The Binary Circumstance

I was taking the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge Island around 8:30 this evening and the crew announced that the International Space Station could be seen crossing the sky to the north.

Out on the deck I could clearly see a very bright light moving across the sky very quickly. It was much brighter and bigger than any light from planes and moved very fast. It took about two minutes to travel from the middle of the sky to the eastern horizon.

It was really cool although I never would have known it was a space station if they hadn’t told us.

I thought of all the scientific discoveries through the centuries that have made the space station possible. If religion had dominated more than it has, none of it ever would have happened.

This page gives opportunities to see the space station schedule by location.

This page is for Bainbridge Island.

Zanzibar Muslims forced the cancellation of a Freddie Mercury tribute which was also supposed to serve as an HIV benefit.

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania (AFP) - Organizers of a 60th gala birthday party for the late Zanzibar-born rock star Freddie Mercury, have cancelled the weekend event after outraged Muslims threatened to disrupt it.

Faced with fierce opposition from Islamists, who complained the flamboyant Queen lead singer’s lifestyle was offensive to many on the overwhelmingly Muslim archipelago, organizers said they had no choice but to call it off.

“We have decided to cancel the party after misleading and erroneous information was spread about it,” said organizer Simai Mohamed Saidi, who runs a Freddie Mercury theme restaurant in the capital.

“I urge Muslim groups in the future to seek correct information from us instead of relying on rumors,” he said in an open letter, adding the event was intended to be celebration to honor Mercury, who died of
AIDS in 1991.

Saidi also lamented that the cancellation would hurt his intention to use the party to raise money for HIV/AIDS victims on Zanzibar.

Conservative Zanzibari Islamists last week demanded that authorities ban the party and then vowed to stage mass demonstrations if it went ahead, saying it would tarnish the islands’ reputation and culture and promote homosexuality.

Local Zanzibar authorities caved into the Muslim demands.

The authorities, who have long tip-toed between secular constitutional ideals, the demands of a booming tourist industry and the wishes of conservative Muslims, never formally responded to Islamists.

But Zanzibar’s information ministry this week ordered local state-run media not to give the event any coverage.

State-run media caving into the demands of religous extremists? No!

If we had a president who stood firmly against the marriage of church and state and favored reason over religous fundamentalism, we would be in a lot better shape to fight the global war on terrorism than we are now. Unfortunately, George Bush represents a false choice between caving into Muslim extremists around the globe or caving into fundamentalist Christian extremists at home. That false choice makes it impossible for the U.S. to form a rational and effective policy to fight the roots of terrorism.

Did anybody catch ABC’s Last Days on Earth hosted by Elizabeth Vargas last night?

It was a really great show about all the top potental catastrophic events, both natural and man-made, that could challenge life on the planet in the decades to come.

It was two hours and I missed the first part but enjoyed their treatment of the last five scenarios: super volcanos, asteroids, nuclear war, global pandemic and climate change.

When they spoke about extinction, they reminded us that 99% of the species that have existed on the planet are now extinct and also pointed out that when an asteroid hit the earth around the Yucatan peninsula it probably wiped out the dinosaurs. The extinction of the dinosaurs allowed a small mammal, a rodent, to flourish and ultimately evolve into man.

Life is both fragile and tenacious. Tenacious as an ongoing evolutionary process, fragile at the level of specific species.

Evolution and the ongoing transformation of the universe are pure beauty.

I was amazed at how many people said that if they knew they were going to die in such an event they would spend the rest of their life praying, without ever wondering why a supposedly loving God would do such a thing to them and everything else he had supposedly created.

Many experts also noted that if such an event were to happen, all government and legal systems would break down, paper currency issued by governments would become worthless and it would be every man for himself.

California is considering a single-payer health plan.

They are a huge mistake if for no other reason than they rob patients of choice, and this proposed legislation exemplifies the horrors of such a system quite well.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Senate Bill 840, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s bill to create a single-payer health-care system to provide health-insurance coverage to all California residents, was expected to be passed by lawmakers last night. The governor is expected to veto it. Those two facts bring up a set of questions about this exercise in politics: How much of it was genuine and how much was a ploy to gain a stick with which to beat the governor in the Nov. 7 election?

The timing is suspicious. The complete lack of candor on the cost, or the messiness, of implementation is as well. Yet the media and the person on the street greet this piece of over-ripe baloney as a golden opportunity to redress all of the flaws they perceive in our health system, especially the “uninsured.” A solution that, of course, will have no flaws of its own.

This legislation is an illusion: This bill would have gone nowhere had either legislators or the public remembered one basic idea — nothing is free.

This bill reflects the clash of a moral vision (we “ought” to do something about the uninsured) with the business economics of health care.

Here are some of the realities, if this bill were to become law:

– All health plans will disappear (That means Kaiser Permanente, too.) Once they go, they will not come back. Before they go, they will sue for confiscation of assets. This law allows a “taking” by the state of private businesses without compensation. Should we not budget also for the two decades of lawsuits that will follow? Does anyone think that Kaiser, Blue Cross, Aetna, Pacificare and other plans will just go away?

– All employed people will be taxed at the level of 11.95 percent of income between $7,000 and $200,000. The high-end people — those earning up to $200,000 a year — will be paying as much as $25,580, three times the amount that health insurance costs them now — all for a “free” statewide program.

The state does not know what it will cost to subsidize or implement the regulatory framework for this bill — that could easily offset any supposed gains from “administrative cost savings.” Since when has state administration of any sector been cost-effective? Prisons? Transportation?

– Hospitals and other nonprofit organizations will stop giving free care and health professionals will stop volunteering in free clinics in poor areas. Why not? The state is now paying for everything. The state will be taking on its back the full debt service of the state’s hospital earthquake-renewal mandate, or about $200 billion, counting construction and interest expense, without having the lead time to decide what should be renewed and what should not.

– There is not a chance that the federal government will turn over Medicare funds to California to administer. So we would end up with a two-headed monster, that is, a federal set of rules and budget, and a state set, for health care.

– All businesses that are (efficiently) self-insured will find their costs going sky-high compared with their now typical average cost of about 6 percent of payroll per employee. The new 11.95 percent tax will be noticed, and not just by high-salary employees, but by union members, too.

– This proposed law has not been funded. An additional bill is needed to “establishing financing of the system.” So, it is without the practical need to perform that this bill was passed, which makes it a “hush-puppy” to the high-minded people who want it.

So, when the governor vetoes this bill, he will be doing his part of the dance scripted for him by the Democrats, who did not for a moment think they were giving him a bill that was sound enough to implement. They then will criticize him at great length. No wonder so few people vote.

Sheila Kuehl must be a communist.