There are 10¹¹ stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

— Richard Feynman
US educator & physicist (1918 – 1988)

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars — billions upon billions of stars.

— Carl Sagan
Astronomer, author, & media personality (1934 – 1996)

Even though Wikipedia claims 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way, Feynman’s number varies by only a couple factors of two.

Now:
According to Oxfam, there has been $8.4 Trillion spent on bailouts. So, call that about US $21/star in the Milky Way. That’s a lot of money.

Oh, but doesn’t stop there. According to the Office of the Comptroller, the “notional value of derivatives held by U.S. commercial banks” is around $200.4 trillion. So call that US $500/star in the Milky Way.

As has been widely reported, DK Matai, the Chairman of the ACTA Open, has published that the outstanding value of the derivative market worldwide is US $1.1 Quadrillion. That’s a cool US $2,750/per star in the Milky Way galaxy.

Maybe I’m a curmudgeon, but I’m getting heartily sick of the exhortation to “save the planet” (and even the debate about cretinous comments by Rep. Michele Bachmann about salvation).

But here’s the deal — when people say “save the planet,” they don’t mean that. Come on. We puny humans can’t destroy the planet. Sure, we can poison the surface, and make it inhospitable for many of the species who presently inhabit the place (ourselves included). Yes, we can wipe out forests and cause extinctions. But the planet’s been through worse — much worse — and probably will go through worse again.

So let’s can the “save the planet” talk and say what we really mean: preserving conditions that keep us comfortable.

Rant over.

Person 1: We didn’t do as well in the yoga competition last weekend.

Person 2: Really?

Person 1: The room was kinda cold. Since I do Bikram, it really cost me against the Power Yoga guys.

Person 2: That sucks.

Person 1: Well, it’s OK. I’ve started doing some cold-room training for the statewide in February. I’m feeling good about it.

Person 2: Well, go get ’em. Show them what yoga’s all about, man!

Little do they know, I’m going to show up and school them all in the freestyle personal meditation category!

Sarah was kind enough to send me this link: Clowns Kicked KKK Asses, which really made my day. You see, it’s not just the great story of neo-Nazi idiots being mocked and overwhelmed, but it’s a story that has a bit of personal history. You see, I know their leader.

Back in 1986, I was in Marburg, Germany as part of the Pomona College study abroad program. As a college radical, a leftist and activist, I was apprehensive to find that Alex Linder, right-wing columnist for the student paper, would be on the program at the same time.

It was around that time that “diversity” was becoming a hot topic on campus, and “politically correct” was not a phrase in the common parlance, but was still used by activists to chasten one another. Pomona College was, in many ways, the kind of institution for “elite liberals” that the Right loves to attack: in theory, everything was open to academic scrutiny, but go too far off the beaten path, and there would be howling^*. Still, philosophy professors could write articles about our debt to Christian Society and Marxists could write blistering attacks on US crimes in Central America, all in the same student paper.

Now, Alex had always had a talent for putting his literary foot in his mouth. In those latter days of the Reagan years, the voices of the Right were Wally George and his rival/crony Morton Downey Jr, whose combative styles were an inspiration to Alex. He tried to write in-your-face political columns for the student paper, attacking affirmative action, for example, and would offend everyone with his unique style of insulting and blunt language, punctuated with as many abstruse words as he could mix in. He could start with a valid question (e.g., if discrimination is bad, then why is reversing this discrimination not bad?), but would blunder around until it sure looked like he was suggesting that only WASPs were capable of being educated.

So, in Marburg, I had some trepidation about being stuck in a small group with Alex. At first, he and I kept on civil, guarded terms. But as the weeks wore on, we discovered we had a fair amount in common. We both love esoteric words. We both collected quotations. His tended towards Mencken, while mine towards Lu Xun (I’d just had a course in Chinese Literature in translation), but he still surprised me. One of his favorites was Steinbeck: “It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.” He had a sense of humor. He was an entertaining guy to be around.

We both liked arguing philosophical issues. In person, Alex wasn’t the bullying, insulting caricature that his articles would suggest. He was articulate, and thought about things. We both came into the semester regarding the other as an inflexible ideologue, I think, but found that, in discussion, we could respect one another’s points (if not conclusions). In fact, we still rarely agreed, but I became convinced that the more extreme positions he put forth in his student paper articles were less rabid opinions than poorly expressed ideas. Needless to say, I was wrong.

In any case, over the semester, Alex and I became friends. We’d play chess quite a bit, and he’d almost always beat me. Being a semester abroad, and in Germany, we did a lot of drinking, and this was one place I could best Alex. Scrawny kid that I was, I could handle two beers — one more than he. Alex was often at his most amusing when drunk — but, in retrospect, also at his scariest.

In Berlin, that May, after drinking plenty of Hefeweizen mit ein schuß grün, we were staggering back along the KuDam, when Alex lurched into a police officer who was investigating the scene (a motorcycle had crashed into a sidewalk display case). Alex launched into a tirade about how the polizei should show more respect — after all, we won the war, etc. Mumbling excuses for him, I dragged him off before the officers decided to dispense some justice.

That fall, back on campus, I defended Alex and even his writing to many of my friends. They thought I was crazy. I thought he was just trying to stir things up, and perhaps a bit clumsy with his use of language. At least one article had the school administration distancing themselves from his opinions^**. He was the most popular Public Enemy in the student paper — they even dedicated an April Fools issue to lampooning him.

Alex graduated a year ahead of me. We wrote sporadically, but fell out of touch sometime in the year after my graduation. Last I had heard, he went to intern at American Spectator, where he felt ill used by the proto-neo-cons. Years later, I saw his name associated with the Vanguard News Network and their slogan “Just right. No Jews.” I contemplated writing him, but decided that there was really no purpose to it. I did make a point of admitting to some friends of how wrong I’d been.

So. How could I avoid a smile upon reading this news?

^* Eventually, I’ll post some stories here of my own run-ins with authority and the ruthless defense of the image of diversity.
^** Then again, before I was able to graduate, I was chastised for similar sins.

Facing the main street at a church up the road from here is one of those illuminated signboards with the movable letters. For years, it amused me with its inadvertent proclamation:

SUN.WORSHIP
10-11 WEEKLY
ALL WELCOME

I’d always had to resist stealing the punctuation. “Get thee behind me, Loki!” I’d say quietly under my breath. And somehow I forbore.

Evidently, however, I was not the only one who interpreted the sign that way. So it’s been changed:

SUNDAY
WORSHIP 10-11
ALL WELCOME

But I still wonder if it bothers them that they’ve just abstracted the misunderstanding by one level. After all, the word “Sunday” originates in Pagan sun worship (refs: here which links to other sources, and numerous others).