He shared life lessons:

Update:

Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams wrote:

I once thought his success was mostly a matter of luck. Anyone can be at the right place at the right time.

But then he did it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

He was my only hero.

Links to many more tributes in the comments at TidBITS.

Would have been, but Emmett Till was murdered when he was 14 years old.

A negro boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi, he may not have known that there were places in 20th-Century America still untouched by civilization. He carelessly violated one of the countless “unwritten rules” of the savage Mississippi culture, and for that he was kidnapped and brutally tortured to death.

His body was found three days later, horribly mutilated. His mother insisted on an open-casket funeral. She said, “There was just no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see.” Photos of the body were published in JET magazine (Warning: the photos are extremely disturbing) and other publications around the country.

In retrospect, it seems that the photos opened a lot of eyes to the nature of race relations in the American South. It was no longer possible to be blind. It was no longer possible to look away.

A little more than three months after Emmett Till was killed, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, launching the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement is bookended with the murders of children: Emmett Till in 1955, and four little girls in 1963.

It wasn’t all that long ago. Emmett Till would be just 70 now.

I was seated way back, at a table far from the podium. I was close enough that when a well-known statewide official or candidate rose to speak, I could say, “Ooh, that’s really him!” but distant enough that I felt like a spectator rather than a participant.

As I made my way out at the end of the event, I found myself walking right past John Glenn, one of the first American astronauts. I eagerly shook his hand. He said something like, “How are you?” but I couldn’t say anything in reply. I was in awe.

Today is John Glenn’s 90th birthday.

Since my first encounter with him, he became a U.S. Senator from Ohio. After he retired from the Senate, he flew on the Space Shuttle and became the oldest human being to go into space.

Happy Birthday, Senator Glenn. I’m still in awe.

After watching it, I feel compelled to channel the spirit of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson:

Maybe God is saying, “You know, I made Mexicans, too.”

I think I do a pretty good impression of those guys, not because I have the same message, but because I use the same methodology.

I have a political bone to pick with Arizona, so when a disaster strikes there, I seize upon it to say, “God agrees with me. Therefore, I’m right! Congratulations, me!”

The evangelical broadcaster who left followers crestfallen by his failed prediction that last Saturday would be Judgement Day says he miscalculated.

Harold Camping said it had “dawned” on him that God would spare humanity “hell on Earth for five months” and the apocalypse would happen on 21 October.

I’ve read a lot of comments online that say “This is not a reflection on Christianity or the Bible; obviously these people didn’t interpret the Bible correctly.”

I believe — without any supporting facts; I’m going on faith here — that the majority of Biblical literalists didn’t actually believe that the world would end on May 21.

Camping and his followers represent a small fraction of Biblical literalists; literalists are a small fraction of all Christian fundamentalists, and fundamentalists are a small fraction of all Christians. (There are literalists who would say that anyone who isn’t a literalist isn’t a true fundamentalist, and there are fundamentalists who would say that anyone who isn’t a fundamentalist isn’t a true Christian. Cliques at work.)

Camping’s failure doesn’t cast a shadow of disrepute on the Bible or on Christianity, but it does cast a shadow. What it brings into disrepute is certainty.

It seems to me that, whatever you may believe, there should always be a small part of your mind whispering, “But I could be wrong.” As Robert Browning wrote:

Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without

The doubting part of your mind should always be on the lookout for evidence that you’re mistaken about anything you believe. The continual search for better understanding is the essence of being human.

Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence, — a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks, —
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.

Certainty isn’t the end of the search for understanding; it’s the abandonment of the search. It’s the end of the road.

The Rapture actually did take place yesterday. The Righteous actually were taken up to Heaven. The self-righteous, who told us how we’d be left behind unless we became more like them? None of them made the cut.

As you have no doubt heard by now, an evangelical broadcaster with lots of followers is predicting that tomorrow will be the end of the world. I think he’s probably right.

Evangelicals have been predicting the end of the world for a couple centuries, now, and so far, all the predictions have been false. The present-day prophet has been wrong once before, himself. After that embarrassment, he went back to the old drawing board, studied very hard, double-checked his math, and this time he’s sure. Doesn’t the law of averages tell us that he’s due?

In the unlikely event that the world doesn’t end tomorrow — or maybe by Monday; I’m willing to allow some slop for rounding errors — I’m going to have to re-evaluate the credence these people deserve.

In such a case, the next time one of them says, “God wants you to do this,” or “God forbids you to do that,” I will be sorely tempted to reply, “Hah! Like you know!”

But I’m sure it won’t come to that. This time it’s for sure!

(Via DarkRoastedBlend.)

Ah, yes, my [Terrorist Mastermind Daily Brief]! I don’t even know why I bother reading them anymore. They always say the same thing: ‘Trail is cold. Trail is cold. Trail is cold.’ Look, it’s been ten years…I got away with it. I tell you, this is going to be the last TMDB I ever read. I simply do not need them anymore.

Warning: some may be offended by the language.

It was the first time any human being had gone into space.

The human being was Yuri Gagarin, a Russian pilot in the Soviet Air Force. He orbited the planet once, in the process flying higher and faster than any human being before him.

At the time, his nationality seemed to be the most important fact about his achievement. The Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in a desperate space race — almost exclusively for propaganda bragging rights. President Kennedy’s famous challenge to land a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s was an attempt to set the finish line sufficiently distant so that the United States, starting from behind, might still have a chance to win.

The space race ended in July 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. The United States won.

That rivalry seems unimportant now, with Americans and Russians and other nations working together on the International Space Station (ISS). Late last year, the ISS marked ten years of continuous human presence in space.

Yet, without that rivalry, I doubt that humans would have gone to the Moon yet. And that would be a shame.

More important than the technical advances called forth by the drive to get to the Moon, more important than the scientific knowledge beamed back by scientific instruments and brought back in boxes of Moon rocks, was this: astronauts could look up and see the whole Earth.

During the Apollo 8 mission, astronaut Jim Lovell realized he could cover the entire planet with his thumb. Everyone any of us has ever heard of — all of history, science, the arts, philosophy; all the nations, all the causes, all the beliefs and faiths; all the great achievements, all the great crimes — all of it on that little blue sphere suspended in the blackness of space.

I think that has something to do with why Americans and Russians work side-by-side with people of other nations on the ISS.

We couldn’t see our rivalry in proper perspective until the rivalry lifted us high enough to truly see ourselves.

Russians certainly have reason to be proud of Yuri Gagarin. Fifty years later, as a fellow human being, I’m proud of him, too.

The photo was taken way back in 1986. Why was it featured on the NASA site now? I’m guessing that NASA believes this will increase Congressional interest in funding deep space missions. To politicians who seem determined to run the country off a cliff, this has gotta be irresistable.

But NASA is offering to send your face and name into earth orbit on one of the two final Space Shuttle missions.

If earth orbit isn’t ambitious enough for you, NASA is also offering to send your name to Mars, encoded on a microchip on a future lander.

Listen, I once felt a little thrill, during a long distance phone call, at the thought that my electronically-encoded voice might be bouncing off a communications satellite. If this the only way this space nut gets into space, it will do.

(Thanks to dealmac.)

I really should mark the occasion in some way, so here’s Chris Vallillo playing “The Battle Cry of Freedom”.

Thanks, Abe.