av8rmike

I meant to post something about this earlier, but it escaped me until I saw it last night on The Daily Show. The world is officially two minutes closer to Doomsday, so say the good people at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:

[The] deteriorating state of global affairs leads the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--in consultation with a Board of Sponsors that includes 18 Nobel laureates--to move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” from seven to five minutes to midnight.

It's not really a measure of anything, of course, just a barometer created as a kind of gimmick by an obscure (at the time) publication for scientists to raise awareness of global issues. Now that they've decided to take climate changes into consideration, it's become slightly more relevant than if they focused solely on a U.S./Soviet Union nuclear war. What surprises me is the time lag in the scientists' response to world events. I'd have thought they'd have changed the hands after Sept. 11, or the start of the war in Iraq, or even the Israel/Lebanon conflict. The last time the clock hands were changed was in 2002, after the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. I guess the scientists take the time to see how events will play out, rather than being seen as worry-worts.

So what happens at midnight? This column in the Chicago Sun-Times sheds some light, by way of a Case Western physics professor: "The whole purpose of the clock is to stop us from ever getting to midnight. If there's Armageddon, then the clock doesn't matter."

Finally, I couldn't pass up passing along this little gem from the same column:
Barack Obama has formed a committee to test the presidential waters and see if they are safe for him to walk on.