(no subject)

I'm currently reading Here Be Dragons: How the Study of Animal and Plant Distributions Revolutionized Our Views of Life and Earth, which is pretty good, especially for popular science. But man, I have never been quite so UTTERLY CREEPED OUT by a popular science book as during the part where the author really drove the point home that Antarctica's climate had once been temperate - say, about the level of the state of Oregon - until the climate shifted and the continents split and the ice took over, to the point where the land underneath is literally warped from the weight of the ice. And of all the species that had been living on there at that time, the only ones larger than a bug still extant in any form in Antarctica are the penguins.

Suddenly I am so much more creeped out by the Eternal Winter cliche, you don't even know.