Archives for February 2013

Well, the world famous Florida Python hunt is over. 1,600 people paid $25 apiece to kill a total of 68 pythons. Considering that there are over 150,000 pythons loose in the swamps of Florida this was not a rousing success. Add in the fact that the unofficial numbers, no one will even mumble near a reporter, state that there were about 400 injuries and you have a pretty dismal showing. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission is calling it a “wonderful learning experience.” One gets the impression that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission was cheering for the pythons. After all, the rules they came up with sound like something you would come up with after a three day bender. In case you missed it they came down to this; anyone with $25 and a weapon could wander into the swamp full of poisonous snakes and deadly gators to win a prize. Training consisted of a picture book. Yes, you read that right, basic literacy wasn’t a requirement. How no one was killed is beyond me.

The again, Floridians are very good with their guns. And they practice the best safety techniques. For example, Deon Rachud Sutton got upset when someone knocked over his drink in a mall, so he shot them.

In the wee hours of Monday morning cops responded to a report a gunfire at the Ocala Entertainment Complex, according to a news release from the Ocala Police Department.

When they arrived they found a member of the security personnel had been shot in his shoulder by a patron, according to cops.
The patron, identified as Deon Rachud Sutton, 27, had become upset with the the security guard after the guard reportedly knocked over his drink.

No word on what Sutton had been drinking.

After the duo had verbally feuded, the guard decided to escort Sutton out of the venue. Sutton then pulled a gun from the guard’s pants. As the duo struggled over the gun, it went off, wounding the security guard. Others present helped to restrain Sutton until cops arrived, the release stated.

The guard’s wound was found to be non-life threatening, deputies said.

Sutton was charged with Aggravated Battery with a Firearm, Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon, Carrying a Concealed Firearm and Possession of Marijuana Under 20 Grams, which was found in his possession while he was being treated at a local hospital for minor injuries he sustained during the scuffle.

Yes nothing says PAR-TAAYYYY like hanging out at a mall at 1:00 AM. Of course, that’s still pretty standard stuff in Florida. Getting shot in a mall is like crossing the street down there.

Fortunately for us we have the story of Aalaya Walker. She got shot by a stove.

Yes, waffles were involved.

An 18-year-old Florida woman was only slightly injured this week when she was shot by her friend’s oven, police said.

Aalaya Walker was visiting a friend in St. Petersburg Monday when they decided they wanted some late-night waffles, The Tampa Bay Times reported. So Walker began preheating the oven — unaware that her friend, JJ Sandy, 25, was storing a magazine from his .45-caliber Glock 21 in the oven.

The magazine exploded about 9 p.m. ET, spraying casing fragments at high speed and striking Walker. She managed to pick some of the fragments out of her leg and chest and then took a bus to the hospital, where she was treated and released.

Sandy told police he’d stored the gun in a drawer but had stored the magazine in the oven. Four rounds were in the 13-capacity magazine, he said.

Gun and ammunition references indicate that the .45-caliber bullets commonly used in Glocks can explode at temperatures as low as 280 degrees — or even lower if they’ve been exposed to heat for a long time, which can degrades the structure.

Sandy “stated that he does not have a temperature gauge on the oven so he estimates the temperature based on how far the knob is turned,” according to the police report, which was obtained by the Times. “I observed that the inside of the oven was damaged.”

In a memorable 2007 episode, the popular science TV show “Mythbusters” found in several experiments that bullets can explode “once the oven was hot enough.”

“Without a gun barrel to contain and direct the propellant gases, the bullets did not develop enough speed to pierce the glass or steel portions of the oven. The shell casings actually caused more damage than the bullets,” it found — essentially reproducing what police said happened Monday.

Sandy wasn’t charged because he had a proper concealed weapons permit, The Tampa Tribune reported.

Ah yes, the ever popular concealed carry permit which states, clearly, that storing ammunition in an oven is a REALLY good idea. Do you get the idea that the people who write the concealed carry laws in Florida hang out with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission?

Now, as many of you remember, a dog recently killed its owner by running him over with a Chevy. It turns out he has inspired canines all over the state. Police in Frostproof, Fla., were called to the scene of a crime and it took all of their training and self control to keep them from laughing.

Gregory Dale Lanier was shot by his dog.

A Florida man was shot and wounded over the weekend by his dog, who walked away without charges, police said.

Gregory Dale Lanier, 35, of Frostproof, Fla., told police Saturday that he and his dog were in their truck in nearby Sebring when the dog kicked a gun that was on the truck’s floor, the Highlands Tribune newspaper reported.

The gun went off, shooting Lanier in the leg, Sebring police said.

Lanier wasn’t seriously injured, said Sebring Police Cmdr. Steve Carr, who actually said police didn’t arrest the dog because the investigation was pending, the Tribune reported.

He also said he had never heard of a similar case.

According to the police report, Lanier said he was driving along State Road 17 North when the dog kicked “the unloaded .380 pistol.” It went on to say that Lanier was “surprised” to learn not only that the gun was loaded, but also that it was actually a 9mm weapon, not a .380.

Okay, did your “HE’S LYING!!” radar go off too? He couldn’t tell the difference between a 9mm and a .380? And he didn’t know if his own gun was loaded?

I smell a bitch all right, but more of the soon to be ex girlfriend variety than Fido.

By the way, for those who asked, WikiPedia’s list of retired popes is about as accurate as they are going to get. It depends on whether they count popes who were forced out, assassinated or just disappeared under unusual circumstances. Their list is limited to voluntary retirements.

That’s good enough for now.

Flo Rida – Whistle (Official Video) from kerim on Vimeo.

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This site is not prudish. A quick search for the word “naked” will garner you hours of enjoyable reading. The same holds true if you search for “porn.” In fact you can even limit your search to “boobs” and you will be rewarded. Even so, today’s stories gave me pause. Not because they’re salacious, because they aren’t. Nor are they exploitative or degrading. Contrariwise they are uplifting and positive. Two things I’m not that comfortable with. If you want stories of happy puppies or stuff like that this really isn’t your blog. That being said, I’m going to give it the old school try today anyway. And the old school try would be the most appropriate way when you consider the subject matter.

The town of Montserrat in Spain is, like everywhere else, having budget troubles. To save money they cut school bus service to anyone living closer than 3 KM to the school. Well, there are some very dangerous roads in that area so moms wanted the service restored. So they got a budget, put together a plan and then took off all their clothes to make a calendar.

Which they sell locally only.

A group of fearless mothers in Spain have gone topless in order to save their school’s bus.

