What, Me Worry?

Space.com dissects (or see the same story on MSNBC, with handy Torino scale graphic) the asteroid scare that's been in the news for the past week, asking some good questions about the roles of the news media and the scientific community. I suppose my take on it is something like this: given that truly insignificant threats to individuals get hyped all out of proportion routinely, at least in this case it was an insignificant threat to the entire planet.

Comments

Daily Show

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Jon Steweart's comment:
"The torino scale ranges from 0, no likely practical consequences, to 10, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Re:The media is pathetic

[bowronch]

Slashdot is the only place where one can find responsible journalism...

3.9 in a million?????

[Lobsang]

And people worry?

That's the same probability of me waking up tomorrow with Cindy Crawford serving me breakfast in bed wearing Victoria Secret underwear...

or...

none...

(I could easily bear an asteroid hitting the planet if that breakfast thingy happened though...) :)

Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public

[mikewas]

Declare war on asteroids. Like most wars, this'll increase government spending and provide stimulus to the global economy.

Unlike other wars, in this one no one gets killed, only asteroids.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with science, it's an attempt by politicians to justify deficit spending (rightly so in my view) by scaring the public at large.

Re:Economic reasons to scare John Q. Public

[The_Shadows]

More spending? It wouldn't take much more. After all, you'd only need to make one spaceship to fight the war.

You get a bonus ship every 10000 points.

Atari

[kin_korn_karn]

This is old news. Atari predicted the asteroid war in the late 70s.

Does it worry anyone else,

[ByteHog]

That the (not so) possible end of the world is named NT7 ?

Re:Chicken little syndrome

[scott1853]

The original post actually reminded me a Carlin bit about how the planet might want things like plastic, so it created humans to manufacture it.

More proactive solution

[GuyMannDude]

Declare war on asteroids.

Screw this defensive "homeland security against asteroids" shit. I say we take the fight to those damn bugs who keep hurling these things at us! And if our allies are queezy about toppling the Brain Bug dictator, then we'll just have to go it alone! Already we've got a plan in the works to take down BugCentral from the inside out.

GMD

Re:Not so new techniques for science

[Zordak]

That's not scientists. That's environmentalists, who are like the bastard step-children science left on the side of a snowy mountain, hoping they would just freeze to death. Unfortunately, some bleeding heart woodsmen rescued them and now we're stuck with them.