Hyperbole? Never!

ABC’s The World Today ran a story about the asteroid that burned up over Sudan yesterday. It featured the inimitable Professor Paul Francis complaining about the Howard government cutting the funding to his astronomy hobby:

Well we’ve probably got lucky. We probably got lucky in the sense that we didn’t search and nothing hit us since.

But if in two years a city gets destroyed by a southern asteroid, then the government’s decision will look pretty stupid. But we may have got lucky.

Now, as much as I would love for my taxpaying dollars to be spent propping up this old fossil in his ivory tower in Canberra, I have a disturbing statistic to reveal.

Number of cities destroyed by asteroid (beginning of civilisation -> present): ZERO

You’ll forgive me if I try my luck a little longer, Professor Humdinger.