Death Metal Bert and Ernie

Death Metal Bert and Ernie

Fool me 935 time shame on you

To be honest, my elected officials would need to lie to me at least an even thousand times before I really felt betrayed by the federal government. After all, don't we expect politicians to lie to us? Making false statements for the sake of furthering a political agenda is just what government is all about.

For those of us who have been paying attention for the last six years, it comes as no surprise that all the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq was merely that: propaganda. Only people who consider FOX News an actual news source ever believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to international terrorist rings. The fact of the matter is, there is one country on the planet whose of weapons of mass destruction give the rest of the world reason to fear, and that's the United States.

What's scary is that this is actually news, that there are people who need to be informed of the fact that the president lied, that even today, some American citizens continue to maintain their faith in their president. At this point, some of us are losing faith in the Democrats. Four hundred years from now, when people ask why the American Empire fell, all the answers will be right there.

It's Alive

In the world of cryptozoology, there is no greater vindication than actually uncovering a creature that does not, officially, exist. Often, this is merely a case of scientists having no respect for the knowledge of indigenous peoples, but sometimes, animals are just that sneaky and that rare. Such is the plight of the almiqui.

The almiqui is a Cuban animal. Weighing only a few pounds, they usually measure between more than one and less than two feet long. Although the almiqui resembles a rodent, it actually belongs to the small order Soricomorpha; its scientific name is Solenodon cubanus. Almiquis are most active at night, passing much of their days underground in burrows they dig themselves, or other natural shelter, which may explain, in part, why they were able to go undetected for so long. However, they are also excellent climbers. Unlike most mammals, they secrete venom in their saliva. Almiquis are insectivores.

Like many creature endemic to island ecologies, almiquis are threatened by non-native fauna introduced by human activity, particularly mongooses in the past and feral cats in the present. That, accompanied by small litters and human encroachment on habitat, keeps the creature on the endangered species list. However, for most of the twentieth century, they were actually believed to be extinct, since none were recorded between the late 1800s and the early 1970s.

Kicking in the Frontiers of Science

A stem cell

Ever since Dolly the sheep, whose creation pushed the technology from the realm of science fiction to realm theoretical possibility, the idea of cloning humans has been one of those issues that makes fundamentalists go all explodey in the brain. They said it shouldn't be done; they did their best to outlaw such trials in the United States. Fortunately for the sum of human knowledge, the fundies don't yet rule the world, and two guys in California report that they created six human clone embryos. Hypothetically speaking, the possibilities are remarkable. Most immediately wonderful is the idea that scientists should be able to grow custom parts for an individual, replacing faulty organs without the pesky need for immunosuppressants in transplant patients to prevent rejection. Your new kidney would be your own kidney, grown from your own DNA and matching the rest of you. And then there's the market for young women who want to sell some of their excess eggs. And the implications for the transgendered boggle the mind.

It's true that technology occasionally gets ahead of itself, but this is science with practical outcomes, science that can benefit the human race. Five hundred years ago, the religious fundamentalists objected to human dissection, convinced that that inner workings of the human body were a sacred secret known only to their god. Today, the anatomical knowledge gained from this kind of experiment saves countless lives. How will this knowledge affect us a hundred years hence?

Monkey Controlled Robot of Doom!

So let us say that you had this robot all the way over in Japan, and you desperately wanted to control it from the US and, and let us also say that you just happen to be a monkey. Well up until recently you were out of luck... no remote controlled Japanese robots for you MR. Monkey! But then some crazy humans decided it was time to correct that injustice and has graciously stuck probes into this monkey's brain so that he can now take that first dramatic step towards the eventual end of monkey oppression at the hands of humans.

Silly humans, this will either lead to Planet of the Apes, or a severe monkey head ache... one or the other.

Now if the robot learns to control the monkey, we are all in seriously deep poop...

Imagine

When will we stop teaching our children that violence is a necessarily and defensible element of society?

Introducing the new Bush/Halliburton Currency Exchange

Hello disloyal readers! To celebrate my return from the abyss that is the Christmas shopping/churning out huge quantities of custom glassware season, I am sharing with you this glorious new mandatory currency exchange program brought to you by our democraticishly appointed leaders on the Halliburton Executive Leadership Council for the Embiggening of Corporate Profits. Please be sure to watch this video thru at least twice, take notes if needed, and then deposit all your old currency directly into the recycling bin for processing with other post-consumer waste. Your replacement coinage/alms for the poor shall be rained upon you during the 1st annual Procession of the Petroleumites to celebrate our Grand and Eternal Leader's overwhelming success both home and abroad... which falls on the 6th Tuesday of the month, so be sure not to miss it, or no mullah or government cheese for you.

Let's start the New Year with a healthy dose of cryptids

In case you worried 2008 wasn't going to be as surreal as 2007, we present to you a brief account of the father of cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans.

Born in France in 1916, he earned a bona fide doctorate in the field of zoology, writing his thesis on the previously unsolved mystery of aardvarks' teeth. Reading about the possibility of modern-day dinosaurs piqued his curiosity, and so began his search for unknown and possibly mythical creatures. Although ridiculed in some quarters for his belief in so-called cryptids, Heuvelmans's books discuss some creatures, such as the giant squid, whose existence has been proved today. He was instrumental in the early days of the International Society for Cryptozooloy and the Centre for Fortean Zoology.

If you would like to learn more about the early canon of cryptozoology, you may be interested in some of Heuvelmans's books: On the Track of Unknown Animals, In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents, and The Kraken and the Colossal Octopus.



Cryptomundo.com lists a biography of Heuvelmans, Bernard Heuvelmans: Un Rebelle de la Science by Jean-Jacques Barloy, as their top cryptozoology book of 2007. If you don't read French, a translation is coming, and there are plenty of other great books on this list.

Happy New Year!