Mirrored parabolas reflect light toward a single focal point. As long as the light rays approach a parabola in parallel, they will bounce toward a focus located somewhere inside the concave shape along an axis of symmetry. Think of drawing a horizontal line through the middle of a parabola like this -(---  . The focus lies along that line.*
The same thing happens when others bounce their thoughts off our preconceived notions. Regardless of the ideas, we have a tendency to reflect them to our own focal point. We turn topics toward what we consider a central focus of understanding, not realizing that our parabolic minds have different foci from those of others. Parabolas of the mind stifle openness and tolerance.
 
Find your parabolic focal points. Some are close; others, a bit more removed, but all within the concave shape of your opinions. How do you redirect all incoming ideas toward those points? You won’t truly understand other points of view until you change the shape of your mind’s parabola.
 
*http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=parabola+focal+point&qpvt=parabola+focal+point&qpvt=parabola+focal+point&qpvt=parabola+focal+point&FORM=IGRE

Word’s out! Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars, and he has people interested.
Is it because they want to escape a hellish Earth for a paradisiacal Red Planet?
 
Now we know that when astronauts return from their Martian holiday, they’ll be just a little closer to not being who they were before they left Earth. Yes, it seems to be true, extended travel beyond the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere will expose us to brain-damaging radiation. Such radiation apparently alters the brain’s ability to handle stress. That’s the finding of V. K. Parihar and others who experimented on Wistar rats:
 
  "... the most logical conclusion to draw from these studies is that cosmic radiation exposure poses a real and potentially             detrimental neurocognitive risk for prolonged deep space travel."*
 
Advice: Don’t go to Mars without some shielding, maybe something like Earth’s thick atmosphere and powerful magnetic field. Those who decide to go should keep Parihar’s study in mind: Even if Mars were Paradise, without the ability to handle stress, astronauts will soon find it to be Hell.
 
 "Our data indicate an unexpected and unique susceptibility of the central nervous system to space radiation exposure, and argue that the underlying radiation sensitivity of delicate neuronal structure may well predispose astronauts to unintended mission-critical performance decrements and/or longer-term neurocognitive sequelae."*
 
Let’s couple that conclusion to the plan to image a planet whirling around our nearest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If the plan called Project Blue works, we’ll have a photograph of a planet on the scale of Voyager’s distant image of Earth, the one that shows our planet as a “pale blue dot.”** Taken at the request of the late Carl Sagan, that single-pixel Voyager image of Earth from a distance of billions of miles was much easier to take than a photo of a planet circling a sun trillions of miles away.
 
So, you might ask, “What’s the sense in that? From what I read, Project Blue will cost millions of dollars, and you know, now that we have the study by Parihar and others, even if we get a picture suitable for framing, we aren’t going to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. If we did go, we would probably suffer irreversible neurocognitive impairment from interstellar radiation.”
 
The image of a distant world and the understanding that a voyage to Alpha Centauri—or even to Mars—is dangerous might underscore a point Sagan made about our home planet.
 
Sagan saw a lesson in the image of Earth as a little blue dot: “Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam… it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
 
Let’s face it. This is THE PLACE. The only place for humanity. We ain’t goin’ to Alpha Centauri. And although we might at great risk go to Mars, we might not get there with the same cognitive functioning we have on the little blue dot we currently occupy. Protected from debilitating radiation by our magnetic field and atmosphere, we have yet to find a better place for the neurons of both sinners and saints.
 
Neuroscience and space exploration raise two questions: Do you find it odd that this is the place where Heaven and Hell coexist like some superposed quanta? Does this little dot called Earth have to be a home of both saints and sinners?

• Parihar, V. K. et al. Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction. Sci. Rep. 6, 34774; doi: 10.1038/srep34774 (2016).

    **   http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/pale_blue_25.html

You are a busy place. According to a recent calculation by Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science the ratio between bacteria and human cells in our bodies is 1.3.* That means you are carrying around about 40 trillion bacteria, maybe a few more, maybe a few less. Anyway, we might change the medieval question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” to “How many creatures are you?” If you are more bacterium than human cell, should I see you differently? “Oh! Ralph. You mean the guy who occupies the same space as all those bacteria?”
 
