Worms in Space

On 31st October 2011, a baby was born somewhere in the world and suddenly the Earth groaned under the strain of supporting 7 billion human beings.  Then, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) released a scary report on 28th November 2011 entitled, “The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture .” or SOLAW.

SOLAW notes that in the 50 years between 1961 and 2009 cropland increased by just 12% but agriculture and food production grew by an amazing 150% largely due to the practices introduced during the “Green Revolution”.  It could be said that we dodged the bullet then because in the same period, the world population also increased by 100%.  If it were not for the Green Revolution, the world would already be facing widespread famine.

However, SOLAW also noted that the success of the Green Revolution has also been costly in terms of soil fertility and pollution and today the “rates of growth in agricultural production have been slowing in many areas and are today only half of what they were during the heyday of the Green Revolution. “  Today, there is very little arable land left for expansion of agricultural lands.  If anything, we are even losing arable land, burying it under concrete as cities spread out.  Furthermore, SOLAW points out that 25% of the world’s land is now highly degraded, another 8% is moderately degraded and only 10% is showing an improvement in status.

Water scarcity, salination and pollution of groundwater and other water sources and habitats are all making food production harder.  All these effects will be magnified further by the effects of climate change.

Yet while agriculture and food production is in decline and under threat, the human population is expected to rise to 9 billion by 2050.  So in the midst of the decline and decay, we will have to pull another miracle out of the bag and increase food production by another 70% in the next 40 years.

Yet at the Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa that is on right now, developed countries and even some developing countries are trying to delay implementation of further measures to reduce carbon emissions and reduce the impact of climate change.  Canada is even threatening to pull out of the minimal Kyoto Protocol because of concerns that carbon reduction targets might affect its economic competitiveness with the USA.

This reminds me of a Government Minister from a developing nation who called his farmers “stupid” for planting food crops when they could use the land for planting cash crops.  He said with the profits, “we can always buy food”.  How short sighted!  The recent flood in Thailand for example caused widespread panic amongst countries dependent on it for their rice.  Climate change is going to make this situation far worse.

It sure looks like we are all heading towards global disaster like idiots; like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned or like lemmings heading for the cliff while assuring themselves there is no other way.

Is it any surprise then that even worms are venturing into space to escape?  Read about it here and see the video here.

And just to link with my previous post on the Muppets, there are also Pigs in Space.

 

Mongolian Beasts

This post is about two beasts that I encountered in Mongolia.   The first is the rare Przewalski’s horse.  When we think of wild horses, we might often think of the American Mustang or other such horses.   However, these are really just domesticated horses that have gone feral.  The Przewalski’s Horse is the only surviving true wild horse.   It is a possible ancestor of the modern domesticated horse.

It has 68 choromosones whereas the modern horse has only 66 chromosomes.  It also has faint striping on its legs which is a sign that it is a more ancient species.  Scientists believe that it and the modern horse diverged from each other some 160,000 years ago.

The horse is named after the Russian geographer and explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky; hence its unusual name.  However, the Mongolians call it the Takhi.     The Takhi disappeared from its home range in the Mongolian Steppes in the 1960′s but since 1998 an international effort has successfully introduced takhi taken from zoo populations and reintroduced them into three Mongolian  protected areas.  This is a rare example of a successful reintroduction of a species into the wild and the Mongolians are rightly proud of this.

One of the places to see the takhi is in Hustai National Park near Ulaanbaatar.  However, you still need a bit of luck to see them.

We first saw the Takhi against this spectacular backdrop.

Rubbing It's Behind on the Rough Rock

The Herd

 

My blogging friend  Geewits always speaks of “synchronicity”.  By this she means, the strange phenomena when suddenly a topic or an item keeps appearing in a short period from different sources.  Well, this second beast of this post is an example of synchronicity.

Just before going to Mongolia, I did my Halloween post which was about the Beast of Gevaudan.  While researching for the post, I discovered that some cryptozoologists proposed that the animal may be a surviving member of a group of wolf-like animals called Mesonychids which were believed to have gone extinct 32 million years ago.

When I was in Ulaanbaatar, I had the opportunity to visit the Mongolian Natural History Museum and guess what I saw there?  The top part of a skull of the Andrewsarchus mongoliensis.  This animal is known from fossils dug up from the Mongolian Gobi Desert and is thought to be the largest of the Mesonychids.  What would be the odds about posting about this and then coming face to face with its fossil within a week in a foreign land?  That’s synchronicity.

