The Ace of Spades

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The Ace of Spades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iwC2QljLn4

If you like to gamble, I tell you I'm your man
You win some, lose some, it's - all - the same to me
The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say
I don't share your greed, the only card I need is
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

Playing for the high one, dancing with the devil,
Going with the flow, it's all a game to me,
Seven or Eleven, snake eyes watching you,
Double up or quit, double stakes or split,
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

You know I'm born to lose, and gambling's for fools,
But that's the way I like it baby,
I don't wanna live forever,
And don't forget the joker!

Pushing up the ante, I know you've got to see me,
Read 'em and weep, the dead man's hand again,
I see it in your eyes, take one look and die,
The only thing you see, you know it's gonna be,
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades

Motorhead

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Ocean Plankton
http://www.alternet.org/story/151918/do_we_need_a_militant_movement_to_save_the_planet_%28and_ourselves%29

Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato all talked about how the world is being destroyed by agriculture — the soil was washing down the hills into rivers and killing the rivers. This is as old as civilization because that's what civilization is. We are not the first people to realize this. We talk about the oceans — two-thirds of all animal breaths are made possible by the plankton that the oceans produce, and the plankton populations are collapsing now, because the oceans are dying. If the oceans go down, we go down with them. There will not be life on land if the plankton go. This is what we are facing now, and it does require a solution that is commensurate with the problem. So all of this withdrawal into your own backyard garden is not in any way going to address the fact that the plankton are collapsing, and that is why we need a resistance, not a withdrawal. Personal solutions aren't political solutions, and it is only through political solutions that we can take apart the political institutions that are actually murdering our planet. -- Lierre Keith

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Permian mass extinction triggered by humble microbe
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628954.400

AROUND 251 million years ago, over 90 per cent of the species on Earth suddenly went extinct. Their killer may not have been a devastating meteorite or a catastrophic volcanic eruption, but a humble microbe.

The prevailing theory is that the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period was triggered by volcanic eruptions over a vast area of what is now Siberia. This led, among other things, to a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

But the scenario just doesn't fit the facts, says Daniel Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From his analysis of an end-Permian sediment sample from China, Rothman says carbon levels surged much too quickly for geological processes to be at work.

Microbes can generate carbon compounds that fast, though. When Rothman's group analysed the genome of Methanosarcina - a methanogen responsible for most of Earth's biogenic methane today - they discovered that the microbe gained this ability about 231 million years ago. The date was close to that of the mass extinction, but not close enough to suggest a link.

But Methanosarcina needs large amounts of nickel to produce methane quickly. When the team went back to their sediment cores, they discovered that nickel levels spiked almost exactly 251 million years ago - probably because the Siberian lavas were rich in the metal. That suggests Methanosarcina did trigger the extinction, Rothman told the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco last week.

Other geologists remain to be convinced. "[But] it's a fascinating idea that the evolution of a new life form led to an extinction," says Anthony Barnosky of the University of California, Berkeley. Today's mass extinction of biodiversity is similar, says Barnosky, because it is largely driven by our species.

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Botulinum toxin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulin_toxin | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum

Botulinum toxin is a protein and neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.[1][2] It is the most acutely toxic substance known, with an estimated human median lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg intravenously or intramuscularly and 10–13 ng/kg when inhaled.[3] Botulinum toxin can cause botulism, a serious and life-threatening illness in humans and animals.

Botulin toxin produced by C. botulinum is often believed to be a potential bioweapon as it is so potent that it takes about 75 nanograms to kill a person (LD50 of 1 ng/kg,[24] assuming an average person weighs ~75 kg); 1 kilogram of it would be enough to kill the entire human population.

Clostridium botulinum is a soil bacterium. The spores can survive in most environments and are very hard to kill. They can survive the temperature of boiling water at sea level, thus many foods are canned with a pressurized boil that achieves an even higher temperature, sufficient to kill the spores.

Justinus Kerner described botulinum toxin as a "sausage poison" and "fatty poison",[4] because the bacterium that produces the toxin often caused poisoning by growing in improperly handled or prepared meat products. It was Kerner, a physician, who first conceived a possible therapeutic use of botulinum toxin and coined the name botulism (from Latin botulus meaning "sausage"). In 1897, Emile van Ermengem found the producer of the botulin toxin was a bacterium, which he named Clostridium botulinum. [5] In 1928, P. Tessmer Snipe and Hermann Sommer for the first time purified the toxin.[6] In 1949, Arnold Burgen's group discovered, through an elegant experiment, that botulinum toxin blocks neuromuscular transmission through decreased acetylcholine release.

