Rabbi Reflects on the News

Rabbi Reflects:

1. News story this week:
Astronomers say Earth could survive sun's demise
International team finds similar planet that outlasted its star's change into a red giant
BY DENNIS OVERBYE
New York Times
Article Launched: 09/13/2007 12:01:00 AM CDT


There is new hope that Earth, if not the life on it, might survive an apocalypse 5 billion years from now.
That is when, scientists say, the sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and swell temporarily more than 100 times its diameter into a so-called red giant, swallowing Mercury and Venus.
Astronomers are announcing that they have discovered a planet that seems to have survived the puffing up of its home star, suggesting there is some hope that Earth could survive the aging and swelling of the sun. "
Earth may survive death of our star in 5 billion years. 3 points:
a. but will we have destroyed the earth before that, with our misuse?
Other news story is scientists are racing to identify most species they think we have not identified, and new DNA advances makes more possible, before they disappear from our ruining the world.
DNA-Reading Tool Helps Quickly Identify Species
downloadable pdf

Biologist Christopher Meyer (left) and zoologist Gustav Paulay examine cowries in the collection at UF's Florida Museum of Natural History.
Within a decade, scientists may be able to use a hand-held device to instantly identify any species from a snippet of animal tissue, says a University of Florida researcher.
That may be possible thanks to scientific advances that include the first test quantifying the effectiveness of a DNA identification tool among brightly colored shells. With an error rate as low as 4 percent, two UF scientists have been able to identify cowries collected from around the world by analyzing tissue samples from the marine organisms and comparing them to a comprehensive catalog of species they compiled.
The findings were published in the December issue of PLOS Biology.
“DNA barcoding — the ability to take a remnant of animal tissue or blood and compare it with a known database — has attracted widespread attention with its promise as a valuable aid in species identification and discovery,” said Christopher Meyer, a UF biologist and one of the researchers. “However, few comprehensive data sets are available to test its performance. This is the first study to actually put realistic numbers on it.”
Because species around the world are disappearing faster than biologists can identify them, the need for a quick and accurate method of classifying life has never been more pressing, Meyer said. With millions of animal species on Earth, DNA barcoding can be a helpful identification tool for ecologists who may not necessarily be taxonomy experts, he said."

b. Analogy with our lives-our individual bodies will flame out and be extinguished at some future point. Our soul survives that, if we live righteously and repent when we don't. Yom Kippur is a self-correction mechanism to help insure that.

c. Chgo Tribune editorial on it-"the grimer realization of
recent decades, -at a time of looming made-made cataclysms,-is that we do not live in geological or astronomical time. We live in ethical and cultural time. The sensible questions are how to live that time to the fullest and how to stave off a premature ending."

2. Madonna, not Jewish took name Esther and is in Israel calling herself "Ambassador for Judaism." Met with President Peres and gave him kabbala books.

a. convert already
b. why can't Jews be more "ambassadors for Judaism"? A cardiac surgeon new member and recent-Jew-by-choice spoke pre-selicote at our synagogue. He says he goes around asking his Jewish doctor and other Jewish friends if they light Shabbat candles and urges them to be more observant.