It's a good thing that the human propensity to seek power and do evil only exists when that human works at a company, and never when that human works in government.
Every few years I get a chance to fire people in the government. I don't get that opportunity with my local telco monopoly.
Furthermore, there's a large philosophical difference between the level of disclosure and accountability for democratic governments than their is for deregulated corporations. You can structure corporations to have an equal level of disclosure, but historically that has always required government intervention to accomplish.
And WTF? libertarians support the PATRIOT act or unilateral action against sovereign nations? you know some funny libertarians, and I'm glad I haven't met them.
You must be fortunate enough to have not heard the radio show of Neil Boortz. He's a registered and self-proclaimed Libertarian, but he's strongly in favor of a muscular approach to terrorism.
Basically, he's a Republican who isn't religious (and thus doesn't buy into the culture war issues) and doesn't like the War on Drugs. He's arguably in the border. I'm not sure whether dismissing him as one is justified or an example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Now that is an interesting point. I unfortunately do not know enough on the issue to conjecture. I don't know how likely the stem cells are to "wear out early."
I'm going to have to do some reading up on this when I get some free time. Thanks for raising the point.
If they're replicating stem cells from people who are already at high risk of breast cancer, doesn't that increase it even more (more generations == shorter telomeres)?
Not really. Stem cells, like most cancer cells, produce telomerase and tend to have significantly longer telomeres than surrounding tissue. While this declines slowly with age, the cells in waist fat should be no more dangerous than those in breast fat in the same person.
Oh, and I'm not aware of any definitive link between breast size and cancer risk, so I have no idea if transferring fat from the waist -- who hears talk of belly fat cancer? -- to the breasts poses ay risk in itself. I doubt it, though.
Just because it's a Civ-type game with spells oriented around 5 "colors" does not mean it's MoM2. It's missing several things that helped make the game interesting, like races other than humans and the mirror world. MoM-like games have been done before.
That said, it doesn't look like a bad game at all, and even MoM wasn't all that original -- basically Civilization with Magic: the Gathering stapled on top of it. I'd buy it.
I should let this go, but there are so many things wrong with this post that I can't.
First, you are one person. Your experiences are interesting but are in no way disproof of the aggregate, average behavior of a population at large. It's nice that your life hasn't turned out the way the study predicts, but against the greater number of people looked at, your anecdotal story is not more valid than the entire study.
Second, the study does not predict a linear, mechanical mechanism by which one cannot watch X hours of TV without being Y levels of depressed. There is a correlation here. There may be an underlying cause, but nothing implies that that cause is universally true of the human population nor that all people are affected the same nor that people don't get lucky.
For example, driving while intoxicated clearly raises the likelihood you will be in an accident. However, people drive drunk without getting in accidents all the time (thanks to being lucky). If you drive home in one piece while plastered and do so regularly, that does not negate the overall truth that driving while intoxicated is risky.
Third, to follow up more on the linear relationship issue, there's nothing the study that says that if you watch too much TV you'll commit suicide.
Fourth, it might be worth pointing out that disabled people have a higher rate of depression that the population at large. Your objection about disabled people having to watch massive amounts of TV would only reinforce the numbers, assuming that the survey actually included disabled people.
I'm sorry for ranting, but this whole mindset of, "It hasn't happened to me, so these scientists are just plain wrong and stupid!" drives me absolutely bonkers. You are not the center of the universe. The rules by which it works do not center around your experiences. The plural of anecdote is not data.
I think this may be a case where correlation does not imply causation. [...] Watching too much television might be a sign of unhappiness, but what are the causes of that unhappiness?
While I think the main cause of unhappiness leads to the correlation of watching too much television, I also think television has an anesthesizing and depressing effect of its own.
Huh. Funny how you start off this entire post about how "correlation does not imply causation," and yet you provide good arguments for causation flowing in both directions:
1) That people who are depressed are more likely to seek out television. 2) That television itself causes a depressive state.
So... What was the point in hauling out the beaten-to-death line about causation and correlation again?
The average American watches an average of 4.5 hours of television every day, according to Nielsen. I don't know what percentage of viewers break down into the "happy" v. "unhappy" camps, but 20% of that is close to another hour of TV -- every day.
