From Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth; what Manhattan would look like…

Despite skepticism and all the video “proof” and GW cover ups, I’m still an avid believer in the fact that global warming is going to screw us all over in a short period of time. It’s finally hitting the news now that major cities would be affected greatly by the rise of sea levels.

More than two-thirds of the world’s large cities are in areas vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels, and millions of people are at risk of being swamped by flooding and intense storms, according to a new study released Wednesday.

(If anyone can actually find the study online somewhere, let me know, I can’t seem to dig it up anywhere.)

More than 180 countries have populations in low-elevation coastal zones, and about 70 percent of those have urban areas of more than 5 million people that are under threat. Among them: Tokyo; New York; Mumbai, India; Shanghai, China; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.

According to satellite data from NASA in 2000 it was estimated that 634 million people lived on the coastal regions. More than 75% were in Asia and this number only increases as globalization promotes movement to the coasts in China and India to foster the shipping methods for world trade.

People living up to 10 meters above sea level are at risk of increased erosion, flooding and severe weather conditions. Just as a statistic to foster to that warning, 90% of the Marshall Islands, Cayman Islands, Turk and Caicos Islands and Maldives are less than 10 meters above sea level. The Maldives population is over 300 000, 60 422 on the Marshall Islands, 45 436 on the Cayman Islands and 21 152 on the Turk and Caicos Islands. 90% of over 427 010 people are at risk of being completely displaced and flooded just on those islands because of our lifestyles.

Go see what your area would look like with a sea level increase.

I’m not going to lie, I am a sucker for puns. They keep me going for hours. I found a website that has a ‘pun of the month’. VERY NEAT.

January ‘07 — “No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery”

February ‘07 — “I’ve been to the dentist several times so I know the drill”

and! Just in………..

March ‘07 — “Do the people who climb the world’s highest mountain ever rest?”

Hahaha. I love them. You can go vote for April’s pun of the month!

I’ve been seeing this ad all over my frequently visited environmental sites. When you click on it, it directs you to stopthesealhunt.org. Where you are asked to add your voice to those advocating against the seal hunt because 98% of the seals killed last year were between 2 weeks and 3 months old.

I’m a little torn.

On one side of the issue - the seal hunt isn’t a bad thing. When done properly the seal will feel virtually nothing, as studies by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association have shown, and studies by Americans in the early 70’s came to the same conclusion. The clubbing of baby seals is just as humane, if not more humane than the practices you’ll see done on farms that pack chickens into tiny rooms, let pigs rot in their own filth and never let cows see the light of day. However some people are stupid and they don’t use the equipment right and they don’t follow procedure. So not only do the animals get clobbered inappropriately they are sometimes skinned alive, which probably isn’t fun for them.

And don’t even try the “well do animals really feel pain? does their pain matter because they can’t talk?” if you kick a baby seal in the head, it’s probably going to run away from you because it hurt, so under that basic assumption when you start ripping its skin off while its dangling in the air - it will probably hurt it. But at the same time, I hate it when activists watch these videos of amateur and use them to invoke emotion on an uniformed public. They will show a little baby seal wobbling around by an idiot, followed by a professional blow to the skull with a hakapik and spout it all as cruelty when really, the blow to the head would have caused an immediate unconsciousness and death.

The ecological argument that they’re using is just flat out wrong. The seal population is well over 4.5 million animals which is 3xs as many seals as there were in the 70s. Canada’s seal hunt allows for the quota of 325 000 seals… not a huge dent to the seal population - but far more than the natives are allowed to kill in their cultural and lifestyle practices.

Fact of the matter is the seal hunt brings in well over 15 million dollars to the Canadian economy. It is the main income for most Aboriginals and thousands of fisherman. We have successfully depleted the cod fisheries leaving the Newfies with not a whole lot of other options besides seal harvesting. At least the Canadian government has gained control over the seal hunt before it got out of hand like the cod fisheries did.

It is not a detrimental hunt to the environment, it is beneficial for the economy, it is the main source of money, food and resources for the aboriginals and can be done in a completely humane way. The last thing that we need to be doing is to be preventing aboriginals for doing even more of their cultural activities in the name of selfish western superiority and ideology. My only protest against it are the idiots who don’t know how to kill properly and end up putting the seals through a lot of unnecessary suffering.

There are ways to conduct seal hunting appropriately - like being informed on how to actually use a hakapik, ensuring that the animal is dead before skinning it and obviously shooting a seal for death, not just to wound it. Not to mention that the Canadian government should be taking responsibility of the seal hunt instead of just leaving it as is. It is obvious to everyone who knows about it that when the sealers are released for the seal hunt they don’t give a shit if they’re killing the seals properly because it’s a race against all other sealers. There’s no time to drain the blood and ensure the animal is actually dead. If the seal hunt were conducted in a more reasonable fashion these sorts of mess ups could be avoided.

