Author: Christopher (Page 18 of 29)

A passenger cruise ship hits an iceberg in Antarctic waters; all passengers and crew are safely evacuated and rescued; ship sinks. It’s a fairly straightforward news story that’s been making the news. See Stricken Antarctic ship evacuated (BBC).

I mentioned an irony bifecta. Since there were only two ironies I couldn’t call it an irony trifecta. Irony No. 1. The name of the ship was the M/S Explorer. Irony No. 2. The name of the cruise was called “Spirit of Shackleton“.

I should probably explain the irony here if you aren’t familiar with either item though most of you should be familiar with the first. Most computers run Microsoft Windows and the graphical interface used to navigate the computer is called Explorer, hence MS Explorer. And as most Windows users will attest MS Explorer crashes often enough to be familiar and frustrating.

As for the second. Ernest Shackleton was a legendary Antarctic explorer who was made famous by leading an expedition that failed. He was more famous for failing than if he’d succeeded with his original plan. His ship The Endurance (another ironic name) was caught in the pack ice, crushed and sank. The crew evacuated with three of the lifeboats; made a heroic trek across the ice, then across the ocean to Elephant Island. Shackleton then took one of the boats and made an even more heroic boat journey across 800 miles of Antarctic waters; only to land on the far side of St. Georgia Island; managed to cross the rugged icy terrain and sought rescue at the whaling station. Ernest eventually rescued the rest of the crew. No man was lost (though all the dogs had to be killed and eaten).

So, I see this post on slashdot: The Universe Damaged By Observation? Before I even read the article I was reminded of a very bad episode of Star Trek The Next Generation called Force of Nature. It was about how warp travel was wearing out the fabric of spacetime. The episode in the tradition of original Trek’s Let That Be Your Last Preachy Episode created an even more blatant beat-you-over-the-head message. ST TNG had other preachy episodes as well.

I wrote my comment and said I couldn’t find the name of the episode. Several other slashdotters came to the rescue and named the episode Force of Nature and was correctly pointed out it was a lame ass allegory for global warming.

Now here comes the interesting part. Another commenter pointed out the proponent of this idea that our observation of the Universe is shortening it’s lifespan is none other than physicist Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek. How cool is that?

What bothered me most about the article had nothing to do with it’s merits. We’ll let other physicists sort that out. It’s that such an idea would be used to stifle science as in “Things Man Was Not Meant To Know”. There’s enough people out their doing their damnedest to stifle science. Some of them hold very high office.

The ultimate green car would be a bio-diesel pluggable hybrid. It would have solar panels on the roof, trunk, and hood. It would also have a hand or bicycle generator. These latter two items are for emergency and supplemental power. And of course you’d have solar panels, a wind generator, and the grid to charge it up at home along with your own home brew bio-diesel production.

This sounds more like a fantasy vehicle out of Mad Max. “Who run Barter Town?” “Two men enter. One man leave.” If you had such a dream green vehicle when civilization collapses, the first thing that will happen is you’d be killed by roving bands of thugs who’d just take it and drive it until it ran out of fuel. Then they’d push it over a cliff or down a ravine to watch it get smashed to pieces.

I wrote about how we are all made of corn in my post Children of the Corn. Now comes the film King Corn which goes into even more detail.

Something changed in the American diet back in the 1970’s and early 80’s. I think it was the introduction of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). We now have an obesity epidemic and most likely a type II diabetes epidemic as well. The link with HFCS probably cannot be shown directly but I suspect it is a major factor. Although the hazards of smoking tobacco were well known and documented for decades the tobacco companies fought for decades with fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I’m sure that ADM and Cargill will be at the forefront of denying that corn may be a factor if not the culprit.