THE DIABOLICAL EXOTHERMIC STRATEGY OF THE JAPANESE HONEYBEE

Yasunori Koide, CC BY-SA 4.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The giant Asian hornet (pictured above) is not a friend of the honeybee, and its appearance at a beehive is not greeted by the hive's occupants with approbation, especially in light of the fact that a few hornets can eliminate an entire colony of 10,000 bees in a matter of hours while seizing the bee larvae as food for the hornet children. The gargantuan size of the hornet and the thickness of its exoskeleton protect the hornet from the stings of the bees, and each hornet can sting repeatedly while a bee can only sting once before it dies. The resulting slaughter from a giant Asian hornet invasion dwarfs even the acrimonious interaction between the competing houses in Game of Thrones.

However, not all bees meekly go to their demise in the presence of these monsters. Japanese honeybees (Apis cerana japonica) eschew futile stinging and lay a trap instead. They gather around the entrance of the hive and allow a hornet to enter. They then block the entrance, cluster together, and form a ball of bees with the hornet at its center. The bees thereafter exercise briskly by buzzing their wings for twenty minutes. The resulting body heat from the bees cooks the hornet to death.

Although giant Asian hornets feed on insects, they certainly will attack humans. Their venom is powerful and can result in death, especially in the case of multiple stings, even if the victim is not allergic to the toxin.

This ill-tempered insect has been relatively recently discovered in the state of Washington and in British Columbia, much to the chagrin of apiarists and also of those folks who wish to avoid being subjected to numerous painful and potentially lethal stings.

URSINE AGGRESSION UNVEILED

A common misconception is that black bears, because they are generally timid and docile, will not molest humans except when a sow bear believes that she needs to defend her cub. In reality, however, over 70% of the black bear attacks on humans are from predatory males. "Predatory" specifically means that the bear is not defending himself or others but is instead attacking the human because he believes that the human will be tasty.

For more info on a study of the phenomenon as reported in the Alaska Dispatch News, click here. The article also provides helpful hints on determining whether a bear is acting aggressively because it is nervous about human presence or instead because it wants to eat you. 

P.S. Don't forget the bear spray when in the great outdoors.

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THE ORIGIN OF RED STATES VS. BLUE STATES

By Gage (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The concept of "red states" for Republicans and "blue states" for Democrats in United States politics originated in 2000, when the three major networks, the New York Times, and USA Today decided, for the sake of uniformity, to institute the same system when displaying political maps showing which party won a state in the Presidential election.  

Prior to that time, there was no absolute consistency in applying the colors, although, as a general rule, most news agencies did follow the custom in Great Britain of representing the more conservative party by blue and the more liberal or revolutionary party by red. The method initiated in 2000 obviously falls contrary to this pattern.

According to the New York Times, it linked "red" to "Republican" for the simple reason that both words begin with "re." The decision purportedly had nothing to do with a fear that if the news media perpetuated the historical use of red, people would associate the Democratic Party with the crimson liberal taint of Marxism (even though that train had already long ago left the station).

BLOWING SMOKE UP YOUR ...

The modern usage of "blowing smoke up your arse" refers, of course, to the practice of providing someone with insincere compliments--usually to curry favor.

In days gone by, however, actually forcing smoke up a patient's rectum was considered a viable and valuable medical treatment for a variety of conditions.

The practice originated when European explorers noted that some Native American tribes treated bowel obstructions by placing a pipe into the rectum of the afflicted and blowing tobacco smoke into it. They also used the same treatment as a laxative for constipated horses.

Europeans adopted the practice for a variety of ailments, including worms, cancer, headaches, pulmonary problems, cholera, hernias, stomach cramps, "female diseases" and gout. However, the primary use of the treatment was to revive the "apparent dead" and was used with good effect in 1650, along with rubbing of limbs, bleeding, and applying of heating plasters, to bring back from unconsciousness a woman who was ineffectively hanged. Along this line, tobacco smoke enemas were considered as important as, and used along with, artificial respiration in order to revive drowning victims, as represented by the poetry of a Dr. Houlston in 1774:

"Tobacco glyster [smoke enema], breath and bleed.

