ronpaulfan
01-22-2008, 08:30 AM
PLEASE DO NOT MOVE THIS TO HOT TOPICS. THIS IS A LEGITIMATE CONCERN.
You may have seen this video I jokingly made 2 weeks ago
http://img.youtube.com/vi/T3bkyO5v_J8/default.jpg
BIG F-ING ASTEROID NEAR EARTH (and Ron Paul) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3bkyO5v_J8)
However, the asteroid is still no-where to be found in the news and this is what's posted at the NASA site.
2007 TU24 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey (Arizona) on October 11, 2007.
This object's 1.4-lunar-distance approach on Jan. 29 is the closest for any
known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid until 2027.
ADDITIONAL ASTROMETRY IS STILL DESIRABLE FOR THIS OBJECT
source: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2007TU24/2007TU24planning.html
Yesterday it said the orbit wasn't precisely known yet but the wording changed, despite no new astrometry being done. Also, variables such as the MOID (Minimal Orbit Intersection Distance) have been shrinking while the closest-approach distance of 1.4LD has never changed (very sketchy).
To give you an idea of how close this thing is going to get, here is a quote about an asteroid in 1989 that was both smaller and further away than TU24.
On March 23, 1989 the 300 meter (1,000-foot) diameter Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius (1989 FC) missed the Earth by 700,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) passing through the exact position where the Earth was only 6 hours before. (wikipedia)
Also the world's elite are all in Switzerland right now for an economic conference. Switzerland is more-bunkered down than even Utah. Every city is legally required to have bomb-shelter space for all it's people.
Elite in Switzerland:
Published on Monday, January 21, 2008.
Source: Breitbart
The icy Swiss mountains are to host the world's business and political elite this week for their annual gathering in Davos, where the cooling temperature of the world economy is set to focus minds.
The Davos event, a unique spectacle of wealth, power and debate, begins Wednesday when chief executives and heads of state gather in the chic Alpine ski resort for five days of public discussions and private deal-making.
Started in 1971 and known as the World Economic Forum, the gathering provides a unique opportunity to gauge the mood and preoccupations of some of the world's most powerful people.
This year's invitation list includes 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers and a smattering of stars from the world of entertainment, notably British actress Emma Thompson and singer and campaigner Bono.
Among the presidents, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Israel's Shimon Peres, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Nigeria's Umaru Yar'Adua and his counterpart from the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, are likely to draw particular attention.
Other big name attractions include UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The prospect for peace in the Middle East is likely to be a major theme -- US Secretary of State and top negotiator Condoleezza Rice is to open the event on January 23 -- but it is the health of the world economy that is likely to dominate.
The official theme of the meeting, The Power of Collaborative Innovation, appears intentionally vague.
An avalanche of weak economic data from the United States has raised fears the world's biggest economy is heading towards a recession, meaning the bankers, corporate executives and policymakers may arrive in more morose spirits than in previous years.
One of the key questions this year will be: "If America sneezes, does the world still catch a cold?"
The role of emerging countries in Asia and the Middle East will be crucial in answering this question.
Can emerging economies withstand a slowdown in the US and power the world economy, or will they too grind slower as their dependence on the American motor becomes apparent?
Some of the people best placed to answer this will be in Davos, from economists and central bankers to the heads of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries or the chief executive of China Mobile Communications Corporation.
There will also be representatives of Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, the state-backed investment funds that have recently helped recapitalise a host of struggling Western banks.
"We have to understand how such funds operate and Davos will be a platform to do so," explains the founder of the event, Klaus Schwab.
He adds: "It is a good sign that the developing world plays a major role in the global concert."
The US economy has been hit by a downturn in the property market that has exposed banks to billions of dollars of losses and caused a generalised tightening of credit to businesses and consumers.
The US Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates by a percentage point in recent months and is expected to continue loosening monetary policy.
President George W. Bush has also ridden to the rescue with a proposal for a giant fiscal stimulus plan worth around 140 billion dollars or one percent of gross domestic product.
Last year, a survey released before the event showed that 92 percent of 1,100 chief executives in 50 countries were confident about their company's revenue growth in 2007.
This year's survey is likely to show a distinct swing in sentiment but Schwab warns about excessive pessimism.
"This year, it is very important, with all the problems that we have, not to fall into an overextended pessimism," he said.
High oil prices, the falling dollar, rocketing food prices, trade imbalances and a rising tide of protectionism add to the broad economic woes linked to the slowing US economy.
Global warming and poverty eradication are among the other weighty topics set to be tackled by the assembled worthies but there is also lighter fare on offer.
