beetlejuice beetlejuice beetlejuice

Last week there was a story making the rounds from an Australian newspaper, picked up by sources here in the US, that the star Betelgeuse, one of our nearest neighbors and a red giant, would soon go supernova and explode, creating a brilliance in the sky visible from Earth as a "second sun" that would make our days like a scene from Star Wars' Tatooine and our nights nonexistent for a time.  And all of this, they said, could happen by 2012.

2012!

It sounded so cool that I even told some of you about it.

But then I got to thinking: this is a HUGE story, right?  Why then have I not heard anything more about it? So I looked it up, and damn!  My instinct was right: it is not quite the huge story it first appeared.  It is yet another piece of evidence of how we are taken in by the incorrect pieces of "information" out there on the Information Superhighway.  It's easy to be lured by stories that one wants to believe.  No wonder so many people so easily believe the falsehoods spread by the media about political candidates: if you're leaning that way anyway, you don't really require evidence; you only need the story itself.

That's how "death panels" were created.

And that's how Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetlejuice") became our second sun.

Here's the article that explains why it is not any kind of imminent threat.

Meanwhile:

All classes, just prepare for tomorrow as you prepared for today.  Consider this to be a one-day extension.