Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more than a few microbes could exist.
That’s why a NASA team was surprised when they lowered a video camera to get the first long look at the underbelly of an ice sheet in Antarctica. A curious shrimp-like creature came swimming by and then parked itself on the camera’s cable. Scientists also pulled up a tentacle they believe came from a foot-long jellyfish.
(h/t Andrew Sullivan.)
Categories: WTF? · animals · cool stuff
Jonathan Safran Foer has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that is so amazingly clever I can hardly stand it. Oh my god, seriously, you guys. Check this out.
He goes on, for like forty-seven paragraphs, about why humans should eat dogs. And you’re thinking, Wait, what, JSF? What are you saying about man’s best friend? How dare you! I would never eat Fido!
But then–in the last couple of paragraphs–he hits you upside the head in a way that will awe and inspire you with its sleight of handedness:
There is an overabundance of rational reasons to say no to factory-farmed meat: It is the No. 1 cause of global warming, it systematically forces tens of billions of animals to suffer in ways that would be illegal if they were dogs, it is a decisive factor in the development of swine and avian flus, and so on. And yet even most people who know these things still aren’t inspired to order something else on the menu. Why?
Oh, slam! Why indeed? Do you see what he did there? Factory farming! It’s totally satire, guys–just like that dude that made the proposal about eating Irish babies or something.
In case you can’t tell, I am unimpressed. Food and farming issues are important to discuss, but complex and difficult, and raise more questions than a glib op-ed with a twist ending can provide. For example: if we all stop eating meat, what happens to all those millions of jobs that the various supporting industries provide? How does that not plunge us into economic chaos? How will non-award-winning-wealthy-authors (who live in other parts of the country and work two jobs to get by) afford and find access to all the healthy foods they will need, and the time to cook them?
Perhaps the answers will appear in Foer’s new book on vegetarianism. (Aha! Now we understand.) I like Jessa over at Bookslut’s take:
now he’s indulging in my least favorite form of nonfiction: the “I have never thought about this thing before until now, and despite the fact that other people have thought about this for years and wrestle daily with the implications, I think my brand new thoughts should be shared with the world.”
