Tea Parties

The Tea Party Protests are stupid. There I’ve said it. It’s short, sweet and to the point.

I’m not saying that people are wrong to be unhappy with the amount of taxes they pay. And I’m not saying that people don’t have a right to protest. But teabags? Just plain dumb.

Remember that the reason for the Boston Tea Party was to protest a TAX on TEA. The colonists were dumping tea into the harbor causing economic damage and refusing to allow anyone to pay a tax they felt was unfair. They were destroying the offensive product.  How do these tea parties to day do any of that? If you don’t like paying taxes, then don’t. Go outside and burn a tax return. Or determine how much of your tax bill goes towards spending you disapprove of and deduct that from your return, don’t pay it and then go publicly announce what you’ve done.

If you want to protest unfair taxes, TAKE A RISK. The protesters in the Boston Tea Party did, and Henry David Thoreau did when he refused to pay taxes to support a war he opposed. Your tea bags mean nothing today.

Inaugural annoyances

There will be thousands of blogs and opinion pieces analyzing Barack Obama’s Inauguration, so I won’t take time doing that here. I just want to point my own little observations.

1. President Obama said “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.” While he is the 44th President, only 43 have taken the oath. Grover Cleveland took it twice (22nd and 24th president). Did Pres. Obama overlook this, did he not know, or did he just think Americans would be too confused if he said “43″ since he is #44?  

2. As part of ABC’s coverage, they occasionally panned the crowd. Only once did they label a person they showed: Caroline Kennedy. They did not however label Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who is not only a congressman, but was also a prominent Civil Rights Activist.  I find that not only annoying but an insult to Rep. Lewis. Who else did the cameras focus on that didn’t get identified for us?

3. Really Chief Justice Roberts? You couldn’t write the Oath of Office down? That was a ridiculous spectacle.

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, these aren’t big deals really, but still…

Underground Martian Microbes FTW!

Water carved channels on Mars. Photo courtesy of NASA.

Today at 2PM, NASA scientists will discuss the presence of methane in Mars’s atmosphere. Methane could be produced in a couple of ways on Mars: through geologic activity, or by LIVING ORGANISMS!!!! I kind of hope it’s living organisms. Just want to put that in writing, in case the obnoxious use of all caps and extraneous punctuation didn’t make that clear.  How could methane mean life? Well, a type of single-celled organism known as a methanogen produces methane as a part of of its metabolic process.  It is possible that this type of single-celled organism is alive and well on Mars, living in ice under the planet’s crust. We’ll hear more on the matter today from NASA.

Life. So close to our own planet. If it really exists, life on another planet has the potential to change everything about the way we view the universe and ourselves.  If life has gone undedetected for so long on our neighboring planet, what other wonders await, right in our own solar system? How does God fit into this new equation? What ethical dilemmas will we face as we continue to explore? Premature questions at the moment. But in a year…who knows?