Something to Worry About Today

The enemies of Western civilisation don’t need bombs and tanks any more, cyber experts have reported. They can bring about our destruction without leaving their desks.

Cyber attack against western countries and global business firms has reached new, “alarming” levels, intelligence officials have revealed. These attacks, coming from unknown and untraceable sources, have even attempted to penetrate such highly protected targets as the UK Foreign Office. What was once a nuisance has become a new kind of warfare.  At stake are military secrets, the security of financial caches and the personal security of millions of taxpayers. Some experts have dubbed GCHQ, the British intelligence headquarters the “fourth service”, along with army, navy and air force.

Apart from the obvious danger of having classified information compromised, concentrated attacks might be able to crash the cyber networks that control air travel, banking services and telephone communications.

Chaos could be just a few keypad taps away

Something to Worry About Today

There you have it-- the Earth is rapidly warming, a new report says.

Over 1.6 billion temperature readings by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Group show a net increase of .911 degrees in the last fifty years. This will come as a blow to the most feral climate change deniers, who have been claiming the Earth isn't warming up at all. The rest will now have to get busy finding another cause for the phenomenon that doesn't involve the actions of us humans.

Nine-tenths of a degree may not sound like much, but history says otherwise.  The lowering of the global temperature by just half a degree in 1816 led to crop failures all over the world. The thermostat setting for human survival is much narrower than we think. If the anticipated raising of 3 degrees centigrade over the next century actually comes about, we're all toast.

Something to Worry About Today

Polar bears aren't just becoming extinct-- they're shrinking.

New research indicates that the iconic mammals of the ice floes are getting smaller.  So are many other species.  This bodes ill for the worsening global food supply, since crops are also shrinking. 

Scientists see this worrying trend as an outcome of global warming, in which case it can only get worse. But others say that the unusually low strength of the Earth's magnetic field is to blame. Animals which grow to great size, like the dinosaurs, seem to do so when the EMF is strong. Now the field, which shields us from harmful cosmic rays, is near an all-time low.

Pigmy animals might be the least of our worries.

Something to Worry About Today:

Your mobile phone could be killing you.

No, not just because of the possible links to brain and testicular cancers, and not even because a pretty smart phone makes you more susceptible to mugging. New research has found that a quarter of the handsets in circulation are breeding grounds for deadly bacteria such as E coli.

Lots of people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet. The hard to clean little surfaces on their mobiles, which also heat up to optimal breeding temperatures, are havens for such potential killers as MRSA.

Moral: Be careful what you put to your lips.

Something to Worry About Today:

Air miles may come at a higher cost than most frequent fliers realise, a new study has revealed. There are new concerns over the effects of solar flares on human health.

Because of  increased solar activity expected over the next two years, air travellers as well as astronauts run risks from damaging solar radiation. The sun’s 11-year cycle of stormy and calm times reaches a peak sometime in May, 2013.

Although most radiation levels affecting air passengers are within “acceptable” limits (less than an average chest x-ray), the intensity of the rays increases sharply in flights over the poles, such as long haul flights from Britain to parts of the US.

According to NASA scientists, the sun has been in a period called a “grand solar maximum”, which has lasted longer than any other in the past 9,300 years. And the report says that the “damaging space weather” is likely to get worse.

Something to Worry About Today:

            You’ve got just 15 days left to live.

            That’s in case the 89-year-old California evangelist Harold Camping has got third time lucky and correctly predicted the end of the world. After his seemingly failed prediction of global destruction on May 21^st, the biblical numerologist altered his doomsday date to October 21^st. A previous attempt to put the Apocalypse during 1994 was found wanting, due to his own admitted scriptural miscalculations.

            Of course, if you are among the faithful 3% who will be spared, you have nothing to worry about. Even if you’re not, you can celebrate the big day by attending one of the popular “rapture parties”.  Details can be found online, provided the Internet still works.