Short of a typhoon ravaging Mazatlan or a fleet of UFOs landing on Gary Borse’s alien-friendly lawn, the national news will speak about only three things---the Covid-19 obsession, Donald Trump’s reign of terror or the virus' just desserts being delivered to Trump. Apparently, there are 194 countries in which nothing of consequence is happening. Even the late-arriving football games are first examined for their whittled down fandom and infected players rather than oh, say, their final scores. If we’re lucky, the ABC Evening News may sign off with a 30-second snippet about a dancing mailman or a tot who can recite all the state capitals (it’s Pierre, Ralphie), but that’s it.
The Flying Pie thinks all of this is a travesty, an abdication of duty on the part of the television networks. There are things happening out there that you, the valued reader, should know about. So just in case you forgot to renew your subscription to the New York Times, here they are:
The Elusive Butterfly
In chaos theory, which almost everybody believes is correct, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a determinate linear system can result in large differences in a later state. In other words, if you accidentally disrupt the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in 1915, maybe Archduke Ferdinand will not be shot three years later and maybe there will be no World War I. Everybody likes butterflies, but this looks like a good tradeoff to us. Trouble is, nobody can determine which butterfly to mess with.
Science fiction books and movies have been playing this song for years, and it seems a reasonable assumption. After all, if I don’t go to the grocery store today, there will be no avocados tomorrow. If I don’t tip the parking valet three times in a row, my car might come back with an antelope’s head in the back seat. So if John Wilkes Booth has a gun misfire it’s logical to assume society would be much different today. Or if Booth gets a toothache and is delayed at the dentist, same result. The smallest factor seems capable of changing the future. Thus, it’s logical to assume that if someone were able to return to the past almost anything he might do would change the future. Except, of course, that the future has already arrived intact. What’s up with that? Man’s eventual ability to return to the past is fraught with danger, assuming it was ever possible. Or is it?
Author Stephen King wrote a book a book about a man who went back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination, but King is not a subscriber to the butterfly effect. “The past is obdurate,” Stephen says. “It doesn’t want to be changed.”
Researchers at the University of Queensland now agree with him, claiming the paradox could not exist. “Say you travelled back in time,” supposed Queensland scientist Fabio Costa, “in an attempt to stop Covid-19’s Patient Zero from being exposed to the virus. And you actually stopped him from becoming infected. That would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox---an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe.”
Looking again at Patient Zero, “You might stop him from becoming infected but in doing so catch the virus yourself. Then you would become Patient Zero, or someone else would,” said co-author of Costa’s paper, Germain Tobar. “No matter what you did, the salient events would recalibrate around you.” Whew, that’s a relief! Will someone run over to Marty McFly’s house and tell him not to waste his time?
An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Transparent Toilet?
Okay, so those wily Japanese have, ahem, unveiled transparent toilets in some Tokyo parks. We know what you’re thinking, but architect Shigeru Ban would like to put your mind at ease.
“There are two things we worry about when entering a public restroom, especially those located in a park,” says Ban. “The first is cleanliness and the second is whether anyone is inside.”
Transparent walls, of course, can address both of these concerns about what awaits one inside. But then there’s the issue of, well, everyone can see them inside. Ah but, watashinotomodachi wa son’nani hayakunai, or not so fast, my friend. After users enter the restroom and lock the door, the room’s walls turn a powdery pastel shade and are no longer see-through.
“Using a new technology, we made the outer walls with glass that becomes opaque when the door is closed, so that a person can check inside before entering,” the Nippon Foundation says. “Our ambition is to create toilets like the world has never seen.”
Kudos, men---you’re off to a good start. Maybe you could add a ceiling fan that puffs out a bit of lilac potpourri when the thing is flushed.
Turn My Emu Sibs Loose, Bruce….
Kevin and Carol, two emu survivors in a nestful of eggs which was abandoned, have never been shy. When their brothers and sisters moved on, the two siblings took a liking to the nearby Yakara Hotel, the social center of a tiny town in the Australian Outback. They paid their way, posing for photos with visitors and making cameo appearances when the hotel owners, Chris and Gerry Gimblett, were once interviewed by ABC.
Alas, Kevin and Carol have now found themselves emu non grata. Their cardinal sin? The emus have learned to climb stairs. This new skill has given the birds access to the hotel pub, and once inside they unleashed a wave of terror on the customers. They snatched away toast and french fries. They gallivanted behind the bar and scared off the polite drinkers. They ran through the place like feathered torpedoes and “heaven help anyone who might be in front of them,” according to Chris. “People would be making toast in the annex and suddenly a big head comes round the corner, takes the toast and gobbles it up. It is not safe to get between emus and food; they have sharp, strong beaks and their long necks can suck up food like a high-powered vacuum cleaner.” Besides, they’re incontinent.
