Aries Commits More Crimes

Sagittarius the fewest - or are they simply caught less often?
Yesterday, a police department in Ontario, Canada released statistics on 2011 crimes committed, broken down by astrological sign. 1,986 people were arrested in the Chatham-Kent Police Service's district in 2011, and out of all of them, people born under Aries were responsible for committing far more crimes.
 
I ran these numbers through a standard deviation calculator, and was mildly impressed. The average of this set is 165, with a standard deviation of 20. This means that anything between 145 and 185 would be considered normal, random, and essentially a meaningless distinction. 

Aries, at 203 crimes, is almost exactly two standard deviations away from the mean. And Sagittarius, at 139, is 1.5 standard deviations below the mean. These numbers aren't proof that this is a real thing, but they do make it statistically intriguing.
 
The National Post contacted an astrologist who was willing to offer a possible explanation. Aries, she explained, is "the sign of the warrior. Aries rules the military. Aries jump in head first, and love adventure." Meanwhile she suspected that Sagittarius are committing just as many crimes, but that "they don't get caught. They are smooth. They can talk anybody into anything."
 
The Chatham-Kent district is a largely rural one, with very little violent crime. Most of the crimes committed were property crimes and DUIs.
 
This information may simply point to a more rational explanation than the zodiac. Aries are born in spring (March 22 to April 22) while Sagittarius are born at the end of the year (November 22 to December 22). Canada has a school system similar to the U.S. where kids start school every fall, based on their age. 
 
An Aries would have their seventh birthday in the spring, and begin first grade that fall. Whereas a Sagittarius would have their seventh birthday in winter, and begin first grade the next fall. Maybe the extra months give Sagittarius more time to mature before starting school, a head start which would carry forth throughout their entire school career.
 
It's well known that birth month has an effect in many areas of your life. MLB players are much more likely to have been born in August, an effect that most observers put down to the July 31 cut-off date for Little League baseball. Kids born right after that cut-off date have almost an entire year to mature before entering Little League compared to their peers.

Neti Pot Can Transmit Brain-Eating Amoebas

Disinfect the pot thoroughly between uses, and always use distilled or boiled water!

I'll be honest with you, even before this story broke, there was no way on this green Earth I was ever going to use a neti pot. Actually I shouldn't say that, because I never like to say "never." So let's just say that "it would take a lot" for me to use a neti pot. Like a gun to my head, or a life-threatening illness that can literally only be cured by pouring warm water into one nostril and letting it run out the other nostril.
 
The brain-eating amoeba is an interesting creature known as Naeglaria fowleri, which kills several people every year. The typical N. fowleri infection comes from warm, stagnant lake water, which is why it is a particular hazard in the Southern U.S. during the late summer and early fall. 

 
This organism enters the body through the nose, as when you jump into a pond and some water gets up your nose. It swims up your sinuses, attaches itself to your olfactory nerves, and uses those to hike their way to the brain. Once in the brain it sets up shop - with fatal results.
 
N. fowleri  is surprisingly fatal, with only about 3% of its victims surviving the attack. This is partly because many people are not taken to the ER until it is too late, since the earliest symptoms of a N. fowleri infection are very similar to a bad cold or the flu: headaches, vomiting, stiff joints, and a sore neck.
 
Unfortunately, it now seems that N. fowleri can sometimes be found inside the home. This is particularly the case again in the Southern U.S. where a quirk of the pipes may result in a stagnant area of water where the organisms can flourish. In the case of a man who died in Louisiana, health officials found the organism in his home's water, but not in the municipal water supplies. Could it be lurking in his hot water heater, or in an outdoor pipe? Uncertain.
 
Most of the time, even if you have N. fowleri in your home's water supply, it isn't going to be an issue. Water has to be forced pretty far up your nose in order for the organism to reach your sinuses and then your olfactory nerves. Taking a shower, even taking a bath and submerging your face is probably still safe. But pour water into your sinuses with a neti pot, and you could be in trouble.
 
If you do choose to a neti pot, be sure to follow the manufacturer's recommendations. Disinfect the pot thoroughly between uses, and always use distilled or boiled water, never just warm water straight from the tap.

Rat-Eating Plant Declared New Species

Sadly, thought to already be extinct in the wild
Some time in the 1980s, botanist and adventurer Rob Cantley discovered the "Queen of Hearts" pitcher plant in Borneo. Although most pitcher plants are content to trap and devour small insects like ants and flies, the Queen of Hearts has pitchers which can be over eight feet long. Long enough to ensnare and slowly devour larger mammals, including mice and rats.
 
Pitcher plants trap their victims using modified leaves or flowers. These are curled into a tube and set upright, then filled with a sweet combination of nectar and trapped rainwater. Many pitcher plants also feature backwards-pointing hairs, which make it easy for their prey to slip into the jug - and difficult for them to climb out. The inside of the jug is slippery and curved in order to make escape impossible.

