Tasmanian Lament

I'm not sure that you are allowed to lament the death of a Tasmanian Devil if you are the asshole that injected it with face cancer.

This article talks all about Cedric, a famed Tasmanian Devil that may have been immune to a facial cancer that is wiping out the species.  Sad, right?  Didn't know Tasmanian Devil's suffered from a contagious face cancer transmitted through their bites, did you? 

Turns out he wasn't immune to face cancer after all...oops!  Too bad, they didn't figure that out before injecting him with the disease.  But really, how are you gonna know if any of them are immune until you inject every last one of them.  Seems like good science to me.  RIGHT?! 

Where exactly is the logic behind injecting an at-risk animal with the disease that is putting it at risk.  And now you're sad that he's dead...BOO-EFFING-HOO!  What did you think was gonna happen, you morons?!?  Here's a tip, why don't you turn your astute minds to pandas next, save us all a lot of grief.

Rant, complete.

An Albatross Around One's Neck

While commencing The Great Purge of 2010, I stumbled upon a blurb in an old Mother Jones magazine about photographer Chris Jordan, and his study of albatross chicks on Midway Atoll. Maybe it's because I have a strange urge to see an albatross in real life, or maybe it has to do with the Great Purge of 2010 and the unavoidable feelings of waste and guilt, but these photographs had me near tears. Taking a tour around his website is admittedly, depressing and gruesome, but I think it's terribly important stuff. You can argue all you like about the scientific veracity of Global Warming and climate change, but does it seem right to wreak this kind of damage if we don't have to? Anyways, these are just thoughts, not condemnations, but I think the age of me buying anything with a plastic, screw-top lid is over. Incidentally, the secondary definition of albatross in my copy of Webster's reads as follows...

2. a seemingly inescapable moral or emotional burden, as of guilt or responsibility. Often in the phrase an albatross around one's neck.