David Morrison is Kryptonite for the world's conspiracy craziness

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/15/177519/a-scientific-bulwark-against-doomsday.html

Posted on Saturday, December 15, 2012

A scientific bulwark against doomsday hysteria

By PAUL ROGERS | San Jose Mercury News

Swirling with lunacy and paranoia, the theories warn of mayhem and cataclysm. They fill books and websites, inspiring hand-wringing among gullible people. The claim: The world is ending on Friday, the final chapter in an ancient Mayan prophecy carved into stone calendars thousands of years ago.

The stories are a jumble, based on everything from New Age mysticism to biblical "end times." In some accounts, a giant secret planet is about to slam into Earth, or a solar storm will wipe out the human race. None has any basis in fact, scientists say, but a poll this summer found 12 percent of Americans are worried. Some teenagers have even talked of suicide.

As Dec. 21, 2012, draws near, however, the U.S. government has a secret weapon to hold back the tidal wave of misinformation and pseudoscientific quackery: a bespectacled 72-year-old scientist, often clad in a rumpled cardigan, sitting in a two-story office building off Highway 101 in Mountain View, Calif.

David Morrison is Kryptonite for the world's conspiracy craziness. A Harvard-trained astrophysicist who studied under Carl Sagan, Morrison is the senior scientist at the Astrobiology Institute at NASA Ames Research Center. He has worked on many of America's top space missions, from Mariner to Voyager to Galileo, and published more than 155 technical papers and a dozen books on astronomy.

[deutsey]

1. Here's what the Church of the Latter-Day Dude advocates:

SNIP...

The Church of the Latter-Day Dude, however, is one of the few world religions that’s not all hung up on figuring out when the End Times will happen…That sounds exhausting. What we are all about is figuring out how to live in tune with the Dude Way right now in These Here Times.

That’s why we’re encouraging Dudeists around the world to celebrate The Now Is Here Day this Friday, December 21. While the gloom-and-doomers are running around like a bunch of fucking amateur eschatologists (Google it), let’s show the world what it means to abide.

MORE...


http://dudespaper.com/the-end-is-near-lets-celebrate-the-now-is-here-instead.html/