This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

The ending is the best part!

    > If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering
    > or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the
    > Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system,
    >  is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

rvkennedy 13 years ago | |

Whoa there: Church and State!

georgemcbay 13 years ago |

"The Administration does not support blowing up planets."

I guess we're going to have to wait until the Republicans are back in the executive branch.

jerf 13 years ago | |

"Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

"You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

"Fools.

"The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy."

- Sam Hughes, "How to destroy the Earth" - http://qntm.org/destroy

dinkumthinkum 13 years ago | | |

I think when people say "destroy the Earth" they are talking more about it's habitability than what a Death Star can do.

ceol 13 years ago | | |

Well, it recovered pretty well after a 6 mile wide rock going millions of miles per hour hit it right in the face and cause one of the biggest extinction events in its history.

If that didn't destroy its habitability for good, I'm not sure we'd be able to do it.

autotravis 13 years ago | | |

> "If that didn't destroy its habitability for good, I'm not sure we'd be able to do it."

But we sure can make it a lot more miserable to live on.

baddox 13 years ago | | |

Sure, but by this point we've redefined "destroying the Earth" to mean "making someone less comfortable."

illuminate 13 years ago | | |

"If that didn't destroy its habitability for good, I'm not sure we'd be able to do it"

You have a pretty stunted imagination for what we are able to do to the planet.

OGinparadise 13 years ago | | |

For good or not, I would like to spend the rest of my natural life without these artificial challenges, as fun as they may be ;)

sneak 13 years ago | | |

Nothing that happens is artificial. Humans are part of nature, just as enriched plutonium is.

sneak 13 years ago | | |

Indeed they are, which is why I asked about _that_ on Quora some time ago:

http://www.quora.com/Is-it-technically-possible-for-current-...

Solving it quite literally requires boiling the ocean.

brazzy 13 years ago | | |

OTOH:

"The momentum would be enough to knock the Earth into a different orbit—but the Earth is no more. The energy deposited is ten thousand times greater than the planet’s gravitational binding energy, and the planet is blown into an expanding cloud of plasma, with a particularly energetic streamer extending away from the far side of the impact site, out into space."

-- http://whatif.xkcd.com/20/

mscarborough 13 years ago | |

So many things to say, but really not the right forum.

Sigh. I laughed at this, it's a fun and smart response targeted to a sub-community that barely broke the threshold to get that response.

But let's be real. If your standard of 'blowing up the planet' is somewhat lesser than 'the Republicans'...it might make you feel better to say it but history shows both of them are plenty happy dropping bombs for no justifiable reason.

pekk 13 years ago | | |

I am afraid that history doesn't show that we wage wars "for no justifiable reason".

jackpirate 13 years ago | | |

How about the Mexican-American war, where US soldiers crossed the Mexican border, Mexican troops chased them away, the US decided this was a Mexican invasion, the US declared war, then we took the entire South-Eastern United States from Mexico. All because WE invaded THEM first.

btilly 13 years ago | | |

Ah, but it was the Manifest Destiny of the USA to conquer North America and Mexico happened to be in the way. How much more justification do you need?

(Note, I grew up in Canada, which became a single country for mutual defense in case the USA wanted to repeat the incident on its northern border. Details are a bit more complicated than that, but that is the gist of it.)

mscarborough 13 years ago | | |

How about the most recent US-Iraq war? The one justified by "OMG WMDs and Al-Qaeda", and a vial of scary stuff waved around at the UN by our Secretary of State?

Merely saying a few things and seeing what might stick in order to justify your actions doesn't automatically qualify them as justified or reasoned.

lostlogin 13 years ago | | |

One can justify anything. However narrowing that statement to "for difficult to justify reasons" leads to list of wars likely in double figures.

spoiledtechie 13 years ago | |

I know its a political site, but please stay away from politics as shown in the guidelines.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

anewguy99 13 years ago | |

Unless its Chuck Hagel or Rand Paul.

baddox 13 years ago | |

Cute, but excessively and erroneously partisan.

jtokoph 13 years ago |

Now that they write a joke response to a joke petition, it would be nice to see a serious response to a serious petition.

xal 13 years ago |

This is inspired. I don't think it would have been possible to pen a better response here. Even the call to action was brilliant.

sethbannon 13 years ago |

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to know our federal government has a sense of humor.

scottkduncan 13 years ago | |

I think we're about to reach a point where internet humor and government and humor finally converge. Congress has basically been trolling the American people (minus anyone actually getting to laugh about it) for most of the last decade, and they're finally getting trolled back by the likes of internet-driven campaigns like Mint the Coin.

I think this is a great development. As a DC resident, I can attest to everyone here taking themselves far too seriously.

