Fabius Maximus has outdone himself this week in his post “The Most Important Story in This Week’s Newspapers.”  To summarize:  If we don’t get our economic house in order, it won’t make much difference whether the F-35 meets requirements because we won’t be buying any of them. All right — it’s a loose summary, but a fair one.  Anyway, read it, if you haven’t already.

I have the second most important story — the end not merely of the USA but of the human race.  Let me ask you this:  When was the last meteor or asteroid strike on earth that would have caused millions of casualties and possibly the end of civilization were it to happen in the right place today?

a)  65 million years ago (the Chicxulub Event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary)?

b)  50,000 years ago (Meteor Crater in Arizona)?

c)  1,500 years ago (Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia)?

The answer, of course, is c.  What’s worse, a much larger object hit near Madagascar only 3,000 years earlier (about when the Pyramids were under construction).  So why aren’t we doing anything about it???

Science writer Gregg Easterbrook tries to figure it out in the current edition of The Atlantic.   I raised this subject — to the general derision of my copy editors — in If We Can Keep It, so I’m happy to recommend Easterbrook’s article.

Comments  are welcome; please observe our comment policy.