May 21 2006
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World to end Thursday, pre-empts three day weekend
I’m looking forward to this weekend; it’s a holiday in the States on Monday so we get three days off. Plus, my nephew Derek the biology student from Kansas is coming to visit, which is always cool.
But some people fear that this weekend will never come! Regular readers know that I have been busily debunking the notion, promulgated by Eric Julien, that a comet fragment will impact the Atlantic on Thursday May 25 (check this blog entry for a list of stuff I’ve written on this topic). This latest doomsday crap is making the rounds; checking my logs, the most common referrer to my blog lately is from a forum devoted to this nonsense. There are lots of folks there lamenting our impending demise, and I wonder (as I always do in these situations) what they will say on May 26 when nothing has happened.
If you haven’t heard of this, I assure you a lot of others have. That forum I mentioned above has a list of sites and blogs discussing this topic, and there’s a lot of chatter. What’s funny is my blog is there twice (and actually, the same blog entry is listed twice — checking facts and such is generally not the forte of doomsayers), as are other pages and blogs which debunk this silliness.
I do sometimes make light of this, but you should know that there is a serious undercurrent here, one I understand all too well: doomsayers, whether they are dishonest or deluded, are scaring people using antiscience and nonsense. Some people ask me, "What’s the harm in believing in astrology or the Face on Mars?", and I point them to crap like this alleged comet impact. When you don’t understand science, when you have no clue how the Universe really works, you are vulnerable, a wide-open target for hoaxsters, conmen, and others of their ilk. When Nancy Lieder was peddling her Planet X nonsense, people actually sold their homes and moved, scared that an impending earthquake or tsunami would kill them. When her deadline of May 15, 2003 came and went, I wonder what happened to those people? It’s amazing no one lynched Nancy; but then, cult leaders who fall out of favor rarely get punished. They lose a majority of their flock, and the deluded ones become even more fervent.
Most of the people who get involved with this sort of thing are seeking something, yearning for something. Perhaps its knowledge, a sense of wonder, or a feeling of belonging. Almost everyone has these feelings, but for some, they seek answers in places that not only won’t help them, but can actually cause them harm. Coupled with a distrust of science, a misunderstanding of how it works, these feelings make people prey to the antiscientists. Even after the doomsday deadline comes and goes with nothing happening, the emotions still linger, and the feeling of social disenfranchisement runs deep. Something else will no doubt come along — a solar flare, perhaps, or another comet– and the cycle starts again.
So on May 26, I have no doubt that this will go away, for the most part, but not entirely. There will always be people who are willing and ready to be tricked, deluded, fooled, whatever word you want to use. And they will be found by the Nancy Lieders and the Eric Juliens of the world. The best we can do is try to minimize it, by educating people about science, showing them the true wonder of things.
Haha. This Julien character is now censoring out opinions on his forum that disagree with him.
So he likes to burn books? No harm, no foul, err…, unless you’re German.
I wonder if the doomsayers realize that although the odds of actually being struck by a comet piece are small, the odds of being struck by a comet piece while naked but for a tinfoil hat, with one’s entire body smeared in vegemite and marmalade, and with an extension cord up one’s rear end, in the shower while listening to the “Blue Danube” waltz and dancing the macarena in front of a live web cam are vanishingly small.
Thus, in order to ensure their survival, they should do all those things.
On the way to the observatory yesterday, Stevie Wonder’s song came on and I thought of this latest comet-doomsday-scenario:
When you believe in things that you dont understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition aint the way, no, no, no
Sorry, about the multiple posts…issues with the links again and their not posting right away (I have no patience!)
Doomsayers are some of the worst of the anti-science fraudsters. The way they can mess up peoples’ lives really angers me sometimes! I guess my wake-up call to just how awful doomsayers are was the whole Nancy/Planet X thing. When I first heard about it I just laughed because it seemed so stupid, but then believers started posting on BABB as well as some scared people looking for information and reassurance that the world wasn’t going to end. I couldn’t believe it at first!
I hope that on 12:01am on May 26th this latest doomsayer is arrested or held to bear for all the damage he has caused. Sadly, I know that he won’t.
It seems that all the doomsdayers always have a book out as well. Listining to Coast to Coast, I have noticed that almost all the guest have a book/movie to push as well. At least when the BA is on he has the added benifit of truth.
I don’t know what else to say but “well said, once again”… When will humanity grow up, I wonder…
Small correction: Whether they are honest or deluded->Whether they are *dis*honest or deluded.
Indeed some have an unnatural obsession with end of the world scenarios.
That’s nonsense - aliens from Atlantis would destroy any incoming meteors!
“Most of the people who get involved with this sort of thing are seeking something, yearning for something. Perhaps its knowledge, a sense of wonder, or a feeling of belonging. Almost everyone has these feelings, but for some, they seek answers in places that not only won’t help them, but can actually cause them harm.”
Sounds like mainstream religion. My local (Swiss) TV station showed a discussion on Sunday morning called ‘Genesis and Science’. The panel members were a physicist (non-believer) a geneticist (devote christian) a member of the dominican order and the imam of the Geneva mosque. As usual, the fairy story believers outnumbered the rationalists three to one. The phyicist described how evolution works through random mutations, which natural selection then weeds out as those mutation which better fit the organism’s environment are selected for.
The imam had what he thought was a killer counter argument (I agree, but not for the same reasons). He said that when he was at university, his teacher told the class exactly why the ‘evolutionists’ were wrong. ‘Imagine’, the teacher said, ‘ if I write down the numbers one to ten on pieces of paper, put them in a bowl and then ask you to pick one at random. What are the chances that you will pick the number one?’. The class responded, ‘one in ten.’ ‘And what are the chances, if I ask you to do it again from the remaining numbers that you will pick number two’. ‘One in nine’. ‘And so what are the chances that you will pick the whole sequence in the correct order…, I will tell you, it’s tens of millions to one. So if the chances of ten little numbers coming up in the right order is so small, there is no chance of a hugely complex thing like Man (sic) coming about by random chance and only Allah can be responsible’.
QED, he thought and sat back with a satisfied smile, leaving me and the phyicist on the panel with our mouths open in amazement. If this is the sort of twaddle that passes for serious content in university level courses for the religious, then we’re in big trouble.