To put that in perspective, consider two things:
1) Most people spend 8 hrs/weekday at work and 8 hrs/day asleep. That's over half of the rest of one's day used for meals, grooming, chores, travel time, etc. For many people, TV is how they spend all of their free time during the week.
2) 4.5 hrs/day = 31.5 hrs/week. 20% of that is over 6 hours. That's not a trivial time investment.
Lastly, note that the above 4:35 quote is for adult men. Women watch about 40 minutes more TV per day. (The good news is that teens and children watch less.)
I know that most of the people registering as Mac users with IPv6 are actually Mac users with an Airport Extreme wireless base station (which many Mac users like myself don't have), but is there anything that can be extrapolated about Mac market share from this?
...but I'm sure diehard Apple fans will point to this study as more proof that the iPhone is the best thing since sliced shit.
Personally, I've always preferred the fresh-made artisan stuff you get at organic grocers, even if you have to cut it yourself. The crust is a bit hard on the gums, but- wait, sliced what?
You failed to distinguish between advertising interest in sex from someone (presumably hot) and advertising interest in sex from anyone (including a rapist). That was the thrust of my question. The dressing sexy argument is irrelevant as it fails to distinguish between the two (or to argue that there *is* no distinguishing the two).
Because she's 'asking for it' by showing it and she's showing it to everyone. She's asking for it by intentionally triggering primal animal urges in males that can and do supersede reasoning centers of the brain.
I don't buy that latter argument at all -- that "primal animal urges" "can and do supersede reasoning centers of the brain" which implies that rapists are innocent of malice and deserve no blame for their actions. Nor do I buy the implicit argument that the woman *deserves* to be raped because she should've known that she would encounter such an aberrant individual when obviously such people are a small enough section of society that women aren't *regularly* raped when they wear sexy clothing.
No. Humans are not creatures that act uncontrollably when they see a female in heat, and many less self-regulated animals have elaborate courting rituals before mating is allowed. The "asking for it by teasing biological urges" argument holds no water for humans. The normal man does not work that way.
To me that's always been a huge irony. The man had a good science education but became so utterly cynical about his fellow scientists that contempt seemed to drip from his work about them. Perhaps that's more experience than true irony, but I think the man came away excessively negative about mainstream science and more willing to embrace the fringe, and I wonder what experiences in academia led him to that.
It was hard to escape the conclusion that Crichton was a guy who would believe literally anything anyone told him. That's one reason I was somewhat surprised to see him arguing in favor of more objective thinking in the global-warming debate.
It's not so much that Crichton believed anything people told him so much as he didn't believe in science. While his science themed books show a great interest in reading about science, the conclusion is always that Science is Wrong and Scientists are Evil or Recklessly Stupid. The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Prey are all about the futility of trying to contain living things. In Next, the drug that saves his brother makes him age and die early. State of Fear is no different, really. It's more strident than the rest of his books about how scientists are all arrogant fools who will destroy the world, but it really matches the theme of the rest of his work.
Usually the protagonists are somewhat involved in the solution to the problem.
You must be new to Michael Crichton's work. See also Sphere, Congo, Jurassic Park, etc. All of them have a major deus ex machina component to their endings. (Technically, in Sphere, they remove themselves from relevance to the problem.)
The man knew how to write towards a climax damned well but has no idea how to resolve the story afterwards. Andromeda Strain is just one of the most jarring in that regard.
I'll turn that one around. How does "asking for it" from someone (who presumably meets her standards) imply "asking for it" from anyone, including a potential rapist?
Also look at DC v. Heller (2008), where he effectively writes the "well-regulated" portion of militia clause out of the Second Amendment, ruling that that only refers to all male citizens capable of common defense and reads self-defense against criminals (and not just defense of state or country) into the Second Amendment. He also goes to considerable lengths to pull in additional interpretive documents, like parallel state constitutional clauses, to interpret the text instead of sticking to the textualism he's so famous for.
Whether you support, politically, his interpretation of the Second Amendment or not, you'll have to admit that Heller is an exception non-Originalist decision and a betrayal of Scalia's judicial philosophy for his political philosophy.
They're not doing this to be consumer friendly, or environment friendly. This is about saving costs in shipping.
Oh to be sure, but if you can kill birds with one stone, make the world a little bit of a better place, and pick up some free PR glow, then why not go for the gold?
The devilish side of me hopes they ARE buying into that idea because I can't think of any better way to ensure the rest of my life is free from horrid packaging than one ruined Christmas.
