Finding Another Prison.
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I am right-brain, which means that of the two hemispheres that make up our brains, my right hemisphere is dominant. When I think about things, I see things from a global perceptive as opposed to left-brain people who concentrate on particular details. I only look at details when I need to get particular data to inform my global picture.
This is a picture of how our hemispheres function. Another gift beyond seeing things globally is that right brain people have is the ability to connect seemingly unrelated pieces of data. For example, recently I created a section on my webpage called On Seeing the Light. Vincent van Gogh and I struggled with living life...until we both saw the light. Here is an example of the way my brain functions. For the past month, I have read and watched hundreds of newscasts about the missing Malaysian flight 370.
As I write this essay, they are centering their search and recovery efforts a thousand miles west of Perth, Australia.
While they think that they may have found some debris of the missing plane, it got my mind thinking about Australia. I have tons of intellectual debris floating in my mind about that continent. Being right-brain, I have spent time thinking about the Aboriginal natives. They have been in Australia for more than 40,000 years. However, the Dutch explorer, Willem Janszoons, discovered that huge landmass in 1606. Then my mind wandered off concerned about the term, discovered. It sounds like the Dutch discovered Australia in 1606 as if it was not there prior to their getting there. That is a form of racism at two levels. First, many people knew about that continent for 40,000 years including and excluding those that lived there. Second, the issue of those people, the locals who had lived there for millennia, were not respected as real people. They were just natives. Then I drifted off to Jefferson's "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." What was self-evident was that blacks and women were not equal. Returning to Australia, to make matter worse, the British came in 1770 and used the eastern half of present-day Australia as a penal colony for criminals so despicable that the British did not want those criminals even in Europe. Therefore, Australia was literally the end of the world at least from Britain in the 18th century. The British considered Australia a safe place for a prison. Again, it did not matter if the Aboriginals were there; they did not matter.
Australia divided between the Dutch and English Then my mind morphed to Cathy Freeman an Aboriginal runner who won a gold medal in the 400 meters in the Sydney Olympics. The British and the Australians had issues with all Aborigines; it was their form of racism. Nevertheless, it seemed poetic justice that a woman with the last name, Freeman, confronted the Aboriginal issue. The British treatment of the Aborigines parallels the American treatment of blacks. Then I wondered what Jefferson would have thought about this black female.
Cathy Freeman in the Sydney Olympics The Australians wanted to discover a final solution to the Aboriginal problem. However, their experiment for a final solution was not killing them but kidnapping their newborn children. This started in 1910 and did not end until 1971. The time period was known in Australia as the Stolen Generation, which lasted for over six decades. This form of racism was problematic at two levels. Aside from the racism, the Australians decided to assimilate Aborigines into the white society. The racist whites, who saw themselves as better genetically than the Aboriginals, kidnapped around ten percent of babies of the Aborigines. Then they gave the kidnapped children to white families who raised them as whites. Therefore, the sins of the father are visited on the subsequent generations. If Aboriginals are not equal to whites, the whites raised them as whites. When the children grew up, the kidnapped Aboriginals would marry other whites. Thus, the Australians mixed Aboriginals, who they did not see as equals, with whites. Did not someone see that racist stupidity? The joke was on the whites. In the next couple of generations, all Aussies will have Aboriginal blood mixed with their blood. Interestingly, the government finally recognized how unconscionable creating the Stolen Generation was but would not officially apologize for it. All of these thoughts and feelings swirled around my mind like debris in the Indian Ocean when by happenstance, I came across several articles about a dwarf planet being located named 2012 VP113. You noticed that I did not say discovered to avoid the haughtiness of discovering an existent item like Australia. Now, back to being right brain...right brain people are not into the sciences. I had to take some science in college. I took a 10-hour geology class when I was a freshman. I have had over a dozen years in post high school education. The geology was the very first and the very last science class that I have ever taken...or will ever take. While I did alright in the class, thinking in very compartmental ways is not my forte being right brain. Having said that I love science...seen from a global perspective. For example, I spent a lot of time attempting understand the removal of Pluto as a planet in our solar system, which occurred in August 2006 in Prague. I generally grasped what the scientists are telling us. Pluto is not a planet because of not "clearing the neighborhood around its orbit," which is one of three requirements needed to call an object in space a planet according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The clearing the neighborhood has to do with the Kuiper belt which Pluto enters along with many other objects. Okay, I told you that right-brain and not a great scientist. While Pluto is not a planet, we do have dwarf planets like 90377 Sedna. In addition, we now have now located 2012 VP113, which further troubles my right hemisphere. Take some time to analyze the following drawing the following caption.
An orbit diagram for the outer solar system. The sun and terrestrial planets are at the center. Solid Now, 2012 VP113 is another located dwarf planet, which is thought to be in the inner Oort cloud. Now, the inner Oort cloud is just a theory or hypothesis. The following set of photos show 2012 VP113. Now, had I known where to look, I bet that I might have located 2012 VP113.
These images show the discovery of 2012 VP113 taken about 2 hours apart on Nov. 5, 2012. The motion of 2012 VP113 2012 VP113 has the distinction of having been nicknamed Biden due to the 2012 VP in its name. In addition, there is a discussion about whether 2012 VP113 is a dwarf planet or not. However, all agree that it is a detached trans-Neptunian object (TNOs).
The Biden TNO is in an orbit around the sun, which takes 11,400 years to circumnavigate the sun. Another way of showing the great distance of its orbit is that it is about 949 AUs from the sun at its furthest point. You are probably wondering what an AU is. AU stands for astronomical unit, which is 93-million miles or the distance from the Earth to the sun. The Biden TNO is 949 AUs of 93 million miles away from the sun. That seems even to a right-brain person a great distance. Biden TNO is about 186-miles wide and 621-miles long. Finally, after all the processing in my right hemisphere, I have gotten all the various pieces pulled together starting with the missing Malaysian flight 370. The British choose Australia in the 18th century as a penal institution. Nearly three centuries later in the 21st century, we have a comparable place to house the radical right. We can ship them to the Biden TNO. They can talk about Obama being born in Kenya or that we do not need healthcare reform. However, 949 AUs from America would be like how the British felt shipping criminals to Australia over two centuries ago.
Visit the On Seeing the Light page to read more about this topic.
Forrest Gump, "Stupid is as stupid does." Visit the Stupid is As Stupid Does page to read more about this topic. 04/24/14 Follow @mountain_and_me |
