Mystery Object to Whizz by Earth Tomorrow

WASHINGTON (AP) — A mystery object from space is about to whizz close by Earth on Wednesday. It won’t hit our planet, but scientists are stumped by what exactly it is.

Astronomers say it may be space junk or it could be a tiny asteroid, too small to cause damage even if it hit. It’s 33 to 50 feet wide at most.

NASA says that on Wednesday at 7:47 a.m. EST, it will streak by, missing Earth by about 80,000 miles. In the western United States it may be bright enough to be seen with a good amateur telescope.

Crazy times!

Too bad this object could not have hit earth this past Saturday and obliterated both the Cowboys and Eagles during their game.

Sigh... dare to dream...

What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

How long how you been waiting to segway into that rant?

hemlock wrote:

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

How long how you been waiting to segway into that rant?

Not as long as I spent trying to get out of the Centrum parking lot onto Campeau this past Sunday.

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

That would make every intersection MASSIVE. There's no reason for that.

shabbs wrote:

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

That would make every intersection MASSIVE. There's no reason for that.

You obviously haven't seen the Centrum (or Kanata, in general) first-hand. It's a marvel of urban mis-planning.

First, who decides that it's a good idea to imitate the "pedestrian mall" that is so successful in California ... in Canada?

Second, even in the summer, when the 40' high snow banks at the edges of every parking lot are not preventing you from making your way across, there is a fairly busy road going all the way across. I once tried to make my way from Loblaws to WalMart, with a baby stroller. Bad idea. The only safe way was the long way around.

Third, they used to have an exit from the 417 to Terry Fox which split two ways. Half of it went to a T-intersection with Terry Fox for people who wanted to turn left, and the other was a no-lights merge lane straight onto Terry Fox headed right, toward the Centrum. They bulldozed that convenient lane, had to bring in lots of dirt to cover it it up and put grass on it, and now everyone has to come to the T-intersection and wait for the lights to change to go to the Centrum.

Fourth, they put in a 24-screen theatre (on top of all the retail there already), and for a very long time the only way from the highway into the Centrum was a one-lane road from Terry Fox, which also featured several across-traffic turns into the Loblaws parking lot. You could literally miss the start of the movie (even with the 15-minute preview/ad reel) because of being stuck in traffic within a 5 minute walk of the theater.

Fifth, the Castlefrank-side access to the mall used to be a joke. A single lane road; a stop sign on one side that is about 100' from the actual intersection (because they had a special indentation there where busses would sometimes sit to waste their time and gas); on the other side, the stop sign was pushed back away from the intersection in the opposite direction because of some stupid staircase leading up the hill. The end result is that the intersection was about 200' between stop signs. You know how long it takes for traffic to clear an intersection that wide? So they commissioned a study to decide whether it warranted a traffic light. I e-mailed and said just use that stupid bus indentation as an exit lane, move the stop sign right up, and move the other stop sign as well, as possible. The traffic light was $3M, my suggestion just cost moving one stop sign. They actually did my suggestion (while waiting for the traffic light). It's marginally better now with the $3M traffic light than it was with my suggestion alone.

And it goes on and on, but I have to stop.

wprager wrote:

shabbs wrote:

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

That would make every intersection MASSIVE. There's no reason for that.

You obviously haven't seen the Centrum (or Kanata, in general) first-hand. It's a marvel of urban mis-planning.

First, who decides that it's a good idea to imitate the "pedestrian mall" that is so successful in California ... in Canada?

Second, even in the summer, when the 40' high snow banks at the edges of every parking lot are not preventing you from making your way across, there is a fairly busy road going all the way across. I once tried to make my way from Loblaws to WalMart, with a baby stroller. Bad idea. The only safe way was the long way around.

Third, they used to have an exit from the 417 to Terry Fox which split two ways. Half of it went to a T-intersection with Terry Fox for people who wanted to turn left, and the other was a no-lights merge lane straight onto Terry Fox headed right, toward the Centrum. They bulldozed that convenient lane, had to bring in lots of dirt to cover it it up and put grass on it, and now everyone has to come to the T-intersection and wait for the lights to change to go to the Centrum.

Fourth, they put in a 24-screen theatre (on top of all the retail there already), and for a very long time the only way from the highway into the Centrum was a one-lane road from Terry Fox, which also featured several across-traffic turns into the Loblaws parking lot. You could literally miss the start of the movie (even with the 15-minute preview/ad reel) because of being stuck in traffic within a 5 minute walk of the theater.

