Random: July 2006 Archives

Or we're all totally screwed.

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

I had the displeasure of a very strange encounter in the BART station this morning.

First of all, I used to try to walk up the stairs in BART. Now that I'm in my 8th month of pregnancy, two very long flights of stairs is pretty daunting. So I take the escalator, but because I'm 1) still trying to get SOME exercise and 2) usually in a hurry, I walk up the escalator steps when I do so. Seems normal, right? Well...

As I was getting off BART in the city and walking towards the escalator, a man came up alongside me who seemed 1) in a hurry and 2) grouchy (he was muttering to himself under his breath, but not in a crazy way), so I instinctively let him get onto the escalator ahead of me. He was a heavyset black man with dreadlocks wearing jogging pants and a sweatshirt — seemed fairly normal.

Big mistake.

You know how you're supposed to stand on the right side of the escalator and walk on the left? This fellow stepped onto the left side and stopped dead in his tracks. Since the right side was full of people, I had no way to get around him.

So I said politely, "Excuse me, can I get by you?"

Now, lots of people stand on the left (even though they shouldn't) because they just don't know the rules. If you ask to get by them, 99 times out of 100, they'll oblige.

Not this guy. He started arguing with me instead! "Well, you should have taken the stairs if you wanted to walk up!"

I said in a louder, somewhat-less-polite-I'm-sure voice, "Excuse me, I'm pregnant. Can I please get by you?"

He still didn't move, but somebody else did, so I walked around him and up. Meanwhile, grouchy guy is talking louder. "You should have thought about it before you got on the escalator. Why didn't you take the stairs!??!"

"None of your business!" I yelled back and kept walking. He kept grumbling something I thankfully couldn't hear by that point.

When I got to the top, I yelled again, "What a gentleman!" (Sadly, or perhaps luckily, I didn't add, "I bet you really charm all the ladies with that attitude!")

I know I shouldn't let that stuff get to me, and most people are really nice about me being pregnant, but that, added to the large number of seated people who pretend I'm not there when I get onto a crowded train, really makes me think about how hostile our culture can be pregnant women.

Wait until I have a screaming child! Then the fun will really begin!

Ah, another one of those "on the one hand, thousands of scientists say global warming is happening now, on the other hand, this handful of crackpots say it's not!" news stories we all love so much...

How's this for the most lame-ass argument ever?

O'Brien criticized colleagues who he thinks are too quick to link short-term and long-term weather. He recalled that in 1988, "we had a big Midwest heat wave ... which (NASA scientist) Jim Hansen told the U.S. Senate was due to global warming." Instead, O'Brien said, the heat wave was caused by high sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.

Likewise, he said, during another recent heat wave, "they said that many people died in Chicago due to this global warming. In fact, it was due to old, poor people not being advised about (how to survive) the heat wave."

Erm... last I heard, global warming could cause surface temperatures of the seas to rise. And — am I understanding this right? Is he saying that if old poor people had gotten better advice, the heat wave wouldn't have happened? He's not saying anything about the cause of the heat wave! He is employing a straw man to avoid actually saying anything with facts in it.

When Florida sinks beneath the ocean waves, I'm gonna laugh so hard. At least in the 20 minutes before the Bay Area does the same thing.

Oh, and Chronicle? "Scientists split on heat wave cause" implies that half of the scientists think one thing, and half think something else. When you split something, it tends to be in half. Down the middle. This is NOT a 50-50 split. Only lame-asses like this joker from Florida are still making a case against global warming, and they're not making a very good one.

Spam received today:

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You had me at "penis coal with relevant saturate Jewish test tube".

This remix of hapless Senator Ted Stevens explaining that the Internet "Is A Series of TUBES!" cracked me up. And I'd just found out that you can make your own ringtones with iTunes and put them on your Treo 650.

So I did it!* And now whenever my phone rings, instead of the normal boooring tones, I will hear "{screech} — it's a series of TUBES!... {screech} — it's a series of TUBES!" I will be the envy of all my peers. Or they'll just think I'm really weird. Yeah, the latter is more likely.



*For those who care: I took the original remix song, opened it in iTunes, picked a small section of it to use as the ringtone, set the starting and ending points (which you can do in File -> Get Info -> Options), went into advanced preferences, changed the settings so songs are now imported as WAV files (must remember to change it back!) and converted a copy of the song. Then I uploaded it to a website, and then loaded it onto my phone by going to the file location with my phone's browser. It gave me the option of saving the file into "Sounds", and now it's a ringtone I can choose from the menu. And it actually took longer to write about it than it took to do it.

The other night we went to watch fireworks in Moraga. The fireworks were part of an all-day Fourth-of-July family festival organized by the town. According to their website, the headlining entertainment in the park there that day was a group called "Larry Lynch and the Mob." (No, I didn't get to hear them — we watched the fireworks from a nearby shopping mall parking lot.)

Today I was walking to BART. A church on the corner of Telegraph and 41st had a banner up advertising a special event featuring a travelling preacher whose nickname is "the One-Armed Bandit."

And I believe I've already mentioned the email I got from a maternity clothing company advertising their "Maternity Blowout Sale."

Yeeeeeeeesh....

"Putin says kissing boy's stomach was like stroking a cat", from the London Times.

Wah?

There's a guy a few blocks away in front of one of the big buildings in downtown San Francisco. You can hear him hundreds of yards away yelling what at first sounds like, "Ay-eh-eh — uh-FAH!" over and over and over and over and over and over. He has a very flat and annoying voice. He's actually apparently saying, "ABM UNFAIR!" but I had to peek at the sign he was carrying to figure that out.

Guys? You might want to find a better voice for your pickets? Otherwise, your point is being lost (and after listening to him for an hour, I'm beginning to feel strangely sympathetic towards ABM, whoever they are.)