One holiday seems a fair sacrifice for thousands of more convenient purchases over the next few decades of my life.
You expect hot coffee to be well, hot. It's supposed to be freshly boiled water. Otherwise it is luke warm.
You cook pies at a temperature of 350 F, but you don't serve them to people right out of the oven. Why does coffee get a free pass to be served at temperatures that cause third degree burns in only 2-7 seconds of contact, as in the famous McDonald's case?
It would be one thing if McDonald's was selling cups of molten lava with a warning that clearly said, "Don't let the stuff touch you until it cools, you freaking morons!" but one generally expects FOOD to be safe to touch to your body.
Also, it should be easy to add cream and sugar to a cup of coffee without dumping it all over yourself. McDonald's had bad lid design in that respect too. Furthermore, documents produced in court showed the McD's was well aware of the fact that other customers had suffered third degree burns from their product and continued to sell it in an unsafe manner. They even alleged in court that people who buy coffee mostly take it home or to work and drink it there instead of in the court (which frankly doesn't pass the laugh test).
No, McDonald's was clearly negligent, if not reckless, in their behavior and deserved to be punished for it. Coffee isn't a product that should be that risky to purchase and consume. How exactly does serving coffee at 185 F do anything positive for the customer?
I've never injured myself with the tool used to open hard plastic clamshell packaging before.
I have, however, had my fingers or hands cut open numerous times by the cut, torn, or ripped edge of the plastic itself when the packaging finally gave way to my cutting implement. I tell you, Boy Scout training on knife safety when cutting wood or animal skins does Jack to teach you about how to open nightmare packaging.
Happens with scissors, knifes, box cutters, or whatever. It's the plastic that scratches me up. I'll admit to being a klutz, but that style of packaging is just an irritating menace.
That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
Because they aren't the same thing.
I can't predict exactly the position and momentum of a single particle. I can predict the position and momentum of the baseball it's a part of.
I can't predict the economic decisions of a single person. I can predict that a recession is coming.
I can't predict the lifespan of an individual cancer patient. I can tell you the average lifespan of people suffering from that specific kind of cancer.
I can't tell you whether an individual popcorn kernel will pop. I can tell you how much time it will take to pop 95% of the corn.
I can't tell you where a random driver on the road is going and how long it will take to get there. I can tell you how long a traffic jam that they are in is likely to last.
There are a lot of localized, seemingly random phenomena that I can't tell you a THING about, but when you step back and look at a large enough scale, a strong pattern emerges. Weather is too small and too short of a time-scale dominated by strongly pseudo-random external forces to predict. Climate is not. Climate is kind of the "average" of weather, and that's a LOT easier to predict. Sadly, many people like yourself don't understand the difference between how systems act at large and small scales. In other words, they don't get the big picture.
Voting for third-party candidates is the ONLY way of changing the system.
In some theoretical world where a third-party candidate: (A) Wins. (B) Wins over enough allies to pass IRV legislation (C) Doesn't use that new found majority power to simply set themselves up as one of the Two Major Parties.
Ballot initiatives are a far better means of achieving this than relying on parties to get it done. All parties have rational self-interest to restrict IRV.
Well, I know Karen Lipps personally, and that's not how she explained to me. Its the fungus. Not increased susceptibility to the fungus. The fungus is 100% fatal in healthy frogs, so... I'm not sure where the frogs gain any ground by having their habitat intact or not... sounds like a red herring from someone capitalizing on her work... but I admit I'm quite a bit biased in that regard.
That's interesting, because a search on scholar.google.com for her name and chytrid (and longer versions of the name of the disease) turns up no papers that she's authored on the matter. Could you point me to some?
And what of TFA? Shame on SciAm for hardly mentioning the hard science (the fungus), and not even by name, but instead giving us what amounts to an editorial.
Did we read the same article?
Throughout the tropics, amphibians are also falling prey to a devastating disease, believed to be exacerbated by climate change: chytrid fungus. This pathogen is marching though Central America at present, leaving silent streams--those without the chorus of dozens of frog species--behind.
Also, as I've linked in another post in discussion, there's hard science behind the other claims, including the atrazine one.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a good thing that the human propensity to seek power and do evil only exists when that human works at a company, and never when that human works in government.
