A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
It's time to say goodbye to the Year of the Snake and hello to the Year of the Horse. What do you know about the Year of the Horse?
0:00 Kai Feng, reporter for ABC Chinese, explains the significance of the horse in Chinese culture and history, 0:49 why 2026 is a 'fire' year, 5:10 and how people across Asia celebrate Lunar New Year.
Not only did ABC News (Australia) explain Lunar New Year, it explained the importance of horses to humans. Bonus educational content!
Some parents are concerned (or thrilled?) that their kids might be developing an Australian accent from watching Bluey... but is that really possible? How much of our language acquisition comes from TV anyway?
This was the perfect video to upload on World Television Day, as it shows the significance of television to society. Since no one else has mentioned it, a belated happy World Television Day to Erica/Dr. B., all of the Storied crew, and viewers!
I knew then that I would be sharing this video today.
By the way, I recommend reading the comments, which are full of Australians saying it was time Australia struck back at the U.S. for all the Americanisms introduced through television. TV can change the way you speak!
That's a wrap for today's holiday about the effect of technology on society. Stay tuned for an evergreen educational entry tomorrow.
You might think rabbits are cute and harmless… After all, they’re the beloved protagonists of some of our most cherished children’s stories! But when 13 of them were released in Australia in 1859, they triggered one of the most destructive biological invasions in history. Within just 50 years, rabbits had overrun two-thirds of the continent, stripping ecosystems bare and threatening native species.
In this episode of Human Footprint, Shane Campbell-Staton meets historian Martha Sear to uncover the astonishing story of Australia’s rabbit invasion and the ecological nightmare it created. From the first release of the deadly Myxoma virus in the 1950s to more recent outbreaks, Shane explores how researchers used biological weapons against the rabbit plague… and why the struggle continues today, more than 160 years after rabbits arrived in Australia. Wildlife manager Ian Lenon and CSIRO scientist Tanja Strive help Shane understand how today’s experts are tracking rabbits and developing new biocontrol tools, and what the future might hold for Australia’s ecosystems.
This is the first story of biological control I remember reading and it's probably one I read about the same time as the first story of invasive species I can remember, the introduction and spread of European Starlings, which I covered in 'The Shakespeare Enthusiast Who Introduced An Invasive Species,' a story I tell my students. Like that story and the discoveryof insulin, I learned new things from this video, like myxomatosis being caused by a virus in the smallpox family and being spread by mosquitoes. The video also reinforced something I knew, which is that a pathogen can be too virulent for optimal spread. The hosts can die before they transmit the pathogens to the next host. That's a flaw in a lot of plague-caused apocalypses in fiction, although the readers and viewers generally don't mind; they're in it for the horror, not the science. Just the same, it's a good day when I learn something new. Also, I've already told my students this story and the cane toad tale, so this counts towards blogging as professional development.
That's a wrap for today's post. Now stay tuned for my planned Emmy entry tomorrow.
We are saying goodbye to the Year of the Dragon and welcoming the Year of the Snake! What do you know about the Year of the Snake? What is the significance of the snake in Chinese culture and history and how do people in Asian countries celebrate the festival?
This is a return to form for me after last year's drum corpsholiday. That written, the host's remarking that snakes are "dangerous and scary animals" that make him "run away screaming" inspires me to put a science spin on this entry with PBS Eons explaining How Snake Venom Sparked An Evolutionary Arms Race.
For some, the rise and spread of venomous elapids was just another challenge to adapt to. For others, it was a catastrophe of almost apocalyptic proportions. And we humans are no exception, because it seems that when elapids slithered onto the ecological scene, not even our ancestors were safe…
I observed "Eleven years ago, they had Kaa as their character for Year of the Snake" then asked "Anyone care to wager that Kaa repeats?" While Mushu repeated in the parade, Kaa still showed in the merchandise available in Shanghai Disneyland.
Disney's California Adventure opted for a snake coiled to form Mickey Mouse's head.
So, yes and no, but if anyone had taken me up on the bet, they'd have won. After all, I didn't ssspecify which park!
Enough of this year's fessstivities. It's time to conclude this post with the generic greetings I've recycled many times over.
