Marine wildlife, which are under threat of total annihilation from a series of anthropogenic impacts–from ocean acidification to industrial fisheries–can rest a little easier. Thanks to the UK based organization Fishlove, blue fin tuna, North sea cod and other sea critters now have a naked Sir Ben Kinglsey–um, holding a dead octopus–on their side and he looks mean as hell.
Fishlove is a media campaign created by a sushi restaurant owner, which is sort of weird, but why not. I’m not sure how effective the ongoing photographic campaign to highlight the crisis of over-fishing will be, but rest assured, Sir Kingsly, who played Gandhi for crying out loud, and even won an oscar, looks pretty damned intent on stopping this shit…like, I think he is going to kick some ass. You should kick some ass too! That’s how we are gonna save those ocean critters.
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By now the altruistic nature of just about every species of animal is well documented. A human mother throws herself in front of rush hour traffic to save her child, vampire bats regurgitate blood to give to sick or injured roost mates, termites and ants effectively commit righteous suicide by fatally rupturing a specialized gland to release a sticky secretion that confuses would-be invaders of their colony, African buffalo jump into harms way to rescue bloodied members of their herd captured by predators, and um, yeah you get it. This here world is full of fine examples of selfless mutual aid.
But it’d be a stretch to imagine altruism in the plant kingdom, wouldn’t it?
Well, turns out, Pamela Diggle, professor of plant evolution at the University of Colorado, thinks corn plants exhibit altruistic behaviors as well, at least towards their siblings. This means that even for flora, blood—or chlorophyll rather—is thicker than water.
Wait, this sounds crazy. How did she come to that conclusion? Continue reading →
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It was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day. Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. –Captain Ahab– from Moby Dick
illustration by becka rankin
Spoiler alert, Moby Dick, the human devouring sperm whale of Herman Melville’s epic whaling novel of the same name, kills Captain Ahab—that ole son-of-a-barnacle’s-taint—and to the great relief of many a hunted sea beast. As a character, Ahab truly was a fine example of a dastardly whaler and neither Greenpeace nor Sea Shephard could be written to have given him his just deserts as well as our cetacean comrade. In the text, Moby Dick is both hero and antagonist and a truly enigmatic literary metaphor for the savagery of both nature and civilization, for revenge, madness, greed, god, the soul and justice, but never love.
But what shall ye make of the knowledge, Mr. Mellville, of sperm whales as loving adoptive parents who were recently sighted crossing the species boundary to care for a disabled dolphin?
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In a world where magic is endangered, the starry-eyed dung beetle is a beacon of hope.
According to new research, these charming excrement-obsessed scarabs with brains no bigger than a grain of rice observe the stars—and more specifically, the Milky Way—to navigate through the night.
O yes, its with a map of the heavens that the dung beetle and its nourishing mierda make their way.
“Dung is a precious resource for food,” says Eric Warrant, an Australian biologist who worked on the team that made the discovery, “and male beetles invest much energy and time in creating and rolling a ball that will be used by a female to lay her egg within.”
As you can imagine, its extremely important that male dung beetles roll that BM ball in the straightest possible path away from the pile—and other male beetles intent on pilfering their poo—to a secure burying location. After mating, that fecal booty will serve as breakfast, lunch and dinner for tiny and disgustingly adorable dung beetle babies. It’s a matter of sex, parenthood and survival. Continue reading →
Unfortunately themall is being taken downto make way for a designer outlet mall which “the city hopes will become a big attraction and a financial shot in the arm.”
There is just something right about a world that contains a scorpion munching mouse that howls at the moon.
Forget Billy the Kid and Pancho Villa. Onychomys torridus — a small, carnivorous mouse with tiny pink paws — may just be the roughest, toughest outlaw the West has ever known.
Also called the grasshopper mouse, this adorable bandito prowls the harsh arid badlands of the Sonoran desert in the United States and Mexico, stalking crickets, rodents, scorpions and tarantulas to sate its monstrous hunger. It battles other rodents, driving them away by force up to and including death; it also steals their burrows. Scientists believe grasshopper mice collect a variety of fleas — perhaps as grisly souvenirs? — from their rodent victims, some of which they cannibalize.
And get this: After biting the head off a scorpion and feasting on its flesh, this mouse has been known to throw its head back in wild delight and howl at the moon. Seriously.
Check out these two amazing videos below wherein you can witness this little critter round up a tarantula and a scorpion and finally hear it howl like a wolf on helium!
