Taking charge of the apocalypse: On serendipity, walruses and last men August 17, 2012, by Brigitte Nerlich Taking charge of the apocalypse: On serendipity, walruses and last men A week ago somebody sent me this YouTube video of a walrus that makes noises on command. I sent it on to a few people, including my sister. Populations and plagues Now, curiously, Shelley’s The Last Man is an early example of dystopian fiction dealing with a dying earth or dying humanity, of which an even earlier example is Le dernier homme by (hold your breath!) Alarmism and apocalypse Humanity has had a long and enduring fascination with the apocalypse, doomsday scenarios, Armageddon, disaster (and also the sublime), from the Book of Revelation and Noah’s flood to Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost to Le Dernier Homme and The Last Man and beyond. Taking charge of the apocalypse This may be true, but only if we let it be true.
Apocalypse Not: Here's Why You Shouldn't Worry About End Times | Wired Science Photo: Garry McLeod; Alamy; Yva Momatiuk & John Eastcott/Getty This is the question posed by the website 2012apocalypse.net. “super volcanos? When the sun rises on December 22, as it surely will, do not expect apologies or even a rethink. Religious zealots hardly have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated.
Our Say: Why we love zombies Click photo to enlarge Zombies roam the streets in "The Walking Dead." ( AMC ) Nothing can stop the zombie invasion. The undead now lurk in every corner of pop culture. There are zombie TV shows, video games, Twitter feeds and even zombie Jane Austen novels for the not-so-gentle-reader, in addition to the legions of fright flicks. Right now, the living dead are all the rage. You see, my fondness for flesh-eaters began when I was about 12. Simply put, the rise of zombies in pop culture reflects our creeping sense of anxiety about the state of the world. Let's face it, there is a lot of scary news out there these days. We live in a world where bizarre is the new normal. Most of us happily deny these fears in order to go about our daily routine, but it's hard to quell those nagging worries entirely. Sadly, one reason zombies ring our bell right now is that they are symbolic of a real threat. But the real key to zombie appeal is how deeply the genre is rooted in metaphor.
PANK Magazine / Post Apocalypse listen to this story Mom talks to us through a tape-recorder during the final summer before, which she believes, the world will end. I lie awake most mornings and wait for my sister to wake up so we can listen to it together. Sometimes it takes hours, but I like the way the sun feels in the morning; a soft warmth floating into our room before it gets harsh. I like the way the birds sing and I think that it’s such a shame that something so nice could end so soon. When she wakes up, I grab her by the hand and lead her downstairs to where the tape recorder waits. Good morning John. A brief moment of muffled static and the message ends. The houses in our neighborhood are all the same: beige units with beautifully-manicured lawns. A convenience store and gas station guard the entrance of our refuge. Most of the days, it’s too hot to go play in the park or even go outside. Sarah likes the happy endings. Good morning John. “It’s been prophesized by those ancient people,” she says. “Mmm.” “Oh.
Gentle Critique of ‘Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times’ Great piece by Matt Ridley, titled “Apocalypse Not: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Worry About End Times,” in Wired magazine: It’s the cover story, even, so we can hope it gets a lot of attention. But it’s all been said and written before, so often in fact by so many of us, by Rael Isaac and Jay Lehr and even this writer, that one has to wonder if it’s worth repeating one more time. Ridley doesn’t mention climate change until near the end of the article, and then ends his article with some good points on the controversy. So, should we worry or not about the warming climate? Unfortunately, Ridley thinks he’s defining “lukewarmers” when he’s actually summarizing arguments that skeptics use – see Heartland’s position statement on climate change, for example. The “hoax,” though, is real. Because they’ve been mislabeled, then defamed, and then censored. — Joe Bast Joseph Bast is president and CEO of The Heartland Institute.
Grave Implications: Professors Prove Zombies Good For Your Brain Weiner believes that zombies, in some respect, represent the chaotic world we live in. You can learn a lot from a zombie. At least that’s the way two instructors at Texas Tech see it. Students in an Honors College class and a Communications Studies class both will experience the lessons of the undead this semester. For 20 Honors College students who managed to get into his class, associate humanities librarian Rob Weiner will instruct Zombie Culture: The Zombie in History, Film, Literature, Sequential Art and the Popular Imagination. “I’ve done some preliminary research, and there are zombie classes all over the place,” Weiner said. The History of Zombies Miller’s class will include plenty discussion about surviving a possible zombie apocalypse. Fast-forward to the late ’60s and George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” and the storyline changes, Weiner said. “I think zombies represent the chaotic world we live in,” Weiner said. “The zombie is a warning that we should remain unique.