Recently two politicians Ray Nagin (the mayor of New Orleans) and George W. Bush made statements which demonstrate magical thinking. Nagin said “The Hurricane is evidence God hates New Orleans” and Bush came out for creationism. When someone asks “what’s the harm” in believing in astrology or any other type of magical thinking I take these two as an excellent exhibit of harm.
Rather than engage in meaningful preventive measures they resigned themselves to the fact that there was nothing they could do, when I think there were many preventive measures which could have protected the city from catagory 4 hurricanes at a much lower human and financial cost than rebuilding the city.
In a democracy that exhibits high levels of magical thinking people with such attitudes aren’t culled out and we get what you see today. If the populus would laugh such people off the stage I think we’d have much more robust leadership than we do now.
Kind of makes you wonder where we’d be if Al Gore been elected in 2000. I do have some issues about him, but at least he spent the weekend discussing global warming.
Troy said: Recently two politicians Ray Nagin (the mayor of New Orleans) and George W. Bush made statements which demonstrate magical thinking. Nagin said “The Hurricane is evidence God hates New Orleans†and Bush came out for creationism.
Well, see there you go, not even interpretations of God’s intentions can be in sync! A friend recalled back in November:
Did you catch the bit on the Daily show where Colbert was analyzing the Katrina disater on “This Week in God”? He was saying how Michael Marcavage said that “The day Bourbon Street and the French Quarter was flooded was the day that 125,000 homosexuals were going to be celebrating sin in the streets.”
Colbert quips back: “It’s an interesting theory, especially since the French Quarter was one of the few places that didn’t flood. Unlike the Ninth Ward, Jefferson Parish and Saint Bernard Parish.” (all of these surrounded the Quarter) “So if anything the lesson is: God loves gays, but hates the gay-adjacent”
(You can do a Google search on “Michael Marcavage” and join Repent America at your leisure–no stinky linky here!)
The world is ending on Thursday?…
My schedule for the first 3 weeks of June was looking hectic, so it was actually with some sense of relief that I flipped open the PDA and scribbled in the fact that a comet will smash into the earth……
Power and emotions.
There, I’ve said it.
Well, typed it anyway.
As a public outreach astronomer I’ve felt the power and I’m here to tell ya, it feels good. Real good. You should try it sometime. Join a local astronomy club where you live (I’, the Vice President of mine, and no, it doesn’t put me in charge of vices, unfortunately) buy a telescope (NOT a department store scope, please) and start showing cool stuff to kids and their parents. This stuff is serious fun. Do it and make the universe a better place.
As you learn the skies and become more adept at juggling the numbers and facts you find that the public looks to you for answers. You’ll find that giving out answers, REAL answers is fun. Serious fun. Intoxicating fun. It’s what the doomsayers Nancy and Julien are into. Only thing is, their “answers” are bunk. They don’t care ’bout that, though, they’re just on a power trip and are getting their jollies on being the “answer man” to their followers.
The followers, for their part, are having an emotional response to it all. Reason has flown out the window and emotions are having a field day. So we rationalists shouldn’t be surprised when the followers lash out at us. We’re bursting (or trying to) their bubble of faith and that’s threatening. They want to feel that they “are in the know”, that they are the chosen ones, that they are special. I like to tell my daughters that they are unique, just like everyone else! Good for a laugh, and keeps things in perspective. The followers’ emotional response isn’t unexpected, I’m threatening their faith in their world view. I’m an unbeliever. I’m not one of THEM.
We’re competitors to the doomsayers and their power trip, we threaten them too, we have the power to knock them off their pedestals. So scientists are under attach from both the leaders and the followers of antiscience. Problem is, they seem to have us constantly on the defensive because it’s much too EASY to believe stuff (like the Stevie Wonder song goes) that you don’t understand if you shift it over to the realm of faith and emotion and don’t make the effort to truly understand and study science.
Ignorance is EASY, knowledge is HARD.
OK, OK, I’m off rant now, I feel (ha) a little better, the sphincter (eew) of my vent is contracting (did I HAVE to put it that way!!!) and I’m going to shaddup.
Thanks,
Rich
Thinking for yourself is hard. I see it all the time with my students.
I’m telling them to look for possible meteor shower Thursday night/Friday morning while they are at their prom (a boat ride around Manhattan).
You might find it amusing (or might not) that NBC is showing “10.5 Apocalypse” this week. The first half ended with the entire city of Las Vegas sinking into giant sinkholes, and the second half on Tuesday will show the cracking in half of the entire American continent. Highly recommended for people who think the world is about to end on Thursday! (And also for people like me who like cheesy disaster movies
The doom-sayers and other pseudoscientific hucksters have another negative effect, which, though certainly less acute than some BA mentioned, is more insidious. Of course it’s heart-wrenching to think of someone selling their home and up-rooting their lives based on this hokum, but we’re only talking a bout a small handful of people. Moreover, the people who make these sorts of dramatic decisions based on week evidence probably learn from the experience.
But the other, less dramatic (and less obvious) impact of these events is on the people who are only marginally aware of them. When this sort of thing happens again and again, it becomes a part of the background noise of our lives, and people begin to tune it out. The problem is, as the signal to noise ratio gets smaller, some people lose the ability to tell the difference, until a large segment of the population can’t tell science from hokum, or worse yet, begins to believe that science is hokum.
Think about all the apparently conflicting dietary information that has come out in the last few decades. At some point, many people, ignorant of the fact that uncertainty is part of science and unwilling to do the hard work of grappling with the information themselves, begin to assume that science can not be relied upon to give any answers. So you get people saying things like, “Sure, I know that doctors say smoking is bad for you, but these are the same guys who said eggs are bad for you, so why should I trust them?”
I don’t ever have problems with folks who do not believe in God. Usually, they are quiet folk,but I do have problems with folks who have to rant “up one side and down the other” endlessly. I always wonder exactly why they get so ticked off?
At any rate, I seem to remember that Jesus warned us about “…Many coming in my name…” with the admonition that we are not to follow them!
Truly believing in God and trying to follow him is not the same as following a cult whether it be “Heavens Gate”,many of the so-called “Tele-Evangelists” or Intelligent Designer/Creationists.
