Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

It may be the clash of the Titans – or little critters living on Titan, anyway. Titan is a moon on Saturn that’s so cold it has seas of liquid methane. A recent chemical analysis of the chemical composition of Titan’s atmosphere is consistent with, though not proof of, methane-based life on the the little world.

Far out. ET may be very smelly.

Guess what this fish, the Portuguese dogfish, is used for:

It’s killed to gather its liver oil. That’s used for cosmetics.

Grody.

Bombshell news from Chinese researchers has registered barely a whimper in the American press this weekend. Over 3,000 dinosaur footprints have been found in China. Here in the USA, bigfoot researchers feel lucky if they find one big sasquatch footprint, but here are thousands of dinosaur footprints. What more evidence do we need that dinosaurs are still alive and breeding in Asia?

I note that Agence France Presse attempts to distract from the discovery by claiming that the footprints are “believed to be more than 100 million years old”. But who exactly believes such a thing, AFP won’t say. That’s mighty curious, I think. When I find a footprint, do I assume that it’s millions of years old? No! I assume it’s recent.

So, we can presume that these thousands of dinosaur footprints are recent, unless evidence to the contrary is found. AFP is unable to cite any such evidence.

Why are French journalists so loathe to admit that dinosaurs are running helter skelter across modern day China? Is national jealousy at the root of the coverup, or something more sinister? What do the French have to profit from the news of living dinosaurs remaining a secret?

Furthmore, what are all those dinosaurs doing in China? Does the dinosaur revelation help to explain how Chinese sweatshops are able to produce shoes, shirts, and other products so inexpensively?

If you don’t hear anything more about the living dinosaur story, count that as a confirmation that the dinosaurs really do exist, and are too valuable to be made common knowledge.

Forget the swine flu, the little runt of an epidemic that ended up being less disturbing than a Porky Pig cartoon. Ecolocalizer is reporting on a growing fungus that threatens to consume humankind – from the inside out.

The site writes, “Aspergillus fumigatus is a fungus found commonly in ordinary garden soil. When the spores of the fungus are inhaled, It can also cause disease–sometimes fatally in those with already compromised immune systems and respiratory disease such as COPD.” (COPD is a term used to refer to conditions such as chronic bronchitis or emphysema.) The article goes on to point out that the fungus is becoming more virulent, because farmers are spreading fungicides around.

Okay – there’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s get started with the fact that the fungus is commonly found in ordinary garden soil – but not, by implication, in common forest soil, or common grassland soil, or common national wildlife reserve soil. Why? It appears that the fungus is actually seeking out human habitation where it can more easily launch attacks against us. That implies sentience, the ability of the fungus to follow its victims close to their homes, and then lurk, planning for the right opportunity to launch a violent assault against us.

Next, we have to ask: Why has this deadly fungus just so happened to have developed at this particular point in time? We’re supposed to believe that it’s a “coincidence” that news of the super fungus comes on the same day that 5 people were killed in a fire in Brooklyn that authorities admit was “suspicious”. Those same authorities have rather conspicuously not linked the fire to the advance of the fungus into gardens across America – almost as if there was someone telling them not to discuss the link. Notice that in ALL media reports about that Brooklyn fire, no one talks about the impending fungal invasion. Looks like someone was handing out talking points.

It’s not going to be popular among the agricultural elites in this nation, but we also have to ask: Why are farmers contributing to the problem, helping to make the fungus stronger? What are they up to? News reports from around the world report unusually high rates of farmer suicides – in India and Australia, for example.

If farmers around the world were conspiring to spread our sentient fungal enemies, planning a land-sharing agreement after the slaughter of 95 percent of the human race, that would explain farmers’ guilty consciences.

We may not have much time to stop the global agrofungal conspiracy. A recent report from DeKalb County, Illinois indicates that farmers there are spending more time on the road than usual. The original report, however, has been scrubbed from the web. You can only find its archived version now, suggesting an attempted coverup.

Where were those farmers going, and why didn’t they want us to find out about it? The fungus knows.

For a long time, we’ve been reminded that, though we see paintings and sculptures of dinosaurs in particular colors, nobody really knows what colors the dinosaurs were. Now, in the case of one dinosaur, that’s not at all true.

Scientists have examined small structures in the feathers of the dinosaur Sinosauropteryx in order to explore an evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs. Particular types of these structures, melanosomes, are associated with particular colors in modern day birds. So, by identifying the melanosomes in fossilized feathers of Sinosauropteryx, researchers can tell which parts of the creature had feathers of which colors.

