- There are two interesting questions facing the United
States Air Force at the moment: 1) Why is the world just now learning of a 1958
plan to blow up the moon as part of the arms race between the U.S. and the
Soviet Union and 2) Why the hell has this plan not been executed yet? The plan
has been concealed in plan sight for decades in a project titled "A Study
of Lunar Research Flights." The project’s nickname is "Project
A-119,” but that bland moniker doesn’t begin to do the idea justice. This
top-secret scheme probed the possibility of detonating a nuclear device on the
moon. At the time, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were locked in a nuclear arms race
that would last decades and drive the two superpowers to the verge of nuclear
war and the Soviets had just launched Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite.
It became clear that the U.S. was falling behind in the space race, so blowing up
the moon somehow became a viable option. "People were worried very much by
(first human in space Soviet cosmonaut Yuri) Gagarin and Sputnik and the very
great accomplishments of the Soviet Union in those days, and in comparison, the
United States was feared to be looking puny. So this was a concept to sort of
reassure people that the United States could maintain a mutually-assured deterrence,
and therefore avoid any huge conflagration on the Earth," said physicist
Leonard Reiffel, who led the project. "The motivation for such a
detonation is clearly threefold: scientific, military and political." In
the military’s mind, such a detonation could net vital information about the
viability of nuclear weapons for space warfare. Some military leaders of the
time viewed the moon as the proverbial high ground in the battle with the
Communists and if the war escalated, the U.S. could launch warheads from the
moon. According to Reiffel, the initial attack on the moon called for an
intercontinental ballistic missile to be launched from an undisclosed location,
travel some 240,000 miles to the moon, and detonate on impact. Some reports
have suggested that the atomic bomb in question would have been the same size
as "Little Boy," the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, near
the end of World War II. Interestingly enough, a young graduate student named
Carl Sagan and after being part of a project that did not attempt to annihilate
the moon, Sagan went on to become one of the world's most renowned astronomers.
Amazingly enough, the Air Force has declined to comment on Project A-119………..
- Maybe explaining why the Detroit Lions are a disappointing
4-7 team this season isn’t that difficult. When defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh
isn’t blasting opposing quarterbacks in the groin, receiver Titus Young is
apparently working as hard as he can to sabotage his squad’s efforts to win
games. Young was curiously deactivated for the same Thanksgiving Day game against
the Houston Texans in which Suh kicked Texans quarterback Matt Schaub in the
junk and the team wasn’t exactly eager to discuss why their young receiver did
not play. He was allowed back on the practice field Wednesday as a second-team
receiver and as he got back out on the field, rumors swirled that he was banned
by the team for intentionally lining up in the wrong place on the field
“multiple times” during the Lions’ Week 11 loss to Green Bay. Oh, and he also
(allegedly) talked back to receivers coach Shawn Jefferson before being benched
for the final possession. Why would a player intentionally jerk with his team’s
chances to win by lining up in the wrong spot on the field? Predictably, Young
was apparently upset because he was not being targeted enough by quarterback
Matthew Stafford in the Lions’ passing game. Rather than keep grinding, run
better routes and block for teammates who did have the ball, Young elected to
go into disruptor mode. His actions are hardly surprising, given that a year
ago he was disciplined by the team for waiting until teammate Louis Delmas took
his helmet off after practice and then punching Delmas in the head because the
two of them were scrapping during a practice. Asked about Young’s absence on
Thanksgiving, star receiver Calvin Johnson was effusive in his praise of rookie
Ryan Broyles and the newly acquired Mike Thomas in the lineup. “It was nice to
see some new playmakers in there making plays,” Johnson said. “We are going to
keep progressing with these new guys in our receiver group.” Even with Young
practicing again, there is no guarantee that he will have any significant role
in the offense going forward……….
- In the United States, kooks who “see” the Almighty in random
places like a grease stain on the floor or a piece of toast on their plate at a
diner are mocked incessantly and rightfully so. In India, questioning whether a
supposed miracle from above is legit gets a person run out of their country. That
fate has befallen renowned Indian rationalist
Sanal Edamaruku, who has reportedly been forced to flee his country after being
charged with blasphemy for denying a supposed Jesus miracle. Edamaruku visited
Our Lady of Velankanni in Mumbai, where a statue of Jesus Christ had been
leaking water, and rather than be overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment, he
informed an excited worshipper that the condensation was coming merely coming
from a leaky pipe in a wall behind the statute. It was a plausible and logical explanation
and to the unbiased observer, there was no reason to doubt what Edamaruku was
selling. For the miracle-believing masses, however, saying that a crying Jesus
statue wasn’t actually crying was an act of blasphemy, a charge that carries a
three-year prison term upon conviction. Rather than stay and fight the
irrational kooks looking to tar and feather him, Edamaruku fled to Finland.