Hopefully I will now not meet one of these creatures alive and biting.  That would not be synchronicity.  That would be a story from the Twilight Zone.

Andrewsarchus mongoliensis skull

Foul Beast

For my Halloween post this year, I fall back on one of the creatures of the night that has longed intrigued me – the wild beast hound/wolf.  The thought of some creature prowling the countryside in search of victims has always made my blood chill.  Some of these creatures like the famous “Hound of Baskervilles” were fictitious creations but often some of these stories of demon dogs or wild beasts were based on some historical incident.

Take for example, the story about the Beast of Gevaudan.  Between 1764 -1767, in the former province of Gevaudan whichwas located in the mountains of south-central France, a man-eating creature is claimed to have killed more than 100 people.  This creature bore some resemblance to a large wolf but it did not hunt in packs as wolves do.  It seemed to attack people preferentially even when cattle and other livestock were present.  It attacked the head and killed by biting the neck or taking the whole head off.  Many of the victims’ bodies were found partially eaten.

Things got so bad that King Louis XV sent professional wolf hunters to help and though they killed a number of wolves, including a particularly large one called Le Loup de Chazes, the attacks and killings continued.   Eventually a local hunter, Jean Chastel, was credited with killing the real beast.  Chastel claimed that he was part of a larger hunting group when he stopped to read the bible and pray.  At that point, the beast appeared and stared at him.  Upon finishing his prayer, he killed the beast.  Survivors of the attacks positively identified the carcass as that of the beast that attacked them and human remains was found in its stomach.

However, others wondered about Chastel’s tale and some suspicion arose that the beast did not immediately attack Chastel because it had in fact been raised and trained by Chastel.

But what was the beast?  It was described as being wolf-like but much larger, the size of a cow.  It had a wide chest, a long tail ending in a lion like tuft of fur,large pointed ears and a long jaw with protruding fangs.   It’s fur had a reddish tinge and smelt horribly.  Some witnesses claimed that its feet resembled hooves rather than paws.  Others claimed the hide was so tough that it was practically bullet proof.

Traditional stories suggest that the beast was a werewolf or a warlock who could shape-shift.  Another early theory was that the beast was the result of cross breeding wolves with certain breeds of domestic dogs.  Or perhaps it was a lion wearing armor, or it was a rare form of hyena.

I think it is interesting that some cryptozoologists and scientists suspect that it could have been a surviving remnant of a Mesonychid which are a group of animals that seemed to resemble the creature described by the survivors; especially the description of the size, protruding fangs, hooves and reddish fur.  The only problem is that Mesonychids are believed to have died out some 32 million years ago.

So what do you think it was?  And are they still prowling around today?

This is what a Mesonychid might look like………..

The Beast of Gevaudan?

 

World Domination in Easy Steps

STEP 1 :  Watch Video Below!

Step 2:  Keep your Eyes on the swinging balls.  Watch them swing….to the right……and to the left.  Keep your eyes on the balls.

Step 3:   Your eyes are getting tired……sleepy………close your eyes.  Keep seeing the balls swing in your mind and keep listening to my voice.

Step 4:  You are in deep sleep and you must obey what I command.   When you wake up, you will not remember any of this but you will want to write a cheque for the total amount of your savings payable to the Lone Grey Squirrel and send it to the “World Enslavement of Humanity by Squirrels” Fund, c/0 Banque Suisse pour des Despotes et des Dictateurs, Zurich, Switzerland (where all the best despots and dictators keep their loot safe).  You will also have an unstoppable urge to feed squirrels.

Step 5: Wake up minions and do your master’s bidding.

Apple’s Shine Dims

(from photoshopgurus.com)

It’s been dominating the news for the last 24 hours.  Steve Jobs is dead.  His brave 8 year long fight with pancreatic cancer has finally come to an end.  Although he had taken some time off on medical leave, for most of the time he had remained the visionary at the helm of Apple as it introduced to the world, one innovative and revolutionary product after another.  In fact it was only on the 24th August 2011 that he resigned as CEO of Apple, saying that he was no longer able to fulfill his role.

I don’t know the man and do not intend here to try to compete with the many better informed articles and posts about him.  I can only say that someone like Steve Jobs, with his unique blend of technical knowledge, business savvy, vision of the future and in his own words, “Good taste.” is an extremely rare individual.   It is very rare that one man can affect the way so much of the world lives their lives.

iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iPad, iMac ..........

 

I only started partaking of the Apple in the last 3 years but I am now a total devotee.  What vision, style and practicality!

