SURVIVAL OF THE FATTEST (MOUTH). It’s stories like this one -- about the baiji dolphin -- that make me wish people like Rush Limbaugh, who perpetrate the notion that there’s no scientific evidence for any human damage being done to the environment, were extinct. A species survives for 20 million years and now, suddenly, its population is down to roughly a dozen. Must be a coincidence! Or maybe Al Gore’s flying habits, John Edwards’s haircut, or those dastardly “feminazis” are behind it all. If big, fat, ignorant, demagogic radio hosts ruled the earth for 20 millions years and then, all of a sudden, an “intelligence virus” borne of enlightened human behavior swept across the planet and caused the population of big, fat, ignorant demagogic radio hosts to thin (in number, of course, not in actual girth), Limbaugh would recognize the connection immediately. One can only hope for such a Darwinian mutation to occur, take root, and begin reproducing itself rapidly. UPDATE: I presume Rush will also point to the explosive power of Mt. Pinatubo as the cause for all the plastic bags gumming up our oceans; heck, there’s probably a scientist at some conservative think tank working on a volcanic-plastic bag theory as I type. On a related note, have you heard about the Texas-sized plastic vortex of detritus swirling around in the Pacific Ocean killing marine life? It’s all so depressing. --Tom Schaller
