The End Is Near, But First, This Commercial

And then, of course, there's the possibility that we'll be attacked by aliens. Or that robots might become smarter than humans and put us in zoos. The Sci Fi Channel sponsored a discussion on Capitol Hill yesterday speculating on 10 exceedingly lousy ways our species might meet its end. It was part of an elaborate promotion for a television special called "Countdown to Doomsday," which airs tonight at 9. Amazingly, the channel managed to lure two congressmen and some serious experts to essentially shill for the show by talking about the various paths toward mass extinction. The event was moderated by Linda Douglass, a former ABC congressional correspondent, who kept saying that "Countdown" was so scary that she'd been having trouble sleeping.