Before leaving, he was receiving death threats and staring down the specter of
impending criminal charges. Now that he is safely in another country, Edamaruku
is calling for European governments to press Indian officials to drop the case.
"There is a huge contradiction in the content of the Indian constitution
which guarantees freedom of speech and the blasphemy law from 1860 under then
colonial rule," Edamaruku said. In response, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, the
Catholic archbishop of Mumbai, has reportedly told Edamaruku that the charges
will be dropped if he publicly apologizes. Knowing he has done nothing wrong, Edamaruku
rejected that offer………..
- The porn industry is getting lazy. Spoofing the names of
popular movies and TV shows like “Saving Private Ryan” or “Dawson’s Creek” has
been the standard M.O. for porn movies for years and typically, the names are
humorously bad and just different enough to avoid directly ripping off the
original. If any one movie in the past year has lent itself to porn spoofs more
than any other, it has to be “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the movie adaptation of
E.L. James’ steamy novel. There are at least 100 different porn title puns
ready and waiting to be used and had the producers of "Fifty Shades of Grey: A
XXX Adaptation" could have avoided legal troubles had they used any of
those 100 options. Instead, they lazily gathered a bunch of soul-less strangers
to lie down on filthy mattresses and have sex while being filmed and named
their porn version of the concept after the original and the book of the same
name. Oddly enough, Universal Studios along with Fifty Shades Ltd., is suing
multiple porn companies for blatantly ripping off their project and claiming
that these skin-flick versions are simply cheap knockoffs of the original. A
clear parody would be protected under the First Amendment, but according to the
just-filed lawsuit, "The first XXX adaptation ... does not comment on,
criticize, or ridicule the originals. It is a rip-off, plain and simple."
That is a heavy accusation, but one that shouldn’t be difficult to prove if in
fact the pornos lift "exact dialogue, characters, events, story, and style.”
One interesting question relating to the lawsuit is who on the Universal side
of this battle was tasked with sitting down and watching the (alleged) porn
knockoffs and cataloguing all of the parts that were ripping off the original
movie. Not only does Universal want to kill the "Fifty Shades of Grey: A
XXX Adaptation" movie, but it also wants to stop two planned “sequels”
before they are released………
- This week’s Debbie Downer global warming news is brought
to you by a new study released Thursday by the European Union, NASA, the National
Science Foundation and research councils in Britain and the Netherlands. According
to this new research, the mile-thick ice sheets that cover Greenland and most
of Antarctica are melting at a faster rate in a warming world. Thanks to an
international network of scientists supported by the aforementioned entities,
the world now knows that the net loss of billions of tons of ice a year added
about 11 millimeters -- seven-sixteenths of an inch -- to global average sea
levels between 1992 and 2011. That represents about 20 percent of the increase
during that time and while that's a small number, one of the researchers who
carried out the study cautioned the world not to sleep on the results. "Small
changes in sea levels in certain places mean very big changes in the kind of
protection of infrastructure that you need to have in place," said Erik
Ivins, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and one
of the contributors to the study. Scientists largely agree that long-term
climate change fueled by a buildup of atmospheric carbon emissions exists even
if the idea has many detractors. There have been many studies examining how
much the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contributed to the current 3
millimeter-per-year rise in sea levels, but this effort attempted to provide
clarity on the subject. A team of 47 scientists compared readings from various
satellite-based methods, including radar and laser readings and measurements of
the minute gravitational changes around the ice sheets. Their research showed that
Greenland and two of the three ice sheets that cover Antarctica have lost an
estimated 237 billion metric tons, give or take a few billion, in the past 19
years. A relatively slight growth of t he ice sheet that covers eastern
Antarctica (14 billion tons) was not nearly enough to offset the losses from
the layer that covers the western portion of the continent and the Antarctic
Peninsula. Those worried that the apocalypse may not happen on Dec. 21 and
therefore that they will be stuck in a melting world need not worry. According
to projections based on this study, it would take between 3,000 and 7,000 years
for those regions to become ice-free. In the mean time, enjoy the free heat……….
