“Unusual meteorite found in Kansas”
As my friend Peter said, "For any Superman fan, this is a great headline to read."
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/10/16/meteorite.kansas.ap/index.html
To true... wouldn't it be great?
Population Milestones
As is being reported all over, the US hit an estimated 300 million people this morning. But what I found interesting was the report I heard on NPR on the way into work this morning. In the same news cycle as the new US population milestone, there were comments about China's one-child policy and it's effect on that country's population. Apparently, since the policy's inception in 1979, it is predicted that there are now 400 million fewer Chinese citizens than if the policy had not been enacted (some sources say 300 million fewer). That means China's "missing population" -- if you can call it that -- is 133% of the total US population.
Not surprisingly, China is now facing a problem that we are also having to deal with in the US: a much smaller working force having to provide for a much larger elderly population. It will be interesting to see how differently -- or similarily -- the two nations approach this problem.
Nietzsche’s Birthday
Today is the birthday of Friedrich Nietzsche, born in 1844. I was fascinated by this excerpt of his biography appearing in today's Writer's Almanac:
He's perhaps best known for claiming that "God is dead," but most people forget that he actually said, "God is dead ... and we have killed him!" He thought that the absence of God from the world was a tragedy, but he felt that people had to accept that tragedy and move on.
He wrote that God was like a star whose light we can see, even though the star died long ago. Much of his philosophy is about how people might live in a world without God and without absolute morality.
Amazing how selective citation can have such a large impact on what someone says. I'm not denying that people -- especially the Christians who were critical of Nietzsche and of whom Nietzsche was critical -- have nothing to argue against, I just feel that it would be more beneficial to take the whole and work through the context than to pull out the one soundbite phrase and use that as the beginning, middle, and end of all things.
An interesting explanation of the phrase "God is dead" can be found at the venerable Wikipedia.