Chickens coming home to roost

Mike Davis' The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu has been on my list of doom books to read for awhile. Davis has always been something of a guilty pleasure for me; he writes so incisively about the intersection of politics, nature, capitalism, and general collapse that he makes it all very entertaining, and the connections he draws are remarkable (he was the first place I learned of the connecton between Aleistair Crowley and the Jet Propulsion Lab, although there is now a whole book about it). This latest one seemed packaged in an overly sensationalized way so I haven't gotten around to it. However, here's a favorable review in American Scientist that will move it up to the top of the doom pile, after I get through Collapse and Fifty Degrees Below.

[via 3quarksdaily:

"Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?"

"A: To cause a global pandemic."]

Keyword: doom