Fifth, the Castlefrank-side access to the mall used to be a joke. A single lane road; a stop sign on one side that is about 100' from the actual intersection (because they had a special indentation there where busses would sometimes sit to waste their time and gas); on the other side, the stop sign was pushed back away from the intersection in the opposite direction because of some stupid staircase leading up the hill. The end result is that the intersection was about 200' between stop signs. You know how long it takes for traffic to clear an intersection that wide? So they commissioned a study to decide whether it warranted a traffic light. I e-mailed and said just use that stupid bus indentation as an exit lane, move the stop sign right up, and move the other stop sign as well, as possible. The traffic light was $3M, my suggestion just cost moving one stop sign. They actually did my suggestion (while waiting for the traffic light). It's marginally better now with the $3M traffic light than it was with my suggestion alone.

And it goes on and on, but I have to stop.

I obviously haven't seen Centrum eh? I lived in Kanata for roughly 20 years until a few years ago. Centrum is a Dung show, I'll have to agree. It's poorly designed and difficult to navigate, but it's by no means an anomoly. Every major city has place that are notorious like Centrum.

Besides, the rant I was refering to was the traffic lanes and right turns thing. I don't know how that turned into the Anti-Centrum manifesto.

Oh, nevermind wprager, I just realized that your post was a reply to shabbs :x

EDIT: Hey, I scored two easy fluff posts.

wprager wrote:

hemlock wrote:

wprager wrote:What? Someone's whizzing at earth?

What I'd like to know is this: they have technology to locate *and measure* a 33' object that, at it's closest point, will be 80,000 miles away; and yet the City Planners in Ottawa don't understand that you can turn right on red in Ontario, so *every* intersection should have a right-turn "exit" lane; if you're going to have just two lanes (which is just stupid anyway) at least it should break down as left-or-straight and right-turn.

How long how you been waiting to segway into that rant?

Not as long as I spent trying to get out of the Centrum parking lot onto Campeau this past Sunday.

The Centrum has the best variety of stores in the city, but I won't go there because of the layout. And I live 5 minutes away.

hemlock wrote:Oh, nevermind wprager, I just realized that your post was a reply to shabbs :x

EDIT: Hey, I scored two easy fluff posts.

'S all good. An easy repluff post for me, too. After that long one, I deserve it, eh?

But it's not just the Centrum. For example, why is it that the little bit of Campeau that runs from Canadian Tire to Terry Fox doesn't line up with the part that continues after? It's like 80' for crying out loud!

Or they add a little indentation to Campeau just after the entrance to the Centrum, so that the bus can pull over to its stop and not affect traffic. Why not start this "indentation" a little bit sooner and make that an exit lane from Campeau into the Centrum? Even better, continue this "indentation" the remaining couple of hundred feet to Castlefrank/Kanara avenue, so people have an exit lane to turn right and not get stuck behind all those continuing down Campeau? The way they have it now, it's an articicially created pinch-point and creates horrible traffic patterns.

And why is Campeau a one-lane road in the first place? It's 2 lanes for about 100' around the gas station but 1 lane everywhere before and after. Yeah, that's going to help.

And Kanata Avenue itself is wide enough for two lanes each way through Kanata Lakes part. But when people started taking advantage of that fact to go two-abreast at the stop signs (right "lane" continuing straight, left lane turning) they came back and painted diagonal lines across the middle portion of the road to force people to *not* take advantage of the wide road. Why did they do it? Being able to go two-lanes at least for the area immediately around the stop signs saved people time, money (gas) and helped the environment.

I can go on and on.

OC Transpo. Where did they get the idea that bus stops at opposite sides of the street must be mis-aligned? Probably because during that one time, every 35 years, that there is actually a bus stopped at each stop, and if they were exactly opposite each other no-body could pass them. Yeah, great, but maybe nobody *should* be passing when two busses are letting off passengers on both sides of the street. Even *I* am never in that much of a hurry. The problem with the existing setup, though, is in the winter, I get off at my stop and have to cross the road right then and there, because there are snow banks everywhere else (the bus stop is cleared out). Then I have to walk about 40 paces to the place where the stop is on the other side so I can get back to the sidewalk. At this point in the winter there is no such thing as a bike lane and I'm pretty much walking close to the middle of the road. A few times I almost had to jump into the snowbank because, obviously, some people are in such a hurry to get to work that they are can't be bothered to pay attention to such a small thing as a pedestrian.

There's so, so much more.

dennycrane wrote:The Centrum has the best variety of stores in the city, but I won't go there because of the layout. And I live 5 minutes away.

I've thought about resorting to my GPS just to find my way out of Centrum. J/K or am I?

I once spent a nightmarish time in an insane asylum Kanata Centrum but... it's all over now. mwhahhahahahahahaha