Taken at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.  The snout houses electrosensory organs, allowing it to navigate muddy waters.  And you can even see its guts…

Is (anthropogenic) global warming real? On one hand, there’s an obvious answer. On the other, the question can never be answered. I’m a confusing asshole? Sure. My point remains. As far as scientists, or “the literature” is concerned, global warming is real as fuck. Some scenarios call for a doomsday by 2050, others give us quite a while longer before we feel the brunt of the change. BUT, there really is no disputing the fact that the world is getting warmer. If you want, go ahead and check every published peer-reviewed article on the subject. There is not one that disagrees. Global temperature is rising. If you disagree, you are either a stubborn, closed-minded fuck or an ignorant fuck. Either way, you are a fuck, and I will not waste time discussing the issue with you, in the same way I’m through debating the evidence for evolution with creationist fucks. I hate fucks. A lot.

Sorry for the rant. So, global warming is real (the obvious answer). On the other hand, the question can never be truly answered, because there is no “control” world identical to our in every respect except without humans. A fundamental rule of science is the good ol’ “no control, no conclusion”, and with good reason. As real as global warming seems (is), people may not actually be causing it. There is every reason to believe we are, and if you look at historical warmings and coolings, this warming is happening at a rate much, MUCH faster than ever before. But we can never know for sure. Scientists get paid to question basic truths, just in case they are not true. At some point in time, it was self evident that the world was flat and had a little sun orbiting around it, and some god schmuck put every animal on earth just the way he wanted them to be. Everything is fair game to be questioned, and you will never hear me get mad at scientists who question whether humans are actually causing climate change. This is not the point. This rant is titled “On science and policy”, so lets get to the policy aspect, eh?

Why are governments not taking meaningful action against climate change? What the fuck is wrong with them? The excuse always comes back to the jury supposedly still being out on the climate change issue. Because scientists cannot prove global warming is real (and never can, as I said before), many politicunts are simply calling for more research before committing to action against climate change. This is fucked, and wrong. Policy should always be based on the BEST AVAILABLE knowledge at the time, not absolute truths, as these can never exist. This is why new laws are still being made - because our knowledge of the world is changing. We do not know for sure what the root causes of poverty, crime, violence, or addictions are. But we do have policies to deal with these issues, and these policies are based on the best data we have. As more data comes in, we change our policies if necessary. Sometimes, we feel rehabilitation of criminals is the best bet, and other times we try a deterrent/punishment system. These are not based on fact, they are based on assumptions of human nature. And our best available climate data (in fact, all our fucking data) says that global warming is a real threat. So it should be policy to combat it. No fucking around. The excuses are bullshit. And really, if global warming somehow turns out to be fake, whats the worst possible consequence from trying to reduce our emissions? Conservation of a precious, limited resource? What a fucking terrible outcome.

If the profanity above offends you, too fucking bad. I care a lot about this issue, and will speak my mind accordingly. Fuck you. (And thanks to GFK’s sick enviro-hardcore for fueling this rant)

This is, at the moment, a place-holder post because I’m too tired to do the topic justice at the moment. But Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in producing “An Inconvenient Truth,” (he shared the credit with the UN IPCC scientists who did the digging). For better or for worse, this is a big deal, and it has the potential for big ramifications.

I’ll get my thoughts up here on it eventually, but in the mean time, I’m curious to know what everyone else feels about the subject (meaning this will get precisely zero responses, I’m sure).

(The discussions page has some good stuff in it, along with my opinions, as promised. Chime in!)

What? So the other morning at about 6:00 AM, in a sleep-deprived, over-worked haze fueled by both stimulants and depressants, I got to thinking about design. Design, and fighter jets. (It was a rough night)

Why fighter jets? Despite the nasty business that causes them to be, fighter jets are still literally awesome expressions of design. They are the purest visible examples of embodied performance, their forms honed solely by the forces of aerodynamic necessity. This is engineering without constraints, especially none of the incredibly arbitrary restrictions that limit, say, Formula 1, often pointed to as the pinnacle of design engineering. And on a purely aesthetic level, it always amazes me how beautiful and “right” their lines look, despite - or because of - their functional role.

Now I’m sure if we’d invested the $62 billion spent on the new F-22 Raptor’s budget solving all the world’s problems there would be countless examples of awe-inspiringly beautiful design produced as a result. But that’s never going to happen, so I figure I might as well try to derive some aesthetic satisfaction from the result while I go on consciously hating it with my left brain.

Love them or hate them, you have to give major credit to Radiohead for the distribution model they’ve chosen for their newest album, In Rainbows. Plenty of sites have been allowing you to buy downloadable music in one form or another, but with the ease of file-sharing, I’ve only ever indulged in using eMusic once (when given a big bonus incentive) as a way to download especially obscure music. It’s always struck me as a little bit dumb paying $10 for an album on iTunes to get the music in a proprietary format with none of the liner notes and artwork. Radiohead, however, have taken that digital distribution model one step further - not only is there no middle-man (not even you, Apple), there’s no fixed price. You go to their website, get what you want, and pay what you can. Even nothing.

The beauty of the situation is, when people feel like they’re being treated well, more often than not they’ll return the favour. Overwhelmingly, people are still paying, even given the choice not to - on the first day, the album sold 1.2M copies at an average price of £4. That’s a handy $10M straight into their pocket - they’d have needed to sell 10 times that many albums at a regular price to make that kind of profit if they’d signed with a label. And that figure says nothing of the 700,000 orders for their deluxe discbox (which comes with a CD, 2 vinyls, and a bunch of art, lyrics, and extras). That one sells for £40 - more than $50M!

I paid £2, plus a £0.45 download fee. $5 for a new album, which downloaded in less than a minute, works for me. The album’s not their greatest, but whatever. It’s the thought that counts. And the supreme satisfaction of fucking the recording industry even harder as it continues its slow, Hindenburg-like descent into irrelevance.

…Maybe not the greatest analogy, though. Zeppelins look like they might be coming back, after all.

I read this in the library, and got scolded by a fat bitch for laughing out loud:

NEW DELHI – A senior government official died Sunday after falling from a balcony during an attack by wild monkeys at his home in the Indian capital, media reported.

New Delhi Deputy Mayor S.S. Bajwa was rushed to a hospital after the attack by the gang of Rhesus macaques, but quickly succumbed to head injuries sustained in his fall, the Press Trust of India news agency and The Times of India reported.

Many government buildings, temples and residential neighbourhoods in New Delhi are overrun by Rhesus macaques, which scare passers-by and occasionally bite or snatch food from unsuspecting visitors.

Last year, the Delhi High Court reprimanded city authorities for failing to stop the animals from terrifying residents and asked them to find a permanent solution to the monkey menace.

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts – encouraging them to frequent public places.

Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs – a larger and fiercer kind of monkey – to scare or catch the macaques, but the problem persists. (From the AP)