Have a Black and White Colobus Monkey

Happy Tuesday!

"Black-and-white colobuses (or colobi) are Old World monkeys of the genus Colobus, native to Africa. They are closely related to the brown colobus monkeys of genus Piliocolobus. The word "colobus" comes from Greek κολοβός kolobós ("docked"), and is so named because in this genus, the thumb is a stump. Colobuses are herbivorous, eating leaves, fruit, flowers, and twigs. Their habitats include primary and secondary forests, riverine forests, and wooded grasslands; they are found more in higher-density logged forests than in other primary forests. Their ruminant-like digestive systems have enabled these leaf-eaters to occupy niches that are inaccessible to other primates.

Colobuses live in territorial groups of about nine individuals, based upon a single male with a number of females and their offspring. Newborn colobuses are completely white. Cases of allomothering are documented, which means members of the troop other than the infant's biological mother care for it.

Colobuses are important for seed dispersal through their sloppy eating habits, as well as through their digestive systems. They are prey for many forest predators, and are threatened by hunting for the bushmeat trade, logging, and habitat destruction.

There are five species of this monkey, with at least eight subspecies..."
~Wikipedia.org

Entomophagy!!! And Why It is Good

This, to me, is a very powerful message. I like stuff like this because it uses pictures to communicate, not just words. 

The fact is, this is true. I don't know the numbers on how fast entomophagy (isn't that a cool word?) is declining, but this follows the same pattern as western missionaries: walk in, make everyone dress and behave like westerners, approve of their existence, walk out and leave them to starve on a culture that is incompatible with their environment. 

So what's being said here? Western philosophies about our environment and how we should interact with it is causing people to stop eating foods (that are actually foods!) and start living in a way that is unsustainable. We've known for years that America's appetite is sinfully excessive, and that if the rest of the world tried to reach our level of consumption we'd self-destruct faster than an agent's mission instructions. (I know that America is not the only member of the "West," but it is the only one I know enough about to have this conversation.)

At one point, it would have taken six planet earths to feed, clothe, house, and accessorize every nation to the level that America had attained. And since then, both America's consumption and the global population have increased significantly, increasing the gap between what America says is possible and what is actually possible.

There we go, telling lies again....

And yes, insects are both food and good food. As is algae. And the sooner the West recognizes that we can't escape the fall by being speciesists, the better off everyone will be.

If Life Were A Chess Game, I'd Be A Pawn

Below is a thing I wrote in August of 2010, with minor edits.

"If life were a Chess game, I'd be a pawn.

Nobody really likes pawns. They are the expendable crewmen of the game - sent out to "feel" the enemy, positioned so as to be captured instead of a more valuable piece, and if captured, no one misses them. If the pawn manages to capture an enemy piece, it is usually another pawn. And the enemy usually sacrificed that pawn on purpose, to buy time or force the opponent into position. If the pawn captures a piece of greater status, it is not cause for joy or praise. The player who lost their piece is shamed for laziness or neglect, and the player who captured it is nervous that he may have been set up, and feels shame for his enemy for such a shortsighted loss.

The pawns is of less value than the other pieces in the army for good reasons. They are limited in their direction, distance, and attack. They are usually the first to be captured, and there is no effort made to regain them.

The pawn has one objective: get across the field. It is a pleasant surprise for the pawn to capture any piece, and a greater one for it to actually make it across the field uncaptured itself.

Should the pawn reach the enemy's home base, it gains one thing: imprisonment. It is swapped for a more valuable, previously captured, piece.

The pawn's entire existence is self-sacrifice. It is meant to be captured, either to buy time, allow another piece to move or protect a higher ranking piece from being captured.

I am a Pawn. Though I sometimes wish for the pomp of the Bishop, or the glory of the Knight, or the strength of the Tower, or even sometimes, the power of the Queen, I wish to be other than myself for only a moment. I was made to be a Pawn, and it is good.

To be the first one on the battle field.....
To stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow Pawns, my countrymen behind me and my foe before me....
To be literally incapable of moving backwards, while limited in distance and attack.......
To be one of the first to make a move, one of the first to engage in battle......
To have one goal, one focus: make it past all the enemy, surrender, and trade freedom for imprisonment, that the king may have better odds of survival......
That takes courage. It takes a will of iron. It takes an unshakable drive to do what one was designed to do.
That is an awesome feeling. And while I may have my moments of envy, I am a Pawn, and I love it.

Have a Soldier Fly

Happy Monday!

"Hermetia illucens, the black soldier fly, is a common and widespread fly of the family Stratiomyidae, whose larvae are common detritivores in compost heaps. Larvae are also sometimes found in association with carrion, and have significant potential for use in forensic entomology.

Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), also known as "phoenix worms", may be used in manure management, for house fly control and for the bioconversion of organic waste material. Mature larvae and prepupae raised in manure management and waste bioconversion operations may also be used to supplement animal feeds.

Larvae are sold as feeders for owners of herptiles [(reptiles and amphibians)] and tropical fish, or as composting grubs. They store high levels of calcium for future pupation which is beneficial to herptiles.

Black soldier fly eggs take approximately four days to hatch and are typically deposited in crevices or on surfaces above or adjacent to decaying matter such as manure or compost. The larvae range in size from 1⁄8–3⁄4 inch (3–19 mm). ...

The adult fly, which measures about 16 mm (5/8 inch), has a life span of 5 to 8 days. It is a mimic, very close in size, color, and appearance to the organ pipe mud dauber wasp and its relatives. The mimicry of this particular kind of wasp is especially enhanced in that the fly's antennae are elongated and wasp-like, the fly's hind tarsi are pale, as are the wasp's, and the fly has two small transparent "windows" in the basal abdominal segments that make the fly appear to have a narrow "wasp waist". The adult soldier fly has no functioning mouthparts; it spends its time searching for mates and reproducing.

[The larvae] prevent houseflies and blowflies from laying eggs in the material inhabited by black soldier fly larvae, [and the adults] are usually not a pest. They are not attracted to human habitation or foods. As a detritivore and coprovore, the egg-bearing females are attracted to rotting food or manure.

Black soldier flies do not fly around as much as houseflies. They are very easy to catch and relocate when they get inside a house, as they do not avoid being picked up, they are sanitary, and they do not bite or sting. Their only defense seems to be hiding."
~Wikipedia.org

LaVoice Update - Susan

Depression has set in again. I didn't recognize it for some time, but after a mild emotional break down on Sunday, a lack of apatite all week and a migraine yesterday, the symptoms are now fairly clear. Since I'm currently reading the Harry Potter series (I'm on book 4), I now have an image for depression that works quite well- Dementors. Creatures that look like drowned, half-rotten corpses floating in torn black shrouds who feed on happy emotions and memories.

I was texting a friend just a few moments ago, and he told me that I've lost my spunk. I tried to remember something happy in order to conjure up the emotion necessary to respond to his text, but I couldn't. Every happy memory that started to come into focus blanked out, like someone clicking off the television screen. I thought about the dementors and suddenly realized that I'm depressed.

That made me smile. I've been depressed before, and I know that the worst lie a depressed person can believe, and also the easiest, is that this is how it will be forever. Nothing will change.

