Darwin's Nighmare
I heard about a documentary this morning on NPR called Darwin's nightmare. The story goes, many years ago someone introduced a non native species of perch into Africa's Lake Victoria. Over the years, the perch have killed off nearly all native species of marine life in the lake smaller than alligators. The environmental effects have been vast and the oxygen content of the water is said to be degrading as more and more species die off.There is a huge industry growing around the perch exports to Europe so there are no forces trying to stop the environmental degradation. The people of Tanzania are benefiting in the short term (food) but the long term effects are still unclear. If Lake Victoria is no longer able to sustain marine life, the implications to Tanzania are big. The fish are being transported by Russian planes and there is some speculation that these planes are smuggling arms into Africa . The larger implication of course is how humans can potentially disrupt the delicate balance of man and nature and what this all means to us in the long run. Are our short term goals somehow misaligned with what we should be doing strategically as a species? How do we reconcile these differences?
On an unrelated note, I heard the phrase "split second" the other night and I stopped and thought about it for several minutes. Also, I got my hands on a Sun Enterprise 420R yesterday (Still in the trunk of my car) and had a 2000 flashback. (Split second flashback at that !)
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