You are, as I said, a busy place. Much going on. Even much that you don’t even realize. Think of Grand Central. All that movement is hard to track. All those individuals are lost in the Crowd. And there you are, a Crowd. Too many whatevers to track, all going about business you can’t possibly enumerate. Trillions, maybe 30 to 50 trillion bacteria outnumbering cells by 1.3. 
 
So, too, with everyone around you. Lots going on. Each a Grand Central. Now think. If you are largely unaware of all that’s happening, aren’t they, also? If you have difficulty keeping track of all that takes place in your own Grand Central, can you possibly keep track of all that goes on in someone else’s? Apparently, many “angels” dance on the pin of every life. Ponder that before you answer, “One.”
 
* https://www.sciencenews.org/article/body%E2%80%99s-bacteria-don%E2%80%99t-outnumber-human-cells-so-much-after-all

The rational numbers can make exact fractions, such as 2/1. In contrast, irrational numbers can’t be exactly represented by fractions. Two examples are π and √2. Try to put either of those in a fraction, and you’re just approximating. Those two also resist being converted to decimals with predictable endings (π, for example, just doesn’t have an ending at 3.1415…, and the square root of two presents a similar problem).
 
Thinking, like numbers, also occurs in rational and irrational forms. When we say, “Be logical,” or “Be rational,” we often mean we want someone to think in an easily definable way, in some recognizable pattern the way that 1/3 just repeats as 0.3333333333333333333333… or the way ¼ just stops at 0.25. It’s so easy for us to deal with others when the pattern of their thinking is predictable, when it results in an easy to recognize conclusion or simply repeats.
 
Alas! Non-patterned thinking by other people presents a problem. We can’t predict the outcome. That makes us a bit uneasy. But maybe it shouldn’t. We usually don’t want others to think we are entirely predictable. Being unpredictable is a survival and a creative strategy. Often we accept the irrational in the arts; we never accept it in the sciences. In social interactions, we are more like scientists than artists. We want to know what the next number is in someone else’s 3.1415. That unpredictability in others makes us insecure, whereas in ourselves, it makes us “individual.”
 
In the coming days, think of your interactions with others in terms of the rational and irrational numbers. If you find yourself in conflict, can you determine whether the source of the conflict lies in non-repeating irrationality or in repeating or predictably ending rationality? 

The Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building each took only about two years to build. Even the 2,717-foot-tall Burj Khalifa took only six years to construct. Speed. Who wants to wait decades for something?
 
To enter the Baptistery of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, one has to go through double doors designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti. They are works of art that Michelangelo called the Gates of Paradise. Lorenzo started the doors at the very beginning of the fifteenth century and completed the project in 1452. It took him a half-century to finish his doors. Because he died in 1455, he could admire his work for only three years. Unlike modern buildings, the cathedral itself took nearly a century and a half to construct. In comparison to the period of the cathedral's construction, Lorenzo’s fifty-year time on the door project might not seem excessively long, especially to someone living hundreds of years later.
 
But, of course, no one today has to wait for the sculptor to finish his work. The doors are already finished.
 
And that’s the way it is with a bottle of Scotch. Some distilleries age their whisky 12 years, some 18 years, and some as many as 34 years. Thirty-four years! Goodness! The person who started the process might not even live to taste the final product (which, by the way, is very expensive: Glenmorangie Pride 1978 sells for $5,799.99).
 
If you want to produce something as good as the baptistery doors of Ghiberti or 34-year-old Scotch, you might have to take your time. You’ll have to have some patience. The time will pass slowly for you, but to one drinking Glenmorangie Pride 1978 or to another walking through Ghiberti’s doors, its passing is insignificant. The people of the present see only the product of the past and not its passing.  
 
What’s your “door” or “Scotch”? Like Lorenzo Ghiberti or some Scotch distiller maybe you will have only a short time to enjoy the completed product. But then unlike anyone else, you will have had the joy of making. Go ahead, take your time. You can be assured that although others will never comprehend the duration of your efforts, they will certainly admire what you created.  

Holy cow! What kind of world do we live in? No sooner do we think, “Okay, I’ve got this going,” than we have to update. Can’t we just run with what we are?
 
Obviously, no.
 
Maybe that is a good reason to know that “this is NOT your practice life.” You have to get life right because there’s no go-around. Once IT is over, there’s no updating. If you want happiness out the process, you have to tweak life as you go, fine tune for increased efficiency and security. You have to make adjustments, however cumbersome, annoying, or even painful the updating process. And you’re the only system administrator.
 