Mandarin: Gong Xi Fa Cai/Xin Nian Kuai Le
Cantonese: Kung Hei Fat Choi
Hokkien (Fujian/Taiwanese): Kiong Hee Huat Tsai/Sin Ni khòai lok
If your choices in the upcoming federal election have you pining for candidates from a galaxy far, far away, there may be a new hope on the horizon.
Rick Di Lorenzo, a councillor from the town of Milton, is creating cheeky election lawn signs, featuring characters from Star Wars and Harry Potter, as a fundraiser for local charities.
With candidates like Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi, and featuring slogans like “Together we can rule the galaxy” and “Seriously it’s not a trap,” this campaign is meant to be more light-hearted than its federal inspiration...
“It's been very positive and like 99 per cent of people are saying it’s hilarious,” Di Lorenzo told CTV News Toronto. “Some people took the signs, because they're saying in this election they can’t support either candidate, so they’re going to put this sign out instead.”
Read the rest of the story and watch the video, which doesn't embed and which I can't find on YouTube to embed here, but which shows the rest of the signs seen below.
Both of the above were in Canada. Australia has also seen signs inspired by Star Wars, as Pulse Tasmania reported.
A series of fake election signage has been popping up on street posts and traffic light poles across Tasmania in the lead-up to the March 23 state election.
One Pulse follower reported spotting several ‘parody signs’ alongside legitimate candidate signage in Kingston over the weekend.
“I think they are pretty hilarious given the upcoming election. Someone had a lot of fun making them,’ he said.
A majority of the signs reference various niche cultures and movie characters, including Darth Vader.
A spokesperson for the Tasmanian Electoral Commission said the homemade signs are not considered “official election material”.
No kidding.
I haven't seen any news stories about Star Wars themed lawn signs in the current U.S. election, although there are plenty of them for sale. I'm not feeling like doing any unpaid advertising for them right now, so I'll skip them. Instead, I'm concluding today's entry with Mark Hamill's tweet from November 2020, which The Hollywood Reporter shared.
On Saturday, after the election was called by numerous news outlets for Biden, Hamill shared a few tweets but one, in particular, really made a splash.
Hamill posted a picture featuring three posters with the titles of the original Star Wars trilogy. The New Hope poster featured a picture of Barack Obama, the Empire Strikes Back poster featured Trump and the Return of the Jedi poster featured Biden. Hamill wrote, “#BestEpisode_EVER.”
May The Force awaken and keep The First Order out of office this year.
That's a wrap for today's modern holiday. Stay tuned for Cinco De Mayo and highlights of tonight's Saturday Night Live as the Sunday entertainment feature. Depending on tonight's episode, I might be able to combine the two. May my readers and I be so lucky!
Today is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Summer Solstice, so it's Souther, a holiday created by John Michael Greer and entrusted to me. He also designated the wombat as the animal mascot for the holiday.
Wombats are the heroes of the bush fires, the stealer of hearts, and the knights of the most adorable joust in the world.
I found this video to be even more informative and entertaining than I expected, although it's almost too cute for its own good. "Mortal Wombat...Fight!" LOL. While I anticipated Danielle Dufault describing the wombat's cubic poop, she surprised me by mentioning that engineers are studying how the wombat shapes its feces so they can imitate it in manufacturing. Consider this to be another example of "Nature knows best," one of Commoner's Laws.
By the way, Animalogic uploaded this video on July 17, 2020, the Friday after that year's Souther on July 12, 2020. I'm adding it to the rest of the coincidences around Souther, wombats, and ice cream that have occurred since Greer created the holiday and I started maintaining it.
Summertime is the perfect time for a frozen treat! President Ronald Reagan named July National Ice Cream Month back in 1984 and he established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday of the month. Americans eat an estimated 22 pounds of ice cream every year! Lynn, Coy and Ivan didn't eat quite that much today, but they did share their favorite flavors with us (Graeter's, Dulce de Leche and Turkey Hill Butter Pecan, respectively).
I like this video because it includes both the history of the holiday and a food fact, has engaging hosts, and is from a mainstream news source, although it is not longer the hard news outlet I watched regularly during 1989-1991 when it was Headline News. It also isn't a stealth commercial for a local ice cream store or manufacturer, as it featured three flavors from different sources.
