Embarrasingly sexist comment of the evening.

If more anthropologists were as attractive as that lady on Bones then I might have stayed in the field. Also, in the defense of anthropologists everywhere, in my experience they are not socially retarded super-nerds like the ones on the show. In fact, anthropologists are a friendly beer-drinking sort of people who are among the most well adjusted folks whose occupation ends in "-ologist."
Also, this is what my lack of money and late-arriving Netflix has wrought: I watching Bones...which is not a good show.

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Live Earth

I just got home from the mountains and turned on the TV to see some of the Live Earth stuff on NBC. Actually some not-bad performances. In order to claim a truly global concert, they had a band of researchers from Antarctica (they call themselves Nunatak). And the thing is, they were good. Get them in a studio, mix the sound a little better than can be expected from the South Pole, and I would buy that CD. Better than Genesis or Madonna anyway.
I'm just excited for the soon-to-be-big South Pole Sound. Pretty soon hipsters and art school graduates are going to move to the South Pole and a bunch of bars that serve PBR will open up and all the locals will have to move when rent starts to get too high.

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I have a theory

On this fine May Day (happy International Workers Day everyone! all power to the Supreme Soviet!) I'd like to share something with each and every one of you. It's something very close to my heart. It’s my Special Theory of We’re-Fucked Relativity. It can be expressed in the equation: F=ac², where F is the amount that we are fucked, a is the amount of messed-up shit done by assholes, and c is the rate of social change that we cannot control (globalization, what!). Basically while the amount of uncontrollable social change is the same for everyone in a given society, a subjective observer may appreciate different values of how much we are fucked based on the perceived amount of assholes (a subjective category) and the perceived amount of damage those assholes can do to shit.

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Maybe your name should be Bonzo and his should be William

It turns out that chimpanzees (clearly allied with our dolphin enemies) are the products of more evolution than humans. The sinister simmians have departed more on the genetic level from our most recent common ancestor than we have. In a sort of diagonal sense humans are the missing link in chimp evolution. Soon they will overrun our cities claiming their darwinian birth right by virtue of the savage law of the forrests we once shared. I for one am buying bananas and tire swings to use as a diversion.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Put a human and a chimpanzee side by side, and it seems obvious which lineage has changed the most since the two diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Such apparent physical differences, along with human speech, language and brainpower, have led many people to believe that natural selection has acted in a positive manner on more genes in humans than in chimps. But new research at the University of Michigan challenges that human-centered view.

"We often think that we're unique and superior to other species, so there must be a lot of Darwinian selection behind our origin," said Jianzhi (George) Zhang, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "However, we found that more genes have undergone positive selection in chimpanzee evolution than in human evolution."

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Damned Dirty Apes

It has begun.
Chimpanzees in Sengal have been seen fashioning spears in order to hunt other primates.
Charleton Heston, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

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Breaking the World

I remember that when I was a kid fish was always Orange Roughy. Restaurants featured it, the super market always had it, the cooking shows always used it. A delightful fish. Not too fishy tasting, light, firm, delicious. I don't see it much anymore. We still import a shit load in the States, but there's just not as much as there used to be.

Apparently by 2050, we will have eaten all the fish.

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of
the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the
rate of decline is accelerating.

...

Steve Palumbi from Stanford University in California, one of the other scientists on the project, added: "Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood."

...

In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield.

Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are not bringing the world's fleets bigger returns - in fact, the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003.

That really freaks me out.

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