MSNBC just released breaking news about another asteroid burning up over thousands of people in Maryland, New Jersey, and New York.

I’m not sure whats worse, the fact that it took less than a week for the universe to prove those of us who have been clamoring about the threat of asteroids correct, or the fact that it took a fireball over the East Coast to do so. 

In retrospect of last week’s post, I wonder what NASA’s official position on the threat of asteroids is now that Washington D.C. had a front row seat to these events.

On a more scientific and less sarcastic note, I feel that it should be noted that the proximity of these two events should at the very least warrant an investigation as to the two trajectories of these asteroids. If they came from the same or similar directions, we should probably consider aiming a few telescopes in that direction, just in case more are on their way.

…nature never makes only one of anything.

Oh for the love of….come on NASA, work with me here. The scientific community has been sounding the “war drums” on asteroid impacts, trying to encourage public support and inquiry about the space program…and then you have to go and undo it all with your resident dunce.

This week, Charles Bolden, the appointed NASA Administrator that is most well known for his verbal blunder about “NASA being responsible for bridging communication out to the Muslim world,” (as if it’s an alien planet) has managed to undo the scientific creed of “learn from your mistakes,” and has blundered once again by stating to the House Science Committee that,

“A catastrophic meteor strike that would trigger the kind of destruction blamed for wiping out dinosaurs millions of years ago is unlikely in the next several centuries.”

It’s quite possible that Mr. Bolden’s comment could be the most asinine combination of words ever to be spoken in human history. I back up my statement with the following facts:

1. In the same statement, Mr. Bolden stated that astronomers currently do not have the technology to detect asteroids of sufficient size to cause disasters on an inter-continental scale. We don’t even have the ability to look up in the sky and conclude his statement is right or wrong, so his conclusion that “there’s nothing to worry about,” MUST be wrong. If other scientists can’t confirm it, it’s not science, it’s malarkey.
2. While “statistically unlikely” Mr. Bolden has forgotten that the way statistics works, it’s EQUALLY possible for such an event to occur today. Or tomorrow. Or anytime until then. We’ll never know, because we can’t see it coming.
3. If Mr. Bolden is correct, OK well no harm done. But if he’s incorrect, the repercussions of “not worrying about it” could actually inadvertently bring about a situation where we DO have such an asteroid approaching, but our own laziness and lack of effort will prevent us from saving ourselves, resulting in the cataclysmic and fiery death of all life on Earth (it’s happened 6 times before, we can prove it).
4. The Chelyabinsk meteor occurred in 2013. The Tunguska Meteor impact leveled 800 square miles of forest in 1908, so if anything, these impacts occur about every 100 years, not “centuries”. With 5 minutes of Google access, anyone can prove this guy wrong.

If there is anything to be learned from this, it’s that the confused and incorrect ramblings of one man in a position of power should not be considered more valid than the factually supported conclusions of tens-of-thousands of scientists, desperately trying to educate the population on an imminent threat that our entire planet faces.

Let’s take this, however, as an overt sign that our elected leaders are already patting themselves on the back for “easing the worries” of the population, instead of actually attempting to do anything about it.

To quote Neil deGrasse Tyson in the interview posted below:

“I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the galaxy, when aliens learn that we all went extinct from an asteroid when we all had a space program that could have done something about it. That would just be embarrassing.”

I’m going to switch things up and post two long clips from The Daily Show, which focus on the interview that Jon Stewart had with Neil deGrasse Tyson, a well renowned astro-physicist.

The reason I feel that this interview is important is because it brings up a major point about humanity’s survival that our society has been ignoring for an unacceptable amount of time. Every day, the Earth is bombarded by hundreds of tiny asteroids, of sizes ranging from a grain of sand up to that of a large sport-utility vehicle. Depending on the material makeup, each of these impacts has the potential to do damage.

This is Canyon Diablo Crater, also known as Barringer Crater, or Meteor crater, in Arizona. It was created by an asteroid that was about the size of an average house, and the resulting hole is over a mile wide. As Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the interviews, this may seem large to a human, but it’s minuscule in astronomical terms. The really scary part of this situation is that asteroids that can do this much damage are currently too small for humans to detect.

