Plains of San Agustin

This is one of the massive radio antennas at the Very Large Array Radio Telescope on the Plains of San Agustin West of Socorro, New Mexico. I visit the place every few years because it is a beautiful scene that has blended a great landscape and science. Read about the VLA here.
Many people have seen this facility in the movie "Contact", which is one of my favorite sci-fi movies. It was based on a book by Carl Sagan. The VLA holds open houses every year and it is really worth the two and a half hour trip to take the tour. Like the space shuttle, this place needs a lot of updating to the digital age, but I understand that is underway. It is a powerful tool for unlocking secrets.

I got to thinking about the VLA today after reading an intersting book review in the New York Times of "Abducted, How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," by Susan Clancy, Harvard University Press. The review says, "At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, at some personal psychological level, true."

I also recently read that researchers have discovered a "religion gene" and that it accounts for about 40% of the variabiilty of a person's religiousness. Read about it here.

So it seems that some of us are just sort of hardwired for spirtuality and beliefs.

I think this makes it easier for me to understand some people's convictions that President bush and his crew are doing the right thing for this country. They are just hard wired to be believers I guess and there is no amount of debate that will change them. Altough bush's poll numbers continue to nosedive there are some that will stick with him no matter what. So, why fret too much about them? Forget them as the Congressional mid term elections approach. We can't change their minds because they are hardwired. Lets concentrate on everyone else voting to make us a great country again and a member of the International community.

FLASH!

There is a national peanut surplus. First Clovis looses an airbase and now Portales will face a glut of peanuts. Read it here.