MAY 17, 2010 - How Does the Sun Affect the Earth? is new wine in an old wineskin. Think "As Above, So Below" meets coronal mass ejection; or how an old astrological teaching finds an expression in a flare from the local star. Everybody knows it's preposterous that a cosmic body millions of miles away can't possibly affect life here on Earth, right? I mean, that's why everybody knows that astrology is poppycock, right? Scream that out at your HD-TV next week, when the reception gets scrambled thanks to a zombie satellite that got fried by a solar flare. (Think LOST goes Lost In Space.) Or stick around a few months to see whether there really is a connection between a solar minimum and hurricane season. While you're at it, keep an eye on the electric power grid and the oil pipeline infrastructure, and get ready to replace (or at least reboot) your smartphone, your computer, etc. (Not that there's likely to be a network to support these devices, which in any event won't work once their batteries run down since there won't be a grid to recharge them.) That's the bad news. The good news: the worst case scenarios rarely pile on all at once. Rarely.