Last year, a workshop called "Dialogue in the Dark" offered high-performing businessmen the chance to explore how they interacted as a group when asked to assemble a Russian doll in pitch darkness.
A series of nightly parties also provide delegates with endless opportunities for winding down and smoozing, with the annual party thrown by Internet darling Google the highlight of the social calendar for many.
Switzerland is a giant bomb shelter:
Swiss still braced for nuclear war
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Switzerland
Many historians will agree the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War, but in Switzerland the threat of nuclear war has left an unexpected legacy.
If you are driving through Switzerland, south to Italy, you are likely to take the route via the charming town of Lucerne and that means driving through the Sonnenberg tunnel.
Those tunnels around Lucerne can be quite irritating, especially in fine weather. Just as you are enjoying a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains, you are plunged into darkness.
But when you get to the Sonnenberg, make sure your eyes adjust, and take a closer look, for this is much more than a tunnel. In here is the world's largest nuclear shelter.
Under Swiss law, local governments are required to provide shelter spaces for everyone, and in the early 1970s Lucerne was short by several thousand. The new Sonnenberg motorway tunnel, just being built, seemed a neat solution: kit it out as a nuclear shelter as well and it could hold 20,000 people.
The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away
"Actually we got the idea from you British," explains Werner Fischer, the local civil protection chief, as he shows me around. "Londoners used the underground as shelter during the blitz."
Well maybe, but believe me, there are things in the Sonnenberg that you will never find down the tard_drive tube station.
'Engineering feat'
It starts with the doors, which are a metre and a half thick (5ft), and weigh 350 tonnes each. The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away.
One megaton is 70 Hiroshimas. That means the Sonnenberg residents would have emerged to a world reduced not to smoking rubble, but to ash.
Inside, the tunnel is a surreal monument to neutral Switzerland's desire to survive a total war which would, naturally, have been started and waged by someone else.
Every eventuality has been thought of.
There are vast sleeping quarters, with bunk beds four layers deep. There is an operating theatre, a command post, and as Mr Fischer points out, a prison. "Just because there's a nuclear war outside doesn't mean we won't have any social problems in here," he says.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis.
There were even, it is rumoured, plans for a post office, until someone asked the obvious question "when the world outside is burning, who would you write to? What would the address be, not to mention who would deliver your letter?"
Then there are the coloured lights, indicating whether it is night or day outside. Obviously the country which produces the world's top watches would not like to lose track of time.
There are some truly impressive feats of engineering: the air filters, designed to supply those 20,000 souls with 192 cubic metres each of non-radioactive air every day, are indeed breathtaking. So large, the hall they are housed in has the dimensions of a medieval cathedral.
Shelter choice
But while the Sonnenberg may be the biggest shelter, it is by no means the only one.
In fact, there are over a quarter of a million of them in Switzerland, because, 17 years after the end of the Cold War, the policy of providing shelters for the entire population still stands.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis. My house, though does not have one.
An anxious telephone call to my local civil protection office brings a reassuring answer. "Actually your community has 40% overcapacity in shelters," I'm told.
It turns out that, should the unthinkable happen, I have got a luxury of choice. I can settle into a cosy neighbourhood shelter designed for 10. Sounds good, as long as my family and the neighbours we get on with get there first.
Or, there is a larger shelter, beneath the local fire station, which those without private shelters would share with the firemen. I can see it is not going to be the easiest of decisions.
And down on the main street of my village, new houses are going up, the bulldozers are digging remarkably deep and blast resistant concrete is arriving by the tonne.
But why add an estimated 4% to the house price, just to carry on preparing for a threat that has gone away?
Karl Widmer, deputy director of Switzerland's civil defence department, looks a little sheepish when I put this to him.
"We asked ourselves this question," he admits. "But then we thought, we've built all these things, so let's just carry on. And there could be new threats around the corner."
"What threats exactly?" snorts a Social Democrat member of parliament. "Bird flu? Terrorism? An underground bunker won't protect against that. It's time we stopped this nonsense, all we're doing is building very expensive wine cellars."
Later this year, the Swiss government will decide whether to continue the shelters-for-all policy, but this week, sirens right across Switzerland were tested, and the population had to check their bunkers were up to scratch.
The monstrous Sonnenberg shelter though, is being gradually dismantled. But not because it has finally been deemed unnecessary: no, no, the real problem is those 350 tonne blast doors. When they were tested, they would not shut.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 10 February, 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
Story from BBC NEWS:
[link to news.bbc.co.uk (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6347519.stm)]
Published: 2007/02/10 11:58:22 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Please don't move this to Hot Topics. This is a legitimate concern and we deserve a little warning.
