Garcia Media Life

Wishing all humans a happy and cautious New Year

This is a re-post from exactly a year ago today and not much has changed about how we “celebrate” at this time of the Earth calendar.

There are a lot of traditions associated with the advent of a New Year. A curious alien from another planet would likely pose questions like these about the things we do this time of year.

Alien: Why do you Earthlings “celebrate” a New Year? The odds are that any coming period of time will offer as many bad things as good things. Why is there so much laughter and gaiety when common sense tells you any given coming year may be just as filled with disaster as with happiness?

Human: Well, we choose to look at things optimistically. A new year is a new page, a new start and so we celebrate a new age of possibilities. And we also wish that people will have a good year which is why we say “Happy New Year” to one another.

Alien: Would it not be more appropriate to wish people a “Happy and Cautious New Year?”

Human: Well, I suppose so, but that’s kind of negative and rather wordy.

Alien: It is only two more words. Why do you humans make promises you can’t keep?

Human: You mean New Year’s Resolutions?

Alien: Yes. Why does your species always resolve to make dramatic new changes in your existence at this time in the Earth calendar?

Human: It’s part of that whole “new page” thing- a clean slate; a chance to start over.

Alien: But it is extremely futile. Everyone knows that by the start of the second Earth calendar month, these promises are forgotten. Why would humans think they can change years and years of patterns of behaviors just because there is a new ending number on one of your Earth years?

Human: It’s a retrospective thing. We pause for a moment to assess the things we do in life and think of ways to improve ourselves. That’s not so bad, is it?

Alien: It is not that it is bad. It is silly. Why do you not make new resolutions every three months instead of every twelve months? Why do you not make resolutions in July and September?

Human: You know what? Your questions are getting a little annoying.

Alien: I am sorry. I have more. Why do you humans ingest large amounts of fermented beverages at this time of year? Beverages that will make you act in ways you will later regret?

Human: You mean champagne? Well, that’s just tradition. People like to get a little trashed this time of year- it’s an innocent thing.

Alien: It is rather illogical. Fermented beverages make humans feel sick. Why would a human who is about to resolve to change their lives for the better in the year ahead, start out that same year by poisoning themselves?

Human: Hey, I was kidding about getting “trashed.” Not everyone drinks to excess.

Alien: I am not sure that is accurate. I saw many human beings vomiting last night. I see many more today on the first day of the New Year; taking pills to make the ill effects of the fermented beverages go away.

Human: It’s what we do, ok?

Alien: And why do mostly the males of your species spend the entire first day of the New Year watching gladiator games?

Human: You mean college football bowl games?

Alien: Yes. And why do they call them “bowl” games? Is it because of all the times humans spend on that first day running from their TV screens to the toilet bowl?

Human: You know… hangovers get better as the day progresses. It’s really only in the mornings that you feel like crap. Besides, the games are played in “bowls,” or “stadiums,” hence, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl.

Alien: Why is there a Tostitos Bowl? Why is there an Outback Bowl? These are names for products not games.

Human: You know what? You think too much and ask too many questions. This little interview is about over, buddy.

Alien: Very well. I wish that you take advantage of the good things that will happen in the coming year, and that you will survive all the bad things.

Human: How sweet of you.

Alien: Why do you say that? There is no sugar or glucose in my DNA.

Human: I was being sarcastic.

Alien: Perhaps that is one of the things you should resolve to change in the year ahead.

Tucked away in the 1,200-page bill that keeps the government funded through the rest of the fiscal year is a teeny, tiny, little provision that denies the Obama administration any of the money that would be necessary for it to enforce new energy efficiency standards that would pretty much eradicate the incandescent light bulb.

Yes, that’s right…for the time being anyway…the old light bulb continues to live on!

For some reason, this has been a huge priority for congressional Republicans- presumably because of the symbolism of it all; playing on the resentment of Americans being forced to use those weird, foreign-looking, squiggly light bulbs by squinty-eyed, bespectacled, nerdy, little, carbon foot-print-measuring, bureaucratic, government weasel-heads.

I’m going with the GOP on this one. You can only judge these things, I think, based on your own experiences. And my one experience with the new fangled light bulbs was not a pretty one. Saw it in the drug store one day and thought, “Oh what the hell, let’s see if these things do as advertised.” So I brought it home, took out my incandescent bulb in my bedroom lamp and screwed in the new one.