Keep warm and rub till you succeed.

And spare no pains for what you do;

May one day be repaid to you."

In the 1780s, much in the same way that defibrillator devices are ubiquitous in modern society, the Royal Humane Society made smoke enema kits (similar to the one in the illustration below) available up and down the Thames River. The device included a bellows, fumigator, and tube. It was a far preferable alternative for first responders than the more primitive method of inhaling smoke and then blowing it directly through your lips into the appropriate orifice (and you thought that administering artificial respiration to a victim with halitosis was bad).

The use of tobacco smoke enemas quickly abated after 1811, when it was demonstrated that the active ingredient in tobacco, nicotine, was a poison which could stop the heart.

For a more detailed anal-ysis of this crucial topic, look at the glorious website Today I Found Out.

JIMINY CRICKETS!

If you are one of those people who do not like crickets and who do not think that they are lucky, you should probably avoid the Little Barrier Island off of New Zealand. It is the home of the giant wetapunga, which is eight inches (twenty centimeters) of corpulent insect pulchritude that can weigh more than a sparrow. The red object in the photo below is a full-sized tomato. "Wetapunga" is Maori for "god of ugly things."

"Weta Workshop" is also the name of a major special effects company for movies, TV shows, and commercials. Weta derived its name from the wetapunga insect because the cricket resembles many of the alien monsters designed by the studio.

Photo courtesy of Arpingstone via Wikimedia

THE DEXTROROTATORY STAIRWAY ELUCIDATION

Spiral staircases in medieval castles usually ran clockwise from the vantage point of a person ascending. This configuration put the wall next to the right side of an invading knight climbing the stairs and, if he was right-handed, inhibited his sword hand. Left-handed knights were not a problem, as they did not exist. Southpaws were considered the spawn of evil and could not become knights.

THE MONSTROUS EFFECTS OF MOUNT TAMBORA

The year 1815 saw a massive eruption of the Indonesian volcano Mount Tambora. The huge ash cloud spread across the earth and was a major contribution, in 1816, to what was called "The Year Without a Summer." In 1816, temperatures in Europe and America were lower than normal, resulting in widespread crop failure, famine, and cold, drizzly weather.

As a result, in the summer of 1816, several spoiled English yuppies (including Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and his paramour and future wife Mary) eschewed going outside in the cold and were cooped up inside Byron's vacation villa in Switzerland warming themselves around the fire. They decided to have a competition to determine who could pen the scariest ghost story. Eighteen-year-old Mary, after reading about galvanism, had a dream at around 2 AM on June 16, 1816, about a corpse being reanimated by a scientist with an electrical engine. She wrote her thoughts down in the form of a short story, which she then expanded into the novel Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. This book is considered by most experts to be the first example of science fiction.

Because the novel was written by a girl, it was originally published anonymously.

In the course of the tale, the monster is repudiated and rejected by his creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein even runs away from the creature when it first comes to life. This passage was actually autobiographical. In 1815, Mary had a kid who was two months premature. Percy, the father, abandoned the infant and his mother and left them so that he could have a torrid affair with Mary's half-sister, Claire. The child died two weeks later.

One of the other yuppies who participated in the contest was John Polidori, Lord Byron's 20-year old physician. Polidori penned for the competition a novel, which was eventually published in 1819, called The Vampyre. This was the story which launched the modern vampire genre--not, as is commonly assumed, Bram Stoker's 1897 best-seller Dracula. Unfortunately for Polidori, The Vampyre was published without his prior knowledge and was credited as being the work of Lord Byron (who by all accounts was something of an self-centered pooperhead). As a result, Polidori committed suicide at the age of 25 by ingesting cyanide.

In short, the Indonesian volcano not only provoked the death by starvation of millions of people, it also led to the creation of two of the most beloved Halloween monsters of today.

For more information about the disastrous effects of the Mt. Tambora eruption, please click here.

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