The women, all mothers of children in the town of Montserrat, decided to take the rather unconventional course of action in December, after authorities in the region decided to restrict school bus pick-ups in an attempt to save money, according to Euronews.

A topless calendar may seem extreme, but for many families, it was worth it.

After bus service was cut, families were forced to navigate a difficult and often long walk to school, according to The Telegraph.

NRP reports that Eva Maria Casas Sancho’s children were forced to walk almost 3 miles to their elementary school after the cuts.

“There’s no sidewalk and there are lots of trucks going fast,” said Sancho, a 41-year-old mother of three, and the calendar’s Ms. June. “The truth is, it’s pretty dangerous for kids to be walking there.”

Montserrat is located near Valencia, one of the country’s largest cities, and also a region extremely hard hit by the burst of a real estate bubble, according to Reuters. Valencia and its northern neighbor Catalonia are the country’s two most indebted areas.

The calendar has since proved immensely popular in the small Mediterranean town of around 7,000, according to NPR.

The Associated Press reports that the mothers need about $4,100 to fund the bus, driver and monitor for a month. So far, calendar sales have raised enough money to keep the bus running through June.

One reason the calendar is popular is that the moms are hot. Another reason is that they are mostly naked. And the best reason is that the damn thing is hard to get. You need to get someone in town to buy it for you.

Well, if being naked can get kids to school safely why shouldn’t it get people to eat healthier?

Wait, what?

Yes kids, the hottest fad this side of the Harlem Shake is Naked Vegan Cooking.

When Jess, Greta, and Zach moved in together, they decided to bare more than their souls to each other — at least in the kitchen.

Jess, 24, and Greta, 21, became instant cooking competitors, constantly trying to out-do the other in creative recipes. Zach, 24, just liked to walk around naked.

Then one day the three students from Manchester, UK, decided to put the competition — and their duds — behind them.

They stripped down and started Naked Vegan Cooking dot com, a website where the roommates and contributors share vegan recipes that they cooked in the nude.

“We realized that by going naked, we created a platform to talk about a whole bunch of issues we are interested in,” Jess explained to the Huffington Post in an email.

Those interests include body image, feminism, and how the media portrays them.

Their website and Facebook page have recently gotten a rise out of people, and led to several side gigs. The trio has had art exhibitions, pop-up restaurants, and is just finishing off an anthology of body image writings.

Even in an age of Instagramming every bite we eat, few are willing to shed everything for the camera. The nakedvegancooking.com team wears its birthday suit for a reason.

“I’ve had issues with body image and eating disorders in the past,” Jess told HuffPost WeirdNews. “This has been a healing process for me. People are saturated daily with unrealistic images of how bodies ‘should be’ from magazines, advertisements, and the media. Showing unairbrushed images on the internet and creating a space to talk about these issues is really important.”

The roommates don’t always cook in the nude. It’s cold in Manchester.

“We’re poor students,” Jess said. “So we cannot afford to put the heating on so much in winter.”

Also, nudity isn’t mandatory for house guests, though the roommates surround themselves with free thinkers. On occasion, Jess said, the guests have been the ones to get naked and cook while the roommates stayed clothed.

Not everyone on the Internet is so excited about the photos on the site, which feature the roommates cooking up their favorite dishes and then covering their erogenous zones with their plates.

“Half the time we were being called ‘fat,’ and the other half of the time people were saying that if we really cared about positive body image we would have larger people on the site,” Jess said. “I guess it just proves how fickle the internet can be.”

Luckily, most of their feedback has been positive. Still, the question has to be asked: Aren’t there risks to naked cooking? HuffPost Weird News editor, Buck Wolf, for example, pointed out that bacon could be especially painful to cook without clothes.

“In the early days we did have a few slip ups, particularly with hot oil,” Jess said. “We quickly learned that aprons were not the enemy!”

Okay, to be fair, the lasagna (pictured above) looks delicious.

But have we really sunk that low that the only way we’ll pay attention any more is if we are being talked to by naked people?

Not that I’m complaining, I’m just asking.

Is Anyone Up in Providence from Film From The Future Productions on Vimeo.

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God has decided that my being sick isn’t entertaining enough. So, today, just for funsies, the heat is out. Normally, on those days where I’m not scheduled to be in the office, I like to get the morning papers. However I figure if I walk outside and get even colder, certainly wetter, and then come back to an unheated room I will catch pneumonia and die. I don’t want to catch pneumonia and die. I have too many other things planned. So it’s Internet only for me for a while. Oh the tragedy of it all. How will I muddle through? Well, I guess I’ll suffer so you don’t have to. Hmm, that sounds familiar. I wonder if anyone else ever done that? No, of course not. I’m the first. It’s my cross to bear.

While today I am going to focus on moms, I thought I’d give a quick shout out to the future mom in Wisconsin who thought it would be fun for her and her Boo to play with a 9mm semi-automatic on Valentine’s day. She’s lucky all she got was an extra hole in her butt. I’m sure she’ll learn from this little episode and become the award winning mom we all know she can be.

We’l kick things off with the fun story of the lovely Asia Walker. In an effort to be discreet she and her boyfriend moved their amorous moment to the car so they wouldn’t be doing the mattress mambo in front of kids or strangers.

So far so good.

Because they’re from Florida they made sure the car was in gear. They just neglected to see if the brakes worked said Daytona police as they pulled the car out of a house.

Their night started with a bang, and ended with a bang.

A Florida couple allegedly getting intimate in their car smashed all the way through a Daytona Beach home on Friday, according to WESH.

Police say Asia Walker, 30, and her boyfriend lost control of their loins — and their 2007 Hyundai — at about 5:30 a.m.

“She told the investigating trooper that her and the boyfriend were getting a little amorous and the trooper suspects that’s probably why she lost control of the vehicle,” Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Kim Montes told the station.

Walker slammed into the home, which was unoccupied at the time, in a crash so powerful the windows on the other side of the house blew out, NBC-2 reports.

Walker was injured by falling debris and taken to the hospital with cuts and bruises, the Daily Mail reports. Her boyfriend, Charles Phillips, wasn’t hurt.

Walker was charged with careless driving.

I wonder how much of that her carton insurance company is gong to cover? My guess is zero.

That being said, I am not one to talk. I once ruptured my prostrate while being entertained on a Harley which I lost control of and drove into a laundromat. As you can see, this could happen to anyone.

What can’t just happen to anyone is our next story.

Police in South Glenn Falls, New York arrested a mom for throwing her son a birthday party. Well, that and the strippers she hired.

As it turns out, strippers and underage teens do not the perfect birthday party make.

At least that’s the opinion of the South Glens Falls Police, who arrested New York mother Judy Viger on Monday for allegedly organizing and paying for a stripper surprise for her son’s 16th birthday.

