Firstly, thanks to GVK and MBP community, now we Bloggers can post directly on Mysore Blog Park using our own google account. What an idea Sirjee!
The Moon is going to be "Bombed" in the next two hours I believe, so this post is really fresh, "Breaking News Ishtyle". It's got a lot of people in a tizzy. Not here in Singapore, the only thing we are interested here are the moon cakes that are really popular. No one is really talking much about it here or anywhere else. The minute the news of NASA scientists "Bombing" the moon came on TV, Twitter went crazy. The trending topic on Twitter all day has been 'Bombing" of the moon.
I wish NASA had used a better term, all they are doing is shooting a projectile to hit the surface of the moon inside a crater and hopefully that is going to throw up a plume of dust with water (hopefully) contained in it. Chandrayaan 1 already proved water exists but NASA's probe will confirm larger presence (maybe) of water in craters and other colder parts of the moon that perhaps receive lesser Sunshine. The poles are also their target sometime. OK, that's enough to make some heads spin around in the good old USA where many Tweeters have got their knickers all tied up in knots.
One of the tweets said that if stupidity was a crime, 90% of the twitter userbase should be arrested! He was so exasperated (as I have been) about the continuous profanity against NASA for "bombing" the moon. One rare guy suggested that the education system in the States be improved so that idiotic tweets did not look so idiotic.
They've now got people asking if the moon is going to break up and maybe chunks of it will hit the Earth. One tweeted asking if this was going to result in high tides and trigger Global Armageddon like in the movie "Day After Tomorrow". Then we have a female tweeting in despair and wondering if it is going to mess up her periods! One guy now says it's not cool, dude, to bomb the Moon. Back off NASA. One girl asks if we voted for this kind of sh*t? One guy asked a profound question. He asks "did we consult other countries before we decided to bomb the Moon? It's their Moon too you know". Wow, I am deeply humbled by this guy's magnanimity.
The latest tweets is a guy asking President Obama to stop this Moon "bombing" because Osama was not on the Moon. Oh boy! This all ties into the fact that President Obama was announced as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner! That got the Moon Bombing tweeters into a crazy frenzy, letting loose comments like "Why did Obama get the Peace Price when he's about to bomb the moon?" One girl tweets about The Nobel Prize announcement saying "verrrrrry funny...now can we have the real announcement please?" I digress, maybe it's the moon effect!
Watch this space for boring scientific updates on the impact. Or for interesting funny comments from tweeters who can't get enough of this Moon topic! Or maybe no updates at all since we'd all be destroyed in this brouhaha!
UPDATE: Impact has occurred, probe has "bombed" the moon, scientific evaluation follows. There was no "plume" visible like expected. They showed a simulated fountain coming out of the crater but that was not visible in reality. Now for the fun part: I am packing my beach wear, sun umbrella and hop on Virgin Galactic (Thanks Richard Branson!) for a nice Lunar vacation! LATEST Tweet that caught my eye (from those expecting a huge plume of dust and ice particles): "Dear NASA, we are not impressed, we want our money back!" hehehe...
15 comments:
This is so funny! You are so right, it takes so little to get the Twitterati out in large numbers tweeting away their indignation over the latest outrage....which they don't even understand because they have jumped to conclusions after reading one word! You are right: NASA did use an unfortunate choice of words in bomb!
Thanks Kamini, your comment came in so fast, as soon as the impact happened. Funny thing is that there are several trending topics on twitter now related to this event. The old one is still there with ignorant people still tweeting that we will all go to hell! The latest tweet on that was a person asking when this impact was to take place. This is a full ten minutes after it had taken place!
One wonders if these people do any work, since all they seem to be doing is twittering, day and night!!
People tweet at work too! This moon impact event happened early morning time in the USA, some sleepy heads probably tweeted without knowing anything about it and some stayed awake from very early in the morning. I just posted an update at the bottom of my blog.
In defense of Twitter (not that it needs any), I found it to be a great source of information. I am "following" NOAA, USGS, NatGeo, World Wildlife Fund and even my favorite "Archaeology news" that gives frequent links and updates to the latest finds in the World of archaeology. One can follow any such interesting organizations and be updated with what's going on with their projects or news related to their work. There are many who follow movie stars and just tweet nonsense, I guess they have found use for it that way!
This is really wild.
