What is it about change that scares environmentalists?

The environment has been changing. Not just in the past 20, or 50 years. 10 000 years ago, Planet Earth was in a deep ice age. 100 000 years ago it was warm. Grass didn’t exist 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs did. 4 billion years ago Earth didn’t even exist – it has just a cloud of particles swirling around a small protostar.

So what is so scary about climate change now? We feel guilty that it was us? Vast colonies of organisms have been changing the environment since the beginning of life. Why is it such a big deal that it *may* be us.

So we’ll probably lose a few tropical islands. And a few polar bears. In both cases there will be few extinctions. Malaria will spread a little further.

What about the positives? Opening the northwest passage would be a boon for international trade. Agriculture would surely boom with new arable areas and greater yields. That can pay for mosquito nets, while increasing the supply of food in Africa.

The fact is that the climate is not a static, unchanging portrait. It is a dynamic, everchanging, complex chemical reaction that we, and indeed everyone is a part of.

Stop being indignant about it – think of the positives and embrace the new world that change can bring.

Sex and the HMAS Success

Singapore: The RAN is in damage control regarding a <a href=”http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/05/2617202.htm?section=australia”>sex contest run by sailors</a> aboard HMAS Success. Sailors kept a ledger of sexual conquests and dollar values were assigned to locations and partners. More money was offered for fornicating with female officers and lesbians.

All and sundry are shocked and outraged by this occurance. Even Julia Gillard has piped up about the poor plight of women, and how this further disadvantages their fight for equality.

What a load of BS.

If you don’t want to be debased and humiliated by your colleauges and co-habitants, don’t have random casual sex with them. In fact, you shouldn’t be f..king them at all. Ever heard the saying don’t sh*t where you eat? These are the rules normal people live by – how stupid are you?

The other argument is that poor defenseless females are being preyed upon and manipulated by powerful males. Despite what the bra-burning parade will tell you, women enjoy equal if not superior rights than men in almost all large corporations. Banks, governments,technology and even manufacturing firms have formal and public policies of affirmative action – also known as discrimination – to further the cause of women. And defense is no different. If they felt harrassed, there are plenty of avenues that could’ve ruined the career of an immature male who oversteps the line.

It’s very immature that a bunch of men would have a contest like this. They should be embarrassed and ashamed – I’m sure at least some of them have wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers and kids. But this sort of immaturity is endemic in underdeveloped adults, be it in defense, sport, or in the real world. It does not qualify as harrassment. In the same way that consensual sex is not rape.

The whole incident is hardly surprising. Put a bunch of underdeveloped young men and women in a confined place with little outside contact for months on end, and what do you think will happed? Of course they will bonk each other stupid. Of course they will make silly bets. Hardly a stretch to combine the two – seen Cruel Intentions?

The media was always going to eat this up – it has sex, young people, defense personell and ‘poor defenseless victims’, but the real story is why is this a story at all? Are women that defend Australia trying to say they are too gullible and naive to take control of their own lives and responsibility for their actions? Is this the sort of character that makes a good sailor – or much more scary – officer?

If you really want to further the cause of women, instead of crying that you are too stupid to protect yourself from disgusting pranks why don’t you close your legs, and do your job of defending the country.

The fight against freedom

Leilani Neumann,  has been convicted of homicide in Wisconsin for letting her daughter die from diabetes. With her daughter unable to walk or talk for days, she chose to pray rather than seek medical treatment. The community is outraged. The world is shocked.

Then again, I thought America was the ‘land of the free’?

Freedom is the right to choose ones own destiny. Good, bad or ugly, we write our own stories of our lives. We choose our politicians (well, supposedly). We choose if we study, what we study. We choose whether we are an employee, or an employer. It is our freedom to choose that defines democracy, not just in the United States, but all free states all over the world.

Freedom is a double edged sword. I can eat a salad, or I can eat smoke a cigarette. This is a concept that many communities have long struggled with. The masses seem to believe that our democratic systems should force everyone to conform with the majority vote. Admittedly, our political system does work like this. Majority rules, and everyone else has to suck it. That is the price of governance, only one party can govern.

There is no reason that all parts of our society must work like this. Teetotallers, do-gooders and moralisers have been inescapable in Australia over the past year or two. Whether it is regulating against smoking, the food we eat, drugs, gardens, religion, alcohol or even what type of cars people should drive, there are voices out there calling for everyone to do what they say, or else, in the name of community opinion.

It is the freedom to choose which drives innovation. It drives justice. It drives productivity. People look over the fence at other peoples choices, and they decide for themselves if they are better off. Those that ignore it succumb to natural selection.

Back to Leilani, I’m not going to defend any lunatic that murders their own children due to their medieval beliefs. Although, it warms this penguin’s heart that even in this era of everyday medical miracles that Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ still manages to hold true. If you would rather pray than seek medical treatment, then natural selection will eventually take its course. It doesn’t matter how good doctors have become.

You can’t save people from themselves.

Builder forced to use ’surgical drill’ on joists

A builder, at the point of desperation, has used a surgical drill for building work after a hospital in Australia borrowed his drill to bore a hole in the skull of a young boy to save his life.

‘F..ken quacks – they stole me drill to operate on some kid.’ Bob The was quoted as saying, ‘Save his life – the boss was gonna kill ne if these joists were not done.’

Bob quipped that it was a complete joke he had to use the surgical drill, saying it was ‘completely unsuitable – how would you feel if you knew your builder used a surgical drill on your joists?’ The CFMEU has demanded the building sites all over Australia be better equipped with emergency non-surgical drills to prevent this tragedy in the future.

‘Swine flu’ pandemic grips Planet Earth

Swine flu, officially known as the H1N1 virus, is the latest threat to the very existence of humanity.

At latest count, 72 people have died from this pandemic. That is a fatality rate of 0.0000011% of the human population.

Be scared. Be very scared. With a measly 99.9999999% of survivors from this disease, it’s fair to say we’re all f..ked.

Except for me, because I’m a penguin.