Joe McRae with Bevmo joins Good Day Seattle to prepare some fancy adult beverages to honor national ice cream day.
I'm beginning to wonder if "It's always five o'clock somewhere" means 5:00 P.M. or 5:00 A.M. to morning show anchors who drink as part of their job. I hope they have designated drivers!
Follow over the jump for the celebration of two more holidays, including one that was created for me.
I interrupt my continuing coverage of the impeachment story arc of "TheWorstWing" for the latest on theDoomsdayClock, which The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved yesterday to 100 seconds to midnight, the least remaining time ever, so far.
Australia's ongoing bushfire crisis is driving up global carbon dioxide levels according to a UK climate report.
Carbon dioxide is a key measuring stick in scientific projections of global warming.
And the outlook doesn't look good, with a panel of world scientists and leaders saying we're closer than ever to doomsday.
Randolph Nogel reports.
The Australian wildfires are projected to contribute one-fifth of the increase in carbon dioxide this year? Wow! That's an example of a positive feedback loop and those usually lead to catastrophes.
ABC Australia's clip served well as a reaction to this year's announcement. News.com.au uploaded Doomsday Clock: Apocalypse fears over nuclear weapons and climate change yesterday, summarizing the history of the Doomsday Clock and placing the recent movement of the hands of the clock in context.
The Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight with scientists blaming nuclear weapons and climate change for the jump forward.
As I mentioned above, the Australians seem to jumping on this news because of the climate change dimension; I've never seen them this interested in the Doomsday Clock before. After all, Australia is the setting of "On the Beach" and "MadMax," both of which share the premise of Australia surviving a nuclear exchange among superpowers, although the survival is only a few years in the first and the "Mad Max" franchise has changed the nature of the apocalypse in its post-apocalyptic setting from nuclear war to, guess what, climate change. The Australians have known for a while which is the greater immediate threat to them.
The more-or-less mainstream news outlet that devoted the most time on YouTube to the announcement was Newsy, which also played up the climate angle in Climate effects on the Doomsday Clock.
For more than a decade, scientists have considered the threats from climate change when they set the symbolic Doomsday Clock.
Of course, nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war are still central concerns of the people who set the hands of the Doomsday Clock. One of them speaks about that threat in Wait Just a Minute: Rachel Bronson on the Doomsday Clock from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
The Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced this morning. In this episode, Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, takes a minute to explain how the Doomsday Clock works, examine if nuclear weapons make the world safer, and recommend her favorite movie involving nuclear warfare.
I agree with Bronson about "Dr. Strangelove," but now I'll have to check out "Command and Control," which I don't recall ever hearing about until she mentioned it.
It's time to wake up! As president and commander-in-chief, my foremost responsibility will be to protect the lives, safety and freedom of the American people -- and that means preventing a nuclear holocaust. My personal commitment to you is that on the first day of my presidency, I will contact the leaders of China and Russia to set up a summit to end the new cold war and nuclear arms race, which will inevitably result in a nuclear holocaust.
Wow, Tulsi said a bunch of things I agree with, not least that talking about them makes one sound like a crackpot. Heh. Still, it means that she's a fellow Crazy Eddie. That doesn't mean I'll vote for her. I would rather vote for Andrew Yang, another Crazy Eddie. Even he is a ways down my list.
Russell Crowe accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards.
Make no mistake. The tragedy unfolding in Australia is climate change-based. We need to act based on science, move our global workforce to renewable energy, and respect our planet for the unique and amazing place it is. That way, we all have a future.
While “Russell Crowe could not be here with us tonight because he is at home in Australia protecting his family from the devastating bushfires,” as Anniston told the audience, another Australian remained in Los Angeles to get on stage. Cate Blanchett mentioned the troubles in her home country when she presented an award.
I wanted to do a special call-out to the volunteer firefighters who have been at the center of battling the climate disaster that is facing Australia. And of course, when one country faces a climate disaster, we all face a climate disaster. So we’re in it together.
Celebrities including Cate Blanchett and Ellen DeGeneres used their Golden Globes speeches to offer support to people battling bushfires in Australia. Meanwhile Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette used the opportunity as a political platform, urging people to vote in this year's US election.