The packaging says, “lasts five years!” What a deal, I thought. Yeah, they’re a little expensive but totally worth it for five years, right? Ten minutes after I put that new bulb into the lamp, it popped and died. I was totally outraged. There is a huge difference in my book between five years and ten minutes. Huge. I fished the old incandescent bulb out of the trash can and happily screwed it back in again.

With visible disdain (visible at the time only by my cats), I tossed the failed new fangled bulb into the trash. I felt duped. Violated, even.

Look, I’m as environmentally conscious as the next guy—no—more so. I don’t even own a car. I have the tiniest little carbon footprint of anyone I know. I love the earth and the trees and the grasses and all of God’s creatures. I would even be in favor of the eradication of the incandescent light bulb if it would buy our lovely planet just one more day. But the thing you’re replacing it with- HAS TO WORK.

Otherwise- back off, Mr. Government Bureaucrat Guy. Don’t make me buy a 1960 diesel pick-up truck without a catalytic converter- ‘cause I will mess the earth up. Big time.

There’s a lot of debate this day after the storm about whether the media and governments went overboard on Irene…as if we didn’t have a hurricane the size of Europe bearing down on 60 million inhabitants of the eastern seaboard.

Forecasters

Weather science has come a long way and no one can argue that the tracking of Irene was anything but amazingly precise. What the advance forecasts misjudged was the wind intensity of the storm. Some 72-96 hours ahead of the turn toward the U.S. mainland, forecasters thought they might have a category-4 storm on their hands. In reality, though still at hurricane strength when making landfall in New Jersey, Irene was “only” a category-1 and down to a strong tropical storm by the time it hit Coney Island in New York City.

Meteorologists fully understand that they overestimated the wind speed forecasts and will surely be reworking their models for future hurricanes. From the layman’s eye, what appears to be missing in the analysis is the effect on storms once they start getting broken up as they pass over land. That’s a tricky thing to try to project when a hurricane is hugging a coast-line and as this one, actually had three different landfalls; North Carolina, New Jersey and New York. It’s almost as if the wind-speed analysis of Irene’s potential discounted the energy it would lose as it made its way up the coast through the combination of cooler ocean waters and the land masses it went over.

Government Response

New Jersey Governor Chris Cristie and the folks at the National Hurricane Center are certain that the overwhelming and, in some ways, unprecedented government response to Irene- saved lives. Little solace to the 24 37 people whose families are attending funerals today but only God knows what the total death toll might have been had there not been mandatory evacuations, transit system shutdowns and dire warnings from Presidents, Governors and Mayors.

The Media

Yes, the Weather Channel, Accu-Weather, and local and national media brought out all the bells and whistles, super-duper graphics packages, doubled-up staffs and dramatic language through the course of coverage. Of course there was some hype. For people in the weather and news businesses this was the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Academy awards rolled into one.

People like Daily Beast Washington Bureau Chief, Howard Kurtz, got all bent out of shape over the marketing and the splash. Kurtz was angered by the earthquake media coverage too. Surely by now, though, we’ve grown to accept that news coverage in the 24-hour, web and cable-driven news business is filled with hype and spin and marketing. Hopefully, we’re adult enough to take some of this with a grain of salt.

But you know what? A friggin’ 5.8 earthquake that rattles nerves from Georgia to Maine is a big deal and 3,000 people didn’t have to die to make it a newsworthy event in a part of the country where quakes are rare. A gigantic hurricane aimed at the most populous region of the nation is as newsworthy as newsworthy gets. Decry the surrounding hype and the breathless reporting as much as you want- it doesn’t change the fact that both these events really were big, major news.

The Politics

I don’t understand the meme that’s been building in the right-wing world as exemplified by the Drudge Report which is usually the trend leader in conservative talking points. Drudge has spent the better part of the last 3 days complaining about the hype over Irene, downplaying its seriousness and went as far as to link to a web site that questioned the integrity of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration while claiming Irene was not really a hurricane and was making landfall with 33 mph winds, data that was disingenuously cherry-picked to the level of absurdity and demonstrably false.

But what motivates this cynicism? I suspect it comes down to the role of government. Disasters are one of those areas in which governments play key roles and exercise tremendous power. The bigger the disaster, the more people depend on government to warn them, take care of them and then fix whatever is broken in the aftermath. Downplaying the size of a coming disaster deemphasizes the role of government and opens the possibilities of claiming government overreaction and intrusion into our lives.

