{"id":21365,"date":"2010-01-14T21:21:49","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T02:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=21365"},"modified":"2010-01-14T23:07:52","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T04:07:52","slug":"eclipse-overnight-tonight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/eclipse-overnight-tonight\/","title":{"rendered":"Eclipse overnight tonight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reminder to readers, there is an eclipse of the Sun overnight tonight, at 2:11 am EST and 7:11 am GMT. Here is an early article<\/a><\/strong> on the events of this week, and here is a more recent one<\/a><\/strong>, both from our subscriber series.<\/p>\n

There was once a media theorist named Marshall McLuhan. He explained the propagation of the electronic media as an extension of the human nervous system. What would have been a newspaper article 50 or 60 years ago is now a constant flow of imagery, description and data. Many people would have never heard about what happened; now we follow events from minute to minute. In a sense we are getting a refined version of the pain in an extremely concentrated form.<\/p>\n

That makes a catastrophe such as we are seeing in Haiti a very different kind of event for those who are witnessing it from afar. This will have a variety of effects: many will indulge a fascination with horror; we are also getting a look at life on the other side of the tracks.<\/p>\n

I’m watching a live feed by NBC News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams, and Carey Sanders, on MSNBC. They are describing how there is absolutely no infrastructure, no command post, no communication center, not even a control tower. There is no functioning government. Contrast this with the way we are getting the news, through a highly organized, structured network, yet one which feeds us this imagery. It is two worlds intersecting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of my hobbies is listening to a scanner. I’m in a rural part of the country, and even here, the E-911 system can get an ambulance to someone’s house in a matter of minutes, with the paramedics being informed of details of the situation while they are on the way. They are being cared for in the first moments after arrival; even before, as 911 operators can coach in first aid. We take this for granted. We simply expect society to be there. And as a result we are highly dependent on that structure around us.<\/p>\n

At the moment in Haiti, no hospitals are functioning; the government has no vehicles to deal with problems; roads are destroyed; people are watching their loved ones die.<\/p>\n

So now for the question: what do we do with this? What is the purpose of our knowing about this? Is there one, or is this just what our extended nervous systems are picking up?<\/p>\n

I really wonder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reminder to readers, there is an eclipse of the Sun overnight tonight, at 2:11 am EST and 7:11 am GMT. Here is an early article on the events of this week, and here is a more recent one, both from our subscriber series. There was once a media theorist named Marshall McLuhan. He explained the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}