Well this is rather nice. As of right now on Amazon.co.uk, Line War is at number 4 in the SF bestsellers (it’s been hanging around there for a while) and number 72 in books overall. I’ve also just been told that the first print run of Hilldiggers paperback sold out last month and that they’re having to reprint, before the actual release date.
Other news: I’m 80,000 words into Orbus. Also, very soon, I hope to be posting some news about some, well,
Neal Asher
Line War is the fifth novel in his increasingly popular Agent Cormac series. The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the invasion seems to have no coherence. Further seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue and Ian Cormac is sent to investigate but he's struggling to control a new ability no human should possess. What's happening could bring about the end of the Polity itself.
All Orders must be placed before 12pm on Friday 4th April
Here's a guy who should be listened to. His comments about Berkley apply equally as well to our universities. And the whole -ism thing is so true.
Well, I turned on google today and was presented with a black screen in aid of Earth Hour. What a load of fucking bollocks. My reaction to this is to immediately make myself another cup of coffee, maybe turn the central heating up and a couple of rings on the cooker just for the hell of it.
Right, here's a post I recently put up on Asimov's forum:
A difference that's becoming increasingly notable between those 'scientists' who back the AGW hypothesis and those who don't is that the former usually sit in offices somewhere playing with statistics and computer models, whilst the latter are actually getting out there and measuring stuff. It's probably part of our big love affair with computers, and the daft idea that they are a solve all, which ignores the crap in crap out rule. Go to a doctor's surgery now and you can immediately tell which doctor is the best: he's the one looking at you and not at the computer screen.
Regarding looking at computer screens. I think I'm now going start using another search engine hopefully not run by a bunch of righteous pricks.
Righto, I've put one of these wdigets on this blog for those who might like to subscribe:
Here's the graph of temperature and and CO2 over the last ten years. It can be found here along with much other data painful to the IPCC (thanks again Rich). The pink and the blue lines are temperature whilst the green line is CO2. They don't even correlate. There's probably a greater correlation between the number of Play Stations (on which they run their climate models) bought by the IPCC and the rise in CO2. But even if there was a correlation between heat and CO2 over the last ten years or even the last thousand years, correlation does not equal causation. Of course it bears repeating that there is a correlation between heat and CO2 in the big 600,000 year ice-core picture of climate data, that being that CO2 rises AFTER the temperature rises. I still cannot get out of my head the warmista explanation of this, that because, overall, there's a lot of CO2 vaguely about the historical point of warming it must have caused the warming. You know, when you heat up a kettle there's a lot of steam. This doesn't mean the steam caused the kettle to heat up.
The icy Easter weekend was declared the coldest for 44 years yesterday as forecasters warned of more bad weather for the rest of the month.
Odd, isn't it, how though this cold weather has been detailed in the BBC news and weather programs, this one phrase has been notable by its absence: coldest for 44 years. You see, whilst it is acceptable to say this has been the hottest summer, winter, autumn spring, March, April or Pancake Day for X number of years, or since records began and then immediately go over to a global warming expert for details about how we are all going to roast or drown, it is not acceptable to say anything that might undermine the AGW religion. However, our thick-arsed news reporters are allowed to say that cold windy or wet weather is an extreme caused by global warming.
It is also notable how there's been no mention of how the polar ice caps have been expanding this year, or how ice now covers 2 million square kilometres more of Canada than it has in three years. Doubtless, when the glaciers are nudging up to Broadcasting House the good old BBC will be claiming that global warming caused the Ice Age.
So, in the fight against waste and overflowing landfills we have three or four different boxes or bags in which to separate out our rubbish for recycling, we have charges coming in for more than one bag of rubbish a week, the push to be rid of plastic carrier bags, computer chips in wheely bins and, oddly, though it angers me that ‘green’ issues are being used as an excuse to push up council tax, I don’t entirely disagree with these moves themselves. Too much is just wasted by our society, too much crap goes into landfills because of built-in obsolescence and over-packaging, too many carrier bags decorate our trees and hedgerows, too many dustbins overflow with disposable nappies and other crap generated by lazy wasteful jerks. And, this is why many HSE and EU dictats seriously piss me off.