Despite all this, the Gimbletts are glad the emus have hung around. Until recently, Chris said, they have been kept at bay by cordons which were erected around the back of the hotel. When they learned how to limbo under the restraints, the stairs proved a second barrier. “We never thought they’d learn to climb stairs,” says Lynne Byrne, a Yakara resident who raised Kevin and Carol.
A prominent sign at the base of the stairway now reads, “Emus have been banned from this establishment. Please replace the emu barrier after entering.” Kevin and Carol, who cannot read (yet) look at the stairway bar, miffed. They’re thinking of taking the matter up with the local magistrate the next time he passes through town. Until then, their diet consists mainly of leaves, grasses and native flowers. “It’s not french toast,” complains Kevin, “but we’ll manage.”
Anyone Here Seen My Roach Clip?
We all know China is….well, different. Therefore, we might expect most aspects of Chinese life to vary greatly from the everyday pursuits of the people of other lands. Take agriculture, for instance. While the natives of most countries raise goats, sheep, cattle and chickens, several farmers in China are more enchanted with (ahem) cockroaches. Your overarching question will be “Why?”
To find out why, you will go where the action is, walking in pitch-black darkness through the narrow corridors of an industrial-sized hangar, sweaty and nauseated, the air thick with intense heat, humidity and the stench of rotting meat. All of which is a walk in the park compared to the awful, everpresent noise all around you. It sounds like the pitter-patter of rain but it's really the scurrying footfalls of a billion palm-sized cockroaches. Okay, we just lost our female audience and Nancy Kay has run screaming into the street, but we’ll continue.
In China, cockroach farms are a burgeoning business, with over 100 thriving enterprises active across the country. The farm described above is managed by a professional bug farmer named Yin Diansong. His facility is located in eastern China in Zhangqiubei, near the city of Jinan, for those of you who want to avoid the place at all costs. “We have 60 small rooms,” says Yin, and there are 20 million cockroaches in each room. In total, there are one billion cockroaches.”
Every day, the farm’s impressively elaborate system of pipes and pumps dumps 50 tons of ki tchen waste collected from restaurants onto metal shelves. As if it were Maxwell House, the roaches enjoy it down to the last drop. Hey, it’s one way to keep that nasty landfill from filling up. The whole experiment was started to investigate means of dispensing with food waste. But then the Chinese discovered something else. This sea of gorged roaches actually had a second use.
“We grind them up into powder,” says Li Yanrong, head of the country’s cockroach farming project. “Cockroaches are rich in protein. Mixed into animal feed, the roach powder provides a cheap, nutritious and practically everlasting feed supplement. If we can farm cockroaches on a large scale, we can provide protein that benefits the entire ecological cycle. We can replace animal feeds filled with antibiotics and supply organic feed, which is good for the animals and the ground soil.”
The cockroach business is already showing impressive results. The traditional farm animals in the area---chickens, ducks, goats and pigs—are now subsisting on the roach diet with no complaints. Matter of fact, the critters seem to prefer the new vittles to the old feed. “I particularly like the new food’s crispness,” raves Petunia Pig, while her pal Porky loves the dreamy almond undertones. Next thing you know, there’ll be a fast food joint on the corner selling Roach McNuggets. They’ll probably call them something else.
Working Class Hero
Your common everyday rat has been cast in a bad light ever since Jimmy Cagney allegedly uttered the phrase “You dirty rat!” in a 1932 movie. Decades of impressionists have used the line when pretending to be Jimmy, who never actually said it. Unfortunately, the insult long ago passed into the public domain and now the rats have no one to sue. After a long and unpleasant century of bad press, however, there appears to be a light at the end of the rodent’s tunnel.
A top vermin hype agency called Halos ‘R’ Us is avidly telling the world about Magawa, the hero rat. Stop shaking your head. This African Giant-Pouched Rat was trained to detect landmines by the Belgium-based charity APOPO. Using an excellent sense of smell and memory, Magawa has now discovered 39 landmines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance. He can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, a job it would take a human with a metal detector up to four days to accomplish.
Unlike metal detectors, the rat ignores scrap metal and only sniffs out explosives, making him a fast and efficient landmine detector, according to Christophe Cox, chief executive of APOPO, the non-profit organization which trained Magawa and several other rats. It also trains the creatures to detect tuberculosis in their spare time.
Magawa, now called “the hero rat,” was presented with a small blue collar and tiny gold medal in late September for his work in saving countless lives in Cambodia by the British veterinary charity PDSA. The director of People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, Jan McLoughlin, lauded “Magawa’s work directly saves and changes the lives of men, women and children who are impacted by these landmines. Every discovery he makes reduces the risk of injury or death for local people.”
And you, foolish human, laughed when Mighty Mouse first donned his scarlet cape.
That’s all, folks….
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