If you can hear me then the world did not come to an end yesterday when the last solar eclipse of the millennium threw a moonshadow across Europe, supposedly conjoining prophecies by Nostradamus and Malachy of Armagh in an event some said would bring the death of the pope or the Mir space station crashing into Paris.
Another apocalyptic prophecy craps out, leaving us stuck here with nothing to look forward to – until next month’s mini-apocalypse. No dead popes or fiery crashes, but some people think we will have our first encounter with the Y2K bug between September ninth and tenth. On the ninth, computers will read the date as 9-9-99. Some computers may interpret this as the end of time and not know what to do next. Other computers may declare September 10th is 1-1-00. Maybe nothing will happen, but you’d be wise to back up your hard drive.
It’s odd to think people would go looking for an apocalypse, but I can understand. Television and newspapers tell us things are getting better and better, but some people don’t feel that way. They feel isolated and disillusioned. I think these people are well-off. The poor blame poverty for their misery, but when you’ve caught the brass ring and discovered it’s just a brass ring, you might think it’s time to stop the carousel. An apocalypse right about now would not just end an unhappy situation for some people, it would validate their notion that not all is right with the world.
How would we know if an apocalypse was approaching? You can’t rely on the media. Predicting apocalypse is a no-win game for them. Either they’re wrong and look foolish the day after, or they’re right and it’s irrelevant. We’re left to conduct our own analysis.
Let’s see – Russia has its fourth new prime minister in just a year and half, its economy is on the verge of collapse and it is fighting a limited war in Chechnya.
The Balkans are still a mess and peace in Northern Ireland is fading away. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is improving, but in Africa there’s instability in Algeria, Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Angola and open war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Iraq is still a wild card, Turkey and Iran are unsteady, Afghanistan is out of control, Pakistan and India are both nuclear and more hostile than they’ve been for decades, China and Taiwan and the Koreas are all making ominous sounds. In Indonesia, politics and the economy are in a race for the bottom.
In the 1940s, we had a world at war, soon we may have a world of wars – sporadic, breaking out like leaks in an old roof. America is “at peace” even though we spend more than half our tax dollars on defense, to the detriment of education and health care. Imagine if we had a real war.
What else? Half of America is choking on the dust of drought. In the Mid-East, the drawing down of water tables may undermine progress at the negotiating table. Once again we’re in the midst of the hottest year on record, breaking the records we’ve set in the past 15 years.
Ozone depletion continues apace, as does deforestation, overfishing and the global dispersion of toxic chemicals. A recent concern is genetic pollution of wild plants by their genetically-modified cousins. Instead of super plants, we get superbugs which defy all efforts to kill them and will inherit the earth, after we’ve been killed off by super viruses, impervious to anti-biotics.
So what should we do? Hide under the bed? All the terrible things I just mentioned will surely overtake us if we decide there’s nothing we can do. So do something. Work to make the world cleaner and more peaceful. Use your vote and your checkbook to make life better beyond your neighborhood. Because either there will be no apocalypse, in which case we have to take care of our only home, or there will be an apocalypse and we want to go out on a positive note.
Apocalypse Now
If you can hear me then the world did not come to an end yesterday when the last solar eclipse of the millennium threw a moonshadow across Europe, supposedly conjoining prophecies by Nostradamus and Malachy of Armagh in an event some said would bring the death of the pope or the Mir space station crashing into Paris.
Another apocalyptic prophecy craps out, leaving us stuck here with nothing to look forward to – until next month’s mini-apocalypse. No dead popes or fiery crashes, but some people think we will have our first encounter with the Y2K bug between September ninth and tenth. On the ninth, computers will read the date as 9-9-99. Some computers may interpret this as the end of time and not know what to do next. Other computers may declare September 10th is 1-1-00. Maybe nothing will happen, but you’d be wise to back up your hard drive.
It’s odd to think people would go looking for an apocalypse, but I can understand. Television and newspapers tell us things are getting better and better, but some people don’t feel that way. They feel isolated and disillusioned. I think these people are well-off. The poor blame poverty for their misery, but when you’ve caught the brass ring and discovered it’s just a brass ring, you might think it’s time to stop the carousel. An apocalypse right about now would not just end an unhappy situation for some people, it would validate their notion that not all is right with the world.
How would we know if an apocalypse was approaching? You can’t rely on the media. Predicting apocalypse is a no-win game for them. Either they’re wrong and look foolish the day after, or they’re right and it’s irrelevant. We’re left to conduct our own analysis.
Let’s see – Russia has its fourth new prime minister in just a year and half, its economy is on the verge of collapse and it is fighting a limited war in Chechnya.
The Balkans are still a mess and peace in Northern Ireland is fading away. The Israeli-Palestinian situation is improving, but in Africa there’s instability in Algeria, Sierra Leone, Congo, Rwanda, Angola and open war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Iraq is still a wild card, Turkey and Iran are unsteady, Afghanistan is out of control, Pakistan and India are both nuclear and more hostile than they’ve been for decades, China and Taiwan and the Koreas are all making ominous sounds. In Indonesia, politics and the economy are in a race for the bottom.
In the 1940s, we had a world at war, soon we may have a world of wars – sporadic, breaking out like leaks in an old roof. America is “at peace” even though we spend more than half our tax dollars on defense, to the detriment of education and health care. Imagine if we had a real war.
What else? Half of America is choking on the dust of drought. In the Mid-East, the drawing down of water tables may undermine progress at the negotiating table. Once again we’re in the midst of the hottest year on record, breaking the records we’ve set in the past 15 years.
Ozone depletion continues apace, as does deforestation, overfishing and the global dispersion of toxic chemicals. A recent concern is genetic pollution of wild plants by their genetically-modified cousins. Instead of super plants, we get superbugs which defy all efforts to kill them and will inherit the earth, after we’ve been killed off by super viruses, impervious to anti-biotics.
So what should we do? Hide under the bed? All the terrible things I just mentioned will surely overtake us if we decide there’s nothing we can do. So do something. Work to make the world cleaner and more peaceful. Use your vote and your checkbook to make life better beyond your neighborhood. Because either there will be no apocalypse, in which case we have to take care of our only home, or there will be an apocalypse and we want to go out on a positive note.