Doomsday Clock

We’ll Meet Again

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For those of you who rely upon me for your Doomsday Clock news, be aware that, as of this morning, it has been moved up to 85 seconds until midnight, once again setting a new record we should so proud of.

Frankly, listening to the explanation for the move in the annual announcement, I’m surprised they didn’t move it even more.

The one hope they held out was that somehow the entire population of the world would band together to make their singular voice of concern heard. I will be calling the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with a great offer for them to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

So, how does this affect our day-to-day lives. I’m not sure. Should I buy travel insurance? Probably not, The insurance companies probably include a clause denying coverage in the event of the end of humanity (The cockroaches will, as always, survive.).

You probably don’t want to buy the seven-minute ab workout video suggested by the serial-killing hitchhiker in There’s Something About Mary. Maybe the seven second version instead.

I, the eternal optimist, am not going to change my plans for next week, and I actually have a bunch of them, only one of which involves a possible end-of-mankind scenario. So, mostly upbeat stuff you’ll hear about from me.

I understand that Survivor 50 premieres next month. Perhaps it will contain some helpful hints. In the meantime, as Stanley Kubrick told us in 1964, we’ll meet again.

Goodbye 2025

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When sports announcers start giving viewers the odds on one thing or another, I turn off the sound on the television. But I’ve finally found something worth betting on – the end of the world.

According to the Online Betting Guide (olbg.com), there is, as of a few weeks ago, an 80% chance that, in January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will move the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than its current 89 seconds before the hour, which is the closest it’s ever been since first being instituted in 1947, when it was set at 11:53.

I don’t know, having not laid down any money to join a betting site, whether there are any incremental wagers that can be made on this topic. Can you bet on the amount of time the Clock might be moved closer, not just that it will be moved closer, and receive different odds?

You can, instead, not bet, but rather go to a prediction market (wink, wink) and, for example, on one site, vote yes or no, as to whether the Clock will be moved to 60 seconds or less to midnight.

Contemplating this led me to wonder whether a big move like that, akin to the 30 second moves forward in 2017 and 2018 (hmm, what do those years have in common with each other and 2025?) might lead to the world going all the way to its bitter end, a self-fulfilling prophesy. And, if it does, how does one collect on one’s bet, or prediction?

And, finally, what is the effect on the Clock of the recent 4.8 microsecond drift reported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology? Perhaps I’ll look for answers by drifting off to the nearest microbrewery. In the meantime, Happy New Year?

On Second Thought

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In 1965 the Doomsday Clock (not to be confused with the Doomsday Machine from Dr. Strangelove) was set at 12 minutes to midnight by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which seemed precarious when you considered that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few million years – something to do with the Lambda CDM (not a music storage device) and the Hubble constant, a measure of cosmic expansion.

That same year Hedgehoppers Anonymous released a song entitled It’s Good News Week, which, of course, it wasn’t, though everything’s relative, a theory that eventually led to the Hubble constant.

Today, the Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds (less time than it takes for me to whip up some instant oatmeal) to midnight — the closest to that hour it has ever been. We should be so proud.

According to a Bulletin spokesman: “We set the clock closer to midnight [only by one second from where it was] because we do not see sufficient, positive progress on the global challenges we face, including nuclear risk, climate change, biological threats and advances in disruptive technologies.” This is much the same as they said last year, when they did not move the clock. I wonder what changed.

Since there are 31,556,952,000,000,000 (that’s 31.55 quadrillion for those of you wondering) seconds in a billion years, that one second seems rather infinitesimal, particularly when you compare it to the five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes that helped Rent win the Tony for best original score in 1996.

Take a second and think about it.

Decision Week in Review – Jan. 26, 2024

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I am so tired of hearing that Greta Gerwig was “snubbed” by not getting nominated for the Oscar for Best Director. Excuse me, but there were four other directors of Best Picture-nominated movies who also didn’t make the cut. Ten nominees in one category and only five in the other – I can do the math.

The easiest solution would be to even it out. Ten and ten. The directors of all Best Picture-nominated pictures, and only those directors, are automatically nominated for Best Director. But then some of those people writing the articles about the snubs might be out of work, which, they might be anyway, based on the L.A. Times staff reductions this week.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists left the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight. In explaining their decision to not move the clock, the organization nevertheless expressed concern about “a new nuclear arms race,” the “lack of action on climate change [that] threatens billions of lives and livelihoods,” biological research that presents the risk of causing a future pandemic, “and recent advances in artificial intelligence . . . that could . . . threaten civilization in countless ways.”

I wonder what kind of news would have been required to move the clock forward – Alex Rodriguez getting elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his admissions about using steroids during his career? Or perhaps Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce breaking up.