Crop Circles

Special thanks to one of our Ohio readers for sending this nugget our way. In the best explanation we have read yet for crop circles, from our 'truth is always able to outflank fiction' files, here is a delightful note originally discovered in the BBC News.

Dateline Tasmania: According to the BBC, "Retired Tasmanian poppy farmer Lyndley Chopping also said he had seen strange behaviour from wallabies in his fields." Wallabies are marsupial cousins of the kangaroo that live on the island state. The wallabies have been sneaking into the farmers fields and apparently grazing on opium poppies. Medicinal growing of opium is a farming industry in Tasmania.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general of Tasmania, said, "...one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles. Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

So aliens and/or smacked out wallabies, nice.

The Emoticons of texting

As you may or may not be aware dear readers, the Clarion Content's editor-in-chief is fascinated with the code switching that is on-going in the new language of texting. English has endless vernaculars, and even technologically speaking, texting is but one code among many tech jargons.

Our sincere thanks to the south Durham reader who recently forwarded our way one of the most complete lists we have seen interpreting the emoticons of texting. Interestingly most of these emoticons are primarily made with mathematical and grammatical symbols, rather than English letters. Though we do not endorse all of these interpretations, (follow this link to Wikipedia's fascinating take) we thought we'd share them.

Follow this link to see the big list.

Nature outflanks

The Clarion Content's editor-in-chief's Gaian perspective inherently assumes that nature outflanks human civilization, a holistic planet cannot be destroyed by one species. It can be made uninhabitable for one species or another, by one species or another, but its rebalancing is innate, at least until the sun goes out. But enough of the big perspective, writ small, here are two instances where nature (in the form of individuals outflanked humankind).



The first is a story about a wolverine. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has been tracking wolverines in an effort to discover more about their habits. According to WCS researchers when a male wolverine ranged into Colorado earlier in the week it was the first time a wolverine had been sighted in Colorado since 1919. Wolverines reportedly need massive territories, with individuals staking out as much as 500 square miles of space per creature. The fellow they were following walked over 500 miles in just the months of April and May this year.

The wolverine was once native to the mountains and surrounding areas of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and California. Public records indicate that populations were largely wiped out by the 1930s, according to the WCS. Their recovery has been intermittent since.

Read the whole story here from Live Science.




The other story of nature reappearing, from humankind's perspective, took place clear across the country, in Collier County Florida at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. Volunteers there were treated to a rare daytime sighting of a Florida Panther. The female in question probably weighed 100 pounds according to scientists. The two volunteers hunkered down and were able to capture about forty-five seconds of video footage of the cat. A relative of the cougar, there are only estimated to be about 100 Florida Panthers roaming the the low tides, palm forests and wild swamps of the state.

Read the whole article and see the footage here.

There is an HIV positive porn star

Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation founder,
Sharon Mitchell

In a serious blow to the porn industry, the Los Angeles Times reported that a female performer in the pornography industry has tested positive for HIV, according to the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, a San Fernando Valley-based clinic that serves adult performers.

This case marks the first publicly confirmed HIV infection in an adult star in California since 2004 when an HIV outbreak shut down porn production for weeks. According to the LA Times, "The new HIV infection was confirmed publicly only after discussions of a possible HIV case appeared on adult industry websites." They quote porn veteran and clinic founder Sharon Mitchell, saying they had recently changed their policies on HIV positive performer disclosure for new cases "because if there isn't a widespread danger – if someone isn't completely virulent and hasn't worked and there aren't a lot of people at risk, we don't put a quote out there; just blankets: Everyone should come in and test."

Read the whole LA Times story here.

New Element

Element 112, is still looking for a name, but it will be added to the periodic table more than a decade after the first single atoms of it were produced. Element 112 was officially recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

It is part of a group of super heavy elements that are very unstable and begin to fall apart within a few milliseconds of creation. As yet, it is only possible to "make" such elements in the lab with most powerful of particle accelerators.

Read more here in the BBC.

Bats recognize each others voices

The study was conducted with greater mouse eared bats like this one.

The Clarion Content has always been fascinated by animal communication. Our Gaian perspective implies almost axiomatically that animals can communicate with each other (and us, if we are open to it) in very sophisticated ways.

A recent study at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, verified that individual bats recognize each other's voices. They have also analyzed how it works. The lead scientist, Yossi Yovel explained to the BBC, "If you think of this in comparison with humans, it's like being able to recognize a person just by listening to the same one-syllable yell in different voices. The bats learned the voice by listening to hundreds of very short yells."

Read more here from the BBC News.