Image via SiLive.com

According to NASA today saw us in a near miss with Asteroid 2010 TD54.

Says NASA, the asteroid, “will have its closest approach to Earth‚Äôs surface at an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers (27,960 miles) at 6:50 EDT a.m. (3:50 a.m. PDT). At that time, the asteroid will be over southeastern Asia in the vicinity of Singapore. During its flyby, Asteroid 2010 TD54 has zero probability of impacting Earth.”

So, from where I’m sitting, that was 11:50am. Phew. At ten to midday today I was more concerned with having a bit of a cold coming on, and the fact that Microsoft might be getting worried about how Kinect is going to be received by the general public. The fact that I had nearly been missed by 2010 TD54 didn’t play much on my mind, I imagine this is because I couldn’t do anything about it. Also, the fact that the asteroid missed by several hundred thousand miles, which in my human scale is a lot, mediated against my dwelling on it.

That said, I can’t do anything about Microsoft or Sony, Nintendo or any other large companies and their worries. I can, however, do something about my cold.

Time to have a recap on the value of news from Thoreau’s Walden.

Primo Levi - apparently he committed suicide by throwing himself downstairs.

“Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealisable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.” – Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival.

Dear old Primo. I haven’t read The Politics of Survival, and I thought I’d read everything that the old chemist had written, so that’s something to look forward to.

I stumbled on this quote while meandering around the Internet in search of books to download. I’ve mentioned that I thought I’d already read everything by Levi, but that didn’t stop me having a look-see in case I had overlooked anything. Being a dullard sometimes pays off in the long run, not something that Primo would agree with I would imagine.

Let’s finish with another quote…

“I too entered the Lager as a nonbeliever, and as a nonbeliever I was liberated and have lived to this day. Actually, the experience of the Lager with its frightful iniquity confirmed me in my nonbelief. It has prevented me, and still prevents me, from conceiving of any form of providence or transcendant justice‚Ķ I must nevertheless admit that I experienced (and again only once) the temptation to yield, to seek refuge in prayer.

“This happened in October 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death‚Ķ naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‚Äòcommission‚Äô that with one glance would decide whether I should go immediately into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instance I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then, despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: one does not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing.

“A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a nonbeliever is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it.” – The Drowned and the Saved.

Howard makes a point

Magazine’s A Song from Under the Floorboards sums up my feelings this morning. Not just this morning actually.

Read on »