Viger, 33, was charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child, according to the Associated Press. The incident reportedly occurred at Spare Time Bowling Center in South Glens Falls, N.Y., in November.

The AP reports that Viger is accused of hiring two women to dance with — and on — teens at the upstate bowling alley. The news outlet notes that pictures from the party appeared to show a “scantily clad, tattooed woman clinging upside down to a seated teen.”

Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy told The Post Star that police had interviewed numerous witnesses and parents. Officials said some children at the party were as young as 13.

WRGB called Tops in Bottoms, the company that reportedly supplied the strippers, and the man who answered the phone told the station the incident was “blown out of proportion.”

Similarly, a man who said he was Viger’s friend argued “police have it all wrong,” Fox23 News writes.

According to WRGB, Tops In Bottoms said dancers did not know anyone at the party was underage.

No, of course they didn’t. All grown up men with jobs wear their high school letter sweaters over Avenger’s Assemble T-shirts while they tip with Chuck-E-Cheese tokens. And the fact that they all had voices like the Vienna Boys’ Choir was just a coincidence.

On the other hand, if I’m ever in South Glenn Falls New York I’ll know how to find some cheap, and morally ambiguous, entertainment.

But, now, let’s take a look at a truly modern family tale. It’s the gentle story of two moms, one penis and a brother who married his sister.

And, BONUS!!!, it’s not even in Florida.

One man has reportedly just found out that he and his wife, the mother to his three children, are half-siblings — but he has yet to tell her the news.

In a “Dear Prudence” letter, a husband tells Slate.com contributor Emily Yoffe that he and his wife were both “born to lesbians” — he to a single woman and she to a couple.

Unlike his wife, who’d met her biological father when she was 18, the man never felt the need to find his sperm donor until recently. His findings have left him in turmoil.

It turns out, his mother and his wife’s mothers had gone to different sperm banks, but, as the man writes, “it appears so did our father.”

To Yoffe, he describes his anxiety in telling his wife and even that he is considering keeping the discovery a secret.

“I can’t help but think ‘This is my sister’ every time I look at her now,” he writes.

Yoffe gives optimistic feedback regarding the couple’s marriage.

“I think there’s way too much emphasis put on DNA,” she writes back. “Yes, you two will have had a shock, but when it wears off you will be the same people you were before you found out.”

She also discusses how, or rather if, the pair should relay the news to their children.

Because the writer is anonymous, skepticism surrounds the letter. One “Dear Prudence” reader suggests that the story is “a fiction pushing a political agenda.”

Yoffe acknowledges the chance for a fake, but asserts that she rarely publishes stories that wind up being false.

In the past few years, the sperm bank industry has experienced controversy quite often.

Most recently, one sperm donor in Kansas had to fight an effort to force him to pay child support for a child conceived through artificial insemination by a lesbian couple.

More famously, a scandal ensued in 2011 when the New York Times reported that one man fathered 150 children through sperm donation.

Okay, let’s – for the moment – assume this is true. Despite what the highly paid, and woefully trained, advice columnist might think, DNA is VERY important. Do you know why the Bible admonished against brothers and sisters marrying? Because, even before DNA testing, they knew that three eyed kids with the IQ of lint were not a good thing. More importantly, inbreeding can lead to a wide variety of genetic diseases.

While I’m sorry this happened to the dude, he has to tell his family. Their lives could literally depend on it.

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Surprise circumcision. Unexpected colonoscopy. Unanticipated splenectomy. Waking up to find your left lung attempting to crawl out your throat. I don’t mean the last one literally but it sure felt like it around 5 AM. I woke up coughing which, if logic still works, means I was coughing in my sleep. Which is very odd. Nevertheless, I managed to get myself upright and soon enough the wall and I agreed not to leave each other. When I could finally gulp air I staggered into the bathroom and coughed up a spongy Volvo. Four cylinder engine and transmission included. Anyway, as you can readily tell, there are some things which may not be considered pleasant when they arrive unknown or unbidden.

Saleh Hadri got a surprise when he tried to turn himself in for murder. The police told him they were closed and that he should go away. So he, and the reporter he was with, wandered around Sweden for a bit until they found a police station that was open and then he turned himself in. He claims he is innocent and wants to clear his name.

Read that again. A wanted murder suspect couldn’t even get a cop to escort him to an open jail. He had to find one himself. After all that I really hope he is innocent. As you might imagine, Swedish officials say this shouldn’t have happened and they are going to look into it. Eventually.

That is one mellow country.

A little closer to home eleven year old Ireland Lane, an Oregon native, went to the doctor because she had an upset tummy. So the doctor gave her some anti-acids and she was fine.

Just kidding, she had cancer.

SURPRISE!

But God wasn’t done with her yet. She fell down and went boom and ended up back in the hospital with a bump on her head.

No, that’s not the reason I’m writing about her. I am writing about her because she cleaned her hands and then the hand sanitizer caught fire and nearly killed her. You can’t make this stuff up even if you try.

Eleven-year-old cancer patient Ireland Lane, who was in the hospital after she fell and hurt her head at school, is recuperating from third degree burns after her shirt lit on fire in her hospital room — and according to reports, hand sanitizer may have been to blame.

The Oregonian first reported on the incident, which occurred Feb. 2 at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. According to the newspaper’s report, Ireland’s father, Stephen, was sleeping in his daughter’s hospital room when he heard her screams. He found her in the hallway, her shirt on fire, and immediately took action to smother the flames.

His daughter still suffered third degree burns and is now recovering from those at the Legacy Oregon Burn Center, ABC News reported.

The Oregonian reports how hand sanitizer may have played a role in the whole incident:

Ireland was due to leave the hospital the day of the fire. The last thing she recalls that day is using sanitizer to clean the table that rolled over her bed, where she had painted a wooden box as a gift for her nurses. Ireland’s father recalls that before the fire, she was playing, making static electricity with the sheets on her bed. He’d never heard of that being a danger, let alone causing a fire.

Hand sanitizer and static electricity “are definitely part of the investigation,” Oregon State Fire Marshal spokesman Rich Hoover told NBC News.

“I’ve been in medicine going back 30 years now and never heard anything like this. And hopefully I never will again,” Dr. Stacy Nicholson, who is the assistant chief at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, told KATU.

Staff at Doernbecher, which is considered a Oregon Health & Science University facility, already follows strict fire safety procedures, the Oregonian reported. The maker of the hand sanitizer used by the hospital, called Avagard D, told the newspaper that its product is safe when used as directed.

