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September 02, 2003

The Sky is Falling

Yet again:

A giant asteroid is heading for Earth and could hit in 2014, U.S. astronomers have warned British space monitors.

Damn, that's only another eleven years to enjoy our planet. Somebody probably thinks that's a good reason to live everyday like it's your last, but that's always struck me as kind of dumb - why would I want to spend the rest of my life moping around in a depressed funk? Can you imagine a world in which we all walked around, each and every day, nodding to one another and saying "Hey, been nice knowing you?"

Brief interlude for a move recommendation, made once before actually: Last Night.

But for those fearing Armageddon, don't be alarmed -- the chances of a catastrophic collision are just one in 909,000.

Hmmm, the chance of being struck by lightning is, so I've read, about one in 600,000 and all but the dumbest among us tend to take shelter when it shows on the scene. The really dumb tend to take shelter under trees, and are conveniently removed from the gene pool. Alas, in this case, we've all pretty much got our cards in the same basket, and other mixed metaphors like that.

On impact, it could have the effect of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs, a spokesman for the British government's Near Earth Object Information Centre told BBC radio.

Wow - the effect of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs! Holy cow, that means 1,200,000,000,000 Japanese people will perish. They better get busy on that whole procreation thing in the next 11 years.

OK, obviously I'm not too worried about this big rock; which is odd, considering I'm pretty sure that one of these days we're going to get smacked out of the blue.

There, that was a happy ending to a post.