Posts Tagged ‘Staggering Pace’

Author: Nate Gillespie

Sometimes it seems that all is new in the world. New developments in science and technology roll out at a staggering pace, revolutionizing our day-to-day lives and enticing us with the promise of allowing us to boldly go where no man has gone before. (Or, at the very least, enticing us with ridiculously cool CGI effects in the new Star Trek movie.) Sometimes it seems like we’ll soon all be communicating with each other only via Twitter.

But then sometimes it seems like the world isn’t so new at all. This spring, for example, we have suddenly found the global shipping industry held hostage by pirates. Yes, pirates. And here we thought that pirates (at least of the non-Hollywood variety) had gone the way of the dodo about 300 years ago.

More seriously, we suddenly find ourselves threatened by outbreaks of pandemic swine flu. The flu as a major public health danger, not as a mere inconvenience? This takes us back to the bad old days; an influenza outbreak in 1919 killed more people than World War I, and the epidemic diseases that spread in the wake of the Columbian Exchange wiped out as much as 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas. Let’s just hope that the swine flu panic of 2009 doesn’t prove so devastating.

The unexpected (and unwanted) return of piracy and pandemic influenza to become issues of major social concern in 2009 only reminds us, as Faulkner said, that “the past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.” The human story is a long one, its plot stretched out even farther than those of http://www.shmoop.com/intro/literature/george-eliot/middlemarch.html”” title=””Middlemarch””>Middlemarch or War and Peace. Long-forgotten characters from its early chapters (pirates!) have an odd way of turning up again at the end. Maybe pirates and pandemics are here to remind us that, Twitter notwithstanding, we all have to bear (in Hamlet’s words) “the whips and scorns of time.”

About the Author:

Shmoop is an online study guide for English Literature, Poems and American history. It’s a perfect aid for students and teachers seeking guidance with advance study, essays and writing papers. Its content is written by Ph.D. and Masters students from top universities, like Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and Yale who have also taught at the high school and college levels. It promises to make learning and writing more fun and relevant. Teachers and students should feel confident to cite Shmoop as a source in essays and papers.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Blasts From The Past