Just in case you were thinking of emigrating Down Under, here’s a salutary thought…

Within less than the span of a lifetime, Sydney could resemble a desert town like Alice Springs, or even the apocalyptic landscape from Cormac McCarthy’s new novel, The Road.

Scorched by temperatures five degrees higher than today, lacking drinking water and yet battered by rising seas and ravaged by bush fires of the ferocity that last month blackened huge areas of Victoria and Tasmania, one of the world’s most spectacular cities could be virtually uninhabitable.

So suggests a scientific report on climate change commissioned by the New South Wales government.

The report, which forecasts a 40 per cent drop in rainfall by 2070, presses hard on the heels of the shock announcement by Queensland’s Premier that from next December state residents stand to drink recycled sewerage…

At last — an argument for drinking Fosters.

Well, well. The British Library is trumpeting the findings of a research survey:

A new study overturns the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – youngsters born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most web-literate. The first ever virtual longitudinal study carried out by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an apparent ease and familiarity with computers, they rely heavily on search engines, view rather than read and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the information that they find on the web.

That’s precisely why my Relevant Knowledge Programme at the Open University created Beyond Google: working with information online, a ten-week online course that reveals that there’s far more to search than typing words into Google.

The full text of the BL/UCL report is available (in pdf format) from here.

Nicholas Carr is chortling about it:

By breaking the linear print model that has dominated the transmission of information for the past five centuries, the hyperlinked web seems to be instilling a hyperactive approach to gathering and digesting information, an approach that emphasizes speed, scanning, and skimming. In one sense, the process of information retrieval seems to have become more important than the information retrieved. We store lots of information, but like distracted squirrels we rarely go back to examine it in depth. We want more acorns.

Personally, like Piglet, I prefer haycorns.

… in 1965, Winston Churchill died at the ripe old age of 90. He drank a bottle of champagne at lunch every day, took a proper nap in the afternoon, smoked huge cigars incessantly, ate a hearty dinner with wine every evening and finished off each day with copious quantities of brandy. Truly, an example to us all.

He was IMHO a rather good painter, despite taking up the pastime relatively late in life (aged 41). There’s a nice memoir of his painterly side here. The photograph shows a wartime painting of Marrakesh by him, which he gave as a gift to Harry Truman.

Q: Who wrote this?

“To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.”

A: Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve in his book Essays on the Great Depression.

“Due to an extreme surplus (of) withdrawals since the announcement of the Linden Labs new policy regarding inworld banks, we have temporarily disabled the withdraw feature on ATMs until further notice.”

A sign in the lobby of JT Financial, a Second Life bank. A rule change has led to old-fashioned bank runs across the virtual world, costing depositors real-world money. As reported in a story in the Wall Street Journal which begins: “In the real world, banks are reeling from the subprime-mortgage mess. In the online game Second Life, a shutdown of the make-believe banking system is causing real-life havoc for thousands of people…”

Thanks to Good Morning Silicon Valley.

Interesting personal ad on Craigslist.

There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as “shell users.” We are an old-fashioned bunch, preferring the warm glow of a green screen full of text over the cold blockiness of a graphical interface. We use ssh, scp, and even occassionally ftp. Back in the days before high-speed connections (“broadband”), we would dial up during off-hours to avoid being slammed with huge phone bills. The whole “Microsoft Windows” fad will fade away sooner or later, but in the interim, our kind is facing extinction.

Because there are fewer and fewer of us, I must help keep our lineage alive. I am looking for someone to help me do this. I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix. Our child will be introduced to computers at a young age, and will be setting emacs mode before any other child can even read. I earn a sufficient income to support a family in modest comfort. Other than the fact our child will be bright, text-based and sarcastic, we will otherwise be a normal family. We will even go to Disney World and see Mickey Mouse.

So, if you are a woman between the ages of 23 and 43 who is ready to raise a child in the way of the shell, let me know so we can begin the process. (If you are ready to raise more than one child, even better.)

Max Hastings says:

The inquest into the death of Princess Diana is providing a circus for the prurient, a dirty-raincoat show for the world, of a kind that makes many of us reach for a waxed bag.

Day after day for almost three months, a procession of charlatans, spivs, fantasists, retired policemen, royal hangers-on and servants who make Iago seem a model of loyalty has occupied the witness box at the law courts in the Strand. They have itemised the princess’s alleged lovers, her supposed opinions of the royal family (and vice versa), her contraceptive practices and her menstrual cycle…

Readers who have laid in a goodly supply of waxed bags may read the daily transcripts here.