The Chelyabinsk Meteor event that occurred on February 15^th, 2013 is another example of how a house-sized asteroid can cause damage to our society. No matter how you look at it, we got lucky. That asteroid exploded 20 miles above the surface, releasing a blast 30 times that of the Hiroshima bomb released in World War II. Had it detonated only one second later, we’d be talking thousands of casualties instead of thousands of minor injuries. Look at this from a different standpoint:

Every day, our planet is bombarded by nuclear-weapon sized explosions that may or may not hit populated areas. The only thing that has prevented such an event up until now is blind luck. For thirty years, we have been aware of this situation and have chosen to do nothing about it.

This is unacceptable. Let’s change the source and say that instead of the cosmos above, a specific country was randomly lobbing nuclear weapons into neighboring countries, not caring in the slightest where they land (I’m looking at you, North Korea). Would we as a country and a society do anything about that?

Absolutely, and without hesitation.

So then why have we ignored this very obvious threat for so long? As a species, rather than identifying a common enemy (the sky literally falling on us), we have squandered our time and resources bickering among each other how best to divvy up our imaginary currency. It’s all meaningless, because it doesn’t matter how rich you are, no amount of money is going to be able to save you from an asteroid impact.

…well, that is unless you spend the money preemptively developing the necessary technology to divert an asteroid from hitting Earth in the first place.

• It is not an impossible task
• We have the technology to prevent these impacts.
• We are aware of the problem.
• We have several plans we’d like to test.

The problem is people. There are not enough people in our society who think this is an important issue. We’re too busy trying to prevent minorities from voting, or trying to revoke women’s rights, or trying to prevent homosexuals from marriage, or trying to blame the economy on the poor, or a slew of other ridiculous and ultimately meaningless issues that do not affect the very core concept of a civilization: That our species must survive, or all of this progress is for nothing.

Here’s how to fix the economy, unemployment, the deficit, and corporate welfare all at once: Declare outer-space a permanently tax-exempt environment. Make it so that any company employing more than 100 people in orbit or on the moon pays nothing. Don’t offer incentives or anything, we don’t need to sweeten the pot past that. The amount of construction, manufacturing, education, and technical related jobs created by this would far outweigh that of any other project, even the Keystone XL Oil Pipeline.

The United States has spent more than a billion dollars on corporate lobbying every year since 1998. Last year, there was over 3.3 billion dollars spent on lobbying in the US. That’s more than the entire budget of NASA during the Mercury Project. The last ten years of lobbying money combined is more than the entire Apollo Project. My point is that each year, corporations spend more money than is needed to research putting a man into orbit, and they spend that money trying to change the laws of the government to their advantage.

We need to be making it easier and cheaper for companies to take their environmentally damaging facilities and quasi-slave labor practices to outer space than it is to change the laws to allow it to occur here. It’s actually cheaper as of right now, it’s just that we’ve caved so much to corporate demands that there is almost no incentive for them to do anything, let alone make a risky venture into developing new technologies.  A great example of this “do nothing” philosophy is how it’s becoming more common for companies to sue each other to prevent new technologies from being created (like Samsung and Apple). Rather than try to compete fairly, most companies are either demanding a monopoly on their market, or they don’t want to participate at all.

It’s time to stop acting like children. We need to either address the threat of asteroids immediately and start working toward a solution, or just lay down for good and give up. The asteroids aren’t going to stop themselves, and we can’t stop them as long as we’re fighting each other.

Benjamin Franklin had the right idea; our enemy has simply changed from British soldiers to giant space rocks.

The state of Virginia is up next on the list of states that are targeting eco-friendly consumers as the solution for waning tax revenue. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is the  motivating force behind this new legislation, which seeks to add a $100 annual fee to the taxes of drivers with hybrid and electric vehicles while at the same time eliminating the gas tax for remaining consumers.

