Bill Nye is dedicated to fighting to improve science standards in this country and fighting asteroids. That's right, asteroids.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

In recent years, Nye has undergone something of a career and image renaissance. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, the world's largest nongovernmental space interest group. He has a YouTube series with NASA. He was on Dancing with the Stars this year, his highest profile foray into dance since he finished fourth at a Cornell talent show where he did a jitterbug routine choreographed to "Runaround Sue." He organized the "Save Our Science" campaign, which has pushed Congress and the White House to provide at least $1.5 billion annually for planetary science and exploration. 

"He's been instrumental in helping advance some of the president's key initiatives to make sure we can out-educate, out-innovate, and out-compete the world," an Obama administration official tells me. "The president lights up when he sees Bill," another official says. (That's not to say Nye is never at odds with the president; in early December, he issued an open letter on YouTube to Obama asking him ensure more funding for planetary exploration—something that has endured some rough budgetary hits during the Obama years.) 

But of his new endeavors, he's likely best known for his politically tinged, no-bullshit talk about science education in America. Over the past few years, he's gained wide attention on social media, the lecture circuit, and television (he's appeared on CNN's Piers Morgan Live and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, among others) for countering creationist drivel, conservative politicians' claims, and climate change denial. 

"I fight this fight out of patriotism," Nye says. 

"We have a problem," he continues. "We can't have economic growth without basic investment in science and research. And we can't have irresponsible school board members in Texas teaching that the earth is 10,000 years old. We can't have us embracing scientific illiteracy." 

When I ask Nye about what he considers his current top-three political passions, he responds: "Climate change, raise the standard of women around the world through education, asteroids." 

Yes, Nye is really into asteroids—specifically, fighting the ones that may imperil human civilization. 

"Sooner or later we're going to have to deflect an asteroid," Nye says. "And we're the first generation that can do something about it." As the head of the Planetary Society, Nye and his team published a plan for using solar-paneled-fitted "Laser Bee" spacecraft to evaporate or volatize parts of an asteroid threatening earth. The parts that burn off have momentum, and that momentum is hopefully enough to "nudge" the asteroid. "It's a matter of life or death for people...It's ironic that people are running around worried about Obamacare while this other troubling thing looms."

You know on second thought perhaps this is the perfect man to debate Creationist and intellectual child abuser Ken Ham.

After all he is intelligent, gregarious, dedicated, extremely likeable and the man wants to take on projectiles from space. On the other hand Ken Ham is an intellectual light weight who uses the trust of small children to poison their minds and cripple their cognitive abilities.

If Bill Nye were  a different kind of man it would be a slaughter. As it is it just might be yet another opportunity for Nye to teach good science, to those who so desperately need to learn.

David Chappelle IS Nostradamus.

Okay you have to admit, that is one bizarre coincidence.

(For those who don't know who David Chappelle is.)

Meanwhile over the skies of Russia

More from Reuters:  

A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, sending fireballs crashing to earth which shattered windows and damaged buildings, injuring more than 500 people. 

People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave, according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city 950 miles east of Moscow. 

The fireball, travelling at a speed of 19 miles per second according to Russia's space agency Roscosmos, had blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in its wake which could be seen as far as 125 miles away. 

Car alarms went off, windows broke and mobile phone networks were interrupted. The Interior Ministry said the meteor explosion had caused a sonic boom. 

"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains. 

"I felt like I was blinded by headlights," he said. 

No fatalities were reported, but President Vladimir Putin, who was due to host Finance Ministry officials from the Group of 20 nations in Moscow, told Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov to help those affected.

Here is video of the event.

Some are speculating that this meteorite might have some connection to the giant asteroid that passed very closely to earth at 2:24 Eastern Time today.

And here was Neil deGrasse's response via Facebook:

And here is Professor deGrasse explaining exactly what happened on the Today show this morning.

Yeah you know I think it is a very good time to start thinking about lighting a fire under our space program, before the next, and possibly closer, asteroid does it for us.

The word of the month for February is "Duck!"

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

An asteroid half the size of a football field will give Earth the ultimate close shave this month, passing closer than many satellites when it whizzes by, but it won't hit the planet, NASA scientists say. 

The asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly by Earth on Feb. 15 and zip within 17,200 miles (27, 680 kilometers) of the planet during the cosmic close encounter. The asteroid will approach much closer to Earth than the moon, and well inside the paths of navigation and communications satellites. "This is a record-setting close approach," Don Yeomans, the head of NASA's asteroid-tracking program, said in a statement. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth." 

"2012 DA14 will definitely not hit Earth. The orbit of the asteroid is known well enough to rule out an impact," Yeomans, who heads the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He added that the odds it will slam into a satellite are "extremely remote."

Yeah that's what they told the dinosaurs!

Okay well may THIS catastrophe will be avoided, but let's face it our time on this wonderful planet is limited. And it shouldn't take a falling rock from the heavens to remind us of how precious our lives truly are, as well as how important it is too spend them giving and receiving love, providing comfort and allowing ourselves to be comforted, and learning something new while overcoming a past superstition every day.

We may, or may not, have very long, but remember it is the life in your days that matter, not the days in your life.