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Our dog is barking at all the people coming to the door asking for us to vote for their candidate for city council. On top of pondering for whom to vote, I just read an article that argues there was no big bang and the universe in infinite. Now there is more to think about. Will  these new ideas affect how I vote? There were long articles about the spread of the Indo European language group. Was it spread by warriors or farmers and when did it spread? Does it really matter? And some researchers found remains of wheat in England that are 8,000 years old. But wheat was only raised in England about 4,000 years ago. The article stated there may have been a land bridge and there was trade with Europe way back then. It’s amazing how much has changed and how much has not. Another study of the development of cities finds that cities in pre Spanish Mexico grew in similiar patterns to modern cities. Now I have to get back considering the candidates for my city council person. What about Florida and the ice age? 100 years ago a scientist discoverd human bones among ice age animal bones in Florida and was sure they lived at the same time. But very soon the idea was reject. Fast forward to the present and new studies seem to indicate humans were in Florida during ths time. Somehow it is hard to think of Florida and ice.

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I would not like to be bitten by a limpet. They have been tested and their teeth are the strongest organic material. Can you imagine falling into the Amazon River in you pirana proof suit and being ripped apart by a band of Limpets? Of course they move slowly and scrape stuff off of rocks. Still what if you were stuck on a rock for a long long time and tasted like what limpets eat? And bedbugs have evolved . I read that bedbug were originally on bats and that when people moved into caves some of the bug moved on to humans. Bat bedbugs are not immuned to many pesticides but human ones are. That great for the human bedbugs but not for humans. Good news, dogs can read human faces and like happy faces better than other ones. I don’t think bedbugs or limpets can or really care.

Other exciting news, a dwarf star was in our solar system about 70,000 years ago. It was much closer than any other star and was in the Oort Cloud which is way out there. It was a red dwarf. Many years later or around 40,000 years ago modern humans interbred with neanderthals. The passing star did not cause this , probably. Anyway all humans except those from Africa have about 2% neanderthal DNA. Asians have about 20% more and scientists think there was a second period of interbreeding with Asians. I was really suprised to learn that Penguins have lost ther ability to taste fish. They can taste sour and salty but not sweet, bitter and uname.  Uname apparently is what allows us to taste fish. of course the penguins swallow the fish whole so it does not really matter.

Have been reading about a 2.2 pound rat caught in a house in Sweden and the fossil of a really big rodent found in South America about the size of a buffalo. Several articles mentioned the latter. It lived about 2 million years ago and had powerful teeth that could be used for fighting and digging. While I would not like to have a group of these animals in my attic they could be useful in digging tunnels and canals. And they have found that there was a variety of mammals in the Jurassic period. Some lived in or near water, some lived in he trees and some burrowed inthe ground. If there had been humans at that time they would have been very small. The article said mammals only grew large after the Great Extinction. Speaking of extinction, one of the founders of the internet is worried that so much of the material stored on hard drives and the cloud may be lost as technology changes and we are unable to read that data. On top of that Bill Gates is also worried about the impact of AI. But there is good news. Male black widow spiders are only eaten by their mates 2% of the time. With certain other spiders it’s more frequent.

A planet much larger than Saturn has a ring system that is 200 times as large. It would reach from the Sun to the Earth. That is more amazing than the finish to the Super Bowl. And if that was not exciting enough a solar system that is twice as old as ours was discovered. It has five earth like planets but they are too close to have life. And maybe just as interesting in a smaller setting, a study found that baby chickens somehow place smaller numbers to the left and larger ones to the right. Will this discovery somehow help bring tranquility to a troubled world? Probably not. I continue to study Spanish while learning a slow pace but that’s okay because I have been inspired by the chickens. What if we find chickens on Mars?