The Power of Media (And I'm Talking About 2012, AGAIN!)

Prior to the movie 2012, no one seems to care about the solar storm. Similarly, no one seems to know anything about dreams other than silly god-giving-you-a-hint thing prior to the movie Inception.

While it's good that people are interested in knowing more about the primary source of energy in our solar system now, it is disheartening to note that most of them still believe in nonsense.

What is a solar storm? What are sunspots? How do they affect us?
Do these people even understand how these things work before even making comments about solar storm? I guess not.

Image: solarstormsoftware.com

While it's true that in the year 2013, not 2012, we'll see an increment in the sun's activity, but that has been occurring for the past several million years. If there would be an apocalypse, why 2012? Why not 2001, when the solar cycle reached its peak? Because the Mayan said so? Well, they went extinct, what do you think?

People would argue that we are dependent upon technology more than ever, thus we are more vulnerable to the element of nature. Well, sort of, wrong~~ There are people in North Korea who don't have enough electricity, clean water. There are tribes in the jungle of Borneo that had never seen anyone other than their own clan members. There are undiscovered tribes in the Amazon that thought the helicopter as a giant bird, and they shoot arrows at it.

Image: rsbandb.com

These people have been living without technology for generations. So what makes you think that they would go perish along with us who are so dependent on technology? Your death doesn't make a significant detriment to the population of mankind.

Why are we spending so much time pondering upon something that is not going to happen? There ought to have some disturbance especially on telecommunication devices and satellites, but that also occur every 11 years, why no one seems to care back then? Why are we putting all our effort to curb something we have neglected ever since the discovery of sunspots in the year 1843?

Image: grimkiller666.webs.com

And finally, people told me that
"I read it in the newspaper"

Again I want to say this: Not all journalists are science-literate, there are times when they have absolutely no idea of what they're writing about. I have blogged about "Journalism at its worst" several weeks back, and this is exactly the case for this solar-apocalypse thing; journalists exaggerating and writing senseless stuff. Malaysian Chinese newspapers normally copy news reports from Taiwan source, which I loathe a lot.

Image; sniroadwarrior.wordpress.com

Think logically. 2012 isn't going to happen. 2013 might, just might, be true. But for now it's all rubbish. And we probably would have found ways to protect ourselves in two-years time.



Malcolm