Five of

Ok, so I don't think I'm going to talk about multidimensional backwards time travel in this entry either. Inventing words is fun. :o

Let's talk about the Doomsday Clock instead. If you're unfamiliar, the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947 as a metaphor for how close the world was to nuking itself off the interstellar map. It also was quasi-featured in Watchmen. In 1998, it was at 9 minutes 'til midnight, by 2002 it had jumped to 7 minutes, and in 2007, once again to 5 minutes 'til.

Though, I don't expect it to stay that way for much longer. North Korea announced today that any attempts to interfere with it's sovereignty as a nation (which includes attempting to force them to abandon their nuclear programs and disarm their facilities), would result in a "merciless attack".

Now, from a rational point of view, launching any sort of nuclear attack is just deep fried stupid. For one, if the US doesn't retaliate then it creates the impression that the way to get what you want on a global scale is to just nuke off a chunk of the opposing country. If the US does retaliate, then N. Korea will probably follow suit, and well. . . badness ensues. Either way pretty much ends with something along the lines of WWIII. This is why (hopefully) no one is going to set off a nuke any time soon. Though my confidence in that statement is seriously starting to falter.

When it comes to the end of the world, I don't think I'm alone in thinking nuking ourselves out of existence is pretty lame. It really makes the whole "sucked into a black hole by the LHC" thing not look half bad.

Of course, I don't actually think the LHC will create black holes that will eventually eat the world. However, as far as ways to destroy yourself go, that's way better than nuclear warfare. If I could pick between the two, I'd take the matter munching black hole every time. While dying as an unexpected side effect of a scientific experiment, would be less than intelligent on our part, death in the name of curiosity and discovery is at least respectable on some level. Death in the name of who's got the bigger missle. . .not so much.

And, c'mon, if you're going to self destruct, you might as well rip a giant sucking hole in the fabric of the universe and take the whole damn galaxy with you. So much more dignified than a global pissing match gone wrong.