But I know better. It's changed before, and it will change again. For me, it will get better. At some point. But even if that Some Point is sixty years away, it will get better.

Now that I've named what is going on, I expect I'll handle it okay. I sat outside for a little bit yesterday, reading a book in the grass. I might just make an effort to do that again, since that is a prescribed remedy for depression. It's so funny to me how quickly I become covered in the smallest, strangest creatures if I sit still long enough. As annoying as their tininess can be on my sensitive skin, they are quite comforting. I didn't know that they existed until our lives intersected in that little patch of grass. I don't know their names, what they eat, how they reproduce or what eats them. But God knows. And He likes them. It is so comforting for me to look at the tiny shape moving across my page and remember how much God knows about me, and how much He likes me. A lot of people look at little moving creatures and either ignore them or squash them. But God sees them. And He sees me. It's wonderful.

I'm going to try to free up my Saturdays and see if I can't get more introvert time for myself. Most of my Saturdays this year have been spent playing DnD, which I will sorely miss, but it requires extroversion. Logan makes a wonderful DM, and the other players are hilarious role players. I'll miss the stories, as well. There's just something special about writing a fantasy story with friends who are so different from one's self....

Currently, all my personal projects are on hold. I reckon that if they were important enough, I'll remember them when my brain starts thinking about things other than work, and if they aren't important enough to remember than I've not wasted resources.

I have a fish! I had to get rid of the nine fish that I had late last year due to my inability to keep their water at a level pH. It made me sad. But now I have a beautiful blue rose fin beta. I may post pictures at some point, but he basically looks like this.

Logan and I are currently sleeping on a pile of blankets. We had to get rid of our mattress because it got so uncomfortable (it was, like, twenty years old when we inherited it after the wedding), and haven't had the money to get a new one. Don't tell Logan, but I really, really like sleeping on a pile of blankets and am avoiding getting a mattress for as long as possible. I've always been enamored with the gypsy/hippie lifestyle and I love having this little bit of it every day. If I could live in a covered wagon drawn by two little Welsh cobs, or a cabin strewn with embroidered pillows and hung all about with brightly colored tapestries, I totally would. Maybe at Some Point I'll live two hundred feet off the ground in a little tree house full of owls.

My studies of the OT law have dropped to a casual level, partly due to the fact that I'm trying to read through the Bible in one year and can't accomplish that if I never read anything outside of the books of law, and partly due to the fact that I rarely read anything serious anymore. My brain is so shot from the overwhelming under-stimulation of my current work level (they say it will get busier, but that doesn't change the bland color of my cubical walls), that it takes me an hour after I get home to get back to a place where I can be curious about anything, but then I only have an hour to eat food and it's time to get ready for bed. (Honestly, the 40 hour work week is murder to the human soul.) Those few hours between getting home from work and going to bed are the reason that most of my projects have dropped to the wayside.....

I think that's enough for now. Love y'all!

Have a Barn Owl

Happy Friday!

"Barn-owls (family Tytonidae) are one of the two families of owls, the other being the true owls, Strigidae. They are medium to large owls with large heads and characteristic heart-shaped faces. They have long, strong legs with powerful talons. They also differ from Strigidae in structural details relating in particular to the sternum and feet.

...The barn owls are a wide ranging family, although they are absent from northern North America, Saharan Africa and large areas of Asia. They live in a wide range of habitats from deserts to forests, and from temperate latitudes to the tropics. The majority of the 16 living species of barn owls are poorly known. Some, like the red owl, have barely been seen or studied since their discovery, in contrast to the common barn owl, which is one of the best known owl species in the world. However, some sub-species of the common barn owl possibly deserve to be separate species, but are very poorly known.

Five species of barn-owl are threatened... The barn-owls are mostly nocturnal, and generally non-migratory, living in pairs or singly.

The barn-owls' main characteristic is the heart-shaped facial disc, formed by stiff feathers which serve to amplify and locate the source of sounds when hunting. Further adaptations in the wing feathers eliminate sound caused by flying, aiding both the hearing of the owl listening for hidden prey and keeping the prey unaware of the owl. Barn-owls overall are darker on the back than the front, usually an orange-brown colour, the front being a paler version of the back or mottled, although there is considerable variation even amongst species. ..."
~Wikipedia.org

How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion

"How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion"
"Mass delusion is an important tool of oppressors because they can’t survive free expression. That’s why the First Amendment’s a target."

http://thefederalist.com/2015/06/08/how-to-escape-the-age-of-mass-delusion/

This is one of the most insightful articles I've read in a long time. From explaining the toxicity of political correctness to why our culture seems to be in so much chaos, this article presents one of the master plans that is behind it all. The other and opposite master plan... well, you'll have to read your Bible to get that one :D

Please enjoy the quotes below, read the article and leave a comment!

"Political propaganda aims to mobilize the masses to move an agenda forward. ... Once the masses are mobilized to push for a cause, the propagandists’ goals can be put into law."

"American conservatives are by and large clueless about propaganda methods and tactics.... the Left has been employing social psychology and depth psychology on the masses for decades."

"...the power elites who now control the media, academia, and Hollywood seem to understand social psychology well enough to exploit it on a massive scale. ... Conditioning and nudging the masses into groupthink is a very old trick of all wannabe dictators."

"Family breakdown led to community breakdown, which we can see in the decline of trust in society. Ignorance was cultivated in the schools through political correctness and squashing free debate."

"Why would anyone want to build such a culture of coercion? In a word, power. “Equality” is not the reason for what is happening with such mobs. It is the pretext for what they are doing. Like all such deceptions, its sole purpose is as a vehicle to transfer power from individuals to an increasingly centralized state. The fuel, as usual, is the emotional blackmail of people of goodwill, the uses of mass mobilization to exploit that goodwill, then, finally, to render all such goodwill meaningless."

"Free expression is always the prime target of tyrants because it promotes logic, the search for truth, and friendship. America is exceptional precisely because it rejects the tyrants’ rule."

"So, in the end, freedom truly depends upon breaking down the walls of separation that tyranny builds. It means cultivating the art of friendship, boldly exercising our rights to free association and to communicate our thoughts to others. It means cultivating knowledge instead of cultivating ignorance.

After all, political correctness is primarily a tool for crushing people’s ability to have open conversations in friendship and mutual respect."

And, yes. Friendship IS magic ;)

Have a Dingo

Happy Thursday!

"The dingo (Canis lupus dingo) is a free-ranging dog found mainly in Australia. Its exact ancestry is debated, but dingoes are generally believed to be descended from semi-domesticated dogs from East or South Asia, which returned to a wild lifestyle when introduced to Australia. As such, it is currently classified as a subspecies of the grey wolf, Canis lupus. The Australian name has therefore sometimes been applied to similar dogs in South-East Asia, believed to be close relations. As free-ranging animals, they are not considered tame, although tame dingoes and dingo-dog hybrids have been bred.

The dingo's habitat ranges from deserts to grasslands and the edges of forests. Dingoes will normally make their dens in deserted rabbit holes and hollow logs close to an essential supply of water.