So, no, we can’t just run with what we are. We have to update.

Desire makes us all Sophists. We can convince ourselves of anything, even when we know that the consequences of our actions might not be physically, emotionally, or mentally healthful.
 
The fifth century B.C.E. Sophists started out as a group of profitable teachers, and then they became rhetoricians. Gorgias, the renowned member of the group, argued that he could convince anyone of anything regardless of his personal knowledge of the matter. The goal of any Sophist is winning an argument, and that’s what desire imitates.
 
We grow into our Sophism. We become rational beings, and then we use our rationality in the service of any purpose we wish, arguing with ourselves in the service of desire. Philosophy often loses; ethics and morality, too. Desire is the ultimate rhetorician in our lives. If you want to oppose it in an argument, you need considerable wit and stamina. Desire is the Gorgias each of us faces as we attempt to balance our lives between what we want and what we know to be physically, emotionally, and mentally healthful for us. Be thoughtful because this clever opponent rarely loses an argument.

Divination surrounds us. All of us have been subjected to predictive influences of modern-day augurs. I’m not suggesting that, like some ancient soothsayer saying “Beware the Ides of March” to an emperor, someone reading the entrails of birds can foretell your life. Modern soothsayers come in different forms, and they influence how we act.
 
Take the Social Security Administration’s Actuarial Life Table as an example. If you are 25 years old, the people at Social Security think you will live another 52.34 years if you are male and another 56.77 years if you are female. That’s pretty accurate soothsaying. If you applied that to Julius Caesar, then the soothsayer might have said, “Beware 1:35 p.m. on March 15.” Point 34 and 0.77 are very precise. So, if you were born on January 1, 1993, you, as a male, should live one-third of the year through 2070. As a female, you get to live more than two-thirds of a year through 2074.
 
Of course, we all know that an actuarial life table is an average. Averages, however, are the bird’s entrails of modern augury. We are bombarded by statistics about who we are and how we live, think, and work. As an example, take an article by Nance Rosen published online by Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ugly-tax-2011-8) that “details” some averages for wages earned by different workers. In the article, Rosen lays out the predestined wages for blondes, tall people, heavy people, and thin people.
 
All the statistical soothsayers believe you are predestined: Your health, your wealth, your happiness, your relationships, and your lifespan. Some of what they predict might come to varying degrees of fruition. Some will be empty divinations, the products of false augury proclaimed by self-assured prognosticators.
 
Auguries based on averages can be useful; they can also be life-inhibitors. If something is on average more dangerous to do than not do, then a level of prudence suggests that caution is wise and avoidance is the right action. There’s no more famous example of this than the death of Julius Caesar. Mighty Caesar, having heard the soothsayer’s warning about the Ides of March, asked in seeming trepidation for other soothsayers to divine his future—Brutus, one of the conspirators who stabbed him, convinced Caesar to continue with his planned visit to the Senate. Against his own judgment and driven by his self-proclaimed status as the most powerful man in Rome, Caesar failed to take the warnings of soothsayers and his wife Calpurnia to avoid the Forum and the Senate on that fateful day. 
 
Et tu, Reader? Take to heart statistics that warn you against a danger, but don’t take seriously the statistics that tell you about your “limits” to succeed or excel. “Don’t do such-n-such” is a warning, real, imagined, or averaged. “Don’t try this because you are predestined to fail” is an inhibiting dictum that applies only to an “average,” and not a specific, person. True, you might not make more money than someone “favored” by the augurs, but then you might. True, you might not live to age 80, but then you might surpass it. All around you there are influences telling you who you are and what your limits are. That they are correct for a specific person sometimes is a manifestation of coincidence. No one is the average person. Don’t let any of the soothsayers tell you that you are one.

There’s no way to get outside the universe. Heck! It’s hard to get outside a country, what with all the security concerns. And traveling elsewhere in the universe is beyond our abilities. You want a perspective on where you are in time and space? Look down at your camera phone on a clear night and take a picture of you with the Milky Way photo-bombing in the background.
 
Our most fundamental perspective provides a view of an interior. Now, don’t get claustrophobic. It’s a big interior, but, it is, nevertheless, an interior. There’s no door either opened or closed we can approach. Even in the great expanse of the galaxy we find ourselves and the galaxy “in” something.
 
