Had it been on a collision course, it would have created “one of the worst disasters in human history,” said Steven Pravdo, the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“What could we have done about it? The answer is, not much,” Pravdo said.

* * * *

That was close! An asteroid 1,000 feet wide came within a hair's breadth of slamming into the Earth today. Lucky for us it missed!

Discussion? How would the world have reacted if it had hit? Peace amongst old enemies, or a spiral into utter war?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/586894.asp?pne=msn

(The article - below)http://www.msnbc.com/news/586894.asp?pne=msn

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Thursday, January 10, 2002 - 06:44 pm:

We'd all be dead, so it wouldn't much matter.

By Yo' Daddy (Sol) on Friday, January 11, 2002 - 08:20 am:

Actually no, we wouldn't all be dead, a country would probably be wiped out if land was hit, but we're not talking a planet-killer here. Basically it would be like having an unknown nuclear device go off somewhere in the world.

Sol

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Friday, January 11, 2002 - 11:21 am:

It would be much, much worse than a nuclear device, Sol. But it also depends on the size of the asteroid.

If it were a big one there would be world-wide environmental consequences the impact-surviving population would have to deal with. severe Temperature fluctuations effecting climate and possibly melt the ice caps a bit, ruin crops, change rainfall, drown coastal populations... if enough dust is thrown into the atmosphere there won't be enough light to sustain plants and ocean plankton for a long, long while. Crops and forests would be in danger and so would all sea life. Everything would be in flux for decades- probably more- until the environment returns to it's normal state.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs made earth' surface temp. 500 degrees F for at least a few weeks. There was so much dust and smoke thrown into the atmosphere that no sun shone through- this didn't clear up over night, it took years. Mass exstinction was the norm as a result. And furthermore it took millions of years for life to bounce back and flourish.

Fred is right, we'd all be dead- any survivors would be highly unlikely, and if so EXTREMELY few.

You'd need access to an underground bunker with 20 years supply of food, water and medicine.

By Yo' Daddy (Sol) on Friday, January 11, 2002 - 12:08 pm:

If the rock hit in the ocean we'd have a huge tital wave!

Of course, the rock that wiped out the dinosaurs was 10 km across - more than 30 times as large as the rock that whizzed by us yesterday. There would certainly be no survivors at the point of impact - whether the rock would be large enough to cause the same disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs, I can't say.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Friday, January 11, 2002 - 03:43 pm:

so, it was a 33-meter rock? that's roughly 100 feet across. Due to atmospheric burnoff, by the time it made impact, the rock would probably be no bigger than a watermelon, perhaps releasing the kinetic energy of 500-pound bomb. No big thing. It would destroy itself on impact, create a nice crater, and life would go on.

The rocks you need to worry about are the ones that are township-sized and larger. They say the rock that hit out in Arizona that created that crater out there was only about 30-feet across when it made impact. Just my 2 cents. CYA!

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Friday, January 11, 2002 - 04:34 pm:

If you have a rock which is a mile wide or larger that's when you have to worry.

Anyone seen the meteorites in the natural history museum? They're cool, you can touch them and climb on them.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Monday, January 14, 2002 - 12:24 pm:

I got pictures of little 11-year-old me sitting in a meteorite being cute. Personally, I think it was the actual vehicle on which I rode to this planet orginally, the littel craters fit so comfy on my lil' butt...

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, January 14, 2002 - 03:22 pm:

So you'd feel at home at the Rose Center @ the Museum of Natural History =) Just don't get all nostalgic or they might kick you out for molesting metorites in the presence of minors.

By Yo' Daddy (Sol) on Monday, January 14, 2002 - 03:31 pm:

Don't grab at any asteroids.

By Yo' Daddy (Sol) on Monday, January 28, 2002 - 01:58 pm:

I read in the paper that Germany has busses today that run on water. True? Will the US always be a slave to its reliance on Arabian Oil? Or is it even feasible to seek other methods?