The dingo is the largest terrestrial predator in Australia, and plays an important role as an apex predator. However, the dingo is seen as a pest by livestock farmers due to attacks on animals. Conversely, their predation on rabbits, kangaroos and rats may be of benefit to graziers.

For many Australians, the dingo is a cultural icon. ... Dingoes have a prominent role in the culture of Aboriginal Australians as a feature of stories and ceremonies, and they are depicted on rock carvings and cave paintings.

Despite being an efficient hunter, it is listed as vulnerable to extinction. ... [Though they are very numerous, it is thought that the population is becoming genetically unstable.]

Dingoes tend to be nocturnal in warmer regions, but less so in cooler areas. Their main period of activity is around dusk and dawn. The periods of activity are short (often less than one hour) with short times of resting.

About 170 species (from insects to buffalo) have been identified as part of the dingo's diet. In general, livestock seems to make up only a small proportion of their diet.[6] In continent-wide examinations, 80% of the diet of wild dogs consisted of 10 species: red kangaroo, swamp wallaby, cattle, dusky rat, magpie goose, common brushtail possum, long-haired rat, agile wallaby, European rabbit and the common wombat. This narrow range of major prey indicates these wild dogs are rather specialised. ..."
~Wikipedia.org

Have a Hoverfly

Happy Wednesday!

"Hoverflies, sometimes called flower flies or syrphid flies, make up the insect family Syrphidae. As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the larvae (maggots) eat a wide range of foods. In some species, the larvae are saprotrophs, eating decaying plant and animal matter in the soil or in ponds and streams. In other species, the larvae are insectivores and prey on aphids, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects.

About 6,000 species in 200 genera have been described. Hoverflies are common throughout the world and can be found on all continents except Antarctica. Hoverflies are harmless to most other animals, despite their mimicry of more dangerous wasps and bees, which wards off predators.

Hoverflies are important pollinators of flowering plants in a variety of ecosystems worldwide.[10] Syrphid flies are frequent flower visitors to a wide range of wild plants as well as agricultural crops and are often considered the second most important group of pollinators after wild bees. However, there has been relatively little research into fly pollinators compared with bee species.[10] It is thought that bees are able to carry a greater volume of pollen on their bodies, but flies may be able to compensate for this by making a greater number of flower visits.

Like many pollinator groups, syrphid flies range from species that take a generalist approach to foraging by visiting a wide range of plant species to those that specialize in a narrow range of plants. Although hoverflies are often considered mainly non-selective pollinators, some hoverflies species are highly selective and carry pollen from one plant species. ...

Many syrphid fly species have short, unspecialized mouth parts and tend to feed on flowers that are more open as the nectar and pollen can be easily accessed."
~Wikipedia.org

This company makes flying cameras: www.hoverflytech.com

This website gives a great deal more information on the nature and nomenclature of the hoverfly, and includes a picture of the larvae.

This Wikipedia article talks about the Sikorsky R-4/Hoverfly helicopter, "the first helicopter used by the United States Army Air Forces..."

Have a Ring-Tailed Lemur

Happy Tuesday!

"Lemurs are primates found only on the African island of Madagascar and some tiny neighboring islands. Because of its geographic isolation, Madagascar is home to many amazing animals found nowhere else on Earth. Lemurs may have floated there eons ago on "rafts" of vegetation and evolved in isolation over countless centuries.

Ring-tailed lemurs are unmistakable because of their long, vividly striped, black-and-white tail. They are familiar residents of many zoos.

Lemurs use their hands and feet to move nimbly through the trees, but cannot grip with their tails as some of their primate cousins do. Ring-tailed lemurs also spend a lot of time on the ground, which is unusual among lemur species. They forage for fruit, which makes up the greater part of their diet, but also eat leaves, flowers, tree bark, and sap.

Ring-tailed lemurs have powerful scent glands and use their unique odor as a communication tool and even as a kind of weapon. Lemurs mark their territory by scent, serving notice of their presence to all who can smell. During mating season, male lemurs battle for dominance by trying to outstink each other. They cover their long tails with smelly secretions and wave them in the air to determine which animal is more powerful.

Ring-tailed lemurs live in groups known as troops. These groups may include 6 to 30 animals, but average about 17. Both sexes live in troops, but a dominant female presides over all.

Ring-tailed lemurs are endangered, largely because the sparse, dry forests they love are quickly vanishing"
~Nationalgeographic.com

Have an Eastern Red Bat

Happy Monday! 

First, you get three pictures of this little guy because I got to hold one last night. I was out looking for our cat, who had decided to go under the fence and into a sea of poison ivy, when something rustled in the leaves beside the walking path. It was a bat! With its wings spread out and everything! I picked it up and got a good look at it. It kept its wings spread out, and I could see it's tiny back feet and adorable eyes. It was so, so soft! It's wing looked injured, though, which made me really sad. I thought it had been stepped on because it was so flat, but it actually has fur on its tail. It smacked its chops and blinked, and when I held it up to get a look at the insect eggs in it's ruddy fur, it flew away. I couldn't find it again, or I totally would have brought it in and cared for it. It was so cute!!
(The cat came in of his own accord.)

Second, here's the info:
"The eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis) is a species of bat from the family Vespertilionidae. ...

Eastern red bats are widespread across eastern North America, with additional records in Bermuda. It is also scarce but widespread throughout many of the Bahamian islands.

Adults are usually dimorphic: males have red hair while females are chestnut-colored with whitish frosting on the tips of the fur.

Like most vespertilionids, eastern red bats are insectivorous. Moths (Lepidoptera) form the majority of the diet, but red bats also prey heavily on beetles (Coleoptera), flies (Diptera), and other insects. Echolocation calls have low minimum frequencies, but calls are highly variable ranging from (35–50 kHz). Eastern red bats are best suited for foraging in open spaces due to their body size, wing shape, and echolocation call structure. ...

Mating likely occurs in late summer or autumn and the sperm is stored in the female's reproductive tract until spring when ovulation and fertilization occurs. In June, females usually give birth to three or four young and then roost with their young until they are weaned. Males roost alone throughout the Summer. High temperature demands associated with gestation and rearing young may limit the northern range for reproductive females. Eastern red bats often roost amongst live or dead leaves on the branches of live hardwood trees, but have also been found using loblolly pine trees in pine plantations.

In late summer, eastern red bats from the northern parts of the range may migrate south for the winter, although little is known about migration routes or overwintering range. In winter, red bats forage for insects on warm nights and even warm days. On warm days during the winter, red bats enter torpor while roosting in the canopy of hardwood or coniferous trees, but during cold bouts they crawl underneath dead leaf litter on the ground and use their furred tail as a blanket."
~Wikipedia.org

P.S. All animals can carry rabies, so don't pick up bats unless you are willing to go get a rabies shot afterwards.

Have a Wombat

Happy Friday!

"Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials native to Australia and are about 1 m (40 in) in length, with small, stubby tails. All are members of the family Vombatidae. They are adaptable and habitat tolerant, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as an isolated patch of about 300 ha (740 acres) in Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland.

