Well, it’s the second day of the work week now, and I’m writing my second blog post of the week, which I guess makes sense.  At least they line up ordinally and such like.  It’s not important, though, not even on most small scales.

I suppose I could probably imagine a scale or unit of measurement on which it would be at least relatively important.  For instance, it may be very important compared to the meandering of a single grain of dust on the surface of Mars in one of its very fast (and yet not very forceful*) winds, blown from one spot to settle in a new one three meters from where it had lain for 100 years‒Martian years‒and there remain for another 100 years before being moved again, in a new direction.  Call it the Martian Dust-mote’s Walk if you will.

On a cosmic scale, though, it’s all pretty much equally negligible, as is most everything else other than the cosmos itself.

Speaking of the cosmos, it turns out that yesterday was Carl Sagan Day (i.e., Carl Sagan’s birthday) and I didn’t even know it when I wrote my post.  I suppose that also doesn’t really matter, but it’s nice to remember Professor Sagan.  Though, it is bittersweet to remember him, since he died far too early.

I feel that we could have benefited from his intellect and insight and compassion and optimism‒his wisdom‒over the past few decades since he died.  Sagan succumbed to myelodysplasia when he was 62, with his mental capacity as fully intact as his illness would allow.  He was a serious scientist, a brilliant teacher, and a leader by example.

When I think of some of the prominent old bastards who have lived on and on despite their detriment to the world‒like Rupert Murdoch and Mitch McConnell, to say nothing of Taco Piggy‒while Carl Sagan died so young, it really makes me astonished that anyone believes in any manner of “natural justice”.

John Lennon is supposed to have said, “It’ll all be all right in the end.  If it’s not all right, it’s not the end”, or words to that effect.  However, he is also reputed to have said that life is what happens while you’re making other plans.  The latter seems to apply more to his own story than the former, I fear, for he was stolen from the world far younger and far earlier even than Carl Sagan’s myelodysplasia took him.  And in Lennon’s case, I do think the word “stolen” applies unequivocally.

Don’t even ask what I imagine doing to the man who killed John Lennon.  I’ll just say that I would use all of my medical knowledge and skill and every available resource to keep him alive and begging for death for as long as physically possible.

I’ll admit that would probably not be in the spirit of John Lennon, but I do not feel obliged to follow the spirit of John Lennon.  I love his music, and I rue the fact that we (and he) lost out on potential decades of even more of that beautiful music.  But John Lennon is not my spiritual guru; I don’t necessarily feel beholden to whatever moral philosophy he might have preferred***.

My spiritual guru would be more like Hannibal Lecter, to be honest.  Not that I share his proclivities or even a curiosity about eating humans; I don’t think I’d be able to get past how unhealthy and virus-laden most humans are, to be honest.  I suppose I might eat someone if it were absolutely necessary to survive (and if my survival was relatively worth the effort overall), but I would want them cooked thoroughly.  I mean, well done, cooked enough to kill anything short of the most extreme of extremophiles.

But would I be willing to use Hannibal Lecter style methods on the man who murdered John Lennon?  Absolutely.  If anything, I think Lecter’s way is too kind and gentle for that particular purulent exudate.

Okay, well, on that charming and upbeat note, I’ll call this post to a close, since there’s no sign of me going anywhere more positive.  I will say, though, that whenever it’s doable, whenever you can act on it without net negative consequences, follow the teachings (and the example) of Carl Sagan, not of Hannibal Lecter.  It’s probably not a great idea to be too influenced by me, either.

*Martian winds are known to be fast relative to our typical winds, and so people here on Earth often imagine incredibly forceful gales that would lift and buffet and possibly wreck even heavy spaceships.  This shows up in movies sometimes.  But the Martian winds, while fast, pack little punch; the Martian atmosphere is much less dense than that of Earth‒about 1 to 1.5% as dense‒so its winds are not intimidating.  That low density is part of why Martian winds can be so fast, despite relatively low impetus.  The uneven solar heating of Mars, the driver of winds there** as it drives winds on Earth, is not terribly extreme.  Not only is Mars’s cross-sectional area much smaller than that of Earth but also Mars is significantly farther away from the sun, and the strength of the sunlight falls off as the square of the distance from the sun.  So, since Mars is about one and a half times as far from the sun as is Earth, the intensity of the sunlight is 1/2.25, or 4/9 as much, as it is here.

**On planets like Jupiter, which is even farther from the sun, winds are driven mainly by the planet’s intense internal heat and its very rapid rotation (despite having ten times the diameter of Earth, it has a 10-hour day).  Now those are winds that could carry you to Oz and back.

***And he might not have minded my attitude.  After all, in the version of Revolution that’s on the White Album (which I think is the earliest version, but I’m far from sure) he sings, “But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…in.”  Maybe he was conflicted.  Or maybe he recognized how non-unitary human morality and even identity is.  I don’t know.