According to NBC News, the alcohol content in the hand sanitizer used at the hospital is around 60 percent.

Hand sanitizers used for health care purposes are recommended to contain 60 to 95 percent ethanol or isopropanol in order to be effective, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends using alcohol-based hand sanitizers to clean hands if it’s not possible to wash up with soap and water.

Because of hand sanitizer’s high alcohol content, some state fire marshals even have guidelines in properly storing it. In Kansas, the fire marshal recommends that a maximum of 1.2 liters of hand sanitizer be stored in a dispenser in a health-care setting, and that there must be at least four feet between dispensers. And if the dispenser is installed on a wall over carpet, then there must be an automatic sprinkler system installed.

I have to admit that the amount of time I had spent thinking about hand sanitizers was akin to the amount of time I spent wondering what I’d look like dressed as Ru Paul. Maybe not even that much. Okay, let’s be honest, I never think about them.

I know that if healthy people use them too often they kill useful bacteria and leave themselves open to all sorts of deadly diseases. Which I’ve always thought of as evolution in action. And the people who do so, in the name of health they don’t understand, never see the irony of their lives. They will gleefully scarf up ounce and after ounce of live bacteria and swallow them whole. This is also known as yogurt. But these same people will scrub themselves so clean as to leave no protection when they are injured or sick.

Okay, back to the young lady. I’m not sure words can describe the horror she must have gone through. Follow up reports say that she is going to be okay and that she seems ahead of the game when it comes to her cancer. I hope so. That kid’s had enough surprises for one life.

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

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It is colder than a witch’s tit in a brass brassiere outside. Judging by the emails I have been getting, many of you have joined me in coughing up bowling ball sized replicas of Spongebob with every other breath. And, if you’re like me, you’ve started naming the more unique samples. My favorite so far is Elroy. But there’s lots of competition left to go. Nevertheless, being included in the Brotherhood if International Phlegm Spewers is the highest honor I’ve gotten while writing this blog, so I am deeply touched. Or that could be the meds talking. What do you think elfish bunny people? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. Well, I think that’s what I thought too. I don’t remember what I thought before I heard your thought so it must have been the same thought you were thinking before I thought what you thought. Right?

Right.

You’ll be thrilled to know that the DeNovo Scientific Journal (who?) has proof, PROOF I TELL YOU, that Bigfoot is real. The proof they cite is limited to items that have only been seen by the howler monkeys that live in their heads and they decry how “mainstream science” wouldn’t give them a fair hearing.

Ahem.

Several year ago I was at a symposium on archaeology. Nothing earth shattering, just an update of some discoveries in South America. During the course of the presentation questions were allowed and one gentleman wanted to know why they were ignoring the proof that aliens had been involved in the structure they were discussing. The scientists on stage could have rolled their eyes or called security or any one of a hundred dismissive things. Instead they patiently talked to him, showed how where his facts were wrong (that would be everywhere) and quietly laid the ground rules for what science requires. While it was clear that the man wanted to believe what he’d been told he also could see he had no rational basis for those beliefs any more. He quietly took his seat and the meeting went on without one single person making fun of the gentleman. That is how science works. Not by humiliation or fear but by logic and facts.

Which brings us back to Bigfoot. Not one scientist outside of the little group who own the website has seen any of the alleged materials or subsequent data. That is not proof of anything … well, other than the fact that they really need to hire a web designer. That site looks like hell.

In other odd genetic news, Edith Casas has married the guy who (allegedly) murdered her twin sister. That has got to make family reunions fun.

Other people who should consider getting out of the gene pool include Aydrea Meade, who decided to liven up a school assembly full of, kindergarten though 8th grade, kids by performing a full strip tease and Joe Rickey who bitch slapped a stranger’s toddler for sitting on his mommy’s lap. Police were called in both cases. And arrests were made in both as well. So there is some hope.

But not much.

Cops in Florida arrested Nedra Byrd after they found her ten year old son naked and drunk wandering the highway. The kid’s blood alcohol level was .108. For some perspective, remember that .08 is legally drunk for an adult. Yes, she’s in jail.

I bring all of this up to make a point. We are drifting further away from a people who take responsibility for our actions and instead look for excuses for our behavior or beliefs. If something doesn’t fit our niche, it gets ignored. If our habits harm others, that’s nobody’s business because they are our habits and no one else’s. The constant cry to get government out of our lives is always followed by ways government should get in other people’s lives.

Don’t touch mine, it’s them that need policing!

And on and on we spiral down the drain.

It’s gotten so bad now that parents are begging their kids to stay out of gangs only to find out that is no longer an option. My friend Sandra Trevino shared this nightmare with me.

Once the kid is tall enough, they’re in a gang.

If it had been any other high school, you would know this story by now. Had some other “kind of school” logged a year that saw 29 current and recent students shot, eight fatally, “we would all know the name of that school,” says radio show host Ira Glass in a new episode of “This American Life” on NPR. “If you grafted those facts onto another high school — in a wealthier place, maybe a suburb … it would be national news.”

But it wasn’t another school. It was Harper High, in Chicago, during a year when the murder rate in that city climbed to 506 while it plateaued or fell in New York and Los Angeles. Three “This American Life ” reporters spent five months in that school last fall, and beginning this weekend, Glass hosts the remarkable two-part program that results from their immersion.

One early section of the first hour finds reporter Linda Lutton laying out of “the rules” of Harper High. It is a chilling lesson. Parents everywhere think they set the do’s and don’ts of their children’s lives: Do your homework, don’t talk to strangers, don’t join a gang. Parents in places that aren’t like Harper tend to think that parents in places that are somehow slack in the rule department. “I would never allow my child to …” we say when the news report mentions that the latest dead student was a member of a gang. And then we go about our day feeling safe.

But as Lutton makes clear, the parents of Harper don’t make the rules, and the kids don’t really “choose” to follow them. She says:

When I ask kids what their parents don’t understand about gangs these days, they say it’s this: their parents tell them not to join a gang — as if there’s some initiation to go through, some way to sign up. Today, whether or not you want to be in a gang, you’re in one. If you live on pretty much any block near Harper High School, you have been assigned a gang. Your mother bought a house on 72nd and Hermitage? You’re S-Dub. You live across the street from the school? That’s D-Ville.

There are more than 15 gangs in the neighborhoods around Harper, she reports, and while being part of one puts kids in danger, it also keeps them safe. You don’t dare walk to school, or anywhere else, without the company of a gang. And, no matter what your parents say, you don’t find a way to stay neutral. As Aaron Washington, a police officer assigned full-time to the school, tells Lutton:

It used to be if you played sports or you were academically better than the average kid, they didn’t bother you. Now it’s different, it doesn’t matter. If you live here, you’re part of them. You know, you live on that block, or you live in that area, you one of them. The way they get to school, they have to come to school with one of these factions, one of these gangs. They gotta come to school with them. They don’t have a choice.

