True Tales from the Underbelly

Harper's Weekly, it's just a column. "Just" a column. Check it out. Hang on to your hat.

True Tales from the Underbelly Halliburton: Your tax dollars at work!

George sez "Strip malls for everybody! If a crack develops in the integrity of another culture, American greed will be ready to fill it."

More and more every day, people are flocking to cities. The implications of this are huge. Go ahead, use your imagination: what do you think might change as this comes to pass? Among other things, short-term natural disasters like earthquakes or storms will have greater impact when they hit cities. Long-term natural disasters like droughts or El Nino may have greater impact too: both development of arable land, and the flight of rural populations to cities will leave us with a less flexible agricultural infrastructure, less able to adapt to change (like, say, long- and short-term climate change).

And that's to say nothing of this. What then?

Irony: not for children

Here's irony for ya: Mainstreaming 'creation science' is evolution at work. Or more specifically, "In the long run, the teaching of 'creation science' to children will produce evidence of evolution."*

It's not newsworthy. Stories like this (Kansas Board of Education is having a hearing about including creationism/excluding science in the curriculum...) and the story about the girl in Florida who got cold feet on the day of her wedding (and then lied about it, telling cops she had been kidnapped...) are not newsworthy. We have instantaneous access to information from all corners of the world, every second of every day, and this is what we're told is news?

Hey, major media, listen: Fuck you.

We're expected to believe that nothing newsworthy is going on anywhere else in the world? We're expected to be that self-indulgent, that self-involved, that we would be more interested in whether or not some normal girl gets prosecuted at the local or state level for ditching her finace? Is that really our business? Why are we being told that it's news?

Because the rest of the world is reporting on things like this, or this, or -god forbid- this, and your handlers don't want you to get upset. You are theirs, their prey, as long as you watch.


*Here's how: The world is watching. The appearance of poor education in America will lead to waning confidence in Americans. Simple.

Agape

Amazing ants. This goes beyond simple "tool use."

Primate language acquisition research goes to a new level. This is exciting stuff- the days of trying to teach apes to speak English are gone: these researchers are trying to find common ground with Bonobos, while providing the Bonobos with innovative challenges and stimuli. What happens when we can no longer pretend that we're the only animals with emotions, culture, and complex motivations? Our awareness of the world, our consciousness, will be irrevocably altered. You watch!

Hippos are aggressive. They've been known to eat people. This one drinks coffee with them. I've read this story over and over, and I'm still slack-jawed: she drinks coffee, and nudges people out of the water. Amazing.