Osiris 13 years ago | |

Sometimes we forget that the government is really a conglomeration of (mostly) normal people and just an amorphous blob of ludocracy.

dakimov 13 years ago | | |

Not in all countries, in fact, in most countries governments consist of goblins. I think there is a correlation between the national wealth and the percentage of normal people in the government.

xentronium 13 years ago | |

I can't tell you how jealous it makes the others, whose governments a sense of humor lack!

baddox 13 years ago | |

A lack of a sense of humor was never very high of my list of concerning and horrifying features of the federal government.

jff 13 years ago | |

The Bill of Rights? Who cares, a White House intern made a Star Wars reference!

consultutah 13 years ago |

That is hilarious! Can we all vote on making Paul Shawcross the official responder to all WH petitions? Ok, maybe just the silly frivolous ones?

Samuel_Michon 13 years ago |

"The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it."

The White House blog doesn't link to the source article, so here it is:

http://www.centives.net/S/2012/how-much-would-it-cost-to-bui...

DanBC 13 years ago | |

    Estimated cost of death star $850,000,000,000,000,000
    Estimated current US debt         $16,437,339,543,399

    Cost of Death Star per US citizen      $2,705,101,099
    Estimated US debt per US citizen              $52,311

(Figures from (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/) I have no idea if they're realistic or not.)

pseudorocker 13 years ago | |

I see a link. Maybe they just added it? Or maybe you're saying the linked article is not the O.G. source.

vermontdevil 13 years ago |

Seems they have not altered the deal to respond to petitions if it hits a threshold. Let's pray these responses are not altered in the future.

monochromatic 13 years ago |

I deleted my reddit account in part because of the Obama-fellating. Can we keep the politics off HN?

mynameishere 13 years ago |

Stopped reading at "Death Star". Kind of ashamed that I blew 20 seconds typing this. Also ashamed that probably 50K in tax dollars were blown in responding to it.

T-hawk 13 years ago | |

I am proud if $0.00043 of my taxpayer dollars went to this. It gave me more value than I get from the vast majority of $0.00043 increments of my taxes.

($50k/$2.9 trillion government taxation revenue * my approximate tax paid yearly = $0.00043)

eupharis 13 years ago | | |

Now I am as critical as anyone of frivolous public spending, but how in god's name did you get to $50,000 for this? At worst, this took one Friday afternoon of this government employee's time. Just how well do you think this guy is paid?

One afternoon of this guy's time at $50,000 would mean an annual salary of $26,100,000.

(261 workdays per year * 2 * $50,000)

In all likelihood, this was either done on this guy's own time or took like an hour....

Time well spent if you ask me :)

mynameishere 13 years ago | | |

Meeting after meeting after memo after memo. The government can blow through money for no reason faster than you can possibly imagine.

mtgx 13 years ago |

I would've been more interested in a response for the more "realistic" petition for an interplanetary ship.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/assign-nasa-do-fea...

melignus 13 years ago | |

Added this one to the app also XD http://projects.melignus.com/petition-heatmap

CurtHagenlocher 13 years ago |

As an American taxpayer, I applaud this use of my tax dollars.

tomasien 13 years ago |

The Government is showing the early signs of "getting" the internet. This could get interesting.

sonabinu 13 years ago |

This is one of the best things I've read all day ;)

jeremyw 13 years ago |

Ahhh, the Chief of the Science and Space Branch at OMB perpetuates achieving "the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs". Allow me to author a petition...

cheeseandbacon 13 years ago |

When this pop-culture reference is forgotten and some historian ready this... they'll think we were all a bunch of loons.

chris_wot 13 years ago | |

Who says they woul be thinking incorrectly?

vojant 13 years ago |

Just hilarious! May the Force be with you!

205guy 13 years ago | |

I think the Farce is strong in that one.

Seriously though, all it takes is a bunch of Star Wars reference to garner a bunch of Likes? No wonder there are so many actors in politics.

mbetter 13 years ago | | |

Everything that isn't a Star Wars reference in that response is fantastic and actually a little inspiring.

melignus 13 years ago |

I added the death star data to my toy project I've been working on.

http://projects.melignus.com/petition-heatmap

aurelianito 13 years ago |

Wow! I never expected a C3PO division of NASA!

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/index.html

maligree 13 years ago |

That was awfully a lot like hearing my parents say to me "you don't need the Brickbeard's Bounty LEGO set, you already have the Castaway's Raft, son".

danso 13 years ago |

For all the talk of the Obama administration being anti-religon, they're relying on ancient myth to argue against technological progress

late2part 13 years ago |

This is the funniest part of the response by the Obama Administration:

"We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it."

spiritplumber 13 years ago |

applause

ck2 13 years ago |

Wait, is private industry really going to put a human on the moon this decade?

Somehow that feels like vaporware.

tunnuz 13 years ago |

Hilarious, this made my day :D