SeniorJunior

Contrasts in Minds Burtynsky* set out bread and cheese, salad, and olives on a hardwood table. “What took out the dinosaurs was a meteor impact,” he said. “We, the human species, are now that impact. Humans are shifting the balance of the planet, and the choice rests within us to destroy it all, or not. It’s a huge, complex thing to solve. We are a predator species run amok.” He's discussing the Anthropocene, that new geological age (like the Pliestocene or the Jurassic) that started when humans started impacting the world in a way that will leave a geologic imprint. Trump**, opinionating on global warming:  "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non- competitive." He's discussing Heaven Knows What, or more specifically some of the crazy stuff he believes. * Burtynsky is the epic photographer (he shoots epic scenes), quoted in The  New Yorker,  an epic magazine. **Trump, can ...

Russia? Ye who actually blog know you get "performance" data on how many page views you get, and where they are from. Here is one of Google's Blogspot reports on how this venerable olde thang is doing on the world blog market. SeniorJunior is now at  72,818 page views, and here is where they originate:  The darker the green, the more the viewing. The concentration of views from Russia is downright amazing to me. The complete lack of sampling from the British Isles is depressing, but hey.... Audience  Wouldn't it be weird if ... aw, forget it. Postscript Mar 31, 2017:  I just can't forget it... Almost certainly all those Russian "page views" were hacking probes. Since 2/3s of all of them are from Linux operating systems, and Linux actually accounts for maybe 3% of all operation systems, it must be those badass hackers. I hope their bots are enjoying themselves.

Give predicting a shot Why not? Badda boom. The horrifying news that there is a massive spike in the most serious form of black lung disease in coal mining country couldn't come at a more ironic time. The great NPR investigative work has put a reality light on how the coal companies work. THIS IS A HUMAN LUNG, NOT A LUMP OF COAL If you thought the worker performance pressures were bad at Wells Fargo - leading to false accounts and phony billing - how about "work 16 hours a day and outperform the guy on the other side of the mountain or lose your job" therefore expose your lungs to silicon dust at a guaranteed fatal level. SO I PREDICT that the truth will come out that not only are the miners having to drill through a lot of silicate rock (because all that's left are narrow seams of coal), but that the new generation drilling machines make A NANO SIZED DUST. This partially explains how the respirators fail and the miners get killer silicosis complicati...