Ponder on this!

Yesterday, at the Doctor's office, I reaquainted myself with Harper's Magazine. I had forgotten what a great communications document it is. One of the features of the magazine is Harper's Index. Two items in that index "grabbed" me:

01. The estimated number of cars that it takes to produce as much co2 as a single cargo ship = 10,000! This estimate was attributed to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration in Juneau, Alaska.

Some time ago, I heard on National Public Radio that if all of the containers on just one cargo ship were placed on multi-wheeled trucks, and the trucks were lined up from the unloading dock in a line.. that line would extend (in Baltimore, Maryland's case) all the way to the start of the New Jersey turnpike!

I tried to calculate this myself.. I figured that the average container is 50 feet long and the front of the truck is 10 feet long. That means a length of 60 feet for each unit and if there were 1,000 units on the container ship... the total length would be 60,000 feet or only about 11 miles. The turnpike is a lot farther away than that. (40 miles?)

Maybe the length of the front of a truck is longer? Maybe the size of containers is greater than 50 feet? Maybe the number of containers on a ship is greater than 1,000? Maybe NPR made a
mistake? Maybe Joe Vaughan mis-heard? Could someone set me straight on this?

02. The Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland has estimated that there are 37,964 planets in the galaxy that are hospitable enough to support life as intelligent as human beings.

Who said that human beings are intelligent? (And don't put too much stock in IQ tests and LSAT scores. As a Mensa member for 30 years, I feel qualified to say that.)

I read that Catholic Bishops have been meeting lately to figure out what to do if life is found on other planets. I'm sure that they are reasoning that if God is all-powerful, He (or She) could place intelligent creatures anywhere he wants to in the universe.

(Did you hear the one about the Priest, the Minister and the Rabbi who set out in a space ship?)

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