You may have seen this video I jokingly made 2 weeks ago
http://img.youtube.com/vi/T3bkyO5v_J8/default.jpg
BIG F-ING ASTEROID NEAR EARTH (and Ron Paul) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3bkyO5v_J8)
However, the asteroid is still no-where to be found in the news and this is what's posted at the NASA site.
2007 TU24 was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey (Arizona) on October 11, 2007.
This object's 1.4-lunar-distance approach on Jan. 29 is the closest for any
known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid until 2027.
ADDITIONAL ASTROMETRY IS STILL DESIRABLE FOR THIS OBJECT
source: http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/2007TU24/2007TU24planning.html
Yesterday it said the orbit wasn't precisely known yet but the wording changed, despite no new astrometry being done. Also, variables such as the MOID (Minimal Orbit Intersection Distance) have been shrinking while the closest-approach distance of 1.4LD has never changed (very sketchy).
To give you an idea of how close this thing is going to get, here is a quote about an asteroid in 1989 that was both smaller and further away than TU24.
On March 23, 1989 the 300 meter (1,000-foot) diameter Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius (1989 FC) missed the Earth by 700,000 kilometers (400,000 miles) passing through the exact position where the Earth was only 6 hours before. (wikipedia)
Also the world's elite are all in Switzerland right now for an economic conference. Switzerland is more-bunkered down than even Utah. Every city is legally required to have bomb-shelter space for all it's people.
Elite in Switzerland:
Published on Monday, January 21, 2008.
Source: Breitbart
The icy Swiss mountains are to host the world's business and political elite this week for their annual gathering in Davos, where the cooling temperature of the world economy is set to focus minds.
The Davos event, a unique spectacle of wealth, power and debate, begins Wednesday when chief executives and heads of state gather in the chic Alpine ski resort for five days of public discussions and private deal-making.
Started in 1971 and known as the World Economic Forum, the gathering provides a unique opportunity to gauge the mood and preoccupations of some of the world's most powerful people.
This year's invitation list includes 27 heads of state or government, 113 cabinet ministers and a smattering of stars from the world of entertainment, notably British actress Emma Thompson and singer and campaigner Bono.
Among the presidents, Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Israel's Shimon Peres, Colombia's Alvaro Uribe, Nigeria's Umaru Yar'Adua and his counterpart from the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, are likely to draw particular attention.
Other big name attractions include UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The prospect for peace in the Middle East is likely to be a major theme -- US Secretary of State and top negotiator Condoleezza Rice is to open the event on January 23 -- but it is the health of the world economy that is likely to dominate.
The official theme of the meeting, The Power of Collaborative Innovation, appears intentionally vague.
An avalanche of weak economic data from the United States has raised fears the world's biggest economy is heading towards a recession, meaning the bankers, corporate executives and policymakers may arrive in more morose spirits than in previous years.
One of the key questions this year will be: "If America sneezes, does the world still catch a cold?"
The role of emerging countries in Asia and the Middle East will be crucial in answering this question.
Can emerging economies withstand a slowdown in the US and power the world economy, or will they too grind slower as their dependence on the American motor becomes apparent?
Some of the people best placed to answer this will be in Davos, from economists and central bankers to the heads of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries or the chief executive of China Mobile Communications Corporation.
There will also be representatives of Asian and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, the state-backed investment funds that have recently helped recapitalise a host of struggling Western banks.
"We have to understand how such funds operate and Davos will be a platform to do so," explains the founder of the event, Klaus Schwab.
He adds: "It is a good sign that the developing world plays a major role in the global concert."
The US economy has been hit by a downturn in the property market that has exposed banks to billions of dollars of losses and caused a generalised tightening of credit to businesses and consumers.
The US Federal Reserve has slashed interest rates by a percentage point in recent months and is expected to continue loosening monetary policy.
President George W. Bush has also ridden to the rescue with a proposal for a giant fiscal stimulus plan worth around 140 billion dollars or one percent of gross domestic product.
Last year, a survey released before the event showed that 92 percent of 1,100 chief executives in 50 countries were confident about their company's revenue growth in 2007.
This year's survey is likely to show a distinct swing in sentiment but Schwab warns about excessive pessimism.
"This year, it is very important, with all the problems that we have, not to fall into an overextended pessimism," he said.
High oil prices, the falling dollar, rocketing food prices, trade imbalances and a rising tide of protectionism add to the broad economic woes linked to the slowing US economy.
Global warming and poverty eradication are among the other weighty topics set to be tackled by the assembled worthies but there is also lighter fare on offer.
Last year, a workshop called "Dialogue in the Dark" offered high-performing businessmen the chance to explore how they interacted as a group when asked to assemble a Russian doll in pitch darkness.
