Is bigger better?

Mother Teresa and Friends
(Public Domain)

While some are devoutly caring for the least among us, others are frantically creating the world’s largest pair of jeans.  Could it be that surpassing the previous Guinness World Record for “massive pants” is what life is all about?

Competition is fine when it spurs folks on toward lofty goals.  Yet when more than 30 textile workers find nothing better to do than to adorn “a waist circumference of 190 feet, 10 inches” with a “3-foot, 94-inch stainless steel button,” then they might just have too much time on their hands.

Perhaps the “18,044 feet of denim fabric” could have been used to clothe those in proverbial rags.  Perhaps the 18 days that each worker spent could have been used to tend the sick. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.“

Resources

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2024/10/16/Guinness-World-Records-largest-jeans/5731729100424/ 

Name that Blob

Ambergris
(Photo by Peter Kaminski)

Modern-day folks claim to know a lot about a lot, but every now and then they publicly admit defeat.

This is one of those now-and-then times. When asked, “What’s white and doughy and regularly washes up on Newfoundland shores in various shapes and sizes,” they've come up with a resounding “Who knows?”

Although some have attributed these blobs to a type of whale goo, others have called them a “mystery substance.”  Canadian officials have simply said that it’s “under investigation.”

Add this particular mystery to many another that remains impenetrable.  It’s nice to know that there are still some ways to stump the experts.

Resources

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2024/10/17/canada-mystery-white-blobs-Newfoundland-beaches/4311729195866/

Larger than Life

Hydrothermal Vent Tubeworms
(Public Domain)

Where there’s life there’s growth, even at the very bottom of the ocean.  Although scientists knew that microbes can thrive within such extreme conditions, they had little proof that anything larger could.

Yet fairly recently a “deep-sea expedition led by the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research” discovered a host of larger life forms around the Tica Vent “on the Eastern Pacific Rise tectonic barrier.”  This lower-than-low area was surprisingly replete with snails and tubeworms.

Such discoveries lend credence to theories about extraterrestrial life.  If life is this hardy on our third rock from the sun, perhaps it can also be found on the fourth one and beyond.

Resources

https://news.yahoo.com/news/scientists-peeked-underneath-seafloor-discovered-184538431.html

A Surprising New Reason to Save the Trees

Raw Bat Guano
(Photo by Aphidwarrior)

Trees provide oxygen.  That alone could be enough of a reason for humans to quit their lumbering frenzy.

Yet a surprising but equally vital reason has recently surfaced.  Holy bat guano, another covid crisis could be on its way!

Chimps who had traditionally turned to decaying palm trees as an available sodium source have now been forced to eat guano instead.  Humans have excessively cut down these nutritious palms in order “to make strings for drying tobacco leaves.”

So what’s wrong with dining on bat guano?  A lot.  Bats are able to harbor quite a few pathogens without becoming ill.  Tiny viral killers can then be transmitted to humans via guano-eating chimps.  Direct contact isn’t even necessary.  Many such infections can be airborne.

All sorts of solutions have been proposed, not the brightest of which is to ”make fences, so that the chimpanzees can’t access the guano.”  Why stop there?  Why not just build walls throughout the jungle?

A wiser suggestion is simply this: quit cutting down so many trees!  Alternatives such as bamboo can often be used instead.  Each of those tobacco farmers can then be given a ball of jute twine when their birthdays roll around…

Resources

https://news.mongabay.com/2024/07/ugandan-chimps-are-eating-bat-guano-raising-concerns-over-human-epidemics/