Hey, you want to buy anything electrical secondhand, then forget it, for such items must be tested and passed as safe by a qualified electrician. Charity shops, therefore, cannot afford to sell, say, an electric kettle. I also know for a fact that most big organizations (especially government ones) throw away computers and related hardware once the maintenance contract runs out. They’re not even allowed to give such stuff away.
Now the latest bit of waste provided for us by the EU: I like beef, but beef ain’t worth eating unless it has been hung for two to three weeks. The usual method, after this period, is to joint the carcase and turn the rest into mince. Not now say the ‘elf and safety pricks in the EU parliament. Because some people in
Oh for fuck’s sake. These EU bureaucrats need shoving through a mincer themselves. Is this continual imposition of regulation after regulation ever going to end? I mean, why don’t they do what they really want and make everything illegal or wrong in some way until specifically approved? Waste, yeah, the biggest waste of space, time and money is that thing called the European Parliament.
Picture the scene: it is a grey cold and colourless day and we focus on an old lady motoring down the pavement on her mobility scooter and gazing miserably at the big CLOSED sign outside the local bingo hall. Then, suddenly, she is on a
The other smoking wheeze (excuse the pun) from our government is to force shopkeepers to take cigarettes off display and hide them under the counter. This is to discourage under-age smokers, apparently. Funny, I thought it was against the law for anyone under 18 to either buy or smoke cigarettes. Again, in the typical New Labour manner: more new legislation and laws rather than ENFORCING THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE!
Subtitle: Brought Down to Earth with a Thump.
In my youth visits to the hospital were either grudging attendances on sick kin or occasional visits to A&E. One time I enthusiastically picked up and eraser thrown at me by a work-mate then as I stood found myself lifting a cast-iron engine block mounting cube (a lump of metal you bolt an engine block to on a surface table for marking out or measurement – it takes two people to lift it) with my head underneath one of the mounting studs, which subsequently slid down. I noted the lump of scalp on the end of the stud, slapped a hand over my forehead and fled to the toilets where, in the mirror, I was greeted by the sight of a flap of my scalp lifting on each pulse of blood.
In recent years my visits to hospital have become more frequent and come to involve death; you get older and more people you know get seriously ill and sometimes die. Like Alan Wood in the dedication in Cowl, and like my father last year. However, I’ve never needed to go beyond A&E for a problem of my own.
Last Friday I thought to myself damn, my bottom is sore, and wondered if I was paying the penalty of my drink-sodden lifestyle with piles. Over the weekend the pain in my arse grew, unrelieved by haemorrhoid cream, but I managed, much to my surprise, to get an appointment with the doctor’s on Monday. To be fair the doctor was probably misled by my mention of piles and probably, having to deal with dim patients was why he asked me three times if I’d had them before (I hadn’t) and if there was any blood (there wasn’t). He also didn’t get to inspect matters too closely since, after his first attempt, he had to peel me off the ceiling. He prescribed a cream, but it didn’t do any good.
Now here’s where the bottom humour starts to wane as soreness turns to pain and then PAIN. After a day in bed I got to see another doctor on an emergency basis. He tried the anal-inspection routine then after digging my fingernails out of the wall came to a conclusion: pain like that was probably due to an infection, probably an abscess. He prescribed strong painkillers and antibiotics and, if things weren’t getting any better within 48 hours I would have to go to hospital where, under general anaesthetic, they would probably have to open drain and pack the abscess.
The pain killers kicked in for a while, at least enabling me to get out of the car, but thereafter it seemed I might just as well have been eating Smarties. You know the expression ‘writhing in pain’? … well I certainly do now, only I was writhing the top half of my body and my feet because any movement of my middle section resulted in an invisible demon shoving a soldering iron up my arse. I was making noises too – little grunts and groans were escaping no matter how much I clenched my teeth. Coughing was to be avoided at all costs, because the demon swapped his soldering iron for a red-hot poker at that point. I spent a night like this, seeing every hour on the clock.
