Angry Rant #40: Someone's all shaken up...

I had a conversation with someone close to me a few days ago that really got me thinking. It was about the recent earthquake in Christchurch which happened a couple of days ago, in fact it was two small 4.5 and 5 magnitude quakes. The conversation was pretty minimal, but the words that were used by that person were these ones "...something's happening."

Read it again. Something's happening.

OH SHIT!

Actually, what happened was an earthquake in a part of the world that always has earthquakes. Continental and Oceanic plates caress each other until one has had enough and punches the other brutally in the face. This is what happened when the big one hit Christchurch in February and it happened with the Japanese Quake and Tsunami, with Haiti, with Chile or anywhere else on this planet where people live in these hot zones, and someone now thinks we're all going to die because the extreme natural disasters keep on occurring.

Just in this month of June alone, there has been 53 recorded earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 and up. That's 14 single earthquakes just this week and 954 earthquakes since the start of this year.

Years gone by, it has been exactly the same.

So, "something's happening" is it? Is it? What is it?

The sky...

Under out feet isn't solid mass - currents of molten rock continually move and spin causing the relatively thin tectonic plates to shift and volcanoes to unleash their rage - that's what happened with Mt Vesuvius and with Krakatoa and they went crazy hundreds of fucking years ago and killed everyone.

So what's changed significantly enough for someone to say that "something's happening"? Two things:

1. Population growth
2. A mainstream media that feeds off fear.
3. Christian Extremists/2012 bullshit

Now of course, the end of the world hasn't just been predicted by these two groups, but every other religious group on this planet that is hellbent on seeing it be destroyed.  When I talk about mainstream media, I'm sure that if there was a camera crew and some wanker that looked like Peter Overton present when Mt Vesuvius blew it's face off, no doubt that they would use it to spread fear and anxiety and churn out "End of the World" nonsense faster than you can say 'money'.

I also couldn't help but notice the slight religious connotation that the "...something's happening" line had. So are you trying to say that God is behind it? Is he going to punish us for all our sins? I guess it's tough to argue with someone who believes that Noah built an ark and recused two of every animal...

Ha! Two of every animal....

Don't believe the lies and spin.
JM

Angry Rant #25: It's pronounced "Nu-cle-ar"

Looks like the Pacific Plate's been having a bit of a party in recent months.

And everyone's invited.

Most recently is the earthquake/tsunami combo that's hit Japan's east coast pretty hard. I'm not all for guess-tamations, but to say that at least 12,000 people would have died would be pretty accurate. That's 12,000 from the earthquake and the tsunami alone - compared to the 1 death that was caused by one of the nuclear power plants exploding.

Where were you this time buddy?

But it seems that the nuclear angle is the ONLY angle when it comes to Japan - never mind the thousands of people trapped under 10m of mud and water from the 9.1 magnitude earthquake - we should all be scared of the impending nuclear meltdown in Japan.

...because shit will hit this puppy.

The push by the media to create this fear-mongering has allowed a bunch of anti-nuclear protesters to grab this story by the nuts as a massive 'I told you so'.

"I told you maaaan. Nuclear ain't the way to go!!!" - Conservative hippy

I did some calculations on the numbers I mentioned earlier, and I've come to the conclusion that the earthquake/tsunami combo is far more life-threatening than any nuclear outbreak by a factor of about...

12,000 to 1

So when I hear about the supposed trajectory of these radioactive clouds, and fires, and stories of "Modern-day Samurais", I  try to think why our good ol' buddies in the media are doing this for.

 And then it hit me...

Pictured from Right to Left: Douchebags. 

It seems to me that the media is treating every crisis like an episode of the Jersey Shore - that being it's the same repetitive stuff over and over again until they find something that they can flesh out for three episodes. So if there's a new angle then they'll latch on it faster than Donkey did with Shrek. Then of course is all the advertising and marketing organisations who are trying to get a piece of the action.

Of course this entirely my opinion, and for me, the media has cried wolf one too many times.

Don't believe the lies and spin.