And for those of you here who might be interested, Florida State University held a panel discussion this past week on Science & Religion:
http://mediasite.oddl.fsu.edu/mediasite/viewer/NoPopupRedirector.aspx?peid=d6bd1be5-dfbd-4d9d-9bec-ac646c24217d&shouldResize=False
I highly reccomend sitting and listening to this!
One of the panelists was Dr. Eugenie Scott, another was Dr. John Haught,catholic theologian specializing in areas of science.
I found it most illuminating when Dr. Scott said that most of the ID stuff happens not in cities but in suburbs and rural areas. Dr. Haught said that it happens because folks have impefect religious education married with imperfect science education.
One must wonder exactly why we have impefect science education as most of these folks are not kids fresh out of high school but adults say in their 40’s and 50’s?
As an adult in his fifties, I was probably in the cohort that benefitted most from the post-Sputnik increase in math & science education in the U.S. Most of my classmates in high school and junior college, however, were not taking the math & science classes. They would satisfy their science general ed requirements by taking generic “general science” classes that were (usually) lists of facts suitable for multiple-choice tests. What we really need is an emphasis on critical thinking and evaluating evidence instead of once-over-lightly science facts and factoids, but that’s not what we have.
There is no cost associated with scaring the hell out of people. We can say whatever we wish, true or not. Perhaps what we really need is some way to SUE the Buzzards who do these dirty deeds, then they might think once or twice about the post, non apocolypse results. Like, the sky didn’t fall as you claimed it would, now you go straight to jail, do not collect $ 200 million dollars from your deluded followers. That might make for some really good news coverage of the wackos and their inaccuracies.
Gary 7
There is actually a very interesting (if slightly old) book on this called “When Prophecy Fails” by Leon Festinger. He inserted students into a doomsayer group, followed them as the members quietly sold their possessions, made peace with their families, etc., and then gathered on the final day to watch the excitement from a nice hilltop.
The interesting stuff starts the next morning. Many of the group of course drift away, but a good number stays the course. These ones, after the failure of prophecy, are the ones who become strident evangelizers. Some become numerological, looking for clues to how they missed the dates, and when the real date is.
Pretty interesting read.
Sadly, Nancy Lieder is still peddling her Planet X nonsense on GLP. Of course, her remaining followers can probably be counted on the hands of one finger!
What is the scheduled time for the “big bang”? An event like this should never be missed.
I would like to see things looked at without the name calling… “nutcase” etc… I have had Nancy Lieder on my show and asked her “tough” questions, based on Laws of Science, which showed error in her assertions without making fun of her.
The same went for Eric Julien when he was on my show.
Ego gets in the way on both sides of the Truth.
We need top look at things open minded and without prejustice, while not abandoning logic, reason and facts.
Two Quotes come to mind:
“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” -Einstein
For me, I will listen to all, and try to see from their perspective, while not loosing grounding of the past… at least until the past ground gives way with new understandings of “truths” that bring us closer to “Truths”.
“Truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it; but, in the end; there it is.”
-Sir Winston Churchill
James Arthur Jancik
Host of “Feet to the Fire” weekly syndicated radio show
http://www.feet2fire.com
I’m sure there are laws in the US against disturbing the peace. If enough people sell their house because they are scared into it, that is somewhat comparable to shouting fire in a crowded theatre. All you need is one test trial to go the rationalists way, and many of these clowns will look for other ways to con the public.
Which brings me to another point: Many commenters here lament the demise of critical thinking by Joe Public. However, Joe was never very good at that. Only a small proportion of the population engages in critical thinking. It’s not that the rest is dumb, it’s that they are lazy. They have been throughout their whole education.
Mr. Jancick, I think it would be prudent to reply with a quote from Douglas Adams:
“All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”
Generally speaking, it is good to at least give ideas the benefit of the doubt. However, at a certain point an idea has been so thoroughly studied and the evidence against it so overwhelming it really no longer deserves serious consideration.
Like the idea that meteors are impossible. We have meteorites, we know where they come from, we see them all the time, we have craters left by them. Anybody who seriously doubts that meteors are impossible does not deserve to be taken seriously unless they have something absolutely overwhelming that no one has seen before. If not, then they have forgone the right to be taken seriously. This is especially true if, based on this assertion, they predict certain meteor events wouldn’t occur but did, or would occur but didn’t, does so repeatedly, and still sticks by the idea no matter how many times the predictions based on this idea turn out to be wrong.
At a certain point such continued assertions take on what Judge Jones elequently called “breathtaking inanity”. Not all ideas are worthy of respect, only those that earn them. All ideas deserve a right to be heard, but if they are heard, proven wrong, heard again, proven wrong again, and this is repeated over and over, at a certain point there becomes little point bothering to take notice again unless the person offers something new and overwhelming. If it is just the same, tired, old tripe that has been dealt with over and over then it would be a waste of time doing so again.
There has to be something new and sufficient to overcome previous objections. Scientific ideas that were originally thought to be wrong but ultimately turned out to be true all met this criteria. They simply didn’t fit the facts, but new overwhelming facts came to light that allowed them to work (with some modification). This is not the case here. Until it is there is little point bothering with it. It is what Park called “Voodoo Science”, at first an idea is simply wrong, but as overwhelming evidence accumulates against the idea but its supporters refuse to abandon it, begin obfuscating, “moving the goal posts”, and throwing up ad-hoc hypotheses, at a certain point it becomes pointless to take them seriously until something new and overwhelming is presented.
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.”
-Richard Feynman
Thank you Phil, for once again posting the reality of the situation. I just wanted to say that yesterday I visited my friend and her 16 yr old sister said that when she first heard about Eric Julien’s notions, she started crying. She was at school and a lot of her friends were crying as well. It just made me feel so angry that she was so upset about it. Although I tried to tell her that it was all a crock; I don’t think she was 100% satisfied. Do you or anyone else on the board have any suggestions how to make young people like her believe the actual truth?
I am also very pleased that you haven’t forgotten the issue and do post about it every few days. Frankly that reassures me. Though I wish I could do more for all those younger than us who actually want hard facts, that I, as a person who doesn’t know a lot about astronomy, could give them.
Help!
I recently heard there’s another rather large group of folks who believe that Lucifer is coming to destroy the world June sixth, because the date will be 6/6/06.
Then there’s this whole DaVinci Code hooey… sheesh
oh no, not again. Why does it always have to be May?
