Don’t Panic

The famous tagline from the Douglas Adams’ fiction series is good advice.

I felt it coming on Friday evening, those old sinus allergy symptoms. Not enough to kill normal activities, but enough to make me marginally miserable. The last tomato plant in the garden expired today; all the fruit was wilting or burst while still green. My neighbors cavorted in too little clothing, but I stayed inside to avoid them. Instead, I wore too much clothing because I went to visit a regular organized church. I’m such a prude!

In other words, life goes on.

Did you notice how the flooding in the Missouri River Basin is no longer in the news? It’s still roaring down the valley, but because the likelihood of a nuke plant making a mess has receded, it no longer seems to matter the flood waters have not receded. Indeed, the prediction now is they will start to ease back on the water releases by the end of this month.

There are no more fresh maps plotting the wind drift from Fukushima. The radioactive particle are still spewing into the atmosphere and the winds still blow this way, but it’s just not news any more. And while there was a massive oil spill off the coast of mainland China this past week, it barely made a ripple. But I’ve not seen a single follow-up on the way the Gulf Oil Disaster has affected the Gulf Stream.

Instead, our heat wave here in the Heartland is now making the panic news circuit, as if it really means anything. Yes, it will reduce our crops this year in Oklahoma. My poor tomatoes… But this is hardly a record year. As recently as 1986, if I recall, we have some 50 days above 100°F. We are about half-way there, so far this year. It’s not shocking to us, just annoying.

What annoys me more is all the attention the alternative news folks give to something, then it simply drops off the radar when a new panic arises. It’s like children under age 5, and you can’t give them more than three instructions at once, or they’ll forget the last one. There are only so many panics that can be covered by all the bloggers and aggregators before the conspiracy theorists get bogged down.

Yes, the basic theory of conspiracies is the single best historical approach. Yes, every human government is a conspiracy, a conspiracy to rule. There are real conspiracies in the world. But it seems so many of the sites getting the highest traffic from the panic crew are sites only one step above the conspiracy nuts who are such devoted fans of Alex Jones and David Icke. All these sites are chasing the same stories at the same time, and no one seems to pay much attention to what made all the noise even two weeks ago. Those disasters didn’t go away, but what seemed to fascinate everyone is now forgotten.

I used to read a lot of links from WhatReallyHappened, and sites like Activist Post, but now I just scan to see what they think are the big stories today. It’s almost the same reason I watch the local and national news on TV, just to see what they are spouting off about today. Different viewpoint, but same business model.

The world is, indeed, “mostly harmless.” And I certainly feel more alien here every day, wishing I could escape. Too bad there are no Vogons building routes through the area, or I’d hitchhike right out of here.