A day for several posts.

First of all, an addendum to the cockroach entry. Whit (http://bushsyndrome.blogstream.com/) wrote a comment that I should have thought of: “Another detail worth mentioning is that the cockroach has survived virtually unchanged for the past 250 million years. The dinosaurs became extinct over 65 million years ago.” Dinosaurs were on Earth for about 160 million years
Homo sapiens appeared about 130 thousand and modern civilization (true modern man) about 15 thousand years ago. Still wet behind the ears.

Of course, an important aspect is that the strength of cockroaches, rats, sharks, etc. is that they are doing just fine the way they are, thank you very much. The strength of human beans is the evolution into something better.

The economy keeps getting worser and worser. News full of dire warnings. Whose fault?

Sort of difficult to put one factor at fault. Unthinking home buyers and the unscrupulous banking industry is one. But the cost of the Iraq war is certainly right up there at the top. Bush's legacy might very well be a collapse of the whole world's economy.

They say that an American blogger spilt the beans about Harry being in Afghanistan. I know what you are thinking and no it was not me.

Whit (http://bushsyndrome.blogstream.com/) in his 24 February post had a bunch of gross but interesting videos about eating bugs. You especially need to see the one where the guy eats the big fat grub.

It brought to mind an article in the November Scientific American.about what happens when you cut (or bite) the head off a cockroach (blatella germanica. Sounds like what you do after eating them). They are truly remarkable little critters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach). “Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects on the planet,.”. They are very resistant to radiation because their cells only divide when they molt.

A roach body can survive without the head for weeks. It breathes through its “torso”, has low blood pressure and does not bleed to death, and is poikilothermiv (coldblooded) so that it uses up little energy. The head can survive for hours, also. The reason scientists are studying it is not because they like torturing cockroaches. Although that is not such a bad thing. It is because one of the things that seems to do in the head and body is the lack of neurological and hormonal interchange from each other.

So, next time you smush one of these critters, think of how tough they really are. And, when the bombs come, superior. And the next time you bite the head off one, you can feel the antennae twitch on the way down. Or, if you just eat the body, the legs still run down your esophagus.

According to The Encylopedia Britannica thingy on my Yahoo home page, on this day in 1932, Johnny Cash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash) was born in Kingsland, Arkansas. It is worthy of some of his work.

Can you recognize the voices in “Highwayman”?

He would be four years older than me. But he looks a lot more. God rest his soul.