Final Blog: Take it or leave it

These tiresome rants have finally come to a close. I have relentlessly spewed one-sided tirades for weeks, denouncing the overzealous concern society dedicates to things we cannot change and cannot prove. Although I do vehementy believe in these issues, my scathing disregard for environmental and hazard awareness is perhaps not accurately representative of my true feelings. The main point of this blog was to play devil's advocate, pushing others to question the nature of what they are told - to stop, think, and inform themselves through careful, critical analysis of human and political history. The fears we are taught to harbor are anything but beneficial. They serve a despicable agenda that perpetuates itself through the cycling and exploitation of our fascination with tragedy and imminent doom. Don't be caught in the tide.

If my perspective seems dangerously averse and nonchalant, that's because it IS. I want to enjoy my life, not be scared of it!
Think for yourself. Question authority. Have a good life, and have no fear.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, and unjustified terror..."
-FDR

Fear is Elementary: Pun Intended, Read On!

My mother is a gifted resource teacher at Lehigh and Alva Elementary Schools. While teaching a unit on the rotation of the earth to her fourth and fifth graders, her facts and figures were met with a barrage of "critical thinking", in which the students inquired as to what would happen if the earth stopped rotating. They were concerned that if the planet ceased to spin upon its axis, the solar routine that drives our seasons, temperature, and night and day would be disrupted, eventually ending all of human life as we know it. For some of her students, this seemed to be a very tangible fear. "No immediate threat," she assured them. "Even if the earth did stop rotating, it would be a gradual slowdown over the course of millions of years. We have more important things to worry about." Of course she was right, and her students seemed to agree. "More important things, like global warming," said one of her fifth graders. It's so refreshing to know that today's youth has its priorites straight. Rather than concerning themselves with speculative astronomical tragedies, they have the practical sense to worry about speculative domestic ones. I do suppose climate change is more of an imminent threat to our false notions of a stagnant and harmonious natural state that preceded human life, but this seems to be the extent of the danger. Unfortunately, young children view the climate change phenomenon as more of a legitimate survival concern than a philosophical crisis, most likely due to a combination of parental and media-based fearmongering. The former seems more troubling. I find it hard to believe that a ten-year-old concerns himself too much with NBC's portentious climate segments, but their parents probably do. An atmosphere of fear permeates everyone in the household. Rather than tucking in their children and telling them to sleep tight, they apparently tell them to "sleep tight, until the rising oceans wash your home into oblivion."

Tragic Television: Bad News Junkies

It seems that the relentless fearmongering perpetrated by the media plays multiple roles - more than just the "be afraid" posterboy that culls viewership from frightened fools. The purpose is, invariably, to cull viewership, but the social impact is more complex than what I have mentioned before. I attempted a more philosophical entry this week:

Bad news seems to serve a dual purpose: one, to beat us into submission by portraying the world as a dangerous place; and two, to make us feel alive by treating us as survivors in the “harrowing odyssey” of day-to-day life. The end result in both cases is a race of undead television junkies who are addicted to tragedy. They (we) rely on the morbid and the dismal to invigorate the humdrum of normal life, but the effect is illusory and paradoxical, as evidenced by the millions of couchlocked zombies who revel in the endless parade of death and destruction in the news. If the media does not itself create the human affinity with tragedy, then it certainly exploits it, and if the latter is the case, our irresistable attraction may stem from another origin. Call it psychology, genetics, or intelligent design, either way man is plagued by an inherent and primeval fixation with horrific disasters, unexpected death, and impending doom. Perhaps this is a reflection of the human condition: where we came from and where we are going, and our ambivalences concerning an unforseeable(?) future in both the short and long term; on both the individual and cosmic scale.

I included a link at the bottom of the page with lyrics and possible interpretations of the song "Vicarious" by Tool, which touches this issue.

New Cold Virus "No Cause For Alarm"

A mutated version of the common cold virus has killed ten people in the last 18 months. Further variations of the respiratory bug have infected 140 people all over the United States. The “Ad14” adenovirus is highly resistant to antiviral medication and infects its hosts indiscriminately, landing healthy adults in hospital beds just as often as sickly infants. Yet no plans exist to administer vaccinations.
Should we be scared? Does this supposed viral threat deserve the same amount of media attention and panic as the infectious heavy-hitters of yesteryear? We all remember SARS and the infamous “bird flu” scares in the past decade, but all that remains of such deadly dangers are their memory and a hearty scoff at the notion that they were thought to be the harbingers of human destruction. Who cares about bird flu now? It seems that Ad14 is yet another chapter in the grim and endless cycle of needless fears that are juggled in front of us. Being a relatively new phenomenon in epidemiology, the Ad14 virus has just begun to work its magic for the media.
Most news sources are currently downplaying the danger (see link at bottom of page), but it only takes a few more deaths before they decide to inflate this minor problem into a full-blown pandemic. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing simulations of an apocalyptic and disease-ridden future like those produced by the media for SARS and bird flu. Some news networks are already hyperbolizing the threat, offering headlines and phrases like “Virulent form of cold virus worries experts,” and “Killer cold kills woman” (MSNBC).
If you compare the two links I have provided about this issue, you will notice a blatant level of exaggeration and alarmism in the MSNBC article. It claims the virus is “worrying experts,” “can cause severe respiratory disease at any age,” and quotes the spokesman for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases as saying “this is a big alert.” Multiple sidebars on the site provide links to more focused articles with taglines like “lethal cold kills teen.” The other site (Earthlink) says in the second paragraph: “CDC officials don't consider the mutation to be a cause for alarm for most people, and they're not recommending any new precautions for the general public.”
There is an opinion among some retired journalists that “the media” does not slant the news or operate according to a certain agenda. In this case I think the bias is clear, the quotes are one-sided, and the message is fear.