Thoughts then?

SoL

By Yo' Daddy (Sol) on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 11:40 am:

Is brainwashing real? I always thought so, but after reading this fact-rich column, I'm not so sure! A term invented to describe Cold-War goings-on in Red-China, what is barinwashing anyway?

The column:
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2061166

Sol

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Monday, February 25, 2002 - 12:49 pm:

You really should be sitting down when you read this one. Gold Star Mothers is an organization made up of women whose sons were killed in military combat during service in the United States armed forces. Recently, a delegation of New York State Gold Star Mothers made a trip to Washington, DC to discuss various concerns with their elected representatives. According to published reports, there was only one politician who refused to meet with these ladies.

Can you guess which politician that might be? Was it New York Senator Charles Schumer? Nope, he met with them. Try again. Do you know anyone serving in the Senate who has never showed anything but contempt for our military? Do you happen to know the name of any politician in Washington who’s husband once wrote of his loathing for the military? Now you’re getting warm! You got it! None other than the Queen herself, Hillary Clinton. She refused repeated requests to meet with the Gold Star Mothers.

Now — please don’t tell me you’re surprised. This woman wants to be president of the United States —- and there is a huge percentage of voters who are eager to help her achieve that goal.

Sincerely, Cdr. Hamilton McWhorter USN (ret)

PS: Please forward this to as many people as you can. We don’t want this woman to even think of running for President. May you sleep in peace always…and please…hug or thank a Veteran for that privilege.

Think about this one!!!

Don’t forget, our girl, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as a New York Senator, now comes under this fancy Congressional Retirement and Staffing Plan. It’s common knowledge that, in order for her to establish NYS residency, they purchased a million+ dollar house in upscale Chappaqua, NY. Makes sense. Now they are entitled to Secret Service protection for life. Still makes sense. Here is where it becomes interesting… The mortgage payments hover at about $10,000 per month. BUT, an extra residency had to be built within the acreage in order to house the Secret Service agents. The Clinton’s now charge the Secret Service $10,000 monthly rent for the use of said Secret service residence and that rent is just about equal to their mortgage payment, meaning that we, the tax payers, are paying the Clinton’s mortgage, their transportation, their safety and security, their 12 man staff, and it’s all perfectly legal.

By Technomage (Houdini) on Monday, February 25, 2002 - 02:33 pm:

Legal? Yes. Ethical? No.

It takes a village to raise an idiot.

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, April 08, 2002 - 07:43 pm:

Reparitions for slavery. I'm surprised no one has started discussing this yet!

I'm against it, it is meritless, irrisponsible, and unjust. My grandparents came here from Europe, after much loss from the Nazi invasion during WWII. Their homes were destroyed, assets stolen, families killed or scattered. They didn't speak english when they arrived in NYC, all they had was a small baby girl and the clothes on their backs. As I see it they were at a grave disadvantage compared to African Americans who had already been established in the US for several generations. Furthermore, they never received assistance from the government, no food stamps, wellfare or unemployment.

If there's anything they learned it's that you aren't entitled to anything. And the more you stand around feeling sorry for yourself, the poorer you get from not doing a damn thing to change your situation.

So when an organization, or a group of individuals cry and scream about how their great, great, great, great grandparents were wronged- how they can't function or succeed to meet the living standards of the "majority" because of lingering pain, humiliation, loss of wealth and opportunities from a time they never existed in, never witnessed, never experienced, never suffered... Blah, blah, blah... Bring in the old consipracy theory that the US is slanted against blacks and you have "reparition for slavery". They are too many generations removed for their claims to have any merit.

I have no sympathy for this "cause" and I'm as liberal as people get, everyone here has the same rights and privilages as each other.

