Word: kutner
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...When you're ill, you don't necessarily get the kind of human contact we do in our daily lives," says end-of-life-care physician Dr. Jean Kutner, who was the lead author of the study. "Most of the touch you receive is related to procedures, such as getting chemo or having blood drawn...
...That's why I like Rob Kutner. Kutner is a staff writer for The Daily Show, surely one of the most important jobs in fake journalism. He's just written a book called Apocalypse How: Turn the End-Times into the Best of Times. While most creative works about Armageddon (The Day After Tomorrow, Omega Man, The Road) tend to be bummers, heavier on cannibalism than comedy, Kutner's book is a lighthearted romp that looks on the bright side of the end of the world. Yes, it's a shame that a Christian Rapture could teleport all the godly...
...Kutner might not appear to be taking the apocalypse seriously - this is, after all, a man whose day job at The Daily Show involves reading depressing news and transforming it into "poop jokes." (Hear Kutner ponder the apocalypse on this week's Greencast.) But though the book is inspired comedy, Kutner says the theme came from his own preoccupation with the possible end of the world. He has a "go bag" - a collection of items needed in case of an emergency evacuation - and he calls himself and his wife "apoca-nerds." He looks around the landscape of American popular culture...
...Which brings us back to the environment, the bummer indicator to end all bummer indicators. If nuclear annihilation was the apocalyptic mainstay through the decades of the Cold War, the eco-apocalypse has clearly taken its place. In some ways, the "Al Gore Scare Machine," as Kutner puts it, is more of the same. Like nuclear war - or like the more fantastical possibilities that Kutner imagines, such as a robot uprising or an unleashed super-plague - global warming will be an apocalypse of our own making. End times stories are tales of sin punished, and climate change is no different...
...what we need is positivity. A low-carbon world will bring benefits that go well beyond simple survival, and that's a message that needs to be heard. But if it really is that bad and the end of the world is nigh - well, at least we'll have Kutner's book to help us meet the annihilation with a smile...