Water Painting and Human Extinction

My roommate kept bugging me to watch the video below, an amazing Japanese fountain that creates "paintings" and written messages in water using hundreds of nozzles. Quite hypnotic.

My first thought, just one more thing that the human drive to exterminate itself before its natural time will render forgotten. Besides my general "sky is falling" "nukes or asteroids are coming" attitude as displayed frequently here, other recent information inputs have put this thought to mind:

* Pundits boasting we have enough oil and coal for the next 300 years! (And what are people supposed to do after that for things oil and coal are the best source of?) We better have Star Trek replicator technology by then that can produce anything from garbage, dirt and water.

* Reading for the first time about the Doomsday argument which wikipedia describes as "a probabilistic argument that claims to predict the future lifetime of the human race given only an estimate of the total number of humans born so far." The article says the prediction is "humanity will disappear within 9120 years." The science magazine article I read describing one version of the theory said we might last another few hundred thousand.

* John McCain. John McCain. John McCain. (Do the neocons think they can control THAT nut?) If you want to enjoy the terrors and delights (legal marijuana!) of post-nuclear war survival, elect John!

* "Jeremiah" sci-fi television series about a male-made virus that kills off everyone over the age of 13ish, destroying most knowledge of modern technology. (As usual the nuclear power plants don't melt down!)

* Experiencing global cooling. Am I the only one who noticed how cool this summer has been? Has enough ice melted to cool the seas and reverse the process - too much? The BBC says it is just La Nina.

* Watching danged History Channel. Gotta stop watching the Mega Disasters series, including the same shows over and over again. Massive volcanic eruptions from Yellowstone Park caldera cover the continent in 20-50 feet of ash. Blocks out the sun for decades.

* Watching that History Channel show alleging all that carbon dioxide we're producing, even if it is not the main cause of global warming, can turn the seas so acid most of the life will die...and so will most of us.

* Reading about Svalbard Global Seed Vault meant to save humanity's plant heritage in case of catastrophe being stuck in Greenland. Geez, who the heck can get there, especially if it's covered with glaciers? Why not 10 or 15 more limited seed banks on each continent?

* Reading about some "cosmological models in which the universe follows infinite, self-sustaining cycles," collapsing and exploding over and over again, according to wikipedia. (Which is getting fussy about being attributed. See it's latest and to me slightly dubious charge of plagarism vs. McCain - and you know I'm not defending McCain per se!!)

* If I missed anything that's been on my mind lately, I'll add it.

Meanwhile think about how we can improve the human race (read end the rule of patriarchy, violent states and low consciousness/lower chakra motivation) so we can survive on the planet long enough to get off it and travel to a planet that will survive. I want all my blog posts immortalized til at least the next time the universe collapses and explodes again, and that's the only way it will happen.