Thursday, April 12, 2007

Spreading cheer and happiness


This is one of those times when my mom would say in a suprised voice, "You've never heard of the Doomsday Clock???". Sorry Susan, I have not. Oh sure I spend a lot of time reading PerezHilton and DListed instead of noteworthy publications. However, in my defense, the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 by a bunch of Atomic Scientists. And my mom was a kid during the Duck-and-Cover Bay of Pigs era. Anyway...

We are swiftly approaching our doom, peops. The clock is currently at 5 minutes to midnight. The number of minutes before midnight, a measure of the degree of nuclear, environmental, and technological threats, is updated periodically. The clock is currently set to five minutes to midnight, having been advanced by two minutes on January 17, 2007. Yeehaw! Other times humanity was flirting with certain peril:

1949 -Soviet Union tests it's first A-bomb. Clock was at 3 minutes to midnight.

1981 - Arms race escalates, conflicts in Afghanistan, South Africa, and Poland.
Clock was at four minutes to midnight.

More interesting nuggets. Linkin Park's third studio album is named "Minutes to Midnight", a reference to the Doomsday Clock, although Mike Shinoda said it is not a completely literal title. Also, The eighth episode of the series Heroes is titled "Seven Minutes to Midnight", which was the time on the clock at the release of the episode. Also, the villain Sylar wears a watch that stopped at seven minutes to midnight. The series was filmed and began to air prior to the 2007 adjustment of the Doomsday clock, which until then did indeed read seven minutes to midnight (Wiki).

"The fate of the planet is in the hands of a bunch of retards I wouldn't trust with a potato gun." (General Kimsey, Armageddon, 1998)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I was not aware of this clock either. We should incorporate the color-coded terror threat scale into a new and improved doomsday clock! How cheerful and colorful that would be. I mean hell, if we are going down, it might as well be in style, dammit!

Anonymous said...

the above was posted by me (ashli)