Institute of Interstellar Navigation
Thirty Meter Telescope controversy aside, at some point an Earth-twin will be discovered, and technology will be found to build starships to go there. Not the Hollywood variety, but the real deal.
That date will occur within the lifetime of most people reading this.
Unfortunately, interstellar navigation is hard. Very hard. NP-hard (theoretically noncomputable).
The positions of the stars in the sky are a function of the Earth’s exact position in space and time. As you move vast distances away from the Earth, stellar positions will change randomly. This is not a perspective effect.
Space-time is warped by mass, and as your position relative to all the other mass in the galaxy changes, the positions of things in the sky will change also.
Compounding this effect is the fact that interstellar journeys will last many Earth centuries (starship months/years), and the galaxy is not static.
Aboard a starship light-years from Earth, uncertainty will dominate positions computed by navigation software and instruments. Getting lost out in interstellar space is a real and underappreciated danger.
So what is the solution?
The solution is an ancient system of stellar navigation that was used to discover Hawaii. The ancient navigators understood that they were among the stars, not beneath them. Their methodology is proven.
Interstellar navigation is beyond the computational capacity of any computer. It is time to begin study of how to integrate Polynesian stellar navigation on the surface of an ocean into a system of navigation among the stars. This is conceptually possible. Ask a navigator.
What better place to build an institute to do that than here in Big Island? All you need is instructors and a room at University of Hawaii at Hilo. What better people than Hawaiian navigator lineage holders, in partnership with modern astronomers? It is all here. Right now.
You probably think this is some sort of sarcastic joke. Maybe some political trick or sleight of hand.
It is not. This is deadly serious.
The extinction of the human race on this world, or its survival on a different one, are what is at stake. There is a city-sized asteroid out there with our name on it, or maybe a virus.
It is time to get over small-minded controversies and think long-term and big.
Or we can slap the ground with our forearms, toss weeds into the air, and shriek at one another.
John Powers
Pahoa
Legalized gambling
The League of Women Voters is in agreement with most mental health professionals that gambling is an addictive habit that many adults cannot control.
A mature civic policy is formed based on the likely effects on society as a whole; the fact that individuals can raise their hands and declare themselves responsible enough to gamble is, obviously, irrelevant.
When Queen Lili‘uokulani was overthrown, she had been pushing to legalize gambling and narcotics so they could be taxed, making her wealthy on the suffering of her people.
That, more than any other factor, explains why the people did not rise up to reinstate her when she called out for them to do so (after a while).
Carl Oguss
Volcano