Cold and Windy; Florida Desire; Dolly; Cups Miscounted; A Billion Earths; Religious Questions from Finland

Bitter cold and windy.  In the teens. To hell with this, I'm moving to Florida. (I say that every year, but never do so. ) I still remember, a number of years ago, it was very cold in Baltimore and snowing a blizzard, but our plane took off and we flew to Saint Petersburg, Florida.  When we exited that plane, it was a balmy 75 degrees.  Within a half hour we were attending a cookout.  It was as though we had died and gone to heaven.

We visited our friends and relatives in Florida... and then.... the big hurricane came and wiped them out!

Here are the main reasons that we do not migrate to Florida:

Violent hurricanes.

Boa Constrictors.

Mosquitoes.

Alligators.

Heat Stroke.

Sun Burn.


Some Stuff:

Quotes:

Dolly Parton:  "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

Arnold Mckinnon (CEO Norfolk Southern): "Be a contrarian.  If everybody says it, you might want to question it."

Miscounted!

According to the New Yorker:  "Every election year since 2004, the Monogram Shop... has kept a careful tally of its sales of three-dollar reusable plastic cups emblazoned with the candidates' names and logos... For the past three elections, whichever candidate's cup has sold best has become President"

So, just before Election Day, the Clinton cup sales were way ahead of Trump's.  But.. look what happened?  Just goes to prove the old saying:  "Don't count your cups until they runneth over."

Counted!

NASA astronomers have now projected a figure of one billion as the number of possible "earths" existing in the Milky Way, which is only one galaxy among billions of galaxies.  So far, 4,696 of these earth-like planets have been identified.  One of them, Kepler-452b seems to be the most earth-like so far.  Unfortunately, it is 1,400 light years away.

One year at Kepler-452b lasts 385 days.  Like earth, it orbits in the so-called Goldilocks Zone, the region where conditions are "just right."

Questions:

Mensan Heikki Kauppinen, from Finland, asked these questions in the Mensa Bulletin for June 1977:

01.  Because of entropy.. why wouldn't the universe, if it has lasted forever.. be all leveled out?

02.  Could there be some factor that started the creation of the universe?  Some "super intelligence?"

03.  Do you think it would be impossible for such a "super intelligence" to create everything.. atoms to stars?

04.  Do you think that a "super intelligence" created Earth?

05.  If there were such a "super intelligence," why would there have to be "evolution?"

06. "... how many different species of animal are there in the world?  More than a million.  so there are more than a million steps in the chain of evolution.  If every step is an accident, each one demanding possibly thousands of failed mutations for several being able to breed, then where are all the billions of remainders of those failed mutants?"

07.  Why are there two sexes? Wouldn't it be simpler if only one existed?

Heikki finally says: "Why think of life as a complicated sum of accidents, each of them representing almost zero probability?  Why not (to) find the easiest way - believing only that everything has been planned and built by "Super Intelligence" whose wisdom and skill is much above our knowledge and technology?  So thinking, it is easy to understand how the first cell developed and how life became more and more complex.  And, when the world was ready for him, how Man was finally created as his Creator's own picture."

(What do you think of Heikki's questions and final statement?)

....................................................................................................