random

Reverse that innocence claim

More recent DNA analysis demonstrates clearly that the Black Death was, indeed, due to Y. pestis and its associated flea/rat vectors. Ah, well. Sorry, black rat.

Mage Wisdom

My favorite quote of the week (er, last week) courtesy of John Michael Greer:

Thus we’ve arrived as a society, and at a very late stage in the game, at the same point that classical philosophy reached after the execution of Socrates, when it became uncomfortably clear that having a small minority of people passionately interested in asking and answering the right questions was no guarantee against catastrophic levels of collective stupidity.

I think he may be a medievalist...castastrophic levels of collective stupidity. Such prose!

The Men in White Coats Are Not Coming For Me After All

Today my biology professor lectured - with a straight face - about global warming and the nearness of depleted oil resources. In our lifetime, he said, oil would be so expensive it would be unthinkable to use it for something so inefficient as transportation. It was incredibly gratifying.

Did the mostly freshman students comprehend or believe? Doubtful, for the most part, I think. Regardless, it's refreshing to know that I'm not insane, after all, along with all the rest of the peak oil community. Now if only the rest of the world would listen to all these students graduating from universities...

I think I know how the Christians felt when the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan.