conuly

I remember after the one in Haiti seeing a picture of rescue workers from Israel and Iran working together to save somebody. (Iran? I think it was Iran.)

More than 50 nations also offered aid, including Israel, whose relations with Turkey have been strained since the Turkish deaths last year in an Israeli commando raid on a flotilla that was trying to run the blockade of Gaza.

Mr. Arinc strongly denied initial reports that his government had refused the Israeli offer, saying that the two countries had always cooperated at times of natural disaster. Relations with Israel might not be as good as desired, he said, but “it would have been highly inappropriate and unpleasant to refuse the offer by the Israeli government.”

“Nobody should even think about such a thing,” he said.

We may have found the distasteful solution to international relations. Clearly, we need more natural disasters so that everybody works together in solidarity. (Hopefully we also will get improved infrastructure so fewer people die in these disasters, but they won't be dying in wars either, so it's all a win.)

Okay, so it's slightly insane, but can't you see it as the ultimate plan of a misunderstood supervillain or something?

(Fun fact: Etymologically speaking, villain is related to villa. It's almost as bad as silly!)

I know it's hurricane season, but damn.

In the wake of Katrina, several people chalked up the severity of the storm to global warming, and blamed it on Bush.

While I'm willing to go along with "we're getting bad storms because of global temperature changes", I don't think it's fair to blame Bush for this. That's like blaming him for a lack of gays in the military. Sure, he's not helping the problem, but the problem started long before he came around.

Additionally, here's the sad (or not so sad, depending on your view) reality of the situation: We don't know for sure what's causing global warming. We know that pollution is a problem, we know that it *can* change the average temperature of the world - but we also know that, historically and earlier, the earth has gone through numerous warm and cold periods. Some of them were fairly short, while others were decently long. And within cold or warm cycles, there have been miniature cycles that were colder and warmer than the prevailing temperatures of the period - anybody remember the Little Ice Age?

I don't know what causes these changes. I don't know if the current temperature changes are natural or not. I *do* know that, whatever the cause, the planet can survive a warm period. It can even survive a mass extinction - this is the sixth one, meaning we've gone through five before. Indeed, I wouldn't be too surprised if humans can survive, unless the future is far more apocalyptic than I'd previously imagined.

Kinda sucks for the individuals in the way of the storms, though.