Rosetta.... the answer to all things. Maybe.

For a scientific marvel it probably has no equal. The equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet. Yesterday, amid scenes of near hysteria at Space .H.Q. Europe, the Rosetta space probe touched down on a hurtling asteroid and managed to stay upright.
Sort of. It is in a precarious position in the shadow of a looming, grey colored rock, held in place by a couple of thru-bolts. It's gravitational weight one hundred times less than that of earth.(it could bounce back into space again given a small jolt)
What is all the commotion about? Well apart from the technical achievement of landing on an asteroid, this expensive little baby is supposed to unveil some of the hidden secrets of how the universe began. Did asteroids transport the first water droplets to earth? Are they part of  far-off planets that had living microbes on them?
Do they consist of special metal and minerals that were generated a split second after the Big Bang. Are there fossils of space creatures riding on their crusty exterior?
The stuff of super-heated imaginations, allied with an almost limitless budget, to produce Buck Rogers fiction.
Meanwhile down on planet earth real life goes on. More mass shootings, more wars, more Ebola, more Middle East mayhem, more.....
Please land the Rosetta in Central Park New York and fix some problems there before we waste another billion dollars chasing rocks in space.

Jubilate.

Ian

And the wall came tumbling down!

Twenty five years ago today the Berlin Wall tumbled down... figuratively and then literally. On that day, the head of the East German security gave permission to the long imprisoned citizens of East Berlin to visit the Western Sector of the city and then return to paradise in the East. He probably expected that the folk would go on a sight-seeing tour to the Brandenburg Gate and be safely in their beds that same night.
Instead, like the Biblical Exodus of old, thousands streamed across the border  under the gaze of the astonished guards, linked up with their long distanced cousins and began a revolution that finally brought about the collapse of the old Soviet Union.

Freedom is a glorious thing for those who enjoy it. The loss of it brings the most exquisite ache to the human heart.
The next time we sing "O Canada" and repeat the words "God keep our land glorious and free," consider the price that was paid for that to take place in our own great country.

Jubilate.

Ian