Exoplanets: New places to dwell, or do we have neighbors out there?

According to a Slate.com article, prospects for finding intelligent life other than our own (?) has gotten markedly better . . . or at least, we have a lot more places other than Earth to screw up once we figure out how to travel through intersteller space.

I don't know. But I'll bet that some day, when we meet the denizens of some of these new worlds, we are going to feel pretty silly (i.e. ashamed) about how we've treated our planet, and each other.

I'll wager a galactic credit or two that we get blackballed from the Galactic Lodge.

For a Christian, this all presents something of a conundrum. I think back to when I read C.S. Lewis' space trilogy, in which he suggests Earth is a planet in rebellion and other abodes of intelligent life didn't mess up their Garden of Eden-esque debuts.

 Whatever. Our view of ourselves and our petty concerns should be getting markedly smaller, though . . . even as our perceptions of God and the Universe explode into something truly eternal and humbling individually, and as a species.

Some of the findings Slate.com reports the Kepler space telescope has made of late includes confirmation of an additional 700-plus "exoplanets" orbiting 300 other stars.

Of those, 95 percent are smaller than Neptune and 100 are about the same size as our Earth. . . and four of those planets reside in their stars' "habitable zones,"in other words, they are in the right range to sustain liquid water, perhaps oxygen-rich atmospheres and conditions we humans might find familiar.

What may have arisen in those places? People, like us? Beings sentient, but dramatically different in shape? Angels? Demons?

Or, just new places for us to dwell?

Alzheimer's: For loved ones, it's not 'misery loves company,' it's need for compassion

While recently commiserating with a colleague who also was lamenting, and enduring the long death of Alzheimer's in a loved one, I remembered the old idiom, "Misery loves company."

The concept has been around as long as human suffering, though it usually is credited to the 16th century play "Doctor Faustus."

Mephistropheles tries to discourage Fautus from visiting hell (which he ignores), by reciting the Latin phrase, "Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris." 

(Literally, that translates "to the unhappy it is a comfort to have had company in misery." But typically, we humans have truncated that over the centuries to "misery loves company."

But, as I admittedly love to do, I digress.

In the referenced conversation above, it is NOT comfort taken from the pain of others . . . but understanding of those others, a selfish desire for compassion and, yes, affirmation. . . .

. . . To not only receive those emotional drinks of cool water in a desert wilderness of Alzheimer's hell, but to offer them as well.

We need each other. No one should walk alone through the sloughs of despair.

Russian Winter Games: Reasons to whine, or are we just pampered Americans?

OK, speaking of the Russian Winter Games accommodations, I'd whine, too . . .

If there was no water (or what there was was dirty).

If the toilet's plumbing didn't work.

If I had no privacy to do the doodoo (even if there was toilet paper), because the stall walls were removed for "security" reasons.

If my room was wired for video and sound by the Russian security folks.

That said, these things we take for granted in the U.S. -- clean water, privacy to poo, being (somewhat) free of prying eyes and ears, etc. -- are exceptions on most of the rest of the world. 

Maybe we are, in retrospect, pampered Americans, after all?

Click on this link, read and consider.

Super Bowl: Don't forget, Seahawks, it all began with Jim Zorn and Steve Largent

It was sweet.

Surrounded by Broncos fans, proudly displaying their orange jerseys at an after-church Super Bowl party, the long-awaited breakthrough for this Seahawks fan came true.

I kept my cheering subdued. But my smile was big.

I had to wait until I was 60 years old to see this -- a long way removed from a summer back in 1976, on the campus of my alma mater, Eastern Washington University, when the NFL's newest expansion team arrived for its inaugural training camp.


Jack Patera was the first coach, a big, profane and somewhat arrogant man who presided over a bunch of pros past their prime and second-tier rookies. But there were a couple players who stood out right away, both for their enthusiasm and skills . . . and quiet faith.

Jim Zorn, who had briefly been on the Dallas Cowboys roster the season before as an undrafted free agent,  was (is) an unapologetic, born again Christian, and his favorite target, Steve Largent, also was a believer. Along with other Christians on the team, they held prayer meetings and Bible studies together -- but there was no preaching or grandstanding, as some later would accuse Tim Tebow of doing (fairly, or not).

Zorn was outgoing, positive, and a scrambler who could zip a left-handed bullet off a rollout like no one I had ever seen then, or since. He ran the Seattle backfield for seven seasons before his star declined, but he never seemed to let it get him down.

I interviewed him again a few years ago, while he was an assistant coach at a small college (later, he would coach quarterbacks for Seattle, briefly, and make a bid as head coach for the ill-fated Redskins).

Largent went on to be a Hall of Fame receiver. He and Zorn would be the first two inductees to Seattle's "Ring of Honor."

For that first season and the next two, I worked with and for the Seahawks as a stringer. I'd do feature articles on players for small dailies who could not afford sending staff of their own. After each practice, I would gather injury reports and quotes on standouts, etc., from Patera and his assistants and call them in to the PR department.

For a 21-year-old small town weekly newspaper editor, the money was good -- and the experience gave me a taste of what I would experience a few years later as an AP sportswriter.

That first season, 2-12 for the 'Hawks, was a tough one. A lot of routs, some spells showing the future brilliance of the Zorn-to-Largent connection.
So, this past Sunday, I'll bet Zorn was smiling. A fellow believer, Russell Wilson, was holding the Lombardi Trophy.

It took nearly 40 years for the dream to come true, but Jim had to be happy for the team where a kid from Cal Poly-Pomona, initially dismissed by the sports experts of his time, became an NFL star.

What both of these quarterback will share, long after the Super Bowl memories fade, will be their faith and humility.

Those qualities are eternal.