You know, there is one thing that differentiates the Czar more so than the other brilliant yahoos who write here. Oh, they certainly share the Czar’s hatred for it, but the Czar has a certain passion for it.

That thing is the intense stupidity of journalism. As you recall from many essays on the subject, the Czar mostly blames the under-educated news editors. The over-educated journalist writes the story, is careful to represent the facts as much as he or she comprehends them, and offers disclaimers. The editor, who majored in idiocy, cuts all that out and ever rewrites stories to fit a particular world view, a political belief, or simply takes out whatever doesn’t sex the story up enough for his tastes. Editors are goofballs who think they know everything.

They also write what they think are eye-grabbing headlines. Take the normally okay Christian Science Monitor, who utterly terrifies the public yet misrepresents the science with this headline: Nearly 15 tons of failed Russian Mars probe could slam into Earth Jan. 15.

This refers to the specatcular failure of another Russian space mission, the Phobos-Grunt. This cool idea was going to have the delicate and precision job of flying to Mars, landing a probe on the Martian moon Phobos, grab some soil (grunt means ground or soil), and fly back to Earth so we can see what sort of green cheese is on Phobos. Of course, the height of Russian software engineering was Tetris, and the entire platform got stuck in orbit around Earth.

Well, the orbit is decaying and the whole assembly will hit our atmosphere on or about January 15th. Its orbital speed is so great that we cannot orient a communications dish fast enough to catch it to transmit an entire “Wake up, dummy!” signal to it…which is why it is stuck in orbit.

And when 15 tons of incredibly fast metal hit our atmosphere, they will burn up in a tremendous fireball. If anything hits the Earth, which is possible, it should be nothing more than a few ounces of blackened sheet metal or a melted tiny screw. And that is it.

Not an intact, 15-ton radioactive monstrosity “slamming” into a puppy and kitten orphanage. The story explains this, the editor ignore this and goes for the scary headline. Pathetic.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.