Word: objectives
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Well, not quite. Early last week, four days after Spahr spotted it, his celestial interloper whizzed by Earth, missing the planet by 280,000 miles--a hairbreadth in astronomical terms. Perhaps a third of a mile across, it was the largest object ever observed to pass that close to Earth...
...astronomer Steel dryly noted in an E-mail message sent to colleagues around the world, "It might be a useful point to make that this object was discovered only...days before closest approach, so that if it had been on a collision course with Earth, we would not have had time to do anything much about...
Some astronomers oppose any immediate defensive preparations, citing the high costs and low odds of a large object's striking Earth in the coming decades. But at the very least, Shoemaker contends, NEO detection should be accelerated. "There's this thing called the 'giggle factor' in Congress," he says. "People in Congress and also at the top level in NASA still don't take it seriously. But we should move ahead. It's a matter of prudence...
...make decisions that would affect not only their own child but other children as well. I believe there should be parental opt-outs if you don't want your child attending a certain health class, say, about sex education. But I don't think that gives parents who object to it on behalf of their own children the right to prohibit other parents who think it is in line with their values for their children to be given such information. Or that parents who on religious grounds oppose the teaching of evolution should have the right to deny their child...
...curious way, Crichton and Martin have outsmarted themselves. To begin with, tornadoes don't make very good movie villains. They're big and scary, all right, but there is a certain sameness in their MOs. If you've seen one of them transport a large object from point A to point B, you've pretty much seen them all. This predictability is exactly the opposite of director Jan de Bont's last film, Speed, in which you could never guess what would happen when Sandra Bullock wheeled her bus around a corner...