On Tuesday, a six-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) belonging to NASA returned to earth. The Associated Press reported that chunks of the bus-sized object broke apart and landed over a 500-mile span in the southern Pacific Ocean, far away from land, despite NASA predictions that the UARS would land somewhere near western Canada.

I know that Google has taken all of the smartest would-be NASA scientists over the last 10 years, but shouldn’t an organization like NASA be able to figure this kind of stuff out? The Pentagon doesn’t launch missiles unless it’s 100 percent sure where they’ll land. Children don’t even fly kites without being able to reel it back in. NASA, on the other hand, sends a six-ton hunk of metal into space and says, “Meh. Hopefully it’ll just hit Canada.”

While reading about this latest Chicken Little incident, I learned that this type of thing isn’t that uncommon. In 1979, Skylab, the first American space station, returned to Earth and landed in the Indian Ocean and parts of Australia. Skylab weighed nearly 77 tons and was the size of a house. Australia was furious with the United States for putting its people in danger. In retaliation, they fined the U.S. $400 for littering. Seriously.

Back then, the odds of Skylab debris hitting a human were 1 in 152. The odds of it hitting a city with a population of 100,000 or more were 1 in 7. So, chances were that nobody would get hurt, but this isn’t blackjack. This is real-life Russian-roulette battleship.

In NASA’s defense, there were teams prepared to travel at a moment’s notice to provide aid to any country that was struck by Skylab debris in 1979. And the odds of the UARS debris hitting a human this past week were just 1 in 3,200 while the odds of it hitting one person specifically was 1 in trillions.

NASA is still NASA. If it says that flying bits of fiery metal probably won’t hit me, I’ll believe them. But, it can’t hurt to have a contingency plan in place for the likely event that this will happen again.

The first thing to do during an impending satellite apocalypse is to keep your head on a swivel. This isn’t one of those escape from a lion situations where you can just out-run your slow friend and live. A falling satellite will come at you faster than midterms. You’re going to have to use your spidey-senses to identify and react at a moment’s notice.

Since you were on your toes, you’ve now realized that a bus is about to fall on you and that you will probably die. However, this is not the time to give up. Remember what NASA said about the odds of a satellite striking a human? There is a 3,199 in 3,200 chance that puppy will just fly right on by and not anvil-squash you like Wile E. Coyote.

However, you can increase your odds of survival with some agility and grace. Dodging a satellite has to be a lot like catching a pop fly in baseball. Except, the exact opposite. The worst thing you can do is imitate Zach Braff and Natalie Portman in Garden State. This isn’t a bob-and-weave moment. Pick a direction – any one will do – and run like hell.

In all seriousness, NASA is obviously an extremely valuable organization. They’ve put men on the moon, explored Mars and kicked Pluto to the kid’s table. However, if its collective brilliance can accomplish these feats, shouldn’t it be able to finish the deed? What goes up must come down, even if you’re NASA.

If you’ve been hit by space debris, contact MARK LING at mdling@ucdavis.edu then go to a hospital – in that order.

Spend 24 hours with me and among the details you’ll take away from what was certainly the best day of your life is that every drink I take is accompanied by a toast to Amy Winehouse, I have a cow-shaped tin full of popsicle stick jokes and I suffer from a crippling dependence on social networking – in particular, Tumblr.

This site, an intricate web of blogs, run by an equally complex collection of cat-and-Nutella-obsessed social hermits, invaded my senses early last summer and hasn’t left my system since. The infatuation developed at first by nature of having an outlet through which to vent my creative flair and showcase my enviable writing technique, but the blog gradually developed into something much more valuable – a vehicle for my narcissism.

Initially, I tried to use my gossip columnist vernacular as a buffer to hide my own self-interest. I tried to cover stories of people much more culturally relevant than myself in an attempt to rise to their level. I tried, in essence, to become famous via the internet and was met with admittedly disappointing results. So fuck it, I thought, I’ll just cut the middleman. That was the day I decided to stop pretending like the virtual entries were about the subjects placed in the forefront; to write about the only famous person I really knew well enough to cover 24/7, without fail or misreporting or abashed denial about the actual focus – me.

I accept that I sound like an egomaniac, and frankly it wouldn’t shock me if all The Aggie readers were to immediately set this paper down on their apartment’s laminate countertop and spark up a conversation with their roommates about “This self-centered douchebag who wrote that column.” However, please give me a shot at redemption before you burn this section of the paper and the message is never received.

My blog, (which I will proceed to plug shamelessly: cleverblog.tumblr.com) once dedicated to critiquing music, movies, and popular culture in my own impeccable fashion, has since metamorphosed into a catalog of my first-world, sensitive Caucasian boy problems – never failing to document the slightest daily irritation, from noisy neighbors to people who thought Born This Way was a great album. No occurrence is too minuscule to share with the world and nobody is safe from the eye of scrutiny – not even the brilliant blogger behind the entire operation.