The reality took the journalists of “This American Life” by surprise. “I’ve done other reporting on gangs and neighborhoods like this,” Glass said in an interview from his Manhattan office. “I am not new to this subject. But what we learned was how little we knew.”

Among the many moments that made this clear, he said, was a conversation the team recorded between the father of a murdered teen, and the boy’s friends. That dad, Glass said, did “all the right things, everything that every parent really does, like signing the kid up for citywide football leagues and trying to keep him out of trouble.” But the friends tell the father — gently but definitely — that the gangs are stronger than any parent. “You reach a certain height and people start shooting at you,” Glass said. “You are in the game.”

Added Alex Kotlowitz, who has made a career of writing about life in “bad” neighborhoods, and who reported through the prism of Harper’s on-site social workers, said this series made him see that just as parents can’t protect their children, they can’t heal them, either. “In the wake of Newtown,” he said in an interview from his Chicago home, “we asked all the right questions. Why did this happen? How do we help the children who witnessed and were traumatized by it? What is going to happen in Newtown going forward?”

And yet, Kotlowitz said, “we don’t ask those questions at a place like Harper. Virtually every kid in that school has seen someone who was shot or knows someone who was shot but we have never really dealt with the issue of trauma in the inner-city.”

Instead, Kotlowitz said, we leave parents and children, teachers and students to navigate terrain that is impassable. And we convince ourselves that their presence there is somehow their own fault.

“What this illustrates in a really vivid way is that all of us hear on the news that a kid got shot and he was a gang member,” Glass said, “but we really don’t understand what they mean. The feeling we have that well, that couldn’t be my kid? You hear these stories and realize, yes, it could.”

I know it’s fun to rush to judgement but the problem is not always “them.” More often than not it’s us. It’s us who shove aside the pain and suffering of others since it’s not happening here. Not yet, anyway.

But it is.

Where do you think those inner city gang bangers get the money for the guns and those stylin’ rides? Government subsidies? No. They get them from nice suburban kids who drive their soccer mom’s cars into the city to buy drugs and whores. And, yes, it’s your kid I’m talking about.

And those gangs collect debts just like the mob used to. If you can’t pay, you set them up in an area where they can find others who can. Your area. Your neighborhood. That’s already happening. Or did you think that uptick in suburban home invasions was due to aliens?

Face it folks, the bad guys and the idiots are winning and we’re letting them.

Jus†ice, Stress from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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The last time a meteorite slammed into earth with any ferocity it happened in Tunguska. That event flattened trees and led to much wild speculation as to the possible cause. Answers ranged from the ludicrous, ALIENS ATTACK, to the interesting, antimatter, to the logical, a meteorite. One thing that couldn’t be denied was that the blast laid waste to a forest as though a bowling ball had been slammed into a sculpture made of toothpicks. Just in case it comes up I’ll break out the theories for you. The Alien Attack one is the funniest. It involves, just like ancient alien believers claim happened at Sodom and Gomorrah, a nuclear attack. Because, well, because aliens would travel billions of miles to get here and then nuke an abandoned forest to …… well, they’re aliens, we’re not supposed to understand them. For the record there has never been any radioactivity found there so you can ignore those people. The anit-matter theory was espoused by scientist and author Robert Heinlein in his book “Expanded Universe.” While the effect, flattened forest, fit the known facts the cause, anti-matter, did not. As one scientist said, if anti-matter reacted with matter it would do so immediately or, if it was contained in a rock or cylinder, much later. Either way it wouldn’t have done so so neatly above the forest. A meteorite matches both the effect, flattened forest, and the cause, exploded due to heat, friction and kinetic energy near the ground. Of course logic and facts never deter the people who demand that every tragedy have deeper significance, so there are a ton of idiots posting stuff about UFOs and government controlled secret space guns and so on.

It amazes me that they can walk upright and breathe at the same time.

Anyway, the one thing that caught most people’s attention was the amount of footage generated by dash cams in Russian cars. Our pal, Ian O’Neill, has the reason why.

Are all Russians trainee meteorite hunters? Do they have their dash cams installed to chase down the next tornado Storm Chasers-style? Despite being perfect for capturing a rare fireball, the fondness Russian car owners have for dash cams has nothing to do with creating perfectly-timed videos of rampaging space rocks.

Lawlessness and police corruption are the driving force behind getting a dash cam installed. According to an Al Jazeera English exposé last year, chaos on Russian roads is the reason why there are an estimated 1 million Russian cars sporting dash cams. New York blogger and Russian native Marina Galperina wrote a captivating piece about the dash cam culture in her home country, arguing that they are “Russia’s last hope for civility and survival on the road.”

Galperina adds:

The conditions of Russian roads are perilous, with insane gridlock in cities and gigantic ditches, endless swamps and severe wintry emptiness on the backroads and highways. Then there are large, lawless areas you don’t just ride into, the police with a penchant for extortion and deeply frustrated drivers who want to smash your face.
In an environment like this, it’s little wonder that having an unblinking eye on your dashboard is essential for your morning commute.

Also, inadvertently, the dash cams that caught the Russian meteor in the act have become a critical tool in understanding where this object came from and how it caused so much damage over a populated region.

A friend of mine lives outside Moscow. She says going to buy groceries is like living an episode of Mad Max. She does not believe this is a good thing.

So what does all this have to do with the pic of baby Pluto that’s adorning this page? Just a quick reminder that the rock that slammed into Russia is a mere pebble compared to the rocks that orbit our sun. In fact it is tiny compared to the rocks that orbit Pluto, and that’s not even a planet any more.

Anyway, two of the rocks orbiting our famous former planet are in need of names. And that’s where you come in. Ian O’Neill, he’s been busy this week, has the whole story.

Pluto may have been demoted, but its family is getting bigger and bigger. Now, two of the dwarf planet’s tiniest moons need names — but rather than leaving the Plutonian satellites’ naming ceremony to astronomers, that honor has fallen to you.

The discoverers of Pluto’s smallest moons — measuring only 20 to 30 kilometers (15 to 20 miles) across — have designated the moons “P4″ and “P5,” but it’s about time that they grow up and get some real names. Discovered in 2011 and 2012 by the Hubble Space Telescope, this tiny duo joins Charon, Nix and Hydra in a very close-knit family of objects orbiting Pluto.