And they want to sue Uncle Same as well? Since the US goverment is funded with tax dollars, when you demand money from the government you are taking it from it's citizens too. As most of my lineage is Eastern Euro, I can declare with a degree of certainty that I had nothing to do with, nor profited from slavery- and there are millions of people like me in the US. So (hypothetically speaking) my tax money would pay for slavery reparitions. So the sins of someone else's great, great, great forefathers would be paid for out of every american's pockets. Oh, bravo! I see the idea of theft is such a novel, moral and just idea.

If anyone so much as tries to tell me I had my life handed to me because I'm white and profited from slavery is going to have their a$$ handed to them. I refuse to pay out for others who whine and bitch because they don't have the discipline or the will to do what I've done for myself. Life is hard- it's supposed to be; and if you don't give up at every obsticle you just might get somewhere.

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Tuesday, April 09, 2002 - 09:42 am:

Yeah, well, I have ancestors on my father's side who stayed in Germany during WWII and served with distinction in the german army. Does that make me responsible for the deaths of all those who were slaughtered in the holocaust? Or, does the fact that my grandmother and grandfather saw that Hitler was a bad man as he was rising to power and got out before it was too late make up for it? Or better yet, how about the fact that my grandfather built PT boats at the brooklyn navy yards to help America in WWII? You know what? They were STILL called Nazis and Krauts and all other kinds of ethnic slurs. I never knew my grandfather, he died before I was born. I know my family wasn't responsible for slavery, and shouldn't be responsible for paying for it now. Why should anybody have to pay for it now? The perpetrators of slavery and the slaves themselves died many many years ago.

Now, I've been called conservative in the past... Here comes a statement you can judge for yourselves:

In America today, due to affirmative action and all these minority "hand-outs" and "equal-opportunity" the white male, 25-35 has a serious disadvantage in the job market. Example: A black man and I are competing for the same position, hypothetically. I have more experience and training than the black man, but not much. He gets chosen before me because the company needs to meet quota so the NAACP doesn't harass them for race discrimination. And if you want a direct example of reverse racism at work, go to the corner of 7th ave. and 34th street outside Madison Square garden/Penn Station on any given afternoon and listen to the black muslim activists in their silky turbans and gold medallions preaching violently about the "Great White Devil" and how America is the "Land of Satan". Nat can back me up on this. They called her Miss Piggy and she laughed openly in their faces and walked away...

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Tuesday, April 09, 2002 - 02:27 pm:

They probably just wanted to sleep with me, after all I'm just so adroable. They have strange ways of showing affection.

Anyway, I'm sick of people who make themselves a burden on society by sitting on their arses only to point the blame elsewhere for their own shortcommings. I hope the courts strike the repartiion bullshite down. We'd have some serious social instability if something so unjust slimes it's way into law.

By Margravine (Ranger) on Tuesday, April 09, 2002 - 07:56 pm:

Reparitions for slavery.

We've already covered debt that. The currency was blood and it was paid at places called Sharpsburg, Manassass, Antietem, and Gettysburg. That bill has been paid, people.

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Wednesday, April 10, 2002 - 01:19 pm:

On a different note, read this site and sign the petition to stop the CBDTPA!!! Protect our consumer rights and tell big businees to go shag thenselves!

www.stopPoliceWare.com

By The One Known Only as (Greyfox) on Wednesday, April 10, 2002 - 03:21 pm:

some dude signed the petition as 'korgath'. He really lent it that air of credibility it needed in order to be taken seriously. Nice going, 'Korgath'.

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, June 17, 2002 - 10:49 pm:

My neighborhood is flooded with cops right now. You guys hear about the shooting at Bar Veloce? Two blocks away from my apartment, and I kid you not, my boyfriend and I were thinking about stopping by bar Veloce for a nice bottle of German riesling that very saturday night. Good thing we decided upon other activities (*blush*) for the night or we would have been in the middle of the shooting.

I think it's cool that it was two girls who took that racist psycho with the guns down so the police could get him. I have just one thing to say: GIRL POWER!