Wombats dig extensive burrow systems with their rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws. One distinctive adaptation of wombats is their backwards pouch. The advantage of a backwards-facing pouch is that when digging, the wombat does not gather soil in its pouch over its young. Although mainly crepuscular and nocturnal, wombats also venture out to feed on cool or overcast days. They are not commonly seen, but leave ample evidence of their passage, treating fences as minor inconveniences to be gone through or under, and leaving distinctive cubic faeces.

Wombats are herbivores; their diets consist mostly of grasses, sedges, herbs, bark, and roots. Their incisor teeth somewhat resemble those of the placental rodents (rats, mice, etc.), being adapted for gnawing tough vegetation. Like many other herbivorous mammals, they have a large diastema between their incisors and the cheek teeth, which are relatively simple. ...

Wombats' fur can vary from a sandy colour to brown, or from grey to black. All three known extant species average around a metre in length and weigh between 20 and 35 kg (44 and 77 lb).

Female wombats give birth to a single young in the spring. ... They have well-developed pouches, which the young leave after about six to seven months. Wombats are weaned after 15 months, and are sexually mature at 18 months.

A group of wombats is known as a wisdom.

Wombats have an extraordinarily slow metabolism, taking around eight to 14 days to complete digestion. ...

Wombats defend home territories centred on their burrows, and they react aggressively to intruders. The common wombat occupies a range of up to 23 ha (57 acres), while the hairy-nosed species have much smaller ranges, of no more than 4 ha (10 acres).

All species of wombats are protected in every state except for Victoria."
~Wikipedia.org

Gunman Kills 9 People in Charleston Church

"Suspect arrested after nine people shot dead in US church"

"http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/06/18/12/46/reports-of-mass-shooting-at-us-church

"Among the dead was the church's pastor Clementa Pinckney, who was also a South Carolina state senator."

"Roof is from the area near Columbia, the South Carolina state capital, the Post and Courier newspaper reported. Columbia is about a two-hour drive from Charleston."



Religious? Racial? Political?

It's hard to tell... If he weren't after a political target, why would he drive two hours? Are there no churches or black people in Columbia? It seems oddly specific to me....

Have a Honey Bee

Happy Thursday!

"A honey bee (or honeybee), in contrast with the stingless honey bee, is any member of the genus Apis, primarily distinguished by the production and storage of honey and the construction of perennial, colonial nests from wax. Honey bees are the only extant members of the tribe Apini, all in the genus Apis. Currently, only seven species of honey bee are recognized, with a total of 44 subspecies, though historically, from six to eleven species have been recognised. Honey bees represent only a small fraction of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Some other types of related bees produce and store honey, but only members of the genus Apis are true honey bees. The study of honey bees is known as apiology.

Honey bees have three castes, drones, workers, and queens. There are two sexes: drones are male, while workers and queens are female.

Males or drones are typically haploid, having only one set of chromosomes. They are produced by the queen if she chooses not to fertilize an egg; or by an unfertilized laying worker. Diploid drones may be produced if an egg is fertilized but is homozygous for the sex-determination allele. Drones take 24 days to develop and may be produced from summer through autumn. Drones have large eyes used to locate queens during mating flights. Drones do not have a sting.

Workers are female bees and have two sets of chromosomes. They are produced from an egg that the queen has selectively fertilized from stored sperm. Workers typically develop in 21 days. A typical colony may contain as many as 60,000 worker bees. Workers exhibit a wider range of behaviors than either queens or drones. Their duties change upon the age of the bee in the following order (beginning with cleaning out their own cell after eating through their capped brood cell): feed brood, receive nectar, clean hive, guard duty, and foraging. Some workers engage in other specialized behaviors, such as "undertaking" (removing corpses of their nestmates from inside the hive).

Workers have morphological specializations, including the corbiculum or pollen basket, abdominal glands that produce beeswax, brood-feeding glands, and barbs on the sting. Under certain conditions (for example, if the colony becomes queenless), a worker may develop ovaries.

Queen honey bees, like workers, are female. They are created at the decision of the worker bees by feeding a larva only royal jelly throughout its development, rather than switching from royal jelly to pollen once the larva grows past a certain size. Queens are produced in oversized cells and develop in only 16 days. Queens have a different morphology and behavior from worker bees. In addition to the greater size of the queen, she has a functional set of ovaries, and a spermatheca, which stores and maintains sperm after she has mated. The sting of queens is not barbed like a worker's sting, and queens lack the glands that produce beeswax. Once mated, queens may lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. They produce a variety of pheromones that regulate behavior of workers, and helps swarms track the queen's location during the migratory phase."
~Wikipedia.org

Have a Sword-billed Hummingbird

Happy Wednesday!

"The sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera) is a species of hummingbird from South America and the sole member of the genus Ensifera. It is found in the higher elevations (mostly above 2500 meters) in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

 The genus and species name ensifera ("sword-wielder") is derived from Latin ensis (sword) and ferre (to carry), and refers to this hummingbird's remarkable beak length.

It is noted as the only species of bird to have a bill longer than the rest of its body. This adaptation is to feed on flowers with long corollas such as Passiflora mixta. The tongue is therefore also unusually long.

Since the sword-billed hummingbird's beak is very long, it grooms itself with its feet."
~Wikipedia.com

Replanting Is Not Enough

"When a forest is burned, what comes back may not resemble what was lost"

http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2015/06/when-forest-burned-what-comes-back-may-not-resemble-what-was-lost

"When a fire sweeps through a forest, or a lumber company strips an area of all of its trees, the greenery will eventually grow back. Or so many forestry researchers thought. But a new study in the tropics suggests that these second-growth forests can look very different from what they replaced—a finding that may cause biologists to wonder what biodiversity will be restored and forestry experts to reconsider how much they should or can intervene in the regrowth.

“There’s a high degree of random effects” in what comes back, says Jefferson Hall, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama who was not involved with the work. “It’s a very important study."

"Indeed, the work indicates it won’t be easy to predict how secondary forests growing now will turn out. “You cannot assume the forest that you know is 5 years old will look like the forest that you know is 20 years old,” agrees Stefan Schnitzer, an ecologist at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was not involved with the work. “It will be a big bummer for a lot of people studying chronosequences.”

Whether deliberately replanting trees is needed to help steer a land back to its previous state is also an open question, the study suggests. “What the paper says is, don’t count on the forest that you replant being the forest next door,” Schnitzer says. “You can still reforest but you still don’t know what you will get.”"


This is so important to understand. I am so dismayed that it is taking so long for people to understand this; I had only one ecology class and this was the most important principle to me. No one in my class understood my obsession with it and, apparently, very few people who are actually running the industry understand how vital this is. So much of current technology and practices could be sustainable, except that major principles like this one are so poorly understood.

Soft Men & Hard Women - Is It a Problem?

I've struggled for a long time with the gender discrimination in the Christian groups I've grown up in and currently attend. This video, especially toward the end, points out that these qualities are connected to personality, and personalities are genderless.

Yes, I was very happy to find another excuse to post this video XD

The Hydroplate Theory

"Phases of the Hydroplate Theory: Rupture, Flood, Drift, and Recovery"

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview7.html

This theory makes more sense to me than the tectonic plate theory.