At least we won’t have to endure it for too much longer. What do you think his excuse will be on Friday?
In Operation Clambake (xenu.net), an excellent website about scientology, the author wrote (you can find it in the FAQs) that he doesn’t hate Scientology. One of his reasons is that hate isn’t a constructive emotion. I admire him, I honestly do, being able to control that emotion and rationalize it. But I just can’t, it’s way passed me. Every time I read something about Eric Julien I feel so angry, so violent!
“I wonder (as I always do in these situations) what they will say on May 26 when nothing has happened.”
That’s the worst part, just like James Randi wrote in his web, he’s already got an excuse planned; Eric Julien said:
“Except if, of course, the leaders go into reverse. That enormously will depend on you, of the actions that you will take to convince them of their folly! ”
So that’s just what he will do, he will just go on celebrating the fact that the “leaders” decided that it would be better to leave our planet alone, and he’ll go home happy and satisfied, just like all of his deluded believers…
It’s a shame, I really really wanted him to eat dust.
I think there should be a mandatory subject in school called Logic or Scientific Reasoning, because I don’t know what’s happening nowadays, what’s wrong with everybody? Scientology, Creationism, Intelligent Design, doomsayers, psychics… People just don’t get it, they just don’t understand science, the scientific method. Everybody,especially children, should be taught that every theory has got to have supporting evidence! And that evidence, for it to be called as such, must be objective and it must be obtained in controlled experiments which must be repeatable. Everything else is a guess, a personal belief which cannot be called science, and when someone calls it science it’s always harmful, dishonest and wrong.
As Robert Heinliens character Lazarus Long said,
“It’s necessary to have an open mind. It just can’t be SO open that the wind blows through,,,”
In other words, don’t be an air head!
Critical thinking is a skill, one that works in opposition to those who seek power to control people. Critical thinkers are HARD to control. So who wants an entire population of critical thinkers?
I do!!!
Gary 7
This is interesting…from Eric’s board…
[b]Aloha All,
I am sorry for those who were kind and serious in this forum. I had to close it due to many attacks in the management of the moderation. Some people want to distract you from the main purpose of this forum which to save lives. The only way to be useful is to help people around you, and especially on the Atlantic coasts. Warn the media, the politics, the family. Thank you to be patient until MAY 26.
Take care of you.
Best regards, Eric Julien.[/b]
Be patient??? What about all of the folks who “supposedly” won’t be alive on the 26th??
Evolving Squid, Superb! Yes, the probability would be much lower. I think I’ll go smear myself with marmalade now.
End of the world?!?! That’s it! I’m selling my house and moving to Mars.
I hear they have really nice hotels there and some kind of “Mars Face Resort” with sandy beaches as far as the eye can see …
:p
As Jaime says:
… People just don’t get it, they just don’t understand science, the scientific method.
Here is an example from the forum of this “scientist”:
“But also consider this. Eric Julien is a scientist. He has put his credibility, not only as a man, a person, but also as a scientist, on the line with this prediction. That same credibility would be shattered into unrecoverable pieces if his prediction turned out to be false. Eric Julien knows this. He has written a book, authored scientific theories on extraterrestrial physics, and in short, built a reputation. Whether that reputation is esteemed or as a crackpot is up to you, the reader, to determine. But Mr. Julien is not stupid. He knows if the date passes, his scientific career is over, as far as he is respected and considered by his colleagues and peers. Which leads me to the only conclusion I can reach; Mr. Julien truly believes that he heard this date in his head.”
So aparently he thinks he is a scientist. When is he going to reveal his scientific method so other scientists can duplicate his data and confirm his results? I was unaware he had any scientific credibility to risk!
“I think there should be a mandatory subject in school called Logic or Scientific Reasoning”
Unfortunately, one thing I learned in high school was that the surest way to ruin a good class was to make it manadatory for graduation. It’s almost like a Universal Law.
I wish I could find some of the doomsday believers near me. I could buy their houses/cars/othertemporalitemswhichtheywon’tneedanymore for pennies on the dollar, flip it, and pay off my credit cards…
The world will not end on May 25th. There’ll just be a major catastrophe! Stop fretting, people!
…That’s getting so redundant… I wonder why people still listen to doomsayers.
One thing that I have yet to see is that even IF we assume that a fragment of this comet will hit the Earth, it is only 1 a small fragment of 2 a large ball of ice. What happens if a small ball of ice hit the atmosphere? It melts to a point that it will blow up and maybe flatten a few trees (Tunguska?) If it hits over the ocean it MIGHT cause a few small waves. Oh, horrors!
Rob said it:
‘If it hits over the ocean it MIGHT cause a few small waves. Oh, horrors!’
However, we are already experiencing rather strong
waves on almost all the major stock exchanges that
started simulteneously some two weeks before the 25 of May. One may well assume that these disturbances were triggered
by the paranoia created by the ‘imminent’ comet plunge into the Atlantic causing a 200 meter high tsunami. Hence, if the doomsayers are to represent some sort of a ’science’ then
may be what is happening on the stock exchanges is the purpose
of their science.
Rob, I think you are highly overestimating the extent of the problem. If there is a fragment, worst-case scenario is a loud bang, maybe a few rattled windows at the absolute worst. More likely we just get a pretty light show. Since it is a comet, it is most likely not stable enough to hit the ground, not to mention cause a tidal wave, and almost certainly not stable enough to detonate at a low altitude like the Tungaska asteroid/comet thingy did. We are most likely looking at an airburst in the extreme upper atmosphere where long distances and low air density would most likely eliminate any possible threat to anyone on the ground.
Just wanted to say - on May 25, I will drive to Norfolk VA, (actually, slightly north, but that is a quibble), take my oldest daughter (22) and youngest son (10) and join my older son (20) on his ship - the USS Normandy - and take a nice “Family Cruise” out into the Atlantic Ocean for about 6 hours.
Now THAT is practicing what you preach. Or don’t preach. Or whatever….
I believe it will be a rather nice day. I even expect wonderful weather.
JC
Evolving Squid, the probability of getting hit by a meteorite might plummet but we have a massive increase in probability of slipping, followed by electrocution.
