Tag: nature

Aargh! It’s Gonna Snow! Oh, Nooooo!

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

So a great big monster blizzard is supposed to hit us tonight and tomorrow. New York Mayor and former Sandinista groupie “Bill DeBlasio” (his real name is Warren Wilhelm Jr.) held a press conference and said, in the most sepulchral voice he could muster, “We are going to see something worse than anything we’ve ever seen…” Yep, we’re doomed. But don’t panic.

Monday is our normal day for grocery shopping, so we had to go to the supermarket. We went early, in case there was going to be a panic. In this we were to some small degree successful: the panic hadn’t really started yet, and there was still some toilet paper, milk, and bread on the shelves. But the couple in line in front of us had at least eight rolls of toilet paper in their cart.

What did they think was going to happen? “Oh, no! We’ll be snowed in for weeks!” Other shoppers had their carts piled high with various foodstuffs: obviously determined not to let this snowstorm turn their households into a latter-day Donner Party. But who knows? Maybe they had more exotic terrors in their minds than that. “Oh, doom, doom, the snow! Why, we won’t be able to set foot outside, because The Woman of the Snows will be out there waiting for us!” Try to stay away from that scary Japanese folklore.

When are people in New Jersey going to learn that none of these apocalyptic things is going to happen to them when it snows?

The worst snowstorm ever seen is nowhere near as big a disaster as public education.

Signs of Spring

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By the calender, Winter is only a month old, plus a few days. There’s snow on the ground, with a lot more in the forecast.

Hi, Mr. Nature here–and I wish I knew how to take pictures and post them on this blog, because I’d like to show you that buds have appeared on most of the trees around here. The folks next door were sitting in their hot tub this morning, but that doesn’t count because they’re nuts.

God’s handiwork is all around us, which means that God is never far from us. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead…” (Romans 1:20). If you want to understand the things you can’t see, first take a good look at all the things you can see.

But of course if you think those things made themselves, just sort of evolved into being, then you won’t be able to see the things of God. You’ll have a stock of worldly wisdom–and the wisdom of this world is to wisdom as Tang is to fresh-squeezed orange juice–and boundless faith in government.

Now that’s poverty. That’s winter with no buds on the trees.

New York Times Stunts Insects’ Growth

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Mr. Nature here–and you’ll never guess what fascinating fact I’ve stumbled over, reading one of the books in my collection.

This is from The Joy of Nature (The Reader’s Digest, Pleasantville, NY: 1977), pg. 163. I quote:

” One weapon [against insects] was discovered when certain laboratory insects died before reaching maturity. Those that succumbed lived in cages that were lined with American newspapers, such as The New York Times; the survivors’ cages were lined with copies of the London Times.”

Exposed to The New York Times, the poor insects suffered premature deaths owing to improper development, coming out of the cocoon at the wrong time, etc.

We coulda told you that would happen! Look what the NYT does to human brains.

Yes, I know scientists say this happened because of some chemical in the paper, derived from the American trees that are the source of the paper on which the NYT is printed. Well, they have to say that, don’t they?

Look what happens to society as a result of inane, unworkable, or suicidal public policies advocated by the New York Times–destructive policies like Obamacare, homosexual pseudo-marriage, affirmative action, ever-increasing taxes, abortion, and apologizing to terrorists: the list could go on until it reached the moon.

No wonder it kills insects.

If you have copies of The New York Times in your home, you’d better consider the effects of prolonged exposure to this newspaper.

And that’s our tip from the natural world today.

The World’s Smartest Spider

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Believe it or not, this is not a real spider. It’s a model of a spider… built by a spider.

As our civilization gets torn apart, mostly by the very people who are supposed to hold it together, there are hundreds of disheartening news stories out there today that I could blog about.

But not with Christmas coming. The good news, that the Word became flesh, that our sins are covered, that God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to us who believe in Him–that dwarfs all the bad news. The news of this fallen world doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Incarnation.

So instead, I’m going to write about spiders: a special kind of spider.

Two years ago, explorers discovered, in the jungles of the Amazon, an itsy-bitsy spider who does something a lot more complicated than to climb up a water spout.

This spider builds a lifelike dummy ot a spider, many times its own size, and positions it so that it will move around when the real spider jiggles the web from a safe distance ( http://www.wired.com/2012/12/spider-building-spider/ ). The dummy is anatomically accurate and probably fools a lot of predators.

Really, you’ve got to see this. If the link above doesn’t work, just search “spider makes dummy spider,” or something like that, and you’ll get pictures and videos galore.

