Just the Headlines

Daniel Handler AKA Lemony Snicket writes a play for adults, called 4 Adverbs - Young fans everywhere already cringe at the thought of Lemony without the Irony

The celebrated dyke band Nochnye Snaipery (Night Snipers) from Russia will come to San Francisco March 8th (International Women's Day, the second biggest holiday in Russia after New Year's, by the by)

Nerd Goddess Sarah Vowell is going to be on the Geek God Jon Stewart's show tonight-- will the heavens open up and all the geeks and nerds ascend into nirvana?

Hmmm, what else caught my attention today... oh yeah, the polar icecaps.

My coworker just came back from the Alaska Forum on the Environment and Climate Change - which was mostly funded and attended by EPA and other government types - i.e. it was pretty sanitized, and didn't talk about the CAUSES of climate change such as hydrocarbons and other things sacred to the Bush Administration - but people STILL managed to talk themselves into a cold sweat about climate change. And one woman apparently reported some chilling (or not, as the case may be) facts about the polar icecap retreating from being in contact with all continents to being surrounded by open water (i.e. room for tanker shipping routes and offshore drilling derricks, yippee) in the course of only FIVE OR SIX YEARS! And then apparently she said that - oh well - we won't all survive, but the human race will survive.

And to boot, someone else said that NO MATTER WHAT WE DO the climate change we've been seeing will continue (in a best case scenario) for the next 100 years based solely on the impact we have ALREADY rendered... so, go ahead and get that houseboat you were looking at, because 6-7 meters of water is headed your way in the more and more immediate future!

I really want to know, are they working out a design for a Prius that floats? I mean, the oilies are fully apprised of our soggy future-- they must be engineering for it.

Doing a casual google for "prius" and "floats" I found this... shadow of the future?

The 2005 Prius has enough air bags to float you safely across the ocean. In addition to the usual driver and passenger air bags, it has side-impact air bags in the front and rear, and “curtain” air bags that deploy from the roof supports.