Weekend Plans Simplified…
Seems some folks are suggesting that for some there will not be a weekend. Via Pharyngula who is relieved that his hectic June schedule will be preempted…….
PK said:
the probability of getting hit by a meteorite might plummet but we have a massive increase in probability of slipping, followed by electrocution
Indeed, that is true, but if that happens one would certainly make the evening news and become at least a local legend - something that definitely wouldn’t happen if you got smoked by a comet.
Muy Britney Spears (“Yes I do….â€).
“Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume so great
an authority over us, that we forget their terrestrial origin and accept them as
unalterable facts. They then become labeled as ‘conceptual necessities,’ etc.
The road of scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such
errors.” - Einstein
E.J. was wrong regarding Schwassmann-Wachmann, but for You:
-have open mind
-never be trigger-happy, arrogant.
If you all are right we have no worries about almost anything, because
meteorites don’t exist. You are opposing Chladni.
If you are alright Earth is static.
If you all are all right my cells perform hoaxes because there is no ATP cycle.
I’m doomed.
If you are alright they are wrong:
Arrhenius (ion chemistry)
Alfven, Hans (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)
Baird, James L. (television camera)
Bakker, Robert (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (black holes in 1930)
Doppler (optical Doppler effect)
Folk, Robert L. (existence and importance of nanobacteria)
Galvani (bioelectricity)
Harvey, William (circulation of blood, 1628)
Krebs (ATP energy, Krebs cycle)
Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)
Gauss, Karl F. (nonEuclidean geometery)
Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
Goddard, Robert (rocket-powered space ships)
Goethe (Land color theory)
Gold, Thomas (deep non-biological petroleum deposits)
Gold, Thomas (deep mine bacteria)
Lister, J (sterilizing)
Margulis, Lynn (endosymbiotic organelles)
Mayer, Julius R. (The Law of Conservation of Energy)
Marshall, B (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)
McClintlock, Barbara (mobile genetic elements, “jumping genes”, transposons)
Newlands, J. (pre-Mendeleev periodic table)
Nottebohm, F. (neurogenesis: brains can grow neurons)
Ohm, George S. (Ohm’s Law)
Ovshinsky, Stanford R. (amorphous semiconductor devices)
Pasteur, Louis (germ theory of disease)
Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
Rous, Peyton (viruses cause cancer)
Semmelweis, I. (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )
Tesla, Nikola (Earth electrical resonance, “Schumann” resonance)
Tesla, Nikola (brushless AC motor)
J H van’t Hoff (molecules are 3D)
Warren, Warren S (flaw in MRI theory)
Wegener, Alfred (continental drift)
Wright, Wilbur & Orville (flying machines)
Zwicky, Fritz (existence of dark matter, 1933)
Zweig, George (quark theory)
I CANNOT believe it, this is exactly what I was talking about when I said that people do not understand the scientific method.
Drazen Zeman, dear fella, all of the theories you listed above were subject to the scientific method, and we scientists treat them as scientific theories, which DOES NOT mean that we believe them as a fact, but we treat them as a very useful tool to describe the world we live in, to make predictions. If someone finds a small point in the theory which is incorrect, the whole theory doesn’t get necessarily thrown away as if were a dogma, it gets fine-tuned or substituted by another theory which works even better.
General relativity and quantum mechanics are maybe the two most important theories in physics, and both seem to be correct but we KNOW they aren’t absolutely correct, because they are mutually exclusive! so nobody takes them as a fact (at least not physicists), no scientist would ever tell you they are “true”, they are simply the best approximations we have for the moment, QM for the micro-world and GR for the macro-world, to put it simply.
Now, you said that Eric Julien was wrong but that we shouldn’t be so arrogant because it’s just another theory. NO, IT IS NOT. Not a scientific theory, that’s what we are arguing here, and you are completely missing the point. We are not debunking him because we think that his theory is wrong, we aren’t close-minded because of that. Our problem is that we don’t like HOW he obtained the theory. For crying out loud, we’re talking about a guy who claims to have had some sort of revelation by aliens or by secret messages in crop circles. Oh come on! it’s not that difficult to understand why we think that this guy is a joke (and a very harmful one). I’m not even going to try to explain why that isn’t a valid scientific evidence. Eric Julien says that he made some simulations proving that he was in fact correct. Now, the fact that he doesn’t make them available the public is just absurd, if a scientist doesn’t expose his theory to the public for it to be critized, proven or disproven then we know that there’s something wrong with it. And that’s all we are saying, we haven’t got anything against Eric Julien’s beliefs, we respect them, we just won’t let him get away with him calling it a scientific theory, because it simply isn’t.
Well, Jaime, I sure don’t respect Eric Julien or his theories, and if that makes me “closed-minded”… well, I’ll just have to live with that, now won’t I?
On the other hand, Drazen Seman, you won’t catch ME homeless, unemployed, hung-over and pennyless on the morning of the 27th.
But, now, seriously, pretty much any ideology you care you name (except some so artificial and contrived that they cannot be related to anyone who has ever lived) will, when taken to an extreme, be ridiculous.
Asking us to be open minded is a very good thing, and indeed many of us will be, but asking to painstakingly analize every single crackpot theory that comes along and uphold it until we can prove it false is pure lunacy.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of crackpot theories are crackpot theories, and the theorists who theorise them die and are forgotten, hence the remembrance of their folly never remains.
Does it amaze you that no publisher has ever printed a book detailing the lives and acheivements of every single kook who came along calling himself a repressed scientist? That book would likely be so large that it would collapse in on itself and create a blackhole (and, indeed, in a metaphorical sense, it has). There are so many cranks that it is simply too much to ask of scientists, who are at the end of the day mere humans, that they wade through the muck in search of a few gold nuggets.
Unless Matt Groening’s prediction comes true and scientists do discover magic in the future, forcing newcomers to prove the merit of their work will be the only way to ensure that Science does not disolve into nothingness.
This msut be so even if it involves dismissing Eric Julien; I will be happy to hang my head low and admit that he told me so (although I’m sure I won’t have to), but not until he does his homework.
And of course the world is set to end on the day after the end of the finals. Typical.
Anyone want to give odds that on 26 May the EJ squad will make an announcement that a meteorite was recovered that OBVIOUSLY was comet debris and therefore, although the world did not end, the Earth was struck by comet debris and therefore EJ is cool and a badass scientist, etc.?