Every few years I get a chance to fire people in the government. I don't get that opportunity with my local telco monopoly.
Furthermore, there's a large philosophical difference between the level of disclosure and accountability for democratic governments than their is for deregulated corporations. You can structure corporations to have an equal level of disclosure, but historically that has always required government intervention to accomplish.
And WTF? libertarians support the PATRIOT act or unilateral action against sovereign nations? you know some funny libertarians, and I'm glad I haven't met them.
You must be fortunate enough to have not heard the radio show of Neil Boortz. He's a registered and self-proclaimed Libertarian, but he's strongly in favor of a muscular approach to terrorism.
Basically, he's a Republican who isn't religious (and thus doesn't buy into the culture war issues) and doesn't like the War on Drugs. He's arguably in the border. I'm not sure whether dismissing him as one is justified or an example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Now that is an interesting point. I unfortunately do not know enough on the issue to conjecture. I don't know how likely the stem cells are to "wear out early."
I'm going to have to do some reading up on this when I get some free time. Thanks for raising the point.
If they're replicating stem cells from people who are already at high risk of breast cancer, doesn't that increase it even more (more generations == shorter telomeres)?
Not really. Stem cells, like most cancer cells, produce telomerase and tend to have significantly longer telomeres than surrounding tissue. While this declines slowly with age, the cells in waist fat should be no more dangerous than those in breast fat in the same person.
Oh, and I'm not aware of any definitive link between breast size and cancer risk, so I have no idea if transferring fat from the waist -- who hears talk of belly fat cancer? -- to the breasts poses ay risk in itself. I doubt it, though.
Just because it's a Civ-type game with spells oriented around 5 "colors" does not mean it's MoM2. It's missing several things that helped make the game interesting, like races other than humans and the mirror world. MoM-like games have been done before.
That said, it doesn't look like a bad game at all, and even MoM wasn't all that original -- basically Civilization with Magic: the Gathering stapled on top of it. I'd buy it.
I should let this go, but there are so many things wrong with this post that I can't.
First, you are one person. Your experiences are interesting but are in no way disproof of the aggregate, average behavior of a population at large. It's nice that your life hasn't turned out the way the study predicts, but against the greater number of people looked at, your anecdotal story is not more valid than the entire study.
Second, the study does not predict a linear, mechanical mechanism by which one cannot watch X hours of TV without being Y levels of depressed. There is a correlation here. There may be an underlying cause, but nothing implies that that cause is universally true of the human population nor that all people are affected the same nor that people don't get lucky.
For example, driving while intoxicated clearly raises the likelihood you will be in an accident. However, people drive drunk without getting in accidents all the time (thanks to being lucky). If you drive home in one piece while plastered and do so regularly, that does not negate the overall truth that driving while intoxicated is risky.
Third, to follow up more on the linear relationship issue, there's nothing the study that says that if you watch too much TV you'll commit suicide.
Fourth, it might be worth pointing out that disabled people have a higher rate of depression that the population at large. Your objection about disabled people having to watch massive amounts of TV would only reinforce the numbers, assuming that the survey actually included disabled people.
I'm sorry for ranting, but this whole mindset of, "It hasn't happened to me, so these scientists are just plain wrong and stupid!" drives me absolutely bonkers. You are not the center of the universe. The rules by which it works do not center around your experiences. The plural of anecdote is not data.
Grah.
I think this may be a case where correlation does not imply causation. [...] Watching too much television might be a sign of unhappiness, but what are the causes of that unhappiness?
While I think the main cause of unhappiness leads to the correlation of watching too much television, I also think television has an anesthesizing and depressing effect of its own.
Huh. Funny how you start off this entire post about how "correlation does not imply causation," and yet you provide good arguments for causation flowing in both directions:
1) That people who are depressed are more likely to seek out television.
2) That television itself causes a depressive state.
So... What was the point in hauling out the beaten-to-death line about causation and correlation again?
The average American watches an average of 4.5 hours of television every day, according to Nielsen. I don't know what percentage of viewers break down into the "happy" v. "unhappy" camps, but 20% of that is close to another hour of TV -- every day.
To put that in perspective, consider two things:
1) Most people spend 8 hrs/weekday at work and 8 hrs/day asleep. That's over half of the rest of one's day used for meals, grooming, chores, travel time, etc. For many people, TV is how they spend all of their free time during the week.
