One of the things about surfing the Internet for inspiration for the Blog is not: how difficult it is, but: how difficult it is to keep one’s nose above the slime.

So before I become too depressed about the human condition, let me give you a link that made me breathe a little easier. No, it’s not great art. No, it won’t change your life. No, it is not injurious to your health or addictive. No, it won’t pay the bills or make you more attractive to the sex that you wish to be attracted to. But, ladies and gentlemen, there’s something here about an obsession about an aspect of our existence that is sooo human.

I give you: Lacing Shoes.

Thank you, Ian for allowing me to rest awhile before returning to the never-ending tide of human dross. All I need now is a blast from Beethoven, and I’ll be as right as rain (and that’s not singing in it – at least not in that sense, Alex).

…and presumably neither can Spanish cardinals and archbishops, who hope that up to half a million demonstrators will join them tomorrow to protest against the introduction of same-sex marriage in Spain.  

UK Students, aged 13-16, were asked to name a famous scientist in an online survey carried out by an examination board. Depressingly, only two out of nearly 1,000 students managed to name a living scientist, and even then it was the highly suspect David Bellamy. 

Bizarrely, other students cited Madonna – please tell me that was a teenage joke?

The Guardian carries a full report on the survey.

Echidne of the Snakes writes about life. I empathise totally with how she feels, and her philosophy of how to live one’s life. Go and read it, and think about how you can make a difference.

Another post that deserves multiple categories: Science, Politics and Society. I’ve chosen the last, because the impact of the scenarios are likely to be so far-reaching.

Data point one: Interview in today’s Guardian with Lord Ron Oxburgh, chairman of Shell:

The basic facts of climate change: since the industrial period carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per million (classical for all previous warm periods) to 379ppm today, and are rising at 2ppm per year. In 10 years’ time they will be at 400ppm; at 500ppm, Greenland’s ice will melt entirely – it’s already receding by 10 metres a year – and the sea level will rise, drowning coastal cities and entirely changing the contours of the earth. Most scientists now agree that unless we stabilise the earth’s atmosphere by 2050, there will be no way to halt the disaster.

Lord Oxburgh: "We have roughly 45 years. And if we start NOW, not in 10 or 15 years’ time, we have a chance of hitting those targets. But we’ve got to start now. We have no time to lose."

Data point two: Peak Oil, Beyond Optimism and Pessimism – article by Jim Hill:

Statistically speaking, I am due to live another 40 years. During that time, I will witness the complete collapse of free-market capitalism. The project of globalisation will fail, and the consumer culture within which recent generations have been raised will end. A massive reduction in living standards, unlike any other readjustment in history, will be experienced by 99% of us living in the industrialised world. A hundred thousand things that we all take for granted today will have ceased to exist by the time I reach my allotted lifespan. This will happen.

(hat tip to Chicken Yoghurt for the pointer)

Data point three: The advisor to the Bush Administration who fiddled with the scientific report on climate change has landed a plum job with ExxonMobil. No surprise there, then.

Why do I get the feeling that, despite the "crisis, what crisis?" mentality of ExxonMobil, climate change and peak oil are the Scylla and Charybdis of the 21st Century?

Marshall Brain has an entertaining and wise tutorial/presentation on how to do it. While I was reading it, I thought his name sounded familiar, and then I realised I had read his book on programming the Motif user interface.

Hat tip to Pale Blue Dot for the pointer to the presentation.

And while I’m having a Victor Meldrew moment, Butterflies and Wheels comments on a recent Polly Toynbee article in the Guardian (Toynbee’s article is here). As Stephen Fry said at the Hay Festival, the words "Respect" and "Offence" are taking on creepy overtones. Respect should be earned, it ain’t automatic.

I’m certainly not going to automatically respect someone who acts on beliefs that are clearly barking, and if they take offense at that, then really, in an adult world, that’s their problem.

I feel another Victor Meldrew moment coming on… Apparently, genealogists want psychotherapy to be made available for people who stumble across unpleasant discoveries while researching their family history, according to a story in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. 

An example of this is provided by Diane Mattinson, 48, an office manager from Bicester, Oxfordshire, who discovered that her great-grandfather, James Phillips, had never married her great-grandmother, Elizabeth.

"It was a bombshell," said Mrs Mattinson. 

Er, excuse me, a bombshell is what happens practically every day in Iraq, and the result is blood and death. Discovering that your great-grandparents weren’t married doesn’t even register on the Richter scale of bombshells. It might cause an ant to stumble, but that’s about it, Diane.

Physical and mental abuse may call for counselling, but genealogy? The world’s going mad, I tell you.