Wingin' It

Who cares about "the big game" when you can't enjoy your favorite sports related finger food.
WTOP, via the always amazing (and scary) planet money blog over at NPR, reported a few days ago about a shortage of BUFFALO WINGS this super bowl season.
"The reason is two-fold: Demand for wings typically goes up around the Super Bowl, and a major supplier of fresh chicken, Pilgrim's Pride, filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month." First millions lose their jobs and now they can't get wings. This sucks... and now I'm hungry. I think I have some wings nachos around here somewhere.

Good News Wednesday XXXIII: Never Love Again!!

The New York Times reported a few weeks ago that it may not be long before a "pharmaceutical love potion" (a real one, not ground tiger teeth or monkey balls) may soon be available. But the author, a Mr. John Tierney, makes an eye opening suggestion: Given the ability to manufacture a drug to make you fall in love with someone isn't it equally possible to make a drug that prevents you from doing something that stupid? Take that sun.

Who needs Prozac. Or Viagra. Or Prilosec. I'll take some of these please.

200 !!!

Well, we've made it to 200 posts. Which is about 100 times more than the average blog created over the last 10 years on the internet.

So what do we have for you in this 200th post? Not much.

* Although I guess there is some good news, of the no news is variety. There haven't been any new press releases out of CERN in the last 6 weeks. Maybe that Large Hadron Collider thing we talk about sometimes blew itself up but didn't take the rest of the earth with it.

* We have had a total of about 37 comments over the last 199 posts. And probably 15 of those were by me and another 15 by our one guest contributor.

* We have lost a total of 1 girlfriend and 1 friend due to the writing of this blog. Probably because it's pretty sardonic and disturbing to know someone that writes an (often, but not always) tongue-in-cheek blog about the end of the world. Or maybe because we're just pathetic.


Thanks for reading. We'll see you at 300.
-eign

[photo caption: "pull me and everything will be okay"]
[by eign staff photographer]

We're Sorry Russia, Please Don't Hurt Us

We're sorry Russia. Seriously.

Last week we talked about a Russian that is predicting the demise of the US in 2010. And we made a quick joke about Russia and how they have to stand in line for bread and that their country collapsed years ago.

Fast forward to this week, when we came across this story about Russia executing dissenters, including a human rights lawyer and a journalist.

Everyone keeps talking about how blogs are the new newspapers and bloggers are the new journalists, but I would like to remind our Russian readers that we are definitely not journalists and therefore do not need to have a bullet put in our heads. Seriously. Read anything on this site. We're the furthest thing from journalists.... and we hate lawyers.

Thank you.

We'll be back to regularly scheduled stories next week.

Polaroid Going, Going, Gone. Bionic Eyes. Wait! We Knew All This Already

First it was NPR, now it's the Washington Post. Two stories I came across in the last few days that the post is just catching up with that we talked about in November and December. I guess this whole blogging thing really is catching on.

The first, Polaroid film is going the way of the saber tooth tiger. (Hear that dodo? Nobody cares about you anymore). We ran the story on December 12th, the post ran the story this past Sunday.

Second, we ran a story about an artist in San Francisco trying to get a bionic eye back on November 25th. The post is running that story today.

Come on Post! Catch up! You can do it! (lets skip over the fact that we only had these stories because we got our information from cnn and the ny daily news and pretend we actually did something on our own)

Good News Wednesday XXXII: We Have A New President

Russian Predicts End Of US. We Predict Russia Already Ended

"For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously." (Wall Street Journal) This isn't some kook either, he's former KGB. Scratch that. He is a kook. Check out the map at the bottom of the link above. The Northeast US will become a part of the EU? The West a part of China? HA!

He should be one to talk though; didn't Russia basically "fail" 15 years ago? Those guys have way too much time to come up with crazy ideas while standing in line waiting to buy bread.

"Dr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision 'reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today,' says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. 'It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union.'" (WSJ) I wonder if that's because people like us make comments like the one above. Oh well. Happy Friday.