How does a spider, with a brain so small as almost not to count, know to create a convincing model of a spider?

Of course, the petrified mind immediately trots out the magic word, “Evolution!” As if that told us anything. Yes, blind chance, yatta-yatta, gives us a spider that can do sculpture, just like it gave us Shakespeare’s plays and Houdini’s great escapes.

But if you’re too old to believe in fairy tales, enjoy the sculpting spider and rejoice in the infinite variety of God’s creation.

Two more days till Christmas.

Breaking News: Mysterious ‘Big Cat’ on the Loose in France

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Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it the Beast of Gevaudan come back to life?

French police and firemen and volunteers are beating the bushes some 20 miles east of Paris, trying to capture an animal that was at first thought to be a tiger. Now they say it’s definitely not a tiger, but they don’t know what it is. See the report by Business Week, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-11-14/tiger-on-loose-near-disneyland-paris-ties-down-french-police . There’s one photo someone took, showing the beast silhouetted against the sky: it looks like a tiger to me. But Disneyland Paris says they’re missing none of their big cats, nor has any zoo or circus reported a missing tiger.

Police are asking people to stay indoors until they can catch the critter. If you really have to go out, go by car, not by foot. Hmmm…

What’s the first thing that would make you say an animal was a tiger? Stripes, of course. But let’s say the experts are right, and this is not a tiger. (The animal’s tracks have been carefully examined.) What beast is most likely to be mistaken for a tiger?

If I knew, I’d tell. I hope this is not one of those stories that just drops out of the news without a follow-up.

And I wonder what they’ll say if they fail to catch the animal.

A Rat as Big as a Car

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Hi! Mr. Nature here, this time via the “Believe It Or Not” Dept.

What would you say if you saw a rat (or hamster or guinea pig, you get the general idea) as big as your car? Well, OK, probably I couldn’t print it. But it seems there really is, or once was, such a creature. In 2008 its skull turned up in Uruguay. Scientists named it (good luck, pronouncing this) Josephoartigasia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephoartigasia_monesi ).

Joe the Giant Rat, scientists estimate, was 10 feet long and five feet tall, with a 12-inch-long incisor tooth in a skull 21″ long. They estimate the animal weighed up to 3,382 pounds: that’s as much as two adult male polar bears, or a full-grown female white rhinoceros. And that’s the conservative estimate: when it was first discovered, they were thinking 5,000 pounds-plus. They reckon it fed on soft water plants, cheese having not yet been invented. They say it lived from four to two million years ago, for what that estimate is worth.

It makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to be discovered.

Behold the works of the Lord. No, I don’t know why He created this Josephoartigasia and then didn’t keep it around for us to see. No, I have no theological explanation for extinction: the subject is not discussed in the Bible.

All I know is that God created a vast number of really cool animals that were also probably really dangerous, and that they aren’t with us anymore. He created them for His pleasure and they were, by definition, perfect. It’s my personal belief that, with a whole universe at His disposal, God simply took these creatures off the earth and moved them somewhere else–

Leaving their fossils here for us to marvel at.

Wow.

 

One of God’s More Beautiful Creations

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Hi–Mr. Nature here.

One of the things I always miss about the summer, and look forward to seeing again the next year, is the tiger swallowtail butterfly.

The other day, while walking, I was lucky enough to see one up close: he was so busy working on a flower, he didn’t notice me gawking at him. What beauty! What grace! And if I can get this complicated link to work, here’s a video for you, http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=tiger+swallowtail+butterfly+video&FORM=VIRE3#view=detail&mid=4C3954D573937236AD144C3954D573937236AD14 . (Boy, will I be pleasantly surprised if this works!)

…Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shown it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…  Romans 1:19-20

For those of us who are called, the tiger swallowtail is more than just a butterfly. It’s one of innumerable examples of God’s handiwork, whose perfection testifies to His perfection. God’s creation is His witness.

But for those who are not called–or who have chosen not to listen–there’s nothing here to inspire praise or joy. You start with a bunch of mud and dust, pebbles and water, and by and by, purely as a result of blind chance, you get the tiger swallowtail butterfly, a field of Texas bluebells, or C.S. Lewis. As Rev. D. James Kennedy used to say, “Ain’t chance grand?”

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Romans 1:22

We do wall ourselves off from joy, don’t we?

P.S.: When I checked, and the video link worked, I cried out in exultation: “It works! It works! I’m flabbergasted, it actually works!” And my wife added, “That’s something God never has to say.”