Botulism toxins are produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, C. butyricum, C. baratii and C. argentinense.[29] Foodborne botulism can be transmitted through food that has not been heated correctly prior to being canned or food that was not cooked correctly from a can. Most infant botulism cases cannot be prevented because the bacteria that cause this disease are in soil and dust. The bacteria can be found inside homes on floors, carpet, and countertops even after cleaning. Honey can contain the bacteria that cause infant botulism, so children less than 12 months old should not be fed honey. Honey is safe for persons one year of age and older.[30]

Food-borne botulism usually results from ingestion of food that has become contaminated with spores (such as a perforated can) in an anaerobic environment, allowing the spores to germinate and grow. The growing (vegetative) bacteria produce toxin. It is the ingestion of toxin that causes botulism, not the ingestion of the spores or the vegetative bacteria. Infant and wound botulism both result from infection with spores, which subsequently germinate, resulting in production of toxin and the symptoms of botulism.

Proper refrigeration at temperatures below 3°C (38°F) retards the growth of Clostridium botulinum. The organism is also susceptible to high salt, high oxygen, and low pH levels. The toxin itself is rapidly destroyed by heat, such as in thorough cooking.[31] The spores that produce the toxin are heat-tolerant and will survive boiling water for an extended period of time.[32]

Botulinum toxin can be absorbed from eyes, mucous membranes, respiratory tract or non-intact skin.

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Antibiotic 'apocalypse'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21178718

The rise in drug resistant infections is comparable to the threat of global warming, according to the chief medical officer for England.

Prof Dame Sally Davies said bacteria were becoming resistant to current drugs and there were few antibiotics to replace them. She told a committee of MPs that going for a routine operation could become deadly due to the threat of infection.

Experts said it was a global problem and needed much more attention.

Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. However, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs. MRSA rapidly became one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea.

Prof Davies said: "It is clear that we might not ever see global warming, the apocalyptic scenario is that when I need a new hip in 20 years I'll die from a routine infection because we've run out of antibiotics."

She said there was only one useful antibiotic left to treat gonorrhoea.

"It is very serious, and it's very serious because we are not using our antibiotics effectively in countries.

"There is a broken market model for making new antibiotics, so it's an empty pipeline, so as they become resistant, these bugs, which they would naturally but we're breeding them in because of the way antibiotics are used, there will not be new antibiotics to come."

Possible solutions will be included in her annual report to be published in March.

The World Health Organization has warned the world is heading for a "post-antibiotic era" unless action is taken.

It paints a future in which "many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated".

Prof Hugh Pennington, a microbiologist from the University of Aberdeen, said drug resistance was "a very, very serious problem".

"We do need to pay much more attention to it. We need resources for surveillance, resources to cope with the problem and to get public information across.

But he said it was not a problem entirely of the UK's making.

"People are going abroad for operations, going abroad for, let's say, sex tourism and bringing home gonorrhoea which is a big problem in terms of antibiotic resistance - and then there's tuberculosis in many parts of the world.

Prof Pennington said the drugs companies had run out of options too as all the easy drugs had been made.

"We have to be aware that we aren't going to have new wonder drugs coming along because there just aren't any."

Observe the juxtaposition between a hypothetical "apocalypse" resulting from either "climate change" or "antibiotic resistance" made by England's chief medical officer. This is supposed to be someone who "cares" about life...and yet he clearly doesn't give a damn that climate change (created by humanity itself) will initiate the extinction of hundreds upon thousands of species on earth while mere "antibiotic resistance" disease will...just kill off a couple million human beings.

There is no comparison there to make, despite the fact it was made...I say : Who gives a fuck about a couple million human beings expiring of infection in comparison to the untold billions of lives (and species extinctions) that will be lost due to the entire ecosphere being fucked over by climate change.

Again we see humanity exposing their wholly anthropocentric attitude to all life on earth. A couple of egocentric, hedonistic, self-satisfying human beings couldn't keep their dicks in their pants and now they're going to die, but because they're God's children - and therefore special - their deaths are far more meaningful than the billions upon billions of lives that will be lost as a result of climate change.