The end is near.

This piece about Michael Taussig, in the current issue of The New Yorker, caught my eye today. (I read an article by Taussig on the Rwandan genocide once, and then I could not sleep for a month.)

It is about Taussig's graduate seminar at Columbia that is all about the apocalypse. (The official title is: Preemptive Apocalyptic Thought: The Angel of History Reconsidered in Light of Climate Change, the War on Terror, and Financial Meltdown.) It sounds lovely, doesn't it. It also meets on Mondays at 8:00 a.m. (no, just kidding. I made that part up.)

When asked why he decided to teach a class on the apocalypse, Taussig said that "now seemed like a good time." ((Oh. That is disconcerting.)) Topics for the seminar include: "Glenn Beck, an R.V. that can go two thousand miles without stopping for gas, Walter Benjamin, 9/11, Las Vegas, and apocalyptic Yiddish poetry..." The article also reports: "Some students confessed that after a while the material had started scaring them. One developed insomnia." (( That sounds familiar. ))

I like Eddie Izzard's version of apocalypse better. It has more animals.