In the morning
After a further long wait during which I stood supporting myself on the arms of two chairs I was taken into a cubical to be checked over by a junior surgical doctor. This involved her asking me numerous questions, delivering homilies about my smoking straight out of the New Labour Book of Truth, then she proceeded to part my buttocks and subsequently remove my hands from her throat. I jest, of course, but right then I wanted a pump-action shotgun beside me: “You touch this without giving me drugs and I spray your head over that wall!”
Some of the next bit comes second hand, because I can’t really remember much of it. I ended up on my side on a bed, behind A&E,
Pain is no fun at all, but neither is the discomfort of lying in one position for hours on end so, despite this stirring the wannabe electrician demon into action, I had to move to relieve aching back, neck, buttocks and dead arms. At about 9.30 in the evening I did this again and noted that the demon must have been taking a tea break. Then I realised something was cold and wet and reached down to find a couple of slimy buttocks. Managing to shift myself I saw brown and pink plasma soaking the under sheet. I called over the nurse who changed things for me and I was actually able to stand beside the bed while this was being done. He then put down some nappies on the bed for me to lie on, and I was able to lie on my back for the first time in three days.
No surgery that evening – too busy – so I was able to eat a sandwich and have a cup of tea. I was told I would be able to have breakfast and something to drink, but nothing more afterwards because I would probably go under the knife that afternoon. Sometime after midnight I fell asleep until about six in the morning whereupon I found that someone had dumped a cupful of strawberry sauce and custard underneath me. I got rid of the soaked nappy in a surgical waste bin and grabbed another gown. When it came to being washed I used the ward shower. I ate breakfast, felt a lot better, and began to question whether surgery under general anaesthetic was a good idea now, but it was difficult to find anyone who had a clue about what was going on.
Finally one I assumed to be the consultant, with his train of juniors in tow, turned up. One of the juniors (the politically-correct anti-smoker) checked me over. She used rather more caution with my buttocks this time, which was a bit stable door. The diagnosis was that nature was taking its course and I was done there. No surgery. All I needed was a dressing on my bum and the needle taken out of my arm, which took six hours to get accomplished…
I wonder what they do?
I thought the BBC was supposed to be impartial? I thought that this is part of the contract they have with the British public for which we pay a compulsory tax every year? Yet, here we have, on the BBC website, the counter-arguments to climate 'skeptics'.
After studying glaciers scientists say that they have retreated the furthest since records began. We need to do more about GLOBAL WARMING! This was how a recent story was reported on the BBC, with pictures of melting glaciers (what they do every summer). Of course they neglect to point out that real glacier measurement only started in the 80s. This report was also based on 30 glaciers. How many glaciers in the world? 16 million.
Pathetic.
Addition: Here you can find the state of the science thus far.
Here's a recent email from Petr Kotrle, the guy who translates my books into Czechoslovakian. A number of years ago The Skinner won the Salamander Award there (the picture is of the publisher collecting it), and in a subsequent award Gridlinked was shortlisted. Now it's the turn of The Line of Polity.
Dear Neal
Another year is over and we have shortlists for the Czech SF&F&H Academy Award again. You are in for best SF novel with Line of Polity, but the competition is really hard this year: Olympos by Dan Simmons (another of my translations), NeoAddix by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Songmaster by Orson Scot Card and Valhalla: The Last Day by Czech writer Frantisek Novotny.
Nice review here at Sci-Fi-London.
Neal Asher has crafted a nice short book here with a simple plot and straightforward narrative that doesn't waste time getting to the action and keeps up the pace, pretty relentlessly, right to the end. But don't be fooled by the apparently simplistic facade, this book has a nice depth and opens up some arguments that, while not really explored in the pages of the novel - this is Neal Asher, after all - stay with you after you put it down.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is that annoys me most about the watermelon cry of, “They’re in the pay of big oil!” There’s the deliberate impugning of the source so as to avoid dealing with the argument, which seems par for the course with these people. This generally means that you need to follow-the-money to find people’s motives, yet now ignores the fact that the widest money trail leads straight to billions in government funding for those pursuing the AGW hypothesis. The bureaucrats and rent-a-scientists pulling down nice fat cheques at the IPCC and in government environmental departments aren’t going to suddenly decide that their cash cow needs to visit the abattoir.
