Search Results for: valentine

It was a week before Christmas. This stunning beauty got on the Fullerton bus. She was clearly upset. Listening to her rant on her cell phone I quickly figured out why. Her ex-husband had stolen her purse, but she had her wallet in her jeans so he didn’t get cash or credit cards, her car had broken down and ….. it went on. She put down her phone and, for reasons that elude me now, I spoke to her. What I said must have been one of my better openings since it elicited a huge smile. I would have paid good money to see that smile again. Anyway smiling led to talking and talking led to introductions and introductions led to me saying that I was headed to a bar to meet some friends. She got on her phone and made arrangements to be picked up at the bar and then offered to buy me a drink. Seeing no downside to being in public with a beauty like her and getting free beer, I readily agreed. A half hour later her friend arrived to pick her up. Numbers were exchanged and she left. I figured if I called her it would be stalking and if she called me it meant she as off her meds.

Two days later she called and didn’t sound the slightest bit nuts. We made arrangements to meet in public and eat food. It took me a while to realize that I was going on a date.

The date went well. I picked up the check and she said “Okay, but I get the next one.” So we made arrangements to meet at a different restaurant and eat food in public. I believe that qualified as a second date.

As our third date was coming to a close she said “It’s getting late. You should spend the night at my place.”

It was 8:00 PM.

I looked at her and laughed. She smiled and said “Too obvious?”

I said “Oh no, that was very subtle.”

So we finished our meal and left.

Stuff happened that you don’t want to think about so let’s move on.

Shortly after the new year her job offered her a promotion and a raise. It would, literally, double her salary. Her kids, who will enter this story in a bit, encouraged her to take the job. Since I hadn’t even known her a month I had no formal say but also offered my encouragements. She accepted the job. It meant that she would have to leave the country in the middle of June. But that was six months away and right then there was a very pretty naked woman in my arms.

About a week before Valentine’s day we made plans for a romantic get away. There is an old Irish proverb which states “If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan.” Her parents, who were watching her kids, had something come up so they returned them to the house around 7:00 AM. The kids, being normal teenagers, wanted breakfast. So they burst into the bedroom and ….

Thankfully we were both asleep.

I was woken by the sound of a young man’s voice saying “Mom, there’s a giant white man in your bed!”

My brain was agile enough to note there was not a third person in the bed so I opened my eyes and said “If you give us ten minutes I’ll make a breakfast that will prove the existence of God.”

Shortly thereafter they were being introduced to vanilla infused Belgian waffles with orange whisk. I don’t know if it proved the existence of God, but since their mom was smiling and laughing – something I found out later she had not done in years – I got a pass from the kids.

The next day I met with a nutritionist. She informed me that, had I gone on a fad diet I would have lost weight and probably died in two months. She said I probably had the same amount of time if I did nothing. Organs failing, protein and iron counts way too high, yada yada yada. So what I heard was I had a couple of months to make a decision.

Then I had a thought. If I lost weight it would make it easier for the pretty lady to find my penis.

Yes, that is how my mind works.

So I took the short list of foods I was allowed and went shopping. By the third day of the diet I was glad I did. I already felt better and was sleeping sounder.

Time went on, I lost weight and no longer looked like a parade float. As one friend noted, I’d “deflated.”

There was a certain rhythm to my life now. And it was pleasant. Then June 1st arrived and she got a call asking her to come down a week early. They were willing to fly her and her family down and put them up if need be.

So Thursday night her kids spent the night with their grandparents and we had some alone time. Friday morning I left before sunrise and went home. I work from home on Fridays so I set up my office, made sure everything was live and then sat down and cried.

Not a lot, but enough to remind me that I’m human.

Friday night she was gone.

Her parting words to me were “Thanks for teaching me how to laugh again.”

I didn’t respond then but I should have said “Thanks for teaching me how to care again.”

Since we knew we had a finite amount of time together we didn’t spend much of it with other people. Still for the few who met her the below video will be hysterical. For everyone else it will just be confusing.

Live with it. We’ll get back to Florida and stuff tomorrow.

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

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.
Visit us on Rebel Mouse for even more fun!
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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.

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