That would be today, the 100-year anniversary of when a small (maybe 40m) something exploded over  Siberia, devastating several hundred square miles. Andrew C. Revkin blogs in the NYT on the status of efforts to protect us from collision with asteroids, comets, and meteors.  Duck-and-cover:

To a person, they said the lawmakers they worked for were convinced of the threat and need to invest more in protection. And to a person, he recalled, they apologized that new money was unlikely because making the deflection of asteroids a priority might backfire in reelection campaigns.

As I noted in a post last month, the threat from space objects is real and much more worthy of defense funding than preparations for large-scale conventional war.

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