Saturday, December 11, 2004

 
added this postscript to the posting of the previous post on Scrappleface[minimally edited]:
I was at first skeptical about this report, given that I was unaware of the anti-asteroid capabilities of our aircraft carriers. Rumagging through the archives(see section titled "Drang Nach Austin Powers") of NRO's "2nd Science Officer,"(John "Q" Derbyshire is 1rst) Jonah Goldberg, one learns that while the U.S.S. Enterprise does possess some lasers, they are insufficient to deflect an asteroid. However they could be augmented by several hundred lasers firing simultaneously from a circle of roughly ten nautical miles.[I couldn't follow the math, but I think it's analogous to the principle behind using widely separated, relatively "small" telescopes in concert via interferometry to achive the results of a theoritically enormous primary objective] PETA protests forced the navy to abandon plans to deploy the devices, first on dolphins, and later, boney fishes. As to Jonah's speculation regarding the Navy's fallback plans, he may have "jumped the shark."
Following up-Mr. Kerik seems to have "disappeared" for a time, and- inexplicably- we have *not* been struck by an asteroid.(Explain *that* ye doubters!)And he is reportedly recovering from some sort of PTSD(the result, Kerik claims, of a "Mayor Beame Memory Beam") with the aid of a NYC psychiatrist who began the healing by placing his fingers on the temporal and parietal areas of the bald policeman's head while whispering, "Fuggedaboutit!"