Good News Wednesday XXXI: Chew On This

Thanks to princess g. for writing in with (her) good news. She doesn't have any cavities. Sure that's great for her, but for those of us that don't have PG's good fortune with teeth, do not fret.

Soon you will be able to regrow them. Seriously.

This Is Not Good News Wednesday

Good News Wednesday is off today. There is no good news. Seriously. Go find some and send it to me. I'd love to hear something, anything, good.

Short updates:

*An Island in Australia removed all the feral cats. But now the rabbit population has exploded and destroyed much of the islands "fragile vegetation." (AP via yahoo)

*3.4 million! Americans say they have been stalked in their lifetime. (chicago tribune)

*Idiots can now "Botox" their eyelashes. Female readers of EIGN, please be aware. An informal survey of men I know shows that the men really don't care all that much about the length or thickness of your eye lashes, just that you have them. (nytimes)

*Now you can read EIGN on the plane. Who the fuck would want to read a blog about the end of the world on a plane? (chicago tribune)

Agnostics are Downgraded Atheists... Atheists Are Bloody Idiots

Atheists are advertising their heathen message by taking out ads on the sides of those crazy red buses in London.

Examples: “There’s probably no God, Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” or “Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings.” (via nytimes)

I love my sleep as much as the person, but that's what Monday through Saturday are for. Sunday is God time.

More terrifying than this blasphemy appearing on British buses is that they appear to be heading to the good ol' USofA...

Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus advertisements in Washington in November, with a more muted message. “Why believe in a god?” the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. “Just be good for goodness’ sake." (nytimes)

The moral fabric of the world is being torn apart at the seams, it seems. How can we stand for this? Where is the outrage?

The Collapse Begins

Looks like the shrinking of the world isn't just in our minds. The world really is getting smaller.

The upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere are much lower than expected, a US Air Force satellite has found.
Currently, the ionosphere - a layer of charged particles that envelopes the planet - is at an altitude of about 420km, some 200km lower than expected. (bbc)

So space is actually closer than everyone thought? Remember how a nova works kids: first things collapse inward and then explode outward.

Squirrel Cop`

Back in December we wrote about disappearing acorns in the NE part of the USA. Less acorns = less food for squirrels. Less food for squirrels = more squirrels starving to death...

So the New York Times, of all places, is offering up a slightly more humane way of ending their lives. Forget letting them starve. EAT THEM!

Plus, if you've recently lost your job (and a lot of people have) they have the added benefit of being cheap and plentiful--at least this year. Now that the liberal, elite, yuppie, hipster New York City trendsters know about this demand will go through the roof.

[thanks to eign reader/guest contributor jg3 for the link]

"Save Our Food. Save Our Bees. Act Now"

We've talked a lot about bees since the beginning of EIGN, including a few posts on Colony Collapse Disorder. Which is one reason it was exciting to come across this flier tacked to a bulletin board.

The full text from the back side is a bit hard to read in this picture, so here it is:

No Bees = No Food

Nearly one-third of everything we eat depends on bees and other pollinators to pollinate farm fields. From cherries to watermelons, we need bees to ensure crops grow. Without bees, vital crops cannot thrive and our food supply is threatened.

Honey Bees are Disappearing

Honey bees are dying. Thousands of commercial beehives and countless wild ones have died off due to a mysterious ailment scientists call Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. We don't yet know for sure, but CCD is most likely caused by factors ranging from pesticides, mites, fungus, and genetically modified plants to global warming

Our Food Will Disappear Too

Disappearing bees threaten more than honey production. The fewer bees pollinating fields, the lower the yield from every acre of food crops we eat every day. Without bees, our food will disappear.

Our Leaders Must Do More Before It's Too Late

Both Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture must invest more research dollars to find a cure for CCD and help affected beekeepers. You can help by letting them know you care.