Rest in Peace, Steve.  Thanks for being such a bright light.

The Important Contributions of Mad Scientists

In 2010, Robert G. Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development of in vitro fertilization.  His achievement has led to the entire field of medicine dedicated to treating infertility which is said to affect as much as 10% of all couples.

Winning the Nobel Prize was one of my childhood dreams but later when I actually became a scientist, I came to realise 3 truths about winning the Nobel Prize in science.

Truth No 1:  It’s a lot of hard work and takes years of hard work.  With little partying and boozing, I may add.

Truth No 2: You have to make a guess about what people will find useful and interesting in about 30-40 years later and actually make some kind of discovery related to that idea.

Truth No 3:  You have to live long enough for them to consider you for the award some 50 years after you made your initial discovery.

So I have pretty much given up on winning the Nobel Prize in anything and decided to make a career change from scientist to mad scientist.  Thankfully, I discovered the Ig Nobel Prizes  for mad scientists and came close to winning one of those last year but my idea was stolen.  You can read all about how I was cheated of this award here.  But I have not given up.  I will get this Ig nobel award one day.

In the meantime, the Lone Grey Squirrel continues his semi-annual (or when I remember to do it) report on the winners of this award.

• PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE: Anna Wilkinson (of the UK), Natalie Sebanz (of THE NETHERLANDS, HUNGARY, and AUSTRIA), Isabella Mandl (of AUSTRIA) and Ludwig Huber (of AUSTRIA) for their study “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise.”

LGS comment :  “So now we know that if we ever find ourselves giving a lecture to a crowd of Red-footed Tortoises and they start to yawn, we can’t blame it on contagious yawning.  The practical implication is to avoid speaking to Red-footed Tortoises altogether.”

• CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of JAPAN, for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm.

LGS comment:  “Because the wasabi alarm works better than the one that goes ‘WOOOAOAOAOAOA!’  for those who are hard of hearing or who are big sushi fans.  Probably would not work so well outside Japan.  Alternatives such as the sauerkraut alarm, the Limburger cheese alarm and the Madras Hot Curry alarm should be developed for other parts of the world.”

• MEDICINE PRIZE: Mirjam Tuk (of THE NETHERLANDS and the UK), Debra Trampe (of THE NETHERLANDS) and Luk Warlop (of BELGIUM). and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (of the USA), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (of AUSTRALIA) for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.

LGS comment:  “When the U.S. President gives the order to launch a nuclear strike, one of the in-built safety measures should be to ask if his/her bladder is full or empty.”

• PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, NORWAY, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.

LGS comment: “*Sigh* Why can’t I win a prize?”

• BIOLOGY PRIZE: Darryl Gwynne (of CANADA and AUSTRALIA and the UK and the USA) and David Rentz (of AUSTRALIA and the USA) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle.

LGS comment: “More compelling evidence that alcohol affects sex life.”

• MATHEMATICS PRIZE: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

LGS comment: “Something just doesn’t add up.”

• PEACE PRIZE: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, LITHUANIA, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.

LGS comment: “At last a peacetime use for armoured tanks.”

My Car is Bigger than Your Car!

• PUBLIC SAFETY PRIZE: John Senders of the University of Toronto, CANADA, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him.

LGS comment: “This was a very important study because highway safety in Canada increased substantially the minute the study stopped.  Thankfully, they did not use an armoured tank for the study.”

Even More Reasons For Not Going Swimming Soon

Regular readers will know that this squirrel is highly suspicious about what lurks below the surface of the water – whether it be at sea or in deep fresh water pools or rivers.  This is evidenced by the following posts, “Not Going Swimming Soon“, “Still Not Going Swimming Soon“,  “More Reasons for Not Going Swimming Soon” and “Fishy Tale“.  Just when, the squirrel was beginning to think it might be okay to dip his paws into the water, news came about this monster crocodile in Mindanao, Philippines.

It is believed that this “croczilla” attacked and killed at least one person in 2009.  A hunt organised then was unsuccessful.  More recently, it is believed to have killed a fisherman in July this year and many witnesses saw it kill a water buffalo last month.

Officials with the help of crocodile experts, set up four traps at the creek where it was sighted but the crocodile destroyed the traps.  They eventually caught it after a three week hunt, using a trap made from steel cable.

This monster measures in at 21 feet or close to 7 m and weighs in excess of one tonne which makes it substantially bigger than the current recorded crocodile caught.   It took 100 men to pull it out of the creek.   Just look at the monster in the photos below.