Yet, all self-deprecation aside, I’m forced to concede the fact that I remain an overwhelming success; the self-promoting act was a triumph and led to my pool of followers increasing in size more than four times over. What’s more, through it all I discovered what is perhaps the most rewarding aspect of recognizing the vanity so inherent in blogging – it earned me the semblance of a shred of cyber popularity that idolizing celebrities had never before achieved. Contrary to accepting my own lack of fame and treating celebrities as revered figures, I had begun to place a new savior on the elevated pedestal previously reserved for popstars and thespians – myself. Bigheaded? No doubt. Absurd? Debatably. But completely unreasonable? Not necessarily.

Consider the following news feed additions:

“Oh yeah, T.G.I.F.!” – Katy Perry (Retweeted by 100+ Twitter users)

“So excited about X-factor premiering tonight! It really looks amazing.” – Zooey Deschanel (Retweeted by 63 Twitter users)

“Gymm then tanninggg with Sheila :)))) lol txt it” – Girl on Facebook feed (3 likes, handful of comments)

What gives a person the qualities required to inflict pointless, ceaseless updates of their daily activities on the rest of the world without being questioned or labeled as vain? Fame? Wealth? A posse? Not to say that I can’t find entertainment in some first-class celebrity conceit, (I own “The Simple Life” seasons one and two and I refuse to regret it) but doesn’t the presence of all those aforementioned factors sort of remove the potential charming irony behind self-importance?

In my decidedly humble opinion – because I’m an especially modest individual – admitting that I’m self-important is a more honorable alternative to acting as though I am without acknowledging it. In fact, I think it makes me better than everyone else.

Single and ready to mingle. You can reach DYLAN GALLAGHER at dylaaaaan@gmail.com.

This is the story of an American in Paris.

Only it’s me – a junior technocultural studies major and San Francisco Bay Area stereotype – in Brussels – a city portrayed in the movies as a dreary political center and not much else.

There are no romantic walks on the Seine or bottles of wine under a twinkling Eiffel Tower. There’s a beloved fountain of a peeing boy, a giant atom and a whole lot of beer instead. This is the story of a UC Davis student abroad for one year, judging the hell out of Americans and Belgians alike. No one is safe from my scrutiny – myself included.

You might recognize my name from publications such as, well, this one. I was your campus news editor last year, and having spent hours every day in a basement, I feel well prepared for sunless Brussels.

While a year in Paris may sound more like every American girl’s fantasy, Brussels can be pretty magical as well. The Art Nouveau architecture on every block is stunning, as are the abundance of parks and ivy-laden brick. There are charming chocolatiers next to trendy cafes with sweeping terraces next to ornate churches.

And the people I meet every day don’t help keep me grounded in reality. With the European Union in house, Brussels is automatically an international city with tons of expatriates. Most Belgians speak three or four languages, but you can often hear six or seven walking down a busy street.

“Where are you from?” and “What brings you here?” have never been more complicated questions. Often the response is, “How much time do you have?”

And then:

“I was born in Belgium but really I grew up in a combination of Hawaii and Shanghai. I moved back here for the university. Oh, and I speak five languages.”

Queue swooning.

What’s even worse is how my pathetic answer will generally yield a very favorable response.

“Ohhhhhhhhh! California! Where abouts?” I answer. “Ohhhhhhh! San Francisco!” You don’t even need to say you’re American, just say you’re from San Francisco!

There we have it. My delusions of being special are reinforced almost daily.

My school doesn’t help either. I go to Vesalius College, a 400-person international institution with what seems like more study abroad students than actual students. Classes are taught in English. Classes are small. Classes are built around the “American” model of student participation.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Vesalius is the most expensive school in all of Belgium at 5,000 euros per semester. I was completely unaware of this fact, as 5,000 euros isn’t remotely ridiculous by American private school standards.

Thus, most of the European Vesalius students are filthy rich. And coming from a large public university where socio-economic diversity is valued, it’s weird being among designer labels every day.

My first week in Brussels, this one Italian took a liking to some of the girls in my program. He brought us to a quintessential European nightclub – sleek white furniture, chandeliers and disco lighting – and after mumbling something to the bouncer, got us all inside for free. Not just inside, but in a VIP section, where we could dance slightly above the common folk and drink endless gin and tonics.

Life abroad isn’t all dreamy pleasantries though, of course.

There are students in my group from Missouri, Idaho and Texas. I think it’s needless to say that we have different values. Daily I am slapped in the face by how conservative these kids are, slapped in the face when I hear things like, “Are those two guys actually kissing?” Or, “I really hate feminists, it’s not like women aren’t getting jobs these days.”

What?

My culture shock in Brussels has not been from language barriers or unrefrigerated milk. It’s been from other Americans.

Don’t worry – this column will definitely have its share of fairy tale anecdotes, and even criticisms of European ways. But as someone who has only lived in liberal bubbles, I’m hoping to gain insight into the American culture that I’ve never met, too.

JANELLE BITKER is bummed she won’t be around to see Cake play at UC Davis. Tell her what other awesome things she’ll miss at jlbitker@ucdavis.edu.