2) 4.5 hrs/day = 31.5 hrs/week. 20% of that is over 6 hours. That's not a trivial time investment.
Lastly, note that the above 4:35 quote is for adult men. Women watch about 40 minutes more TV per day. (The good news is that teens and children watch less.)
I know that most of the people registering as Mac users with IPv6 are actually Mac users with an Airport Extreme wireless base station (which many Mac users like myself don't have), but is there anything that can be extrapolated about Mac market share from this?
...but I'm sure diehard Apple fans will point to this study as more proof that the iPhone is the best thing since sliced shit.
Personally, I've always preferred the fresh-made artisan stuff you get at organic grocers, even if you have to cut it yourself. The crust is a bit hard on the gums, but- wait, sliced what?
You failed to distinguish between advertising interest in sex from someone (presumably hot) and advertising interest in sex from anyone (including a rapist). That was the thrust of my question. The dressing sexy argument is irrelevant as it fails to distinguish between the two (or to argue that there *is* no distinguishing the two).
Because she's 'asking for it' by showing it and she's showing it to everyone. She's asking for it by intentionally triggering primal animal urges in males that can and do supersede reasoning centers of the brain.
I don't buy that latter argument at all -- that "primal animal urges" "can and do supersede reasoning centers of the brain" which implies that rapists are innocent of malice and deserve no blame for their actions. Nor do I buy the implicit argument that the woman *deserves* to be raped because she should've known that she would encounter such an aberrant individual when obviously such people are a small enough section of society that women aren't *regularly* raped when they wear sexy clothing.
No. Humans are not creatures that act uncontrollably when they see a female in heat, and many less self-regulated animals have elaborate courting rituals before mating is allowed. The "asking for it by teasing biological urges" argument holds no water for humans. The normal man does not work that way.
To me that's always been a huge irony. The man had a good science education but became so utterly cynical about his fellow scientists that contempt seemed to drip from his work about them. Perhaps that's more experience than true irony, but I think the man came away excessively negative about mainstream science and more willing to embrace the fringe, and I wonder what experiences in academia led him to that.
It was hard to escape the conclusion that Crichton was a guy who would believe literally anything anyone told him. That's one reason I was somewhat surprised to see him arguing in favor of more objective thinking in the global-warming debate.
It's not so much that Crichton believed anything people told him so much as he didn't believe in science. While his science themed books show a great interest in reading about science, the conclusion is always that Science is Wrong and Scientists are Evil or Recklessly Stupid. The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Prey are all about the futility of trying to contain living things. In Next, the drug that saves his brother makes him age and die early. State of Fear is no different, really. It's more strident than the rest of his books about how scientists are all arrogant fools who will destroy the world, but it really matches the theme of the rest of his work.
Usually the protagonists are somewhat involved in the solution to the problem.
You must be new to Michael Crichton's work. See also Sphere, Congo, Jurassic Park, etc. All of them have a major deus ex machina component to their endings. (Technically, in Sphere, they remove themselves from relevance to the problem.)
The man knew how to write towards a climax damned well but has no idea how to resolve the story afterwards. Andromeda Strain is just one of the most jarring in that regard.
I'll turn that one around. How does "asking for it" from someone (who presumably meets her standards) imply "asking for it" from anyone, including a potential rapist?
Also look at DC v. Heller (2008), where he effectively writes the "well-regulated" portion of militia clause out of the Second Amendment, ruling that that only refers to all male citizens capable of common defense and reads self-defense against criminals (and not just defense of state or country) into the Second Amendment. He also goes to considerable lengths to pull in additional interpretive documents, like parallel state constitutional clauses, to interpret the text instead of sticking to the textualism he's so famous for.
Whether you support, politically, his interpretation of the Second Amendment or not, you'll have to admit that Heller is an exception non-Originalist decision and a betrayal of Scalia's judicial philosophy for his political philosophy.
They're not doing this to be consumer friendly, or environment friendly. This is about saving costs in shipping.
Oh to be sure, but if you can kill birds with one stone, make the world a little bit of a better place, and pick up some free PR glow, then why not go for the gold?
The devilish side of me hopes they ARE buying into that idea because I can't think of any better way to ensure the rest of my life is free from horrid packaging than one ruined Christmas.
One holiday seems a fair sacrifice for thousands of more convenient purchases over the next few decades of my life.
