HAWKING PERSEIDS

Okay so we are supposed to be craning our necks upward tonight in hopes of catching a shooting star, part of that yearly ritual called the Perseids Meteor Showers.

It's a cool notion that as Earth is zooming around the solar system about this time each year it encounters billions and billions of particles of intergalactic space dust left behind when the gods and goddesses swept their floors eons ago.

Word has it tonight's show may be more spectacular than most.

Curiously, this news coincides with the newest spoutings from Stephen Hawking, the mega-mind Brit cosmologist who spends his time thinking about black holes while most of us simply live in them.

In a recent interview, Hawking said "If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe, as we spread into space."  Hawking believes that the only eventual solution to this mess is for the human race to beat feet and live amongst those aforementioned particles out in space.

Presumably, unlike the brilliant Hawking, we humans are morons and likely to blow ourselves up into billions and billions of particles of intergalactic dust (okay, Cabrera, stop spouting Carl Saganisms) or wreak ecological havoc rendering Earth unihabitable.

Incidentally, this past spring Hawking postulated that we earthlings best not mess with any beings from outer space because it's likely they won't be very nice.

So do we stay or do we go, Steve? I'm confused. Drop me a note and 'splain, please.