Cheery bunch, aren't they. Here's an excerpt from the AOL article I got it from:

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.
Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said.
"It's not just Apophis we're looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue," Schweickart, a member of the Apollo 9 crew that orbited the earth in March 1969, told an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Francisco.
Full article:http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/un-urged-to-take-on-asteroid-threat/20070218175909990002?ncid=NWS00010000000001

So you got that? First off, 1 in 45,000 are actually really good odds. Better than winning the lotto. Better than being struck by lightning. Probably better than being in a plane crash. Second, it's not like it's the first time. Both Earth and our Moon are littered with craters from past collisions with space rock.

Who should take care of the problem? Good question. The article suggests that the UN should take care of it, but I'm not so sure they have the capability to do it. A joint project between the US, Russia, and China would be much more preferable and probably more successful. Anyway you look at it, someone's got to do something about it. Otherwise your just inviting disaster.

Anyway, not to be all pessimistic, but this is a dire risk that we can't just ignore. And the fact that it is so imminent is even more reason not to ignore this. Because even if this one misses us, it doesn't mean the next one won't.

When you were young...

...there were no limitations. The sky wasn't the limit because there was no limit as to what you could achieve or who you could be. So what happened? Why is it that now we are adults, suddenly there's goals we can't achieve and walls we cannot overcome? What happened between then and now? Is reality so harsh that we are stuck to just one track in life? Or has the loss of youth meant the loss of dreams?
This is it. You're only go around on the carousel that is life. You have your ups, you have your downs. Either way, you move on to the next stage in life. And for the most part, blindly going from one place to the next with no true ambition to actually live life to the fullest.
So I ask all of you out there this question: Is there any way we can once again embrace that part of us that believed anything was possible that we seemed to have lost after puberty? And if so, why aren't we?

Isolation
Friday February 2, 2007 10:38PM

From a simple twist from Fate
I find myself alone
Accompanied only by my thoughts
Left to visit the myriad of regrets
That haunt my sleep and poison my dreams
I am alone

Shipwrecked on the deserted island that is Life
With no help on the horizon
If I were to send smoke signals
It would only clutter up the sky
For no one is looking
My plight is but my own

Alas, but no man is an island
We as a race are a whole
So why is it I am lost in a sea of individuals?
Surrounded by the people who do not see me
And once again, I find myself
Alone.