All of the objects were named after Hades and the underworld in ancient Greek mythology. Hades, god of the underworld, who was also known as “Plouton” (meaning “Rich One”), was Latinized by the Romans to, simply, Pluto. And the ninth planetary body from the sun was given that name by 11-year old schoolgirl Venetia Burney shortly after the small world was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in 1930. The mythological name for the dark and cold world on the outskirts of the solar system has now been inherited by Pluto’s satellites.

So, the SETI Institute has launched a new website called “Pluto Rocks” to decide new names for P4 and P5. Of the possible mythological names, the following can be selected: Acheron, Alecto, Cerberus, Erebus, Eurydice, Hercules, Hypnos, Lethe, Obol, Orpheus, Persephone and Styx. You can also make your own suggestions.

“The Greeks were great storytellers and they have given us a colorful cast of characters to work with,” said Mark Showalter, Senior Research Scientist at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., in a press release.

Voting will remain open till Feb. 25, when the P4/P5 discovery team will take the winning suggestions to the International Astronomical Union so the satellite pair can officially be named.

On Monday (Feb. 11) at 11 a.m., two astronomers involved in the P4/P5 discoveries — Mark Showalter and Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland — will be available live to take your questions about the naming of these moons via a special Google+ hangout. If you want to get involved, be sure to use the #PlutoRocks hashtag on Twitter, the SETI Institute Facebook page and the Google hangout.

The naming of P4 and P5 may seem frivolous, but this more than a public outreach project. As NASA’s New Horizons probe flies through interplanetary space toward Pluto, in July 2015 the world will be awestruck by the first close-up photographs of dwarf planet Pluto and its largest companion Charon. The Plutonian moons will likely become household names (and the debate as to the planetary status of Pluto will likely be reignited).

But like any story from the underworld, there is a sinister back-story.

Last year, when Hubble spotted P4 and P5, concern mounted for the possibility of more, sub-resolution debris that may be hanging in Pluto orbit. The current plan for New Horizons is to fly straight between Pluto and Charon (only 6,200 miles from the surface of Pluto, pictured top), but if there’s a cloud (or ring) of debris or many smaller moonlets, there could be a substantial collision risk. This has prompted the NASA New Horizons Team — headed by Alan Stern — to formulate a “bail out” plan should the risk be deemed too great. This means mission managers may opt to command New Horizons to carry out its much anticipated flyby further away from Pluto and any potential dangers that lay in wait.

So, for now, astronomers are carefully surveying the volume of space around Pluto, looking for any hint of the hypothetical debris that may be hiding there.

Just to give you some perspective, if one of those moons hit Earth it could wipe out around 60% to 90% of all life. That should inspire you to wander through the Greek Underworld to find a name or two.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Today is Valentine’s day. It is a day where people are expected to do certain things even if they are wildly outside their skill set. For example, last year at this time I was asked to give relationship advice. That was not as helpful as you might imagine. Even less helpful is the fact that I keep bringing up the fact that Valentine’s day is the only holiday to have a disease named after it. I already noted, yesterday, some of the many oddities in the history of the holiday. Like all modern Christian holidays it has picked up a fair amount of unintended baggage over the years. Which is fine. It gives the tinfoil hat people something to talk about. As for this blog, we’ve already discussed how the holiday has been altered in Asia. It is a day when women give men chocolate. The better the chocolate the hotter she is for your manly form. So, if it says Nestle’s on the wrapper, you will be monkey spanking tonight.

But, there is one country hanging out around Asia that gets a bad rap when it comes to Valentine’s day. I am, of course, speaking of China.

“Them Commie bastards usurping our sacred Christian rights …” is among the fascinating looks I have gotten into the brains of idiots. You see China, like every country in the world, has a celebration of love. Japan, for example, has a Penis Day. what better way is there to celebrate love than that?

Anyway, China gets hosed for supporting polygamy and lesbian incest. All fun, but also all false.

And here’s the best part, China’s romantic holiday doesn’t even fall on Valentine’s day.

I give you the day of seven sisters.

People in China too have a day devoted to love but it is quite different from Valentine’s Day festival as seen in other parts of the world. Chinese Valentine’s Day fall on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month in the Chinese Calendar. Hence the day is also called as ‘Festival of the Double Sevens’ or Qi Xi – ‘The Night of Sevens’. The other popular name for the Chinese Valentine’s Day is ‘Seven Sister’s Festival’ and ‘Daughter’s Festival’.

Legend behind Chinese Valentine’s Day
There is a very interesting legend behind the festival of Valentine’s Day in China. The story goes that there once lived an orphaned poor boy called Niu Lang with his brother and sister-in-law. The handsome boy owned an old ox that he worked on the field everyday. The ox is said to be an immortal from the Paradise who was punished for mistakes in heaven and send on earth as an ox. The ox liked the cowherd and one day he said to Niu Lang, “You are a nice person. If you want to get married, go to the river and your wish will come true.”

When the Cowherd went to the stream he saw all the seven beautiful daughters of the Emperor who had come down from Heaven to take a bath. Niu Lang was captivated with the beauty of the youngest daughter Zhi Nu and secretly took away her fairy clothes. Without her fairy clothes the youngest daughter could not fly back to the heaven along with her sisters. The cowherd asked the fairy that he would return her clothes if she promised to marry him. The girl coyly agreed to marry the cowherd. They lived a happily married for several years and had two children.

One day, the ox felt that his last day was near. He told the cowherd that he should keep his hide for urgent situation after he dies. Meanwhile, Emperor began to miss his seventh daughter. He sent Zhi Nu’s grandmother to bring her back from the earth. The grandmother succeeded in bringing Zhi Nu back to heaven. While the 7th Princess was being taken away to the heaven, the cowboy wore the ox hide and carried his two children in the two bamboo baskets with his wife’s old fairy clothes and chased his wife in the sky. To keep the lovers separated forever the grandmother created a Milky Way between them. The seventh princess was moved to the star Vega in the Lyra (Harp) constellation while the cowherd with his two children stayed in the star Altair (Flying one) in the Aquila (Eagle) constellation. The star Vega is therefore popularly known by the name of the Weaving Maid Star whereas the star Altair as the Cowherd Star in China. The mother took pity and two were allowed to meet only once a year on the 7th day of 7th lunar month. It is believed that on this specific day magpies form a bridge with their wings for Zhi Nu to cross to meet her husband.

Celebrations of Chinese Valentine’s Day
The celebrations of Chinese Valentine’s Day or Qi Qiao Jie – the seventh eve is quite different from usual Valentine’s Day celebration we see in rest of the world. There are specific and colorful rituals for the day besides the usual exchange of flowers, cards and chocolates as tokens of love between lovers.