The Bible's Story versus Evolution's Story

"The Creation model (Creation Magazine LIVE! 4-22)"

This is a great exposition of my own beliefs.

"Why would you pray for someone in your congregation with cancer if God used cancer to create [and called it "good"]?
(start at 5:03 for the setup to this quote)

Why People Care Neither for Science or Religion

Mr. Harrison Makes His 1,106th Blood Donation

"Man With The Golden Arm' Donates Blood That Has Saved 2 Million Babies"

http://www.npr.org/2015/06/14/414397424/man-with-the-golden-arm-donates-blood-thats-saved-2-million-babies?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150614


This such an encouraging article.

BishopofReddit asked this question: "I wonder what this guy would say if you told him a fetus ≠ person."

Several people missed the point of his question, but I think it is a pertinent one - the culture he lives in will praise James Harrison for saving lives, then turn around a murder another several hundred thousand babies. That

Have a Panda

Happy Tuesday!

"The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca, lit. "black and white cat-foot"...), also known as panda bear or simply panda, is a bear native to south central China. It is easily recognized by the large, distinctive black patches around its eyes, over the ears, and across its round body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes used to distinguish it from the unrelated red panda. Though it belongs to the order Carnivora, the giant panda's diet is over 99% bamboo. Giant pandas in the wild will occasionally eat other grasses, wild tubers, or even meat in the form of birds, rodents or carrion. In captivity, they may receive honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, or bananas along with specially prepared food."

"The giant panda is a conservation reliant endangered species. ... On March 2015, Mongabay stated the wild giant panda population increased by 268, or 16.8%, totaling to 1,864 individuals. However, the IUCN does not believe there is enough certainty yet to reclassify the species from Endangered to Vulnerable."

"Giant pandas are generally solitary, and each adult has a defined territory, and a female is not tolerant of other females in her range. Pandas communicate through vocalization and scent marking such as clawing trees or spraying urine. They are able to climb and take shelter in hollow trees or rock crevices, but do not establish permanent dens. For this reason, pandas do not hibernate, which is similar to other subtropical mammals, and will instead move to elevations with warmer temperatures. Pandas rely primarily on spatial memory rather than visual memory."

"Though the panda is often assumed to be docile, it has been known to attack humans, presumably out of irritation rather than aggression."
~Wikipedia.org

The Death of Two Lions - Bryan College News

On June 6, Dr. William Ketchersid died of a massive heart attack while hiking on a mission trip in Peru.

On June 13, Lee Rickman died "while helping lead a missions trip in Jamaica when a tree limb fell on him while he was standing and talking to a pastor. It knocked him backwards, and he hit his head on something metal" (Travis Ricketts, 'Bryan College Alumni and Friends' Facebook page.)

The first was an older man and a favorite professor of Logan's. The second was a fairly recent graduate and I remember seeing him around campus.

The coincidence of their deaths struck me as odd, especially considering the spiritual climate of the regions they were in.

Musings About Reddit - My User Habits

I am a fungal Reddit user; I frequent the site sporadically.

Design in the Sand - Puffer Fish Displays God's Glory

"Japanese Pufferfish Masterpiece - BBC Life story David Attenborough"

Have a Southern Pudu

Happy Monday!

"The pudús (Mapudungun püdü or püdu...) are two subspecies of South American deer from the genus Pudu, and are the world's smallest deer. The name is a loanword from Mapudungun, the language of the indigenous Mapuche people of southern Chile. The two species of pudús are the northern pudú (Pudu mephistophiles) from Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and the southern pudú (Pudu puda; sometimes incorrectly modified to Pudu pudu) from southern Chile and southwestern Argentina. Pudús range in size from 32 to 44 centimeters (13 to 17 in) tall, and up to 85 centimeters (33 in) long. As of 2009, both species are classified as "Endangered" in the IUCN Red List."

"...Pudús are threatened due to the destruction of their rainforest habitat. The land is cleared for human development, cattle ranching, agriculture, logging, and exotic tree plantations."

"They are solitary animals "whose behavior in the wild is largely unknown because of its secretive nature...they do not interact socially, other than to mate. ... An easily frightened animal, the deer barks when in fear. Its fur bristles and ... shivers when angered."
~Wikipedia.org

Spiders Take Over a Whole Building

Actually, they didn't. They just took over the ceiling. And it wasn't like anyone was living there. And there were perfectly harmless spiders, just eating away at the bugs.


"An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat"

http://www.entsoc.org/PDF/2010/Orb-weaving-spiders.pdf

Physics! The 11th Deminsion TED Talk

I'm not sure I understand this.....but it's so cool!

More Things We Don't Know - History

"500 Year Old Map Was Discovered That Shatters The “Official” History Of The Planet"

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/02/24/500-year-old-map-was-discovered-that-shatters-the-official-history-of-the-planet/

"Our world is no stranger to unexplained mystery, and there are numerous examples of verified phenomenon, ancient monuments, books, teachings, understandings and more that lack any explanation and counter what we’ve already been taught. We are like a race with amnesia, able to put together small bits and pieces of our history yet unable to provide any sort of verified explanation. There are still many missing pieces to the puzzle.

One great example is the Piri Reis map, a genuine document that was re-made (copied from older documents) at Constantinople in AD 1513, and discovered in 1929. It focuses on the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica. It was drawn by the military intelligence of Admiral Piri Reis of the Ottoman era. He is a well-known historical figure whose identity is well established. The Admiral made a copy of it, and the original was drawn based on documents that date back to at least the fourth century BC, and on information obtained by multiple explorers."

"The fact that this ancient map could have been made with some sort of arial technology is quite a thought, isn’t it? Even if this isn’t an option, who had the technology to undertake such an accurate geographical survey in Antarctica a couple million years ago? How would they have known to detail the map as if it were taken from above, with knowledge about the earth’s shape?

It remains a mystery how the Sumerians, Mayans, and others were aware of bodies in space that are impossible to detect without modern technology, and were able to make calculations based on that awareness. This map is another example of just such a mystery, and suggests that the existence of some sort of ancient advanced civilization, with all the tools (or possibly more) of modern day civilization, is indeed plausible."

"I’d also like to mention that this map is part of a very large body of evidence suggesting that extremely intelligent, very advanced ancient civilizations once roamed the Earth."


I have another source of evidence!! It's called "the Bible," and it has been a "verified" document since... hundreds of years. But it says that people started off super smart, and it tends to be right on just about everything.

How to Write Good

Behold, the essence of Susan's humor:

This was shared with me by a favorite family member. In face, it was the same family member who sent me the last picture... I am known by this person very well   ^_^

A Picture of Susan

I hope you weren't expecting a photograph....

Have an Octupus

Happy Friday!!

Does Physics Need the Scientific Method?

"A Crisis at the Edge of Physics"

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html

"Do physicists need empirical evidence to confirm their theories?

You may think that the answer is an obvious yes, experimental confirmation being the very heart of science. But a growing controversy at the frontiers of physics and cosmology suggests that the situation is not so simple.