I wish I had this video yesterday. I could have taken care of both exhorting Americans to vote and climate change in one post.
Joaquin Phoenix accepts the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards.
Gizmodo quoted Phoenix as well.
It’s really nice that so many people have come up and sent their well wishes to Australia, but we have to do more than that. It’s such a beautiful gesture. Together, hopefully, we can be unified and actually make some changes. It’s great to vote, but sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves and make changes and sacrifices in our own lives. I hope that we can do that. We don’t have to take private jets to Palm Springs for the awards sometimes or back.
Bukko Boomeranger and I had quite the conversation about the Australian election in the comments to John Oliver explains trade. I found it so engrossing that I first responded "Just for you, I might cover it [the Australian election] next week," and finished with "I'll respond to the rest of your comment when I feature it in a post about the Australian elections." Here are his comments with my responses about ranked-choice voting, mandatory voting, and the outcome of the election.
Here's Bukko's first comment, which he posted before the voting began.
Ah well -- soon off to accost voters (national Parliamentary election today.) It's good fun. Citizens expect to pass through a line of people waving flyers telling them what various parties recommend in Australia's ranked multiple-choice voting system. I try to make it funny, with quips like "If you're sick of the big parties!" or "Who's leaning Green today?" And when the polls close, I'll be "scrutineering." That means watching the Australian Election Commission's paid workers when they unseal the ballot boxes, dump the paper ballots onto a table, sort them by which candidate got the voter's #1 choice, then eliminating the piles with the fewest votes. THOSE ballots are shuffled onto the candidates that each voter marked as their #2 choice, so the person's vote is not entirely ignored. From then, it goes to the top 2 vote-getters, and the winner at that polling station is determined. Combine the results from polling places across the electorate, and bingo! we have a winner. It's pretty quick -- less than 2 hours -- and honest, with observers from Labor, us Greenies, sometimes the Liberals (the conservative party), Socialists or other minor parties looking on. Much better than black box electronic voting. It's one of the reasons I have a bit of faith in this country, because everyone has to vote (or face a small fine) and the counting is done transparently, so who's in Parliament can be said to represent the will of the people.
I knew that Australia had mandatory voting, but I didn't know that the country also had ranked-choice voting. While I'm not a fan of mandatory voting with fines for not voting, I am in favor of other ways of increasing turnout, particularly by reducing barriers to access. That's why I was thrilled when Proposal 3 passed here in Michigan allowing same-day registration and no-reason absentee voting. On the other hand, I am definitely a fan of ranked-choice voting, which I mentioned as an election reform before. I am so glad to see that it works so smoothly in a major country like Australia.
On the gripping hand (yes, a Motie reference), I'm not sure I'd like to walk through a throng of volunteers trying to get me to vote for their party or candidate on the way to the polling station. It's bad enough seeing all the lawn signs on the way in, and I'm a fan of lawn signs and have placed them myself the night before an election.
That was about the process. Follow over the jump for the outcome, which came as a bit of surprise.
I found three nominees that were more science than either health or the environment. Two of them were nominated for Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary, "A Bear's-Eye View of Yellowstone" and "Collisions." The former looks like a fun follow-up to 'Wild Yellowstone: The Frozen Frontier' -- last year's Emmy winner for Outstanding Cinematography: Documentary and Long Form. The second is much more serious and on-topic for this blog, the story of a native tribal elder's recounting of his being witness to an atomic bomb test in the Australian Outback. Not only does it talk about the event, but also the elder's philosophy on caring for the environment. For both of these nominees, it is not the content that is being recognized, but the technology used to tell it.
Reading between the lines, one might be able to tell that I was more impressed with "Collisions." So were the Emmy voters. Here is Scott Kelly, star of "A Year in Space," announcing the winner of Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary.
Like Lynette Wallworth, I find the timing of this production's release particularly apt. Here is the trailer that describes both the story and the technology being honored.
A work of stunning visuals and powerful narrative, Collisions tells the story of Aboriginal elder Nyarri Nyarri Morgan who lived as 1000 generations before him in the remote Pilbara desert of Western Australia-- until his life was dramatically impacted by a collision with the extreme edge of Western science and technology. [Lynette] Wallworth is an acclaimed Australian artist and documentary filmmaker known for producing immersive artworks that provoke a profound emotional response. She is ideally positioned to explore the storytelling potential of VR, and sees the new form as the perfect vehicle for Nyarri to communicate his story.
