Michael Rogers' Star Talk Weblog

Michael Rogers' Star Talk Weblog
Astronomy, technology, small business, politics

Thursday, August 08, 2002

News: Media hype creates inaccurate image of a child kidnapping "crisis" -- http://makeashorterlink.com/?E2F413871

Comment: This reminds me of the church burning "epidemic" of a couple years ago. After the hysteria died down, it turned out that there was no unusually-high number of churches being torched.

Of course, even one child being kidnapped is a tragedy, and it's important we do everything we can to keep our kids safe. But worrying all the time can hurt people too, and the media contributes to unnecessary anxiety with the focus on child kidnappings.

News: I need one of these for my daily commute -- an SUV with a revolving .50 caliber machine gun -- http://www.lsj.com/news/business/020808_warwagon_7c.html

Comment: It's all about respect, man. Just see how fast they get out of my way when I let a few rounds go flying by their bumpers.

I'm kidding, of course. It's sick, disgusting and anti-social to even suggest that I'd shoot a machine gun on the highway at innocent motorists. I don't really want a machine gun on my car.

What I want is a rocket launcher (heh heh heh).

The kids and I used to play the Car Wars board game ( www.sjgames.com/car-wars/ ). It was more fun designing our cars than actually playing the game.

News: I took Jane and Rick's kids out to Joe and Sarah's farm last night to see the night sky.

Comment: We saw lots of cool stuff, including several meteors and an Iridium satellite flare ( http://makeashorterlink.com/?R4CA13871). We also looked at several deep sky objects through my ETX-125, including the Lagoon Nebula, the Dumbbell Nebula and Albireo. We also looked at the large spiral galaxy M81. The kids were impressed that the galaxy is 77 million light years away.

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5:20:51 PM

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