the medium that made the most noise and Welles' Mercury Theater was one of its premier programs. There were no televisions or cell phones. Social media was limited to eavesdropping on the neighbors' party-line telephone conversations.

It was estimated that the radio drama was believed by more than a million people who didn't hear the disclaimer at the beginning of the program

Word spread from person to person and there was some sense of panic... but the reports that made the news turned out to be broad exaggerations with little basis in fact. Yet, the medium proved the message valid to many and Welles showed how to use its power. This, of course, was before Brian Williams was born.

Welles proved he knew how to move and motivate a listener. He showed it again with one of the top rated movies of all time, Citizen Kane.  And 30 years after his death, his unfinished last movie, The Other Side of the Wind will finally be produced for release this year, the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 250 greatest movies of all time, has Welles' Citizen Kane and his The Third Man as nos. 2 and 3, just behind The Wizard of Oz. If his new movie, 77 years after the radio broadcast, achieves as much, Welles would be the first to show such transcending breadth. 

An early radio

Today, from Star Wars to Avatar and beyond, special effects and new technology innovations have evolved and given us a pseudeo-sophistication. For those who have only seen a radio of that day in museums, radio was special in a way that anyone who hasn't had that original experience could never know. We have literally evolved our way past that emotion.

 Broadcast Hysteria by Brad Schwartz tells the story of Welles' radio play and "the art of fake news." But it's his conclusion that tells why early radio was the perfect medium for drama. Like a movie, it had all the scripting, actors, sounds and elements but the staging, costumes and visualizations powerfully play out in the mind.

Television, Schwartz says, demands visual depiction but radio captured its audience in a different way. "It's not so much that picturing the Martians in one's head makes them easier to believe, it is that people see the Martians they are ready to see."

Earlier radio broadcast

Radio was the true 'theater of the mind' and it was powerful.

Wanna see something no-one alive today will ever see again?

By the end of August, mars, the Red Planet, the subject of so many of our solar myths and sci-fi flicks, will be closer to earth than ever before.

As our respective orbits come closer, mars will continue to brighten in our sky and by late August, the two planets will be a mere 34,649,589 miles apart... a hair's breadth away in space terms!

Mars will rise in our late August sky at about 10 pm (EDT) and reach its peak at 12:30 am. Now here's the good part. It will look as large as our full moon to the naked eye! Imagine that.

Martians for dinner, anyone? Oh, it's a cook book.

Ever have one of those days when... ? ( A reprise from a 2012 post because we need a reason to smile today and I haven't thought of one.)

Joe Btfsplk by Al Capp

     ... you know, you learn lots of really interesting stuff but have no good use for any of it? It's kind of like being lost but making good time. I have days like that all the time. For example:

     I know how to spell the winning word in the latest  U.S. National Spelling Bee... g-u-e-t-a-p-e-n-s... guetapens! I even know what it means: ambush. (It's French, of course. They have a different word for everything.) Then I use it in a sentence during a very important cocktail party conversation: ... and the cattle rustlers took the short cut, just as the sheriff and posse thought they would, and they rode right into a guetapens.
          Sacre bleau! Hey, where did everybody go?

See what I mean?

     Just learned that our Milky Way galaxy and its evil arch-galaxy, Andromeda, are on course for a head-on collision... at 250,000 miles-per-hour! KABOOM!!! I alert my family and friends: WATCH OUT! DUCK! It's really going to be big! Hide in the closet... under the bed... right now! It could be the end of the world! It is inevitable!
     It will happen in... oh, 4 billion years. Excuse me.

     Do you know that, for the last few weeks, the top three best selling books everyone is reading are Fifty Shades of Gray, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed? 
     Oh, sorry Sister Mary Margaret Joseph, I thought you loved to read.

     Have you heard that a 12-by-23 foot garage on New York's Upper East Side is Manhattan's first million-dollar parking space? 
     Look, I know you only asked for a handout to feed your hungry family... I just thought you might find that amusingly interesting.

      I just learned of  the two guys who were tossed overboard by a big Atlantic Ocean wave in 2008. They made it safely to the Nantucket shore but efforts to find their 26-foot fishing boat were unsuccessful. Thinking perhaps it sunk, they were surprised when it turned up... FOUR YEARS LATER, adrift off the coast of Spain with its motor, seat cushions and everything else still intact. 
     So have they found Amelia Earhart yet?

     Now that we have our most sophisticated exploration vehicle ever, "Curiosity," on the surface of Mars, some creatively imaginative types on earth feel we should explore the very life-like images of "a half-feline, half-human face" and "a parrot" on the Martian surface. We will discover, they say, that not only was there life on Mars but it was a very creative life at that. Says one critic, " I know art when I see it." Really? Really! 
      No, I can't make out the man in the moon but I did see the cow! Honest.

      I just read of a new study that says attractive people do better, earn more money and develop greater skill than their less attractive counterparts, despite similar backgrounds. This, says one expert, correlates with what other research calls 'the accumulation of human capital'... the psychological jargon for success.
     That's hard for you to believe, you say?
 

      Did you know that a Loyola University research team recently found that people who eat organic food are, on the whole, more likely to be jerks? 
      No, I didn't realize that you are  a vegetarian... and would you mind moving your shopping cart off my toe?

     Now do you see what I mean? 
     Sorry, didn't realize you were blind.