Scientists had no clue a thirty-foot meteor was hurtling toward the Earth (see attached video) until it exploded with the force of 50,000 tons of TNT, in the atmosphere, according to the Telegraph. If it had been twice as large, the astronomers add, it could easily have killed a bunch of people — and still been nearly impossible to detect ahead of time.

Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center... said: "If you want to find the smallest objects you have to build more, larger telescopes. A survey that finds all of the 20-metre objects will cost probably multiple billions of dollars."

And guess who has to figure out how to pay for it: "The White House is to develop a policy on the space object impact threat by October next year. " Not like those people have anything else to do, other than build a space shield, with communism.

(Video via YouTube)

A tipster tells us this comes from an internal NGS memo, and refers to the Washington, DC office:

Possible H1N1 case at NG
Article posted by Karen Gilmour

Statement from [NGS Human Resources SVP] Tony Sabló
An NG staffer has come down with what may well be the Society's first
diagnosed case of the H1N1 virus, which has also been known as swine
flu. While the lab test results are still pending, the general wisdom
in medical circles these days is to treat any such set of symptoms as
if it is, in fact, H1N1.

The employee is now resting at home under a doctor's care and is
expected to make a full recovery. While members of the person's work
group have been contacted by our medical unit about precautions they
may take, we thought this would be a good time to remind everyone
about "best practices" to reduce the risk of contracting any and all
communicable diseases, including the flu.

Clearly, swine flu has become self-aware and is moving further and further up the intellectual food chain: it went from private schools to Conde Nast to the Washington Post to the National Geographic Society. Soon it will start systematically attacking institutions that really matter, such as the Sanitation Department.

This is only the beginning.

Wolverton's style is familiar to everyone—whether you saw his original bad-acid-trip stylings in MAD, or any of the scores of later cartoonists influenced by him. It would have been hard to imagine then, when he was whipping the ideals of Ozzie and Harriet with a rusty bike chain, that he'd become a darling of the art world half a century later.

But here he is, with a retrospective show at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea, being dubbed "The Van Gogh of Gross-Out" by the New York Times. His mama would be proud. As would Jesus:

A devout churchgoer, he hoped to be remembered for his Bible illustrations, not his cartoons.

His series of apocalyptic images are...memorable. Christians are the freakiest ones of all!
[NYT]

Twitter is forcing its previously-anticipated "Twitpocalypse" to occur before the weekend begins, so engineers will be on hand to deal with the fallout. When the microbloggins service finally assigns an ID of 2,147,483,647 to a tweet, some third-party Twitter applications may crash, as this is above the limit of what can be stored in a 32-bit data field (assuming the field allows for positive and negative, or "signed," integers).

The Twitpocalypse was originally planned for 5 p.m. ET/2 p.m. PT, but this has slipped. You can watch the situation unfold here or here, or listen for the cries of "32-bit signed integer overflow, woo-hoo!"

Once geeks get past the terror and excitement of the Twitpocalypse (Will Tweetie work? Who knows?!), the Facebook reckoning will soon be upon them, in which users get to try and claim vanity URLs like "facebook.com/yourname" starting at 12:01am ET/9 p.m. PT.

The lucky ones will end up with uninterrupted Twitter service and uber-cool Facebook handles, as they surf the Web, probably alone, late on a Friday night. Yay internet!

(Image via)

Topsy launched last night. Its trick — ranking Web pages based on their popularity within Twitter — works awfully well for searches related to technology and breaking news. But it also effectively illustrates just what is important to Twitter's young and overcaffeinated users.

Some examples:

Who is Barack Obama? Why, he's that guy who recorded an audiobook with lots of funny swear words!

Chile is a mall in the Southern Hemisphere, recently blessed by the Jonas Brothers with an awesome concert.

Afghanistan is known primarily for a pig flu outbreak.

John McCain is an old guy whose speech was interrupted by a music video.

Topsy is useful enough that it's starting to look like maybe a big deal. Good for it! But here's to hoping it never replaces Google.com.

Breaking: humankind is doomed! You maniacs, you blew it up! Chimpanzees aren't just writing our economic recover bills and then being shot by racist cops, they're fighting back:

In a scientific paper published today, a primatologist describes an adult male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo often collects stones before opening time so he can have them ready later on when visitors arrive and he becomes agitated.

On some days, he's barraged visitors with up to 20 projectiles thrown in rapid succession, always thrown underhand. Several times he has hit spectators standing about 30 feet across a water-filled moat.

This is not mere "stockpiling" of the sort birds and other dumb animals do, this is plotting for a "future psychological state," as the chimp doesn't actually become agitated until he sees those stupid Swedish tourists across the moat.

A primate researcher warns us that this chimp, "Santino," is actually just a chimp of average intelligence, and not one of those super-intelligent space monkeys we've been warned about.

The Swedish zookeepers have castrated Santino, in an attempt to keep his aggression at bay, but they can't castrate all the weapons-stockpiling human-hating chimps out there.

And so, knowing that, it's apparent to 15% of the American populace that our foolhardy Man-God is Dead.

The market's now lost more than half of its value since its October 2007 highs. And one economist says that based on the previous history of stock market busts in the past century, big stocks could have—are you ready, now?—another 35% to 55%. OR, the sunny scenario: "The market could simply move sideways for 5-10 years... This is what happened in the 1970s." So either a decade of stagnation, or another huge way to fall!

A couple months ago I was in K-Mart buying socks and some young guy who was obviously in finance was talking loud on his cell phone, saying, "Yea, guys at work now are talking about Dow Five Thou, Dow Five Thou..." And I thought, "whatever man, what kind of finance guy is shopping in K-Mart, anyhow?"

Turns out the answer is "the smart ones."

This guy nailed the September 15, 2008 market crash way back in July. Of course, he also attributed it all to a shady Catholic group called Legatus that controls the world, but that's a small matter. Money is money. Now he has identified himself, and he emails us this news:

February 09 2009

100% sure thing

market begins huge downfall

Do not say we didn't warn you. [Previously]

Stop braying on about your purchases as if you were doing something meaningful like removing brain tumors or solving the global economy. SHOP BUT DON’T TELL.
And stop allocating all your free time to shopping... you run the risk of being branded an idiot...
From now on, your shopping trips will be more like surgical strikes. Snag yourself a personal shopper who can streamline the process...
Deep is the new superficial!

And it's so simple: You just need to throw together a soul, intelligence and basic human empathy. They can be tricky to find but are always on sale!

“I think we are maybe 10 percent into this crisis. The economic distortions have been building for longer than we’ve seen in the history of the world. Never have we had such confidence falsely placed in a reserve currency.”

Ha ha, you know what's funny about that Ron Paul quote? It's probably the least disturbing one in the entire New York charticle. The people from inside the financial system sound far more depressing. Here's the former Morgan Stanley chief economist:

“The American consumer is toast. We’re talking a multiyear adjustment, at least two or three years, maybe more. Does that mean America is over? Does that mean we have a whole new world order? The jury’s out on that

If you really want to ruin your Monday, go ahead and click through and read the other two quotes. The short version is that you'll soon be starving in the street, but in the meantime don't stop reading, because there's this new tapas place New York would like to tell you about!

[New York]

[via Gothamist]

This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse [Curbed]

We don't know what it means, but no good can come of this.

[Image: Cobrasnake]

The End of the Rain and More [Gothamist]
Related: True Bible Code

6-23-06 [Copyranter]