While this transportation “legislation package” isn’t as draconian as what Oregon has proposed, it is much more overt about intentionally shifting higher tax rates to those who are more actively environmentally conscious. Seeking to shift ALL of the revenue from the gas tax to taxing hybrid owners is not only despicable  it’s just fiscally irresponsible. There is just no way that there are that many hybrid drivers in Virginia. According to the package, an estimated 3.1 billion dollars annually is expected to be recouped from this move. If every driver is taxed $100 each, that still comes out to 31 million people, or about 3.8 times as many people as there are in the entire state of Virginia.

So since it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this legislation is really more about partisan politics, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that it serves no other purpose than to obstruct technological progress and impede the development of green technology as well as “the right to privacy,” which have both been growing as issues in our technological society for decades.

Alright, two can play at that game.

For anyone interested, I have written and posted an article explaining the electromagnetic properties of a Faraday Cage and how to build one around any electronic device using nothing but ordinary kitchen products. With this simple device, anyone can have the ability to completely sever and prevent communication to/from any electronic device of their choice.

Only Patrick Stewart can express this much disappointment so well.

I needed to take a moment before writing this post because I admittedly just kept staring at the screen over and over again yelling “REALLY?” at myself. I don’t even know where to begin with this, aside from the fact it’s quite possibly the most intrusive and idiotic proposal to solve a problem that I’ve ever heard of.

According to an article on the Statesman Journal, a local paper based in Salem, Oregon, the state legislature of Oregon is in the beginning stages of testing a bill that would begin charging drivers of fuel efficient vehicles a per-mile tax for road maintenance. There are several things wrong with this.

First off, the auto industry is rather understandably upset, as they claim that this will further hurt sales of fuel efficient cars. I don’t find myself aligning with the Auto industry on much, but I have to agree with this assessment. People buy fuel efficient cars out of a necessity, because they need to save money on fuel. The West Coast (California in particular) pays more for gasoline than anywhere else in the country, so people are already paying significant amounts of taxes toward gas. Why is the assumption that people with smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient cars are causing more wear-and-tear on the roads than say…a large pickup truck with snow tires? Or how about an 18-wheeler fully loaded with cargo? What about people who go driving for fun in sports cars? The move here is blatantly choosing to punish the people who are actively making an effort to reduce their carbon footprint during their commute while at the same time rewarding those who choose to continue using more fuel-consuming forms of travel. This attempt to “offset tax losses” is a flimsy guise, to bring in new technology that to me is the REALLY scary move here.

In fact, I’m surprised that none of the other news outlets picked up on this: the solution is to install a GPS transmitting device to your car, so you are tracked 24/7 by the Department of Transportation.

That is the ridiculous part of this solution. The government’s first choice of move was to begin tracking everyone with a fuel efficient car. And let’s not play dumb here, as fuel efficiency increases, the program is designed to expand to include all cars with 55 MPG or higher, which means it will apply to more and more vehicles every year. It’s not a leap of the imagination to see that the ultimate goal is to begin taxing each car per mile, and thereby have a “blanket excuse” to monitor all cars in the state at all times.

But before you all start pointing at my tin-foil hat, I ask you to consider this move in relation to other more practical alternatives. Rather than increasing taxes on gasoline, placing the burden on those who drive larger vehicles that contribute more toward global warming and adding further incentive to purchase energy efficient vehicles (and helping the economy by making higher demand for new cars)…this move chose to spend public money making a tracking device, installing it in cars, and enforcing this per mile tax, thereby increasing the costs of law enforcement (and likely causing a need to raise those taxes too).

What happens if someone gets sneaky and takes off the GPS device and leaves it at home? Or wraps it in a Faraday cage? Now, you’ll have to have an enforcement division to go out and have people’s GPS units checked regularly. What if someone else manages to break into the signal and say…uses the GPS to stalk/kidnap someone? My point here is that the choice to require this tracking device opens up a huge can of worms from a technology and liability standpoint, so I am absolutely bewildered how someone would actually make this their first choice in a means of solving this problem.

• Raise the tax on gasoline.
• Raise the cost of registration.
• Raise the taxes on tires.
• Raise the taxes on diesel.
• Raise the State income tax.

But spending the effort to track drivers, enforce a per-mile tax…and on top of that, choose to do it to the most eco-friendly drivers of all of us?

I smell partisan politics all over this…