P-C, seriously? You've never heard of the Doomsday Clock?

(Crazy, post-Cold War kids.)

Dammit, our Academic Decathlon topic was the '80s. I don't think that was in the curriculum.

OMG now I feel really old.

The clock came about in the 1950s, though.

I am not old enough to remember when it came out, but I am definitely old enough to remember when it was like 11:59:45 or some shit during the Reagan era. Not that it's a digital clock.

They didn't set it ahead in October 2004 when the Red Sox won?

P-C, seriously? You've never heard of the Doomsday Clock?

I am not known for my being on top of current events.

I am definitely old enough to remember when it was like 11:59:45 or some shit during the Reagan era. Not that it's a digital clock.

It should be. Digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

Yeah, and it was moved after 9/11. But I didn't hear about it. Maybe because I wasn't on b.org at the time, and b.org is where I get all my cool news.

No, I just mentioned that, because I'm not so sure it ought to belong in academic decathalon materials on the 80s.

but I am definitely old enough to remember when it was like 11:59:45 or some shit during the Reagan era.

That clock's a big old drama queen.

In Super Power News:

We've got China on the cover of one of the newsweeklies, we've got Russia withholding oil from from Europe again and a review in the NYTimes about India's ascendence with some useful quotes:

India’s dizzying economic ascent began in 1991, when the government abruptly dismantled the “license raj,” a system of tight controls and permits in place since independence in 1947.

India’s economy has grown by 6 percent annually since 1991, a rate exceeded only by China’s, yet there are a mere 35 million taxpayers in a country with a population of 1.1 billion. Only 10 percent of India’s workers have jobs in the formal economy. Its excellent engineering schools turn out a million graduates each year, 10 times the number for the United States and Europe combined, yet 35 percent of the country remains illiterate.

Despite its robust democracy and honest elections, India faces the future saddled with one of the most corrupt government bureaucracies on earth....As a former cabinet official tells Mr. Luce, corruption is not simply a nuisance or an added burden on the system. Rather, he says, “in many respects and in many parts of India it is the system.”

Sometime in the 2020s, at current growth rates, India will overtake Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy.

Mr. Luce takes a cautiously optimistic view. “India is not on an autopilot to greatness,” he writes. “But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane.”

No, I just mentioned that, because I'm not so sure it ought to belong in academic decathalon materials on the 80s.

Oh, right. Point.

That clock's a big old drama queen.

It really is. I mean, doesn't it just cause MORE drama by making people freak out about the state of the world that it measures? It's like the Fandom Wank of clocks.

Mr. Luce takes a cautiously optimistic view. “India is not on an autopilot to greatness,” he writes. “But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane.”

Go Team India!

It's like the Fandom Wank of clocks.

Nah, the clock has way fewer sockpuppets and flouncy journal deletions.

Go Team India!

Did you skip over the part about the most corrupt bureaucracy on earth?

Dammit, our Academic Decathlon topic was the '80s.

Jeebus.

I've forgotten what our AcaDeca topic was. I think something having to do with Amy Tan's books, but I misremember.