Two Cardboard Steps to Doom
I go from one end of the country to the other and the world goes to hell in a handbasket!
I grew up in the 80s (and maybe the 70s, I admit nothing) and lived in perpetual fear of a nuclear holocaust, and ever since I was aware of it, the Doomsday Clock was the symbol of that fear. I used to honestly think about the clock, imagining its giant hands clicking closer to midnight and the fireballs over Toronto and London and Kitchener that would mean I had to run to the basement and go into hiding until the fallout was gone.
Today, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group that sets the clock, announced that they were moving the clock two minutes closer to midnight, putting us at 11:55 — not a good place to be. I first heard this on the radio, and images from my childhood of that giant, scary clock went through my mind.
And then I saw a clip on TV at the airport of one of the scientists solemnly pulling a cloth off a stand next to the podium revealing a terrifying piece of BRISTOL BOARD with a clock on it in what appeared to be magic marker!
Gah!
Seriously, this is the Doomsday clock we’re talking about. Stephen Hawking was at the press conference to read a statement. It was a worldwide news event. The best you could come up with was CARDBOARD?
Wait a sec … does this mean there IS no clock? That there never has been one?
Apparently!
Seriously, I’m not expecting that there’s some sort of magical clock that reads the minds of scientists and sets itself accordingly or anything… all I want is an appropriately scary prop that looks like a clock! It’s not that expensive! I’m sure I could whip one up for a couple hundred bucks that would do the job! Hell … didn’t anyone have a standard kitchen wall clock they could have used? Set it to five minutes to midnight, unplug it, then put that ominous cloth over it for the ceremony. Voila!
Remember the first time you found the truth about Santa Claus? How you had this crushing disappointment because something so good and wonderful wasn’t real? This is the opposite of that.
Apparently the clock was redesigned for this “time change”.
I still think it needs to be a real clock.
http://blog.pentagram.com/archives/2007/01/new_work_bulletin_of_the_atomi.php
I don’t want to be picky, but that article states that the clock moving forward was based on ” increasing availability of nuclear weapons and the effects of climate change.” I must be misunderstanding something because I don’t see the interplay of climate change and world nuclear annihilation. Unless the real Inconvenient Truth is that under the polar ice caps are large nuclear warheads that will explode when exposed to sunlight.
I’m just saying….two different world problems.
Yeah, I saw that as well. Apparently there is supposed to be a big comma in between the two or something. It’s about Iran and North Korea killing us with bombs OR Al Gore melting the ice caps. The latter isn’t really something the atomic scientists in the world would be experts in. Still, if it could kill us, guess it should go into the equation.
Maybe it’s just that the doomsayers who nobody pays attention to anymore are looking for a way to join the “cool kids”.