The fluid inside the Queen of Hearts pitcher plant is not only rainwater and sweet nectar. It also contains hydrochloric acid and enzymes, just like our own stomachs do. The trapped animals drown in the fluid and settle to the bottom of the jug, where the plant is able to dissolve their remains and extract the nutrients.
 
Five years ago, this amazing species of carnivorous pitcher plant stole the spotlight at the Chelsea Flower Show. Its growers won a staggering four gold medals from the Royal Horticultural Society, and caused a sensation in the world of botanists and carnivorous plant enthusiasts. 
 
After this year's show, someone showed photographs of the plant to Dr. Martin Cheek of the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. He immediately identified it as a new species, a recognition which has formalized the plant's new scientific name: Nepenthes robcantlieyi (after the botanist who originally discovered it).
 
Unfortunately, the territory where Cantley collected his specimen has since experienced terrible deforestation due to logging (most of it illegal), and forest fires. The fires are set by locals to clear the land in order to plant it - often for palm kernel oil plantations - but then rage out of control and devastate the local ecology. The Queen of Hearts is likely extinct in the wild, or very nearly so.
 
The Queen of Hearts has followed a backwards path to fame. Most plants are collected, described scientifically, and only then brought to the public's attention due to cultivation by fanciers and gold medals won at garden shows. But it's a good thing it followed its odd path, because given the situation with the Borneo rainforests, otherwise it might have been lost to the world before it was even discovered.
 

The Washer at the Ford

And the Goddess of the Battlefield

The Washer at the Ford, or the Washerwoman, is a creepy figure from Gaelic lore. She's usually portrayed as a little old lady, washing out bloody clothes on the night before a battle. If you run into the Washer at the Ford on the night before you go to war, you shouldn't expect to make it home. She has already selected you for her own.

The Washer at the Ford is a version of Morrigan or the Badb (pronounced “bive”), a Gaelic goddess who represents raw sexuality and the terror of the battlefield. The Morrigan is often described as a warrior goddess, but this isn't strictly accurate. She doesn't go to war- she is War. In archetypal terms, she's connected with the Valkyrie as a “chooser of the slain,” and she's also closely tied to the stories of the Banshee. In some regions of Ireland, the Banshee was actually called “the Badb.”

 

The Badb's name or title also connects her with a Gaulish war goddess known as Cathobodua. This is a Celtic name, and in Irish it would be written as “badb-catha”- which was also one of the Morrigan's titles. In other words, contemporary folk tales about the Washer at the Ford are remnants of the ancient Celtic lore about the terrifying and insatiable goddess of War, whose worship goes back to the most ancient times. Or perhaps “worship” would never have been quite the right word. Warriors may not have worshiped Cathobodua so much as tried to placate her by any means possible!

 

 

Dual-Wielding Jedi Assaults Customers At Toys R' Us

Some people like Star Wars, and some people really like Star Wars.

I would consider myself a pretty big Star Wars fan. I definitely prefer the first trilogy made (the second according to the Star Wars universe’s timeline). I can name all of the creatures in those films, and what planet they originated from, as well as the names of all of the different fighter craft, including the Empire’s (TIE Quad, bitches!). OK, but I will freely admit that for all of my Star Wars nerd cred, I don’t have an ounce on this guy.

According to The Oregonian, a man in Hillsboro, OR, was arrested for going on a light-saber assault rampage through his neighborhood Toys R’ Us. The man, 33-year old David Allen Canterbury, evidently was struck by some Clone Wars PTSD and grabbed two blue-tinged light-saber toys (it’s OK everybody, he’s a good jedi), and began running through the store, dual-wielding his “more elegant weapon for a more civilized age.” I imagine the guy was simply trying out his best Old Republic moves on freaked out customers because, as the article reported, none of the victims needed medical attention. Still, the police were called and the scene and while the 911 caller was still on the phone Canterbury took his Fisher-Price rampage out to the parkinglot.

As police arrived, he was still in the parking lot, ready to face Portland’s storm-troopers in blue. Swinging his dual blue light-sabers, he made it difficult for police to arrest them. Eventually they resorted to tasers, and this is where it get’s interesting. According to the report, the first officer’s taser refused to operate. Was it the Jedi mind trick? (“Don’t taze me bro!”) The second officer used his taser and Canterbury deflected the wires with his lightsaber. Ha-zaa!

