Ignorance is Bliss

From: P h i n n y <user@user.net>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Sun, Feb 16, 2003 4:58 AM

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=378392

Armageddon asteroids 'best kept secret'
15 February 2003

A scientific adviser to the United States government has suggested
that secrecy might be the best option if scientists were ever to
discover that a giant asteroid was on course to collide with Earth.

In certain circumstances, nothing could be done to avoid such a
collision and ensuing destruction, and it would be best not to tell
the public anything, said Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in
Santa Monica, California.

"When a problem arises with high uncertainty, there is an opportunity
to spin the problem to avoid global panic. If you can't do anything
about a warning, then there is no point in issuing a warning at all,"
Dr Sommer told the association yesterday.

"If an extinction-type impact is inevitable, then ignorance for the
populace is bliss. As a matter of common sense, if you can't intercept
it and you can't move people out of the way in time, there's nothing
you can do in terms of reducing the costs of the potential impact," he
said.

"Overreaction not just by the public but by policy-makers scurrying
around before the thing actually hits because we can't do anything
about it anyway ... to a large extent you are better off not adding to
your social costs," said Dr Sommer, who is also an adviser on
terrorism.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is
conducting a 25-year survey of the sky to find asteroids wider than a
kilometre which could have a devastating impact if they collided with
Earth.

So far they have determined the orbits of about 60 per cent of these
objects and none so far have a trajectory that threatens the world
within the next couple of centuries, said David Morrison of Nasa's
Ames laboratory in Moffat Field, California.

"There are, however, many things out there that we know nothing
about," he said.

My website = http://www.nationalcynical.com
My webcast = http://listen.to/voicejail

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

In article <u1ou4v0ecueh6h09qmj82ejaje926df7mi@4ax.com>, P h i n n y
<user@user.net> wrote:

> http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=378392
>
> Armageddon asteroids 'best kept secret'
> 15 February 2003
>
> A scientific adviser to the United States government has suggested
> that secrecy might be the best option if scientists were ever to
> discover that a giant asteroid was on course to collide with Earth.
>
> In certain circumstances, nothing could be done to avoid such a
> collision and ensuing destruction, and it would be best not to tell
> the public anything, said Geoffrey Sommer, of the Rand Corporation in
> Santa Monica, California.
>

I'm with them. Give us that extra 5 minutes in bed, at least, if we're
all going to be suffocated, starved or burned to death anyway. Keep the
last-minute panicky raping and pillaging to a minimum.

YOU LAUGH! But if it hadn't been for that one Xist picnic in the late
Cretaceous, we'd be bespectacled dino-men with stubby tails typing this
sick humor out, and speculating about sudden catastrophic extinction
events, instead of brain-eating apes typing atop a blessed geopgraphic
layer of iridium, the magic asteroid-dust that encircles the entire
globe and keeps the billions of rampaging dinosaur ghosts trapped below
that geographical strata.

Just think, for all we know, in their very last half million years,
perhaps some velociraptor type dinosaurs became so fiendishly
intelligent that they were peering at the night sky through telescopes,
working out the causes of the Triassic extinction, and discussing
whether or not, IF they saw an asteroid heading straight at us with
malice, they should EVEN TELL the rest of the book-learning dinosaurs
they were all doomed.

>
> So far they have determined the orbits of about 60 per cent of these
> objects and none so far have a trajectory that threatens the world
> within the next couple of centuries, said David Morrison of Nasa's
> Ames laboratory in Moffat Field, California.
>
> "There are, however, many things out there that we know nothing
> about," he said.

"... UNLESS, THAT IS, WE'RE READERS OF "THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS,"
and "REVELATION X," FIRESIDE BOOKS, AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM," he added
excitedly.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
A subsidiary of:
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc. / P.O. Box 204206, Austin, TX 78720-4206
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com
For SubGenius Biz & Orders: call toll free to 1-888-669-2323
or email: jesus@subgenius.com
PRABOB

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahooX.com>

"Rev. Ivan Stang" wrote:
>
>
>
> Just think, for all we know, in their very last half million years,
> perhaps some velociraptor type dinosaurs became so fiendishly
> intelligent that they were peering at the night sky through telescopes,
> working out the causes of the Triassic extinction, and discussing
> whether or not, IF they saw an asteroid heading straight at us with
> malice, they should EVEN TELL the rest of the book-learning dinosaurs
> they were all doomed.
>

See my essay "When dinosaurs wore hats."

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