Build Date: Tue Oct 22 17:50:12 2024 UTC
I'm a self-important, ignorant drunk who avoids organized religions like the plague.
-- Johnnie Royale
Close Call
2002-06-21 19:41:16
It would seem that our Planet narrowly escaped a devastating blow on the 14th of June! An asteroid the size of a football pitch broke the Moon's Orbit and passed a mere 120,000 KM from the Earth!!!
Had the asteroid, named 2002MN, with a diameter of 50-120 Metres actually hit us, it would have caused damage on a scale similar to that of the Tunguska strike in 1908... That is 2000 square kilometres, folks!
One of the Scariest facts in this Frightening Fly-By is that "Linear" (The Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid Search Programme) in New Mexico only spotted our stealthy visitor After it had passed!!!
Apparantly they were blinded by the Sun, which, due to its brightness, meant that the Asteroid was completely hidden from view until about 1 hour after its passing.
The Angel on our shoulder, Hubble, being a space based observatory, would seem to be the only means of warning against an Asteroid made invisible to us by the Sun.
I guess we are all lucky that a second space based Telescope, "European Gaia," is set for launch in 2010. Its design lends itself perfectly to this kind of problem!
But for now People... beware!.... BEWARE!
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
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'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
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In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
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During a magnificent sunny day in a fast receding autumn, the Spock Science Monitor reporters once again blew the playa dust off of their computers and covered the 2002 Burning Man Decompression – held every year just east of Portola Hill in beautiful San Francisco. Both an afternoon and evening issues were released to the unsuspecting crowd of freaks attempting to in some small way experience the euphoria of the playa – if but for a brief afternoon far from the desolation of Northern Nevada. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
40 Acres, a Mule, and a Crummy 90-Second Spot on Weekend Update
Consider the plight of the Black Man. The Black Man on "Saturday Night Live," I mean. Has there ever been a more pathetic thing than a token unredeemed for 28 years? Where is the NAACP when you really need them? (More...)