Random thoughts, random topics

Just a few random thoughts today on some random topics. Recently NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope discovered there are 25,000 new, never before seen asteroids floating around up there. Reports note that 95 of these are considered "near Earth," which only means that they are within 30 million miles of us. The project cost $320 million and was launched in December so scientists could use this ultra-sensitive new technology to get a better idea of what else is out there. I guess we are not to be too concerned about the asteroids, because the scientists say they are not a threat to Earth. When we hear such things, though, we think of the science fiction movies, like Bruce Willis' Armageddon where a bunch of macho guys are sent up to blast it to pieces before it hits the Earth full force. I guess if one really is headed this way, though, we won't be able to do much but wait for it to come, since the space program isn't what it used to be. Isn't an asteroid collision what some speculate brought the end to dinosaurs on the Earth? Bet THEY didn't see it coming!

  Another cruise through news reports shows a lot of concern about teens, especially, engaging in something called "i-dosing," where they go to a website and get digital sounds that supposedly mimic the high of drugs such as marijuana or cocaine. The action is said to alter brain waves and a person's mental state. As this concern has spread, some experts (neuroscientists and others) say it's just a "virtual" experience, an "imaginary" ecstasy. I guess the biggest concern is that  people who seek out these sites, especially young people, may be led to Websites or other sources of real drugs. (Just when you think you've heard it all, something new pops up prompting worries about kids and what they are exposed to.

Finally, I saw reports about an Australian woman who posted a video about her Holocaust survivor father, Adolek Kohn, in his late 80s. The video of him visiting the concentration camp at Auschwitz is still available where he tells his accompanying grandchildren about the experience, but the really controversial one has been pulled due to copyright issues. The controversy stems from criticisms that the man and his grandchildren were "disrespectful" to those who did not survive the World War II atrocities, because the video clip depicts Adolek and the youngsters dancing at the site to the tune of "I Will Survive," the disco song. This is an old man, who survived horrors. He had the opportunity to revisit the "scene of the crimes" with his grandchildren, the family he would not have had if he had not survived the horror. He has reason to celebrate both the survival and the human spirit, and I think others made too big a deal over the dancing. Everyone who has suffered adversity of any kind (and who hasn't) can hardly deny that there are times after the storm has passed that you want to leap from the joy of having made it through. I think that's all this man did. He was not stomping on anybody's grave with disrespect. He lost members of his own family, and as he said, "I think about them every day." Sometimes people make too much of things.