A Copenhagen Conundrum
This post is meant chiefly to provide some background facts, figures, and food for thought regarding the ongoing UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. While I will be providing a bit of a narrative along the way, please feel free to ignore that: the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.
Fascinating
I just ran across this picture today while procrastinating:
It never ceases to amaze me how curious life is. It takes a bunch of primates to bring together these two creatures which, in the ‘natural’ world, would never in a million years come upon one another. You’ll forgive the anthropomorphism, but I just can’t help but wonder what each was thinking. “What a curious creature!”, “Ack! Water!”, “Dinner!”, or just “Wtf?”
Hmm…
On a related note, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans.
And then watch this (which is only very tangentially related): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
I love science.
On another note, I’m in the middle of papers and final exams right now, but I’m hoping to be able to do some blogging over the holidays. We’ll see if I get around to it or if I’ll end up watching unhealthy amounts of TV or finding some new game into which to immerse myself.
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Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
- The Tiger (William Blake)
Chilvary and the Like
Ever wonder why chivalry is dead?
Hitler and Stalin rendevous over the dead body of Poland, and exchange polite remarks: “The scum of the Earth I believe?” – Hitler; “The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?” – Stalin;
Apparently, it sunk with the Titanic:
“There was one gentleman who was rather wealthy… who went back downstairs after he put his wife on the [life] boat… put on his tuxedo…went back upstairs and smoked… with the idea that if I am going die, I may as well die as a gentleman and well-dressed.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7843154.stm
Well, that’s one way to remove yourself from the gene pool. But really, it goes to a bit more of a fundamental issue. I’d write about it, but instead, I’ll point you to this article that I read a long time ago:
I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.
http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
Its a very good analysis of the subject of chivalry, culture, manliness, and evolution. 
Read it.
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Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.
- Mark Twain