Of course, after that didn’t work, Portland’s finest just tackled the guy to the ground and hauled him away in cuffs. The department store Jedi was charged with disorderly conduct, theft, assault, and resisting arrest. We’ve yet to find out whether they found traces of any drugs (or midi-chlorians) in his blood. Still, there are plenty of stories of real robberies and tragedies, it’s nice to hear about one that didn’t hurt anybody and earned some attention for a fantastic sci-fi franchise. Who knows, with a little planning this become the latest trend for flashmobs; how about a bunch of Gollums at K Jewelers, or an Ewok attack on Times Square? The possibilities are endless.

UFO Towed Through Kansas Streets?

Um... probably not, actually.

 

I haven't written about this yet, because honestly. The first time I heard about it I rolled my eyes and didn't even click through to read the article. The likelihood that people spotted a UFO being trailered through Kansas - and not a military drone - was, in my estimation, approximately zero point zero zero percent.
 
But seriously, folks, this story will not die! It just popped up on my news feed from a supposedly reputable source. The military has officially announced that no, it wasn't a UFO, it was a military drone.
 
BUT THEY WOULD SAY THAT, WOULDN'T THEY?

 
Here are the facts: earlier this week, residents of Cowley County in Kansas were treated to the spectacle of an oddly-shaped object sitting atop a trailer flatbed. The object was 32 feet long, was shrouded in a gray industrial tarp, and was being towed down Interstate 77. 
 
Unfortunately for the driver, it was also about 30 feet wide - too wide for the roadway. This meant that the county sheriff's department had to go along and take down all the road signs in its way, then put those signs back up after the object passed. Local law enforcement couldn't say what it was, but one of them "let slip" that it was a military drone that had been manufactured by defense contractor and aerospace manufacturer Northrop Grumman. 
 
For anyone who has ever seen a picture of a military drone, this all sounds about right. I was particularly exasperated by the media hype given that at the very same time we are being treated to pictures and digital recreations of military drones on the news. No one who watches the news, and has seen one of the stories about our captured spy drone that went down in Iran, should be taken aback by the object which was towed through Kansas. IT LOOKS JUST LIKE THE THING YOU SAW FIVE MINUTES AGO ON TV.
 
But hey, who ever lets the facts get in the way of a good story, right?
 
Honestly, if the military ever did capture a crashed UFO, I sincerely doubt they would tow it through Kansas on a flatbed truck in the middle of the day. For one thing, the military has plenty of cargo planes they can use for this sort of transportation. For another thing, if they were going to drive it through town, I'm sure they would at least put it in a box to shield it from prying eyes.
 
Or is that what they are counting on? Maybe the military really is hiding a UFO in plain sight!
 
Nah, probably not.

Strigoi

The Real Romanian Vampire

When you compare the Hollywood version of a vampire to the Eastern European folklore that ultimately spawned it, the differences stand out more than the similarities. That's probably one reason you won't find many people in Transylvania who will tell you they believe in vampires. What they believe in is called a “strigoi” and it's pretty different.

For one thing, there isn't really a clear distinction between a witch, a werewolf and a vampire in Romanian lore- they're all basically just types of strigoi. If a strigoi is dead, it's a “strigoi mort” or what we would call a vampire. If it's alive, it's a “strigoi viu,” which is like a “wicked witch” except that it's also vampiric. If it takes the shape of a wolf, as strigoi can, it might also be seen as a “pricolici” or vampire/werewolf.

 

All of these different types of strigoi feed on the life energy of living humans, usually (but not always) in the form of blood. “Strigoi mort,” though- the true undead vampires- don't look anything like Lestat or that kid from Twilight.

 

What do they look like? Dead people, of course- corpses. That is what they are, after all. A strigoi mort is a dead corpse that can unnaturally prolong its existence by drinking human blood, most often that of its own family. It's almost closer to a zombie than a Hollywood vampire.

 

If you ever happen to run into one, don't just jab a stake through its chest and expect it to collapse into dust like on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” That won't work on a strigoi mort. The stake is actually just to pin the vampire down so you can safely cut its head off and then burn it in a bonfire. Without a very thorough bonfire, that strigoi mort is just going to keep on coming back! In fact, according to Romanian folklore, if the vampire can escape this fate for seven years it can come most of the way back to life and even have children, although all of them are doomed to become strigoi in the end.

Apples Fall From The Sky In England

"Sky falls are one of the original Fortean phenomena."
Earlier this week, drivers in Coventry faced an unusual traffic hazard: hundreds of apples fell from the sky. The apples were described as being "small and green," and rained down over the intersection of Keresley Road and Kelmscote Road. It was particularly puzzling since there are no orchards or other sources of apples for quite some distance around.
 
The weather in England has been described as "unsettled" during this time, and the standard explanation for these sky falls is that a water spout or small tornado sucks up a collection of items and flings them far from their original location. This seems like the most plausible explanation for this phenomena, although it fails to explain why the items in sky falls are typically so uniform. In the case of this particular fall, for example, the apples were all nearly identical. No apples from a neighboring tree? No leaves or branches from that tree? JUST the apples?

