Hell in a handbasket. Ayup.

Well, just because I haven't had time to breathe doesn't mean that the Doom has slowed down. Au contraire- the world is getting weirder, scarier, and darker faster than anyone could keep up, let alone me in my own weird mental state (kind of like Nebraska but a little more desolate and with more vicious wolverines chasing me).

So. To sum up:

Cocaine-fueled terrorists took Mumbai for a few days, Americans ignored it and ate turkey and trampled a part-time Wal-mart employe to death in their frenzy to buy more crap made in China, and now residents of Kashmir are worried about potential retaliation. "I have asked my children to pay attention and be vigilant if shelling starts," said one woman.

Riots in Nigeria killed at least 400, and Thailand is "Feeling like a country on brink of civil war".

In economic news, Ford would like 9 billion dollars please, to stay in business, and we are officially in a recession. Bush is "sorry" that the financial crisis is hurting Americans.

As we turn to the environment, Venice is so flooded that fools are surfing in Saint Mark's Square, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is breaking off of Antarctica,
and the UN Comittee on Climate Change just warned ""Further expansion in the same style will generate global threats of really great intensity - huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, pandemics of tropical disease, dramatic decline of biodiversity, increasing ocean levels," said Mr Nowicki.
"All these can cause social and even armed conflict and migration of people at an unprecedented scale."

So.

Happy Tuesday!

Christ this is heartbreaking.

"Tens of thousands of newly-born penguins are freezing to death as Antarctica is lashed by freak rain storms.
Scientists believe the numbers of Adelie penguins may have fallen by as much as 80 per cent – and, if the downpours continue, the species will be extinct within ten years.
And the Emperor penguin – made famous in the Oscar-winning documentary March Of The Penguins – is also under threat.
Temperatures on the Antarctic peninsula have risen by 3C over the past 50 years to an average of -14.7C and rain is now far more common than snow.
Adelie penguins are born with a thin covering of down and it takes 40 days for them to grow protective water-repellent feathers. With epic rains drenching their ancestral nesting grounds, their parents try to protect them. But when the adults leave to fish for food, or are killed by predators such as seals, the babies become soaked to the skin and die from hypothermia.
‘Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death,’ said Jon Bowermaster, a New York-based explorer who has recently returned from Antarctica.
‘It is all very well talking theoretically about how the ice cap could disappear – but watching penguins walking among the skeletons of their young is the most powerful evidence of climate change I have seen.’" LINK

Just in case you thought that big splash earlier was 'awesome'.

"Chinstrap penguins perch on top of an eroded blue iceberg near Candlemas Island. Icebergs are simply fragments of glaciers, and last October an iceberg half the size of Greater London ‘calved’ from the vast Pine Island Glacier (Pig). Over the past 20 years, Pig has been thinning at 40 times the previous stable rate. Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 57m. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected sea level rises by 2100 of between 20 and 80cm" LINK

Splash.

"A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday..." CNN

"Vast Antarctic ice shelf on verge of collapse
Latest sign of global warming’s impact shocks scientists

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent.Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (about the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf — about 6,180 square miles (about the size of Northern Ireland)— was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate."Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread — we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."" MSNBC

China discourages travel to the South Pole, citing environmental concerns. China?

" "China has not approved any kind of tour to the region because its overriding concern is to protect the fragile Antarctic ecosystem and travelers' safety," an NTA official said. " LINK