A series of nightly parties also provide delegates with endless opportunities for winding down and smoozing, with the annual party thrown by Internet darling Google the highlight of the social calendar for many.
Switzerland is a giant bomb shelter:
Swiss still braced for nuclear war
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Switzerland
Many historians will agree the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War, but in Switzerland the threat of nuclear war has left an unexpected legacy.
If you are driving through Switzerland, south to Italy, you are likely to take the route via the charming town of Lucerne and that means driving through the Sonnenberg tunnel.
Those tunnels around Lucerne can be quite irritating, especially in fine weather. Just as you are enjoying a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains, you are plunged into darkness.
But when you get to the Sonnenberg, make sure your eyes adjust, and take a closer look, for this is much more than a tunnel. In here is the world's largest nuclear shelter.
Under Swiss law, local governments are required to provide shelter spaces for everyone, and in the early 1970s Lucerne was short by several thousand. The new Sonnenberg motorway tunnel, just being built, seemed a neat solution: kit it out as a nuclear shelter as well and it could hold 20,000 people.
The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away
"Actually we got the idea from you British," explains Werner Fischer, the local civil protection chief, as he shows me around. "Londoners used the underground as shelter during the blitz."
Well maybe, but believe me, there are things in the Sonnenberg that you will never find down the tard_drive tube station.
'Engineering feat'
It starts with the doors, which are a metre and a half thick (5ft), and weigh 350 tonnes each. The Sonnenberg, in theory, is able to withstand a one megaton nuclear bomb, as close as half a mile away.
One megaton is 70 Hiroshimas. That means the Sonnenberg residents would have emerged to a world reduced not to smoking rubble, but to ash.
Inside, the tunnel is a surreal monument to neutral Switzerland's desire to survive a total war which would, naturally, have been started and waged by someone else.
Every eventuality has been thought of.
There are vast sleeping quarters, with bunk beds four layers deep. There is an operating theatre, a command post, and as Mr Fischer points out, a prison. "Just because there's a nuclear war outside doesn't mean we won't have any social problems in here," he says.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis.
There were even, it is rumoured, plans for a post office, until someone asked the obvious question "when the world outside is burning, who would you write to? What would the address be, not to mention who would deliver your letter?"
Then there are the coloured lights, indicating whether it is night or day outside. Obviously the country which produces the world's top watches would not like to lose track of time.
There are some truly impressive feats of engineering: the air filters, designed to supply those 20,000 souls with 192 cubic metres each of non-radioactive air every day, are indeed breathtaking. So large, the hall they are housed in has the dimensions of a medieval cathedral.
Shelter choice
But while the Sonnenberg may be the biggest shelter, it is by no means the only one.
In fact, there are over a quarter of a million of them in Switzerland, because, 17 years after the end of the Cold War, the policy of providing shelters for the entire population still stands.
Some of my friends have private ones in their own houses, used, these days, mostly to store wine or skis. My house, though does not have one.
An anxious telephone call to my local civil protection office brings a reassuring answer. "Actually your community has 40% overcapacity in shelters," I'm told.
It turns out that, should the unthinkable happen, I have got a luxury of choice. I can settle into a cosy neighbourhood shelter designed for 10. Sounds good, as long as my family and the neighbours we get on with get there first.
Or, there is a larger shelter, beneath the local fire station, which those without private shelters would share with the firemen. I can see it is not going to be the easiest of decisions.
And down on the main street of my village, new houses are going up, the bulldozers are digging remarkably deep and blast resistant concrete is arriving by the tonne.
But why add an estimated 4% to the house price, just to carry on preparing for a threat that has gone away?
Karl Widmer, deputy director of Switzerland's civil defence department, looks a little sheepish when I put this to him.
"We asked ourselves this question," he admits. "But then we thought, we've built all these things, so let's just carry on. And there could be new threats around the corner."
"What threats exactly?" snorts a Social Democrat member of parliament. "Bird flu? Terrorism? An underground bunker won't protect against that. It's time we stopped this nonsense, all we're doing is building very expensive wine cellars."
Later this year, the Swiss government will decide whether to continue the shelters-for-all policy, but this week, sirens right across Switzerland were tested, and the population had to check their bunkers were up to scratch.
The monstrous Sonnenberg shelter though, is being gradually dismantled. But not because it has finally been deemed unnecessary: no, no, the real problem is those 350 tonne blast doors. When they were tested, they would not shut.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 10 February, 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
Story from BBC NEWS:
[link to news.bbc.co.uk (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6347519.stm)]
Published: 2007/02/10 11:58:22 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Please don't move this to Hot Topics. This is a legitimate concern and we deserve a little warning.