The results indicate bands of light and dark orange along the tail of the dinosaur. Read more about it.

This t-shirt speaks the truth that huge numbers of Americans still aren’t ready to accept, 7 generations after its discovery: Evolution happens.

2009 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Still, huge numbers of Americans, including the Republicans’ recent Vice Presidential candidate, expressed an inability to understand how biological evolution through natural selection could possibly happen.

This year, the great idea of Charles Darwin still needs defending. Celebrate Darwin Day on February 12.

They’re really smart people over there at Cornell University. They have the ivy growing on their buildings to prove it. That’s why, when I saw an advertisement reading…

“Research participant needed for a study on credit cards conducted by a Cornell PhD student. Monetary compensation of $60 will be paid to participants who complete a photo-taking task and an interview. Participants need to bake pictures of anything that comes to their minds when they think about credit cards, and anything that can express how they think and feel about credit card, either by the disposable camera provided or by their own digital cameras depending on their own preference.”

… why, I just knew it had to make sense. So, I’ve gone and used my own digital camera, because that’s my own preference, and taken a whole lot of pictures of everything that I think of when it comes to credit cards. Now, I’ve set my oven to 450 degrees, and put my digital camera in on a no-stick pan.

I can’t wait to get my 60 dollars!

I’ve winced over the last week as I’ve watched colleagues announce, in professional situations, “Well, so much for global warming! Do you know how cold it’s going to be tomorrow?”

They’re reacting, of course, to the strong cold front that has been active in the upper Midwest and East Coast of the United States. These prophets of instaclimate don’t seem to be aware that, at the same time as there’s been a cold front in some parts of the country, the Pacific Coast has had a strong heat wave. What would they suggest, that global warming doesn’t count in the East, but it’s stronger than ever in the West?

It’s uncomfortable to watch people exhibit such sloppy thinking in professional settings, forgetting that global warming is a global, not local, phenomenon, and failing to understand the difference between a day’s weather and changes in climate. Would these people suddenly believe in the reality of global warming again, if only they encountered a hot summer day where they live?

I’d love to send these people to meteorology school, but failing that, I’ll give them the reminder that December was one of the warmest Decembers on record, and 2008 was one of the top ten hottest years ever recorded.

One chilly week of fluxuating weather doesn’t undo the kind of trend that climatologists have been tracking for decades.

“Astronomers say it may have been born elsewhere.” Elsewhere, as in outside of our solar system, or even outside of our galaxy. Perhaps outside of our universe.

It’s the largest UFO ever seen. It’s 50 kilometers wide.

The mainstream, institutional, corporate-sponsored astronomers at so-called “New Scientist” claim that the orbit of this UFO “appears to have been stable for hundreds of millions of years,” but how do they know that? They just discovered the object, after all!

They insist on calling it a comet, but to tell the truth, they haven’t looked at the object, called 2008 KV42, that closely. All they see is a blur.

It could easily be a gigantic alien spaceship. A clue to that: It’s flying in the opposite direction of all the planets… as if it is powered by itself!

The obvious question now is: Why are the 2008 KV42 aliens here in our solar system? Are they here for some super powerful natural resource here that we don’t know about? Do they know about us, and if so, what do they intend to do with us?

It just so happens that a circular spaceship 50 kilometers wide could hold the entire human population of the Earth. Coincidence? That’s unlikely.

Why are the scientists refusing to ask these questions? What are they trying to cover up?

Right wing Republicans keep on saying that it’s okay to deny same-sex couples equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the Constitution because same-sex marriages are inherently unnatural. The idea is that anything unnatural is therefore ungodly. Of course, these Republicans don’t spend their time attacking unnatural things like cars, or light bulbs, or chewy granola bars. Their righteous wrath is oddly restrained to just same-sex marriage.

The scientific truth is that same-sex marriages are not really unnatural at all. There are many examples of same-sex reproduction in nature. In fact, in many species, three are no males at all – only females who breed with each other. Then there are hermaphrodites, like snails, and even fruit trees. Oh, the immorality!

Today there’s a report of research by Lindsay Young, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii. Her studies have included observations of lesbian albatrosses setting up long-term nesting relationships with each other that involve considerable physical intimacy.

Same-sex marriage occurs in nature, it seems. Therefore, same-sex marriage is natural. By the standards of right wing Republicans, that ought to mean that evangelical churches should start pushing Congress to make same-sex marriage legal across the United States.

How likely do you think that is it happen? Maybe the right wing Republicans’ efforts to deny equal protection under the law to same-sex couples doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s natural. Maybe they’re just jerks.