Interesting that BA brings up this Nancy charachter…
Some years ago there was another cult..”Heavens Gate” I believe they called themselves. Apparently, they thought that there was a UFO in the tail of Comet Hale-Bopp and it was going to pick them up and of course it didn’t after they committed suicide.
Turns out that the leader of this cult had surfaced many years before as a UFO astronaut and he gathered a cult together somewhere out west.
He and his mate started this cult and left to get their UFO and was never seen again…but had made off with a stolen car and credit cards of his cult members.
A few years later,believe it or not, a network made for tv movie was made of them called “The Two” if memory serves correct.
Funny thing about these two…they met in a hospital for the mentally ill.
So, don’t talk to me about folks not being nuts some truly are.
And even the most “learned” of men can be wrong too.
Ole Tom Jefferson never believed that meteors could actually land on Earth.
Jaime said:And that’s all we are saying, we haven’t got anything against Eric Julien’s beliefs, we respect them, we just won’t let him get away with him calling it a scientific theory, because it simply isn’t.
Really, you respect him or his beliefs? I don’t respect people who listen to crop circles, mix those messages with politics when there’s some serious reality going on, and I feel no need to apologize for that. Now, “crop squares” are another story…if you can tell me what the approximate yield of corn, and thus the price, will be this summer, I’ll respect you…
Really, the crop circle business blows all credibility from the get-go; even if he was right about one minor thing I wouldn’t respect him. Conversely, someone who is right about a lot of things, but has a few imaginative ideas is a different story. A bad artist can’t create good abstract art.
Drazen Zeman said:
I don’t know what you’re going on about. None of those claims are related. Rejecting Eric Julien and his doomsday claim has no bearing on ATP, black holes, Tunguska, or flying monkeys. Eric Julien said nothing about any of them, so they are independent claims to be evaluated independently.
P. Edward Murray, you mean this Heaven’s Gate?
Irishman says:
flying monkeys
Monkeys can, in fact, be made to fly if you get them moving fast enough, but this would typically involve strapping them to some kind of rocket or other explosive device.
You could get them to remain airborne, subject to the usual rules of gravity, etc. by throwing them from a trebuchet, large slingshot or similar device.
Technically, every pilot and astronaut is a flying ape
One well-known problem scientists have isn’t with the idealized application of scientific method in Positivistic Happy-Land, which is fine on the face of it. Rather, it is the entrenchment of politics (personal as well as ideological) and its effects over distribution of research funds, positions, acceptibility of new findings, etc. As one poster mentioned- at the end of the day scientists are just human beings, mere mortals. Add into the mix social and personality psychology- somebody may be brilliant but a lousy writer, speaker, or be anathema to anyone that meets him/her.
Very often such factors far outweigh any idealized ones when it comes to new science. Too bad we can’t automate the process yet, to REMOVE the human equation at this level. It doesn’t, IMO, belong here.
Jess Tauber
Yes, BA, THAT heavens gate. The New York Times even had a horrendously huge article on these folks.
I thought it was most interesting, I mean, how many times do you hear about these scammers that just disappear? And then reappear somewhere else?
[…] A “psychic” has predicted a Deep Impactstyle tsunamigenerating comet for Thursday, May 25th. His site is unavailable, but the warning is reproduced here and discussed at length by Bad Astronomy. […]
This isn’t a correct model of evolution. A much better model would be:
Pick one of the numbers at random. If it isn’t a 1, put it back and repeat.
If it is a 1, set it down on the table and repeat for 2. Repeat until you get
all ten numbers in order.
I wrote a little computer progam to simulate this. It usually took about
40-50 picks to get all the numbers. In about a dozen trials, the quickest
was 20 picks, the worst 104.
Of course, this is a very bad simulation of evolution, since it is goal-directed,
and there is no chance of evolving away from the goal rather than towards
it. Still infiinitely closer to reality than the “you have one shot to evolve a
complete human being from a bacterium” model that was proposed.
P.S. I hope my quote worked. Never did this before…
This guys website is a joke. I had to laugh when i went on there as it said forum closed until may 26th haha. This guy is off his head and must be smoking something green as there is absolutley no evidence at all (other than,”I had a dream about a spaceship, so it must be true”) to support what he is saying. If you read this article, dont worry nothing is going to happen tomorrow, this guy is just after publicity.
As it is now 02:45 hours EST in the eastern States of Australia, 25th May 2006, and in fact we are also two hours later than the International Date Line, (making it over fours into the ‘Doomsday’ as predicted by M. Julien), I AM STILL WAITING!
Can’t rely on decent help these days.
Or maybe the doomsdayers are going to insist that ‘The Event” may not actually start until the eleventh hour, ie, like at one minute to midnight, to satisfy the strict letter of the law. And this would have to be at some place just East of the I.D.L., giving us a bonus day extra, to get our affairs in order.
Oh ooh, should I have given them our secret scientific knowledge that we have worked out ourselves? I have not noticed any local, world, daylight saving or intergalactic times mentioned, considering where all of us live on this planet, as they only refine their prognostications to certain days on the calendar.
Just one more thing. What am I supposed to do with all the extra hours of daylight I have been saving all these years?
Ivan.
I heard Eric Julien on a radio program this AM, and now he is changing his story. He is now stating that by the end of the week there will be a major Tsunami on the East Coast-now we have to wait until the 26th for this catastrophe-glad I live in Kansas!
Oooops, just correcting a little typo in my first paragraph, don’t know how it happened as I’m sure it was ok leaving here. Should have been… (making it over four hours into … etc. But it gives me the opportunity to correct the correction as it is now nearly six hours and I’m not going to wait any longer. I’m going to bed.
Ivan.
Hmmm…May 25th, yes ok, but Where? Technically it is already May 25th in Australia, and when its May 26th here in Pittsburgh it will be may 25th in Chicago.
The fact that this “Scientist” doesn’t even have the foresight to take this into account and weave this into his “Scientific Data” greatly undermines his credibility.
If his models (which, might I add, none of us can see) are so accurate, then why is the time so vauge? That would be like me saying “I have solid proof that a tornado will hit New York at five o’clock…” Five o’clock where? When? What date?’
I hope this all makes sense to you, since, to me, part of being a successful theorist and scienstist is punctuality.