On the BAD side of things that psycho creep shot my favorite restaurant owner! He shot Mr. Iso!!!!!! =( Mr. Iso owns a kick-arse Sushi restaurant on the corner (called "Iso", of course)- the best sushi in the east village! My boyfriend and I go there all the time because we love the place. Poor Mr. Iso!

That racist psycho should hang!

By Starlit simulacron (Ranger) on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 09:48 am:

Shot dead or wounded? I heard there were two killed. I sincerely hope it's not your friend - it will have been someone else's friend however

I also heard the psycho left a suicide note hoping to get the cops to kill him. Why can't these a-holes just go ahead and kill themselves and leave the rest of the world out of it?

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 12:10 pm:

Wounded. Iso was shot in the wrist, and some good news: no one was killed. Two others were shot, one badly, but he's at bellvue in stable condition last I checked. The girl who tackled the gun-toting psycho was shot in the leg.

The psycho left a suicide note for his son and painted "tell the boys in blue I won't be easy" on one of the walls in his apartment.

Apparently the psycho has a long record for drug and weapons posession. The only strange thing is that none of the people who knew him would describe him as racist. Though, the police said he was obviously under influence of drugs the night of the shooting. He also had AIDS, and his girlfriend (who also had AIDS) died last march.

There's lots of psychos in the population, instead of taking themselves out first they like to use someone/anyone as a scapegoat.

It was one of those random acts of violence that happens now and then, but the neighborhood is actually very safe.

By Starlit simulacron (Ranger) on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 01:20 pm:

I'm glad I was misinformed about fatalities - it all blended together with last night's news what with the (most) recent carnage in Isreal, and the pregnant woman who died leaving her her two year old alone and fending for her self for almost a week while she walked around mom's body in the kitchen (shudder)

I think I'll go retreat into some fiction.

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 - 01:47 pm:

Good idea, I think I'll do that too.

By Technomage (Houdini) on Friday, August 02, 2002 - 04:47 pm:

(From National Review Magazine Online, July 25,2002 Issue)

On Being Disliked
It’s an America thing.

A number of advisory groups are now working to improve the image of the United States abroad, in particular to "get the word out" to the Arab world that America is not really the Great Satan of censored Middle Eastern media. These are important tasks and all Americans should hope that our best and brightest can be enlisted in the effort in "global communications" to provide balanced reporting about the United States. Yet I do not think in the end even the most comprehensive and best-intended media campaign will have much effect in making such peoples fond of us — at least publicly.

The problem is not that we are imperialistic, ruthless, murderous, and oppressive toward allies and neutrals, but, in fact, mostly the opposite. We welcome rather than suppress criticism. Despite our enormous military advantages we do listen to and, as disinterested brokers, try to mediate a variety of complaints — Indians versus Pakistanis, Greeks against Turks, Spanish and Moroccans. Foreign critics realize that their grumbles are heard and so often publish in American journals and newspapers.

Our recent interventions abroad are rarely to gain territory or lucre, but rather, as we saw from Panama to the Gulf, to put down dictators who are robbing and killing their own people and threatening neighbors to the extent that the entire stability of a region is threatened. It is hard to see how the much criticized operations in Grenada, Haiti, Somalia, or Kosovo gained the United States much profit or valuable territory.

Coupled with these high-profile and often caricatured efforts to mediate, adjudicate, and intervene are the unique position of the American economy and the ubiquitous culture of the United States. Both are as preponderant on the world scene as are our military forces. You see today small children high-fiving each other in rural Greek villages and University of Texas sweatshirts in the Amazon basin. Crass TV reruns of Gilligan's Island and Love Boat, bad 1970s movies, near-pornographic fashion magazines, and the Internet — all of that and more smother indigenous culture worldwide. And this domination is not accomplished by some sinister corporate conspiracy. But much worse, it is a natural result of the very egalitarian and democratic logic of American popular culture — an insidious addiction that is designed to appeal to the widest popular audience without prerequisite education, training, or knowledge.

