Selfie Awareness

I think it’s safe to assume that cancer exists. Mary 1st of England (better known as Bloody Mary), didn’t have the luxury of knowing. The phantom pregnancy that consumed her was thought of as just that, until the very end. She probably could have done with some cancer awareness herself, for all the good it would have done her.

Of course modern campaigns aren't really about getting the knowledge out that the disease exists. They’re about helping people to talk about it and in doing so finding out about diagnosis, treatment, and symptoms. A person who shaves their head for a cancer charity is in some small way mirroring the all-too noticeable sacrifice someone battling with cancer has to make every day.

And now we come to no-make up selfies. The most useless thing to happen to cancer awareness since weekly horoscopes . First and foremost, it’s a campaign aimed exclusively at women, despite the fact that the disease also affects men.  

While it’s true that male sufferers of breast cancer are certainly in the minority, this makes it even more important to make men aware that they can actually get it. Pink ribbons and female-focused campaigns further perpetuate the myth that it’s a women's only disease. Meanwhile, about 400 men in the UK will be diagnosed this year.  Hell, I only know men can get it because of Fight-Club.

But I’m afraid that my mad irk with something seemingly so sincere goes further. It’s an irk similar to another: with those who compulsively pray.

Prayer is something you resort to when all your worldly powers to change things have been exhausted. When seeing someone clinging to a cliff-edge for dear life, your first instinct should not be to clap those clammy palms together and have a word with the good Lord. No, first you’d try to help the poor bugger up.

Sure, take your makeup off. Try and get a nice camera angle and some good lighting. Prepare to be inundated with friends telling you how gorgeous you look. And then rush to put the makeup back on, since you are going out later and need to be fabulous.

While you’re at it, try and figure out how much you spend on make-up every month. Got it? Take that figure, and instead of spending it, give it to a cancer charity. Do the race for life (IN BLACK). Volunteer to help those in need.

Just don’t pretend that perpetuating your own narcissism has ANYTHING to do with cancer awareness. You're posting on Facebook, so you hardly need an excuse for it anyway.


(EDIT): Some people are actually donating money with their selfies. Kudos to those who have. I'd still ask why the selfie part even needs to be there... but if it's to a good cause, what the hey.

A Splitting Headache

 

 Source:  steelturman.typepad.com

I think even as a child I had a fondness for nuclear energy. Looking back, I blame the Simpsons for most of my support. I suppose that tropes such as the three-eyed fish, and that wickedly fluorescent uranium, were supposed to put me off the whole idea, but I couldn’t help but want a twelve-eyed dog that glowed in the dark.

As I grew into a teenager, my opinions began to mature (slightly). I discovered a Nuclear Disarmament patch in a dusty American thrift shop, and promptly convinced my mother to buy it and and sew it on to my newly acquired denim jacket. I spent the next few years trying to convince people that I honestly wasn’t trying to look all ‘New Age’, and genuinely thought nuclear weapons were a nasty idea. Even then I think my idea of what was ‘New Age’ was a little bit past its protest-by date.

However, a tolerance of nuclear power remained. I still firmly believe that a country can justify enriching uranium without wishing to lob the stuff across state borders. My sympathies would go out to Iran, provided they didn’t start official events by chanting “Death to America”.

The fact that we are grappling with the challenge of a carbon-free future only raises the stakes. I say grappling the challenge, but at best we are lightly tickling it. Boffins suggest that as early as 2015 we could be experiencing blackouts due to power shortages. Nuclear power could fill the gap.

The alternative is a reliance on renewables. Unfortunately we are not Iceland, who receive over 50 percent of their energy from geothermals, so this means wind-turbines. While they make wonderful modern art installations, anyone who has driven past one can tell you that they do look rather static most of the time.

Or we could use less power. Speaking as a person who turns into a gibbering lunatic whenever the lights get left on overnight, I can relate to this. But in reality there is only so far this can take us. Hospitals, schools, and research facilities all require an increasing amount of power to keep their employees entertained, and I doubt we are willing to go back to treating various ailments with copious amounts of leeches and praying.

Having said that, there will always be the eternal ‘if’ with nuclear power. The plant can be made to the highest of standards, the employees can be trained with Spartan discipline, and the whole system will still only be one honest mistake away from irradiating hundreds of miles of pristine (but slightly devalued) countryside, and killing thousands of unfortunate homeowners. Anyone who takes this scenario lightly deserves a long night in a skip full of used nappies.

The only response I could offer is that if we’re scared of this kind of scenario with nuclear power, we better stop reading New Scientist for a while. Genetic manipulation, Fusion, Artificial Intelligence, all are technologies that can lead us in a very dark direction if we make mistakes or use them irresponsibly.

The first farmers probably thought a doomsday scenario of a bad harvest. I’m sure glad they took the leap. Fukushima was over 40 years old and was hit by an earthquake. Followed by a tsunami. We can’t live in fear forever.