Happy New Year

One thing I most like to remind myself of is that human beings are still a very primitive species. Written records only emerged five or six thousand years ago, perhaps several thousand years earlier if one liberally considers assorted pot-scratchings. Edison patented the light bulb only a hundred and twenty nine years ago. If we manage to not destroy ourselves, and our planet, five or ten thousand years from now should be an exciting time — and it's that sort of scale that makes me optimistic. Although we haven't yet made "official" contact with intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations I think we should also take some comfort from the speculation that there are many, many other worlds at a stage of development roughly comparable to our own. On some of them, they're probably having arguments about health care policy, too... In other words, we're not alone and I would guess that somewhere (Dreamland?) there's an "owner's manual" for the planet, if we have the wit to find it.