However, I think that what annoys me about the “big oil!” claim is the sheer naivety of those making it. They seem to be making the assumption, despite daily evidence to the contrary, that government organizations, whether national or international, should be trusted more than big industries yet, if an industry’s accounts are dodgy they have auditors down on them like a ton of bricks. If the execs get caught massaging expense claims or with their fingers in the till, they get the sack and often end up in prison. Government bodies do what the fuck they like and are not even controlled by the market. Look at that shithouse the EU: twelve years now auditors have refused to sign off the books because of the obvious corruption there. And what happens with the IPCC when it gets caught massaging the figures? Nothing. What happens when it is quite obvious it’s cooking the books? Nothing.
It must be part of the watermelon mindset. They’re statists and believe everything will be fine when the state controls everything, when the socialist utopia has come. And it probably will come, a step at a time, each step a good intention.
Maldives safe and GW causing an increase in Antarctic ice.
Now we have the urban heat island effect, and a bit of sea-level rise.
And here we have Mr Mann's 'hockey-stick' and the 40s cooling.
When did we start doing meteorological measurements of global temperature? At the coldest point in the last 10,000 years.
Here, check out fantasybookcritic where there's a Line War giveaway. There's also an interview with me to be found, which will soon, I believe, be updated.
"Global warming" is not a global crisis
We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,
Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed 'consensus' among climate experts are false;
Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:
Hereby declare:
That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity's real and serious problems.
That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.
That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.
That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.
That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.
Now, therefore, we recommend --
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as "An Inconvenient Truth."
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.
Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008
Thanks for this, Rich.
Of course, if any of this had backed up AGW it would have been a lead story on the BBC and definitely the front page of the Guardian.
The Conference, held in New York March 2-4, and sponsored by the Heartland Institute, attracted some 500 people from around the world to listen to climatologists, meteorologists, economists, policy makers, and others with impeccable credentials. They were brought together by their disdain for the global warming hoax, based largely on the false claims of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These in turn are spread by people like Al Gore along with scores of environmental organizations.
"Last week, virtually unreported in Britain, the extraordinary winter weather of 2008 elsewhere in the world continued. In the USA, there were blizzards as far south as Texas and Arkansas, while in northern states and Canada what they are calling "the winter from hell" has continued to break records going back in some cases to 1873. Meanwhile in Asia more details emerged of the catastrophe caused by the northern hemisphere's greatest snow cover since 1966."
But, as Booker writes, the fact that in Afghanistan they have lost 300,000 cattle and the human death toll has risen above 1,500, the fact that in China, six months of snow and record low temperatures have killed 500,000 animals and left three million people on the edge of starvation, is news. That British editors did not think it important enough to print speaks volumes of their distorted priorities and their lamentable values.
A simpering parochial mouthpiece for the government, that's just about all our MSM is.
The Environment Agency warned of severe storms yesterday but, this being Britain, severe means a few missing fence panels and dustbins, the odd tree over and a bit of minor flooding – flooding we wouldn’t have had if the Environment Agency’s funding hadn’t been hugely cut by a government who would rather blow money on its armies of useless bureaucrats, on killing Muslims far away from here or by throwing a few hundreds of millions at Africa.
This morning we got the usual media storm of our on-the-spot reporter hyping up the disaster: we see said intrepid reporter standing in a windy street with a wheely bin over on its side behind him (hints of the reporter Damian from ‘Drop the Dead Donkey here – doubtless the camera crew had to heave it over on its side before they started filming), the odd tree over, a ship in trouble and a few inches of flooding in Loo. But it’s dangerous out there folks, your umbrella might get turned inside out.
