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The internet has revolutionised shopping for books, DVDs and airline tickets, but it has also opened up great opportunities to deal in illegal wildlife which, according to the UN, is worth billions of pounds a year and now rivals the arms and drug trades in scale.
…
“Within one week we found over 9,000 wild animal products and specimens, and wild animals for sale, predominantly from species protected by law,” says the report for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). “More than 100 traders were identified, each advertising an unnamed, unspecified number of items,” said the authors of the report.
The range of live endangered animals for sale could have set up whole zoos, and the parts of dead animals found on the web would have stocked streets of Chinese pharmacies. “They included some of the world’s most endangered species,” the report says. “There were live Amazonian parrots, wild cats, a green turtle which the seller claimed was captured from a south-east Asian rainforest; even a live pet lion.” A total of 146 live primates were found in a week, some being advertised before they were even born. Commercial trade in any primate species is either prohibited or subject to strict controls.

(Guardian: “Tigers and gorillas - for sale on the internet,” by John Vidal [Aug 16, 2005])

…has some nice Quicktime VRs of the–you guessed it!–Louvre. (Although these QTVRs are a little bit chunkier than the best.)

(via MeFi)

Saw and read lots of things. Same old story. Here, let’s think. Watched Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, which I thoroughly enjoyed; was at times an uncomfortable enjoyment, but that’s I think what Cronenberg was going for, mood-wise. Excellent performances all around, with what you might call a tightly-crafted script. This is a movie that manages to navigate between heady theory and base physicality without ever letting you know quite where it is at any given moment; it’s a thoughtful movie that throws you around, basically.

Lots of quality but non-outstanding books on my recently-finished list as of late. The new Bret Easton Ellis novel, Lunar Park, was better and worse than some of his other writing. Better writing than the earliest stuff, but not superior to Glamorama or American Psycho. Lunar Park was extremely promising at times—mostly when bizarrely surreal elements began creeping in—but in the end the whole thing was basically self-deflating. Pffft. If you haven’t already read an Ellis novel, I don’t know that you’d want to start with this one.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, fairly excellent. It’s an ‘unauthorized autobiography,’ which should give you some idea of the tone. Yes, the movie of the same name is based on it. Good, crazy fun. The book, for those not in the know, is Chuck Barris attempting to recount his frenzied dual rise to prominence as a game show producer and CIA assassin. It’s generally a quick read, as long as you don’t get bogged down by the whole question of what’s real and so forth.

I picked up Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Repetition partly on the merits of its cover, and wasn’t disappointed. Though confused. There’s some weird stuff that goes on with the tenses and what-have-you—this is ascribed to Robbe-Grillet’s unique literary theories by someone inside the front cover—but none of it is in any way unreadably strange. Brain calisthenics, is all. The story, if you’re interested in knowing, is a sort of noir spy thriller sort of thing, but without much clarity as far as any of the spy details are concerned.

Alongside Repetition, I read another slightly off-kilter spy novel: Tremor of Intent, by Anthony Burgess. Which certainly didn’t help with the whole confusion thing—I wasn’t actively trying to seek out spy novels—but did perhaps help to set the mood of the reading. Tremor of Intent is simultaneously serious and goofy, satiric and honorable, and/or highly detailed and generic. All these things are at least partly true. Generally speaking, if the vague mention of “theory” and “weird stuff” of Repetition sound like something you might not go for, you might still be able to enjoy Tremor of Intent. Imagine an older, vastly more cynical, slightly more cunning James Bond and place him on a wild last retirement mission, and you have a vague idea of this book (though you’ll probably have more misconceptions than you will correct assumptions… but oh well.).

All in all, a pretty good collection of entertainment media.

Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate.

…

Specifically, deforestation of Amazonia was found to severely reduce rainfall in the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico during the spring and summer seasons when water is crucial for agricultural productivity. Deforestation of Central Africa has a similar effect, causing a significant precipitation decrease in the lower U.S Midwest during the spring and summer and in the upper U.S. Midwest in winter and spring. Deforestation in Southeast Asia alters rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula most significantly.

Elimination of any of these tropical forests, Amazonia, Central Africa or Southeast Asia, considerably enhances rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. However, the combined effect of deforestation in all three regions shifts the greatest precipitation decline in the U.S. to California during the winter season and further increases rainfall in the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

(EurekAlert: “Tropical deforestation affects rainfall in the US and around the globe” [Sept 13, 2005])