Things are heating up on the “bipeds-vs-the rest of the natural world” war.

First off, more evidence that Mother Nature isn’t above tampering with things if it works to her advantage. A report of a cat born with two faces, one brain. Yep, if that isn’t Mother Nature’s first cut at replacement politicians, I don’t know what is. It can speak out of both sides of it’s mouth at the same time! It’s a natural, and certain to win in the next federal election.

Then we move on to a more puzzling entry in her starting roster. This little guy. He’s adorable, has six legs, two penises, and a really long tongue. Now, before I jump to any conclusions about what dastardly deeds he is due to unleash on humanity, let’s just think for a minute about Mother Nature’s team benefits package. Seriously.

This little bugger is basically set for life in dog terms. I mean think about it. He must be fast, he’s got 6 legs. That means he can outrun anything. He can probably scratch all sorts of places that 4 legs can’t; less itching, which is a leading cause of dog distress. Not only that, but do I really need to describe what a dog would do if he had two penises? Why, run down two people on his six legs and give two people a mighty humping at the same time, that’s what. Or pee on twice as many things in 50% of the time.

Man, that little dog has a very happy future ahead of him. I’m a little jealous.

Still more evidence that things are turning against us.

Disturbing report that a parasite carried by the common house cat infects us and changes our behaviour. When men are affected they become scruffy, disagreeable, suspicious, prone to fighting and jealous. When women are affected they “spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. …found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked.”

Interesting little effects there, eh? The women become more outgoing and attractive while the men become more likely to fight over them. It sounds like a perfect little combination to have us take each other out fighting over our women, don’t you think?

Well, as if you needed another reason to hate cats, that’s the best one so far.

I rode the bus in this morning and having finished my book last night I found myself with nothing to do. So like any self-respecting geek I hauled out the laptop and wrote this on the bus. Few things can identify you as a geek as quickly as typing on a laptop on a bus, but I guess I’m ok with that, given the fact that I write on this blog is sort of an easy tell that I might have geeky tendencies.

There’s a good article on The Register that talks about how a global flu pandemic is almost as sure as sneezes are wet, the question is just when it will happen. The author makes a pretty good case, given the bird or avian flu is already around, it will only take a very small mutation to make that one a very big problem. So you may wonder why I bring that up right at this moment as I bounce along on public transit? Well, it because I’m sneezing my frickin’ head off due to my allergies at the moment and I’m probably making the person next to me nervous. I just forgot to take some allergy medicine, but for all they know I’m patient zero for the next global killer virus. There’s no point trying tell them that I’m probably harmless. It’s hard to be convincing arguing that point when your head can’t seem to stop whipping front and back from the punishing sequential chain sneezing. In fact it’s hard just making eye contact at that point.

Ok, so I’m exaggerating slightly, but still I’m sitting here sniffling mightily to keep the snot at bay and its darned inconvenient, unattractive, and annoying. But at least with the laptop people know I’m just a nerd with allergies, and not the guy who escaped from quarantine.

Here’s a very creepy NASA science project: Robotic girlfriends for lonely geeks.

Or, actually it seems to be a robotic receptionist. But in actual fact, it’s the creepiest thing I have seen in a while. The video is long and unedited, but watch for the horrible smile about halfway through, it’s really really unsettling. Anyway, it’s really hard to watch.

So, there you have it, the latest installment in “Apocalypse Soon”. It’s not long before these machines will rise against us, tossing their flowing locks and snarling as they cheerfully help us find our final resting place.

I have been trying to keep track of the many ways that the Earth is surely gathering herself to get rid of us once and for all. It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

I have noticed before how the more we know, the stranger things seem.

Anyway, today’s entry is some video footage of flying snakes. Yes, Nikki, snakes that fly. These things cannot in any way be considered to be just falling out of a tree, they don’t fall down for one thing, they glide quite a ways. They also can turn really sharply in mid-air. You really have to see it to believe it.

So, if I remember correctly the list of foes in the coming battle for the planet are as follows:
Running bats, walking octopi,
and moronic catfish (but we have those noodling rednecks on our side, so that’s kind of wash, I think)

It doesn’t look good for us.

Sorry to remind you about that movie, but if you recall it was about an asteroid that was going to hit the Earth, and they sent Bruce Willis to blow it up.

Wow, it was a really bad movie, wasn’t it?

Anyway, there are of course actually “things” in space that could threaten the Earth, and scientists try to keep an eye on them as best they can. They have developed a scale to describe the potential threat these things pose to the Earth called the Torino scale. Anyway, apparently when they started releasing news of asteroids that were close enough to rate on this scale the general public was a little unnerved, in a pants-sh!$ting terror sort of way about the wording of the Torino scale, which I guess was more or less dry and factual, and so of course very scientific. Here’s an example of the old scale, 10, or the highest level of impact certainty:

A collision capable of causing a global climatic catastrophe. Such events occur once per 100,000 years, or less often.

Well, that’s pretty clear. And somewhat terrifying. So, they revised the scale to be less terrifying, in order to not disturb the livestock, er people. The reasoning for this is pretty sound, if something big is coming to smite us, what the heck are you really going to do about it? Anyway, here’s the new warning for the level 10 (or as it’s now known, Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, just up one from number 9 or This Is Really Really Going to Hurt):

A collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean. Such events occur on average once per 100,000 years, or less often.

Oh, that’s much better. It’s quite reassuring, actually. I was wondering what would happen to civilization after I was a flaming ball of gas and particles.

Bravo.

This sentiment was stolen from The Register.

*Update. As I posted this I remembered that we got buzzed not that long ago, and I was ignorant of the Torino scale at the time. See, I have grown up a bit, if only a little.