The Rock Is Gonna Fall on Us

To give this some perspective the force of the explosion was equal to 500 kilotons of TNT -- when put into nuclear blast language Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by bombs with a 13-22 kiloton force.
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The sky is falling... The sky is falling...

Move over you investors in Social whatever... the next big thing is coming... maybe even here...

So get your faces out of your smartphones -- look up and get ready to monetize the heavens.

7,000 tons of space rock crashed down in Russia and suddenly Bruce Willis is in great demand... not really but fits my story line... but if you don't recognize my pseudo cultural reference check this out... and see the movie...

Now -- I don't know about you -- but I have been obsessed with the story.

First of all... thankfully... no one was killed... but to give this some perspective the force of the explosion was equal to 500 kilotons of TNT -- when put into nuclear blast language Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by bombs with a 13-22 kiloton force. 500, depending on where and how it landed, would be devastating.

Read the story -- it is the stuff of movies -- flash of light -- sonic booms -- shattering glass -- light pouring through the windows of a Church in mid-service -- all it needed was Bruce -- but this was real life.

And... of course... to quote Edward Lu, once an astronaut and now a Google executive: "Wouldn't it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren't looking?" and -- surprise -- "a group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday's shockwave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more."

Let me be crystal clear -- I am not making fun, to the contrary -- in fact I am amazed that the story hasn't trended; that there seems to be little serious interest in it and that after tomorrow it will be mostly forgotten.

Interestingly only a few months ago a group of scientists took it upon themselves to debunk the "science" behind Armageddon -- the Bruce Willis movie -- and they concluded that it was all bunk -- Bruce could not have saved us.

Now, I don't know how that makes you feel, but after the Russian story I'd be more impressed to know how they would save the world...

Seriously, I am not writing this to be apocalyptic or suggest survivalist activities -- au contraire -- I am seriously suggesting that we start looking up and around and realize that there is more going on in our world than how to monetize social activities or whether or not a disappearing photo will replace Facebook... COME ON!!!

What we call technology is simple application of technology applied to evolutionary human behavior. There are people out there trying to cure disease; end hunger and save us from the dangers of the universe -- and therein maybe resides our human quest, our raison d'etre, make the world a better place to live... longer. Yes, I know we can use Twitter to do all those things... and no doubt make better latte too...

So there you have it, a real story, a real tragedy averted, and real people trying to figure out how to avoid the fate of our Dino predecessors...

So to those scientists who doubted my hero Bruce -- I refer them to another hero of mine:

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." Arthur C. Clarke

So who knows...

And for those of you who don't believe any of this:

"Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; Look up a second time, and, one by one, You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, And wonder how they could elude the sight!"
William Wordsworth

And finally a thought from one of my favorites: See here.

Sadly -- one final thought -- it's easy to see how jaded we can get -- a story of "scores" killed in a market in Pakistan barely registers... so it goes...

What do you think?

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