APOCALYPTIC TIDBITS FROM HERE AND THERE

ITEM: The above photo showing Mercury, Venus and Saturn aligning over the pyramids on the Giza Plateau went viral recently and, no doubt had people screaming “End of days! End of days! Bring out our dead!” or peeing themselves in utter terror or, maybe, ecstasy. Alas, the photo is as phony as is the idea of a rogue planet poised to collide with earth. It was computer generated by Charles Marcello using Starry Night Pro, an astronomy software program. Of course, people gobbled it up as a sign of…something, a kind of fill in the blank application. It can signify whatever or what not or just nonsense.

ITEM: The Planetary Peace Broadcast, a 24-hour “global event focusing on three aspects of peace” will be transmitted on…wait for it…yes, that’s correct! December 21, 2012! It will be on the Internet as well as television and radio stations throughout the world. Created by planpeace.org, the Planetary Peace Broadcast will focus on three crucial themes: “peace among nations, peace with the environment of our planet, and peace within each individual.” All righty then, very touchy-feely and a date that is supposed to be the End of the World…NOT!

ITEM: “We're in the End Times, the imminent coming of Jesus Christ is at the door. This Board is about updating an event happening around the world. - Matthew 24 : The Signs of the End Times and the End of the Age Prepare for the Rapture.” The forgoing is from “2012 End Times.” I assume in January, it’ll be updated to “2013 End Times.” Just sayin’!

ITEM: Conservative columnist (and baseball aficionado) George Will tackled Doomsday in a recent column. Discussing decades of doom and gloom, he pointed out that people suffered from “apocalypse fatigue — boredom from being repeatedly told the end is nigh.” While George Will and I might only agree on baseball, I do admit I agree with him about Apocalypse Fatigue. However, I disagree with his typical conservative world view that denies global warming – “we’re having some hot weather – get over it.” – even in the face of massive data. Oh, well, we still have baseball.

ITEM: Dr. Matthew Ashton, a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, points out in a recent article that “Doomsday predictions have been around for all of human history…” and that “there will always be the gullible and the foolish willing to believe any old nonsense. What's worrying in the modern world is the way sections of the media, politicians and the internet seem obsessed with panicking us into distraction.” He finds that the chief culprit in soreading doomsday misinformation is, of course, the media. “It's simply the case that bad news sells. No-one ever bought a newspaper which had the headline: 'Hey, things are basically OK'. This isn't the papers' fault though - it's ours. Generally we're more interested in bad things happening to people than good and we buy our news stories accordingly. If we didn't want to buy bad news, media sources would sell less of it.”