Last time I followed a trending topic was when MJ died. And then I found that many ppl were tweeting irrelevent things and putting in RIP MJ just to show up in the search.
But I cant follow twitter avidly as I dont have grps enabled cell and cant be linked to twitter 24x7 cause of office firewalls.
Avdi, I was free this evening, tweeting, following all this paranoia driven tweets and all of a sudden, a few minutes before impact, I felt the urge to put it in a blog. So, in 10 minutes flat I had this post up. Don't know if the moon had any hand in my mood! You know, I put off getting on twitter for a really long time and when I finally did it, it's been a great thing for me to catch up with so much information that is available.
When I joined twitter,long while ago. I did not know what to do with it. Mindless minute to minute tweeting. Its only when I could link my blog by twitterfeed that I found any use for it. Even now most of my friends who do not spend a lot of time on the net ask me what is twitter?
Namita, when I first looked at Twitter, I did not know what to do with it either and hence did not even register. One fine day, I just thought, it wouldn't kill me to see what potential there is in this thing, and signed up. I have found a lot of use, especially in terms of following news & development related to my areas of interest including my professional line in Aviation and my major love for archaeology and travel. Sometimes I drop into trending topics to see what everyone is tweeting about, its a lot of mindless fun sometimes, like this moon madness, but, at least, it inspired me to blog!
I want my money back too ! After getting the world's knickers into a twist about the "bombing", all Nasa gets to see is a tame fzzzz ! Thank god, we had the other spectacular Bomb to enliven our day, that of Obama winning the Nobel.And there i was, an ignoramus, thinking one needed to do something noble to get a Nobel. Turns out,mere good intentions are enough to get the crown, as in Beauty Contests.
I belong to the endangered species of non-tweeters and i guess that deprives me of a lot of excitement in life. Educated in old fashioned english, i'm condemned to always view the word "twittering", in human context, only hyphenated as an adjective to a very unflattering noun. Your account of the recent commotion in twitterland, alas, confirms that unfortunate view. My heart goes out to the youngsters worrying about life with a halfmoon and to that little lady who is nervously watching the Nasa Bomb and crumpling her calender. What can i say, friend ! Birds twitter. Birds also have brains.QED.
Yosee: LOL, I enjoyed reading your comment. And so beautifully expressed in your usage of the "old fashioned" English! Your comparison of Obama's Nobel win with a beauty contest (where all contestants name Mother Theresa-may her soul rest in peace-as inspiration!) is priceless. I like the guy, but The Nobel Peace Prize? What were they smoking in the committee room when they decided, unanimously? I want some of that! Gandhiji does not even win posthumously!
Oh, and that so called explosion of plume and moon ice that never happened? One tweeter had this answer. He said that it was probably because the moon was made of cheese (we knew that) and the rocket got stuck in it, hence no explosion! I tell you, this twitter is hilarious. I know birds (real feathered ones) that much better brain power than a lot of twitheads on twitter.
I can imagine Anup. The post was exciting and it seemed worthwhile being on twitter.
Tweeting, like any other technology or knowledge, can be most useful if used intelligently.
When the millennium was upon us, you may remember how people were so addled, that they expected something catastrophic on the big day, and even stocked up on food.
I still smile when I think about that. And now the moon bombing reminds me of that. It is a fear of the unknown, I suppose.
Happy Diwali, Captain.
Very true Raji ma'am. Yes I remember the so called Y2K bug that they said would render washing machines useless, computers useless and even warned people that they could get stuck in elevators! How many body shops recruited Indians for tackling the Y2K bug and same people unceremoniously dumped back when the scare was no longer there. In the Moon case, NASA chose the wrong term to use in the first place and Tweeters went nuts! Happy Diwali to you and family as well. Thanks for your kind wishes.
Interesting read! I am not a part of twitter group and after reading this, I am glad that I am not. :) When Chandrayaan detected water in moon, it didn't cause so much of interest, presentation matters. ;) More people now know the presence of water up there.
Thanks Indrani. Twitter has too many frivolous people aimlessly tweeting and starting "trending topics" of no real use. Maybe that was the intention of the inventors, just another form of social networking. But, there is also a hidden wealth of use and information, that also gets tweeted and I have found many of interest to me. Actually Chandrayaan is still being tweeted, even today I checked.
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