Skip to main content

Doomsday 2020?

Eyewear was - you may recall - scared mindless last year by the Swine Flu Pandemic - which today the WHO has officially declared kaput.  Good riddance.  The panic was worse than the disease.   Today's Guardian mentions two brewing media stories from reliable scientific and medical sources that promise disaster in ten years or less.  One reports that a new bacteria in the human gut carries genes that make it resistant to almost all antibiotics - in ten years the bug which 1% of people in India already carry - will apparently be 100% resistant, and bring about deadly pneumonia.

Also, today, we are told that if the world warms by even 2% in the next ten years, which it may well do, the Greenland ice will melt, raising waters enough to wipe out low-lying coastal cities like New Orleans.  So - will 2020 see us dying of deadly stomach bugs in droves and drowning like lemmings?  History shows that bad things happen at a constant rate, and humankind manages to (barely) adjust to most developments, except when catastrophic shifts happen (like ice ages and massive meteor strikes).  I suspect we will muddle through to 2030.  But when I am 54, if I get there, I expect the world to be a wetter, hotter, and maybe sicker, place.  Fortunately, 3D TV, emotional robots, and genetic life-prolonging treatments may balance this out.  And Jack Underwood may be the new poet laureate.
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
I'm looking forward to 2012 to see if those Mayan predictions are right or not! I feel also that I have been prepared somewhat by the movie 1012. Because that was definitely an accurate film. Yep.
Wed Aug 11, 04:43:00 pm 2010
Lisa Pasold said…
an apropos post, considering i just arrived in Nelson (British Columbia) & a suntanned man in a cowboy hat is outside the hotel holding a banner which reads: SATAN'S 2013 NEW WORLD ORDER. With a secondary banner reading: 2060 YAHSHUA THE MESSIAH SAVES THE WORLD. glad to have the doomsday dates published in advance...
Thu Aug 12, 01:09:00 am 2010
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise
1 comment
Read more