You expect hot coffee to be well, hot. It's supposed to be freshly boiled water. Otherwise it is luke warm.
You cook pies at a temperature of 350 F, but you don't serve them to people right out of the oven. Why does coffee get a free pass to be served at temperatures that cause third degree burns in only 2-7 seconds of contact, as in the famous McDonald's case?
It would be one thing if McDonald's was selling cups of molten lava with a warning that clearly said, "Don't let the stuff touch you until it cools, you freaking morons!" but one generally expects FOOD to be safe to touch to your body.
Also, it should be easy to add cream and sugar to a cup of coffee without dumping it all over yourself. McDonald's had bad lid design in that respect too. Furthermore, documents produced in court showed the McD's was well aware of the fact that other customers had suffered third degree burns from their product and continued to sell it in an unsafe manner. They even alleged in court that people who buy coffee mostly take it home or to work and drink it there instead of in the court (which frankly doesn't pass the laugh test).
No, McDonald's was clearly negligent, if not reckless, in their behavior and deserved to be punished for it. Coffee isn't a product that should be that risky to purchase and consume. How exactly does serving coffee at 185 F do anything positive for the customer?
I've never injured myself with the tool used to open hard plastic clamshell packaging before.
I have, however, had my fingers or hands cut open numerous times by the cut, torn, or ripped edge of the plastic itself when the packaging finally gave way to my cutting implement. I tell you, Boy Scout training on knife safety when cutting wood or animal skins does Jack to teach you about how to open nightmare packaging.
Happens with scissors, knifes, box cutters, or whatever. It's the plastic that scratches me up. I'll admit to being a klutz, but that style of packaging is just an irritating menace.
That blows my mind because I watch the Weather Channel and they can't even get things right for the next week. If we've got models that can go out 10-50 years accurately, why the hell is the weather forecast still so bad?
Because they aren't the same thing.
I can't predict exactly the position and momentum of a single particle.
I can predict the position and momentum of the baseball it's a part of.
I can't predict the economic decisions of a single person.
I can predict that a recession is coming.
I can't predict the lifespan of an individual cancer patient.
I can tell you the average lifespan of people suffering from that specific kind of cancer.
I can't tell you whether an individual popcorn kernel will pop.
I can tell you how much time it will take to pop 95% of the corn.
I can't tell you where a random driver on the road is going and how long it will take to get there.
I can tell you how long a traffic jam that they are in is likely to last.
There are a lot of localized, seemingly random phenomena that I can't tell you a THING about, but when you step back and look at a large enough scale, a strong pattern emerges. Weather is too small and too short of a time-scale dominated by strongly pseudo-random external forces to predict. Climate is not. Climate is kind of the "average" of weather, and that's a LOT easier to predict. Sadly, many people like yourself don't understand the difference between how systems act at large and small scales. In other words, they don't get the big picture.
Voting for third-party candidates is the ONLY way of changing the system.
In some theoretical world where a third-party candidate:
(A) Wins.
(B) Wins over enough allies to pass IRV legislation
(C) Doesn't use that new found majority power to simply set themselves up as one of the Two Major Parties.
Ballot initiatives are a far better means of achieving this than relying on parties to get it done. All parties have rational self-interest to restrict IRV.
Well, I know Karen Lipps personally, and that's not how she explained to me. Its the fungus. Not increased susceptibility to the fungus. The fungus is 100% fatal in healthy frogs, so... I'm not sure where the frogs gain any ground by having their habitat intact or not... sounds like a red herring from someone capitalizing on her work... but I admit I'm quite a bit biased in that regard.
That's interesting, because a search on scholar.google.com for her name and chytrid (and longer versions of the name of the disease) turns up no papers that she's authored on the matter. Could you point me to some?
And what of TFA? Shame on SciAm for hardly mentioning the hard science (the fungus), and not even by name, but instead giving us what amounts to an editorial.
Did we read the same article?
Throughout the tropics, amphibians are also falling prey to a devastating disease, believed to be exacerbated by climate change: chytrid fungus. This pathogen is marching though Central America at present, leaving silent streams--those without the chorus of dozens of frog species--behind.
Also, as I've linked in another post in discussion, there's hard science behind the other claims, including the atrazine one.
So the only aggression I have is this unexplainable urge to jump on people's heads and punch bricks.
OH YEAH!