What an odd confluence of efforts these summer days bring. Humans everywhere are busy doing those things humans do both good and bad. The savagery of senseless killing continues to blemish our planet, erupting in one unsightly corner of the world after another. Some of this recent carnage includes one of the prominent contributing partners to the International Space Station, and this development further confounds our peaceful extension into space. The illogic of waste stinks just like a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad, squandering precious resources desperately needed elsewhere while the orbital momentum we have so carefully accrued threatens to stall overhead.
On the other hand (if not side of the world!), the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat meet again in their quadrennial Olympic conjunction. This time around the host for the games is magnificent debutante China, and to date their delivery remains almost perfect. Where athletes can compete in peace no soldiers have to break it. The dissonance between our greatest accomplishment and our most insidious injury stands in such glaring contrast nothing at all good recommends the latter. If we could all learn to work together to improve the place the rewards would be far greater than "firesticks" can ever be. (That challenge unfortunately includes two four letter words for some people, "learn" and "work.")
Among those rewards will be the return to Luna. Getting back to the moon will not be easy no matter the metric used to measure success. It's easy - relatively easy! - for one sufficiently motivated and resourceful nation to plant a few footprints. It will take so many more steps to plant a few plants, flowering under the same sun but on a completely different world.
That dream will require not only the resources of several nations but also (and more importantly) the will to drive our current leadership. We're in need of an inspirational leader to (1) come along and (2) point us back towards math and science. How long the world can deteriorate down its currently doomed path seems about the only answer provided by "staying the course." And it's a pretty useless answer, let me tell you.
Instead try and visualize moon blooms, tended by busy little moon bees making moon honey, undistracted by inane politics as they come together to conjure the selfless production of a divine treasure. And if that's something that buds and bugs can do in their bellies, even the sky's no limit as to what an allegedly intelligent species can do.