Typepad Outrage

Frank Warner tells me that Typepad blogs are having major problems. He's missing at least four days worth of posts. Let this be a lesson. Don't trust any single provider. For this reason, among others, all my stuff is double posted on AOL. Having said this, I know I'll look silly when both of them go down. In Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke made sure that the aliens' kept everything on their ship in triplicate. Triple systems with triple components with triple parts. People, on the other hand, are mostly way too optimistic. We are always willing to spend the rent money on air-conditioned trash trucks before the levees are secure, always assuming that we have a few years before the bad things start happening. But in real life there are surprises. I guess they wouldn't be surprises if we could learn to expect them.

At any rate, scientists investigating the source of the tsunami were confronted with quite a surprise recently. There is a kilometer-wide dead zone stretching along the fault line. One thing we should keep in mind while we lick our self-inflicted wounds. Humans are not responsible for all the calamities. Ecocide happens. Make sure you got backup.