Category Archives: BULLSHIT

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CATS AND MICE AND GODLESS PARASITES

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ichneumonidae__phrudinae“I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.”

~  Charles Darwin, letter to Asa Gray, May 22, 1860

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Female_Ichneumon_xanthoriusIchneumonidae is a family of parasitic wasps, and one of my particular research interests.  If you’ve never heard of a parasitic wasp before, think chest-burster from Alien, but for insects. A more scientific definition is that parasitoid wasps lay their eggs inside or on top of other insects; those eggs then grow and develop by feeding on their host’s tissue, resulting in the eventual death of the host.  Estimates of the total species range from 60,000 to over 100,000.

...and other stuff, BULLSHIT, READING MATTER, UNIVERSES

8 PERCENT PEACE

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Plataea, Greece --- Spartans at Plataea. --- Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

War is defined as an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.   

Has the world ever been at peace?

Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.

How many people have died in war?

At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history range from 150 million to 1 billion. War has several other effects on population, including decreasing the birthrate by taking men away from their wives. The reduced birthrate during World War II is estimated to have caused a population deficit of more than 20 million people.

(Source: NY Times)