Apparently government ministers had a meeting about this yesterday. Gosh I feel all safe now that I know teams of diversity managers will be heading out to insure that the correct proportion of black lesbian firewomen will be filling sandbags. I wonder what else was on the agenda: how can we spin this as global warming and introduce some more taxes? Can we really hype this up in the news to distract people from how we betrayed them over the vote on the European Constitution?
In another less hysterical age Winnie the Pooh would be noting that this is a Blustery Day.
So, the Orwellian hogs in the Houses of Parliament have decided we will not get a vote on the EU constitution, even though they made election promises to do so. These cunts have again shit all over the freedoms people have died to preserve, butt-fucked democracy and sneered contemptuously at anyone not in their political class. The arch pustulent pig Gordon Brown just ignores any protest and robotically repeats that it is not the Constitution any more – working on the basis that if you repeat a lie often enough it will be believed.
Now, since most of our legislation is made in
Thanks to Yan Golanski for this link to Daily Tech. Seeing stuff like the below it is worth remembering that NASA is just as corrupt and bureaucratic as the IPCC. Remember, NASA still employs that lunatic Hansen who has been claiming 20ft and 80ft sea-level rises even when the IPCC could see that bit of alarmism was starting to sink. Here we go:
NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. "Money", he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.
Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."
Because we are having a warm spring here in Britain, a silly fucking weather girl was on GMTV this morning spouting the usual AGW rubbish. No mention there, or on the BBC, of the inconvenient drop in global temperature this year. I doesn't fit accepted doctrine you see. Annoyed by this I started thinking about why my opinions are as they are. Here's some of it:
The IPCC is a political organization that ‘adjusts’ reports to fit policy, names authors who have opted out or objected to the way their data are used, ignores research that does not fit the AGW hypothesis, based its 2001 claims for major warming on the discredited ‘hockey-stick’, has a stated purpose of “understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change” therefore no inclination to point out that there might not be a risk, especially when that would mean no more large bungs of cash from governments and no more conferences in exotic locations.
The left has hijacked the issue, blamed it on 'evil capitalism' and now tries to use it to foist their failed ideology upon us all.
Governments have hijacked the issue and are using it as an excuse to destroy our freedoms and impose further taxes upon us.
Cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
For the years 1998 to 2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
This year’s total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to drop the graph to the lowest level for the past 100 years.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. The bears also survived the Medieval Warm Period and the Holocene Maximum.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at 380ppm. In the Ordovician Period it was at 4400ppm, yet this was during an ICE AGE. The IPCC says it could reach as high as 450 to 550 ppm by 2050 … that would be one tenth of what it was during the mentioned ICE AGE.
Computer models not only failed to predict the future, they can't even predict the past: if you run their software with the data from the 1970s or 1980s, and project what should happen in the 1990s or 2000s, their results have absolutely nothing to do with the known climate data for those decades.
Despite Gore’s vague claim of a ‘correlation’ as proof of AGW, the ice core data inconveniently proves that CO2 appears approx 800 years AFTER warming commences,
Even the IPCC has backed off on its claims of catastrophic sea-level rise and we are now nearly back down to the 1.8mm a year of the last few centuries i.e. the rise ongoing since the end of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago.
At the same time as supposed AGW we’ve had warming on Pluto, Jupiter, Saturn, Triton and Mars.
Oh hell, I could just go on and on, but if you want to find out some more, read the NIPCC Report. Unlike the IPCC report the English is quite clear in this one since they're not trying to distort reality to fit ideology.
Check this out on EBAY. Bids have only reached £36 so far.
For sale with "NO RESERVE" is a 1996 Triumph Trophy with 65,550 miles. MOT till 1st May and taxed till the end of April.
Nice little review of Gardner Dozois's Galactic Empires here on SF Signal. And here's the bit about my story, though I thought it mean to give it three stars (I'm biased).
