5 Mins WITH HUMPBACKS

Whale watching is on as the humpback whales travel between the  Southern Ocean and Hervey Bay, Queensland. They are warm-blooded mammals that are supposed to be descendants of land-based mammals which ventured back to the ocean.                                      

You and I are warm-blooded mammals too, so what say we meet down at the beach one day and join the humpbacks on our discovery safari. Bring your flippers to make it easier to keep up with them but wet-suits won’t be necessary - just imagining we carry 30% of body weight in blubber like they do should keep us warm. Hopefully.

When it's time to dive deep just take a few big breaths first, and forget decompression stages – if it works for whales it should work for us. Unlike whales, our nose and throat are connected - but don't worry about that, we’ll just swallow whatever food we find with the seawater.  If we strike any trouble we’ll call them with clicks and whistles - you know, by recycling air through 'monkey lips' like they do in their nasal passages.

On second thoughts, I've decided to wait for you with the paramedics in the rescue helicopter. I expect you might be in bad shape with hypothermia, kidneys clogged with salt, 'the bends' and heart failure from nitrogen bubbles in your soupy blood…...that is, if you didn’t drown in the first five minutes when you opened your mouth.

Or how about we scrap that idea and just use binoculars to watch these marvellous creatures do their thing?  We might even see a whale feeding her calf by squirting milk into its mouth – now that’s what I call a ‘fast-flow’ pump!

Israel cookin' with gas!

Here's what the World Book encyclopedia said about Israel in 2005: "Israel is poor in energy sources. It has no coal deposits or hydroelectric power resources and only small amounts of crude oil and natural gas."

So was Moses just waffling on in Deuteronomy 33 when he said:  

“they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hidden in the sand and later on of Asher whose land faced the great sea: "let him dip his foot in oil."                                                       

Listen Moses, you're 120 years old  and retired from sheep farming 40 years ago – what would you know about geology or seismic surveys, let alone what’s under the great sea?

Poor Israel - surrounded by oil-rich Arab lands but stuck with this 'ridiculous' prediction staring out from their Torah about abundance, treasures and oil....ridiculous until now.

Natural gas started flowing to Ashdod on March 31, 2013 from the Tamar field 80 kilometres west of Haifa, tapping into a reserve of 275 billion cubic metres of natural gas under the Mediterranean. If that's not enough there's 700 billion cubic metres of gas waiting in the Leviathan field nearby, plus 600 million barrels of oil for good measure.

Is this just ‘Lady Luck’ smiling on Israel for a change?..…or is this yet another modern day fulfilment of Jewish prophecy after 3350 years? Perhaps old Moses knew what he was talking about after all.                                      

With an Energy Triangle planned for 2015 with Cyprus and Greece, things are looking up for Israel, except there’s a jealous neighbour - Lebanon, backed by.......

 

Acknowledgements:  

World Book 2005    

wikipedia.org   

Photo credits: oil rig / oilinisrael.net 

map /worldtribune.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 

                                                                                           

                                                                                  

 

 

 

JUST A LOCAL FLOOD?

How far from home would you have to go to find evidence of cataclysmic flooding by sea-water?...down in the back paddock?...just out of town?

We showed you a fossil shell specimen from Heron’s Ocean – I mean Heron’s Creek, only 15 kilometres from home. Our friends’ paddock is in the Camden Haven River catchment, 20 metres above the Pacific Ocean 13 kilometres away.

Nearby, in the Hastings River catchment, we have Bago Bluff towering over the ‘timber-town’ of Wauchope and even though it seems to comprise uplifted conglomerate, the National Parks and Wildlife Service ignore requests for information on fossils. I wonder why.                                      
Never-mind….just below the bluff….right on the edge of town!...we find these beauties in limestone, the same distance from the Pacific Ocean but this time 60 metres above sea level.    

 

(By the way, this limestone seam apparently runs all the way up to the mountains of Willi Willi - 700 metres above sea level!)

