The world is a very interesting place. It’s filled with wonder and creativity that fills even the most adventurous of souls. To speak more literally, I mean to say that there are so many different things that we can experience that most of us don’t even know about. Too often we focus on the bad things that come across our news headlines. Instead, why don’t we take a journey through the strange, terrific, and absurd things in our world today? Trust me, there are a lot of them.
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve heard a lot of news about the warming climate, and how the ice caps have been melting for a long time now. Climate change is a real threat, but that’s not the only interesting thing happening in the polar regions. Interestingly enough, Antarctica, which penguins and frozen scientists primarily inhabit, has been developing small parts of its own regional culture. Scientists have noted the emergence of a distinctly Antarctician Accent among the researchers there. The most notable changes were reports of their ‘o’ vowels changing to be placed at the front of their mouth rather than the back like us Midwesterners. Who knows, maybe they’re all secretly trying to imitate Canadians over there.
One absurd story comes to us from California (of course), where the world’s oldest tree, Pinus Longaeva, is found. Arborists and scientists have been working together to try and clone many species of the oldest trees in the world. Methuselah the oldest tree in the world, is thought to be over 5000 years itself! The reasoning behind this cloning? To save the ancient species from the warming effects of climate change and the drought-ridden landscape of the region. Honestly, I can’t blame them too much. If I had a tree over 50 centuries old in my backyard, I’d want to save it too.
This next story is quite literally out of this world. NASA has been racing China to the moon as of late with its new Artemis program. The eventual goal of which is to establish a permanent moon base which will be used as a launch pad to Mars. It’s exciting stuff to think that it’s going to happen in our lifetime. On National Public Radio just this last week, a building entrepreneur who developed 3D printing concrete machines already has plans in place for construction on the lunar surface. In fact, I would encourage you to keep up with NASA’s news outlets, because they do cool new things on a daily basis.
Back here on Earth, we have some more wild news that comes to us from the Florida Everglades. As many of us North Americans know, invasive species are a real problem in our half of the world, and the Everglades are no exception to this. Burmese Pythons have been destroying the natural ecosystem by overfeeding on rabbits and other rodent populations in the area. It’s gotten so bad that the Florida Government will pay people who kill and bring in remains of pythons. In fact, there are some Kansan residents who plan to do just that towards the end of this Summer. Can you imagine, the thrill of hunting and killing large reptiles? And getting paid for it? Sounds like a summer vacation to me!
With all that being said, there are so many different pieces of interesting information out there in the world that we all should get to enjoy. Our world is a crazy place, and it’s always fun to dig a little deeper into what’s going on.
