It's hot out there. One brave turtle was sunbathing out on a submerged tree trunk in the Fens, but that was about it. Of course I went for a brisk walk today, because I'm an idiot.

Good news - the Killer Space Rock isn't going to end the world in 2019 after all. But like all good Jerry Bruckheimer-esque apocalytpic events, a sequel is already in the works, for 2060. Hopefully by that time our planet will have gotten its collective head screwed on a little better and will finally listen to my old astronomy professor Richard Binzel, who's been the figurative John the Baptist of the danger posed by Near Earth Objects for quite some time now.

Hey, just because I got out of the astronomy biz doesn't mean I don't keep up!

And here's a bonus link about the Chinese space program. Apparently China wants to go to the moon by 2010. Maybe that will inspire the U.S. to start dreaming big again, when it comes to the final frontier. Well, good luck to the "taikonauts". That's the term being used to describe Chinese astronauts, using the Chinese word for "space". I guess every major power has to have a unique name for their space travellers: the Americans have "astronauts", the Russians call them "cosmonauts", and now there will be Chinese "taikonauts", which to me sounds disturbingly close to Micronauts, a series of tiny action-figure toys from my youth. But that's just me - I'm betting it sounds better in the mother tongue.

At this point I should probably note that the Chinese were the inventors of both gunpowder and rockets. That and they were serving take-out during the time of Charlemagne. China's been around long enough as a continuous civilization to have done pretty much everything at least once. We discover, but they rediscover. We in the West don't think an awful lot about China, except to stereotype and/or demonize. Perhaps someday that will change.