ET, Here We Come

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Two news stories, this past weekend, shed light on the increasingly desperate search for extraterrestrial life.

First, NASA scientists announced they expect to find alien life very soon, probably within the next 20 years ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/05/nasa_aliens_are_out_there_we_will_find_a_new_earth_within_20_years ). No, we’re not going to send up spaceships. This will be achieved by better and better telescope technology.

Second, scientists had to admit they got it wrong when they announced the discovery of two planets just like ours–nicknamed “goldilocks planets” because they’re supposedly “just right” for the chance appearance of life–orbiting a star named Gliese 581 (Source: Washington Post article by Sandhya Somashekhar, July 3, 2014 ). But the planets turned out to be not planets at all, but sunspots or something.

The humanist mindset is revealed in really bad movies: like The Lost Tribe, which I reviewed July 13, in which scientists discover a fossil that “proves God did not create man.”

Here’s what will happen. NASA telescopes detect “signatures of life” on a planet many light-years away, and next thing you know, the talking heads are all over TV saying “This proves there was no special creation of life on earth, no creation by God: but rather that life arises by purely naturalistic processes wherever you find ideal conditions for it.” Democrats dance in the streets, and the Presbyterian  Church USA publicly states that it’s sorry there is no God, but it’s going to stay in business anyhow because it hasn’t paid a dime’s worth of attention to God in the last 25 years anyhow.

The materialist/humanist pseudo-theology dictates that life be found on other planets. They think this will wipe out Christian faith. Of course, with a whole universe at His disposal, where is it written that God created life only on this earth and nowhere else? The discovery of bacteria on Diomega Orionis IV would not change my religious beliefs.

Nevertheless, life on other planets is the Great White Hope of atheism, and it has led them to make some really splashy promises.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the LORD shall have them in derision. (Psalm 2:4)

P.S.–Of course the link to the article in The Register UK doesn’t work. Sorry! I’ve had all the computer problems I can cope with, lately, and I can’t cope with more. Seek the original story, and ye shall find.

Drinking from the Springs

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When I was a boy, we all used to drink from a spring that came bubbling out of the ground, a couple hundred yards from my house. People around the neighborhood used to come and fill bottles with the water. No one ever got sick.

The spring has been paved over. Gotta expand the school parking lot.

A little farther away there was another spring, a bigger one, in Roosevelt Park, a county park. My father used to send me there with half a dozen bottles at a time, in the 1970s. There would always be a crowd of people there. The water was pure and cold and delicious, and free.

I went to visit that spring yesterday. It’s still there; but for the first time ever, I found myself alone there. No one was getting any water. Maybe that’s because the County Water Dept. had posted signs all over the place, warning people “consume at your own risk: the source of this water is unknown and unprotected. We recommend boiling for a full two minutes before consuming.” In other words, they don’t know where the water originates from or how it gets to that precise spot in Roosevelt Park, and they don’t know whether it’s been tainted by pesticides or germs along the way.

The warning is certainly justified, but it’s a shame nonetheless. God gave the people in my neighborhood two springs of lovely drinking water, and one we’ve paved over and the other might be poisoned.

I know what actually happens when lib politicians–we don’t have any other kind, where I live–promise “to protect the environment.”

You’d better develop a taste for asphalt.

How Long Do Living Things Live?

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Mr. Nature here–say, how long are various kinds of plants and animals supposed to live?

My wife and I have lived at the same address since the Silurian Period. Next to our front steps, the same big red tulip blooms every year. Neither of us can remember a time when it didn’t, except for a spell when the squirrels would eat it as soon as it showed a bud. I think the squirrels who did that have all been eaten by the hawk. Anyhow, this ancient tulip bulb this year has produced a positively gorgeous flower.

A few feet away stands a dogwood tree that was here before we were. They say a dogwood lives only twenty years or so, but this one has that beat by a long, long way. It’s still putting out white flowers every spring.

I’m not one of those Jane Goodall types who gets to be on National Geographic, and can look at a handful of ants and tell you which one is which. Flowers and trees are easier because they don’t move around. So don’t ask me how old are any of the birds or animals around here.

Across the street, on top of St. Francis School, we now have a couple of nests of buzzards (turkey vultures, to you sticklers), going back no more than two years. It’ll be interesting to see how long they stay. I hope they’re not here just to wait for me. I will presume that the same individual buzzards use the nests from year to year. If it turns out they don’t, I guess I’ll have to go back to observing trees and tulips.