If there’s one thing we can all agree on, is that’s we’re in severe need of good news these days. Unfortunately, we can’t even all agree on what would be considered good news.
Science to the rescue! No matter what’s going on in the world, we can always count on scientists to be a steady source of entertainment. That’s why we keep sending them grants. And if their discoveries happen to help mankind in a positive way, that’s great too, but nowhere is that anywhere near our main priority.
Unfortunately, even what seems to be good news at first might turn out not to be as amazing once you start looking into it. But when that happens, we can just jump to another news story.
Our first story today is from November, when a Virgin Atlantic plane flew across the Atlantic Ocean—from London to JFK—fueled by nothing but fat and sugar.
At which point it immediately had a heart attack.
This was part of an initiative by the airlines to do research into “Sustainable Aviation Fuels” that are better for the environment.
Airlines have been finding ways to be better for the environment for years—they built narrower seats, took most of the stuffing out of the seat backs, and they make passengers split a can of soda with a complete stranger. And it makes sense. You give a passenger a full can of soda every time he flies, and soon he’ll need a bigger seat.
We already know that things can run on fat and sugar. We run on fat and sugar. Well, run is a strong word.
I would also think that the exhaust fumes probably smell amazing.
They’re saying, though, that doing this was a one-time stunt and that they won’t regularly offer flights like this. They were just trying to prove that they can. Clearly, they were trying to settle a bet.
Apparently, in order to just grow enough sugar cane to be used on all flights, they would need 482,000 square miles of land, which is roughly equivalent to the surface area of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Louisiana combined. And I for one am willing to make that sacrifice. Can we use Washington DC, or does it have to be Washington State?
So “sustainable” might be a strong word. But at least they’re trying.
Airlines have also been trying other things. In September, a plane containing 111 passengers took off from Switzerland and landed in Spain without a single suitcase on board.
That’s how you do it. Just a load of passengers gathered around the baggage carousel at the destination, waiting for their bags to appear from some magical dimension and wondering if they have the right carousel.
“We were just following you guys.”
“We were just following you guys!”
“Did anyone hear the announcement?”
They were waiting at the carousel for 2 hours before they were told.
The situation actually worked out, though, because when you’re the only one who loses his luggage, nobody cares. But when it’s an entire flight, then you guys are friends for life. Because one person says, “I brought Tylenol in my carry-on! Who needs Tylenol?” And another person says, “I brought a toothbrush!”
But speaking of ways to go green, scientists at the University of Chicago have recently come up with a way to grow potatoes that are much bigger than the potatoes we’re used to, which is great news for the Yidden, but the scientists didn’t let that stop them.
Giant potatoes! That’s the dream.
The part you don’t want to hear is that they did this by injecting fat genes from another species that has also been growing bigger in recent years: human beings.
They said, “Whatever gene is making people bigger can make other things bigger, right?” The logic is there.
So number one, that means that yes—sometimes being fat is in the genes. And I mean, we’ve all seen people that look like they’ve been injected with potato DNA, especially at the airport. So why not go the other way?
The great thing is that bigger potatoes means less peeling come Pesach time, although maybe not, because no one is changing the cookbooks. It’s just going to mean heavier, blander kugels that everyone is going to stare at come Shulchan Orech.
“Totty! I have a new question this year!”
“Me too.”
According to a spokesman, they didn’t think this would work. They honestly thought it would kill the potato plants.
But the potatoes ended up 50% larger, which sounds about right.
They do have a ways to go, though, because for example, they have not found anyone who’s actually willing to taste the potatoes.
And speaking of new discoveries in biology, there’s been an exciting new development in the field of starfish.
We’ve all gone to aquariums and picked up starfish, which seem safe because they don’t appear to be alive, despite the aquarium staff insisting that they are, and we marvel at their five arms and say, “Okay, but which arm is the head? Do they just not have heads?”
Anyway, according to researchers at Stanford, it turns out that the entire starfish is the head. That’s all it is. Starfish are just giant disembodied heads shimmying around the ocean floor.
So that’s a nightmare. That’s what we’ve been touching. And handing to our kids.
Though it’s probably no picnic for the starfish either.
Wait, so where’s the body?
And that’s not the only sea creature scientists are looking into. According to a study from a few years ago, octopuses don’t actually have eight arms!
Yeah, apparently the whole thing is a head.
Just kidding. As far as I know.
They do have eight tentacles, but two specific ones are mostly used as legs to crawl around the sea bed. The rest are used for eating and swimming, though sometimes the octopus will pick one specific one and eat with that.
This whole thing came out of a study designed to show whether octopuses favored one side or the other: Are they righties or lefties? Not that this narrows anything down that much. What, are you buying them tefillin?
And speaking of heads, there’s also an article from August titled, “Japanese Scientist Wears Giant Bird Head for a Year to Befriend Real Birds, Fails.”
He also failed to make human friends that year. He’s 0 for 2.
He just wore a head. That should do it. Don’t bother disguising the rest of your body.
The scientist had been trying to study the language of these birds, and he figured out what a distress call sounds like, and then he noticed that they made this distress call whenever he was around.
“That’s weird.”
He already hadn’t been on the best of terms with them ever since he approached the nest once to weigh their chicks.
So he needed a disguise. And apparently, he remembered, this species is capable of remembering human faces from one day to the next. So instead of dressing up like maybe a different guy, he put on a giant bird head.
I saw pictures, and he looks like a human with a pigeon head and normal street clothes. And a backpack. And holes under the beak so he could continue observing the birds.
“It’s not that guy,” the birds said. “It’s some other giant thing with a backpack and an alien-looking bird head that doesn’t blink, except maybe in its neck holes. No distress here!”
But sometimes scientists are a little more successful at communicating. According to a story from December, scientists in Alaska claim to have had a 20-minute conversation with a whale!
(There’s not much to do in Alaska.)
Turns out the whale had nothing interesting to say. Nor did the scientists.
This wasn’t in the confines of an aquarium. The scientists went out into the ocean and used some underwater shower speakers to play a call and see if they attracted any whales. Most of the whales ignored it, except for one female humpback whale named Twain.
Who said her name was Twain? Did the whale say that?
Twain responded with a call of her own, and then scientists called back, and so on. But we have no idea what was said. The scientists don’t know either. All they know is that she changed her frequency in response to what they said. So it might have been an argument, for all they know.
And if you’re like, “Well, if you have no idea what was said, it wasn’t really a conversation, was it?” then you’ve probably never been married.
When asked why they did this, scientists said that this conversation could pave the way for conversations with aliens someday. Especially if this is how we want the conversations to go.
It’s a step, though.
This might sound ridiculous, but as I’ve said in articles before, I think that if we do someday find life forms on other planets, they’re statistically very unlikely to be anything like humans and way more likely to be like any of the other billions of species on this planet, none of which we know how to talk to. In fact we haven’t even mastered talking to the other humans.
And if the alien species are anything like whales, they’re not building spaceships so fast. Although this would be a good planet for them to come to, because of all the water. And then they can talk to the whales, and the whales can tell us what they said.
“They said, “So is this place all just disembodied heads? What are those things with the eight arms?” And we said, “They’re not all arms.” And then they ate a giant potato. In salt water.”
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of seven books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com. Read more of Mordechai Schmutter’s articles at 5TJT.com.