Oh, and another note, what in the world does a truck sized comet have to do with the geological stability of Earth? What mystical power does this ball of Ice have that will cause dormant volcanoes to awaken? Siesmic waves created by its impact? But those would be muffled by the MILES of ocean water the ice ball would be impacting, Maybe it will hit at an angle, skip across the top of the water like a stone, causing ENOURMOUS waves and then hit the ice caps, releasing a UFO that has been trapped there for centuries, which will, in turn, fly around the world igniting underwater volcanoes.
If thier was a comet fragment heading for us NASA would have spotted it.
And before anyone tosses the government coverup thing around, if the government DID know, why would they have so many ships on the EAST COAST for fleet week….
Just found a new quote that seems applicable to the situation:
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-Hubert Humphrey
“And before anyone tosses the government coverup thing around, if the government DID know, why would they have so many ships on the EAST COAST for fleet week…”
Not to mention rolling Discovery out to the launch pad… At least NASA is putting its money where its mouth is
There is quite a bit of a serious discussion concening the vertues of a good science in this forum and my impression is
that despite the luni character of Mr. E.J. hypothesis he is
still being viewed as sombody deserving some sort of a scientific consideration.
I assume that people like him know quite well what they are
doing and they enjoy it very much. To my opinion they would
like to gain an influence, a sense of self-importance at all costs and by all means including by thretening the world with
a major catastrophy. For this purpose they have now a world wide broadcasting tool at their disposal: the Internet.
One can assume that broadcasting the message of Mr. E.J.
on, say, the ABC as it is broadcast on the Internet on the
Mr. E.J. site would attract some attention of the corresponding judicial authorities. But, sure it is, nothing like this will happen to Mr. E.J.
I would like to attract the attention of this forum to the fact that during the last week there were massive corrections
downwards on all the major world stock markets, without any
underlaying economic causes for this type of corrections.
The stock market in Idia has experienced its worst week ever amidst robust growth and excellent outlook. Wasn’t it a
result of the panic created by the ‘imminent catastrophy’?
Well, I am inclined to beleive that it was. If so, then
Mr. E.J. and Co. achieved what they were up to: exerting
whatever influence they can get on as many people they
can reach through the Internet.
It would be very appropriate if the legislators would take
steps in order to make the panic making broadcasting of the type Mr. E.J. used on the Internet unlawful. After all,
there are broadcasting considered on the Internet as
unlawful, for instance broadcasting of child pornography.
Always wondered why the doom players insist on SELLING their personal belongings. I mean, what are they going to spend their cash on? Their world is ending,,,Maybe they could give it to me.
Don’t knock the green smokers. They’re no more likely to be irrational than boozers,,,Remember, eat, drink and make Mary,,,but only if she’s willing,,,
Gary 7
Baby on board? Who cares?…
Today I saw a woman driving, talking on the cell phone, screech to a halt at the 4-way at the end of my road. Screeching, to avoid the driver stopped in front of her at the sign, and I assume,…
Phew. No comet impact. Here in Sweden it’s a long weekend and that would be a really unfortunate time for the world to end. And it’s pay-day too (the whole country (give-or-take) gets paid on the same day of the month). That would be even more annoying!
Hang on… it may be May 26th now over here but do the doomsayers say anything about time-zones?
Remember that nearly all doommongers become footnotes of history, which really is the ultimate revenge. Ask the average teenager now who Velikovsky was, and I can guarantee you that none of them will have a clue. Occasionally an irrationalist like Uri Geller will slip through the cracks and make a bunch of money for himself, but most of them fade away, far away from the attention that they need so desperately.
I don’t even remember this dude’s name… Eric something… and that’s half the battle right there.
I can disprove EJ’s hypotheses very easily:
“O Qua Tanzin Wan! Quaonsar Na Jin Wan!”
Put that in your pan flute and dispute it!
But seriously, the only fuel these fools need is recognition. Hardly anyone remembers Velikovsky these days, and he used to be The Man! They wouldn’t be doom-sayers if they didn’t have a savior complex, so your best refutation is forgetfulness.
Now who was that guy who said that we’d all be beamed aboard a spaceship in 1987… it seems like yesterday…
Weren’t those 1987 guys the ones who castrated themselves as well?
Shouldn’t that be a requirement for everyone that makes a doomsday prediction that never comes true? I’d think we’d get a lot less of them if that were the case.
3:36am central and the world is still here.
Damn, its been extended another 48 hours. From Julian’s site:
“UPDATE MAY 25, 2006:
According to informed sources, contacts in the American intelligence services confirm the existence of a time window of 48 hours, centered on May 25th at midnight GMT, for the impact a comet fragment south of the Azores.”
Maybe they’ll extend it another 48 at that deadline as well. Can’t someone just whack him with a snowball and say “There’s your comet piece” so they don’t have to keep extending it?
I see the main stream in these comments are just ‘full of themselves’-reply’s wich saddens me a bit, but it was to be expected. Pointing fingers solves nothing. It just serves to large ego’s, nothing more.
As said somewhere before : there was no claim for total extinct, that is what you suggest.And i dont here anybody mentioning the part about the cropcircles, wich are still unexplained to this day.
Do we really think we have the ultimate science ?
Do we really think life only exists in the physical realm ?
Do we really think we know all univeral laws ?
A nice ‘coinsidence’ Viking (post 20917) points out there…
It’s not that if it doesnt happen, none of it would be tru.I believe that he believed he was doing the right thing & think its brave to put his credability on the line like that.
I’M STILL WAITING! (for an apology at least. M Julien, Copiez-vous ?
I’m glad I have the daylight saving hours restored though, as I had plans for them.
Ivan.
[…] Oh, the rumor about a Vogon constructor ship disguising itself as a comet is probably not true. If it is true you won’t be reading this, so I’m covered. […]
Adam Bell said:
I understand your point, but in the specific example you list, I would assume the time is 5 o’clock New York time, on the same day. Unless otherwise specified, those are default assumptions.
Leo said:
I think it would be more reasonable to help people be less gullible.
But what’s your evidence? First, I haven’t witnessed those economic “corrections”, though to be fair I am not looking. But second, what justification do you have to connect the with Eric Julien’s nonsense? What other factors are possible candidates that you are overlooking?
