My laptop computer is driving me crazy.

It’s like it has been invaded by those evil clowns you see in television commercials. You know, the ones with white faces, fiery red lips, wicked red smiles and tufts of curly red or blue hair framing a bald head.

They sneak about in the shadows, concocting new ways to make life difficult. They work quietly and efficiently, grinning mischievously while driving you whacko.

They are not just in my laptop. They’ve also invaded my cell phone and my iPad.

Most people call clowns Bozos. I call the ones in my computer equipment Spam.

Spam, in the form of dishonest text messages, emails and telephone calls, is increasing. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says that last year it received fraud and cybercrime reports totalling $530 million in victim losses. That was almost a 40-per-cent increase from the previous year.

Those figures don’t actually reflect the full extent of spam fraud because the centre says most people don’t report spamming that is minor or just annoying.

There really is no defence against email and text spam, or the spam phone calls that come at any time of day or night. You can’t stop them. If you do find ways, the spammers come up with ways around them.

I now have roughly 500 blocked spam addresses on my cell phone. However, once a spammer discovers the block he changes the address slightly and starts again.

Some of spam is not just annoying, it’s downright dangerous. It can contain malicious links or attachments that infect your system with malware or viruses.

The purpose of most scams is to get at your information and use it to get money from you.

We put our email and text addresses up for sale or trade when we accept the privacy policies of services or websites that we visit. Those policies are long, painful reads that often include your agreement to your information being passed on to others. Who reads them when you simply are trying to find something simple on a company website?   

Email addresses are worth money to scammers. They buy them in bulk to add to their mailing lists. A simple push of a button sends spam out to tens of thousands of innocent people and just one sucker falling for the scam makes it all worthwhile.  

Phishing – pretending to be a legitimate major retailer or service – has become a favourite way for scammers to trick consumers. 

Scammers copy a company logo and use it in a phony email. The message might say you have a $45 credit from a recent purchase. Click a link, fill in your credit card or bank info and the $45 will be deposited for you.

Retail giant Walmart has become the most imitated company.  Its brand name was used in 16 percent of all phishing schemes globally during the first quarter of this year, says a study by Check Point Research, a California-based cyber threat intelligence company. That’s an increase from 13 percent in the last quarter of 2022. 

Other top companies imitated by scammers are the delivery company DHL, Linkedin and Netflix. I’ve also blocked phishing schemes from Lowes building supplies, Costco Best Buy and a variety of pharmaceutical companies.

Scammers also hack the accounts of people you know then send you fake messages that appear to be from someone you trust.

Basically we are alone when it comes to fighting these cyber crimes. If you report a phishing attack or other email fraud to police you’ll likely be told to call the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre  by telephone at 1-888-495-8501.

When you call that outfit someone will take down your information and say thank you. The centre simply collects information on fraud and identity theft and compiles details of past and current scams to pass on to the general public. 

There’s little direct action any government agency can take. We are all on our own on this one. The best any of us can do is be very watchful and cautious, don’t open anything that looks the least bit suspicious and if a company wants something from you, give them a call or go into one of their stores.

Scenes of utter devastation from Maui, Hawaii, the Yellowknife, N.W.T. and B.C. wildfire evacuations, plus the Halifax flash flooding bring to mind a single word: Apocalypse.

We are living a real life apocalypse as fires, floods and drought bring destruction and death. Record wildfires in North America, killing heatwaves in India, Pakistan and Australia, typhoons in Asia and record-breaking rainfall in the U.K. and parts of Europe confirm today’s apocalypse as a global event.

Elon Musk, the business magnate baptised Anglican but now claiming no religious affiliation, issued an apocalypse warming last year, predicting the end of mankind.

Apocalypses are common in Biblical texts and usually refer to an intense confrontation with God in which destruction of evil and the end of time bring divine justice and the visibility of God’s rule.

I prefer to understand apocalypse as a revelation, which is the true meaning of the Greek word apokálypsis from which the English word is derived.

Apocalypses are devastating events but they reveal how our lives can be better by changing the lifestyles that brought about the apocalypse in the first place.

Surely no intelligent person doubts that global warming is causing the damaging weather events we are witnessing. And, there can be no doubt that human lifestyles are major contributors to climate change.

We are beginning to accept that our ways of living must be changed if we are to avoid what Musk calls the end of mankind.

Many governments are committed to reducing climate changing emissions to zero by 2050. They are investing in renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels, reducing environment damaging items such as plastics and promoting more ways of green living.

But governments are cumbersome and slow. They are incapable of reducing global warming on their own. They need a committed partnership with business to effectively change policies and practices. Businesses exist to make money, however, and changes will hit corporation bottom lines.

Collective action is needed and will be achieved only when individuals become deeply committed. That requires individuals to make better choices about where they get their energy, what foods they eat, what items they buy and how they travel.