Being “inside” will give some of us a sense of security and protection and others a sense of restriction. Being “inside,” is, however, a relative concept. We’re all inside the universe. We’re inside a local group of galaxies, inside a galaxy, and inside a Solar System. As I list them, they all encompass more to less volume, but still even the smallest is difficult to imagine. The volume of the Solar System alone is greater than 3,000,000 cubic Astronomical Units (Each is 93,000,000 miles cubed), and the sun’s influence might make a sphere with a diameter of four light years, so, the volume of our local “inside” might be 4/3 π 2LY^3. The numbers just get bigger with the galaxy and the Local Group. But they always remain finite. We’re always “inside.”
 
From the womb to the edges of the Local Group we’ve always been inside. So, “inside” shouldn’t, one might think, make us claustrophobic. Yet, many of us are. That psychological state is difficult, but not impossible, to overcome. Interesting, isn’t it, that it usually results from our physical circumstances?
 
There is another kind of being inside that we often pay little attention to: Being inside a thought pattern, particularly inside someone else’s patterned way of thinking. All of us have been subject to such an “inside,” but many of us—maybe  all—don’t even recognize that we are inside a philosophy, a worldview. And we often remain inside without any feeling of being closed in. Maybe this is the "inside" that should make us feel claustrophobic.
 
You might not be able “to get outside” the physical universe, but you do have some doors—often hard to open—that lead to the outside of a universe, local group, or system of thought. Yes, just like any of the physical insides that contain you, the thought-universe is voluminous, and the doors to the outside might be difficult to reach, but they are far more approachable than the impossible-to-reach doors of the physical universe that contains you. 

Nothing says insatiable more than the human footprint on the moon. And now more similar speech. Elon Musk wants to put people on Mars. “Go for it,” we cheer. This planet is getting a bit crowded and increasingly more inhospitable, what with all the pollutants, diseases, and violence. But have you looked at Mars lately? Total Recall, The Martian, Red Planet, Mission to Mars, John Carter, and other such Martian-themed movies aside, Mars is a rough place, even for a visit. There’s the cold, the dust, the months-long dust storms, the carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the possibly inaccessible reserves of water. There’s less protection from radiation and incoming bolides than there is on Earth. But then, you might argue that we visit and stay at our planet’s poles, deserts, and the tops of its tallest mountains. Do we really care if a place is inhospitable? It’s there, right? If it’s there and we can find a way to visit, we go, attempting, and sometimes completing, dangerous journeys.
 
In the going, however, there’s risk. Many have died in getting to Earth’s poles, mountaintops, and deserts. Imagine the level of risk in going to Mars, a planet that isn’t very much Earth-like. Assuming Musk’s dream reaches fulfillment, what’s after Mars? A trip to Kepler 22B, the exoplanet that appears to be both Earth-like and positioned around a sun-like star? Mars will take months to reach. Kepler 22B will take centuries. You’ve seen the science fiction portrayals: Ships large enough to support primary producers and their human consumers. Radiation-free travel. Centrifugal force as portable gravity. A second, third, and twentieth generation of travelers with little sense of life on Earth.
 
Assuming we can overcome the physical constraints, can we also overcome the psychological ones? Take a trip to a Mars-like desert on Earth, say Las Vegas. Look how we converted the wilderness! Look how we overcame the difficulties of desert life. We found water, a source of power, and a way to get a constant supply of buffet delicacies. How hard could it be to do the same on Mars? But we do have one largely unresolved problem: Human interactions. We still haven’t solved age-old problems.
We’ve tried, of course.
 
We’ve invented governments, philosophies, religions, communes, and dictatorships, all in the hopes of achieving something no place can give: Consistent peace among many. Is it because there’s “just never enough.” Of what? Of anything. Find water in a desert, and the next goal is to make a waterpark. Find food, and the next goal is filling buffet tables. No government, philosophy, religion, commune, or dictatorship has ever resolved the problem for many nor resolved the problem over multiple generations.
 
Satiated? Then you are the exception, but are you being honest? Make any changes to your place? Desire any changes? You know what will happen on Mars. The same things that happen on Earth. We can migrate, but we take—this sounds silly—ourselves with us. This is not an argument for status quo. We have inhabited new “worlds” because there’s “just never enough.” It is an argument that wherever we go—southern Nevada, Mars, or Kepler 22B—we will still think there’s “just never enough.”