Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    The round body makes me think of the oculus monster.
    Maggots are practically packages of nutritients for the development of adult flies, if you simplify embryonic development a lot.
    .
    PZ, as you are a proud Minnesotan, see this: The white mastermind behind daycare fraud in Minneapolis was sentenced to 42 years in prison. Yes, it was not a Somali immigrant!

    .http://youtube.com/post/UgkxZugqMVtFQeGVPgEvXA8sjhA7fuv-WOOA

  3. birgerjohansson says

    You should bless the maggots every time: “Fthagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”.

  4. drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler says

    Upon accepting the risk of dispensing an unpopular remark: One day, we shall have to set nature in order using genetical engineering.

    No creature should devour any other.

  6. chigau (違う) says

    No creature should devour any other.
    That’s no way to run an ecosystem.

  7. chigau (違う) says

    If I recall correctly, Kimba The White Lion was a vegetarian.
    But he was a cartoon.

  12. StevoR says

    @7. chigau (違う) : “If I recall correctly, Kimba The White Lion was a vegetarian. But he was a cartoon”

    Hmm .. Could find no reference to that on it’s wikipage :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion

    Or here on youtube – Kimba (1965): 10 Wild Facts You Didn’t Know!

    Um, lessee.. Aha! :

    …in real life a small white lion wouldn’t have much chance of convincing the other jungle carnivores to give up meat). But in fact, I actually think Kimba was one of the influences behind my becoming vegetarian when I was a kid. I’d never considered it before, but I’m certain now that Kimba was a definite influence. So three cheers for Kimba – turning small children into vegetarians!

    Source : https://matthewinsydney.blogspot.com/2007/07/kimba-white-lion.html

    Yes, yes, he was!

  13. chigau (違う) says

    Which is sad.
    Because all obligate carnivores will die on a vegetarian diet.

  14. John Morales says

    Because all obligate carnivores will die on a vegetarian diet.

    Which is precisely why drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler wants an Alter Reality spell or similar to make sure all creatures exist only on inorganic matter.

    I get the wishfulness therein. I didn’t like the epistemology of it, but.

  15. cheerfulcharlie says

    Isaiah 11
    6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
    7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

    What is God waiting for?

  18. birgerjohansson says

    When we are at it, GM the commensal bacteria so they can metabolize cellulose and lignin.
    I recall SF author Philip Jose Farmer writing a story about a protagonist who added sawdust to his sandwiches.

  19. birgerjohansson says

    cheerfulcharlie @ 15
    The Culture will make God obsolete. The Eschaton is another good option.

    (And people with a Trump-like BO will attract future carrion eaters, to clean up the environment)

  20. John Morales says

    [OT]

    Birger, compare
    “Why caffeine can sabotage deep sleep even when you still get eight hours”
    with
    “Why caffeine will sabotage deep sleep even when you still get eight hours”.

    That ‘can’ is doing a lot of work. I can break my leg getting up from my chair. Odds that I will? Fuck-all.

    Get it?

    (Headlineitis, that’s your thing)

  21. John Morales says

    [pedantry]

    The Culture will make God obsolete.

    Excession made The Culture obsolete, too.

    Also, The Culture canonically exists in our past.

    2: Stranger Here Myself
     
    2.1: Well I Was In The Neighborhood
     
    By the spring of the year 1977 AD, the General Contact Unit Arbitrary had been stationed above the planet Earth for the best part of six months. The ship, of the Escarpment class, middle series, had arrived during the previous November after clipping the edge of the planet’s expanding electro-magnetic emission shell while on what it claimed was a random search. How random the search pattern was I don’t know; the ship might well have had some information it wasn’t telling us about, some scrap of rumour half remembered from somebody’s long-discredited archives, multitudinously translated and re-transmitted, vague and uncertain after all that time and movement and change; just a mention that there was an intelligent human-ish species there, or at least the beginnings of one, or the possibility of one… You could ask the ship itself about this easily enough, but getting an answer might be another matter (you know what GCUs are like).

    (https://library.uniteddiversity.coop/More_Books_and_Reports/The_Culture_Novels-Iain_M_Bainks-Anarchist_Science_Fiction/iain%20m%20banks%20-%201989%20-%20the%20state%20of%20the%20art/Iain%20M.%20Banks%20-%20The%20State%20of%20the%20Art%20v1.html)

  22. birgerjohansson says

    ‘Headlinetitis’ is how I feel without enough sleep (which is every day).
    .
    I read that short story by Iain Banks. I liked the idea of culturing cells from tyrants like Pinochet so you could eat boeuf ala dictator.

  23. nomdeplume says

    PZ I assume you’ve seen the new Cambrian spider/scorpion ancestor from Canada?

  24. says

    Does your spider lab need a gas mask at feeding time? My father’s typical response when someone farted was to ask “Who opened their lunchbox?’

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