Oxygen-free is the way to be?

Life is a fundamental component of the Universe.

Allow me, please, to explain. That statement, sounding mystical as it does, arises in a certain context.

Whether we find ourselves arguing with Creationists or discussing the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, a question arises concerning the odds of life developing in the Universe. There is even the Drake Equation, intended to predict the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos.

And for some, the numbers prescribe a low possibility. For the Creationists, life is nothing short of miraculous, requiring God’s hand to come about.

But the Universe is vast, perhaps even infinite in its potential. Which suggests that however we calculate the odds, life becomes nearly an inevitability.

And in recent years, people have started to recognize this. Some look hopefully to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, wondering what surprises might await in or beneath the ice of, for instance, Europa.

Here at home, on Earth, our outlook on life is rapidly changing, and the latest announcement from the Mediterranean will only fuel that transformation. Patrick Jackson explains, for the BBC:

Scientists have found the first animals that can survive and reproduce entirely without oxygen, deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.

The team, led by Roberto Danovaro from Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy, found three new species from the Loricifera group.

He told BBC World Service they were about a millimetre in size and looked like jellyfish in a protective shell ….

…. One of the three new Loriciferans (so-called because of their protective layer, or lorica) has already been officially named Spinoloricus Cinzia, after the professor’s wife.

The other two, currently designated Rugiloricus and Pliciloricus, have still to be formally described.

They were discovered in the course of three oceanographic expeditions conducted over a decade in order to search for living fauna in the sediment of the Mediterranean’s L’Atalante basin.

The basin, 200km (124m) off the western coast of Crete, is about 3.5km (2.2m) deep and is almost entirely depleted of oxygen, or anoxic.

I’m sure it could have been worse …

… though I haven’t put much thought into how. Really, it’s not that big a deal. But, still ….

Government at its finest:

The general manager of the Chilean mint has been dismissed after thousands of coins were issued with the name of the country spelt wrongly.

The 50-peso coins – worth about 10 cents (6p) – were issued in 2008, but no-one noticed the mistake until late last year.

Instead of C-H-I-L-E, the coins had C-H-I-I-E stamped on them.

The coins have since become collectors’ items and the mint says it has no plans to take them out of circulation.

According to the BBC, it’s not the first time in recent years mint employees have shown a certain talent for ineptitude. Last year, two medals—one a museum piece—were mistakenly sold.

Write a punch line if you need one.

(And a tip of the hat, of course, to Mr. Ben Schott for pointing this one out to his readers.)

Hatred is myopic

Prominent hatemonger Peter LaBarbera offers this amazingly myopic argument:

A little over a year ago, Amanda Collette became the ultimate victim of homosexuality when Wimberly shot her in the back at school. As the Miami Herald reported, “Collette, 15, a star dancer on the school’s hip-hop dance squad, had rejected romantic advances from Wimberly in the days before the shooting.” Minutes after the shooting, Wimberly cried in a call to the 911 operator: ”I didn’t want to kill her so I shot her in the back . . . I just wanted to give her the pain she gave me.”

Regardless of what other factors were involved in this tragedy, it is not unreasonable to assert that Collette would be alive today were it not for the modern GLBT activist movement, which aggressively seeks to mainstream sexual deviance and immoral gay/lesbian “relationships” as normal and acceptable — most tragically among young people.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in America when young women did not have to worry about sexual harassment and sexual advances from other young women. And the GLBT movement is first and foremost to blame for the rising number of youth who are embracing homosexual behaviors and considering destructive “gay,” lesbian, bisexual, or “transgender” self-”identities,” at younger and younger ages. We ask you to pray for the families of both Collette and Wimberly, and pray for the Christian conversion of Teah Wimberly as she awaits sentencing.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment:

If one murder committed by a homosexual teenager caught up in the confusion of love, lust, and hormones, is an indictment of homosexuality, what do the thousands of rapes, murders, and beatings between heterosexuals say of heterosexuality?

Oh, big surprise

But … Lithuania? That was always my first question about this story. And I was probably late to it. It seems to me I picked it up only a couple weeks ago.

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board ….

…. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA “black sites”, media reports say.
In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania’s political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

The only thing that’s really surprising about this is that it was Lithuania. Not that any ancient legend says they are the paladins to lead us to new enlightenment, or anything like that. But I don’t know. Is it unfair to mutter something about the Soviet experience? You know, like, you’d think Lithuania, not even twenty years out of Soviet reach ….

Okay, that’s probably not fair. There are also rumors of similar sites in Poland and Romania, so maybe they’re just calling on some of Europe’s surviving old-school bonebreakers.

Hired goons. Why not? There will always be a market for cruelty.

Art is …. (v.3)

Art is something of a reflection of the soul. True, that is something of a cliché, but little else can be said with so little pretense of Johan van der Dong’s God’s Hotline. The BBC explains:

An art exhibition opening in the Netherlands will allow people to call a telephone number designated for God – but they will have to leave a message.

Dubbed God’s Hotline, it aims to focus attention on changes to the ways Dutch people perceive religion.

Dutch artist Johan van der Dong chose a mobile phone number to show that God was available anywhere and anytime, Radio Netherlands reported.

Critics say the project mocks those with religious beliefs.

Forming part of an art installation in the town of Gronigen, the voicemail message says: “This is the voice of God, I am not able to speak to you at the moment, but please leave a message.”