Scribal Terror

Dragonfly

Our precious Shelleigh writes:

As of this posting I am on "ready relief" status with my church to respond to the victims of Katrina. I am told "we" will not be permitted to assist for a week. I probably won't be posting from this moment on in an effort to focus on keeping my child aware of what is going on (my tentative leaving) and getting myself emotionally prepared to go.

I just ask one thing of you, if you are reading this.

Prayer.

Please help me let Shelleigh know that she has our unqualified support and love.

Ostrich Crossing

Via Lisa. (I had to stop for a family of Canada geese crossing a busy street in Champaign the other day, but I've never seen anything like this.)

DONATE TO THE

RED CROSS HERE.

Pompeii on the Mississippi

That's what AMac at Winds of Change is calling New Orleans, and he's talking about history repeating itself in potentially very ugly ways:

As Vesuvius erupted, most of the wealthier Pompeiians scattered to the homes of relatives and friends in other parts of the Empire. Some took a trireme up to Rome to stay at the Radisson, or got a room at the Hotel 6 Sesterti.

What about the poor of Pompeii? As the ash rained down, most of them skedaddled as well. But where did they end up? History is silent on this matter. Roman society wasn't known for its concern for the misfortunes of the poor. Day laborer, starvation, slavery, prostitution, mercenary? Whatever.

Over the next few weeks, our society gets its turn to answer this question, as contaminated and flooded New Orleans is emptied of its remaining population.

Possessed

New Scientist describes a creepy natural phenomenon:

A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects’ proteins reveal.

The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would – causing them to seek out and plunge into water.

Once in the water the mature hairworms – which are three to four times longer that their hosts when extended – emerge and swim away to find a mate, leaving their host dead or dying in the water.

A "Civilized" City Enters Zombie Movie Mode

The New Orleans Times Picayune blog reports:

Late Tuesday, Gov. Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher described a disturbing scene unfolding in uptown New Orleans, where looters were trying to break into Children's Hospital.

Bottcher said the director of the hospital fears for the safety of the staff and the 100 kids inside the hospital. The director said the hospital is locked, but that the looters were trying to break in and had gathered outside the facility.

The director has sought help from the police, but, due to rising flood waters, police have not been able to respond.

Bottcher said Blanco has been told of the situation and has informed the National Guard. However, Bottcher said, the National Guard has also been unable to respond.

To keep up with events in New Orleans as they develop, consult NOLA frequently.

Bananas and the Poor

Ron Bailey has an excellent article in Reason magazine about European-generated biotech paranoia in the third world, which, he says, "is starving the world's poor." Just one example involves the banana crisis we discussed in a recent post. Here is what Bailey says:

Researchers are trying to save bananas and plantains from commercial extinction in the coming decade. Bananas and plantains rank fourth as a staple crops after rice, wheat, and maize, providing food for nearly 400 million poor people. Unfortunately, bananas and plantains, are rapidly succumbing to global plagues like black sigatoka and a new variety of Panama disease. As a result, yields have dropped by half in many poor countries.   

Bananas and plantains are sterile, and thus generally propagated by farmers as genetically identical clones. If one clone is susceptible to a disease, so are all of the other clones. Sterility also obviously makes it difficult for plant breeders to create new disease-resistant versions of bananas and plantains. This is precisely where biotechnology comes in handy.  Researchers are trying to create hardy clones by directly inserting disease resistance genes from rice into banana tissue and coaxing the tissue into producing full grown plants, which can then be propagated. 

However,

Anti-biotech European regulations are spooking the governments of poor countries into preventing their farmers from growing the new genetically enhanced crops.

Asiatic Cheetahs in Iran

"Once ranging from the Red Sea to India, the Asiatic cheetah today numbers fewer than 60 animals on the entire Asian continent   (Image: I.R.Iran DOE/CACP/WCS/UNDP-GEF)"
--BBC News

Hurricane Relief

Click on this link to donate to the Red Cross.

Kiyoshi Martinez of the Swag Blog is also organizing efforts for bloggers to set up donation buttons for hurricane relief. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get TypePad to do this. (It also seems to have lost my donation button and ads.) So visit Kiyoshi and push HIS buttons for him.

I should have linked Kiyoshi a long time ago, but every time I try to add a new link, an old one drops off. Whine, whine.

The Night Owl Is Curious

about pranks and hijinks, musings and mutterings, and the door is open all night.