Our own elites whine that we have dumbed everything down to the lowest common denominator Maybe, but the world's billions have responded by voting with their feet, pocketbook, and remote control for almost everything American. It is precisely this media and consumer tidal wave, when coupled with the omnipotence of the American military, that has an ambivalent effect on most in the world — one that plays out on the personal level absurdly as a mixture of desire for all things American and yet shame for that very craving.

Martina Navratilova slurs her adopted America by suggesting it is not unlike former Communist Eastern Europe. Yet she apparently has no desire to return to even her freed country over a decade after it was liberated — largely through a half-century of dogged American opposition to murderous Communism.

Thousands of Palestinians are desperately trying to immigrate to the United States, and finding it difficult since their usual route of transit — the hated Tel Aviv airport — is now closed to them. Such would-be refugees may voice overwhelming support for Saddam Hussein, celebrate the news of September 11, and in polls attest their dislike of America. Yet, given the chance, thousands would gladly move to the country they profess to despise. And why not? Where else would they have freedom to say what they please, pursue their dreams of economic security — and protest that their newly adopted country is both amoral and shortsighted in its Middle Eastern policy.

The current Journal of Palestine Studies has a splashy ad for a new sympathetic history of Hamas — an official terrorist organization according to our own State Department. Before we get too worked up over this and its other nonsense, we should remember that the entire journal is published only through the auspices of the state-subsidized University of California Press. Critics may praise our enemies and rail against our government — but they still don't turn down help from our state-funded universities. Again Palestinians profess Arab solidarity and voice anti-Americanism; yet they are not emigrating to Kuwait which once ethnically cleansed 300,000 of them after the Gulf War, but instead seeking to open businesses in the Bronx.

I recently perused the catalogue of a University of California, Santa Barbara campus and discovered 62 classes in Chicano Studies with titles like "Methodology of the Oppressed"; "Racism in American History"; "Popular Barrio Culture"; "Chicano Spanish"; "Chicana Feminisms"; "Body, Culture, and Power" and so on. Thematic in these classes is that America is a rather hateful place that has made life horrific for Hispanic emigrants. But I also live in a state where millions of undocumented aliens from Mexico reside, and millions more want in — despite the purported sins so amply documented by tenured professors. A few of our elites say America is a rather bad place; millions of poor abroad disagree and apparently instead think Mexico is.

A Greek member of parliament from the socialist and often strident-anti-American PASOK party recently retired. The news accounts noted that she was a former Harvard professor. Such a contradiction between the life one actually lives and professes is not an anomaly when we realize that the first family of Greek anti-Americanism, the Papandreous, have a long and close relationship with the United States — one manifested over generations by them working, living, teaching, and going to school in America.

But then apparently Mr. Musharraf's own son also likes us. Until September 11, Mr. Musharraf had pretty much let Pakistan be overrun be murderous fundamentalists who professed undying hatred for America. One wonders if that included the city of Boston, where the younger Musharraf is employed. Even Saddam Hussein's stepson was found in the United States, and unofficial reports circulated that a few offspring of both the Taliban and the mullahs in Iran were living in America. We, of course, also remember that dozens of close family members of our archenemy Osama bin Laden lived in the northeast. Their renegade brother pledged to kill every American on sight; did his threats apply only to passport holders or random resident strollers in Boston like his own kin?

Anti-Americanism is as deeply psychologically as it is politically motivated. Many observers of the phenomenon have commented that such hostility, especially in Europe, arises out of envy and jealousy. Of course it does, but the animus is still deeper and all the more virulent because it is a war of the heart versus the head.

Professed hatred toward America for millions too often cloaks an inner desire for the very culture of freedom, material security, and comfort of the United States — like Saudis smirking over bin Laden as they push their carts in faux-American supermarkets among Pepsis and Sugar Smacks. In that regard, it all reminds me of tenured academics, who send their kids to private schools, vacation in Europe, and live in tasteful tree-lined suburbs — and then in the lounge damn the very institutions that have provided their universities with such bountiful capital to make their lives so comfortable. They are perennially unhappy because what they castigate has given them everything they treasure, and they are either too weak — or too human — to confess it.