Congratulations to Wallworth and all the people she named in her acceptance speech.
That's not all. Follow over the jump for a video of one of the tests and another about the site today.
I blog for a number of reasons, but one is a form of professional development. In addition to organizing my research, I will park videos here that I plan to use in my classes using the stories I tell my students label. Since I'll be teaching my evolution, ecology, and biodiversity class starting next month as well as new sections of my environmental science class, it's time for me to stock up. Here are three videos that popped up on my YouTube subscriptions over the past few days.
Single-celled organisms have intricate microscopic weapons evolved for capturing prey.
As soon as I saw the preview image, I knew this was about dinoflagellates. At least now I have something interesting to tell my students about them other than red tides and bioluminescence.
Follow over the jump for two videos about mammals that work equally well for my advanced students as for my general onces.
Between March 21, 2015, and March 20, 2016, I posted 435 entries, which earned 176,458 page views and 672 comments from my readers and me. These are out of totals of 2724 entries, 595,621 page views, and 1309 during the first five years of the blog. For comparison, I present the statistics from the previous four years.
During the fourth year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News, from March 21, 2014 to March 20, 2015, I posted 528 entries, the readers and I posted 229 comments, and the blog received 145,875 page views for a total of 2289 posts, 637 comments, and 419,163 page views over the entire first four years of the blog.* For comparison, the third year of this blog saw 785 entries, 304 comments, and 127,945 page views, the second year I posted 493 entries, readers and I posted 129 comments, and the blog received 97,535 page views, and the first full year I made 483 posts, readers and I posted 204 comments, and the blog received 47,808 page views. ... *I am recording these stats from Midnight EDT to Midnight EDT on March 21 of successive years. It would be easier to record using Midnight GMT, as that is the default time zone of the stats recorder, but I want to count full days here, not London.
Follow over the jump for my analysis of the fifth year's statistics compared to the fourth year's.
George Kourounis starred in the second video I featured in The Door to Hell; I noted that he'd show up again. Here he is in Stung by a Box Jellyfish, the video used in one of the two presentations that tied for second most popular among my students.
Adventurer and Angry Planet TV show host, George Kourounis finds out what it is like to be stung by the deadly Box Jellyfish, possibly the most venomous creature on Earth.
Between this and climbing into the Door to Hell, Kourounis demonstrates his taste for risk and adventure. Even so, he didn't want to do that again!
While folks in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast are seeing the first major snowstorm of the winter, those who dwell Down Under are broiling.
Parts of Australia have suffered under an intense heat wave over the holidays, and before the weather pattern breaks, temperatures today were expected to reach nearly 50 degrees Celsius (more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit), The Guardian reports. Temperatures in many inland towns in particular have reached above 40 C (100 F) for several days. The culprit is a high-pressure system sitting over the country.
The heat wave has prompted fire officials in the state of South Australia to rate fire conditions as "catastrophic," with total fire bans in place for the northern parts of the state. The heat wave has meant the summer has started out much like it did last year, hot and very dry. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology is expected to announce on Friday (Jan. 3) that 2013 was the hottest year on record for the country.
A searing heatwave is baking central and northern Australia, piling more misery on drought-hit cattle farmers who have been slaughtering livestock as Australia sweltered through the hottest year on record in 2013. ... Monsoon rains in Australia's north failed last summer and the entire continent endured its hottest year since records began in 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said on Friday.
Average temperatures were 1.2 degree Celsius above the long-term average of 21.8 degree Celsius, breaking the previous record set in 2005.
"The new record high calendar year temperature averaged across Australia is remarkable because it occurred not in an El Niño year, but a normal year," David Karoly, a climate scientist from the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, said in an emailed statement.
The El Nino weather pattern is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific and usually brings hot, dry, and often drought conditions to Australia.
So, don't be fooled by the cold snap in the U.S. As Al Jazeera America pointed out, "The record-breaking cold weather in the US doesn't mean the globe isn't warming, scientists say." Remember, weather isn't climate.
