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Polar Bears
Aug. 15th, 2006 10:31 am
I was talking this morning to Rob about how my latest literary foray has got me thinking about global warming & the continuing effects thereof... (it's 'Spiritwalker' by Hank Wesselman) Anyway, the story may be hard to believe, but the writer is an anthropologist, & his statistics were correct for 1995. Around that time, an iceberg the size of Rhode Island had broken off of Antarctica. Rhode Island may not be a very big state, but that's a big-ass iceberg. Rob said something about wondering how many polar bears were on said iceberg & we had an argument about whether or not polar bears live in Antarctica & eat penguins.
I was right - polar Bears live in the Arctic Circle, up north of us a ways, not the Antarctic; and penguins & bears have never even seen one another, except for maybe in zoos or something like that. This leads to my stupid trivia for the day. Polar bears' outer coats are actually translucent, but the density makes their coats appear white. The hollow hairs absorb ultraviolet light and render the bears invisible to infrared - all except their breath and muzzles. So, if one were to craft a cloak of polar bear fur, one could be invisible to infrared. Pretty fucking cool if ya ask me.
I'm going to be so paranoid by the time December rolls around - between reading this book & absorbing all the alarming factoids about the rate of the sea rising as the polar ice caps melt, how the ocean's salinity levels play a large part in currents and our weather, the spread of tropical diseases & AIDS/HIV... and then I'm going to be taking Environmental Science this semester on top of it.
Got into an argument last night w/a woman at work over the bomb found at Hoover Dam. She said, "Well, if there wasn't a real danger, it wouldn't be on the television!" To be truthful, no one really knows what is going on with this so-called war - all we see is what the media wants us to see. Where does the media's best interests lie? With Big Business, mostly run by politicians. Every time one of these bomb scares or threats are announced, everyone gets a little more frightened. Everyone wants to believe that the government will protect them and keep them safe - and meanwhile, we lose our civil liberties, one by one. It won't be martial law overnight, but in the course of the next two or three years, it's going to become closer to martial law. Right now we at least have freedom of speech, and they haven't totally suspended our right to a fair trial, but we may not be able to hold on to that much longer. I just hope the next president in line starts trying to reverse things instead of stepping up the threat level.
I was right - polar Bears live in the Arctic Circle, up north of us a ways, not the Antarctic; and penguins & bears have never even seen one another, except for maybe in zoos or something like that. This leads to my stupid trivia for the day. Polar bears' outer coats are actually translucent, but the density makes their coats appear white. The hollow hairs absorb ultraviolet light and render the bears invisible to infrared - all except their breath and muzzles. So, if one were to craft a cloak of polar bear fur, one could be invisible to infrared. Pretty fucking cool if ya ask me.
I'm going to be so paranoid by the time December rolls around - between reading this book & absorbing all the alarming factoids about the rate of the sea rising as the polar ice caps melt, how the ocean's salinity levels play a large part in currents and our weather, the spread of tropical diseases & AIDS/HIV... and then I'm going to be taking Environmental Science this semester on top of it.
Got into an argument last night w/a woman at work over the bomb found at Hoover Dam. She said, "Well, if there wasn't a real danger, it wouldn't be on the television!" To be truthful, no one really knows what is going on with this so-called war - all we see is what the media wants us to see. Where does the media's best interests lie? With Big Business, mostly run by politicians. Every time one of these bomb scares or threats are announced, everyone gets a little more frightened. Everyone wants to believe that the government will protect them and keep them safe - and meanwhile, we lose our civil liberties, one by one. It won't be martial law overnight, but in the course of the next two or three years, it's going to become closer to martial law. Right now we at least have freedom of speech, and they haven't totally suspended our right to a fair trial, but we may not be able to hold on to that much longer. I just hope the next president in line starts trying to reverse things instead of stepping up the threat level.
