Asshateroids

[digitaldiscipline]

Hummer commercial, featuring your average science geek peering through a telescope, and noticing a big rock tumbling "straight towards us." Our protagonist scurries to his computer and buys a Hummer (and not the good kind, which involves smeared lipstick) as the countdown to impact commences at 77 hours and change.

Assuming for a moment that it was actually on a collision course for earth, there's one glaring problem with this commercial.

Whitey McPocketprotector ain't gonna be anywhere near the impact site if he does nothing more than sit on his ass... 77 hours is three days plus five hours... wherever it hits, it'll be nearly a quarter of the way around the world to the west from this dork. He's about the safest guy out there.

Unless he's somewhere east of Moscow on the Eurasian continent or in northern Canada/Alaska somewhere (neither of which seem to be the case from the exterior footage of him dashing away in his economy-tinged rollerskate), the chances are very good that the rock itself will impact in the ocean (far from harmlessly, sure, but it ain't gonna hit his house).

Which, of course, would cause something like this instead... and, last I checked, Humvees weren't all that buoyant. [link courtesy of jaylake]

This is how I paralyze myself when writing SF; I don't tolerate stupid science.

Comments

[ms-cantrell.livejournal.com]

all hummer commercials suck, because they appeal to the physically inadequate of the world, and how can you not make fun of that? there should be some fixed link between hummer ownership and the darwin award.

[mighty-man.livejournal.com]

Heh, one might argue that commercials appeal to the mentall inadequate of the world. And we do make fun of that. Why, there's even an entire field of study related to it: advertising!

[etcet.livejournal.com]

see also - Lotto: A tax on the math-impaired. :-)

[mighty-man.livejournal.com]

Heh, but we still keep hoping we win it (preferably by mugging the guy/gal with the winning ticket).

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Or something. the FL one is never a gratuitously large sum, so i am less inclined to self-tax.

[mighty-man.livejournal.com]

And I find that odd. You'd think the old coots down there would be the ones to play the lottery more than the ones of our generation.

At least AZ has Powerball and NY had Mega-Millions. I generally don't even bother looking at it unless it's someplace north of $75m, though the breakeven point is around $110m. I figure it's not so much the odds but rather how sick I'd feel when Uncle Sam got his greedy mitts on his take.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

that, too.

[timly.livejournal.com]

when next you see it, watch the clock more closely. it's 77days, 35hrs, XXmin and XXsec. yes, 35 hours....

77 days might be enough time to get some lipstick smeared on it!

[etcet.livejournal.com]

if it's 35 hours, that means he's even safer, because it's going to hit 11 hours east of him, nearly on the other side of the world!

given two and a half months until the end of the world, one would hope that they could get a blowjob. heh.