Off topic, and not something I would usually blog about, but the following three unrelated items caught my eye recently:

• The Atlantic ocean is big, and submarines are relatively tiny
  04feb2009: The British submarine HMS Vanguard and French submarine Le Triomphant collided in the Atlantic, at an unspecified location and depth. Click here for Wikipedia article on the accident. Good news is that nobody was reported killed or injured and both vessels were able to make it home under their own steam. Lets not think too much about the fact that they are both nuclear powered subs each carrying 16 nuclear missiles to serve in a nuclear deterrent role.

• Space is big, and satellites are relatively tiny
  17Feb2009: An obsolete one-ton Russian communications satellite collided with a very-much-in-use-thank-you half-ton U.S. communications satellite. Both were destroyed, littering the orbit area with debris which will cause more fun for other satellites in the same orbit.

• Space is big, and astroids/planets are relatively tiny
  04mar2009: Asteroid 2009DD45 came within approx 40,000 miles of Earth, and missed! For relative scale, I note that is only 1/5 of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. An astronomical hairs-breath. The asteroid was between 69-154feet in diameter, and estimated to be the same size as the asteroid that flattened approx 830 sq.miles of Siberian forest in 1908.