Now we move north into the much larger Macleay River catchment and find specimens like this in a council quarry 100 metres above the ocean which is 45 kilometres away!

 

A 100 metre tide??....come on now…..that’s not just a local flood, it’s not even a tsunami – how about a cataclysm?....a global catastrophe right here in the area where our town council advertised to tourists: ‘God lives here’!

…or perhaps God judged here??

 Photo credit:  specimen / Tony Sullivan 

 

RU486 - are you for 86'ing?

Australia’s federal government is now recommending that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme list the ‘morning after’ or RU 486 pill (Roussel-Uclaf.38486), making the 2 complimentary drugs – Mifepristone and Misoprostol, available to concessional patients for $5.90 each, otherwise for $36.10. 
Umm…that sounds very affordable for schoolgirls!              

Well girls, we don’t have to tell you what this quick fix will do to your baby - an embryo possibly with its own pulse already - nor is this a lecture about morality but please listen to the side effects before we try to explain how your 'inconvenience' occurred.

These drugs contain methotrexate which blocks progesterone to cause miscarriage. For you this can cause liver damage, kidney destruction, heart muscle damage, pulmonary failure, gastrointestinal pathology, bone marrow suppression, loss of speech, stroke, convulsions, or death. Potent stuff, huh!

In case you didn’t know, your body comprises living somatic cells made of inanimate chemicals and every cell came from another living cell - so how did the very first living cell happen?...supernaturally??                                                    

Now for what has been happening inside you…

Approximately 100 million immature sperm entered your vagina to undergo capacitation from your secretions. 
Can you see any co-operative design in that?                               

                                                      

After several hours one of these now mature sperm managed to find your ovum in one of the two fallopian tubes, penetrate the zona pellucida of your ovum and release enzymes to block the 99,999,999 other sperm.  

So how did the sperm know to do all that?                              

By the way, your immune system resists foreign intrusion but apparently learns to recognise the same visitor!  

Is there any message there?                                                         

Your body's cells all contain your genetic blueprint in 23 pairs or 46 chromosomes, made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and amino acids (protein)….except for the sex cells, which under meiosis split to form gamete cells with only 23 chromosomes.  

So how did they know to do this?                                                                

 

The sperm is also a gamete cell containing 23 chromosomes, which fertilized your ovum on Day 1 to become a zygote with 46 chromosomes - the beginning of a human embryo. On Day 2, cleavage by mitosis created 2 identical cells each with the full compliment of 46 chromosomes…a morula of totipotent cells.

2 cells clave into 4, then 4 into 8, which by Day 4 compacted to form a blastocyst in which the identical cells now started to differentiate to either remain stem cells or specialize as skin cells, hair cells, organs….                             How do they know how to do this?

Thanks to medical science we know what has happened to who, and when and why – BUT HOW ??....don’t expect answers from the medicos any time soon because they don’t seem to know, so let’s see who else has an invisible hand in this miracle:

If we take a look in your nanna’s ‘religious relic’- the family Bible that’s not supposed to be scientific – we find your embryo classically described in Job chapter 10, verses 8 to 12!

“Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about…..(9 month gestation)   

Hast thou not poured me out as milk (fertilization), and curdled me like cheese? (blastocyst to day 10)  

Thou has clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced me with bones and sinews. (embryo to week 8)  

Thou hast granted me life and favour, and thy visitation hath preserved my spirit.” (quickening as foetus after week 8)                                                                                              

So whose work inside you will RU486 destroy?


 

Acknowledgements:  
www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au   
www.rxlist.com  
abortsa.com  
wikipedia .org  
harvard.edu  
Photo credit: news.softpedia.com                                                                                                               

Ring of Fire

Have you got 5 minutes to spare this Friday the 10th?  

The place to be is Musgrave Roadhouse in Far North Queensland at 8:48 am, where you will see another eclipse of the sun by our moon – this time forming an annulus around the moon, or 'Ring of Fire'.

So how does this come about?

