Newspaper Page Text
December 4,199.1
Flagpole Magazine
Page 13
Ed’s Answers
by Ed Tant
"Anyone who stops learning is
old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone
who keeps learning stays young,"
said auto magnate Henry Ford. My
readers keep me researching and
learning something new all the time. Once again this week,
here are some answers to your questions. Keep 'em com
ing, folks, to Ed's Answers. c/o Flagpole, P.O. Box 1027,
Athens. GA 30603.
1. When is the next meteor shower?
Coming up in the wee hours of December 13 and Mis the
annual Gemmid meteor shower, so named because the
meteors seem to emanate from the constellation Gemini,
the twins. Go outside and look up after midnight on those
dates and you may see as many as 60 "shooting stars “ per
hour, according to the current issue of Astronomy maga
zine. Your best bet for viewing the leftover remnants of
comet debris is to go to a place far away from city lights.
Misnamed "shooting stars," meteors are actually bits of
rock and dust that vaporize when they hit the tenuous
traces of the atmosphere about 70 miles up. Believe it or
not. the average meteor you see at night is tiny, ranging
from the size of a grain of sand to the size of a BB pellet.
Most of the 100 million or so bits of meteoric space dust that
strike the Earth's atmosphere daily are estimated to weigh
only 0.0005 ounces, but truly big ones do get through our
veil of air on occasion. When they impact on our planet they
are called meteorites. The largest meteorites found include
a specimen found in Africa that weighs over 60 tons and a
space rock found in Greenland that vseighs in at well over
30 tons. You can bet that these cosmic stones made
brilliant fireballs as they slammed into the atmosphere.
Thousands of years ago. a meteorite impact blasted a
crater nearly a mile in diameter in what is now the desert
near Winslow, Arizona The object exploded with the force
estimated to equal a 4-megaton H-bomb. Though it could
fit easily inside a football stadium, such a meteorite hitting
in a populated area could cause a natural disaster of
unprecedented proportions. Heads up! There's a space
rock out there somewhere with our name on it — coming
sooner or later to a planet near you!
2. The universe is infinite, eternal and in harmony. Do you
think there is a god that has anything to do with this?
Beats me. It can be argued whether the universe is really
infinite, eternal and harmonious. I can't answer such a
question in a few column inches of space or at all. even
given all the space and time in the universe Investigate,
read differing philosophies and come to your own conclu
sions. Too many self-styled Christians conveniently forget
the part of their doctrine that says "judge not.' Even though
they are thankfully a minority among the v'orld's popula
tions and religions, too many intolerant ChrisT-ans push a
belief in a god that is created in the image of their own
insecure egos. Remember what writer Jules Renard said:
"I don‘t know if God exists but it would be better for His
reputation if He didn't."
3. Is the Robert Welch who founded the John Birch
Society connected with Welch’s Grape Juice?
Candy company executive Robert Welch founded the
Right wing conservative John Birch Society in 1958 Welch
lived from 1899 to 1985 but the candy company is still
around. Not related by blood or business so far as I have
been able to find out.
A Day of Humanity
International Human Rights Day takes place on Decem
ber 10. A Tuesday by all standards this year. So what, you
may ask? We won’t feel any different, after all, we live in
what we could consider a Democratic society. But it is
important to remember, even if for one day, that there are
places around the world where people are not safe in their
own homes, where they have no voting rights whatsoever,
where governments systematically abuse their citizens
human rights through torture, kidnapping and extrajudicial
executions. It is with the idea that the free of the world have
the obligation to work for the unfree that groups like Am
nesty International use the Universal Declaration Human
Rights (UDHR) to wrestle the too! of torture away from
repugnant human rights offenders.
“On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the
United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. . . Following this historic act,
the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publi
cize the text of the Declaration and ‘to cause it to be
disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally
in schools and other educational institutions, without dis
tinction based on the political status of countries or territo
ries. " — Javier P6rez de CuGllar, Secretary-General.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was cre
ated out of the world’s outrage with the atrocities committed
during World War II, and from a determination the world
over to prevent such acts from ever happening again.
But many of the free-thinking countries of the world have
not adopted the Declaration. America is one of those
countries and reasons have varied as to why the Declara
tion cannot replace that which is set out by the Constitution.
(The United States is the only country in the western
hemisphere that practices the death penalty, a practice
condemmed in the UDHR).
There are 30 articles in the Declaration beginning with
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
nghts.’ Sounds idealistic, doesn’t it? Our own constitution
holds such truths to be self-evident. While this remains the
basis of the lengthy document, other articles propose for
free and equal health care for citizens.
How does the UDHR work? Well, say a country in
Central America is a known abuser of human nghts. Regu
lar reports come from churches, families and human rights
groups that people are being tortured or executed The
greatest tool
against human
rights abusers is
the spotlight of in
ternational pres
sure. Once these
abuses are
known, strategies
are implemented
to stop the of
fender. Letters are
written, phone
calls are made. If
the government in
the righteous
spotlight has ratified the UDHR, the offender can be
brought to task as going against their own word. It makes
them look like international liars. It brings the offenses
forward and nails the offenders to the wall of justice.
On December 10, people will celebrate Human Rights
Day with a toast to freedom and for one day people will
celebrate the long strides we have taken. Atlanta is cele
brating a day earlier with an Interfaith Human Rights Prayer
Breakfast. The event is sponsored by The Concerned
Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta and the southern re
gional office of Amnesty International. The breakfast will
take place on Monday, Dec. 9 at 9:00 a.m. at Paschal’s
Hotel, 830 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. NW. The special guest
speaker is Goler Teal Butcher, Professor of Law and
Director of Graduate Programs at Howard University,
Washington, D C. Butcher is also a board member of Al.
The theme is "Women and Human Rights." The breakfast
is opened to the public and a $10 00 donation will be ap
preciated. If you’re interested in attending RSVP to 404-
876-5661.
Remember that on this day, like every day, there is a
prison cell somewhere and in that cell is a person like you
or me who is in need of human rights protection. We may
have come a long way in the last 30 years, but we have a
long way to go. Write your representative, write George
Bush and ask them what their stand is on human nghts.
What’s yours? And what are you, the free cf the world,
doing to work on behalf of the unfree?
Martah MacNeil and Hillary Meister
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