Appendix.

Today, while reading my biology textbook for homework, I had an epiphany.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French naturalist, proposed to the world in 1809 that changes in an environment caused an organism's behavior to change, leading to greater use or disuse of a structure or organ. The structure would become larger or smaller as a result, and that these changes would be passed on to an organism's offspring.

Observations by Charles Darwin on his voyages to the Galapagos Island revealed that though the islands were very similar in climate and geology, the animals that inhabited each island were completely and totally different. Darwin concluded that this must because animals migrated there from South Africa, separately, to each island, and slowly, started adapting, and evolving to meet the needs of survival on their particular island.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I would like to propose a new idea. A radical idea, one that would change the way we think about the world.

You know that small thing we have inside ourselves, the appendix?

Truthfully, it serves little purpose to us.

It has been suggested that the appendix is a lymphatic organ, rich in lymphoid tissue, necessary to create lymphoid cells that fight off viruses and invaders to the body.

However, it can be removed, and no one is exactly sure of what it does now.

But this is NOW.

What about THEN?

What if the mammals, near the time of the age of dinosaurs, had the ability. to breathe. fire.

It was no meteor that killed the dinosaurs. It was no ice age.

IT WAS THE MONKEYS THAT RAN AROUND BREATHING FIRE.

After the monkeys had completed their genocide of the dinosaurs that had terrorized the world for eras, most of the monkey population settled in peace around the world, and stopped using their fire-breath-inducing appendix. Eventually, their appendix shrunk and lost it's function as the monkeys evolved, and became an organ aiding the immune system as we became humans.

The rest of the monkeys that did NOT want to stop breathing fire would begin to shed their fur and live in tropical climates, developing a cold-blooded body and scales, and later becoming what we believe to be dragons. Later, the dragons migrated to the Europe and East Asia from the equator zone, the locations of many dragon myths.

While dragon-monkeys evolved, one group of monkeys, smarter than the rest of the peace-monkeys, decided to make the harsh pilgrimmage to what would be known as the Mayan civilization, in order to get away from the stupid ones.

Their journey was harsh, climbing mountains, fighting off dragon-monkeys, traveling without food for days at a time. They eventually had to adapt to their environment, they had to evolve, just as Lamarck and Darwin demanded it.

So they developed ESP. They developed the power to SEE INTO THE FUTURE (near future, mind you). This ability greatly ensured their survival as they traveled.

Finally, when they reached the coast of Texas, where the land and food was plentiful, some of them realized that they had actually gone off their original course. Others just didn't care about going to Maya anymore and just wanted to stay in Texas, where they would be ensured a lifetime of happiness rather than make another harsh and desperate trip to Southern Mexico.

And so, the group split up again, half of them traveling southward, the rest staying for luxury. The journey was completed much faster due to less supplies needed to be consumed by less monkeys. By this time, the monkeys were almost human, and they had reproduced to make several generations, and their ESP was growing stronger with each new generation.

By the time they reached their destination, their ESP had become so powerful that they had foreseen the horrible death that would come to all of life on Earth by December 21, 2012, as well as having developed a revolutionary planetary-based calendar system.

And so, they planned ahead, creating their calendar and purposefully stopping at 2012, to give humanity a warning of what was to come.

Then most of the Mayans, now almost completely human, died because of overworking on developing the calendar, and the rest died because they had ended up in-breeding within families too much, and they became susceptible to a deadly disease, what was to become known as HIV.

While this was happening, the monkeys in Texas lost their ESP slowly while becoming humans. However, most Texans still retain their ninja-like reflexes and ability to see within the near future.

There are firebreathers out there, humans with mutated appendixes that still allow them to breathe fire. The genetic code has not been completely lost.

And that is the story of why our appendixes are small.

~BKH

Gravities

War. What is war? War is conflict, wrought about by clashing needs, competition, and wrapped up in ideals. So what causes conflict? Regional differences which cause certain settlements to have either a surplus or a shortage of needed resources. Then what causes regional differences? The earth's spherical shape which causes sunlight to rain down upon the populations unevenly. And what causes earth's spherical shape? Gravity, which brought about the formation of earth from nebular dust and formed it into a spherical mass. What causes gravity? I sure don't know, but from this logical standpoint, gravity is the most indirect, and yet most important, cause of war on earth. If world peace is to be attained, then gravity must go.
~C.

Exist.

You do not exist. At least until you are beneficial to another person, opposing another person, or acknowledged by society or a higher authority. No one exists when they are born.
People never take notice of other passerby. They are both strangers to each other, alien. Nothing is known between them, nothing known from them. They do not exist to each other. The only people that exist are people that are known. Friends, family, famous celebrities, possibly a classmate only whose name is known. We are all ghosts, never truly seen clearly by those who do not believe in us. Abraham Lincoln, he would not be a nationally, or possibly internationally, known figure, would he not have been acknowledged by the American society for his deeds. Your friends, why are you friends with them in the first place? Because they benefit you in some fashion, either to support you, make you feel accepted, maybe even to make you feel better about yourself. They exist because they are useful. Your enemies, rivals, jerks you hate, they exist to you because they oppose you in some fashion, even if they aren't actively aggressive to you know, they probably were in the past. You know them, so in that case they exist.
Most people want to be seen, they want to exist. They try to become accepted into society, most likely to make society acknowledge them as a great person. If that doesn't work, they try to become useful to society, becoming friendly with anyone, to help people out. The easiest way to exist, is to become the opposition. Rejecting everyone, while trying to prove themselves right. Lashing out to make people see them, not as ghosts, but as humans. Is this existence?
~C.