NBC's Green Week Just Plain Goofy

NBC’s “Green Week” dominated the airwaves for all of last week (see link at bottom of page), complete with a green-plumed NBC peacock in place of its typically rainbow-shaded counterpart and sitcom scripts centered around climate change. It also featured a special program called “Ends of the Earth” – yes, “Ends of the Earth”, in which NBC’s most celebrated reporters scattered to the far corners of the globe and relayed the flagrant evidence of climate change to network headquarters. Of course, they couldn’t name the program “far corners of the globe.” I admit, “Ends of the Earth” is more alliterative, concise, and cute. It is also more connotatively threatening, a deliberate move by NBC to scare up some viewership. The network, of course, admits to no such agenda.
One particular correspondence between NBC headquarters and Anne Curry in Antarctica was more than illustrative. She was asked if she had witnessed any evidence of “the melting,” a reference to the ubiquitous images of dripping icicles and crumbling glaciers we have seen in recent years. Curry, worried she would undermine the best intentions of Green Week with an unequivocal “no”, began to flip hurriedly through statistics that “proved” the melting was occurring, despite first-hand evidence to the contrary. She first said the statistics were from 2005, then later corrected herself. They were from 2002.
If you’re going to hedge, at least do it properly. Ducking behind irrelevant statistics might fool the everyman, but falsely citing such references and then correcting yourself later is more than a bit conspicuous. It was as if she was screaming to the masses “no there is not any melting that I can see, but I don’t want to explicate that fact because NBC paid good money to hole me up in Antarctica for a week in order to show the world that it’s melting!” Better luck next year, ladies.


I would also like to apologize publicly for the lengthy list of links at the bottom of my page. Despite numerous attempts to incorporate links into the body of my blog, I have been unsuccessful. I'm using an older Mac and the "add link" icon is nonexistent. Sorry everyone!

More Wildlife Woes: Wildebeests Fight Faulty Logic

In a recent NBC News story, reporters chronicled the plight of the African wildebeest populations, which migrate annually to find more plentiful feeding grounds. The species' success in such relocations depends heavily on climate and water levels, which, according to modern analysts, are all "out of whack". Thus the wildebeests are in danger of...well, surely something bad. Scientists who support global warming say that recent years have strained the animals' stability. "Last year they were plagued by a drought. This year, they had too much water." What?! I thought global warming inexorably leads to drier, hotter climates. But apparently "global warming" is now an obsolete term. Nowadays it is referred to as "climate change", a more general and easily imputed cause of ANY environmental instability. Any atmospheric readings that fall outside of "average" even by one degree are labeled "dangerous, the results of climate change." What most people fail to realize is that averages are calculated from a succession of anomalous environmental conditions. The average temperature in Africa (and all over the world) is determined by numerous specific readings that all fall outside of the one "average" temperature reading. Averages are not predicted conditions. They merely represent an annual or seasonal mean; something that is determined from a slew of individual statistics and readings, many of which violate the average itself by several degrees. Deal with it. This is life. This is nature.
Modern scientists, hypnotized by the current "global warming turned climate change" frenzy, interpret any weather patterns above or below average as being proof of climate change and an imminent doomsday. It is interesting how liberals now fear the word "change" so much. This kind of backwards logic seems to prove the lunacy of their ideology. And media moguls exploit mass ignorance with cavalier gusto, employing unabashed manipulative tactics and enthymematic rhetoric. Betting that the modern citizen has been brainwashed by climate change propaganda, major news networks broadcast stories that assume we will be swayed into needless concern by listing unstable climate conditions. Knowing that "unstable climate conditions" equals "climate change", and "climate change" equals "man-made apocalypse" in the national conscience, the media knowingly plays a role in ignominious psychological fearmongering. Should we listen? Yes. Should we believe? No. If anything, such flagrant attempts to usurp our own self-reliance and critical awareness should be met with outspoken indignation, possibly even revolt. Join the cause. Fight the power. Have no fear.