Oh shit.

http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/23/has-runaway-climate-change-begun/

Also:

WTF, people? - Yes, 'stop flying' means *you*, too! (No doubt that makes me an EVUL ECO-NAZI who wants to deprive people of the well-deserved, meagre joys of their stressful lives, and probably all just because I'm jealous I can't afford expensive holidays myself. Or, as my mother puts it: "We just can't *live* the kind of limited life that *you* live!" - Though, to be fair, my parents' preferred mode of holiday is the bike tour, so they're pretty near ecological paragons in that respect. Our points of conflict are more along the lines of food, i.e. the need, or, in their view, the unimaginable deprivation, of reducing meat and, even more importantly, fish consumption.)

I apologize to the flyers on my flist

I know that attacks and recriminations are not the way to go if you want to convince people to change their behaviour. It's just that I get so frelling impatient when I read things like the article linked in the post before the one about flying, because I get the impression the house is on fire and we really need to start, y'know, dousing the flames, and yet any measure to do so is currently regarded as purely an individual 'lifestyle choice' that nobody has any business 'pushing' on others.

And yes, I actually flew fairly frequently between 2003 and 2005 (about eleven times, i.e. five return trips and one single, between Germany and Britain), and my *really* firm decision not to fly anymore is a recent thing, so I'm obviously no saint myself. So it's not like I don't understand the temptation and so on. I just think the time to give in to that temptation is well and truly over now. (Strictly speaking it's been over for quite a while, but sometimes facts take a while to penetrate. We all want to go on believing that we can make 'just one more' exception, and go on living the way we've always done - reality has to hit us over the head with a mallet a few times, usually, before we're ready to acknowledge it.)

Music, August through October

I think this may be the greatest number of CDs I've acquired in so short a time in... well, ever, I think. I've never bought much music (although I *like* music), and in the last few years I stopped nearly completely - because it was expensive; because I was cut off from interesting new music; etc. So, (for the record), this may be a record for me:

August (birthday presents):

Ghostwriters: Political Animal
New Order: Get Ready
Suzanne Vega: (self-titled)

September:

Gazpacho: Firebird
Seven Reizh: Samsara
Regina Spektor: Soviet Kitsch
The Decemberists: Castaways and Cutouts
Nine Inch Nails: The Fragile

October (planned purchases):

Phideaux: Fiendish & 313

Nearly all of these were discovered through fandom - either as recs by fannish friends, or via fanvids...

Addendum: Anyone (morbidly?) curious about my taste in music, check out the links to the left of the main page of my LJ - there's a link to my LastFM profile there. My account there is fairly recent, so it doesn't represent my taste perfectly yet, but you should be able to get a vague idea. (Female singer-songwriters are a bit over-represented at the moment - for many of these, I basically love one of their albums but not necessarily their entire output. Same goes for a few other people/bands listed.)

Feel free to rec me stuff I should give a try!