Go Hug A Tree

I once heard if you live long enough you’ll be in fashion.

For years, those who chose to protect the environment were tagged with disparaging labels like ‘tree hugger.’ Now it seems everybody is a ‘tree hugger.’

Most things I see on the tele these days have commercials from the big oil and gas companies about how green they are-- like we’re supposed to forget how hard they've fought restrictions on the way they do business.

I wonder how many of those bumper stickers saying, ‘Hey, I like Spotted Owls---fried,’ I’m going to see in the near future?

Gee, it’s nice to finally be in fashion.

Waiter-There's a fly in my soup!

I came across some really disgusting gastronomical suggestions for the astronauts.

Remember, all you SciFi fans, the complaints about pressed soy steaks or yeast porridge and algae jello?

Well, how about dried fly pupa, larvae and adult house flies pressed into a cake or maybe added to a nice yeast broth for some added protein? The nutritional scientists claim over 70% dried protein by weight. Earthworms fell just a few points behind. And as a bonus flies and earthworms do a pretty good job of turning that pesky garbage into more flies and earthworms.

There is a serious side to all this-but maybe you think dried turtle food is serious enough-but it may be awhile before steak on the hoof appears at the local Lunar Mega mart and it is constructive to give even the wildest ideas some thought.

Iron Chief, tonight’s mystery ingredient---fly pupa.

911 to the ISS?

We were visiting grandkids in Houston a few years back, so naturally we made the required pilgrimadge to the SpaceCenter and being a good tourists took a tour.

The tour included the assembly building for the 7 crewperson rescue boat, in anticipation of putting more than a janitor crew of three astronauts aboard at a time, as that was all Soyuz could accommodate as a rescue vehicle.

The designation was the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle, I think.

If my memory serves me, and it usually doesn't, Bush killed that project to free up funds to return to the moon in a souped up Ap0ll0 type craft.

Now I hear with the new truss installed yesterday, we have enough power to crew up to six.

I got to wondering. If somethiing bad happens, how do we get them down? The shuttle retires next year.

Anybody know?

Shroud Eaters-AKA Vampires

I love vampire lore and movies and thought I was up to date, but here's a new one, at least to me, but then I don't get out enough.

Evidently it was a custom in 1600 Europe to stuff a brick in the mouth of a suspected vampire so they could not feed and therby starve.

These suspects were already buried, usually in a mass grave, victims of the latest plague. When the tombs were reoppenned to bury more victims, during a subsequent the plague, sometimes a gravedigger or priest thought something about the corspe didn't look right and was a vampire. One of the reasons they were suspicious is that folks of those times thought vampires had something to do with disease, in addition to their other antisocial activities.

Quite often the tipoff was a hole in the victums shroud around the mouth and (sorry) blood oozing from the mouth and the body bloated.

The scientific explaination given is that the hole around the mouth is from decay from mouth bacteria, the blood oozing from the mouth was pushed out by swelling internal organs and you know why bodies bloat as they decay.

What happened to the stake through the heart?

Watching a gnat while listening to 'Good Vibrations'

I've probably seen gnats thousands of times, but I don't think I've ever SEEN one before. Know what I mean?

This thing is tiny. It wouldn't crowd a pinhead yet it senses its surroundings, seems to get to wherever it is it is going, can FLY, land and walk.

It's nervous system can't have that many nerve cells, but look what it does with them. It is an autonomus, living thing that is just amazing.