Grateful for the Overreaction

In the end, if Irene wasn’t all she was hyped to be, she still caused enormous damage and inconvenience, and in some cases, death. If all the media hype and governmental seriousness that was attached to Irene helped keep people alive- then good. I’ll take the hype and make fun of it when it’s silly. The worst of it for me was that I now have 48 containers of bottled water and a half-dozen cans of tuna fish I would not otherwise have purchased.

And God help us when the time comes that the media and government under-hype a potential disaster. That’s called getting caught off-guard and usually results in catastrophe. We should be grateful to have avoided that this week whether it was the ground trembling beneath our feet or less-then-expected winds rattling our windows.

A guy named Steven Goddard has posted today that Irene has nothing more than 33 mph winds and that NOAA’s hurricane warnings are phony. I read it just now on the famous Drudge Report.

I can’t find Goddard’s credentials but a Google search does find that he’s been waging war against climate change theory for years now, which is neither here nor there. He’s currently denying actual data from weather stations in North Carolina.

Joe Bastardi, Accuweather’s former chief long-range forecaster and well-known for his views that climate change is not a man-made phenomena and has nothing to do with hurricane development has posted this on Goddard’s site in response:

There are winds gusting to near 120 mph. The storm may destroy every boardwalk up the coast. Please, you are doing a disservice to our side of the debate by downplaying this. ITS A 951 MB LAND FALL… 6th strongest on record in NC.
This is not a fight you should be fighting with these people. Lets not resort to the tactics they have ( warmingistas) by twisting examples. The exposure of some of the ob sites is leading to some of the reports, but other areas are getting hammered in the way this should 951 mb is similar to the pressure of IKE which was ridiculed before hand cause it was downgraded to 2.

I beg of you guys. Make fun of me after if this is not a 5-10 billion dollar storm , but wait till the game is over because we are setting ourselves up for problems if we find the boardwalks destroyed and people without power for a week like I think.

LETS FIGHT THEM WITH TRUTH on the facts .. Hurricanes are not caused by global warming, but lets fight them on the merits of the issue, not with examples, whether I am right on how this turns out or not!

Goddard’s site, “Real Science,” is claiming that because Irene has been downgraded to a Category 1 storm and wind levels are lower than may have been anticipated, the hysteria is phony.

Here are the facts: Most hurricane or tropical storm deaths are not caused by winds—they’re caused by storm surge; water piling up, driven by tides and currents and supplemented by extreme downpours. And even though Irene’s wind speeds are down due to how the storm has broken up over land, it still has the potential to spawn tornadoes.

And even if Goddard is correct that maximum winds will be at 33 mph when the storm hits New York City, having lived on the 18th floor of a Manhattan high-rise for several years, I can tell you from first-hand experience, that wind speeds of 30 mph at ground level, can be twice that 15 stories up and well over 90mph above 30 stories.

This strikes me as not the time to let political or scientific viewpoints on the veracity of climate change theory influence actual information people need to decide whether they’re going to evacuate or not.

Regardless of her wind speeds, Irene is a massive storm, nearly the size of Europe and the storm surge and the threat of tornadoes alone should be enough to convince people to be safe and prudent in protecting their own lives and those of their families.

Yes, we streamed out of office buildings. We had some traffic jams. People pretty much freaked out because we’re not supposed to feel what we did today. It feels like everything is kind of shaky these days.

We barely survived the debt default scare, the financial downgrade and Wall Street’s convulsions. And now there’s a hurricane coming. So I was not the least surprised to feel the earthquake. If I am carried off by a swarm of locusts in the morning, I will simply accept this as the new normal.

It’s kind of interesting if you think about it. I mean how many generations of earthlings have passed before us- but we are the ones that get to see the end! Imagine being the first generation to not be able to tell our grand kids about all we went through- because we’ll be gone! So we just need to relax and watch this all unfold.

And we East Coast people are not complete, total wimps! Geologists say the rocks we sit on here in the East are kind of cold, dead things that allow the energy from an earthquake to spread really far without being dissipated. Here’s a Geologist who talked to the Washington Post. His name is Graham Kent. Dr. Graham Kent:

Even though it’s a 5.9, it’s a lot bigger deal than a 5.9 would be in California or Nevada. You might see damage further away from the epicenter than you might expect.

