We couldn’t have asked for a more spectacular way to mark the end of a decade in Asia – the annular solar eclipse on December 26 and according to experts, the next time this will occur in our part of the world will be in 2063 and given I won’t be able to wait that long, I didn’t want to miss it.

It’s kind of an eerie moment right before the eclipse. Everything gets bathed in a muted, golden glow as the moon covers the sun’s centre, and then you see a ring appear around the moon, formed by the sun’s visible outer edges. (Thank you Jason Chan of Bananamana Films for the photo).

It brought me back to October 24, 1995, when I witnessed the total solar eclipse in Angkor Wat, except that in Cambodia, the event was filled with superstition and ceremony whereas in Singapore, it was more about the science and facts, less about the beliefs and myths.

Which brings me to the good news of 2019 – the world is actually in far better shape than the media (social or otherwise) would have us believe. This is according to the book, “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think”, a continuation of the Rosling family’s efforts to “fight devastating ignorance”.

Hans Rosling started the Gapminder Foundation in 2005, thinking he could do this with facts, and if you’ve seen his TED talks, he brought to life data with “beautiful animated bubble charts” that was meant to educate people about the reality of the world – that things are better than we think in terms of global health and poverty. He even swallowed a sword at the end of his talks to prove a point.

However, all the tricks he threw into his act didn’t work – and the book, “based on years of trying to teach a fact-based worldview and listening to how people misinterpret the facts even when they are right there in front of them”, is his latest attempt to address the problem.

Described by Bill Gates as “an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world”, the book argues that it’s the way our brains work that’s the problem and so it teaches us to practise “factfulness”.

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