World Space Week

Our home - Earth

By Chris 

Did you know that October 4^th to 10^th is World Space Week? I didn’t. Apparently the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 declared October 4-10 annually as World Space Week. Today, the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna provides the overall global coordination of World Space Week, under the guidance of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and with the support of World Space Week Association, a non-government organization. 

I’m impressed that so many bodies are actively promoting the education and awareness of space across the globe. Mind you, we do often take our position here on Earth for granted. In a previous posting I spoke about the Pale Blue Dot. That view of Earth taken by a Voyager probe that shows our planet as a pale blue dot against the un-inhabitable vastness of outer space. Solitude. Precarious positioning. A living planet so remote from any other living body in space. 

I am particularly interested in the pale blue dot as I once worked for a mining company and have spent more time underground than the vast majority of people on this planet. And I mean deep underground – about a mile or more. So deep that the rock temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and rock starts to flow over short periods of time due to the intense pressure. 

We regard Earth as our home, but in fact we can only live on the very surface of it. Some creatures do live in the ocean depths – but not humans. We are effectively trapped on the surface of a small round piece of rock, surrounded by a tenuous atmosphere floating in a loosely defined orbit in the vastness of space. Whew! 

But I’m glad – of course. As so many wondrous things happen and exist on our planet, and of course among the human race. I don’t believe for one moment that we are alone; there are other life forms out there, somewhere. Hopefully, at some time in the future, mankind may establish contact with them. It’s a long shot but I hope so.      

But by celebrating space week we are actually celebrating our potential neighbours, and hopefully educating people and broadening their awareness of what is all around us. And who knows who may be receiving the SentForever messages that are transmitted? Have a happy World Space Week.

Everyday and once in a lifetime

I was thinking about things that we only intend to do once in our lifetime. Going to an interesting distant country that we like means we often go back there again. So it’s not about distance or places. With people, we tend to meet them regularly. So I started thinking about events and occasions.

Children – no we often have more than one. Death, well yes, that only happens once – but generally it isn’t in our best interest to die. Marriage – now that could be one of the few things that we imagine we will only do once (well at the time anyway).

If a marriage is such a special once-in-a-lifetime event then I was thinking how that occasion or special moment could be made to last forever. After all, in a Christian wedding, there is much ceremony around the “for ever and ever” aspect of getting married.

I made a list of the highlights of getting married and thought that this would make a wonderful service for SentForever to offer. Here are the things I thought of:

- making a proposal of marriage. What did you say to propose and what was the first photo you took of yourselves when you were “officially engaged” as a couple?

- what were your wedding vows that you exchanged at your wedding?

- a copy of your marriage certificate

- a significant part or reading of your marriage ceremony

- a photograph of you and your guests on the big day

- your special song

I think that soon after the wedding, if SentForever were to transmit all these items into eternity for you, it would be something that could never be recalled or cancelled. And hopefully that’s just what your marriage should be – something that will last forever.

SentForever would love to hear from you if you are getting married soon as we’d like to offer a limited number of these complimentary transmissions. All we’d ask is that you let us know what you thought of the service as part of our market research. Just contact us through our website if you are interested.

Graduating into Eternity- a special SentForever message

I’m sure you have heard the saying “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.” It’s true of course, but for most of us tomorrow tends to be pretty much like today which seems pretty much like yesterday which seems remarkably similar to the day before…. You get the pattern here?

However, if something changes quite significantly for you, then that can actually change tomorrow and also have a permanent effect on the rest of your life too. Graduating is one such event.

For many of us, graduating signaled the end of formal education and the start of a new life in paid employment. It’s curious that this stage of our lives seems to go on interminably and yet it only lasts some 40-odd years. But in those 40-odd years a lot happens.

Love, marriage, children, families and homes will all be formed. An individual may well make some significant achievement in their work that benefits mankind in some way. So upon graduation, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Maybe that’s the time to wish somebody well for the future – that graduation marks an important transition point in life. To show how important that point is with SentForever, you can send a message of congratulations and celebration on the success of graduation, but also to send an eternal message to express all the hopes for success in every way in the future.

Because just as one day leads into the next, one person’s successes can be the starting point for another person to build on. What you do today can enable somebody else to do something better and different tomorrow – which then allows somebody else to do the same the next day. And so on into infinity. Just like a SentForever message.

Send somebody who is graduating a special SentForever eternal message, because what they are about to start doing from graduation day plus one will in some small way influence the future of mankind.

Did you know that Britons spend more on greetings cards in a year than on tea and coffee combined?

More than tea and coffee combined? No way, thought I, promptly spilling my morning caffeine shot everywhere. But according to market research analyst Mintel, the UK greeting card industry is the most successful of its type in the world and worth over £1.3 billion annually.

In 2006 an estimated 800 publishers produced more than 2.87 billion greeting cards for the well wishing British public.

The average Briton sends 55 greetings cards a year, which is the highest usage on the planet. Apparently the US is a long way behind in second place with Australia in third place.

We launched in January 2008, and SentForever’s ethereal alternative has been used to relay a plethora of good wishes for all occasions including birthdays, Valentine’s day and Mother’s day, and soon we will be covering our first Father’s day too..

We like to think that we are offering an unusual and innovative alternative to greetings cards. After all, many greetings cards are simply thrown away after a few days, while the messages sent with SentForever will be travelling across space and time for the rest of the sender’s and the receiver’s lives – and also on for an eternity afterwards too.

In a world where so much is transient in nature, and paper greeting cards are thrown away after a few days, SentForever’s service is the ultimate way of showing commitment to someone special. In a billion years the sun will become a giant red star and engulf the Earth erasing all traces of our individual existence, but the messages transmitted by SentForever will continue their way through the universe for the rest of time.

So what are you going to do? Send an unusual and unique message to somebody as a thoughtful gift – or buy some more coffee! And which one will be more beneficial for your health I wonder?