A few months ago in the journal Nature, two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, published a controversial piece called “Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics.” They criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today’s most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are “sufficiently elegant and explanatory.” Despite working at the cutting edge of knowledge, such scientists are, for Professors Ellis and Silk, “breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical.”"



Yup. That is what's happening. I'd add one thing, though - cosmic theories no longer need empirical evidence to be accepted as long as they don't talk about a personal God. 

More Soft Tissue Found in Dino Fossils

"75-million-year-old dinosaur blood and collagen discovered in fossil fragments"
"Scientists accidentally discover what appear to be red blood cells and collagen fibres during analysis of ‘crap’ fossils dug up in Canada 100 years ago"

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/09/75-million-year-old-dinosaur-blood-and-collagen-discovered-in-fossil-fragments

"A detailed study of the soft tissues could unravel some of the long-standing mysteries of dinosaur evolution. The dinosaurs evolved from cold-blooded ancestors, but their modern descendants are warm-blooded birds. When did the transition occur? Red blood cells may hold the answer."

"If collagen and red blood cells can survive for 75 million years, what about dinosaur DNA, bearing the genetic code to design, or potentially even resurrect, the beasts?"

"“We haven’t found any genetic material in our fossils, but generally in science, it is unwise to say never,” said Maidment. Bertazzo is hedging his bets too: “This opens up the possibility of loads of specimens that may have soft tissue preserved in them, but the problem with DNA is that even if you find it, it won’t be intact. It’s possible you could find fragments, but to find more than that? Who knows?”"

"Anjali Goswami, a paleontologist at University College London, said that if dinosaur soft tissues were found in many more fossils, it could have a transformative effect on research. “If we can expand the data we have on soft tissues, from fossils that are poorly preserved, that has real implications for our understanding of life in deep time,” she said."


And what, exactly, is the explanation for how this happened? Aren't animals supposed to rot away before they fossilize?

A Couple of Fossils that Break the "Fossil Record"

"Do All Life Forms Fall into a Nested Hierarchy?"

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/06/do_all_life_for096771.html

This article's title is actually kinda misleading, as the article doesn't talk about nested hierarchies at all. What is does talk about is how many fossils exist that do not fit within the "Tree of Life" or "Single Tree" modal of common decent. The "Single Tree" modal is the evolutionary tree drawn in most biology textbooks today, as proposed by Darwin and touted by evolutionists. This modal represents both a nested hierarchy and common decent from a single ancestor. Another option for interpreting the fossil record, and my personal favorite, is the "Forest" or "Garden" modal. This modal describes the creation of baramins, or kinds of creatures, and their speciation over time. It displays multiple nested hierarchies and many trees of common decent.

But this article is really fun. Here's a quote:

"Sahelanthropus tchadensis is widely touted as a human ancestor that lived about 6-7 million years ago, sometime very soon after the supposed split between the human line and the chimp line. But it's rarely mentioned that this specimen doesn't fit into the standard hominin tree at all. Why? Because it has a flat face, a humanlike quality, which shouldn't exist that far back:

""If we accept these as sufficient evidence to classify S. tchadensis as a hominid at the base, or stem, of the modern human clade, then it plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins. Quite simply, a hominid of this age should only just be beginning to show signs of being a hominid. It certainly should not have the face of a hominid less than one-third of its geological ag. Also, if it is accepted as a stem hominid, under the tidy model the principle of parsimony dictates that all creatures with more primitive faces (and that is a very long list) would, perforce, have to be excluded from the ancestry of modern humans."
(Bernard Wood, "Hominid revelations from Chad," Nature, 418 (July 11, 2002):133-35.)""

Scientific Research is in Trouble

"These Five Corporations Control Academic Publishing"
"Five corporations publish more than half of all scientific papers, dominating fields like chemistry and psychology"

http://www.vocativ.com/culture/science/five-corporations-control-academic-publishing/

"Scientific research—from baby steps in basic science to revolutionary breakthroughs—is effectively controlled by five major corporations.

An analysis of the 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science, and recently published in PLoS, reveals that Reed-Elsevier, Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, Taylor & Francis and Sage published more than half of all academic papers in the peer-reviewed literature in 2013*. The study suggests it may be time for scientists to move away from major for-profit publishing houses, and take their research elsewhere."

I must agree with that assessment. Science is already becoming synonymous with secular humanism, and unless it becomes an open community again it will get worse.



*"The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era"

Lack of Sleep = Build Up of Neurotoxins

"Our poor sleeping habits are filling our brains with neurotoxins"

http://qz.com/424120/our-poor-sleeping-habits-could-be-filling-our-brains-with-neurotoxins/

"We’ve known for some time that sleep is important for the restoration and strengthening specific functions in the brain linked to memory, regulating emotions, decision-making, and even creativity. But scientists are now discovering the processes through which sleep also cleans the brain like a plumbing system, in the process changing its cellular structure.
This research has led to an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the brain’s internal workings—and is one more reminder of why it’s so essential that humans make sure they get the proper amount of sleep."


I shall never again apologize for needing 9 hours of sleep a night.

Susan's Post on "Mad Max - Fury Road"

Logan and I saw "Mad Max: Fury Road" yesterday at the insistence of a friend of ours. After all, how could we resist such an endorsement?

"I cannot strongly recommend enough that you see Mad Max: Fury Road while it is in theaters."

"It is not a typical action movie. Plus, the action is exquisitely, magnificently, gorgeously done."

"I can see where one might get [the impression that the movie is just explosions and human depravity], as there are some brilliantly vivid depictions of both. But it is a very human story about redemption, the need to be free, the determination to keep fighting against evil in the face of certain doom, and about how men should fight FOR women, not ABOUT them.  The women do some hellacious fighting of their own as well. In the same way that Harry Potter is a story about friendship, love, and sacrifice, told in the context of magic, wizards, and enchantments, Fury Road is a story of humans fighting for their most basic human right, freedom from tyranny, in the context of a gorgeously displayed wasteland. I'm telling you, you have to trust me. 

"If y'all see it and are dissatisfied, I'll send you a check to cover your tickets"

.......

Aaaaaand, I use his words because I have none of my own.

It's the only film I've seen that takes full advantage of the medium and produces a work of art that cannot be translated into any other medium.

Or maybe it was an experience so different from every other movie experience that I don't know how to describe it.

When I think about the movie, I feel the same way I feel about the Old Testament- it's so full of the truth of the human story that it makes me feel all the emotions.

The movie appealed so well to the truth of reality that Logan and I didn't have anything to talk about after we saw it, except how awesome it was. And that's a first for us. We usually talk about movies for hours after we see them, because we see them from different perspectives. Fury Road was so precise in it's storytelling that we had nothing to discuss. Every scene we brought up just made us both go quite again and say, "Wow."

It's the first movie either of us has ever seen that did not have blatant lies in it. In fact, I have yet to identify even a subtle lie from that movie....

I'm going to have to think about this one for a long time.

There has to be a way to articulate why everyone says it's worth watching.

And, I mean, the cars and stunts were real:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-12/every-killer-car-in-mad-max-fury-road-explained

Guess What the Closeup Is!

Can you guess what this is?

Have a Hebridian Sheep

Happy Thursday!

Tiny Hamster is a Giant Monster!

