The Lair

Robert Jordan, RIP.
I’ve told myself time and time again that I wouldn’t buy any more books until he finished the damn series. The last WoT book I bought was Winter’s Heart, book 9. This was almost 7 years ago. Guess I’ll run out and buy the more recently released books 10 and 11. Will book 12 ever see the light of day? I wonder. RJ really was a gifted storyteller though. That alone makes his passing a sad sad loss.

And Colin McRae, RIP too. And to think that I had been going through a retro phase – been playing Colin McRae rally 2 (released in 2000 or so) for the last month and a half.

I know I don’t blog very often about environmental issues. There are many reasons for this; most of which can be summarized as apathy and a distaste of the more militant tree-hugger tactics. No, I think global warming is (mostly) a man-made catastrophe waiting in the wings, yes – I do recycle and make environmentally conscious choices when I can. Just don’t tell anyone about the multiple flights back home last year, ok? But I don’t kid myself that I’m actually making an appreciable difference or helping stave off melting ice caps. I’m just doing it because it’s the right thing; not because I seriously think that sorting a couple of bottles for recycling will save anyone. Illogical, resigned to my fate and perhaps defeatist? Yeah. All of those.

And my uncharacteristically somber mood is due to a couple of images I saw yesterday.

arctic sea ice concentration in 1979.
arctic sea ice concentration in 2007.

Full archive. The pictures start from somewhere in 1978.

And in related news, Russia is making a play for a large part of the exposed arctic.

After the professionals have passed out, repeatedly *headdesk*-ing themselves into unconsciousness.

But more seriously, I saw an entertaining interview last night which featured Andrew Keen, the author of Cult of the Amateur. In summary, an influx of amateur video editors, bloggers, journalists and pretty much every other profession into the internet is causing a surfeit of mediocrity. And horrendously long sentences like that one. It’s too easy to dismiss this as just another rant by someone who resents the usurpation of his journalistic soapbox. Wait. Another horrendously long sentence. *sigh*. It’s all a bit shite, basically – and I’m not talking about my sentence structure either.

Actually, I read Andrew Keen’s blog regularly and he makes some excellent discussion points (I read it on the internet, blogs are boring [and he hasn't even read mine, does he know what a massive datapoint he's missing?] and McLuhan’s Revenge are particularly interesting).

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