How will the world end?

If we survive until January 20, 2009, we"ll be OK.

 

Have no idea how the world will end, but after what I went through in my newsroom tonight, I'll tell you this:

* The reporters will file two hours late (as usual, unless it's four hours).

* Some lame-ass manager will keep harping that we're not pushing copy fast enough (sorry, pal, but you cut the staff, two editors called in sick [I think they're hiding at home], and now we've got news-side editors trying to fill in, although their sports knowledge is negligible).

* The design managers will keep reminding us that we're not pushing copy hard enough, even though they keep changing the page designs and story layouts all night long.

* And we'll run lots of house ads because our new deadlines won't allow us to run late stories, such as the UCLA-Western Kentucky game story tonight.

If the world ends after 10 p.m., our readers will be fine. They won't hear about it until two days later. They might try to cancel their subscriptions at that point, but they can't -- the world is dead, so there's nobody to answer the phone in India.

But you can catch live updates on our free Web site.

We have blogs, too! Many of them!

 

Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

 

Well, I liked it just fine, but my husband just felt shot for some reason.

Sometimes that man talks like he needs another hole in his head.

 

See, that DOES sound exciting. What the hell happens when the sun burns out? My thought is that we've either figured out a way to prevent it from happening by that point or left Earth of our own accord to colonize other galaxies.

And no, I do not own Star Trek DVDs nor do I even watch sci-fi shows. I do, however, do a mean imitation of Professor Frink.

 

If the world ends and no one BLOGS about it, did it really happen? ... in the vein of the whole 'if a tree falls ...' riddle.

Regardless, I don't care how it ends. I'll probably sleep through it.

 

Heaven must have needed an everybody.

 

On Friday the 13th, no less.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

 

I'm thinking there won't be much of anything left in 4 billion years, but maybe that's just me. When it does go, the Sun's core will collapse under its own gravity while its atmosphere expands (it's not large enough to go supernova). The new Red Giant will gobble up Mercury and Venus ... Earth might be outside that range, but even if it is, all the water will be boiled away and the planet will be unable to sustain life. The Sun will shed its outer layers and leave only its core, which will cool and become a White Dwarf over the next few billion years.

If humanity is still hanging around by that point and hasn't figured out interstellar travel enough to find new digs, it deserves to be burnt to a crisp.

 

We've been compressing photo, sound and even movie files for years now.

Sooner or later something has to give and all those files are going to spring back to their normal size.

And we'll all be squished.

 

Blogs? We have blogs!