Friday, December 31, 1999

WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!

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Well, folks, as I predicted, the Y2K "Millennium Bug" is already wreaking havoc on the globe. Shoppers in the UK are just the first victims. Beginning at midnight on January 1, 2000, power stations will literally shut down, airplanes will literally fall out of the sky, and nuclear weapons will literally launch themselves when their onboard computers reset to 1900 and create a General Fault Alarm.

Trust me, I know this stuff. I worked for computers.

Luckily, I've prepared for this eventuality, having spent the better part of the 1990s stocking up on canned goods and Crystal Pepsi. I've also created my own seed bank so that I can re-start agriculture after the Y2Kpocalypse, fortified my property with twelve-foot-high cinderblock walls, and stocked up on sandbags to launch at marauding attackers with my homemade trebuchet.

I'm prepared. I've been listening to me. Hopefully some of you have been listening to me as well, and have taken similar precautions.

I'll try to continue posting after the Y2Kpocalypse, but I make no guarantees, as both the Internet and the global power grid will be literally on fire. So if this turns out to be my last post ever, I wish you all blessings and luck for the future, however bleak it turns out to be.

The Math Skeptic, signing off.

Friday, October 01, 1999

Numbers Strike Again!

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So NASA is releasing preliminary findings on the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter last week, and the likely culprit is -- you guessed it! Numbers!

Specifically, the problem arose in the conversion between English (aka "correct") measurements and Metric (aka "communist") measurements. NASA is, typically, covering up for the numerical-governmental conspiracy by attributing the failure to "human error."

Still - not all is lost. The Mars Polar Lander is also en route to the Red Planet, and this one's sure to land without a problem. I mean, what are the chances of numbers striking two Mars probes in a row?