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A small group of truckers protested high fuel prices today by doing their part to consume as much fuel as possible, driving around the White House in circles. What a bunch of imbeciles. I guess having the entire interstate highway system subsidized isn't a sufficient freebie.
What do these people think the government is supposed to do about high fuel prices? Offer a credit? Set a price ceiling? Invade Iran?
T H I S S U I J G U J M F A O B G C G B
S V O L J W M B U O U J G A W T O D Q M
O I X K Z K D J Q M I Q D D R I Y U Q Z
V I Z I H Q D Q O D R U D Y I O O U G I
O W U Z V I I Z W K X I X U Z X X I W K
X I X P I J U D Q B I J S O Q Y L J S A
Q D R L U L I P U Z X L I Z D R I O Q T
I K H D R I D I U E G M V F N H P P G H
I H T Q P E R R E O A N H Y G Q B P M Q
W B I H Q E R Y I A V P I U M D R Q O J
C D T P U D S U R K K X K D W K Y
Believe it or not, I decided to read this book not because of some interest in the environmental message it contains, but from a juvenile fascination with the premise. What would happen to the world if humanity, as Alan Weisman puts it, were to be "raptured away"? He explores a variety of aspects of this question through the book.
What would happen to your house? (It would be down to the foundations inside a century.)
What would happen to your city? (The subway tunnels would collapse, the cars would rust away to nothing, and the windows would all be reduced to sand in mere decades.)
What would happen to the 441 nuclear reactors spread around the world? (441 Chernobyls... or worse.)
What would happen to the oil refinery center known as Texas City, outside of Houston? (Firestorm unlike any seen on Earth since the last giant asteroid collision.)
What would happen to bronze statues? (Not a friggin' thing. They'll last for millions of years, easy.)
If you've read my previous post, you may notice a similar theme in this next comment. While Weisman does have a fair amount to say about the negative impacts of man on the environment (look up the term "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" for a horrifying read), the overall message is optimistic. If we leave, nature will reclaim the land and readjust very quickly.
Case in point: one of the most pristine and natural areas on the planet is one that you (or, at least I) wouldn't expect: the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. The cessation of hostilities between these two nations has left the DMZ so untouched by man that it's a naturalists dream. And that's in just over fifty years.
The book is fascinating, and doesn't descend too much into preachiness. I liked it well enough.
I recently finished reading the "Science in the Capital" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've already reviewed the first in the series, "Forty Days of Rain". It was followed by "Fifty Degrees Below" and "Sixty Days and Counting".
Unfortunately, the second and third books don't have the same sheer oomph of the first. But they're still remarkably well written. Robinson continues to impress me with his ability to put words on paper.
But, this series being what it is, and this blog being what it is, the political/scientific aspect of the series is really the meat of the review. The premise of the series is, in a nutshell, that global warming ticks up a notch, causing a flood in Washington, D. C., a terrifying cold snap in the Northern Hemisphere, and the beginnings of the melting of the Southern Polar Cap. But it doesn't read like a disaster movie, like "The Day After Tomorrow". These events occur, much like I imagine they would, by degrees, slowly piling up until, finally, the world has to respond.
In the story, everyone responds, but it is the role of the US government to collate those efforts, which actually have a nifty, just-barely-believable sci-fi quality to them. A tremendous convoy of decommissioned oil tankers dumps trillions of tons of salt into the North Atlantic to attempt to keep the critical currents there from stalling. A vaguely scary genetically engineered lichen is released into the Siberian forests, causing extraordinary draw down of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. My favorite subplot is the pumping system designed to pull water out of the ocean and spit it back up onto the Antartic plain, basically reforming the Southern Polar Cap.
This being a book written about science, from the perspective of scientists, there is a measure of humility to be seen. The salt-convoy is described as barely a pin prick in the problem, a desperate delaying action that costs billions. The lichen, on the other hand, may well be a horrible mistake, if the carbon draw down is too much. (Though, they do say that compensation is as simple as burning a few billion tires.)
All in all, there's little propagandist about the series. Robinson isn't saying, "The world is about to end! Listen and learn!" He's making the assumption that the scientific community is right, and telling a story about how it all might go. His tale is one of optimism. (Just like every other book of his I've read, incidentally.)
I guess the reason I like Robinson's work so much is that he's a writer that seems to be doing what I hope to with my career. He's got a world view (which I don't necessarily agree with) and he's writing a variety of novels in different genres to explore that view. I look forward to his next.
I was reading this story about Petraeus asking to stop troop withdrawls because of a flare up in violence in Iraq, and it got me thinking... I'll admit, this is a random thought, not anything grounded in real, analytical knowledge of military strategy. (I last won a game of Risk in the mid 80's.)
I wonder if the big terrorist organizations (AQ, et. al.) are glad that we're in Iraq. We are stirring up the Muslim world, which makes it easier for them to (a) recruit and (b) get funding. More importantly, we're less able to deploy elsewhere, particularly in Afghanistan, where the real work needs to be done.
And maybe we are running the risk of turning what was a stable (if tyrannical) secular leaning nation into a new hot bed of jihadism. Because, let's face it, we're going to pull out of Iraq someday. If we pull out today, in the midst of 5-year-old chaos, will things be better or worse than if we pull out in 2013 in the midst of ten-year-old chaos. (Yes, I know, the goal is to pull out in the midst of peace and democratic prosperity, which is the ideal case, but one which cannot be guaranteed...)
Like I said, just idle thoughts. (And probably thoughts that have been proposed, argued over, and dismissed three years ago. But they're new to me...)
I don’t know how no one thought of this before:
NZ man 'used hedgehog as weapon'
Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy.
"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane.
It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence.
The police spokesman said the suspect was arrested "for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog."
This story is about a week late to be an April Fool’s joke, and about forty years late to be a Monty Python skit, so I”m not sure what to make of it.
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