More than likely you will never get the chance to travel into space, but your name and a few well-chosen words can travel to the stars!

The Kepler Mission, NASA’s first exploration to detect Earth-like planets around solar-like stars, will launch from Kennedy Space Center in February 2009. After a 372-orbit around the Sun, the satellite will drift slowly away from the Earth, and in about 25 years it will be 300 million kilometers away from the Earth, and on its voyage to find other worlds that can sustain or already have life. Join the mission and submit your name and brief comment. Here’s what I submitted!

Our search for other planets that promise the opportunity to support life or already have life is a natural expansion of our being. As humans we are drawn to challenges, to the unknown, to the possible and the impossible. It is vital for us to explore space, and to do so in a spirit of cooperation and growth, not as a government, a military, or an industrial action, but as students with a classroom that expands into the cosmos and hold mysteries and lessons for eternity.

If we do not find life elsewhere in the universe, then we must re-evaluate our culture here on this very special planet. We must cease wars and choose to better ourselves, mentally, physically, and emotionally, because if we can discern no life out there, then we must spread and grow a healthy civilization throughout the galaxies, but with more care and wisdom than we have done with our home.

If we do find life in the universe, then it is incumbent upon us to respect and learn about that life. We must not think ourselves better than other life forms regardless of how strange or primitive they may seem. We must respect their habitats and learn from all the mistakes we made as we explored our own planet. We have the opportunity to do better, to do no harm.

I hope we are not alone in the cosmos. However, whichever way this story turns out, the people of Earth should take a collective deep breath and present ourselves to the cosmos as children who need to learn and as leaders who can inspire and cultivate life.

Google Books is sadly ahead of its time. The flap that went up when Google announced that it was going to start scanning books and making them accessible online is representative of the turmoil that precedes paradigm shifts. Lights bulbs were going to ruin society. Telephones were devices of the devil. Perhaps to the practicing Luddite, this might be true: technological advances have simultaneously increased and decreased our quality of life, but that is an argument for another time.

Google Books, according to publishers and some authors, was set to infringe on copyright and if allowed to proceed with abandon may bring down the entire industry. This fear echoes those of the movie and music companies who likewise look at the Web as both a boon and enemy of their business. That music companies have been suing their own customers is disgusting. But it is all part of the upheaval.

Personally, I welcome and embrace Google’s vision, and I am sad that I will not live long enough to enjoy the commonplace occurrence of books online. Electronic readers are not necessarily the answer, although they are handy.

But it is the ultimate sharing of information and art and literature that makes the Web so enticing and so efficient and so potentially egalitarian.

In my view, Google is embarking on creation of the largest cyber library in the world, albeit with books available simultaneously to the multitudes. This scares a lot of people. Why will anyone want to buy a book if you get it online?

Such narrow-minded thinking shows a lack of understanding of the reader and even researcher. Such thinking also presupposes that most of want to sit in front of our computers all day, and NEWS FLASH: we don’t!

The creators of technology have yet to come up with a screen that is truly easy on the eyes or a sitting arrangement that easy on the butt. So after a while even the most addicted of cyber-surfers ends up in comfy chair with a cuppa and a real, printed book or periodical. People will always want to own a book, for the beauty of it, for the ease of being at their fingertips, or because the hum of the computer is just too much.

On the other hand the efficiency, economic opportunities, and energy savings of being able to do research online is invaluable. Let’s say I am charged up to do a complicated research project, but I lack the funds to travel to locations where one-of-kind texts are housed. If I can call that work up online, I can do the research within my means. And the libraries all over the world housing delicate texts should jump at the chance to have these works online, because it means fewer hands will be turning the pages and the originals will persevere. (Clearly special methods are in order as scanning such texts can degrade them.)

While it is true that many books circulate through interlibrary loan, consider the cost of that process. Someone has to prepare it, send it, and then it must be sent back. Lots of fuel being wasted there. And while a useful service, with interlibrary loan, you have a finite time to do your research, usually a month, sometimes less. Then the book needs to be returned to the lending library, which could be in Oregon and you’re in Georgia! More fuel necessary if you want it again later. With the book online, you can access it as needed for your research. Some scientific research books are terribly expensive, upwards of $250, and if they are not housed at your local library or university (if you even live near a university), you must rely on this interlibrary loan system. Wouldn’t it be simpler to access the text online?

One of my greatest yearnings as a reader is a searchable index for fiction. How wonderful to be able to look for a specific passage or to easily find the place where a particular character was first introduced. Books online allow you to do that.

I think the publishing industry, so mired in its primitive old-school ways, should take a cue from radio. Set up a licensing system like music industry’s ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers). Create pool licensing funds and distribute the royalties. The ASCAP system is complex, but it seems to work. I don’t pay to hear the Beatles on the radio, except to listen to the ads from that station. I listen and so do hundreds of thousands of people—at the same time! Selling a book one at a time will someday be a quaint notion. There is money to be made through free Web distribution, but publishers must let go of their fear of loss and embrace new and different opportunities.

Every book should be available online, and someday publishers and authors will realize this. Google is a visionary pioneer. What looks frightening now will in the not-to-distant future be ho-hum ordinary.

This week there has been a lot of discussion by the media about the meaning of the word “patriotic” and by association the accusation of “unpatriotic.” With the presidential elections looming and political rhetoric waving like flag, the concept of patriotism is undergoing microscopic disassemblage.

Did you know that you can make a peace dove by folding an “I voted” sticker like origami? Now that’s patriotic!

“Patriot” seems to be rather amorphous and bows to the whims of popular trends. Supposedly the word is derived from the Latin, “patriota,” which translates as “fellow countryman” and in the early 1600s came to mean a “loyal but disinterested supporter of one’s country.” However, as early as the mid-1700s and into the mid1800s, “patriot” became a word of derision and was used in unflattering ways.

Americans seem make the most use of the word and nowadays attach to it a high degree of emotionality. Our own president has called people and groups “unpatriotic” for voicing their own opinions or speaking out against the current administration’s policies. During the past 8 year, people have been detained for protesting the war, for wearing t-shirts that protest the war, and for disrupting public events. Each time, in addition to the possible legal infraction, these people have been called “unpatriotic” by one or more of the president’s cabinet. Even members of congress have been called “unpatriotic.”

Did you know? The USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym for the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.

However, as one dialogue unfolded on The Diane Rehm Show on July 3, I was at least pleased to hear that many disdain the accusation that those of us who speak out or differ with our leaders are less than patriotic. Quite the opposite: one caller voiced my opinion exactly, which is that speaking out is uber-patriotic.
Our ancestors fought and died for our right to speak out, and we should be angered that our elected officials choose to mock and belittle that right.

Patriotism is not about revenge and killing people; it’s not about fighting for oil; and it is not about falling in line to watch the emperor walk naked down the street. It’s about speaking our hearts and caring about our friends and neighbors and all the people who make up this country, even the ones we don’t agree with.

I like that Obama has reaffirmed that all Americans are patriotic despite where they may stand on various issues. That’s a start in a healthy direction.

A lot of us feel patriotic when we say, “Support the troops. Bring them home,” or “I’m not going to shop ‘til I drop” just because the President and Congress sent me $1200.