What can we do to rectify this illogical dislike of the United States? If the history of the Athenian, Roman, and British empires — all of them far more aggressive, imperialistic, and uncompromising than us — offer guidance, not that much. If we can believe Thucydides, Tacitus, and Churchill, earlier powers accepted human nature for what it was — mercurial, emotional, contradictory, self-centered, and deeply paradoxical — then shrugged, and went on with their business.

Rather than creating new programs to teach others about America, I would prefer that our government instruct Americans about the exceptional history of America, reinaugurate civic education in the schools, explain that racism, sexism, and prejudice are endemic in the human species — but under the American system of government can be identified, discussed, and then ameliorated. If we could instill in our citizens a tragic rather than therapeutic sense of the world, they would understand that utopia is not possible on this earth, but that the Constitution and institutions of the United States are man's best hope for eradicating the evil and ignorance that plague us all. If we could do all that, then Americans might project a sense of self-confidence in their history and values that would admonish others that we are proud of rather than ashamed of being different — and that we care far more about the principles for which we fight than the applause of the day from the fickle, insecure, and mixed-up.

So yes, we must remind the Arabs that we saved Muslims from Afghanistan and Kosovo to Somalia and Kuwait. Yes, we must reiterate that we are at odds with dictatorial Mr. Arafat and Mr. Hussein, not with the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples, that we want democracies for them, not their land or money. And yes, we should explain to the world why U.N. resolutions do not represent collective wisdom, but often the reinforced biases and private agendas of dozens of autocratic, theocratic, and tribal regimes who vote only in New York, never at home. And if we are more imaginative still we can point out that the American fleet keeps the peace cheaply for others in the Pacific and Mediterranean, that American companies and universities provide the world with life-saving medicine, medical treatments, and critical technology. And so on.

But ultimately we must expect that the anger of many millions will remain, because the pathology lies unresolved and deep within them, not us.

By Technomage (Houdini) on Monday, August 19, 2002 - 03:37 pm:

As if you didn't need more proof that the legal profession is overrun with greedy robber-barrons here comes the latest lawsuit fad ready to
erode at the ever crumbling wall of personal responsibility. You ready? Lets sue fast food!

Thats right, some extremely overweight guy is taking on the the makers of the whopper and big mac blaming them for his obesity problem.

Excuse me, didn't he have a choice in terms of what his diet consists of? Didn't he have a choice to decide to get off his arse and exercise? At the very least he could have ordered the garden salad. It's so silly that the courts are not throwing this suit out.


Why is it nobody acknowleges personal choice anymore? If I choose to stab my eye with a knife is it the knife makers fault? No. But the way the US courts are going, someday I may be able to sue for millions!

Twits.

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, August 19, 2002 - 04:24 pm:

I read about that one a few weeks ago. Something about that fat guy only realizing fast food was bad for him when his doctor inquired about his diet after two heart attacks and diabetes. Apparently he feasted on burgers and fries for 40 years.

All this "fast food BAD" hype has been in the media for years, and preached by every doctor and nutritionalist. Remember when Dave Thomas had heart trouble over eating Wendy's food? He's dead now, but I thought that was funny.

By The Chosen One (Buffy) on Monday, August 19, 2002 - 09:18 pm:

When did Dave Thomas die???




Buffy

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, August 19, 2002 - 09:45 pm:

That was old news, back in Jaunary...

Dave Thomas CNN obituary

By Ms. Vice (Nat) on Monday, August 19, 2002 - 09:54 pm:

He had quadruple bypass surgery in 1996 and had his gallbladder removed... But hey, them burgers are tasty.. Any refreshing beverages to go with that?