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Is Jupiter Earth's Cosmic Protector?
Hugh Pickens writes "Last Sunday, an object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into Jupiter's colorful cloud tops, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean — the second time in 15 years that this had happened, after Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving Earth-size marks that persisted up to a year. 'Better Jupiter than Earth,' say astronomers who think that part of what makes Earth such a nice place to live is that Jupiter acts as a gravitational shield, deflecting incoming space junk away from the inner solar system where it could do to humans what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. 'If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us,' says Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley, who first noticed the mark on Jupiter. But others say the warm and fuzzy image of the King of Planets as father-protector may not be entirely accurate. In 1770, Comet Lexell whizzed by the earth, missing us by a cosmic whisker after passing close to Jupiter. The comet made two passes around the Sun and in 1779 again passed very close to Jupiter, which then threw it back out of the solar system."
This theory fails to take into account the giant space goatse monster.
only when it's a big nigger cock
Hi, I'm BadAnalogy Guy, folks, due to a recent string of brilliant postings, I have found myself at so much more intelligent than you that I am at the short end of the Karma stick.
If you are a moderator, fuck you. You have three choices facing you. First, do nothing and affect me neither positively nor negatively. Second, you can mod me down as off-topic, which I will not agree is an appropriate moderation for this post because I'm so much more intelligent than you. Finally you can consider my productive and lively posting history and moderate this comment up. Don't consider this post, consider my history of posts. That is what you should do when you moderate, read the entire comment history of the person and mod them up or down based on that.
I'm not begging you, moderators, because I have a spine unlike you. I know you have your own agendas which are all trivial compared to my desperation for karma. Some of you are staunch Open Source dumbshits and are searching for heretics to burn. Others are pedants who see no benefit in posts that are even slightly divergent from your perspective. Your agenda is your business, and since Slashdot has awarded you with moderation points, your agenda and perspective must have some merit. Notice that I do not agree with that. What I'm doing on this site is still not clear to you but I need karma.
What I would ask is simply that you spare a point in rescuing me from an automatic -1 posting level. It doesn't take any extra work on your part except for your moderation rights, and it will only take 4 of you to put this particular post up to +5. Also, when it ends up -1 and the metamods come in to play, you will never get moderation points again. So help me if you have a spine.
Thank you for exercising your moderation rights and following my suggestions like a bunch of sheep. You have the freedom to go against the system and listen to me.
This is a follow up attempt to earlier postings. Posting anonymously because you should mod my parent post up instead of this one to give me karma.
So far, none of the cures for "Global Climate Change" are better than the problem.
It seems to me to be a fact that life would only get worse for me if we were to implement any of the more drastic solutions. As most everyone on the planet feels the same way, there's no logical reason to do anything.
The absolute worst possible outcome is that we consume all technologically-related resources and have to fall back on subsistence living. That's only a tragedy if you happen to be alive during the change.
when it happens daily, is it really news?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I want to the mall today and I must admit it has been a long time since I have been to one and now I recall why I don't like going. A ratio greater than 1::2 is obese and mostly, morbidly obese. To be more specific about the location, I was at The Parks Mall in Arlington, TX. I know demographics vary greatly so it needed to be better qualified. In any case, I felt very uncomfortable being there because of my dislike of obesity in general. But where should we assign blame? I have doubts in that area.
Other nations do not have the problem that the U.S. has...at least not on the same scale or extreme. I think that people are people everywhere, though, and that massive amounts of individuals in other countries are NOT shunning the unhealthy foods that we devour so quickly and readily in the U.S. I think it has little to do with people of other nations being somehow more enlightened or have more self-control although it does make it more convenient to think so. People in masses tend to do the same thing everywhere in the world. They pretty much do whatever they want and especially that which is most available to them.
An interesting difference between the U.S. and other countries is that in the U.S., the FDA has failed the people of the U.S. in favor of the companies who want to make food less expensively that can sit on shelves for longer durations. Where else can you get a "diet" sweetener that has 0 calories and at the same time lowers the metabolism which invariably leads to weight gain? (I speak of aspartame) Many other nations have banned or restricted the substance... why? It is perfectly safe isn't it? The FDA says so... (not that it matters that the FDA had rejected approval of Aspartame with good reason twice before political pressure had somehow got aspartame through the process later.) Some of the healthiest countries in the world have significant restrictions on unhealthy foods being available. It might be "unamerican" to restrict things that are unhealthy from consumers but we already have that... and we see that the results are good when there are restrictions on certain things like corn syrup sweeteners and the like... and we can see what results when there aren't such restrictions.
Humans do what they do regardless of the country they live in... it's the laws and regulations that make the most difference.