Save Our Food
Save Our Bees
Act Now

The flier was produced by the NRDC and a lot more information can be found at www.beesafe.org. If you're pressed for time, I can sum everything up for you in a few brief words: If the bees all die, we all die.

Good News Wednesday XXX: Bush Saves The Environment (WTF?!?!?)

The New York Times (and pretty much every other media outlet) reported yesterday: "President Bush will designate vast tracts of American-controlled Pacific Ocean islands, reefs, surface waters and sea floor as marine national monuments on Tuesday, limiting fishing, mining, oil exploration or other commercial activity..." Which is funny because we were just talking about the brutal death coral the other day. Maybe he was reading EIGN.

It's a pretty big amount of land. But this doesn't quite make up for all the other shit Bush has done to the environment over the last 8 years.

Which reminds me; GNW XXX(b): T-minus 12 days.

[photo courtesy jg3]

The Coming Apocalypse According to the WaPo Opinion Section

Sundays Washington Post Opinion section featured this as the lead: "Fasten Your Seatbelts: We could be headed for a great adventure. Or apocalypse. Either way, we're in for a wild ride."

This lead article paved the way for a number of related pieces with titles like "Coming to the battlefield: Stone-Cold Robot Killers" and "Global Warming Is Just the Tip of the Icebergm," which upon reading turns out to be a story not just about global warming but about how global warming is going to cause wars to break out on this planet for a time period longer than the cold war.

Anyway, it's good to see the major news outlets starting to take more of an interest in our bleak future as a species. How long will it be before this stuff spills into Section A and presented as real news as opposed to the Opinion section? Only time will tell. Our guess is by 2012.

Nearly 1/5th of Coral ... Just Gone

"The world has lost nearly one-fifth of its coral reefs, and much of the rest could be destroyed by increasingly acidic seas if climate change continues unchecked," according to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). (National Geographic News)

In only 20 years 19 percent of coral reefs have been destroyed. And in only 20 to 40 years most of the rest of the world's species of coral could be destoryed. "Because such reefs are home to more than a quarter of all marine species, their loss could be devastating for biodiversity in the world's oceans, experts say." (NGN)

[photo courtesy me]

Happy 2009, But Mostly A Look Back At 2008 (The Best Of...)

Happy new year everyone. In the grand tradition of pessimists like me, and in the grand tradition of this blog, I figured I'd take this time to look back rather than forward; after all, the best days are behind us anyway.

Earth Is Going Nova started as a phrase pete used to describe the shrinking world problem that is all around us these days. Last January we had a conversation that was the genesis of this blog. So in March of 2008 we started this to keep everyone up to date with stories that seem to predict (or want to predict) the coming end of the world. Of course he stopped posting about 3 days into it, but that's neither here nor there. It's been a fun 10 months and I look forward to keeping everyone slightly informed about the sad, scary, overlooked and downright terrifying news to come out of 2009. But first I thought it would be a good idea to share some of my favorite stories from the 2008 EIGN archives:

Obviously we talked about the Large Hadron Collider a lot. But the damn thing is sending particles at the speed of light in temperatures colder than deep space around a 17 mile tunnel under France and Switzerland and may produce tiny black holes. How can that possibly sound like a good idea?

There was a while where I ranted at the end of posts besides just trying to be funny. This cumulated in my 255 word sentence|rant at the end of a story about Texans not wanting to recycle. Personally I think it was some of my favorite writing this site has seen, which clearly says a lot about how shitty this blog is.

We also have run a fun little feature called Good News Wednesday where we try to find stories with some sort of positive angle to them. I'd say we've been moderately successful and that the weekly posts are some of our more popular ones.

Then there have been our way-better-than-our-own guest posts. Thanks go to jg3 for those. (You too can contribute/suggest stories/say hi, by the way, just send an email to eign@earthisgoingnova.com)

And finally thanks to everyone else for reading, occasionally supporting and even more rarely, laughing at our jokes. We'll see you in 2009.

.jeff.
(oh, and pete says hi)