Well, I don’t feel like writing about politics tonight, and not too much of significance is happening in my personal life, so I’m stuck for a topic. There’s a little trick I did a couple of weeks ago, or maybe it was a couple of months ago, to find a topic and to reconvince myself that the human race isn’t doomed, irrevocably committed to a path of self-destruction. I go to Google, type in ‘scientists discover’ and set the filter to ‘last 24 hours, and bingo. There are things happening that will change the world. Unfortunately, the first 3 articles to pop up tonight weren’t universally optimistic, but it’s still educational and fun.
Scientists discover new architecture in corn… well, there are positive and negative points to GMO products, so I went to the article with a bit of trepidation. They were mostly talking about corn for making ethanol, which may be a boon to mid-western farmers, but it isn’t much better for the environment than regular oil. We need to be converting to solar and wind and electric cars and high speed trains, not to fucking ethanol. Still, it’s an increase in our overall scientific knowledge, and it may yield some positive benefits.
The next article was Scientists discover hidden blood networks that cross through bone. Cool. You would have thought we’d have had the body pretty well mapped out by now, as doctors have been cutting open bodies for thousands of years, but apparently we’re still learning stuff. I’m not clear about the applications on this (maybe a cure for bone cancer?) but the more we learn about our bodies the better. I feel sure this research will save lives, somehow, at some point in the future.
The third story was Scientists discover freaky fish thriving in waters we thought were deadly to life. I thought they were going to be talking about extremophiles near ocean-bottom vents, but no, they are talking about de-oxygenated zones, and they’ve actually found some fish that can live there. Now, this one is some scary shit, because human beings sure as hell can’t live without oxygen, and the water is not that far from the land, they even touch at points. We may not extinguish all life on Earth in the next 12 years… just any species that breathes oxygen.
And monsters will inherit the Earth.
