{"id":1877,"date":"2019-01-24T16:53:02","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T16:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1877"},"modified":"2019-01-26T20:22:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T20:22:03","slug":"extraterrestrial-life-uh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1877","title":{"rendered":"extraterrestrial life? Uh&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"http:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/national-geo-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1878\" srcset=\"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/national-geo-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/national-geo-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/national-geo.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I just read some of the cover article in this magazine.  The relatively new field of <strong>&#8220;astrobiology&#8221;<\/strong> has scientists spending all kinds of time and money setting up experiments in places like a frozen arctic lakes, tropical caves, and such, in order to simulate conditions on, say, parts of <strong>Mars, Europa<\/strong>, and so on, in a quest to discover life forms, like, for instance, earth&#8217;s microbes and other possible microscopic life &#8220;out there.&#8221;  Uh&#8230;  I just interviewed a philosophy professor at Ohio Northern University who teaches a class on <strong>Environmental Ethics.<\/strong>  He talked about people developing what he referred to as &#8220;virtue ethics.&#8221;  That is, their actions are determined, not at random, but rather through where their moral compass points to.  Okay&#8230; If I know that some one billion people on <em>this<\/em> planet don&#8217;t have access to clean drinking water, and I&#8217;m part of a field spending millions, maybe billions, of dollars, and all kinds of precious time and valuable expertise, on looking for extra-terrestrial microbes,  what might that say about where my moral compass is pointing?  Just askin&#8217;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just read some of the cover article in this magazine. The relatively new field of &#8220;astrobiology&#8221; has scientists spending all kinds of time and money setting up experiments in places like a frozen arctic lakes, tropical caves, and such, <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1877\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}