This is hilarious and adorable! (Note: I only watched this, I have no idea what the sound is like.)

How the 40 Hour Work Week is Killing Us

"Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed"

http://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/


"The culture of the eight-hour workday is big business’ most powerful tool for keeping people in this same dissatisfied state where the answer to every problem is to buy something."

"You may have heard of Parkinson’s Law. It is often used in reference to time usage: the more time you’ve been given to do something, the more time it will take you to do it. It’s amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer."

"Most of us treat our money this way. The more we make, the more we spend. It’s not that we suddenly need to buy more just because we make more, only that we can, so we do. In fact, it’s quite difficult for us to avoid increasing our standard of living (or at least our rate of spending) every time we get a raise."

"I don’t think it’s necessary to shun the whole ugly system and go live in the woods, pretending to be a deaf-mute, as Holden Caulfield often fantasized. But we could certainly do well to understand what big commerce really wants us to be. They’ve been working for decades to create millions of ideal consumers, and they have succeeded. Unless you’re a real anomaly, your lifestyle has already been designed."

"The perfect customer is dissatisfied but hopeful, uninterested in serious personal development, highly habituated to the television, working full-time, earning a fair amount, indulging during their free time, and somehow just getting by."



The longer I work in a corporate office, the more I believe that this is true.

Clean Energy - A Terrifying Prospect

"Engineers develop state-by-state plan to convert US to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050"

http://phys.org/news/2015-06-state-by-state-renewable-energy.html

"One potential way to combat ongoing climate change, eliminate air pollution mortality, create jobs and stabilize energy prices involves converting the world's entire energy infrastructure to run on clean, renewable energy."

"This is a daunting challenge. But now, in a new study, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and colleagues, including U.C. Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, are the first to outline how each of the 50 states can achieve such a transition by 2050. The 50 individual state plans call for aggressive changes to both infrastructure and the ways we currently consume energy, but indicate that the conversion is technically and economically possible through the wide-scale implementation of existing technologies."


I have two problems with this plan: 1) our existing technologies are highly destructive to the environment, and 2) our existing technologies are not versatile enough to be developed into safe, renewable and eco-friendly equipment.

I am an environmentalist and my dream job would be to draw up a map like this. But the map I want to draw would not include such destructive technologies as solar panels and windmills, at least not in their current form.

I like this general idea a lot. But implementing these details would be disastrous.

Deut. 29:29 - An Explanation

Below is the link to the forum where I found the text below. I think is a really cool interpretation of this passage.

http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/391xn4/verse_of_the_week_deuteronomy_2929/

Deut. 29:29
""The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." (ESV)

namer98 posted in response (from "the commentary of rashi"):

"The hidden things belong to the Lord, our God: Now, you might object [to God, saying]: “But what can we do? You punish the entire community because of the sinful thoughts of an individual, as Scripture says, ‘Perhaps there is among you a man…’ (verse 17 above), and after this, Scripture continues, ‘Seeing the plagues of that land [and the diseases with which the Lord struck it]’ (verse 21) [which seems to indicate that for the sinful thought of even one individual, the whole land would be struck down with plagues and diseases]. But surely no man can know the secret thoughts of his fellow [that we could somehow prevent this collective punishment!”

In answer to this, God says:] “I will not punish you for the hidden things!” [I.e.,] because “[The hidden things] belong to the Lord, our God,” and He will exact punishment upon that particular individual [who sins in secret]. However, “the revealed things apply to us and to our children” [that is, we are responsible for detecting the sins committed openly in our community, and] to eradicate any evil among us. And if we do not execute judgment upon these [open transgressions, over which we do have control,], then the whole community will be punished [because they would be remiss in their responsibility]. There is a dot placed over [each letter of] the words לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ here, to teach us homiletically that even for open sins [which were not brought to judgment, God] did not punish the whole community-until Israel crossed the Jordan. For then, they accepted upon themselves the oath at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and thereby [formally] became responsible for one another (Sanh. 43b). [When dots are placed over letters of the Torah, this denotes an exclusion of some sort. In our context, our Rabbis teach us that the exclusion refers to the period prior to the crossing of the Jordan.]"

The Absolute Best Hippie Truck

"This family transformed a truck into a fold-out fantasy castle you have to see to believe"

http://rare.us/story/this-family-transformed-a-truck-into-a-fold-out-fantasy-castle-you-have-to-see-to-believe/

Before Setup:

After Setup:

Giant Squid Caught on Camera

So beautiful! I have no idea how big it is.....

http://i.imgur.com/l0OoKUL.gifv

Life with Nonverbal Autism - Philip Reyes

"I Have Nonverbal Autism. Here’s What I Want You to Know."

http://themighty.com/2015/04/i-have-nonverbal-autism-heres-what-i-want-you-to-know/

"I want people to know autism is another way of being. I am weary of stereotypes that make us out to be less human than neurotypical people. I have listened to people talk negatively about autism since I was diagnosed and, as a result, I learned to hate myself and think I was a monster for causing so much hardship. I can’t let others continue living under these common misconceptions about autism."

"I think living with autism is no better or worse than living a typical life. Each life is special in its own way. I love my life with autism."


Can we bring it back around to the Gospel? Yes we can. Isn't grace amazing?

Gena Turgel - Lest We Forget

"She Survived 3 Concentration Camps And A Gas Chamber, Listen to and Heed Her Warning For The Future [Video]"

"Gena Turgel’s story should haunt all of us and remind us how easy it is for the world to look away from evil."   ~rightwingnews.com

Have a Cane Toad

Happy Tuesday!

Have a Genet

Happy Monday!

Bat in Flight - Slow Motion

Because, bats are awesome. 

+2 for  observing the flying the mouse.

Mesh for Your Brain!

"Injectable brain implant spies on individual neurons"
"Electronic mesh has potential to unravel workings of mammalian brain."

http://www.nature.com/news/injectable-brain-implant-spies-on-individual-neurons-1.17713

"A simple injection is now all it takes to wire up a brain. A diverse team of physicists, neuroscientists and chemists has implanted mouse brains with a rolled-up, silky mesh studded with tiny electronic devices, and shown that it unfurls to spy on and stimulate individual neurons.

The implant has the potential to unravel the workings of the mammalian brain in unprecedented detail. “I think it’s great, a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain,” says Rafael Yuste, director of the Neuro­technology Center at Columbia University in New York, who was not involved in the work.

If eventually shown to be safe, the soft mesh might even be used in humans to treat conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, says Charles Lieber, a chemist at Harvard University on Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the team. The work was published in Nature Nanotechnology on 8 June1."



Please note the following sentence from later in the article:

"Neuroscientists still do not understand how the activities of individual brain cells translate to higher cognitive powers such as perception and emotion."

Think about what atheistic evolutionists claim. Now think about the above sentence. Now look forward to all the billions of dollars that are going to go into trying to make those two things work together.

Also, enjoy the wonders of a team of people working together to create an injectable brain net that can read your brain!!

Puglia Italy Blames Scientists for Olive Tree Pathogen

"Italian scientists vilified in wake of olive-tree deaths"

http://www.nature.com/news/italian-scientists-vilified-in-wake-of-olive-tree-deaths-1.17651?

