It's Time to Talk of Many Things...

Now’s the time to talk of many things, of bees and frogs and lemmings, of whether the sea is turning into goopy soup and whether people can think…

A bumblebee can’t fly, but the bumblebee can’t read books, so it never learned that it can’t fly and so it flies anyway…

Not true! A fellow in the 1930’s did some math showing that an airplane with wings the size of a bumblebee’s in proportion to its fuselage can’t fly. However, a bumblebee is not an airplane. Its wings move rapidly in a complicated pattern. According to this logic a helicopter can’t fly either. As a matter of fact, the newest death planes (jet fighter-bombers) can’t fly either – not with out a computer constantly making adjustments. Needless to say, it might be a safer if not necessarily better world if all those demon machines turned into bunks of rust right now!

If you put a frog in a pot of water and heat it up by slow degrees, the frog will eventually get cooked, because it’s so dumb it never figures out that it’s getting cooked…

Not true! At some point something in the little frog’s brain will say, “Sheet! It’s getting hotter and hotter here, this me not much like! Legs, JUMP!”

On the other hand, it’s not all that bad an analogy to apply to people. People are quite capable of remaining in a worsening situation until there ain’t no turning back. That’s not theory, dear hearts! We’ve done it again and again. True, never on a world-wide scale, but, hey, for something that big you gotta practice, dontja?

Lemmings in Norway in fits of mass psychosis follow one another and commit mass suicide by jumping off of cliffs or drowning themselves in the ocean.

Not true! Lemmings are little rodents, usually solitary except for mating and they have a very high reproductive rate. In years when there is a lot of food, their population can increase exponentially. This forces the population to migrate in search of food. They are good swimmers, so they naturally expect to be able to ford rivers and even lakes – but, because of exhaustion from a long march, they can drown. Also, they might not have a choice. There can be so many lemmings that the mass of little bodies behind them can push them into the water and, if it is a precipice instead of a lake shore they can be pushed over the edge. It is not mass psychosis or suicide. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about humans.

The point of my ramblings here is an acknowledgement what my alien friend said back in one of my first posts on this blog – that there is little or no sign of intelligent life on our planet…

In fact, I am rapidly becoming even more pessimistic than he/she/it. There is a distinct possibility that, as a species, bees, frogs and lemmings, not to mention elephants and dolphins got more smarts than human beings. I’ve come to this rather depressing conclusion because as you have seen the stories we tell about the animals almost always apply more to people.

Intelligence is not always measured by what you do but often by what you don’t do!

Did you know that we are the immediate cause of a mass extinction on this planet which is rapidly beginning to look as if it will match the last one, sixty-five million years ago, when the dinosaurs went off to dreamland and left this precious world to our tender care?

If we go that way and I can’t see any see any good reason that we won’t, unless of course the Alien Veggies really do land, the chances of which are much, much less than the chance of winning a quarter million on a Power Ball ticket – if we go that way and cause once again Mother Earth to not only abort, but die in childbed – well, what do you think that would prove?

It would prove that the sum total of human intelligence amounts to that of a ten-mile thick hunk of rock! That is namely about the size of the asteroid that whacked the earth somewhere off the shore of what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula.

IF we are as a species are that goddamn dumb and stoopid, do you really think that Jesus is going to come and wipe our bum and kiss our thumb and make it all happiness and green fields forever?

I think NOT!

I’d rather bet on the Alien Veggies!