Following the tradition, lovers visit the Temple of Matchmaker on the Chinese Valentine’s Day and pray for their love and happiness and their possible marriage. Singles too visit the temple on the day and ask for their luck in love.

The Chinese Valentine Day is also known as the Daughter’s Festival. Chinese girls always wished to learn a good handcrafting skill like the weaving maid. On the night of the Chinese Valentine’s Day, unmarried girls offer prayers to the Weaving Maid star and seek blessings to become smarter. When the star Vega is high up in the sky, girls perform a test by putting a needle on the water surface. If the needle doesn’t sink, it’s a sign of girl’s maturity and smartness indicating she is eligible to find a husband. Girl who passes the test may ask for any one wish. It is also traditional for young girls in China to demonstrate their domestic arts, especially melon carving, on this day. Chinese Valentine’s Day is therefore also known as The Festival to Plead for Skills, The Seventh Sister’s Birthday and The Night of Skills.

In some provinces of China, people decorate the ox’s horn by flowers on the Chinese Valentine Day in a belief that the ritual will save them from catastrophe. Following the age old tradition women also wash hair to make them look fresh and shining. Children wash their face the next morning using the overnight water for a more natural and beautiful look.

Stargazers celebrate the festival by looking up at star Vega on the east of the Milky Way which represents Zhi Nu, and at the constellation Aquila, on the west side of the Milky Way, where Niu Lang waits for his lover to join him.

I know what you’re thinking.

“THANK GOD! We finally have proof of alien interventions!”

Okay, you’re not thinking that but some people are. To them the above story is proof. It is all they need.

Which is why they should forever be alone. We don’t ant that kind of crap seeping into our gene pool.

From all of us here at the World News Center, to all of you, have a safe and happy Valentine’s day.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Tomorrow is the day we celebrate love. Love is one of those things that comes with some expectations. Honesty, openness, sharing and so on. Well, that’s what it says in the press release. And, for the most part, it’s all true. Valentine’s day is widely attributed to a celebration of the selfless death of St. Valentine. The problem arises when you try to figure out which one. Here’s what the Catholic church, the people who authorize saints, has to say; “At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city. In William of Malmesbury’s time what was known to the ancients as the Flaminian Gate of Rome and is now the Porta del Popolo, was called the Gate of St. Valentine. The name seems to have been taken from a small church dedicated to the saint which was in the immediate neighborhood. Of both these St. Valentines some sort of Acta are preserved but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.”

But whether it was the fate of the 3rd century inmate who allegedly cured the jailer’s daughter’s blindness just before he was executed or one of the other guys, we do know that by the late 1400’s Chaucer was writing about the holiday in his Parliament of Foules.

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

What’s missing from the story thus far?

Some might say that I am missing the connection to the Lupercalia. They would be right. I have not discussed how Valentine’s day got connected to a pagan holiday. Nor did I mention how early Lupercalia lotteries were truly a prize worth winning. If you were an unmarried man and you won, you won a virgin. That beats the living hell out of a TV.

Yeah, the church had problems with that and the whole thing got watered down.

Okay, what else is missing?

If you said “Vikings” you’re one of the people who have been blowing up my email this week.

Let’s trace this back to its source. Tru-TV, like the History channel it’s not all that accurately named, put up a blog called “Valentine’s Day Conspiracy Theories.” Most of it is harmless fluff but then they toss up this nugget.

The Vikings

Valentine’s Day might have absolutely nothing to do with any of the three saints or the Romans at all. Instead, it could have started with the Norse — yes, the Vikings. After centuries of burning and pillaging and helmets with horns, many Vikings settled in northern France and became Normans. There they venerated a saint called Galantin which they pronounced “Vah-lantin” and which translates to “lover of women.”

How wrong is this? Let me count the ways.

First, St. Galantin is not a saint. That’s easy to prove. Catholics love their saints and they have a web site dedicated to all some kazillion of them. They even have St.s Sergius and Bacchus, the two gay saints, so it isn’t like they’re trying to hide anything. They downplay it, but they don’t hide it.”

Second, the word “galantine,” widely cited on the internet as being a French word for “a gallant lover” actually refers to a French dish of stuffed meats. It’s a very good meal if you get the chance to try it. The word has no meaning in French other than that.

Quick side note, there was not a Normanic person on the planet in those days who would have pronounced the letter “G” as a “V.”

Third of all, the Vikings didn’t lay siege, and later move, to France until 896. Well after the death of all three saints noted above and long after the Church’s early attempts to blend the holiday with the Lupercalia.

Lastly, the Vikings didn’t have any saints in the first place. They had gods by the basket full but no saints. If you click on the list of saints above you will note that the only saints even remotely associated with the Normans or the Vikings are the ones attributed to people who were killed, excuse me – I mean martyred, trying to convert them.

Simply put, the story is horse manure.

So, there you have it. Valentine’s Day has its share of odd traditions, especially in Japan, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Vikings. Never has, never should.

I can’t say “Never will” since I refuse to underestimate the stupidity of some people.

Hearts (The Valentines Day Video) from Moist Creation on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Today’s blog will clearly explain why most scientists are hardened alcoholics by the age of 6. You may think that scientists are just nutty or absent minded but, in reality, they’re either drunk or suffering through the DTs on their way to a bar. You’ll understand why in a moment. My first draft of this blog was about the latest search for alien life. It was based on a great article by Ian O’Neill. Oh, go ahead, click on his name to read it. It will be worth your while. Anyway, it all came down to how SETI is using new techniques and data supplied by the, space based, Kepler telescope to study solar systems that are known to have planets similar to Earth. That will be a great time saver in the future. Even though they did not find anything this first try the fact that they developed the technique is pretty exciting. Anyway, while I was perusing my first draft a gentleman I know marginally came by and asked what I was writing. Being polite, I tipped my lap top so he could read. It quickly became apparent that I had, much to my surprise, written the article in Swahili instead of English. It is even more surprising when you consider that I don’t know a single word in that language. The gentleman was upset that I had written that there was no such thing as extraterrestrials, which is not what I or Ian said. Furthermore, didn’t I know that science had already proved that aliens lived among us? He cited that godawful piece of crap, called Ancient Aliens, on the History Channel as his proof. That show is a combination of bald faced lies and half truths. But it is not a collection of facts or scientific proof of any kind. And, obviously, given the fact that SETI has already discovered the WOW Signal, it’s pretty clear we’re not alone. But not alone does not equal life of the party.

So I trashed that idea. If I couldn’t get across those simple concepts it was just not my day. I then thought about writing about the asteroid that is coming to visit the day after Valentine’s Day, but there isn’t much to say to anyone who lives in the US since we won’t be able to see it.

