musings from an afternoon thunderstorm/bathroom reading Despite the fact that we do live in a beautiful world, it is going to hell and a handbasket. I don't even know what that saying means, but just trust me when I say it applies to our current living conditions. So in a time like this, it's good to take a minute and let your friends and family know how much you appreciate them.

On a completely other random note, I was reading on the jon the other day about the Voyager Golden Record, a time-capsule of sorts launched into space back in 1977. It has a record that includes natural sounds of this Earth, music from a New Guniea men's house song to chuck Berry doing "Johnny B. Goode" It passed Pluto in 1990 and left our solar system in 2003. It is now in empty space, with forty thousand years expected to elapse before it or makes a close approach to another solar system. Do you have any concept of how amazing this is? Blows my mind. When it was launched Carl Sagan noted, "The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this 'bottle' into the cosmic 'ocean' says something very hopeful about life on this planet." How inspiring, no? That's my deep thought for the day.  ¶ 8/16/2005 05:00:00 PM