Your everyday life and 2012 doomsday

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17essay.html

Topic:
Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012

Author:
Dennis Overbye

When everyone is talking about 2012, worrying that 2012 will be the end of human, we do need some opinion from authorities and experts. Based on this background, Mr.Overbye summarized the relevant information from NASA and CERN, interviewed some scientists, and explain the possible disasters which have been presented in the movie 2012.

I really like the author use a little humor to relate this science news to everyday life. If the end of human isn’t in 2012, we still need to “keep up those mortgage payments”. What a “bad” news!

But this article seems a little lack of logic order or sense. The story keeps jumping from what the experts says to the background then to the Mayans, which make it a little confusing. The better structure may follow this order: news lead, background (including Mayans legend), NASA and CERN opinion, and expert opinion.

In terms of the design and structure of this website, the section “related Searches “gives the links to NASA and CERN. Moreover, a lot of keywords such as “climate change”, ”sun”, ”earth” are linked to the relevant New York Times websites. All these links are very helpful and convenient for readers.

This is Hyperlink, the magic of online news.

For example，the article mentioned that “announcements by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in the form of several Web site postings and a video posted on YouTube”, I clicked the “video posted on YouTube”, then I got this video(although it seems like not in YouTube but VIMEO).

The Truth about 2012 from NASA Lunar Science Institute on Vimeo.

Want to know more? Click here to read some interesting opinions and reactions about 2012:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=5301284&page=3

Do you know earthquake happeds everyday?

Source:

http://earthquakes-today.info/2010/09/2012-disaster-scenarios-what-are-the-terrible-events-we-must-prepare-to-survive/

Topic:
2012 Disaster Scenarios? What Are The Terrible Events We Must Prepare To Survive?

Author:
Earth




This blogger who named Earth gives the readers a vision of nine most possible terrible events which may bring the Doomsday.

In this article, unlike serious but boring hard news, the author doesn’t use official statistics and quotes to illustrate and convince the readers. Instead, he/she just uses the humour and less-formal tongue to show nine possible cataclysmic events that may result in the end of human. But by doing so, I can still notice the professional geography knowledge of the blogger behind this interesting piece. Looking through his/her blog, I find the whole blog generally focus on the environmental issues and especially on the geography phenomenon like earthquakes.

Since the blog was born as a popular tool to show personal experiences and opinions. While the blogosphere has been developed, there has been increased specialization. Many bloggers start to use blogs to show their professional knowledge and provide useful information to the public, just like this blogger Earth. Today, when we Google some questions, we may probably find the answers from some blogs instead of traditional websites.

When reading this blog I am not just interest in the articles. The blogger also shares a very interesting website plug-in script with the readers, the USGS earthquake monitor. Using this plug-in script we can easily get to know the most recent terrible earthquake globally, and we can easily get its code and put it on our own blog.

If you care about the global earthquake as well, you can get the USGS earthquake monitor here and put it on your blog.