Well, my name is Samie. Short for Samantha, although the only people who really call me by my full name are my mother and stepfather, whom I live with currently. I live in their basement, eat their food, drive their cars and in return, I go to school, cook, clean, do laundry, you know the normal trade off for such circumstances.

I attend UofT - which is supposed to be one of the most highly regarded universities in Canada. At first, the whole idea of attending this university was surreal to me. When I got in, it reassured something in myself, my admission letter was like a certificate congratulating me, telling me I’m smart, and that all my hard work in high school actually paid off (not to brag or anything, but I also got into all of the other universities I applied to: York, Ryerson, Memorial University of Newfoundland and St. Mary’s <3 - but for reasons that seem to confuse me sometimes, I picked UofT as the base for my undergrad degree). However, after almost two years of tuition, books and hard work put into furthering my education at the University of Toronto, I’m left wondering why I even bothered going there in the first place. But, in the end, I appericate how far I’ve come, and defintiely am honoured to even be in university. One of my favourite things to do is walk around campus and watch people, wondering to myself, is this person the future of this university? Or how about the one that’s going to find a cure for cancer, or AIDS? Prime Minister of Canada, even? I often doubt my place in this school, especially after working my ass off on a paper, only to discover my TA (who really can’t communicate ideas in English very well) thought it was “inadequate”. I got accepted into UofT for Criminology, something that I’ve wanted to study since middle school because really, law is a passion of mine. However, I wasn’t actually accepted into the program, just the school. Which sucks, since I’m currently still working my ass off for the chance to finally take some classes that excite me and make me tingle.

I’m not going to lie, I love this school. The city life has definitely grown on me. I love the old buildings, I love the hidden treasures, I love the many pubs on campus, the dozen libraries scattered all over the place, the people that swarm from class to class totally oblivious to everyone around them and I love the subway. One of the downfalls being the long ol’ commute I make everyday, it gets to me sometimes. I also love how I looked up yesterday, while riding the subway, and my psych prof was sitting next to me. And I love how he didn’t know I skipped this lecture to go to a study group. I love the profs that come to class and give lectures on material that excites them! Excitement seems to be contagious when one knows how to convey it correctly. For example, this year I’ve taken political theory by Professor Lippincott. This man is a genius and has made the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke a newfound passion of mine. He’s witty, energetic and so full of knowledge that for the remainder of my years at UofT I’m going to take one of his classes. He found a way to strike something in me, to make these philosophers and I connect somehow. And I think that is what university is all about. Finding something you are passionate about, and going with it. (oh, and switching your major every time you take a class that strikes this passion in you)

Another passion of mine is definitely English. I didn’t take any English courses first year, but second year I decided to take a second year Canadian Short Stories class. And just as I suspected, I’m hooked. I’m driven to change my major, or at the very least to add ANOTHER minor. We shall see what the summer brings, and evidently whether or not I am allowed to enroll in some criminology courses next semester.
So I guess that’s just a little bit about me. I’m a very honest and laid-back person and I’m definitely still trying to find my “place” in this world. So I will try my best to bring something new – right after I get a midterm out of the way tomorrow

(I’m going to stop with the quirky titles and just go with the animal name from now on… put the intro line after)

Largest carnivore in the Ordovician (like that)

pronounced: cam-er-a-sair-us meaning “chambered horn”
animal type: cephalopod mollusc
time: 470 - 440 mya
size: Huge. 10 - 11 meters long with a 9 -10 meter shell
found: North America
diet: Carnivore
fossil:

Huge. The biggest animal around during the Ordovician, in fact. It is classified as an orthocone, a squidish creature living inside of a long, straight shell that was once mistaken for unicorn horns. It also had 8 tentacles that were almost a meter long and had a grooved surface as opposed to the suckers that are found on a moder squid).  Like their relatives the ammonites and the nautilus the ordovician shell was divided into various compartments that could fill with water or air depending on the direction the animal wanted to float in the water. Moving up and down in the water was easy in comparison to the effort the animal would have to exude to swim due to its large shell.

The othocone had a flexible hyponome, a large tube of flesh, hanging just underneath its head that could point in any direction. It would push water through this tube at a high pressure propelling its self in the opposite direction.

It is assumed that like most molluscs the othocones likely spent their days hiding in the dark resting and at night would move into more shallow water to hunt it’s prey the trilobites and megalograptus. Their eyesight was pretty shoddy, but they made up for it with their chemical sensors picking up the scent of their prey. It would use their tentacles to grab onto the prey and rip it apart with it’s bird like beak.

Some of the fossils of the orthocones that have been found have preserved colors and have been found in thousands of places. Unlike the cameroceras most of the orthocones grew to be only a few centimetres long. The orthocones in general evolved at around 495 mya and became extinct 255 mya.