From Last Chance to See, by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, excerpt at The Digital Village:
Here Be Chickens - Part 1Dragons
The first animal we went to look for, three years later, was the Komodo dragon lizard. This was an animal, like most of the animals we were going to see, about which I knew very little. What little I did know was hard to like.
They are man-eaters. That is not so bad in itself. Lions and tigers are man-eaters, and though we may be intensely wary of them and treat them with respectful fear we nevertheless have an instinctive admiration for them. We don't actually like to be eaten by them, but we don't resent the very idea. The reason, probably, is that we are mammals and so are they. There's a kind of unreconstructed species prejudice at work: a lion is one of us but a lizard is not. And neither, for that matter is a fish, which is why we have such an unholy terror of sharks.
You can order both the book and a cd-rom set containing "the entire text of Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine's book, over 700 colour photographs, Douglas Adams reading the book, and lots more" from the Douglas Adams site, if you'd like to know more.
Related -- Granta: 'Worried? Us?' by Bill McKibben:
For fifteen years now, some small percentage of the world’s scientists and diplomats and activists has inhabited one of those strange dreams where the dreamer desperately needs to warn someone about something bad and imminent; but somehow, no matter how hard he shouts, the other person in the dream—standing smiling, perhaps, with his back to an oncoming train—can’t hear him. This group, this small percentage, knows that the world is about to change more profoundly than at any time in the history of human civilization. And yet, so far, all they have achieved is to add another line to the long list of human problems—people think about ‘global warming’ in the way they think about ‘violence on television’ or ‘growing trade deficits’, as a marginal concern to them, if a concern at all. Enlightened governments make smallish noises and negotiate smallish treaties; enlightened people look down on America for its blind piggishness. Hardly anyone, however, has fear in their guts.[. . .] Fifteen years ago, it was a hypothesis. Those of us who were convinced that the earth was warming fast were a small minority. Science was sceptical, but set to work with rigour. Between 1988 and 1995, scientists drilled deep into glaciers, took core samples from lake bottoms, counted tree rings, and, most importantly, refined elaborate computer models of the atmosphere. By 1995, the almost impossibly contentious world of science had seen enough. The world’s most distinguished atmospheric chemists, physicists and climatologists, who had organized themselves into a large collective called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made their pronouncement: ‘The balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.’ In the eight years since, science has continued to further confirm and deepen these fears, while the planet itself has decided, as it were, to peer-review their work with a succession of ominously hot years (1998 was the hottest ever, with 2002 trailing by only a few hundredths of a degree).
Bonus round: Climate Change and Wildfire Severity in California, from Environmental Energy Technologies Division News.
Update: Sorry, from that first link in the above sentence, for those of you who aren't into that whole clicking of links thang (in which case, why the hell are you reading blogs?):
Climate is one of the main determinants of wildfire regime. By warming and drying vegetation, and by stirring the winds that spread fires, global warming and associated climate change have the potential to increase the severity and extent of wildfires. Researchers applying predictions of general circulation models (GCMs) have consistently found that climate change will lead to increases in the frequency of weather conditions associated with high wildfire hazard and to corresponding changes in weather-related indices of potential fire intensity and rate of spread (Figure 2), increases in fire ignitions, and a lengthened fire season.
Not that I'm driving at anything.
Ahhh. Good point.
I keep remarking that the ashen rainfall and orange skies tinged with black clouds of soot are reminiscent of Armageddon.
People just nod and say, "yeah."
But at least we have funny firemen:
"If we lose, we will see you at the beach in about three days," said Battalion Chief Anthony C. Marrone Jr. of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
Can we play the star wars pants game with the matrix?
Oh yes please. "If you're killed in the pants, you die here?"
Jason, yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger. . . and you give me my pants.
"Kiss me like you kiss pants."
"Welcome. . . to the desert of the pants."
See, I would have said...
"Welcome...to the pants of the real."
"There is no pants."
Why, oh, why didn't I pick the blue pants?
"You never truly know a person until you've pantsed them."
"Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize that there's a difference between knowing the pants and walking the pants."
"It's them."
"The pants."
"Should we engage them?"
"Yes. They are still only pants."
I know I'm doubling up, but I love this, game."
"Morpheus, not everyone has the same pants as you."
"Thankfully, my pants don't require them to."
(I think this is a paraphrase but I still like it.)
"I'm sorry. I was in my own little pants."
"The body cannot live without the pants."
"Apropos, she entered the Matrix to save your pants at the cost of her own."
"It's like wiping your ass with pants."
[moved from another entry -- The Mgt.
"Captain Niobe of the Logos will answer the Councillor's pants."
"Stop trying to pants me and pants me!"
I like using 'pants' as a verb.
"It was a disaster. No one would accept the pants.
Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect pants, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery
and suffering."
"I just keep wondering if Morpheus is so sure, why doesn't he take him to see the pants?"
"The pants are everywhere. They are all around us. Even now in this very room. You can see them when you look out your window. Or when you turn on your television. You can feel them when you go to work. When you go to Church. When you pay your taxes.
It is the pants that have been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."
"I don't even see pants. I just see blonde, brunette, redhead..."
"As long as pants exist, the human race will never be free."
"I'm going to show them a world....without pants. A world without rules and controls. Without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible."
"Yes. I know. I'm the pantsmaker. I've been waiting for you."
"I don't remember you ever bringing me pants."
"What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge pants?" "No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to."
"Mr. Anderson, you have a problem with pants. You feel the rules do not apply to you."
"Inside the pants, they are everyone, and they are no one."
"Everyone please observe...that the fasten seat belt and no smoking signs have been turned on! Sit back and enjoy your pants!"
"You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound....of your pants."
"Morpheus believes in you, Neo. And no one, not you, not even me can convince him otherwise. He believes it so blindly, that he's going to sacrifice his pants to save yours."
"He told me I wasn't really looking for pants. I was looking for an answer."
"Sentient programs. They can move in and out of any pants still hardwired to their system."
"Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison....for your pants."
"There's a building. Inside this building there's a level where no elevator can go, and no stair can reach. This level is filled with doors. These doors lead to many places, hidden places, but one door is special. One door leads to the Pants."
I am so *dead* over here.
Thanks guys for making me laugh!
"Follow the white pants."
"I'm so tired of his pants. Pompous prick."
"She wasn't kissing your pants, my love."
"Take off your pants."
I liked Switch. . .
"One pair of pants for every man, woman and child in Zion."