Weird wonderful world...

Driving home from work, I listened to this report on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/26/381647445/another-day-another-close-call-between-earth-and-an-asteroid

In their chat, Robert Siegel and Paul Chodas, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Near Earth Object Program, discuss the fact that asteroid 2004BLS6 was passing quite near, 745,000 miles to be exact - or the distance from earth to the moon and back with a return trip to the moon - our planet.  While this particular asteroid is very large, the size of two football stadiums, it's path poses no threat to earth.  However, the two talk about what options we humans would have to change the trajectory of a large asteroid heading our way so that we could avoid the fate suffered by the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Well, duh!  Call Bruce Willis, Ben Afleck, Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thorton, and all those other guys from Armageddon and have them drill a hole in it, sillies!!!!

Then the talk faded.  I sped along at 70 mph with 100's of other earthlings, on 4 and 6 lane roadways, well lit with bright lights frightening away the dark, while gigantic billboards advertising electronics, waffles, and gas stations flew by....I sat in a mechanical box, powered by gasoline, a fossil fuel, listening to voices from Washington D.C. telling stories of people across the globe, on a bit of spherical matter spinning in the universe, with random chunks of stuff flying by....as we walk and drive and work and play....where dinosaurs used to roam.

What a weird and wonderful world.  How very small and insubstantial our role in it.  I am grateful for my little space in time, here, today....with each of you. - c