Slashdot Mirror
Small Asteroid On Collision Course With Earth
musatov writes "There's talk on The Minor Planet Mailing List about a small asteroid approaching Earth with a 99.8% probability of colliding. The entrance to the Earth's atmosphere will take place October 7 at 0246 UTC (2:35 after this story goes live) over northern Sudan, releasing the energy of about a kiloton of TNT. The asteroid is assumed to be 3-4 meters in size; it is expected to burn up completely in the atmosphere, causing no harm. As a powerful bolide, it may put on quite a show in the sky. For those advanced enough in astronomy to observe, check the MPEC 2008-T50 and MPEC 2008-T64 circulars. NASA's JPL Small Body Database has a 3D orbit view. The story has been already picked up by CNN and NASA."
Hopefully it really does burn up totally in the atmosphere. An asteroid colliding with the world right now would make a bad economy worse. Speaking of the economy, do you know how this whole meltdown began? It started in 1977 during good ol' Jimmy Carter's presidency (geez, his presidency just keeps on giving so many years later; giving nothing but damage, that is). They wanted to make sure that poor people would be able to own their own homes. So they made up this law about making it possible for these people to get loans. Then this dude named Barack Obama came along some years later, along with some Acorn thing, and they went around and sued banks into complying. What banks did in order to keep making money while making bad loans was this: They'd bundle together lots of good loans with bad loans and sell these bundles to Freddie Mac and Fannie May. Those two government corporations would then bundle together a bunch of these bundles and sell the resulting bigger bundles to investment bankers. That is, 401k's and stuff like that. Then Bill Clinton came along and encouraged even more of this loan-giving, because you see, it's a pyramid scheme, kind of like Social Security. Well the result of all of this was that people who should never have received a loan (since they couldn't conceivably pay it back) did, homes were purchased, demand went up, supply couldn't keep up, prices skyrocketed, people who wanted loans beyond a home's value could get them since the price would "always" continue to rise, and so forth. It was a huge bubble. And that bubble just burst. And now, in order to "fix" the problem, the government is gonna make up even MORE legislation, even MORE regulations, etc., and the banks and CEOs are going to get punished, and everyone is conveniently forgetting that it's the government that started the whole thing and Barack Obama who, through the threat of litigation, forced banks to make these bad loans, which they knew were bad. In other words, what I'm saying is that the government forced the banks, through this ridiculous legislation, to make these loans. The banks did because they didn't have a choice (and Obama was there to make sure of that). And when it failed, everyone blames greed and banks and whatnot. The government walks away scott free, Obama gets elected because one Jimmy Carter isn't enough for a country this size, and the entire American people are left paying the bill -- which will come out to something like SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS PER TAXPAYER! What would YOU do with $7,000? For these reasons, an asteroid crashing on the Earth and driving stock prices even lower is something we really don't have time for right now. Government regulation out of control. Because when Rome is burning down, play a fiddle.
The difference is that Barney Frank is a pillow-biter who is up to his flabby neck in the ruin of the home mortgage industry, and by extension, the entire American economy. "Those wascally Wepubwicans are onto me! I guess I better pway the wace card!"
"These two entitiesâ"Fannie Mae and Freddie Macâ"are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."
Barney Frank, 2003
Lets see... almost 57 years ago, Japan bombed the crap out of Pearl Harbor and a year and a half before that ... German Blitzed Poland, etc. The US wasn't a world power.
A few decades before that... the Prussian army was the scourge of Europe. The US was barely on the map.
Before that... the French controlled most of the European land mass. The US was an also-ran. ...
And so on.
Holy cr*p. Things change! Politics, Religion, Climate... all these things we expect to stay static ... aren't.
AAAAAAHHHHHH!
T
Now that it hit, zombie party at CERN!