Four Minutes

I was watching the Discovery Channel, I forget which show, and they were talking about near Earth objects or NEO’s. NEO’s are the objects that are flying through space and have the possibility of hitting the Earth. These objects range in size from a pebble to hundreds on miles wide. The NEO’s that are tracked are the ones that are considered dangerous. There are thousands of these objects being tracked at all times. The scientist who was being interviewed said that even though there are thousands of these objects being tracked there are thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of these objects that we aren’t tracking.

The scary fact of it all is that there could be an object over 600 miles wide that might be headed directly at the Earth right now and if it is, and we aren’t tracking it, we would have four minutes of warning before it struck the Earth and effectively wiped all life off of the planet.

Four minutes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, not because I’m obsessed with the idea of being killed by a rock falling from space but because of the phenomenon that I’m becoming way too aware off lately – Nanny Laws.

We are currently living in a society where our leaders keep doing things to make us feel more safe when, in actuality, there is nothing that can keep us safe.

Examples:

• Security checks at the airport are great for seeing what’s in passenger baggage, but no one checks the cargo placed in stowage – THIS IS ON YOUR FLIGHT! If someone REALLY wants to blow up a plane all they have to do is ship it.
• Dog Bans and Breed Specific Legislation do not accomplish the goal of stopping dog bites, once one breed is gone the other dogs pick up the slack. This has lead to over 70 breeds of dog being banned or restricted in some way in Italy and multiple dog bans across the United States.
• Gun Laws
• Tobacco Laws
• The Drug War

All of these only punish the law abiding, the people who want these things will have them anyway – only the innocent get punished.

And for what? What are we really being kept safe from? When does personal responsibility become a factor? I would actually like to see a return of personal responsibility!

Why does AIG get a bail out for being a failure? I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. And I don’t agree that any company is too large to fail. In fact I would argue that some companies have become too large to succeed!

This is really just the beginning of a much bigger conversation and I would like to encourage you to comment so we can continue the discussion.

Four minutes.

Think of all the stuff you would cease to care about if you knew it was your last four minutes and then tell me what’s really important to you.