Substitute(s)

Some people out there are disparaging the idea of a "substitute." I just want to remind everybody that without substitutes, none of the following would ever have happened:

-The movie The Substitute (duh) and all sequels
-The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson
-The 1999 St. Louis Rams Super Bowl Championship
-AC/DC's "Back in Black" and Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"
-Lou Gehrig's entire career and the awareness raised for Lou Gehrig's Disease, a/k/a MDS
-Beverly Hills Cop*
-The middle seasons of Roseanne
-All of the Vacation movies after Vacation
-Any movie ever made with a stunt double
-Kirk Gibson's legendary home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series
-The side dish with any meal Oyin has ever ordered

*would have been made, but with Sylvester Stallone as Axel Foley. In other words, it would have been total shit.

...and boom goes the satellite

Now that we no longer have to worry about the .000000001% one of us is hit by a satellite, all we have to worry about is the .000000001% chance we're hit by a piece of satellite debris. So not a lot has changed except that now China and Russia are furious.

When the Pocket Grabs onto Something, it Could be a Long Painful Death... Sorry Analog Cellphones...

As of today, the analog cellphone is no more. Here's the complete timeline of its development, since Greece in 490BC to February 18, 2008, the day in which networks are no longer obligated to provide with analog cellphone coverage. Click to see the huge, high definition version.

(Click the image above for a huge 2000-pixel wide version of the timeline)

490 BC
Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to transmit the news of the victory over the Persians.
Signal was really bad back then: he died on the spot after delivering the message, according to Plutarch.

1876
First successful telephone transmission. Graham Bell says "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you" and Watson understands each word clearly. A century later, people would be "What? Say that again? Watson? Watson?" over cellphone lines.

1895
Marconi puts Tesla wireless communications discoveries to practice, developes commercial radio.

1906
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden demonstrates first wireless radio telephone.

1908
First US Patent on a wireless phone awarded to Nathan B. Stubblefield.

1926
Radio telephony starts to be used in the First Class of the Hamburg-Berlin train line.

1939
World War II starts. Germans start using radio phones in tanks on a large scale.

1945
Germany surrenders. Hitler kills himself, he never used a Windows Mobile Phone, (or a Playstation 3 or a HD DVD player.)

1947
Bell Labs proposes hexagonal cells for mobile phones, with the three sided antenna we know today. It sucked, because it was all theoretical.

1954
Linus Larrabee (Humphrey Bogart) uses a real mobile phone from his car in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (played by Audrey Hepburn.)

1956
First fully automatic mobile phone (Mobiltelefonisystem A or MTA) system launched in Sweden by Ericsson. Each handset, pictured above, was 90 pounds (40 kg.)

1965
Ericsson's MTB is launched. This time, the headset is just 20 pounds (9 kg.) thanks to the use of transistors.

1970
Automatic "call handoff" system is invented, allowing mobile phones to move through several cell areas during a single conversation without loss of conversation.

1971
ARP, the first successful commercial cellphone network, is launched in Finland. You couldn't move from cell to cell seamlessly.
It was 0G (Zero G.)

1973
April 3, 1973: Motorola's Dr. Martin Cooper calls Joel Engel, head of research at AT&T's Bell Labs, while walking in New York City using the first Motorola DynaTAC prototype. The beginning of 1G networks.

1978
Bell launches first trial commercial cellular network in Chicago.

1982
Nokia introduces their first cellphone, the analog Mobira Senator. FCC approves the analog-based Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) and assigns frequencies in the 824-894 MHz band.

1983
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X is the first commercial cellphone available in the US.MTB shuts down, still with 600 clients.

1990
FCC approves the Digital AMPS, the beginning of the end for analog networks.

1991
First commercial GSM call in the world. Done using Nokia hardware. 2G and digital begins.

1993
txt msgng apprs 4 1st time LOL.

1996
Motorola StarTAC debuts.

2000
3G appears.

2002
FCC decides to shut down the analog network

2003
GPRS and EDGE, technologies for faster (but not too fast) data transfers, launch. It's 2.5G. 3G networks are not available yet.

2007
iPhone launches. Still runs on 2.5G technology, but adds Wi-Fi for data transfer. 3G cellphones start to become ubiquitous.

2008
February 19
Cellphone analog networks can shut down

[Wikipedia, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and various other sources]

When the Satellite Hits

Artist's Rendering

How Much Things Weigh

So if the satellite is the size of a city bus in area, is it in weight? Approximately. City buses are too various to have a reliable average weight, but the average school bus weighs 7 tons. As does a London double-decker bus.

So there you have it. The satellite might be the same size, but it is even heavier than many buses. In fact it's about the size of a school bus filled with fat people, only instead of fat people it's filled with flesh-searing rocket fuel.

Things I Don't Like

1. Bees
2. Sharks
3. A 4 Ton Satellite Hurtling Towards Earth
4. Pockets
5. WHO THE HELL CARES, A 4 TON SATELLITE IS HURTLING TOWARDS EARTH

Actually, it weighs 10 tons. It's the size of a city bus. The reason I say 4 tons is because roughly half of it will burn up in the atmosphere. For reference the largest land animal in the world, the female African Elephant, weighs 7.7 tons. This thing weighs more than the biggest elephant you've ever seen.

Bad news: Satellite the size of a city bus will crash into earth on or about March 6.
Good news: Half of it will burn up in the atmosphere.
Bad news: That still leaves up to 5 tons of twisted metal set to hit...absolutely anywhere.
Worse news: It contains some biohazardous rocket fuel. Like a lot of it.

Now you can listen to the government which says "This is nothing. Shit falls from space all the time. Why just a couple decades ago skylab fell out of the sky and nothing really happened. In fact, there is a 1 percent chance it will hit a populated area."

That's all well and good except for one problem. The U.S. Government is about to spend $60 million trying to blow this thing up before it blows earth up. So you tell me if they think this is serious.

We're all Witmered.

Also, one quick note: The final meeting of the Finer Things Club will take place sometime before March 6 due to the pending destruction of our planet Earth and subsequent rapture.

The BOOM might just catch up to this guy...

This is such and overuse of the BOOM mentality. Tsk Tsk. He should spend more time LARPing.

This is what happens when you don't know how to use BOOM!

You poor dumb bastard...

How do you think he got where he is today?

After realizing the awesome power of BOOM at such a young age, Big Willy was able to harness this power and catapult his career to staggering heights.

Here is one of many acceptable uses of BOOM!!!

Speaking of Pockets, They Were Collapsing Around Tom Brady All Night

He will soon be Divorced or convicted of murdering his significant other...

This Crazy SOB is the Tom Cruise of "Pocketology!"