A One Tonne, 21 Foot Man Eater

"It is ...this big. Well .....actually it is a lot bigger than my arms can stretch!"

Malaysia too has its share of crocodiles.  Attacks on people and livestock still occurs frequently in the rivers of East Malaysia.  In West Malaysia, the situation is different.  Although historically crocodiles were a menace and attacks were frequent, incidences of such attacks have practically disappeared in the last 50 years.

While it is true that man-eating crocodiles were hunted down and killed, there are still crocodiles in the rivers today but they seem to stay away from humans.  Why this is so is unclear; perhaps the remaining crocodiles have learned to fear men or perhaps there are so few crocodiles today and their natural food so plentiful that they leave humans alone. No one knows for sure.

But if you were to speak to the bomohs or village shamans and the elderly but experienced crocodile hunters, they have a different explanation.  They will tell you that in every river, there is the one king crocodile which they call the “Bujang”.  The Bujang is the one that influences the crocodiles to attack humans.  Once you have killed the Bujang, then the rest of the crocodiles will leave humans alone.

It may be easy to dismiss this as superstitious fables but these men are well respected in their communities as being able to call and attract the Bujang to shore where they can kill it.

As for me, I can’t stop thinking that the ‘croczilla” is long enough to swallow three of me lined up length-wise and still have room for R2D2 for dessert.

Carolina Squirrel and the Midnight Mystery

The Conspiracy Theorists

This post is the third one in the Carolina Squirrel series (which includes Carolina Squirrel and the Holy Grail and Carolina Squirrel and the Money Pit).  Following well established Hollywood practices, this sequel is actually a prequel.  This tells the tale that started it all; when a mild mannered squirrel began his career as adventurer – mystery solving, globe trotting Carolina Squirrel………..

A long, long time ago (1994), when the internet was still young and there were no blogs or Facebook or Twitter, there were Usenet newsgroups.  As a poor, impoverished and over worked graduate student, I often had to be working in the lab late at night.  When I had some free time, I would take advantage of the free computers and connect with the world through the Usenet newsgroups.

One particular newsgroup that I visited regularly was alt.skeptics.  The prefix “alt” meant “alternative” but because of the type of people that it attracted, many jokingly called it “Anarchist, Lunatics and Terrorists”.  But in fact, alt.skeptics was a great place to meet with fellow inquisitive souls and discuss, debate or debunk strange phenomena or sightings like UFOs, raining frogs, Bigfoot etc.

One night, after midnight, I logged on and joined an on-going online discussion about a most strange case.  A real life mystery which was hot off the presses and here was an active intellectual debate going on and theories were being offered to explain the facts.  It involved a woman who had just been emitted to a hospital with a green sheen on her skin and an odour that incapacitated her healthcare workers.

Suggestions were coming in from all over.  I remember someone from New York suggested that the woman had been poisoned by pesticide sprayed by planes on orange groves.  Within minutes, someone from the Palm Oil Research Centre in Malaysia replied saying that the symptoms do not fit pesticide poisoning which he was familiar with.  And so it went on, this global investigation.  It was very exciting being in the midst of all this.  I can’t remember if I ever went back to the lab that night and so was born, my alter ego, Carolina Squirrel.

This strange occurrence and the poor unfortunate victim would eventually become known as the case of “Toxic Gloria”.   The story goes as follows.

Gloria Ramirez was a thirty year old cancer patient who apparently suffered heart failure.  She was taken by ambulance to Riverside General Hospital in California.  In the emergency room, medical personnel began to treat her.  Then strange things began to happen.  Several people noticed a green, oily sheen on her skin and some detected a fruity odour coming from her mouth.  At this stage a nurse tried to draw a blood sample with a syringe and she noted an ammonia like smell as she drew blood.  Some of the medical crew claimed that they saw yellow crystals in the blood sample.

Shortly after that, the nurse who took the blood sample, fainted.   The doctor treating Gloria and another trauma staff also fainted soon after.  At that point, they decided to evacuate the entire emergency ward, with patients being wheeled out into the parking lot.  A Hazmat team was called in and during all this confusion Gloria Ramirez passed away.

The doctor and one of the nurses continued to have problems after that including sleeping and breathing problems.  The doctor was in intensive care for two weeks and she subsequently developed hepatitis and avascular necrosis in her knees.