More than that, individuals need to pressure governments and businesses to change policies and practices. Governments need individuals to vote for them and businesses cannot survive without customers so individuals can be a powerful force in making change happen.

Will individuals take today’s climate apocalypse as a revelation that we must make major changes to the way we live? That’s questionable.

Think about how filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola warned us back in 1979 about the futility and absurdity of war. His brilliant Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now portrays war’s damaging psychological effects on humans and how it indulges the darkest, ugliest parts of human nature.

Yet here we are more than half a century later with Encyclopedia Britannica posting an article on the eight deadliest wars in the still young 21st century: The Second Congo War. Syrian Civil War, Darfur Conflict, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, The War Against Boko Haram, Yemeni Civil War, Russia-Ukraine War.

Those are just the eight deadliest of the 32 conflicts now ranging in various parts of the world.

Whether we learn enough and make the changes needed to stop the current fire-flood-drought apocalypse from destroying the plant remains to be seen.

There is hope, however.

A 2021 study of 10,000 young people 16 to 25 in 10 countries found 59 per cent said they are extremely or very worried about climate change. Most of those also said their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily lives.

Youth organizations such as Zero Hour, Earth Uprising and Climate Cardinals have been growing in recent years and are working to find solutions to global warming and climate change.

The United Nations has expressed confidence that youth will find a way to make changes that will prevent the planet’s final apocalypse.

Says a UN web page on climate actions:

“Young people are not only victims of climate change. They are also valuable contributors to climate action. They are agents of change, entrepreneurs and innovators. Whether through education, science or technology, young people are scaling up their efforts and using their skills to accelerate climate action.”

Here’s hoping!

Some good news: Despite weather disasters and war the world apparently has become a happier place.

The annual Gallup Global Emotions Report shows people around the world generally more positive in 2022 than they were a year before. More people felt well-rested, experienced enjoyment, and smiled or laughed than in 2021.

That finding is supported by the market research company Ipsos which says global happiness is six points higher than one year ago. It says 73 per cent of adults across 32 world markets describe themselves as happy.

I'm taking all that with a grain of salt, or more likely a shot of whiskey.

The happiness polls show pockets of unhappiness that are deeper and wider than the pollsters realize.

Gallup, an analytics and advisory company, has reported steadily rising negative feelings since 2006 when it reported a negative experience of index of 23. The index rose steadily to a record 33 in 2021 and remains there.

  Gallup also found that 41 per cent of people last year experienced worry while 32 per cent said they experienced daily pain.But this year’s increase in global happiness is driven by a few unlikely areas. Latin America, notably Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Columbia, has seen a remarkable year-over-year happiness increase. Western counties are showing decreases with the number of Canadians feeling happy down six per cent in the last year.

In 2012 Canada was listed as the world’s fourth happiest country. Last year we were rated 15th happiest.

The reasons why Canadian happiness has fallen so far should be fairly obvious. Ask anyone close by you and you’ll likely hear complaints about high food prices, absurdly high housing costs, increasing crime and violence and a feeling that governments have made little progress in solving those issues.

Unhappy feelings will continue until political leaders start tracking the wellbeing of their citizens. The standard political game now is to smile into the cameras, and talk about statistics on inflation, Gross Domestic Product, unemployment and other statistical trends. 

They should spend less time tracking statistical dumps and more time face to face with the people they are elected to serve. Listening to people and tracking their wellbeing will get governments a lot more insight into solutions than will bare statistics.

Jon Clifton, the CEO of Gallup, has said that the job of leaders is not to make people feel happy.

“The role of leaders should be to reduce misery,” he says. “And the problem in the world today is that misery is rising.

“Measuring how people feel must be a priority of world leaders if we are going to reverse this global rise of misery.”

Good thoughts but governments alone cannot improve our lives or our sense of well-being. 

Canadians have assumed that governments can effectively provide everything people need, from protection of rights to preventing violence to maintaining a strong economy.

We should no longer assume that. Few of us are even aware of what the issues are or how our governments are approaching them.  We’re information lightweights.

People today view important issues in video-clip form. We are too busy to gather and absorb details that make a complete story. We form opinions with little information.

Perhaps we just get tired of hearing problems. Global warming is killing us. The health care system is failing us. The grocery company czars are fleecing us. 

The news often is so depressing that we turn to the lighter stuff. 

A stunning example of how we look away from important happenings and give more attention to lightweight matters was shown recently by London, England’s Guardian newspaper.

The Guardian reported that a Google news search found that the news media ran more than 10,000 stories this year about Phillip Schofield, the British television celebrity who resigned over an affair with a young colleague. Another Google search recorded a global total of only five news stories about a scientific study showing the likelihood of major world crop losses caused by climate change are being dangerously underestimated.

Giving less importance to the real world in favour of celebrity gossip won’t help to find solutions to the serious problems facing the world.

We all have to get better informed.