Wow

So, I am truly amazed at what goes in to the Passover Rabbi/Seder Leader's kit. Happened to get my hands on one. In addition to the expected box of matzah, there is a whole host of goodies. There are two beef ghoulash entrees. Greasy, but, well, greasy. Eight grape juice boxes. One can of kippered herring from sometime in the early nineteenth century. Two pieces of bazooka gum.
I was impressed to find not only a kittel, but an Artscroll Passover Machzor. Not cheap.
However, the most amazing things I found were two little packs of charoset that were marked as gifts of the Telshe Yeshiva in Wickliffe, OH, outside of Cleveland. What a nice gesture.

In one office a senior officer was about to visit. The ranking guy in the room was given advance notice. His warning to the troops: "Shut up about Paris Hilton going to jail, XXXX is coming." True story.

Another incident occurred recently that was related to my story about laughing about some dead bad guys. One thing that contributes to it is the absurd nature of the reporting. The dry and surreal nature of it is darkly funny. There are definitley times that I think Catch 22 was based on a true story.
Anyway, during a report on an operation, a less than professional--though hardly crude--term was used for killing people. At the end of the brief, one of the senior folks stood up and reminded us that we are in a serious business. You must be passionate about what we do, but able to be professional about it to work at our level. He didn't jump on the guy, just made a general statement about the type of discourse he wants.
Still, dark or otherwise, some things are funny. I'm sorry. If we call it a coping mechanism, maybe it is more socially acceptable.

In response to my weak India analogy, my mother pointed out that India's infrastructure wasn't destroyed. I'd argue that it wasn't really built either.

Also, I was sharing my initial reaction to the first half of The Weathermakers with my wife, but may as well mention them here.
First, the climate IS changing. I see that first hand in the variations in weather patterns that we've experienced. To be fair, the climate is always changing. Climate change is a constant, but we don't notice it on the small scale of time that we are here. We are small and life is short on a geologic scale.
Second, I'm not convinced that Carbon Dioxide levels are the primary cause and by extension, I'm not sold on human activity as being the sole and driving factor in the phenomenon of global warming as part of the climatic shift.
This is the primary flaw in the argument of the paleontologist (note, not meteorologist or climatologist, though I don't doubt his mastery of much of the material). He takes the conclusion that human activity and our CO2 emissions are the primary factor as a given. He does raise other factors but doesn't sell me on their irrelevance. I can be sold, my mind is not made up or closed by any means. But he didn't do it for me. I understand how CO2 can warm the atmosphere, and it does, but with variations in our orbit, variations in insolation (essentially energy from the sun reaching the Earth), volcanos, etc. there are a lot of influences. And the variations in the data and the means of collection involve many assumptions as well. And finally, maybe just from my brief experience forecasting weather, I am suspicious of the forecasts made from assumed starting conditions. We have trouble working from mostly known starting conditions using precision measurements.
The other thing that is a little odd in the reasoning is that it assumes that the present is the way it should be. There have been many mass extinctions in the past, many related to changes in climate. These mass extinctions have opened the doors for new species to evolve. Nothing against polar bears, but if they can't compete in the current climate, historically they would have died off. Historically, the mass extinctions didn't result in an end to biodiversity, but a change to it.
Yet, this paleontologist, who makes a point of going in to this history in the book, rails against any extinction or change. It just seems confusing to me how now-centric the mindset is. I find it a little arrogant to assume we are the sole drivers of everything on this planet and that what we experience is the perfect snapshot in history of how the Earth should be, as historically anomalous as it may be.
All that said, I hardly advocate hunting animals to extinction or being irresponsible with the environment. I bike. I use biofuel. I'll probably agree with many of the policy changes he recommends at the end of the book, even if I don't think they'll stop climate change. Reduction in polluation can't be bad. Being good stewards of the environment is a good thing. Not recklessly destroying ecosystems is a good thing. We are a part of it afterall.
If nothing else, the book does an incredible job detailing the interconnectedness of varrying ecosystems and the effects of alterations at the microscopic level on the largest animals.
I'm just sold on quixotic missions.
I realize I write that while potentially charging at wind mills myself.