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Rod Miller's Personal Thought & Opinions

Find me in the Jib Jab Movie Hint ... at the very end sporting the only beard I've ever had -- ever!

by Rod Miller

Consider this: If you want to know where I am coming from, you need to know where I have been!

There is much to be written here ... as time permits. A look around the time will tell you much about me and how I see the world. So far, you get the long view of how I envision things to come. Anyway, here is a start for part of this page:

In my teens, I came up with the quote that I thought would make me famous. I soon held back when folks who were my confidants would chastise me with all the reasons why such a thought was impossible? That thought: "The destiny of the human race is to colonize the universe."

An early version of this site stated:

"We believe the destiny of the human race is to colonize the universe -- Some reviewers have suggested I take this line out lest others think me a 'loony toon' of some sort. Well, I have had this thought for over fifty years and it has been on this web site for several years now. Only those who are so wrapped up in the present are unwilling to see the future. The reality of dealing with the present is not really a bad way to live, but the world needs dreamers.

Based on the history of human experience, many things are predictable in the short term of generations. And that is precisely why we must pay attention to historical events and related factors to govern our daily lives. It is unwise to ignore the impact on future generations. George Washington expressed it well when he said:

"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.... It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn." --George Washington”

We believe that individualism best enables human productivity and is the way to achieve the destiny of humankind. Somehow, someday, the entire world's population must come together and evaluate the long term goals for the human race, consolidate our resources and re-direct our efforts to invade the universe. Hope is one thing, but historical reality suggests this won't happen. I said THAT! Me, the eternal optimist? Fraid so.

Read on ... I feel vindicated:

Humans must spread out in space

Tue Jun 13, 2006 10:38 PM ET ... News Release HONG KONG - The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday. Humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and a colony on Mars in the next 40 years, the British scientist told a news conference. "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," added Hawking, who came to Hong Kong to a rock star's welcome Monday. Tickets for his lecture Thursday were sold out.

Hawking said that if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth. "It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species," Hawking said. "Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of." The 64-year-old scientist — author of the global best-seller "A Brief History of Time" — uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end. However, Alan Guth, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Hawking's latest observations were something of a departure from his usual research and more applicable to survival over the long-term. "It is a new area for him to look at," Guth said. "If he's talking about the next 100 years and beyond, it does make sense to think about space as the ultimate lifeboat." But, he added, "I don't see the likely possibility within the next 50 years of science technology making it easier to survive on Mars and on the moon than it would be to survive on earth." "I would still think that an underground base, for example in Antarctica, would be easier to build than building on the moon," Guth said. Joshua Winn, an astrophysicist at MIT, agreed.

"The prospect of colonizing other planets is very far off, you must realize," he said. Hawking's "work has been highly theoretical physics, not in astrophysics or global politics or anything like that," Winn added. "He is certainly stepping outside his research domain."

Hawking's comments Tuesday were reminiscent of the work of American astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who was a believer in the existence of

extraterrestrial intelligence. Sagan, a Cornell University professor and NASA-decorated scientist who died in 1996, noted that organic molecules, the kind that life on Earth is dependent on, appear to be almost everywhere in the solar system. But his work also focused on the search for habitable worlds and intelligent life beyond the solar system, as well as theories about life's origins, ideas popularized in his best-selling 1985 novel, "Contact," which was made into a film starring Jodie Foster.