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  • UFO over Washington D.C.

    ByJohn Brown

    I just ran across this.

     Published on Saturday, July 27, 2002 in the Washington Post
    F-16s Pursue Unknown Craft Over Region
    by Steve Vogel

    WASHINGTON — For Renny Rogers, it was strange enough that military jets were flying low over his home in Waldorf in the middle of the night. It was what he thinks he saw when he headed outside to look early yesterday that floored him.

    “It was this object, this light-blue object, traveling at a phenomenal rate of speed,” Rogers said. “This Air Force jet was right behind it, chasing it, but the object was just leaving him in the dust. I told my neighbor, ‘I think those jets are chasing a UFO.’ ”

    Military officials confirm that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base were scrambled early yesterday after radar detected an unknown aircraft in area airspace. But they scoff at the idea that the jets were chasing a strange and speedy, blue unidentified flying object. Read more here.

    I don’t automatically assume it was methane creatures from Jupiter or our long lost cousins from Alpha Centauri. But I do find it interesting. Was it some new military craft? An exercise? Something the military has seen before? From another nation? The possibilities are endless. Here’s another link to the full article since the WP appears not to have archived it online.

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  • Bees Sniff Out Land Mines

    ByJohn Brown

    The bee. We slather its delicious vomit on bread and muffins. We send colonies out to pollinate our crops. Now Colin Henderson and his University of Montana colleagues have partnered up with bees to “locate buried land mines” and do it more quickly and thorougly than any dog.

    “We can survey in one day what takes more than a week with dogs,” he says, “and humans stand 300 yards away.”

    Bees can find not only land mines, but also drugs and decomposing bodies. Oh, and they are smart enough to recognize a sugar daddy when they see one.

    Here’s the full article. Read it. Enjoy. Things like this are part of the wonderfulness of life.

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  • Hitler’s Father and Snake Venom

    ByJohn Brown

    Hitler

    I’ve just begun HITLER by Ian Kershaw. Fascinating. And full of zing. Did you know that Hitler’s father:

    • Smoked like a chimney
    • Went to beer table after work instead of home
    • Took little interest in family and had multiple affairs with women
    • Beat Adolf almost daily, his gentle mother sometimes waiting outside the door while he thrashed his son
    • Had a passion for bee-keeping

    See, it’s weird, unexpected, almost against-type details like the last one that always seem to stimulate the zing meters.

    3 ways that snakes kill

    Let’s see: digest you, hundreds of blood clots, and brain attacks. Cool visuals of how the 3 types of venom work!

    And article explaining more about venom and why, for instance, sea snakes have such quick killing venom or why cobras have venom that could kill an elephant with one bite.

    So after reading this, I’m thinking of Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake where in the future this woman uses snakes to manufacture medicine. Not in a factory, but in the snakes themselves. And she delivers them through natures brilliantly evolved hypodermics.

    But what other applications are there of this to a story? Heck, a murder mystery where you’d need to know the type of venom and the snakes nearby, a new type of dragon’s breath (instead of fire, could they breathe out a fog of one of the three toxins?), some new enzyme protein cocktail that leads to…superhero skills or is it immortality?

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  • Are Squirrels Smarter Than We Think?

    ByJohn Brown

    I miss the squirrels we had at the old homestead. No, that’s not hyperbole. Until two years ago the six of us lived in a 900 sf home my wife’s grandmother homesteaded for. But that’s beside the point. We had squirrels there. They chittered, ran about, tossed apples down at my girls when they tried to inhabit the hammock.

    For those of you not from Utah, you might be wondering why this is such a big deal. If you’re from the East you might be thinking I’m nuts. But out West trees are few and far between, which means so are the squirrels. So we loved our squirrels, but then they got into our neighbor’s fifth wheel and he promptly killed them all.

    Alas.

    But here, for your pleasure, are squirrels using their god-given intelligence to do what they were bred to do–steal and eat.

    Of course, they are squirrels.  Not quite geniuses yet.

    One of my stories either needs a squirrel who steals candy bars or a character who is constantly setting up obstacle courses for the varmits.

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