The Death Star in A New Hope (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First up, in case you don’t know, over in the USA, they have a website called ‘We The People’ where The People (obviously) petition the government for various things such as responsible pet ownership, the legalisation of marijuana, the building of a Death Star…no, seriously. It has a very simple premise: people put forward a petition, people sign the petition, if over 25,000 people sign it, the government responds.

The Death Star petition got 34,435 signatures.

And the White House responded.

They said ‘no’…

…but they said no in a beautifully crafted response written by Paul Shawcross, Chief of the Science and Space at the White House, titled ‘This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For’.

Reasons for the non-existence of the Death Star include:

• It’ll cost $850,000,000,000,000,000 to build.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• And ‘why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?’

All valid points.

He goes on to explain in more detail the whys and whynots as well as the what’s already here and what we have planned for the future (‘floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke’s arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers’).

Proving himself a true Star Wars fan, he signs off with ‘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.’

If you’re a Star Wars fan, a space fan or just even mildly amused by this, you should totally check out the rest of the response…if only to see a picture of the President wielding a lightsaber!

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Do you remember when I posted that Coca Cola video of CCTV cameras catching something awesome a while back?! No? Well, Coca Cola are BACK with their new ad directed by Smuggler’s Henry-Alex Rubin.

There are also mini films about a few of the participants including ‘The Secret Gardener‘, ‘Mr. Lucky‘ and Jeff Waldman aka ‘the swing dude’.

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A follow-on from the Coca Cola segment, one of the participants, Mr Lucky (above), has his own dedicated website. Coming into a lot of money one day, he decided to ‘do something good’ with the money and set about giving away £1,000 every day to complete strangers. The only catch: they must do something ‘good’ with the money and tell their story on the website. An interesting, compelling and downright amazing read for a timewaster this week.

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And to finish off this week’s ‘wasters, some Random Acts of Kindness:

Don’t forget, here at The Ketchup War, we like to give back so we’re continuing our RANDOM KOREAN PRIZE giveaway. Will it be a packet of Psy sponsored ramen? A cute, kitschy phone dangle? Or something more awesome? (probably not that last one!) All ya gotta do to be in with a shot to win is to ‘like’ a post published between December 18th 2012 and 23:59 (KST) January 18th 2013. Why the 18th? Well, why not the 18th?

Still got time to waste? For more Timewasters, check out:

• Tuesday Timewasters – Will It Blend? 01/08
• Tuesday Timewasters – The Detention Edition – 01/01
• Tuesday Timewasters – The Pictures Edition – 12/18
• Tuesday Timewasters – Stupid Joke Edition – 12/11
• Tuesday Timewasters – Break Room Stories – 12/04
• Tuesday Timewaster – The Best of Liz Climo – 11/27
• Tuesday Timewasters – Star Disney War – 11/13
• Tuesday Timewasters – Favorite Ecards Round 4 – 11/06
• My Favourite Ecards round ONE / TWO / THREE
• Tuesday Timewasters – Some Stories Require No Words – 10/23
• Tuesday Timewasters – Mini Star Wars Edition – 10/16
• Tuesday Timewasters – Gangnam Style – 10/09
• ‘Dear God, So who made the dinosaurs…?’ (Note: The most popular timewaster on this site!)