The new moon is nearly at ‘apogee’ i.e. furthest from Earth so its angular distance is smaller than the sun’s and it will only cover 95% of the sun’s image.

Where else would you be able to see this dramatic sight?

The eclipse will increase after dawn over the Pilbaras in W.A., then Tennant Creek N.T. and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Hopefully you Queenslanders appreciate your heavenly shows because you’re getting more than anybody else these days!

 

Oh and by the way, astronomers tells us that this sort of show is unique in our solar system and as far as we know, the universe.  How come?

Acknowledgement:                                                                                                                                                                          

 G. Dawes, P. Northfield, K. Wallace, Astronomy 2013 Australia, Quasar Publishing

Photo credit: indiatimes.com

MERCURY IN SYNCRO??

Let’s try and catch up with the elusive 'swift messenger' called MERCURY that races around the Sun at ~48 kilometres per second.  Let’s give Mercury the once over and see if it’s your idea of home sweet home:

·         450 degrees C by day (lasting 59 Earth days)…..phew, that’s one long scorcher of a day!

·         Minus 170 degrees C at night……brrrrr!

·         virtually no atmosphere…..o’oh!

·         no moon – there’s nothing to regulate

·         a weak magnetic field against cosmic radiation – danger!

·         BYO water, except possible ice at the poles

·         no seasons like Earth

·         A highly elliptical orbit, taking 87.9694 Earth days, that isn't really centred around the Sun 

Mercury doesn't sound too Earth-like to me, but there's more.....we haven't mentioned its rotation.  Mercury is extremely difficult to observe because it lies within 28 degrees of the glaring Sun and being closer than Earth, often presents only a thin crescent or a dark side to us.  Apparently it presents the same face to Earth at the best position for observation, so until 1965 we thought that its rotation was locked to the Sun but with the aid of Doppler radar it was found that its rotational period was 58.6461 days, making 3 rotations for every 2 orbits.

Did you get that?
Mercury does its own loopy thing under the control of the Sun and yet remains synchronised with itself!  Its rotation synchronises with its orbit at the ratio 3:2, to an accuracy of 99.99972% : only 43.2 seconds difference in 176 Earth days (1 Mercurial day takes 2 orbits).  At the same time it appears to also synchronise with observations from Earth - keeping us guessing for thousands of years. 
How about that!
Does that sound like the result of an uncontrolled 'big bang'?

 

Blind men meet Jumbo

For those of us who think we have it all worked out, especially this ‘God stuff’, here’s a poem you’ll enjoy that brings us back to size -

The Blind Men and The Elephant

It was six men of Indostan,…to learning much inclined

Who went to see the elephant…(though all of them were blind),

That each by observation,…might satisfy his mind.

 

The First approached the elephant,…and happening to fall

Against his broad and sturdy side,…at once began to bawl,

"God bless me! but the elephant…is nothing but a wall!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,…cried: "Ho! What have we here

So very round and smooth and sharp?...to me 'tis mighty clear

This wonder of an elephant…is very like a spear!"

The Third approached the animal,…and happening to take

The squirming trunk within his hands,…thus boldly up and spake:

"I see," quoth he, "the elephant…is very like a snake!"

The Fourth reached out his eager hand,…and felt about the knee:

"What most this wondrous beast is like…is mighty plain," qoth he;

"Tis clear enough the elephant…is very like a tree."

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,…said: "Even the blindest man

Can tell what this resembles most;…deny the fact who can,

This marvel of an elephant…is very like a fan!"

 

The Sixth no sooner had begun…about the beast to grope,

Then, seizing on the swinging tail…that fell within his scope,

"I see," quoth he, "the elephant…is very like a rope!"

And so these men of Indostan…disputed loud and long

Each in his own opinion…exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,…and all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars…the disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance…of what each other mean,

And prate about an elephant…not one of them has seen!

- John Godfrey Saxe

 

Acknowledgement: 
Dr. Chuck Missler, Holographic Universe,
Koinonia House