For conspiracy and cover-up fans, there were the additional points of interests such as the fact that the syringe with the crystals in the blood sample went missing and the authorities initially did not want to release the body and then later while claiming they found nothing strange during autopsy, still wanted to insist that the body be buried in a hermetically sealed coffin.

Eventually, the family got a second autopsy done and again nothing unusual was found.

So what did you think happened to Gloria Ramirez?

In the end, we may never know what really happened but there is one theory with an unusual explanation that has received more acceptance than most but even it is at the edge of plausibility.  If, you are curious, read about it here.

Odd Balls of Fire

Following on from the last post on “possessed foods”, comes more discussion about the strange and wonderful.  I have always had an interest in the weird, the odd, the unusual and the paranormal.  I was fated to be a fan of the X-files as I was of Kolchak -the Night Stalker, which was its predecessor and according to X-file creator, Chris Carter, an inspiration for the series.

I haven’t abandoned my scientific sensibilities and try to look at each of these reported phenomena objectively.  At the same time, I don’t dismiss all paranormal phenomena as bogus hocus pocus and hoaxes, believing instead that where there is smoke, there is fire.  I don’t believe in aliens creating crop circles, for example, as it can easily be done by pranksters.  However, other phenomena may appear strange but may be scientifically verified and explained when properly scrutinised.

To my great satisfaction, two of my favorite strange phenomena from my youth have now been more or less been properly documented and there are now plausible scientific theories to explain them.  These are the phenomena of “spontaneous human combustion“  and “ball lightning”.

Spontaneous human combustion refers to cases where humans are believed to burst into flames such that the bodies are discovered burnt to ashes with the exception of parts of the hands or legs.  However, there maybe minimal damage to the surroundings such as the bed or chair.   An interesting literary  side-note is that Charles Dickens killed off one of his characters, Krook, in Bleak House by this means.

The “wick” theory seems to adequately explain all the different aspects of the phenomena and has been successfully demonstrated using pig carcasses. The theory  basically says that a low grade fire caused by, for example, a cigarette lighting a blanket,  can be fueled by melting body fat.  The blanket may take up the oil and the oil may burn but the blanket would only char just as in a lit candle where the wick does not burn.  In this way, the body is consumed with little damage to the surrounding and the parts of the body with least fat, i.e. hands and legs, are not consumed.

Then there is ball lightning.  Ball lightning have been reported for hundreds of years.  They are basically charged luminous spheres which can move around for short periods.  In some cases, they appear capable of going through surfaces like walls but in other cases they explode on contact. They can kill people in the same way normal lightning can.  One of the earliest well documented case involved a 2.4 m diameter ball of fire that entered a church in Devon, England in 1638 which killed 4 people.

For many centuries, science tended to ignore ball lightning as an unreliably reported phenomena.  There was no theory then that could explain electricity or lightning behaving in this strange manner.  However, many scientists today accept ball lightning as a rare but naturally occurring phenomena and while it is still unclear what really happens in nature, similar glowing spheres have been successfully created in laboratory experiments.

These luminous spheres can be created by discharging a high voltage capacitor in a tank of water; or by using microwaves on certain compounds and objects; or by the oxidising of silicon vapours.  The microwave experiments produce “plasma balls” which adequately demonstrates all the know properties and behavior of ball lightning.

Strangely, one of the things that seems to produce plasma in a microwave is a cut grape (as seen in the video below).  I wonder how that was discovered.  Probably some bored scientist putting everything he/she could find in the kitchen into the microwave for entertainment.  Anyway, don’t try this at home.  Apparently the fumes produce are toxic and the gases can get so heated up that it can shatter glass.  You have been warned.

Anyway, this post is meant to whet your appetite for the strange and unusual cause next week I will share with you one strange X-file that this humble squirrel was indirectly involved in.  Till then. Too doo, too doo, too doo too doo……. (theme from Twilight Zone).

Surrogate Critter

Sorry folks but the Lone Grey Squirrel is off to attend a Christian Youth Camp for the next few days where I am suppose to share wisdom with the next generation on the topics of “Freedom” and “Self Esteem”.  In between, I might be expected to participate in all manner of wild, whacky and energetic youthful games and sports.  Please pray that I survive this encounter with youth.

Anyway, I am literally packing for my trip but I was worried that regular readers may come by this blog and be perturbed by the silence and miss the sound of little scampering paws.  Therefore at great expense, I have brought in a surrogate critter to scurry around here for your entertainment.  Many thanks to Termites of Sin  who first alerted me of this wonderful creatures.   For scurrying and scampering, please play the video below.