Then I ran across an article by Ray Villard. It was exactly what I needed. It has a doomsday comet, the possibility of the sun exploding and Jupiter sucking us to our deaths via its evil gravity.

Oh, sure, he debunks every one of those assertions, he is not a fan of Ancient Aliens either, but at least it gave me the lurid content I needed to get through this day.

Take a deep breath; Dec 21, 2012 is behind us. The Mayan calendar end-of-world debacle is over: zip, zilch, gone!

The silliness, anxiety, and paranoia leading up to the predicted end of times was so bad that on Dec. 21st — the appointed doomsday — a worried citizen left a message on my office phone that accused me of skipping town to escape Armageddon.

If history is any example, the next cosmic doomsday prediction is always right around the corner. The Mayan blowout was just the latest in many centuries of bad calls by prognosticators who have the audacity to think they can divine the End of Everything.

So, to be a little preemptive, let’s look at just three cosmic events that might start another pop culture panic. Thankfully these aren’t born out of mythology, psychics, and misinterpreted archeoastronomy. They are real events that will inevitably be embellished by the imaginations of modern day soothsayers.

The Comet of the Century
Last September, the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) near Kislovodsk, Russia, discovered comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). Though its closest approach to Earth is a year away, the celestial visitor is already billed as the “comet of the century.” That’s because it may be a first-time visitor to the solar system that will warm and then erupt with a lot of outgassing from pristine ices.

On Nov. 28, 2013 the comet will skim above the sun’s surface at a distance slightly greater than the separation of the Earth and moon. Not doubt there will be pseudoscience predictions of the comet wreaking havoc by raising tides on the sun. The exact opposite will be the case. The sun’s tidal pull could tear apart the comet into small pieces, as has been the case for previous sungrazer-class comets.

Comet ISON is due to pass within 37 million miles of Earth in January 2014. I’m expecting to see all types of outrageous claims that the object’s feeble gravity will yank on Earth to trigger volcanoes and earthquakes.

Comet ISON has been compared with the Great Comet of 1680 (click to see an artist’s rendering) which, according to contemporary accounts, caused New Yorkers to be “overcome with terror at a sight in the heavens such as has seldom greeted human eyes.” A day of fasting and humiliation was set-aside in order that “the wrath of God might be assuaged.”

Likewise, soothsayers will quickly note that the comet will be at it brightest one month before Christmas 2013. “This comet, if it lives up to its billing, certainly could point to the glorious soon coming of the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven!” predicts one religious website.

The fact that the comet is anticipated to get as bright as the moon will only fuel religious and mystical speculation about its timing and significance as an omen. Chill out folks, it’s just another 4 billion year-old primeval chunk of ice from the solar system’s deep freeze, the Oort cloud.

Asteroid Apophis
NASA keeps cataloging more Earth-threatening asteroids every year. But the asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian spirit of evil and destruction, is legendary because it will be a record-breaker.

On April, Friday the 13th of 2029 Apophis will skim below the orbits of communication satellites and briefly be a naked-eye object scooting over the mid-Atlantic ocean.

Earth’s gravity will deflect the comet’s trajectory. The worst-case scenario is that the chances of it striking Earth on its return on April 13, 2036 will increase to 1 in 5,500.

Apophis is the length of over three football fields. It packs enough kinetic energy to wipe out 10 million people with the power of 100,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs. Even in this worst case scenario a direct hit would not obliterate all life on the planet. But it certainly would not be a good day for the human race.

People will get very squeamish over the possibility of Apophisgeddon despite the best low-probability collision estimate from astronomers. Parallels no doubt will be drawn to Biblical prophecy. This is especially true because the potentially destructive path of the asteroid crosses Middle East. South America and the west coast of Africa are also along the ground track.

Congress might even debate if steps should be taken to deflect the asteroid. But given that so many legislators are tone-deaf to global warming, I wouldn’t expect any preemptive actions to be funded.

Planetary Grand Alignment
Like clockwork so-called planetary grand alignments have taken place in 1962, 1982, and 2000. This does not mean that the planets line up like pearls on a string. But they sort of gang up on one side of the sun within an angle of roughly 10 to 30 degrees — so the definition is a but mushy.

The uneventful year 1128 A.D. saw one of the tightest planetary alignments.

The doomsday best seller The Jupiter Effect in 1982 spelled out an improbable chain of events that would be triggered by the planets’ tug-of-war with the sun: tides raised on the sun’s surface would increase sunspot activity, build up the solar wind, that would effect Earth’s weather, and subsequently, Earth’s spin rate, which would then trigger earthquakes.

No geological disasters happened in 1982 short of a 6.0 magnitude earthquake that killed 1,500 people in Dhamar, northern Yemen. In fact the celestial alignment allowed for NASA to pull off the Voyager 2 “grand tour” of the four outer gas giant planets from 1979 to 1989.

Jupiter contains more mass than all the other planets combined, and yet it is still less than 1 percent of the sun’s mass. Therefore Jupiter’s influence on the sun is inconsequential.

Alien astronomers could measure Jupiter’s gravitational tug as an insignificant 270 mile-per-hour cyclic change in the sun’s radial velocity over the planet’s 12-year orbital period. Only if Jupiter was moved so close to the sun that its orbital period was measured in days, would some serious tidal effects be seen. This is observed with so-called “hot Jupiters,” the exoplanet WASP-18 being the most extreme case.

Running an ephemeris forward in time, with the ease of throttling H.G. Wells’ time machine, the next closest thing to a grand alignment comes in 2163. Unless we have bombed ourselves back to pre-Columbian society by then, people in 2163 will be too science savvy to give this any thought. They will be bemused by historical accounts of the feared Jupiter Effect by their science-illiterate ancestors.

What’s ironic is that any casual surfing of the Internet shows that a lot of people are preoccupied with doom and gloom based on mythology, psychics, and patently flaky ideas. The real Earth-threats, such as global warming, seem to be too easily shrugged off as lacking solid scientific evidence. Go figure.

Ogg think sci-enz funny. Ogg no like sci-enz. Sci-enz makes Ogg’s head hurt.

You laugh but you shouldn’t. 25% of Americans think that God decides sporting events. 20% of Americans believe that witches are real. 20% still believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth. I could go on but I’d need to start drinking.

Even for me it’s a little early.

Besides, something tells me that I’m going to need to be sober to come up with a way to overcome the fear mongering liars who keep preying on the ignorant.

Mr. Myster – Exploding the Myth (music video) from Krustaps on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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