Erik (Belgium) said:
Wait, you see the responses here as meant to feed egos? Confidence does come off as arrogance sometimes.
Total destruction of the world is an exaggeration, but he does suggest lots of destruction to the American coastline from the tidal wave caused by the comet. Yet he’s still wrong about the possibility of an impact, still wrong about what the possible effects could be, so if we’re overplaying the “disaster” element a little we can hardly be faulted when he is overselling the whole concept.
And do you really want to drag crop circles into this? Crop circles are not unexplained. They’re hoaxes - manmade sculptures in crops. People finding significance or hidden messages in doodles is particularly nutty.
Ultimate science? Science isn’t a collection of data. It isn’t a collection of laws and formulas. Science is a process of learning about the world. Knowledge is incomplete, but that is no reason to throw out what we do know. We do know enough about orbital and intrastellar motion to track objects in space. We do know enough about comets to know what their effects should be based upon their size. Julien is wrong on both these points.
He’s brave for making an idiot of himself in public? Of stepping beyond his technical knowledge and parading that around as if it is worth something? Of refusing to listen to people who do have the technical knowledge and tell him he is wrong and how they know he’s wrong? What do you mean, if none of it happens it wouldn’t be true? Yes, that’s exactly the point - it isn’t true, and it didn’t happen, and his claims to the contrary were delusions. Spreading misconceptions and creating fear because he had a dream, that’s acceptable to you? Have you heard the old tale about “Crying Wolf”? Panicmongering does nothing but weaken credibility for real concerns.
In order, each point:
Makers of “comments full of themselves” - It takes a great deal of ego to claim to have a direct line to the alien gods that control our solar system. I looked it up in my imaginary dictionary and the definition of “full of yourself” say “Claiming to the world that I can save you!” What saddens me…. people believed him.
Crop-circles still unexplained to this day!? Right. Sure. It’s a true mystery. ……. Not. Anyone with nine tenths of their brain tied behind their back should know better. Alien UFO believers refused to accept any mundane explanation, however. It doesn’t require exotic technology to make crop circles. None.
“We have the ultimate science?” Where does that come from? Every science geek I know, with out exception, knows that we only have the most base understanding of the universe. I will say, though, that we have a solid understanding of orbital mechanics. We prove that every time our probes send back pictures of distant planets and moons. They got there on our understanding of orbital mechanics.
“Life only exists in the physical realm?” So far. Every attempt to understand metaphysical phenomenon that I know of found a mundane explanation. Believing this only requires not believing in a global conspiracy cover-up.
“Know all universal laws?” Not on your life. Not on anyone’s life. As I mention above, we do understand orbital mechanics. That comet, aimed at a .012 million meter diameter target missed by 10 million meters. We knew it would miss because we could use our understanding of orbital mechanics to calculate how close we were going to be. Our window of closest approach was known with a much better precision than the recent 48 hour window. By the way, how can you know precisely where it will hit if you don’t know precisely when it will hit. The Earth moves in its orbit about the Sun a distance equal to the Earth’s diameters in about 7 or so minutes. At that rate we were four days travel from the comet’s closest fragment. That, by the way, was several days ago. At this point the comet is moving away from the Sun and away from the Earth.
That scientists report the surprising results from the Voyager probes concerning the heliopause indicates they have no problem admitting they do not know everything and they consider finding new and surprising things fun and exciting.
Certainly EJ had a large enough ego to think he was right and everyone else that is trained in the science of orbital mechanics and scientific study were wrong and that “revealing” imminent mega-destruction to the world (regardless of how politically motivated the message) took arrogance.
John B. Sandlin is addressing the ‘message’ of Mr. E.J. as if
Mr. E.J. were a scientist. But he is not. Him and the people
like him are up to something else that has nothing to do
with the science, and they do it deliberately. They are
taking pleasure in spreading their opinion about the
imminent catastrophies and death of millions as if it were scientifically established facts while knowing well that all this is just empty fantasies.
Before the advance of the Internet such people were rather
harmless in their attempts to get a satisfaction by scaring
others. However, today the Internet provides them with a uinque and rather inexpensive opportunity to reach millions
and spread panic. The latter is their real purpose.
It is a pity that no legislation exists that makes it
unlawful to disturb the public peace through the systematic horror messages on the Internet.
Hi, just wanted to say hi. Especially since today is the 27th (hehe). I don’t even know how I found your blog last Tuesday night, but I read about the so-called end of the world to happen on the 25th, and thought, “See ya on the 26th!”
OK. Then I forgot about it.
So this morning I remembered-”Oh yeah, the world ended!” I blogged on mine that it was to have been yesterday, credited yours, then came by to ask…
Do you think maybe the doomsday sayers were using the old calendar?
OK. Then I forgot about it.
So this morning I remembered-”Oh yeah, the world ended!” I blogged on mine that it was to have been yesterday, credited yours, then came by to ask…
Do you think maybe the doomsday sayers were using the old calendar?
My point was:
- those people are NOT a scientists
- their work was labeled as a - HOAX
- E.J is wrong (I repeat myself).
Oh well..
I had planned on enjoying this past weekend with fishing. Nope, didn’t happen.
The second my son and I got out on the lake we were hit by the comet. Just turned into a bad day.
bank…
bank
bank - bank
You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
It was all so different before everything changed.
…
ok its july not may and the world ant going to end i if your thinking of the one to hit monday your thinking of a meteor and its only half a mile and on 1910 year a meteor hit a quarter of the size of it and another thing we dont even no if it will miss or not o and i got heard on friday of may a meteor to maybe hit monday 2006
ahhh srry it was june i heard of it 29 2006
title loans…
title loans
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Give him an evasive answer.
It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best
judge of one.
– Mark Twain, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar”
…
online backgammon…
online backgammon
online backgammon - online backgammon
You are not dead yet. But watch for further reports.
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
– Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice”
…
pay day loans…
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Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
– Mark Twain
Don’t get stuck in a closet — wear yourself out.
…
hi ummm yeah i am still alive and it is almost 1 yr after that one dude said that. he is not good at predicting things, i am more worried about black holes than asteroids. or comets or w.e. they r
[…] the rumor about a Vogon constructor ship disguising itself as a comet was not true, but I almost missed it […]
[…] World to End. Film at 11 […]