Our friend Xanthippi who is constantly e-mailing us the most amazing photographs, cartoons, and items of interest has sent one called “How small we are” showing the relative sizes of planets starting with the smallest Pluto, followed by Mercury, then Mars, and Earth three times bigger than Mars followed by Venus, bigger than Earth but not by all that much. Jupiter is enormous compared to earth but is completely dwarfed by our sun which is gigantic, but it doesn’t end there. Sirius is eight times or more larger than the sun but smaller than Pollux which is three times larger but completely overshadowed by Arcturus which is proportionately the size of a football as opposed to Pollux like a cricket ball. Moving up even further Arcturus which was previously the size of a football is now the size of a walnut in comparison to Rigel slightly bigger than a golf ball in comparison to the walnut and Aldabaran a bit bigger than Rigel. But now comes Betelgeuse the size of a melon and, to top them all, Antares about a third or more larger again, the 15th brightest star in the sky and 1000 light years away. Printed out this way only gives an indication of this giant. To see it in picture form truly shows how very very small our little earth is. I wonder where god is in all this.
On Vouli (the government station) last night was a BBCTV programme “The Story of God” skirting over the three monotheistic religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, starting with Abraham of course whose tomb Muslims can see from one side, Jews from the other, just in case blood flows should they view it together, and the line (I probably paraphrase here) I remember most from the programme was one in which I wholeheartedly concur, “Considering the suffering caused by the religious in the name of their god, maybe it would be better if god didn’t exist.” Here I’m on my soapbox again beating my drum, blowing my tin trumpet because “If god didn’t exist man would have to invent him” I change to “AS god doesn’t exist man has had to invent him.” Here endeth the lesson
Finished the week’s film watching with one I thought was going to be rubbish and which I would hate but it turned out to be completely the opposite. Titled “Replicant”, In the first place it starred Jean Claude Van Damme in the duel role of killer/clone who not only ran the gamut of emotion from A to B but went a whole lot further, possibly even as far as P and Q. Basically a thriller about a serial killer, with a bit of science fiction thrown in with the introduction of his clone – set a thief to catch a thief only in this case set a clone to catch a killer. No big star cast, (unless you rate Van Damme in that category) no multi-billion dollar budget but a better film than the biggies I watched (or tried to watch) earlier in the week Not an award winner but gripping nevertheless and why did I keep on thinking of Frankenstein?