So there- you West Coast people who were laughing at us today. And you New England types who mock us, particularly in the Washington area, for closing schools when there’s an inch of snow—well, well….I guess you got us there.

Anyway…we are survivors here in ‘ol DC. We’re used to being hated for gridlock and taxes. Our highways rival LA and NY’s for their endless congestion. We don’t have a single escalator that works in our subway system. We have Augusts that compare to any horrible month anywhere in the world with miserable heat and humidity that will buckle your knees. We panic, have 9-hour traffic jams and crash into each other in winter storms. We haven’t had a sports team win a championship in nearly 20 years. What’s a little earthquake?

I laugh at earthquakes. The locusts, however, are going to be a little disturbing.

Amidst the uncertainty and potential of a nuclear catastrophe the world has never seen on such a scale, there are selfless heroes working at great personal risk at this hour to contain the specter of unspeakable disaster. Someday the story will emerge of the heroic fight that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

It is a horrendous irony that the only people to have suffered the brunt of a nuclear attack during World War II, should be the ones having to cope with the nuclear dangers that have been unleashed in the wake of Friday’s 9.0 earthquake. And among the brave and suffering Japanese people right now are an estimated 50 safety workers toiling at great personal risk to contain and prevent a nuclear meltdown at Fukushima reactor #2.

The story is changing by the hour but what Monday night looked like the sure unfolding of a calamity has now stabilized somewhat as spiking radiation levels near the plant have come down considerably. These Japanese safety workers look for all the world like the first responders of 9/11. They are almost certainly sacrificing their lives, through either further explosions (and there have already been three at the plant including one at reactor #2) or acute radiation poisoning.

Their continued presence offers hope. The implications, if they should have to leave, are bleak. From the New York Times:

If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since Chernobyl.

Tokyo, with a population near 13 million, and one of the largest cities on the planet Earth, is just 170 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Though radiation readings there have recently abated, the city government reported Monday that they had occasionally exceeded normal levels by 20 times.

For the Japanese people, many lives are depending on the success of those 50 brave souls working at great peril for the greater good at the Fukushima plant. Besides them, only the fickle direction of the wind may determine who eventually gets sick, who dies and who lives.

Wishing all humans a happy and cautious New Year

There are a lot of traditions associated with the advent of a New Year. A curious alien from another planet would likely pose questions like these about the things we do this time of year.

Alien: Why do you Earthlings “celebrate” a New Year? The odds are that any coming period of time will offer as many bad things as good things. Why is there so much laughter and gaiety when common sense tells you any given coming year may be just as filled with disaster as with happiness?

Human: Well, we choose to look at things optimistically. A new year is a new page, a new start and so we celebrate a new age of possibilities. And we also wish that people will have a good year which is why we say “Happy New Year” to one another.

Alien: Would it not be more appropriate to wish people a “Happy and Cautious New Year?”

Human: Well, I suppose so, but that’s kind of negative and rather wordy.

Alien: It is only two more words. Why do you humans make promises you can’t keep?

Human: You mean New Year’s Resolutions?

Alien: Yes. Why does your species always resolve to make dramatic new changes in your existence at this time in the Earth calendar?

Human: It’s part of that whole “new page” thing- a clean slate; a chance to start over.

Alien: But it is extremely futile. Everyone knows that by the start of the second Earth calendar month, these promises are forgotten. Why would humans think they can change years and years of patterns of behaviors just because there is a new ending number on one of your Earth years?

Human: It’s a retrospective thing. We pause for a moment to assess the things we do in life and think of ways to improve ourselves. That’s not so bad, is it?

Alien: It is not that it is bad. It is silly. Why do you not make new resolutions every three months instead of every twelve months? Why do you not make resolutions in July and September?

Human: You know what? Your questions are getting a little annoying.

Alien: I am sorry. I have more. Why do you humans ingest large amounts of fermented beverages at this time of year? Beverages that will make you act in ways you will later regret?

Human: You mean champagne? Well, that’s just tradition. People like to get a little trashed this time of year- it’s an innocent thing.

Alien: It is rather illogical. Fermented beverages make humans feel sick. Why would a human who is about to resolve to change their lives for the better in the year ahead, start out that same year by poisoning themselves?

