The thought that Sarah and myself ought to avail ourselves of local parks and resources more than we do has been gaining momentum in my head for some time now. We were going to investigate a local farmer's market and walk around Lake Merritt tomorrow but those activities have been scaled down to make room for a matinee screening of The Matrix:Reloaded at the historic Grand Lake Theater.

Ironic, isn't it, that I'm pushing back the real world to enter a fantasy one? Hah! At least the theater (and it is a fairly grand one) is within walking distance of the farmer's market and at least a portion of the lake (fairly grand too).

The Matrix, as you know if you read my last post, has been occupying my mind these days. I couldn't help but think of Agent Smith, for instance, when I caught up on some recent news:

Big-Fish Stocks Fall 90 Percent Since 1950, Study Says

"The impact we have had on ocean ecosystems has been vastly underestimated," said co-author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and the University of Kiel in Germany. "These are the megafauna, the big predators of the sea, and the species we most value. Their depletion not only threatens the future of these fish and the fishers that depend on them, it could also bring about a complete re-organization of ocean ecosystems, with unknown global consequences."

- from NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM -

Humans Are Driving Birds to Extinction, Group Warns

Humans are singled out in a recent report as the cause of what many scientists believe is the biggest mass extinction of animals in 65 million years. Published by the Worldwatch Institute, a U.S.-based environmental research organization, the report says scientists' fears are backed up by plummeting bird populations.

- also from NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM -

Great ape populations are declining at an alarming rate world-wide. The continuing destruction of habitat, in combination with the growth in the commercial bushmeat trade in Africa and increased logging activities in Indonesia, have lead scientists to suggest that the majority of great ape populations will be extinct in the next ten to twenty years.

- from The Great Ape Survival Project -

What was it Agent Smith said to Morpheus in The Matrix about we humans?

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation I had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify
your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a
natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply
until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is
another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are
a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

- Agent Smith sharing his ideas about humanity in The Matrix (1999, Warner Bros.) -

I must admit that during my more pessemistic moods/modes I have entertained thoughts about humanity very much like those of that sentient program and oppressor of humanity, Agent Smith. But, honestly, I will be rooting for Neo and the humans tomorrow in that darkened room, pictures flashing before my eyes. . .