Can you find the hidden code in the picture?
I know, it is a bit tough at first so let me give you a clue: Look about the a third of the way down.
Ah, once you know where to look its pretty glaring.
At this point I guess I’ve pretty much given you my opinion of the book. Still a little elucidation may help move things along. Let me first say I’ve got no problem with the religious stuff. Sure some folks are saying this particular tome is inspiring many people to completely rethink their notions of Jesus. Which is good, a little introspection coupled with legit research generally helps one grow. Personally, I don’t care if Jesus was married, had kids, was gay or a Martian, it just isn’t going to impact my personal philosophy one iota. So now we’ve established that I’m not bashing the book because it upsets the status quo. Nope, I’m bashing the book because the book sucks. The characters are shallow and one-dimensional, the plot twists are predictable, and the writing is somewhere around he eighth grade level. Don’t get me wrong the action takes place at a fantastic pace and you’ll find yourself turning the pages but after the fiftieth impossible escape (that happens on page three if I recall correctly) you start to wonder if the book has anything to offer besides escape after escape after escape. The answer is no. In short it’s like going to a movie and finding out there isn’t really a movie per se but instead a poorly filmed three-hour car chase which the producers called Gone in Sixty Seconds and tried to pass off as an actual film.
Since that trip into fiction didn’t turn out very well for me I headed back to the bookstore and bought Jared Diamond’s Collapse. At this point let me note that if you have never read Guns, Germs and Steel his Pulitzer Prize winning treatise you owe it to yourself t invest the time. Collapse starts out chronicling collapses of previous societies. You got your Easter Islanders deforesting the island, collapsing and turning to cannibalism, you’ve got the Anasazi Indians following the exact same path and several other examples. The general drill is: over population->deforestation->loss of farmland->drought->cannibalism. That is about as far as I’ve got in the book but I can guess where the thing is heading. JD will draw parallels between these ancient societies and our modern societies and whammo doom and gloom all around.
I suppose societal collapse at some point is inevitable, I mean when the sun snuffs it or the earth stops spinning or the moon drifts away it is hard to see how society is going to keep on truckin’. On the other hand all of those event s are a long time in the future and we can’t do anything about any of them. I imagine people find the idea of societal collapse more disturbing when the proximate cause is human action. Personally the cause of societal collapse doesn’t concern me nearly as much as the when, like sometime after I’m long dead.
I suppose societal collapse could happen sooner, maybe tomorrow or something, and the last thing we’ll hear is “I told you you were destroying the planet” and I’ll just laugh, get slaughtered and possibly be eaten. Note to would be cannibals: I’m stringy, not the best mouth feel. In any event the planet won’t be destroyed, nossir, they’ll just be a lot fewer folks around. And that is the thing to remember: When organisms outstrip the carrying capacity of their environment there is a correction and the correction usually involves a lot of the organisms becoming one with the environment yet again. Oh, and don’t worry about people, I mean the species won’t go extinct, heck Homo sapiens are nothing if not adaptable. They’ll bounce back sooner or later, overpopulate and then die off yet again. Thank you Malthus.
Or maybe it isn’t all that bad, maybe people will embrace nuclear power, city living, and genetically modified food (If there is one thing that is good for the environment it’s genetically modified food). But don’t listen to me, read this:
Or maybe it’s too late, maybe everything is hopeless already:
Life after the crash
Probably not:
Of course even if we wriggle free from human caused catastrophes you’ve still got plenty to worry about. You can worry about meteors, super volcanoes, some new plague (if it’s a plague I hope it can be the Picardy Sweats cause that just sounds cool), getting sucked into a black hole, etc, etc.
Well that is all fairly depressing stuff. Maybe some links will cheer everyone up:
Taxing Terminal Tales of Terrifying Terpitude (cause tomorrow is tax day and all).
Excellent Mac analysis:
Q2 2005: A Closer Look at the Numbers
Actually it’s not really that good. The kid had to get his adenoids out today and I was a little too distracted last night to write a decent opinion piece. In case you’re wondering, operation went fine, two year olds bounce back quickly.
Fun little flash exercise:
Make your own South Park Character
At this point I was planning on linking a South Park bit referenced by Tim, but having just watched it….nope.
For the benefit of “he who can not be named”:
Dave McAwesome for Pope
There goes my shot.
Great, very short flick on the origins of CTRL-ALT-DELETE. Bill Gates looks miffed.
CTRL-ALT-DELETE
Hmm, I bet Todd has an order in:
Inflatable Pub
Do NOT Press the Red Button
For those of you wishing to hasten the end
BsilveradoL/cks tridiot rating: 101.425%
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