abominations of nature: why I am not a transcendentalist

[erf_]

Comments

[oddtodd]

Thanks, kevin, I just spent the last hour looking at those articles and following video links to see things eating each other; of note was the giant octopus that ate sharks and the venus fly traps eating frogs.

[oddtodd]

I forgot to mention two things: one) that movie poster had me in stitches, and two) I am seriously worried we'll get some kind of cordyceps.

[erf_]

I was really hoping M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening would be about cordyceps, but unfortunately, it wasn't.

Sometimes, at night, I feel the urge to climb tall buildings, and after I'm up there a while I come down and do my usual thing. I wonder if it's Toxoplasma gondii summoning me up there, waiting for some enormous alien predator to return and eat me so it can propagate through the galaxy.

[erf_]

I've seen the venus flytraps eating frogs! Going to have to look up the octopuses eating sharks, though. That sounds kind of awesome.

[drabheathen]

See, this is the stuff that fills me with awe and wonder.

[erf_]

It is awesome and terrible indeed. (In both the ancient and the modern sense.)

[judgewargrave]

Well, as for infanticide, that's just getting them closer to Nirvana, right?

[erf_]

Only the kind that involves a baby floating in a pool reaching for a dollar bill on a hook.

[erf_]

Yeah...so much for eco-primitivism, I guess.

[foboat]

re:Cordyceps_unilateralis

that's 冬蟲夏草. designed so we can eat it.

also, if you really are interested, look into parasite life cycles. and mechanisms which they use to propagate them selves, i.e. instead of looking at what they did, look at how they did. it's epic in scale.

[erf_]

冬蟲夏草 is Cordyceps sinesis.

Yeah, it's mind-boggling as to how all this stuff evolved.