World Peace

All the good little boys and good little girls wish for peace in the world. No conflict, no hatred, a world in which guns are thrown away and everybody has good relations. No war. But, what would it take for such a thing to take place? A change in the population in which everybody has no opinion, where everyone is the same? A surplus of resources and good conditions everywhere? An outside threat to everyone that creates unity? What does it take to create world peace?
A change in which everyone becomes the same doesn't seem like the optimal choice in this utopia, and it certainly doesn't seem very realistic. Differing views stem from differing conditions in the environment and possibly genetic make-up, which creates variation among individuals. A surplus of resources and good conditions might work, but it would require a miracle for something like that to happen, and plus this surplus will contribute to the growing global population, and soon there wouldn't be enough to feed everyone again, so conflict over resources would yet continue. An outside threat to everyone could possibly work, foreign terror can be a powerful unifying force, as individuals usually band together in the face of adversity(ex. the September 11th, 2001 terrorist bombings on the Twin Towers), but it could also work in the opposite direction, panic and confusion could drive different groups of people against each other, creating a divisive force in the population.
These are some theoretical situations in which all peoples of the world form friendly bonds with one another and end all wars (or conflicts) in the world. But what would actually work? Can you think of some things?
~C.

Happy that we're not

You know what. There are so many whiner blogs out there that I'm happy that we talk about random metaphorically-enlightening nonsense rather than complain about the mundanity of our lives.

Aren't you?

In other news:

Haiti!

I doubt humanity will get off of its lazy ass to defend Haiti. I feel that recently, we've degenerated into apathetic slugs who solely work in self-interest. So if you feel like proving me wrong, get your friends to help the rescue effort in Haiti...somehow. I wouldn't know, I'm one of the slugs.

Holy crap, I started whining, what to do now....

*snaps fingers*

HEY!

DO YOU WANNA FEEL SO ENERGETIC?!?

whoever can name where that's from gets a free...I dunno.

hi-five of awesomeness.

I changed the muzak.

May the force be with you. BKH

When I was your age...

I hope that I get to grow up to be one of the greatest old men ever. I would pass down wisdom like nobody's business. Only I would be so senile and crazy that all of my teachings would be incoherent. And I would be talking nonsense in three different languages: English, Chinese, and Spanish, with random gibberish sprinkled here and there. Also, whenever I would have the opportunity, I would always talk with my mouth full. Get some disgusting blobs of food everywhere, with some spit. And I would always creep or annoy people younger than me. Like with little children, I would be all nice and keep talking to them about how the world was when I was their age. And I would threaten them to pay my retirement funds. I would keep yelling at teenagers, to "turn down their music", even when they didn't have it on. I would also yell at them about their physical appearances, clothes, and manner of speaking. And for adults would be younger than me, I would always offer them the most useless and disgusting things, like my pre-chewed food or a random stick I found. I would also give them financial advice that makes no sense what-so-ever. And for old people, we would keep shouting at each other, then laugh and go play cyber bingo. I would also make sure to not get sent to some insane asylum, so I could keep going to the supermarket's return or refund lane to talk to random people. Yup, I would be one of the best crazy, senile old men ever. Hopefully.

Primal Instincts

Humans. Are they truly more sophisticated than the rest? I suppose it's true in some sense, being able to change the environment around us, creating structures, marvels of wonders, with our own hands. But are we really as intelligent and superior as the rest of the animals? Or have we still the instincts of them?
Take for example, the discrimination of women in societies. Sure, in developed worlds such as the United States and India, secularism and womens' education have lessened the sexism in their societies, but it still exists today. But why? Why discriminate women? How have these patriarchal societies come to be? I have a theory, and I'm pretty sure many other scientists (or human geographers) have already figured it out.
It all starts with the habits of animals. Usually, because of certain organs of females, the mother carries the responsibility of feeding the newborns after birth, while the father has to protect the family or go to hunt for food. This is natural, but if the population keeps getting larger, as it inevitably will under certain circumstances, the males will have to hunt for more and more food, thus depleting the available resources and thus cause competition to arise. Between species, different populations, or in the same population, it can vary, but the results could prove to be the same. So, when there is competition, there is naturally warfare; the two populations will attack each other for the resources, like when individuals fight over a mate. Now, warfare needs some sort of organization, otherwise things will really get out of hand, so this creates a need for a government, which will oversee the fighting, the resources, and any other issue in the population. Now, because the females in the population have the burden of caring for the young, the males are usually the ones who fight, so as a result, the males get the glory and recognition while the women are pretty much just seen as the child-bearers of the society. And so, the government gives more rights to the glorified males while oppressing the females, fearing that should they get killed, there would be less of a population to fight even more. Religions come about, which restrict females' role in society even more (such as Christianity and Islam) and this eventually evolves into women discrimination as we know it today. This is my theory, and I have not the tools, knowledge, nor contacts to experiment to see if it is true. This is also one example of humans acting on animal insticts. Also please don't be insulted, if you feel insulted.