ecology

People suck, and that's my contention. We're a virus with shoes.

—comedian Bill Hicks

I actually like quite a lot of people, but there's much to recommend Hicks' notion that people are viruses with shoes. It's a fact that well over 40% of the human DNA chain is viral in origin, as Michael Specter writes in a fascinating New Yorker article, "Darwin's Surprise":

Climate change is causing the sea to rise far faster than expected, potentially a meter or more by 2100. Perhaps that doesn't seem so dire to you. Perhaps you read that sentence and think: "Pity; there go some beaches and beach-front real estate." Maybe you think: "You know, I've always liked the ocean more than New York City anyway..."

In July of 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did something unprecedented in its history: It lowered its official estimated value of an "average American life", from $8.04 million to $7.22 million.

Why?

Mostly because the EPA performs a cost-benefit analysis when evaluating and creating policy and regulation. To do this, they have to agree on the value of a human life and weigh that value against the cost of regulation. The less a life is worth, the less statistical need exists for regulation.

Biofuels have been hyped as the answer to global warming, as "fuel for the revolution," and as a way to prevent the predicted catastrophe of "peak oil collapse." They've also been blamed for driving up food prices and contributing to global warming (in some instances, at a greater level than traditional fossil-based fuels).

The darling has become dastardly, at least judging by recent media coverage.

Mention blimps or dirigibles to people and you'll normally get a bemused reaction: Oh, what an oddball topic! They rarely react as if airships or airship technology exists outside the distant past or whimsical present. But a new class of modern airships -- part plane, part dirigible -- might change that.

In the 1930s and 40s, passengers routinely flew via airship from Berlin to Rio De Janiero, crossing the span in just under three days. But following the spectacular Hindenburg disaster (a disaster some believe was the result of sabotage), and with the advent of jet engine technology, the popularity of airship travel plummeted.

A few years ago, a friend showed me a book called Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. He handed it to me and asked if I noticed anything unusual about the book itself. I didn't; it looked and felt like a high-end art book, with impressively white paper stock and some weight to it.

Last week on the Colbert Report, a guy named Dean Kamen demonstrated a water purifying machine that promises, he says, to provide clean, drinkable water, at low cost, and from virtually any liquid source.

"Puddles!" he said; "The ocean!" he said.

"Doritos!" exclaimed Colbert, before dumping some extreme-flavored Doritos into the machine. The segment didn't last long enough to find out if the chips would indeed yield clean drinkable water.