Anxiety and conscience are a pair of powerful dynamos. Of course, I can speak for myself. Between them, they have ensured that one shall work at anything worthwhile. They are blind forces which drive but do not direct. Fortunately, I have also been moved by a third motive-- the wish to see and understand. Curiosity is another motive for action. It is also one of the distinctive characteristics of human nature and contrasted with the natures of non-human animals. All human beings have curiosity in some degree and we also have it about things which are of no practical use.
Curiosity may be focussed on anything in the universe, but the spiritual reality of the phenomenon should be the ultimate objective of all curiosity for it to be fruitful. Thanks to my mother, my approach to this ultimate objective is through the story of human affairs.

Soft-bodies animals like caterpillar often fall a prey to voracious hunters like birds or reptiles. Despite having no means to 'actively' defend themselves, with weapons like claws or jaws, they have, nevertheless, evolved other equally effective deterrents. A particular species of the caterpillar lives at an altitude over 2,500 meters in the Himalayas. It uses prominent colours to inform would be predators of its inedibility. In the event than an inexperienced or adventurous bird eat the caterpillar, it would probably vomit it out soon after, and subsequently desist from attacking similar species in the future. Though this would do the unfortunate victim no good, the species benefits. A rare example of the martyr among animals.

We call a man irrational when he acts in a passion, when he cuts off his nose to spite his face. He is irrational because he forgets that, by indulging the desire which he happens to feel most strongly at the moment, he will thwart other desires which in the long run are more important to him. If men were rational, they would take a more correct view of their own interest than hey do at present; and if all men acted from enlightened self-interest, the world be a paradise in comparison to what it is. I do not maintain that there is nothing better than self-interest as a motive to action, but I do maintain that self-interest, like altruism, is better when it is enlightened than when it is unenlightened. In an ordered community it is very rarely to a man's interest to do anything which is very harmful to others. The less rational a man is, the oftener he will fail to perceive how what injures others also injures him, because hatred or envy will blind him. Therefore, although I do not pretend that enlightened self-interest is the highest morality, I do maintain that, if it became common, it would make the worlds an immeasurably better place than it is.
Rationality in practice may be defined as the habit of remembering all our relevant desires, and not only the one which happens at the moment o be strongest. Like rationality in opinion, it is a matter of degree.Completing rationality is no doubt an unattainable ideal, but so long as we continue to classify some men as lunatics it is clear that we think some men more rational than others. I believe that all solid progress in the world consists of an increase in rationality, both practical and theoretical. To preach an altruistic morality appears to me somewhat useless, because it will appeal only to those who already have altruistic desires.But to preach rationality is somewhat different, since rationality helps us to realise our own desire on the whole, whatever they may be. A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires. I believe that the control of our acts by our intelligence is ultimately what is of most importance, and that alone will make social life remain possible as sciences increases the means at our disposal fr injuring each other. Education, the press, politics, religion-- in a word, all the great forces in the world-- are at present on the side of irrationality, they are in the hands of men who flatter King Demos in order to lead him astray. The remedy does not lie in anything heroically cataclysmic, but in the efforts of individuals towards a more sane and balanced view of our relations to our neighbours and to the worlds. It is to intelligence, increasingly side-spread, that we must look for the solution of the ills from which our world is suffering.

One simple physical concept lies behind the formation of the stars : gravitational instability. The concept is not new. Newton first perceived it late in the 17th century.
Imagine a uniform, static cloud of gas in space. Imagine then that the gas is somehow disturbed so that one small spherical region becomes a little denser than the gas around it so that the small region's gravitational field becomes slightly stronger. It now attracts more matter to it and its gravity increases further, causing it to began to contract. As, it contracts its density increases, which increases its gravity even more, so that it picks up even more matter and contracts even further. The process continues until the small region of gas finally forms a gravitational bound object.

A jolly musicologist by the entirely unobjectionable name of Henry Pleasants has written a book called "The Agony of Modern Music ". The word 'agony' is right. Much of it is just not written down but improvised. Much of what passes for music of these times is raucous noise and the excuse for persisting with it is that every common youngster understands and likes it. The pleasant fellow concedes that "serious" music is virtually dead. This may be dismissed as yet another pleasantry which the undirected young indulge in. Paul Hindesmith, possibly one of the last of the classical giants, once said that some composers tended to develop an oversublimated technique which produces images of emotions that are far removed from any emotional experience a relatively normal human being eve has. That is just the point. High art can never be totally democratised. There is a barrier between the egghead and the hoipolloi and it would be lazy idealism to ignore this. When Bach played and Beethoven roared, who was then the gentleman? The pity of it is that while talking music to the masses, all known rules are broken and improvisation becomes king. That, roughly speaking, is how jazz was born; by dropping discipline, inspiration, deep personal emotions and every element of creative art, and adopting improvisation as its main rationale. Why, they even tried to smuggle bits of jazz into serious music so that the composers could somehow survive. Now they are going one step further : learn it by ear, don't write down the stuff, make it up as you go along and hope, by these shoddy techniques , that everyone present will applaud and, thus, provide the composer and the performers with their daily bread.

If Life exists on Mars, it is most likely to be in the form of bacteria buried deep in the planet's permafrost or lichens growing within rocks, say scientists from NASA. There might even be fossilized Martian algae locked up in ancient lake beds, waiting to be found.
Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Centre in California told the AAAS that exobiologists, who look for life on other planets, should look for clues among the life forms of the Earth's ultra-cold regions, where conditions are similar to those on Mars.
Lichens, for example, are found within some Antarctic rocks, just beneath the surface where sunlight can still reach them. The rock protects the lichen from cold and absorb water, providing enough for the lichen's needs, said McKay.
Bacteria have also been found in 3-million-year-old permafrost dug up from Siberia. If there are any bacteria alive on Mars today, they would have to have survived from the time before the planet cooled more than 3 billions years ago. Nevertheless, McKay is optimistic : "It may be possible that bacteria frozen into the permafrost at the Martian South Pole may be viable".
McKay said algae are found in Antarctica lakes with permanently frozen surfaces. Although no lakes are thought to exist on Mars today, they might have existed long ago. If so, the dried-out Martian lake beds may contain the fossilized remains of algae. On Earth, masses of microscopic algae form large, layered structures known as stromatolites, which survives as fossils on lake beds, and the putative Martian algae might have done he same thing, said Jack Farmer, one of McKay's colleagues.
The researchers are compiling a list of promising Martian lake beds to be photographed from spacecraft, said Farmer. Those photographs could help to select sites for landers that would search for signs of life, past or present. "If we find algae on Mars, I would say the Universe is lousy with algae," McKay said. "Intelligence would be another question".