Neal Asher's "Owner Space" opens with a group of people on the run from (1) the Collective - the dominating conformance society from which they escaped, and (2) an alien known to be dangerous to mankind. Their only salvation is to enter the mysterious Owner Space, an area of space that is home to a rumored God-like being equally intolerant of humans and aliens. Sound confusing? It may take a little time to get a clear picture of all factions and interrelationships involved (additionally there's the Markovian society which fell to the Collective) but the conflict is actually well-imagined and intriguing. The most memorable characters are the evil Collective Doctrinaire named Shrad, who is power-drunk and evil to the bone; the Owner, an unassuming human with mind-boggling but largely unexplained powers; and the Grazen alien mother, a hapless victim to man's atrocities. Some cool elements in the story - like the mind-controlling strouds and the automaton Guards it turns people into - round out a good story.
And another old rant and rave:
NOT IMMORTAL.
We live in a society obsessed with the idea of youth, and frightened of the plain facts of aging and death. To avoid facing up to them people will lie, behave as if those facts don’t exist, refuse to wear hearing aids or glasses, dress young, have Botox injected and wrinkles cut away. But worse than all this are those who offer up the obviously untruthful promise of eternal youth.
One look at the advertising thrown in our faces every day will illustrate this. An evening of TV adverts will give you such gems as a model who has only just managed to clear up her acne in time to sing the praises of a hypo-allergenic-polyfiller-in-wrinkle-cream. Another cream will reduce the seven signs of aging, so we can all be glad that such a simple product will protect us against incontinence, arthritis, dementia, heart failure, blindness, hearing loss and a tendency to harp on about the good old days. You can boogy down on the beach sipping a drink containing enough sugar to rot the tusks off an elephant, and somehow this will transform you into a white-toothed youth. There’s the deodorant that keeps you perpetually available to your latest boyfriend, which is probably useful if you live the active skateboarding life promoted by your latest brand of tampon.
Magazines and catalogues are as bad if not worse. See the girdle clinging to the curves of that model who has just returned from shooting an advert about a shampoo that apparently gives you an orgasm. Observe young Adonis modelling the latest truss. And read all those articles promoting foods, New Age treatments, lifestyles and internal décor that’ll keep you perpetually this side of the
The horror of all this is that it works – many people believe it. It is doubly unfortunate, therefore, that this lying ‘in spirit and in fact’ extends well beyond the mercenary and cut-throat worlds of advertising and glossy magazines.
Consider government health warnings on cigarette packets. If you smoke you can get painful, humiliating, or disfiguring diseases that can be fatal. This is all very frightening until you ask, “How many of us don’t?” We all die. Few of us are lucky enough to die in our sleep. Most of us die from some kind of lingering malady. If you drink, don’t imbibe more than twenty-one units in a week. Heavy drinking can lead to liver failure and death (unless you’re a famous footballer of course). Both of these aberrant behaviours can lead to all sorts of terrible illnesses ranging from impotence to heart failure. Again, such warnings ignore the fact that avoiding such habits does not result in endless perfect health. You are going to get sick and die anyway, and not at the age of ninety-two with your nurse bouncing up and down on your willy. But ignoring this fact is carried on through to our health service with horrible results.
This seeming inability accept the inevitability of death (which admittedly has always been a human trait) has resulted in a health service that refuses to give us an easy way out and, with increasingly poisonous treatments, prolongs the horrible process. Get yourself a painful lingering terminal illness, and you can guarantee that the NHS will extend your suffering for as long as possible. Your only way out would be to suck on the exhaust of your car but, unable to drive that you sold it years ago, or perhaps cut your wrists, if your hands didn’t shake so much. But neither are really viable while you are trapped in a hospital bed. Your dignity is irrelevant, of course. How dare you, by your very presence, prove that none of us lives forever? How dare you be old or ill? How dare you die?
Thanks to Kirby Ubben for this link. Now all you hysterics go and read the numerous pieces here with their links then shut the fuck up about AGW causing polar bear extinction.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.” The alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. And the methodology of these computer models is being challenged by many scientists and forecasting experts.
