“Traveling is a fool’s paradise. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Andrew Leonard wonders if the crazies are getting crazier or if they think other are getting dumber. What got him going is, among other things, a television ad stating “We all need CO2. CO2 is not pollution. Higher CO2 will help the Earth’s ecosystems. Support more plant and animal life.” He’s wondering if our culture is losing the ability to embrace complexity.
Waiting for the big one: What’s the greatest threat to survival for human beings? Stephen Hawking suggests one of the major threats is a collision with an asteroid. He thinks that might limit intelligent life in the universe. Impacts with Earth are thought to happen about every million years or so. All of human development occurred after the last big bang-up.
The Daily Galaxy story linked provides a great overview of the issue:
As Stephen Hawking says, the general consensus is that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 kilometers in diameter that strikes the Earth will result in the complete annihilation of complex life – animals and higher plants.
England is working on plans to expand library usage so a person could borrow a book from any library. The article also mentions allowing patrons to order book on-line from other libraries, something that’s already available in Michigan. Today it is. Budget cuts might change things:
The society is developing a scheme for the future where one library card would allow the holder to borrow and return books to any public library in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Matt Siber removes the support poles of advertising signs with Photoshop and comes up with an odd image. Check it out here.
Woe to newspapers of the future. Here’s what a survey uncovered in England:
U.S. publishers planning to erect pay walls may want to take note of a new poll that found only 5% of newspaper site readers in the United Kingdom would be willing to pay for interactive content.
In a Harris Interactive Poll conducted for PaidContent:UK, researchers found that 74% of respondents simply would go to other sites if they were required to pay for access to the news they now get for free.
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