• Verse 4 – No camels
• Verse 5 – No coneys (a translation of the Hebrew Bible word shaphan, in modern English “rock hyrax”)
• Verse 6 – No hares
• Verse 7 – No swine
• Verse 8 - ”Of their flesh shall ye not eat, and their carcass shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.”
• Verse 10 – “all that have not fins and scales… they shall be an abomination unto you” – so basically No shellfish (shrimp, crab, lobster, etc)
• Verse 13 – No eagles, ossifrage (a kind of vulture) or ospray
• Verse 14 – No vultures or kites (raptors)
• Verse 15 – No ravens
• Verse 16 – No owls, nighthawks, cuckoos, or hawks
• Verse 17 – No little owls, or great owls or cormorants
• Verse 18 – No swans, pelicans, or gier-eagles
• Verse 19 – No storks, herons, lapwings, or bats
• Verse 20 – “All fowls that creep, going upon all four, shall be an abomination unto you.”
• Verse 29 – No weasels, mice or tortoises (I’m guessing turtles would be a no-no as well)
• Verse 30 – No ferrets, chameleons, lizards, snails or moles
• Verse 41 – “And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earthshall be an abomination; it shall not be eaten.”
• Verse 42 – “Whatsoever goeth upon the belly. and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat, for they are an abomination.” – So basically no snakes, centipedes, millipedes – pretty much no bugs (except locusts which are deemed okay in verse 22).

It goes into detail in verses 30-40ish about how these “unclean” animals are not only to be avoided as food but that if they come in contact with or if their carcasses come in contact with anything then those things are basically contaminated and we are forbidden from them as well.

So you’re probably wondering… why do I care?  Well doesn’t this seem just a little bit over the top?  I know that I’m not going to give up bacon or shrimp to name a few favorites.  I mean, truthfully, I probably wouldn’t have eaten many of these animals anyway but I fail to see the reasoning for them being banned.  Further…. I point this out because of the hypocrisy.  This is the same book of the Bible that homophobic right-wingers like to quote from when they try to defend their anti-gay propaganda. (See Lev 18:22 or 20:13)

So, here is my question for the masses… why should we vehemently follow the “anti-gay” verses but not the ones about naughty tasty animals?  Or how about the versus dictating that “they shall not make baldness upon their head” (Lev 21:05) boy that would put a dent in some fundamentalist hair-dos (or lack therof).  How about Lev  19:28 which says “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you” – No tattoos!

I could go on – the entire book of Leviticus is a plethora of hypocrisy and unreasonable rules.  So why oh why??? Why would anyone trying to prove a point use this as ammunition?  I’m bewildered, befuddled… mystified!  (Guess I’m not a)dumb b)gullible c)fundamentalist enough to get it.)

Help celebrate a year of Domestic Partnership Protections in Wisconsin!

Remember folks… it’s not about gay rights — it’s about CIVIL EQUALITY!!

I think I’m gonna go have some bacon-wrapped shrimp while I think about a design for my 6th tattoo…

Current Mood: Aaarrggghhh!!!!! & Doh! & Naughty & On my soapbox

Tremble, Michelin, tremble

OTHER than being an ingredient of the more recherché sorts of salad, herbal tea or wine, dandelions are pretty useless plants. Or, at least, they were. But one species, a Russian variety called Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS), may yet make the big time. It produces molecules of rubber in its sap and if two research programmes, one going on in Germany and one in America, come to fruition, it could supplement—or even replace—the traditional rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis.

Despite the invention of synthetic rubbers, there is often no good substitute for the real thing, for nothing artificial yet matches natural rubber’s resilience and strength. This is because natural-rubber molecules, the product of a stepwise synthesis by enzymes, have a more regular structure than the artificial ones made by chemical engineering. Around a fifth of an average car tyre is therefore made of natural rubber. In an aeroplane tyre that figure can be more than four-fifths. Moreover, the price of synthetic rubber is tied to that of the oil from which it is made, rendering it vulnerable to changes in the oil price. Because oil is likely to become more costly in the future, natural rubber looks an attractive alternative from an economic point of view as well as an engineering one.

Natural rubber has problems, though. Growing Hevea in the Americas is hard. A disease called leaf blight means the trees have to be spaced widely. Even in Asia, currently blight-free, planting new rubber trees often means cutting down rainforest, to general disapproval. And trees, being large, take time to grow to the point where they can yield a crop. A smaller plant that could be harvested for its rubber therefore has obvious appeal.

To this end, Christian Schulze Gronover of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology in Aachen, Germany, and his colleagues have identified the genes that allow TKS to produce usable rubber. In particular, they have discovered an enzyme called polyphenoloxidase that is responsible for making its rubbery sap coagulate.

From the plant’s point of view this coagulation is a good thing. The evolutionary purpose of rubber, and the reason why it has appeared independently in plants as diverse as trees, guayule and dandelions, is that it gums up the mouthparts of herbivorous insects. Human users, however, do not want it to coagulate too soon, and Dr Schulze Gronover has found a way to switch polyphenoloxidase off, using a technique called RNA interference. This intercepts and destroys the molecular messengers that carry instructions from the polyphenoloxidase gene to make the enzyme, meaning that rubber can be extracted more easily from the plant.

Meanwhile, in America Matthew Kleinhenz of Ohio State University is working on increasing the yield of rubber from TKS. Dr Kleinhenz is doing things the old-fashioned way, growing different strains of TKS, grinding up the roots (where most of the sap is found) to see which have the highest rubber content, and crossbreeding the winners. His aim is to create a plant that is both high-yielding and has roots chunky enough to be harvested mechanically by the sort of device now used to pick carrots.

Combining the two approaches—high-tech bioengineering and low-tech plant breeding—may produce that rarity in the modern world, a whole new crop species. It would also mark a step on a journey that some see as the way forward: a return to the use of plant-based products that have, briefly, been overshadowed by the transient availability of cheap oil.

SOURCE:  http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15172672&subjectID=348924&fsrc=nwl.

Current Mood: *Wink* & Cool

“The Golden Couple” by Sam Taylor

Click the pic for more kewl seahorse pictures!
Check out Project Seahorse and their sponsor (where I found out about this) GuyLian.

Current Mood: Hey there! & Seahorsey!

Scottish Soay Sheep from TIME, July 20, 2009, pg. 53

Click here for more super cute sheep pictures!

The article in the print edition was ‘Why Are Scotland’s Sheep Shrinking?’ but I couldn’t find that online, however a similar article by the same author can be found here.  Anyway… due to climate change these adorable sheep have shrunk in size by almost 5% over the last 25 years.  That may not seem like much but it illustrates how species have to adapt to accomodate and survive in a changing environment.

Adopt a Sheep!

Play Save the Sheep (*warning – really loud annoying music)

Current Mood: On my soapbox

Current Mood: Amused & Ja Ja Ja