Jeremy Herndon

I’ve seen pictures of the Smart car on the Internet, and on television, but not “for real” until today.  I was waiting to pull out of a parking lot and a large tractor trailer passed me by, followed by a Smart car.  What a huge difference in size that was!  It was a cute little thing, a bright red, but it brought back memories of many years ago when I saw the results of a little car being in an accident with a tractor trailer and it made me shudder.  I don’t know how safe I would feel in such a little car!

Do you know what parthenogenesis means?  I didn’t until I read it in an article that was talking about how a second case of asexual reproduction in sharks was documented this week in Virginia Beach.  It seems that a female blacktip shark, having been the only kind of her species in an aquarium, gave birth without benefit of having a mate.  The article also mentions that last year a hammerhead shark in a zoo in Omaha also gave birth without benefit of mating.

I found this to be quite fascinating!  I knew that there were some animals that could do that, but not sharks!  Considering how many people are afraid of sharks, this could be very scary news to some people.  I would not be surprised to see this story on the Colbert Report’s threat down sometime soon!

I have an uncle who lives in England, and he sent me an email telling me that horrible storms have hit the UK, killing five people.  The country is under flood alert.  I don’t remember hearing about this on the news anywhere, and it makes me wonder why.  I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention, or if it just didn’t get very much coverage here in the US.  It seems to me that sometimes “we” are a little bit too self-centered and egotistical and don’t pay enough attention to what is going on in the rest of the world unless it has a direct impact on “American Interests” - which means corporate profits!

I’ve heard that Hurricane Gustav is heading for New Orleans, and the Mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city.  The experts are saying it is going to be the worse hurricane they’ve seen to date and if they don’t evacuate then they are going to be sitting on their rooftops surrounded by water, waiting for rescue.  He essentially told the residents “if you don’t get out, you’ll be on your own.”

I just can’t even imagine living in an area that is so susceptible to that much damage from such frequent hurricanes!  I know a lot of people were born and raised there and feel like they are “stuck” there, which really is too bad.  It would be nice if the government would come up with a program to buy their homes and turn those areas into parks so that the people could afford to move someplace safer!

I was reading an article on a news website that I found called livescience.com that states that many schools have decided to stop supplying trays to their students.  They think that this will save energy, by not having to wash the trays.  The article indicated that they students are not very happy with the decision, as it makes carrying their food to their tables a lot more difficult.