Venus and Mars, our neighbors, have come to symbolize love and hate. It’s because of the brightness of Venus and redness of Mars, but Venus is far too hot for life and Mars too cold. At present they are in opposite directions: Mars in the midnight sky, Venus close to the Sun in the evening sky.
This space view shows the planets’ paths in December, and sightlines to them from Earth on Dec. 14. Mars was at opposition on Dec. 8. Venus was at its southernmost in our sky on Dec. 13.
On the only planet of life
Tomorrow, Thursday, December 15, the United Nations General Assembly will vote on a resolution calling for a global “Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty.”
The regimes of nations such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and China are using death ever more mercilessly to suppress those who criticize them. President Biden personally opposes the archaic punishment and has abolished it at the federal level. Heroic long-time campaigners such as my friend Abe Bonowitz ask us to phone the president’s office requesting that the US support the moratorium: 202-456-1111.
The world’s leading democracy needs to set the example. Oregon’s governor has commutes all 17 of the state’s death sentences.
On Saturday, December 17, the member of Britain’s parliament will observe a minute of silence in memory of the Jews who died in the Nazi holocaust. It’s the 80th anniversary of the day in 1942 when the parliament recognized the full extent of this most massive of state killings.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I venture that Stalin outdid the Nazi in killing people, by double or more the number. https://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kill-1111789
Regardless of who killed them, the Lord have mercy upon them all.
Nice view of Jupiter,Mars and Saturn tonight walking across the local golf course but I couldn’t catch Venus and Mercury or Uranus for that matter although I didn’t look.With the death penalty the facts seem to be it doesn’t work,if you assume that it’s ment to deter crime rather than be state sponsored revenge.
Very right. States that execute have higher rates of nurder and other violence.
After a big storm last weekend, Monday evening December 12 was very clear here in San Francisco. I walked up Bernal Hill with my 10×42 image-stabilized binoculars and saw Venus and Mercury for the first time during their current apparitions, and Saturn, Vesta, Neptune, Jupiter (and all four Galilean satellites), Uranus, and Mars. The Moon came up later, after I was home.