Pennsylvania Hotbed Of The Paranormal

It isn’t just Bigfoot who’s been spotted in Pennsylvania. Now NASA has agreed to search for files related to a “fireball” that crashed near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965.

On Dec. 9 of that year, people in North America saw a fireball cross the sky. It crashed near a town about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, and the Air Force showed up and hauled a Volkswagen-sized object away from the site and told everybody not to worry about it, everything was under control.

As you might have guessed, such secrecy by the government only leads to more conspiracy theories and speculation that it’s aliens or thetans or whatever. NASA complements this nicely by losing all the records related to the crash and claiming it was a Russian satellite, changing the story from years earlier.

NASA will now search for those lost records and tell us that it was actually a cow dropped from a helicopter or something.

NASA Will Re-Open Kecksburg UFO Files [Wired Science]
Kecksburg UFO Incident [Wikipedia]
Yesterday: Bigfoot Enthusiast Says Photo Is Bigfoot

Pretty Much Nobody Can Operate Anything Nowadays

A summary of recent accidents follows below. All of these stories are from Action News‘ website.

• On Route 1 in Bucks County, a cabinet fell off a pickup truck and caused a six-vehicle crash.

Well, okay, that was kind of a random accident, though. At least our trained drivers are a little more careful.

• On Roosevelt Boulevard in the Northeast, an ambulance crashed after another vehicle hit it, causing it to roll over.

Well, okay, but that was a private ambulance and it was hit first. I’m sure our professional drivers — say, pilots — know what they’re doing.

• The Pinelands fire earlier this year was caused by a National Guard pilot who dropped a flare to close to the ground on a bone-dry day, though a senator from N.J. called it more of a “systematic failure.” [AP]

Okay, okay. So the National Guard messed up and caused a fire that destroyed 17,000 acres. But, you know, mistakes are mistakes. Our highest trained pilots surely are top-of-the-line.

• A bunch of astronauts flew drunk. [AP]

Forget it. Nobody should be allowed to operate anything more dangerous than a Barbie® Power Wheels car anymore. Even then, somehow some guy named Ken would probably be killed.

Northeast Philly Renaissance Continues: Ex-NEstie To Go Into Space

Okay, so Bianca Ryan’s million dollars is a pretty big thing to happen to Northeast Philadelphia; probably the biggest thing since, uh, ever.

But Ryan might’ve just been one-upped by Chris Ferguson, who is slated to head into space at the end of the month. Space? Holy shit! (Ferguson is also a fellow alum of St. Martha’s grade school, although our similarities pretty much end there, since he’s successful.)

During his roughly 12 days in space, the 44-year-old Ferguson will “conduct high-intensity robotics operations and perform administrative jobs,” according to the Northeast Times. (That second part kind of makes him sound like a space secretary.) Ferguson also plays drums in a “rock and roll band,” according to his NASA bio.

The main point of the mission is to install solar panels on the International Space Station. But it’s not just that:

“Expanding your horizons doesn’t come without a cost,” he said, adding that Earth is a small planet in a large universe.

NASA’s long-term goal is to go farther into the universe, perhaps to Mars or back to the moon. It might be generations before NASA gets back to the moon or centuries before Earth can colonize another planet, but Ferguson is glad to be doing his part to advance the cause.

“You have to start some place,” he said.

And, really, what better place to start than by installing some solar panels. Godspeed.

Off he’ll go… [Northeast Times]
Christopher J. Ferguson [NASA]

Mathematically terrified

Current front story on CNN.com:

Friday the 13th + Intergalactic Dust Collector Approaching Earth = 1 Nervous Blogger Who Feels Like He’s In A Horror Film.

Intergalactic dust collector sweeping toward Earth [CNN.com]
Friday the 13th [Wikipedia]