Waiting for the Apocalypse: From the Romantics to Romney by Malise Ruthven A year before the Cuban missile crisis took the world to the brink Robert Lowell wrote his apocalyptic poem, “Fall 1961”: Back and forth, back and forth goes the tock, tock, tock of the orange, bland, ambassadorial face of the moon on the grandfather clock.All autumn, the chafe and jar of nuclear war; we have talked our extinction to death. Yet Armageddon didn’t happen then and Lowell’s anxiety seems almost pedestrian when compared with the uncanny instinct of Thomas Merton, the poet turned Trappist monk. In 1947, more than half a century before the catastrophe of 9/11 Merton asked in his poem “Figures for an Apocalpyse,” How are they down, how have they fallen down Those great strong towers of ice and steel, And melted by what terror and what miracle? What fires and lights tore down, With the white anger of their sudden accusation, Those towers of silver and of steel? Perhaps this should not surprise us. Many such notions are also present in modern totalitarian movements.
Pick Your Apocalypse The end is nigh. Or maybe it’s not. I mean, what is “nigh” anyway? Is it tomorrow? Next week? A billion years from now? Anyway, we all know the world will end. But the “when” is not really important for the purposes of this post. So, how will the the world end? That’s up to you. First, check out this After Hours episode from Cracked: Note: it’s not especially work or kiddo friendly…so, you’ve been warned. Elmo. Now, you tell us which apocalypse you would pick (if you pick…which you probably can’t…so you might want to be prepared for them all…just saying)? I kinda favor a Day After Tomorrow scenario. So which apocalypse would you pick and why. Image Attribution (In Order of Appearance): Abandoned City by lrargerich, on Flickr CC BY 2.0my tickle me Elmo TMX by Adam Foster | Codefor, on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Like this: Like Loading...
5 Pop Culture Apocalypse Scenarios and How They Might Happen Since the earliest days, humankind has pondered the end of the world. We’ve imagined messianic judgment days, cataclysmic comets, hyperspace bypasses, and Mega Maids. Here are a few apocalyptic scenarios from recent popular culture, how they might happen, and how likely they are to occur. 1. Some existential threats are waiting quietly beneath the surface of the planet, as we learned in Tremors , Gears of War , and the 2002 dragon apocalypse film, Reign of Fire . Probably not. The deepest land creature is 1.23 miles beneath the planet’s surface. (Lest we become complacent, the Los Angeles Times reported on January 29, 1934, that Lizard People might once have lived in catacombs hundreds of feet beneath the city. 2. If there’s one thing Independence Day taught us, it’s that Bill Pullman can give a pretty stirring speech. They can’t all be Vulcans out there. Presently, the Voyager 1 space probe is approaching the heliopause, where solar winds give way to interstellar winds. 3. The U.S. 4.
Apocalypse not (?) by Judith Curry Predictions of global famine and the end of oil in the 1970s proved just as wrong as end-of-the-world forecasts from millennialist priests. Yet there is no sign that experts are becoming more cautious about apocalyptic promises. Matt Ridley has penned yet another provocative article, which is published in Wired. Over the five decades since the success of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 and the four decades since the success of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth in 1972, prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine. So far all of these specters have turned out to be exaggerated. The classic apocalypse has four horsemen, and our modern version follows that pattern, with the four riders being chemicals (DDT, CFCs, acid rain), diseases (bird flu, swine flu, SARS, AIDS, Ebola, mad cow disease), people (population, famine), and resources (oil, metals). Read the article for extensive discussion of these historical examples. Like this: Like Loading...
Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse Event Date: 18-20 July 2012 Hotel Solstrand Solstrandveien 200, Postboks 54, 5201 Os, Norway Modernism, Christianity, and Apocalypse A conference organised by the Department of Foreign Languages at the University of Bergen, Norway; funded by the Bergen Research Foundation through the ‘Modernism and Christianity’ research project. The modernist imperative ‘Make it new!’ The modernist crisis is often depicted as emerging ‘after’ disenchantment and secularisation. The complexities and ambiguities involved in such historical transactions are obvious: and interdisciplinary insights are essential in mapping them. Introduction to the conference by Dr Erik Tonning (Bergen) download Introductory poetry reading by Kevin Ireland download Paul S. Professor Hans Ottomeyer (Former Director of the German Historical Museum) – The Reason of Nature. Professor Marjorie Perloff (Stanford University) – “To Change Your Life”: Wittgenstein on ChristianityAUDIO HERE Professor C. Professor Gregory Maertz (St. download