The olive groves of Puglia, Italy, have been suffering something similar to our our own pine beetle epidemic, but their problem is a bit smaller - the bacteria Xylella fastidiosa. While scientists have been studying the pathogen for the past two years, it was just recently that the common folk started accusing the scientists of either introducing the pathogen or failing to contain it. The scientists have been called in for questioning and have had computers and documents confiscated due to the investigation, adding great stress to an already tense situation.

It seems to me that the people should have lost faith in the humanistic claim that science can solve everything, but instead they have lost faith in the goodwill of members of their own community. Instead of blaming the fall for the broken leg, they are blaming the doctor who is trying to set it.

Sin hurts. But without the Gospel to absorb that pain, we just turn around and sin against someone else, participating in a vicious cycle of hurt, blame, guilt and more hurt.

And there you have it. A bacterium in Italy brings us 'round to the Gospel. That's pretty cool, if you ask me.

Justice Prevailed! - A Christian keeps her job

"Christian Worker Wins Employment Tribunal Case Over Homosexual Targeting Claim"

http://christianconcern.com/our-concerns/freedom-of-speech/christian-worker-wins-employment-tribunal-case-over-homosexual-target

In a world were most "tolerance" is straight up anti-Christian, this case was resolved with a rare and valuable fairness.

Psalm 135:14
"For the LORD will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants."

Tiny Blurb on Geology

Welcome. Below we see the Geologic Column:

Welcome to the Geology of Tennessee:

(Please click image to enlarge.)

So, just remember that the Column is just a bunch of rock layers grouped together based on their similarity and a (probably erroneous) chemical date. 'Tis a useful tool, but it's only a model.

Gravity - A Great Mystery

"The Unbearable Lightness of Gravity"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/06/the-unbearable-lightness-of-gravity/

"In 1955, Nathan Rosen, a former assistant of Einstein, applied several different energy-momentum complexes to a particular model of gravitational waves and calculated its energy in each case to be zero. He consequently proposed that gravitational waves don’t carry energy and thereby cannot really exist in nature."

...but so-and-so disagrees with him and now everyone is trying to directly measure gravitational waves.

WooHoo!! More info on how much we don't know about GRAVITY! So exciting. But why is it important? It's important because it's fun, for one thing. Another thing is that gravity is essential to the Big Bang theory, and the sooner we understand it the better!

Oh, and TED talk video as listed at the bottom of the article:

TED talk website

or

Lumber - Are we adjusting in time?

"A Story of Wood"

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/a-story-of-wood/

This article gives a brief history and assessment of the lumber habits and needs of the US. While it concludes that we are starting to supplement our need for softwoods with "weed" wood press-board, I wonder if we are doing it soon enough. I mean, think about it; Easter Island was not always a grassland.

Study Pushing the Homosexual Agenda Found to be Fraud

"Anatomy of a Politically Painful Fraud"

http://worldofweirdthings.com/2015/06/02/anatomy-of-a-politically-painful-fraud/

Last year on Dec 12 a study was published in Science, one of the world's leading peer-reviewed science journals. This study claimed that talking with a friendly person who then identified themselves as a homosexual was a significant factor in changing people's minds about same-sex marriage. That study was fraudulent. Jesse Singal was (I think) the first to expose the fraud in the New York Magazine, but "Anatomy of a Politically Painful Fraud," quoted below, tells us why it has taken so long for anyone to prove that it was fraud. In my mind, this is more painful than the actual fraud, for anyone can cheat a good system once, but amount of cheating that can happen in a broken system is untold. And our system is most definitely broken.

"New York Magazine has the details on how exactly the study came undone, and some parts of the story, held up in the comments as supposed proof of universities’ supposed grand Marxist-homosexual conspiracy to turn education into anti-capitalist and pro-gay propaganda as one is bound to expect, actually shine a light into why it took so long for the fraud to be discovered. It’s easy to just declare that researchers didn’t look at the study too closely because they wanted it to be true, that finding some empirical proof that sitting a homophobe down with a well dressed and successful gay person for half an hour would solve social ills was so tempting to accept, no one wanted to question it. Easy, but wrong. If you’ve ever spent time with academics or tried to become one in grad school, you’d know that the reason why it took exceptional tenacity to track down and expose LaCour’s fraud is because scientists, by in large, are no longer paid to check, review, and replicate others’ work. Their incentive is to generate new papers and secure grants to pay for their labs and administrators’ often outrageous salaries, and that’s it.

Scientists have always lived by the paradigm of “publish or perish,” the idea that if you publish a constant stream of quality work in good journals, your career continues, and once you stop, you are no longer relevant or necessary, and should quit. But nowadays, the pressure to publish to get tenure and secure grants is so strong that the number of papers on which you have a byline more or less seals your future. Forget doing five or six good papers a year, no one really cares how good they were unless they’re Nobel Prize worthy, you’re now expected to have a hundred publications or more when you’re being considered for tenure. Quality has lost to quantity. It’s a one of the big reasons why I decided not to pursue a PhD despite having the grades and more than enough desire to do research. When my only incentives would be to churn out volume and try to hit up DARPA or the USAF for grant money against another 800 voices as loud and every bit as desperate to keep their jobs as mine, how could I possibly focus on quality and do bigger and more ambitious projects based on my own work and current literature?"

"...When scientists know that a big project and a lot of follow up work confirming their results is the only way to get tenure, they will be very hesitant to pull off brazen frauds since thorough peer review is now one of the scientists’ most important tasks, rather than an afterthought in the hunt for more bylines…"

The Glory of the J-Shaped Spine

"Lost Posture: Why Indigenous Cultures Don't Have Back Pain"

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/06/08/412314701/lost-posture-why-indigenous-cultures-dont-have-back-pain

"Back pain is a tricky beast. Most Americans will at some point have a problem with their backs. And for an unlucky third, treatments won't work, and the problem will become chronic.

Believe it or not, there are a few cultures in the world where back pain hardly exists. One indigenous tribe in central India reported essentially none. And the discs in their backs showed little signs of degeneration as people aged."

Turns out that the S-shaped spine is unnatural and detrimental. Go figure.

Science Prevails! - Brain is attached to the immune system

"Researchers Find Textbook-Altering Link Between Brain, Immune System"

http://news.virginia.edu/content/researchers-find-textbook-altering-link-between-brain-immune-system

"In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.

That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis.

Kevin Lee, who chairs the Department of Neuroscience, described his reaction to the discovery by Kipnis’ lab: “The first time these guys showed me the basic result, I just said one sentence: ‘They’ll have to change the textbooks.’ There has never been a lymphatic system for the central nervous system, and it was very clear from that first singular observation – and they’ve done many studies since then to bolster the finding – that it will fundamentally change the way people look at the central nervous system’s relationship with the immune system.”

Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. “I really did not believe there are structures in the body that we are not aware of. I thought the body was mapped,” he said. “I thought that these discoveries ended somewhere around the middle of the last century. But apparently they have not.”"


Hoorah! Another point for Instrumentalists. (The view that the exercise of science produces models, not truth.)