Earth Day 2013: The Earth Miraculously Survives Yet Another Year

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Yesterday I forgot it was Earth Day.  I had neglected to alert the audience and to remind you that yesterday was Earth Day.  Now, as I used to say on this program back on the old station in the old country, Earth Day is the day that it is fun to try and destroy the planet to prove that you can’t.  Think about that for just a moment before we get into what the entire known universe is talking about today, which is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  Just think about that.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Yesterday I forgot it was Earth Day.  I had neglected to alert the audience and to remind you that yesterday was Earth Day.  Now, as I used to say on this program back on the old station in the old country, Earth Day is the day that it is fun to try and destroy the planet to prove that you can’t.  Think about that for just a moment before we get into what the entire known universe is talking about today, which is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  Just think about that.  If all the misery and destruction, some of it creative and intentional destruction, that is visited upon our fair terra firma, mankind, even after detonating nuclear devices on land and sea, has been unsuccessful in what you could say was his quest to annihilate or destroy his homeland.

When you’re told that the planet is fragile.  Oh, my god, don’t drop a plastic bag in the ocean.  It’ll kill a turtle!  I’m sure there will be other turtles to replace the one that choked on my sandwich baggie.  Just think about that for a moment.  The planet has been able to survive everything that the known universe can throw at it.  It’s survived being engulfed in fire.  It’s survived being an entire block of ice.  At one point in time this planet was ice, mile thick ice from pole to shining pole.  It has survived being bombarded by comets.  It has survived being bombarded by asteroids.  It has survived being bombarded by what scientists believe was the largest object to ever hit it, that object that we call the moon today.  It has survived being bombarded for 3.5 billion rays by cosmic rays.  It has survived being bombarded for 3.5 billion years by the rays of the sun.  It has survived having its magnetic poles reversed.  It has survived having its atmosphere eliminated and then regenerated again.  It has survived asteroid hits that wiped out all life on the face of its surface, or so it thought.  It survived all these things and yet here we are, little, tiny, insignificant, puny humans believing that by not recycling properly, by flushing toilets, and by not using the correct brand of shaving cream or toothpaste, we’re going to cause some manner of irreparable harm to the biosphere that we know as Earth.

I am happy to report that on the day after Earth Day 2013, the Earth has miraculously survived yet one more annum, Latin for year.  Happy Birthday, planet.  What a miraculous planet it is.  Some say by intelligent design and some say by happenstance, just the machinations of the atomic and material universe that got together and just happened to form this sphere here.  That reminds me, before we got all obsessed with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and whether or not they were radicalized by some Russian Islamic cleric, or whether or not they performed their heinous attack as a result of someone telling them to or whether they were involved in some manner of a bomb plot and all that other stuff, did you know — I meant to bring this up.  What day did home slice go on the run?  That was Friday, right?

AG:  They released the photos Thursday afternoon.

Mike:  So it was Thursday night.  You couldn’t have possibly known Thursday night or Thursday afternoon when you sent Pile of Prep material out and I read it, you could not have possibly known that Friday was going to happen.  I think it was Thursday.  I only mention this in passing because we’ve missed so many other events in our lives being obsessed with this one.  Do you remember the story about the Kepler Telescope?

AG:  Nope.

Mike:  The Kepler Telescope, the one that found the other planets out there.  It found three new planets that are of Earth size.  The telescope was launched in 2009 and it’s looking beyond the near stars.  It’s not looking beyond the near stars like an ordinary telescope.  What it’s looking at, beyond the near stars, specifically is for life, for planets.  It actually has discovered thousands of candidate stars.  Recently the Kepler Telescope has discovered three, just in the last week, either Earth-sized or near Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-size or near sun-size stars.  I believe one of them was in the constellation Libra and is about 1200 light years away.  That might not sound very far, but that’s 1200 years, how far light travels in a year.  If you could attain the speed of light, it would take 1200 years to go there and find out whether or not the aliens from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus movie are there, and then another 1200 years to get back here and warn everyone: Don’t drink the water.

What is not talked about about this is that the Kepler Telescope is a NASA project.  While I may be fascinated by the discovery that there are planets out there 1,200 light years away, that with current technology and any technology we can envision into the near future you’re never going to explore.  You’re never going to send someone or something there to go find out if there is anything there.  Why are people being taxed?  We all have to pay for this through NASA appropriations.  Why are people being taxed for something that they will never actually benefit from?  It’s a question that few people ask and I thought I would bring it up.  There’s my Earth Day rundown.  As I said, have a lottery for the next Kepler Telescope.  I’ll be happy to buy a ticket and hope that you launch one that can get as far out there and see even further out into the cosmos.  That does not necessarily mean that I wish for myself or my children to be taxed for said experiment.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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