The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 230,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 4 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 30 December 2012
“The ‘control of nature’ is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects, it has also turned them against the earth.”
With those cautionary words ended Silent Spring, a popular science book that first came out 50 years ago, and is now widely regarded as a book that changed our thinking about the environment.
Its author was a marine biologist turned science writer, Rachel Louise Carson, who…
For much of 2012, a large section of the print and broadcast media in Sri Lanka behaved like the proverbial chicken who panicked himself and the rest of the jungle claiming the sky was falling.
They uncritically and sometimes gleefully peddled the completely unsubstantiated and imaginary prophecies of doom and gloom – specifically, about the world ending on 21 December 2012.
And just like Chicken Little did, our media too had plenty of uncritical followers – a case of the blind leading the blind. They worked themselves into a misplaced frenzy, imagining all sorts of scenarios for the world’s end.
In this week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala), I take a critical look at our uncritical and fear-mongering media, especially broadcast media. Appears in print issue of 30 Dec 2012.
As I wrote in my blog that morning, Ass-trologers (my new name for those claiming to read our destiny in the stars) and other dabblers in pseudo-science and non-science have a lot of explaining to do.
Perhaps the greatest damage these false prophets of doom – and their uncritical multipliers in the media — did was to distract us from the real hazards that we are confronted with.
The long list includes better known threats like nuclear weapons and accelerated climate change as well as the more slowly building up ones like water scarcities, antibiotic resistance and demographic changes.
There are also some hazards that are not frequent, but have the potential to inflict planetary scale damage when they do occur. The…
This week’s Ravaya column (in Sinhala) is dedicated to the memory of the world’s worst peace-time maritime disaster in terms of lives lost.
No, it wasn’t the sinking of the Titanic. It’s a disaster that happened 75 later, on the other side of the planet – in Asia.
It is the sinking of the MV Doña Paz, off the coast of Dumali Point, Mindoro, in the Philippines on 20 December 1987. That night, the 2,215-ton passenger ferry sailed into infamy with a loss of over 4,000 lives – many of them burnt alive in an inferno at sea.
Nobody is certain exactly how many lives were lost — because many of them were not supposed to be on that overcrowded passenger ferry, sailing in clear tropical weather on an overnight journey.
That was the refrain of a certain Chicken Licken or Chicken Little, the lead character in a popular folk tale. The rather timid creature was easily scared, and each time something slightly out of the ordinary was experienced, it always assumed the worst.
“The sky is falling!” has entered the English language as an idiom for hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. If the original Chicken Little was prone to hallucination, its modern day equivalents are more likely feigning hysteria for their own reasons and gains.
For much of 2012, a large section of the print and broadcast media in Sri Lanka has behaved like Chicken Little. They have uncritically and sometimes gleefully peddled the completely unsubstantiated and imaginary prophecies of doom and gloom – specifically, about the world ending on 21 December 2012.
And just like Chicken Little did, our media too had plenty of uncritical followers – a case of the blind leading the blind. They worked themselves into a misplaced frenzy, imagining all sorts of scenarios for the world’s end.
Some involved terrestrial hazards while others, extra-terrestrial ones. The prophets of doom were too busy churning out more and more fantastic tales to realize that, if all their various scenarios were to happen, we would need not one but several worlds…
Ah, but our intrepid media won’t allow such facts to get in the way of a good story, or reality checks to hold down their run-away imagination. Fear and panic sell newspapers, and keep TV ratings high…
As the leading Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku has noted, “Selling every day anything from bunkers to miracle bracelets and wonder cures to gullible, fearful people, they don’t just exploit them; they massively reinforce the mind crippling vicious circle of superstition in their lives. The superstition generator is running overtime, even in many of our otherwise so critical and progressive media.”
We the minority of sceptical readers have long endured not only the incredible shrill of assorted doomsday prophecies in our media, but the distraction of public attention and the deprivation of valuable media space and time for covering issues of genuine public interest. In desperation and frustration, we decided to present Chicken Little Media Awards
Nominations were called via Twitter and Facebook, and selecting the worst performers was truly difficult as the contenders were engaged in a race to the bottom. The online debate about these choices will continue.
But after considerable deliberation, meanwhile, here is our choice…
Chicken Little Media Awards 2012
Most Hysterical Sinhala newspaper: Mawbima
Runner-up: Lankadeepa
Most Giddy-headed TV channel: Sirasa TV
Runners-up: Swarnawahini and TV Derana
Two-headed Chicken Little Award: Vidusara science magazine, which accommodated both critical views as well as outright superstition (thus covering all bases?)
Headless Chicken Little Award: All-astrology newspapers that thrive on people’s gullibility
We salute all reporters, editors and media managers who have peddled mind-rotting tall tales about the world ending.
The much touted ‘Doomsday’ has finally arrived: today is 21 December 2012.
According to the assorted peddlers of doom and gloom, the world should be ending today. Hmm…
Perhaps THEIR WORLD of myth and fantasy would indeed end today — and not a moment too soon!
For the rest of us, however, it’s another day. And from today, I would call the misguided “star-readers” ass-trologers.
Ass-trologers and other dabblers in pseudo-science and non-science will now have a lot of explaining to do. The religious zealots, of course, would probably claim that their pious conduct and non-stop prayers earned us a stay of execution…
The US space agency NASA was so sure that the world won’t come to an end on 21 Dec 2012, that last week they released this simple explanatory video for “the day after”. It has already been seen by over 2 million viewers on YouTube:
Here’s an excerpt: “Doomsday prophecies may not be the most dangerous part of the problem. But as they are bound to collide always so harshly with the continued existence of the world after zero hour, they allow us a glimpse at a process – here in fast motion – that normally would play out too slowly to be understood. It is a process of immunization against reason…”
Read my 4 Nov 2012 Sunday column: End-of-the-World, Inc.
RT @nytimes: The Indian Space Research Organization has been tight-lipped about what happened to its Vikram moon lander. Crowdsourcing and… 3 hours ago