The last man will call Barrow his home.

Just real quick. For no other reason than that it occurred to me.

Alaska (Aleut Alaxsxaq) was the first place inhabited by humans in North America. (My mentor in college, the eminent geneticist and anthropologist Dr. Stephen Zegura did work on the genetics and dental morphology of the first Americans, the tribes that crossed the Bering ice bridge to Alaska from Russia.) And Alaska, if global worming becomes catastrophic, will be the last place inhabited by humans in North America. The inland highlands of the North Slope in the last days of human dominion will be a pretty pleasant climate. Too bad that just means that we're all fucked. If it gets that bad, then the last humans on the North American continent will live very much as the first ones did. But with warmer oceans.

Read more

Just disgusting.

Today the Republicans filibustered Democratic measures in the U.S. Senate that would have 1) restored habeas corpus protections to enemy combatants (I remind you that American citizens can be unilaterally declared enemy combatants and imprisoned without access to courts to challenge that imprisonment--you just go to jail indefinitely on the President's say so, nothing else, it's literally what we fought the Revolution against); and 2) the amendment to the appropriations bill introduced by Senator Webb of Virginia (who I think may be the baddest ass in these United States, no joke) that would merely require that active duty soldiers get a day of rest at home in between tours for every day spent in Iraq. Wouldn't limit the duration or number of tours, just ensure that soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines can't be sent home from a long tour only to be called back to Baghdad in a couple of months for another year in that god-forsaken quagmire. You know, God forbid we let them see their kids (or parents) once in a while.
The Republicans didn't defeat these measures, they didn't even let them come for a vote. They would have lost a vote, so they stalled and filibustered. Because the health of our troops and the sanctity of our laws are of no importance to the Republican Party. They are un-American, they are a cancer on the Republic, and they make me sick. Literally. Just disgusting. I'll be writing my Senator before the day is out. Probably won't do anything. my Republican Senator, Wayne Allard, is literally one of the worst Senators out there. I don't mean that I disagree with him politically, though I do very much on this issue, but that he is bad at his job. He can't even bring home pork, or get his name on a major piece of legislation. He is bad at Senating, and this is just one more example of that.

Read more

Guess Who's Right

I'm beginning to think that the Paris Hilton schadenfreude may have gotten out of hand. I mean, yeah, she's one of the worst people in world (I'm serious about that too, Hannah Arendt taught us that true evil is banal and not spectacular) but while throwing her in jail is what would happen to anyone else that doesn't change the fact that it is still unjust. We toss folks in the slammer entriely to casually in this country and doing it to a truly loathsome person doesn't make it any more just.

Also, as much as I hate Paris Hilton for a number of admittedly silly reasons I can't help but notice that a lot of dudes are getting misogynistic in their criticism, and that's unacceptable. Hate Paris Hilton, not women. And finally, I think the whole thing has gotten out of hand because O.J. Simpson has come out as a voice of reason. Yeah, I know, we're through the looking glass on this one.
Quoth the Juice:

"When Paris Hilton was going to jail last week, more people knew about that than knew that we were sending people into space that day," Simpson said in a phone interview from Miami. "It has replaced what is real news. There was always a place for it, but it was [gossip writer] Rona Barrett. Now it is the equivalent of Edward R. Murrow reporting it today.
...
"It is about time that the news media point out that they are not doing their job," he said about why he agreed to the interview. "Things have changed a lot from my trial until today. It is all about ratings, unfortunately.

"When I was growing up, to watch guys like Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley, I didn't know what they thought of the news," he added. "Legitimate news people are giving their opinions. It is hard to tell the difference between legitimate news people and Nancy Grace and Bill O'Reilly."

So there you have it. O.J. Simpson: more level headed and thoughtful than the news media.

Read more

Things that are unacceptable

I'm not going to really talk about this because I don't have anything constructve to say and it fills me with rage and shame and neither of those things are conducive to quality thinking on any subject. All I'm going to do is write a sentence with links to two things in that sentence, and then you can follow those links and figure it out for yourself. My only commentary is in the form of a disclaimer: No historical analogies are to be taken literally, I'm not calling anybody anything specific, I just think that we should think about the road we've apparently chosen to go down. Anyway, here you go:

We are doing this, and we are doing it here. I'm honest-to-God sick to my stomach right now.

Read more

The Virtues Of Being Number One End At The Number Two.

There's a difference between "hegemon" and "unipolar super power." Athen's was the former (by virtue of the Delian League) before Sparta toppled it, Rome was the latter before it was toppled. In the last 60 years, the US has acted as both. You will, however, note the common verb in the two descriptions. [Hint: I'm not talking about "was."]

Read more

Apparently 30% of Americans (and 100% of public officials) are affected

If you have this problem...Please, for your family's sake, get help.

Ask your doctor today.

Read more

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.

Read more

It's begun...

Every asshole out there telling you that "Islamofascists" are an existential threat to Civilization is a douchebag. And here's why. These same folks ignore things that are real and true existential threats (as opposed to a a few hundred goat fuckers with a hard-on for the Middle Ages--which actually describes the religious right pretty well, too) like the following, extremely momentous event (from the Independent):

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

It's gone, motherfuckers, gone. That island isn't coming back, and dozens more are next.
The delta where that island was located is one of the most heavily populated parts of the globe, along with the deltas of the Nile, Amazon, and Mississippi (and we know what happened a couple years ago to the biggest city on the Mississippi Delta). It was a holy place, a magical place, one of the great centers of human achievement and culture, just like those other river deltas. It's begun, gentle readers, it's begun and I'm sore afraid that we might not be able to stop it. And if the loss of a single Indian island doesn't affect you, doesn't drive it home, then I direct your attention to one of the smaller, least geographically significant, estuaries in the world that could be equally swamped sometime in this new century, the locus where the Hudson River flows into New York Harbor. So if you fret that hordes of swarthy foreigners are a force to be dreaded above all others then I direct your benighted eyes and ears to the old saying: We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Read more

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.

Read more

History of Oil.

While I'm posting video, please enjoy the comedy and critical history stylings of Robert Newman in his History of Oil. It's both hilarious and informative. Also, I'll bet you didn't know that shit about the start of WWI.
I came across it a few months ago and recently had reason to remember it.

Read more