Human: Hey, I was kidding about getting “trashed.” Not everyone drinks to excess.

Alien: I am not sure that is accurate. I saw many human beings vomiting last night. I see many more today on the first day of the New Year; taking pills to make the ill effects of the fermented beverages go away.

Human: It’s what we do, ok?

Alien: And why do mostly the males of your species spend the entire first day of the New Year watching gladiator games?

Human: You mean college football bowl games?

Alien: Yes. And why do they call them “bowl” games? Is it because of all the times humans spend on that first day running from their TV screens to the toilet bowl?

Human: You know… hangovers get better as the day progresses. It’s really only in the mornings that you feel like crap. Besides, the games are played in “bowls,” or “stadiums,” hence, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl.

Alien: Why is there a Tostitos Bowl? Why is there an Outback Bowl? These are names for products not games.

Human: You know what? You think too much and ask too many questions. This little interview is about over, buddy.

Alien: Very well. I wish that you take advantage of the good things that will happen in the coming year, and that you will survive all the bad things.

Human: How sweet of you.

Alien: Why do you say that? There is no sugar or glucose in my DNA.

Human: I was being sarcastic.

Alien: Perhaps that is one of the things you should resolve to change in the year ahead.

Alberta in red- proposed fence in black

So, I was thinking. We’ve built thousands of miles of fences between us and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants who are not the problem they used to be because there are no more jobs in America. What we really need is a super-high fence between us and Canada to keep out the Arctic air masses.

You think I jest?

From the Modesto Bee newspaper just a few months ago:

The bad economy and stepped-up federal immigration audits have dramatically slowed the influx of illegal immigrants, experts say.

Demographers, government officials and business leaders say illegal immigrants not only are returning to their homelands in response to more intense government scrutiny, they’re also staying there.

And as word spreads that jobs are harder to come by in the United States because of the recession, others are deciding not to come in the first place, slowing an unprecedented flood of immigrants that’s lasted more than a decade.

Meanwhile…from Maine to Georgia, from Minnesota to Texas…we are all chilled to the bone, dressed in multiple layers as inhuman, frigid, arctic winds make a mockery of our sad attempts to keep warm. Water pipes are bursting, people are bitching, the bitter cold is killing strawberries in Florida and taking down gigantic stadiums in Minneapolis.

We are 20 degrees below normal and this comes on the heels of one of the worst winters in history last year. The real peril, my friends, is from the north.

So how big does this American/Canadian fence need to be? Here are some simple, undisputed facts about earth’s atmosphere, from a brief article entitled How High is the Atmosphere, by meteorologist, Jeff Haby:

5.5 kilometers- about half the atmosphere is below this height
9.0 kilometers- about 70% of the atmosphere is below this height
16.0 kilometers- about 90% of the atmosphere is below this height
36.0 kilometers- about 99% of the atmosphere is below this height
100.0 kilometers- atmosphere is so thin that it is virtually the vacuum of space
above 600 kilometers- atmosphere is so thin that it is considered outer space

It’s got to be higher than the jet stream, right? Jets actually use those tailwinds and they’re usually at 35,000 to 37,000 feet. For sure the American/Canadian fence needs to be higher than that which would be about 7 miles up.

Using my trusty kilometers-to-miles conversion chart, 16 kilometers translates to just short of ten miles…and as you can plainly see—90% of the atmosphere is below that height.

I don’t think we need to build the fence the entire length of the border with Canada. The frigid air is not coming from the extreme west. That’s where Vancouver is and that’s a fairly temperate zone with temperatures in the 50s most of the time. Not a lot of cold air comes down to us from the east either. That’s St. John’s and Halifax. If it stays this cold from now on we could get their icebergs, but not frigid air.

The culprit resides in the North Pole and generally comes down from the Canadian province of Alberta- hence the term Alberta Clipper. The way I see it, we should be ok if we start the fence at Idaho/Montana and continue east to Lake Superior. We don’t have to worry about the other Great Lakes because people in Michigan, Indiana, Upstate New York, etc., are already used to that Lake-effect snow stuff.

Needless to say, construction of a 10-mile high, 1000-mile long fence would create a shitload of jobs.

And it has to be retractable. If we don’t allow some cold Canadian air in, our summers will be more miserable than they already are.