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Sleeper cells, domestic terrorists and the Seven Dwarfs had better beware: Florida’s Orange County Sherriff’s office is getting hyped to unleash unmanned drones over Orlando skies this summer.
Disney will now be more exciting once blood thirsty drones patrol the skies.
Two drones, similar to those which fly over tribal regions of Central Asia to bomb suspected terrorists, unlucky wedding parties, children and even American citizens, are currently being tested.
However, according to Sheriff’s spokesman Jeff Williamson, Orlando’s drones will not be armed. The office still needs approval from county officials and the FAA.
Drones are already being used all over the United States, have been recommended for use by wildlife officials to shoot “problem” wolves in the West and are a daily site along the U.S. Mexico border. The Miami-Dade Police Department is also considering their use.
Predator drones used by the military and CIA cost roughly $4 million a pop and are about the size of a two-seater Cessna. Orlando’s drones are a bit smaller and, according to Williams, cost roughly $25,000 apiece.
A map of Disney’s rugged Jungle Cruise terrain, a region known for lawless tribes sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Williams did not comment in any depth as to exactly how the remote-controlled planes would be used but in an email he noted that they might be deployed to look for explosives, barricaded suspects and to inspect “hostile/inaccessible terrain,” which may refer to Orlando traffic, the regions dwindling swamps, or Disneyland’s sanitized version of a wild Jungle Cruise.
Will the Orange County Sheriff’s drones hunt down Dopey’s dope and Grumpy’s anti-American manifesto before its too late?
By now, all you current and former subscribers to the EF! Journal should have seen our 2013 Winter update letter in the mail. For those who have sent back donations, we offer our full gratitude for your commitment to sustaining the media of the eco-resistance.
For those still sitting on the letters twiddling your thumbs, we ask that if you can afford a donation of any amount, please get them in the mail to us soon, before they are totally buried under the mounds of junk mail from whack NGOs with their glossy polar bear pictures who are trying to capitalize off your christmas gift money…
And for those who didn’t see it in the mail, you can subscribe to the Journal right here and now, so you’ll never miss another riveting letter from us again. In the meantime, the text from the letter is below. Also, you can print out the whole thing to make copies and give ’em to all your friends by clicking on the image to the right.
Yule Season’s Greetings To All You Eco-Defenders And Earth First! Journal Supporters
It’s been a long, hard year here at the Earth First! Journal office. Despite financial pressures in conjunction with lots of court dates, once again, we have persisted.
In which is discussed the preposterously true details of a cyborg cockroach enslaved by crowdsourced social media; the computer program that you are living in right now; and Smartphones that can see, smell, fart and someday screw.
by Russ McSpadden / Carbon-based humanoid correspondent for the King Ludd & John Connor Institute of Anti-Technology
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La Cucaracha Robotica
Philosophers, science-fiction writers, and doctors have long pondered the cyborg dilemma–that blurred boundary where biology and machine are fast becoming one. And while most arguments tend to focus on two key questions — 1) Is it morally legitimate to use robotics to upgrade the human form and 2) Is it morally legitimate to neglect cyborg technology in the treatment of disease and disability — there are other very important questions that have yet to be raised.
For example: 3) Did you really just fit a cockroach with cyborg technology and control it with an IPhone and Twitter? Continue reading →
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One Small Step for Man, One Giant Sh*t for the Moon?
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of the Apollo 11 space mission touched down on the lunar surface. It was a pretty big deal to many and cost some $20 billion bucks. You know, “”one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as Armstrong put it.
But just a year later, in his spoken-word piece “Whitey On the Moon”, the hard biting and rebellious poet and songwriter, Gil Scott Heron, asked some pretty poignant questions about race, poverty and technology in the U.S. ” Was all that money I made last year(for Whitey on the moon?) / How come there ain’t no money here? (Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon).
In the face of the dire poverty and racism that affected (and continues to affect) black communities, an expensive trip to the moon for two hillbillies might’ve certainly given one pause as to who was excluded in that “giant leap for mankind.”
But it gets worse.
As it turns out, probably unbeknownst to our revolutionary poet, whitey also left behind a few gifts on the moon before hightailing it home: a flag, some wrenches, batteries, a pair of lunar boots, old food containers and, well, according to NASA documents, they left their shit.
For millenia, poets and dreamers have pondered in awe, the beauty, mystery, and meaning of the moon and in 1969, two men finally voyaged the 230-some-thousand miles to visit it, to touch and study it, and then they took a crap on it.
EF! DAM
Ecodefense
