Extinction Level Event is Headed Your Way: An Asteroid Misses Earth, Hits our Moon
(Earth, Solar System, Local Super Cluster)  March 2009
Do you remember the thrill of finding out in 1981 that a huge piece of iron and granite located between Mars and Jupiter went astray, blasted into our planet, and turned all the dinosaurs into Exxon oil? What a momentous event in our terrestrial and corporate history. However, the KT Boundary was only fun for a while, when it solved the mystery of mass extinction of fossil fuel reptiles. Then scientists dropped the next fact: That millions of these rocks are circling the Sun (nearest star) and crossing the earth's path (planet you are on right now)and could, or rather, would hit again. Damn, now we get turned into oil, ironic.

Ironic, that it's made of iron, too. I have tracked many near earth objects, and STOP THE PRESSES: you heard it here first, at TWSE, that the impact to earth by these asteroids is NOT the greatest, nor most likely Extinction Level Event. Objects the size of Manhattan can be wittled down to a baseball when entering our atmosphere, no real threat there except a wishing star that doesn't come true. The real threat is that a collision of a rock far, far smaller bashing into our Moon is not only equally likely, but occurs at a greatly higher rate of probability.  So what, you say, who cares if it smashes into the Moon and creates an impact the size of the Tyco crater? At least it missed us.  

Or did it? The earth, with the size of the Moon orbiting it would be considered a binary planet system if observed by an objective observer. The Moon, take the example of the high ocean tide, controls, regulates, and restricts the wobble of the earth's north to south axis to a limit of 2 to 3 degrees. To put that in comparison, Mars, which has some puny potato shaped moons wobbles up to 17 degrees on its axis, causing wild, wild catastrophic seasonal changes on the Red Planet. The moons there cannot keep Mars controlled enough to have predictable and manageable climate seasons. 

So a rock smashes the Moon and throws it off even slightly and now the Gulf of Mexico and the Hudson Bay become interchangeable with the coming of winter, or spring, or whatever season the crazy axis wobble season it wants it to be. Because the Moon has no atmosphere to burn down large rocks, near earth objects of far, far less magnitude that hit the Moon will not be wittled down and are of a size much smaller than THE ONES WE ARE LOOKING out for right now. Thus, the odds for an Extinction Level Event-  a massive destruction of earth climate - goes through the roof when SMALLER rocks hitting the Moon (that we can't see) are added into the formula. Hope that eased your mind.
-- M.Moops, TWSEN Eastern Bureau Chief

SeaWorld Orca: Third Homicide, No End in Sight - Whale is Still Hungry, Irritated
(Orlando, FL) February 2010
Where does public safety start and profits end?  This whale has already killed three people. One was a tourist who fell into the tank and two were highly skilled trainers, so this animal knows no distinction. SeaWorld was aware that when they bought this animal from a Canadian aquarium that it had already taken one human life. Was it priced to move? What dropped their guard?

Letting this happen over and over again has no reasonable explanation except as the by-product of corporate greed and deserves to be questioned - as everyone knows that in Florida if a far less valuable animal had did that once, much less three times, wait a minute, even if a human being did that one time - they would have been put to death by state law.   

SeaWorld can keep mixing people with killer whales for entertainment and profit and the state of Florida will turn a blind eye to these dangers because there are two rules that we play by in America, the ones that govern regular people and the ones that govern, or fail to govern, huge bankrolled corporations whose high-priced lawyers allow them to get away with anything.

If this had been a case of a small town Florida alligator farm for example, where reptile handlers wrestle with these beasts for the amusement of tourists, the operation would have been shut down a long, long time ago after the first death of a handler or visitor and the alligator that killed that person would also have been put down too. But small town alligator farms don't draw tens of millions of dollars in tourist revenue to the state of Florida or more importantly make big contributions to the state politicians. Sadly though, SeaWorld does, and it allows them to get away frankly, with murder.

The real tragedy goes far beyond the death of this trainer, who has died senselessly, the true tragedy is that no one has ever challenged SeaWorld's laissez faire safety polices or ever questioned the regulators in Florida responsible for the licensing of dangerous animals. So what is it that they say down South? Oh yeah, That's one big fish to fry. (We know it's a mammal, please don't email us..)
--BW Schulz, Editor in Chief

Let's Change Our Model for Traffic Commuting: It Could Save Millions of Gallons of Gasoline Every Day in America
(Santa Monica, CA, USA) January 2010
Last Friday I had the unfortunate obligation to have to use I-10 during rush hour, which people have said for years is no rush, that it is actually stop hour because you are stuck in your car for an hour and definitely more if there is something out of your control like a traffic accident that happens ahead of your travel that hasn't been cleared yet.

While I was sitting at a complete stop, as everyone else was, I observed the usual sight of drivers who were shaving, reading, putting on make-up, eating, and talking on their phones. Normally all these activities would be very hazardous on the freeway, but that is, if we were actually moving. Its when an idea came to mind; one that could save the United States millions of gallons of gasoline everyday that get burned up by idling cars stuck in these absurd daily commuter jams. 

The question was, why are all these people trying to get to work at the same time? What is so magical about the ubiquitous 8 AM start time for everyone? Do we need the light of the nearest star so that we can bring in the cows and gather up the wheat?

Like the FAA fanning out take-offs out of Newark, or President Bush's proposal to make some travel flight times more expensive than others (for example, old people have all day to travel and run errands, if you are retired, don't shop during 1st or 2nd shift please.) we can do the same thing with millions of workers everyday, too. Many employers, I know, could examine their business models and adapt the work day to stagger the times that people have to punch in and start working. If you polled the staff, you would find people who would want to start at 6 or 7 AM, and you would also find a lot of people who would like to start at 9 or 10 AM. For the commuters where an exact 8 AM start time remains necessary, at least there would be less drivers to contend with.

We know supervisors everywhere are balking at the idea of all their worker bees not being in the hive at the same time. Some even threaten firings for being a few minutes late too many times. Late for what? Late for getting my coffee? I can't control LA traffic. I know from observation that much of our work days is fake working. People looking busy at doing nothing, gossiping, browsing our on-line newspaper, talking on the phone, and all sorts of other fun things.

No one admits it, but we all know it is true.  How many of you bought some or all of your holiday gifts on-line from work for example? Like Peter in the film Office Space says, "In any given week, I probably only do 15 minutes of actual work." Mike Judge was exaggerating and joking, but there is some truth to it. The urgency is simply not there to have fifty million people hit the road at the same time every morning.

There could also be a great benefit to the economy as goods and services would be more available in our new staggered hours work-world. Wouldn't it be nice to have some people at your insurance office until 8 PM? How about if your plumber could arrive at 7 AM, a full 3 hours before your shift begins? No more missed work days calling in fake-sick waiting all day at home for a contractor to arrive. No more frantic lunch hours trying to jam all your errands in while businesses are still open.

This could lead to not just massive savings in petroleum usage, it would cut down on automobile exhaust from idling, non-moving cars, allow early risers or people who need to pick up kids at school to leave work sooner, and it would allow workers who are highly productive, but hate getting up in the morning from being fired for punching in one minute late, this sweatshop-like policy necessitating higher costs for the company by having to rehire and retrain another worker. We could save ourselves a lot of wasted gasoline and perhaps raise the GDP in turn as people, with more flexible hours can get more things done without missing work by calling in sick to get something done that has to be done during the strict business hours we are subjecting ourselves to right now.

--BW Schulz, Editor in Chief