The same question is true of other sky falls. Frogs and fish are the collections which most frequently fall from the sky. The explanation is that a water spout has emptied out a pond and drops its contents elsewhere. But why, then, is it just a load of frogs? Why not frogs and trout and crayfish? Why only one species of fish, and not the random collection we would expect to see from a statistical sample of some body of water?
 
Other things have rained from the sky, with no more explanation. Crops like wheat and oats could conceivably come from a small tornado over a single area of acreage. But what are we to make of the earthworms which fell from the sky to land on a group of Scottish children playing outside on a cloudless day earlier this year?
 
Sky falls are one of the original Fortean phenomena. Charles Fort was fascinated by this phenomena, which has been recorded around the world and throughout history. In earlier times, sky falls were frequently thought to be the work of witches, or divine retribution for human wrong-doings. 
 
These days people seem more likely to attribute them to the work of prankster teenagers. And there could be some validity to this theory. I imagine it would be entirely possible to load up a giant slingshot with a few bushels of small green apples, which would no doubt fly quite far from their source!
 

A Living Breathing Wooly Mammoth Clone In 5 Years

It'll be the first one in 10,000 years, if they can pull it off.

Michael Crichton’s masterful Jurassic Park series, other than creating piles of cash for him and Universal Studios, brought the idea of cloning extinct creatures into a mainstream fascination. Since researchers recovered intact bone marrow from the thigh bone of a wooly mammoth found partially mummified in the Siberian permafrost, there have been whispers of bringing the extinct back to life through the wonders of genetic cloning. Now, according to a team of Russian and Japanese scientists that will be working on the project, we may have a living, breathing mammoth in five years.

Russia’s Sakha Republic Mammoth Museum and Japan’s Kinki University have project team to resurrect the wooly mammoth, which has been extinct for 10,000 years. They will do this by reconstructing the proteins within mammoth DNA, some of which they’ve already done. One the DNA sequence has been replicated, one can grow the nuclei of a mammoth cell, placing that nuclei inside a modern-day elephant’s egg (you take the elephant’s nuclei out, of course). This exchange will, supposedly, allow the birth of the first wooly mammoth in ten millennia. Kind of a crazy thought, right?

Here’s another one, that mammoth lived in an era characterized by an ice age. Human activity was miniscule compared to what it is now. During the last ice age much of the world’s fresh water, including much of the world’s bacteria, viruses, and other mono-cellular organisms were locked up in that ice. In addition, much of the world’s biomass has evolved and changed since the era of the mammoth. Today we are at the advent of the next large warming trend (like the one that supposedly killed off the mammoths in the first place), and live in a world that is very very different than the one in which the mammoth had been intended by nature to live. What’s to say that the first breath this mammoth calf takes doesn’t give it a life-ending case of bronchitis? Scientists have postulated that the elephant mother’s genetic material may help to afford some immunities that the wooly mammoth DNA may not provide itself.

Finally, there’s the moral question. We have hundreds of pieces of extracted DNA from various now extinct creatures. We have postulated about everything from the return of the mammoth to recreating an ancient ecosystem (a la Jurassic Park). However, at the same time, some scientists are discussing the use cryogenics to preserve the last the nearly extinct species that are native to our time. This shows a kind of sick dischord in priorities, we’re looking at freezing (killing) the last members of a dying species, and reanimating the long dead specimens of an extinct one.

The Wendigo

Cannibal Monster of the North Woods

The wendigo is my candidate for the scariest monster in the entire world. Imagine an emaciated giant as white as snow, with the power to raise up blizzards and storms, and an insatiable desire for human flesh. That's one form of the wendigo, a traditional monster of the Algonquian peoples. The other form is arguably worse, because it's a non-corporeal spirit that can possess a person and turn him into a cannibal.

Wendigos (under various names) are part of the mythology of native peoples in the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. It was believed that if any man committed cannibalism- even to save his own life- he would inevitably become a wendigo, possessed by the need to kill and eat other people. Usually the first victims would be members of his own family.

 

The lumberjacks who worked in the Great North Woods included Frenchmen, Irishmen and many other nationalities, but they adopted the folklore of the wendigo into their own mythology. If a man suddenly started to behave strangely in the lumber camp- particularly if he claimed to be able to smell something that no one else could smell- he was thought to be possessed by the wendigo.

There is also a type of culturally-specific mental illness known as “wendigo psychosis,” which is the conviction or delusion that one is possessed by a wendigo and doomed to become a cannibal. The distinction between wendigo psychosis and actual wendigo possession seems to be a rather arbitrary one, predicated on the assumption that actual wendigo spirits simply cannot exist.

 

 

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