Thirst by Vadim Trunov.

[Via oilygrrl, posting to James Nicoll's LiveJournal]

Scary statistic of the day:

The Lord God first divided the darkness from the light. Then he divided the heavens from the earth and the earth from the sea. Evolution did the rest: It divided the earth between humans and ants, and in so doing created another fundamental dichotomy. There are billions of humans on earth, and trillions upon trillions of ants – an estimated 1.6 million for every human being. If the earth were a scale, and all the humans were placed on one side and all the ants on the other, it would not budge. Ants have answered the ever-expanding human biomass with an ever-expanding biomass of their own, so that the planet is poised, teetering between its two most successful civilizations – each of which is social, aggressive, expansionist, and well suited for war.

(Emphasis added)

[Via kottke.org]