WhimsyLand

Alongside the many poetry books, Sweet Junie also provided me with a small pile of popular science magazines last week.  Here's the latest from NewScience and Seed:

• Ecoactivists are concerned with the overharvesting of freshwater snakes in Cambodia, a recent phenomenon resulting from the decline in fish that were the previous prey of the locals.  The snakes are sold to alligator farms in Southeast Asia and are the community's only source of income.

• Russian industrialists are claiming a gas and oil rich-patch under the North Pole, claiming that the area is a "natural extension" of Russian territory because of a thin ridge they say extends from their eastern Arctic shelf

• The race to produce synthetic life continues.  Craig Ventnor of Human Genome Project fame, has transplanted synthetic genetic material in a bacterium that then reproduced in quantity.  Other researchers call this a development that is just short of "synthetic life" and are attempting to produce simple bacteria completely from synthesized material.

• Almost one-quarter of the earth's natural resources are now consumed by humans.  The largest concern is that the recent switch from fossil fuel to bio-fuel will only make matters worse.

• Some cosmologists believe that the singularity that is the result of the Big Crunch, and the starting point of any discussion of the Big Bang, may actually cycle, producing successive universes over trillions of years.  One researcher (Martin Bojowald) believes that most or all of the information about the prior universes is lost in the process, producing new universes with "amnesia" about prior incarnations.

• Experiments show that when rats benefit from the kindness of strangers, they begin to act similarly.

• All modern housecats have descended from one species of Near Eastern wildcat.

• A Japanese researcher believes that most animal pathogens evolved from bacteria found around deep-sea vents.

• Many space scientists are uneasy with NASA's ill-conceived plan to deflect threatening mini-asteroids with nuclear explosions.

• Privacy groups are concerned with potential abuses by the government in tracking individuals by means of their cell phones.

• You have the same number of neck vertebrae as a giraffe.

• Every living creature gets about a billion hearbeats.  Small animals consume their lives faster.


 

I'm still reading Gabe's Rhode Island Notebook at odd times and enjoying it.  Meanwhile, I'm considering another poetry adventure.  More on that later.