Goddess before Man?

 

The Shakti communicating with an intelligent species on Terra Prime. 

Nuke da roach

 

I removed an earlier blog post about cockroaches and nuclear war, since I´m no longer certain about ChatGPT´s anwers to my questions...

If evolution is true, why are there still humans?

 

An evolutionary impossibility?

Some lighter bedtime reading (my time) on the theme "we are not the crown of creation". Note the bizarre information about octopi! Note also the interview with Dougal Dixon, whose book "After Man" was one of my favorite bedtime readings when I was much younger...

Does evolution ever go backward? 

Why haven´t all primates evolved into humans?

When humans are gone

Roaches in the sewers

A review of "MonsterQuest: Gators in the Sewers" 

LOL! Another unforgettable turkey episode of "MonsterQuest", which pretends to "scientifically" investigate the (bizarre) rumour that there are alligators in the sewers of New York City.

The brave explorers of the History Channel send in some kind of drone with a camera into the sewage system, only to find...cockroaches. Not being a certified entomologist, I can't really judge, but they did look gigantic to me! For being roaches, that is. Says one of the explorers: "We have established that there is a food source for alligators here".

So gators eat roaches? Yeah, go figure. Besides, I would have thought the recent super-storm over New York have flushed out all the alligators in the sewage pipes...

Getting rid of the Wall Street brokers, might be something else again.

The allied invasion of Cornwall

This is probably *the* book on British and Irish orthopteroid insects: Orthoptera, Dictyoptera, Dermaptera and Phasmida. In plain English: Grasshoppers, crickets, cockroaches, earwigs and stick-insects!

An extensive 65-page introduction covers life history, morphology, courtship, predators and parasites, collection, rearing and culturing, etc. There's even a section on how to record orthopteran sounds! The appendices are equally interesting, including lists of outstanding sites. The New Forest and the Dorset Heathlands leads the way with 24 species, but if you're ever stuck on the island of Jersey, don't worry, 19 species to find!

The main part of the book is, of course, the species presentations, which are extensive: Description, life history and behaviour, song, habitat, distribution and status (plus range maps). Colour plates are at the back of book.

I was particularly fascinated by the stick-insects. It turns out that all of the species found in Britain are "aliens" from New Zealand or India. The authors claim that somebody deliberately bred and implanted the Unarmed Stick-Insect in Western Cornwall back in 1982. The perpetrators name isn't given.

"Grashoppers and Allied Insects" deserve five stars.

This book also has a companion, "A sound guide to the Grashoppers and Allied Insects of Great Britain and Ireland" ISBN 0946589224. It comes with commentary by David Ragge, the grand old man of British orthopteran research.