The American/Canadian fence also has to be lowered for about a five-hour period around midnight, December 24th into the 25th. We wouldn’t want to have to scrape Rudolph off the giant structure. That would be both sad and difficult to explain to the children.

These are sad times for many people but many of them will, nevertheless, still give thanks on Thursday. Thanks for their families and friends and the food on the table. That’s something those of us who are fortunate should keep in mind.

Among millions of American families there are moms and dads who used to bring home a regular paycheck but only have a few weeks left of unemployment benefits coming in. They are thankful they’re a family and have an address. Some sit beneath a roof and are grateful they have something over their heads this Thanksgiving while banks and regulators figure out if they’re going to take away their home. They’re thankful to be dry and warm. There are soldiers and journalists missing limbs or otherwise terribly scarred by war. They are thankful for life itself.

Many of us have learned lessons from these hard times. Good lessons. Many of us are scaling back and downsizing and are learning to appreciate honest things more than material things. Hard times can bring people together. Helping hands are more common than you ever dare dream.

So for those of us who are privileged enough to sit around a table this Thanksgiving, it is a good thing to appreciate those things we have left. The things we have lost, I suspect, we will either gain back or will come to realize we didn’t need at all.

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This is my 200th column for Garciamedialife. I started this little blog about a year ago. Some 20,000 times over the past year, without any marketing besides Facebook and Twitter, people have taken the time to read the words I have written about our culture, media, politics, sports and just the plain silly things in life.

One time I went viral, picked up by two major web sites and it was kind of cool. And I’ve noticed that my indexing is getting better because this thing is actually showing up in search engines within the first couple of pages on some topics.

My theory about this little labor of love is that if you write it and it’s any damned good- they will come. I’m proudest of Ode to New York. It’s love prose to the grandest city of all. Somehow, someway, a dozen more people read it every single week, even though it was posted over a year ago. People- strangers- just keep finding it. Mostly they get it when querying a search engine for “New York” and its many iterations. It is by 4 times, the most widely read piece I’ve written (other than the one that went viral- LaBron Bores the Nation).

I apologize if I sound a little self-indulgent about all of this. It’s just that I’m grateful. I’m grateful that this stupid little blog born in the midst of my own bout with unemployment, helped me find my voice.

I’m grateful for your time and your interest and your outrage and your kindness. I think mostly, I want to find some truth in things. I sincerely thank you for being along for the journey.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Navy says it wasn’t them. NASA says it wasn’t them either. By all accounts, including actual video captured by a KCBS-TV News traffic helicopter, a fairly large missile shot up out of the water west of Los Angeles, north of Catalina Island and 35 miles out to sea right around 5pm, PST on Monday November 8^th.

Here’s the statement from NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command:

From: James, Desmond Lt(N) CAN NORAD USNORTHCOM HQs PA Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 12:57 PM
Subject: NORAD and USNORTHCOM statement – UPDATE

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED

The latest:

NORAD and USNORTHCOM are aware of the unexplained contrail reported off the coast of Southern California yesterday evening. At this time, we are unable to provide specific details, but we are working to determine the exact nature of this event. We can confirm that there is no threat to our nation, and from all indications this was not a launch by a foreign military. We will provide more information as it becomes available.

Former Deputy Defense Secretary, Robert Ellsworth was shown a video of the event and he said it definitely looked like a big-ass missile. Actually, I think he used the word, “large.”

He speculated, and underscores it’s just a guess, that with President Obama travelling in Asia, it may have been a show of military muscle, a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine.  Ellsworth suggested it may have been done “to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.”

Hello? Didn’t we send a man to the moon? Don’t we have enough nuclear weaponry to explode the earth about a hundred times over? We really send messages this way to other countries? Well, ok, that was Ellsworth’s self-admitted conjecture.

I’ll tell you what, though. If it wasn’t us, we damn well better figure out who has the resources and the firepower to launch an apparent intercontinental ballistic missile out of the ocean near the 2nd largest city in the United States.

We’ll keep you updated as we get more e-mails from NORAD.

—-

Note:  NBC News tonight is pretty emphatically reporting that it was not a missile but the contrail of an airplane, and likely a jumbo jet.  The appearance of an upward trajectory, says NBC, may have been an optical illusion.  NBC quotes military officials as saying they’re fairly certain it was not a missile and FAA officials who say no fast-moving objects were spotted on tapes of radar around that time of day.