"Important"

One of the themes of this blog is to demonstrate by way of example the benefit (I would say neccesity) of univariate, uniform skepticism. We as humans find it difficult to inject skepticism and critical thought into discussions that contain a subject that we have an emotional connection with.

Thus, the vast majority of what we see and read appeals to our emotions in the attempt to "drop our shields" and attempt to influence what we deem as "important".

This leads to some truly silly conclusions...discussions of behavior given a celebrity's laviciousness, a paramilitary response to state budget cuts (government should be trusted like any other entity you barely know), etc.

The point being that in the collisions between passion and reason, passion wins.

So we should all take some deep breaths before simply assuming a nuclear winter, or that aftershocks in Japan herald the awakening of GODZILLA! From his slumber and represent his measured steps to the mainland, for the media has simply played on our ignorance and posited an extremely unlikely but awful outcome in our minds, and we are locked onto this emotional target like the movie Top Gun...or a Chinese Naval demonstration.