Over the weekend I finished Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon. One of his stories "The Omega Glory" was a little unsettling for me as I am about to teach an earth science unit with the 7th grade where we look at possible earth shattering disasters. They are very much aware of the significance now attached to Dec.21, 2012, and what some would like us to believe is a prophesy of doom. We watched the movie "2012" last week to start the unit. Chabon's story/essay expresses his hope that we are not losing 'belief or interest in the Future'. When I teach the unit I give my opinion that the Mayan's saw 12/21/12 as the end of a calendar, and the overwhelming majority of Mayan scholars do not see this as a prediction of the end of the world. If there is a consensus on a Mayan prediction, it is that there will be a "New Age". I kind of picture what we used to back in the 60's call the "Age of Aquarius". I actually thought we had already had that back in the 60's and then "The Age of Disco" took over. Anyway ...
I do try to give the students facts about the fragility of our planet, though. There are some scientific theories (fact is a very hard word to use in science) that indicate we are approaching the peak of teh 11 year cycle of solar activity in 2012 and that the magnetic fields of the sun and earth will be lined up in a way that they haven't been before during this peak. The equinoxes (not the Dec. 21 solstice) is supposed to be the time when this solar activity might have its most profound effect on us in terms of communication and power disruptions. Unless your life is dependent on your GPS or cell phone or having electricity when this event happens you probably will survive. I have a hard time thinking of when my life is dependent on these things. Our power went off Sunday for 12 hours. I had to take a shower with a bucket of water I keep handy for when the power goes off and use candles to finish reading Chabon's book, but otherwise my life was pretty much the same. Disruption of water supply for a couple of weeks could have severe effects. The fear mongering folks who talk about the lining up of the planets seem to be wrong. Check out the website "Solar System Live" at http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar/action?sys=-Sf and move the date to 12/21/12 and you'll see the planets are not lined up as much as they are at other times. There are also conflicting theories about if the earth is in more danger as the solar system drifts to the center of the galaxy or pops above the galaxy and is subjected to more cosmic radiation. We discuss all kinds of earth ending disasters from our galaxy exploding to extinction of phytoplankton. Chabon's article had me worryiong that I was taking away hope for a future from these kids. This is certainly not my goal. The goal is our planet is fragile and we need to take care of it and use our minds and scientific methods to think about preserving it and eventually (thousands of years from now) leave it. But we need to start planning for that now and we need new young scientists.
Chabon felt this 10,000 year clock (as do the designers of the clock - The Long Now Organization http://longnow.org/clock/ ) would cause people to think slowly, critically, and creatively about a very distant future and instil a hope in what that future will be. If you saw my plans from yesterday's blog, I have a week at the end of the semester on "Visions of the Future". Often these lesson gets bumped because of previous content I didn't cover. This year I'll make seeing the future a priority - and we'll think about what the world will be like when the Long Now Clock stops.
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