Jeremy Herndon

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 was shocked to hear on the local news that a bridge in Gainesville VA that is part of the I-66 highway collapsed over part of RT 29 today shortly after noon.  The bridge that collapsed was undergoing demolition, so the roadways were cleared (thank goodness) but I did not find that out immediately.  I was very upset when I first heard the news because I have a lot of friends and family that drive over and under that bridge!  So I was freaking out; wondering if anyone I knew got hurt.  When I finally found out that the roads had been closed and only one person was hurt (minor injuries, one of the work crew) I felt quite relieved, but a little bit angry that such an accident could have happened in the first place.  I know that it is going to be investigated - I hope that they can figure out a way to prevent a situation like that from happening again!

I don’t understand a lot about what’s going on in the financial disaster news, but I was under the impression that this big bail-out issue was a pretty important issue, and that if the bill did not pass we were going to have a serious economy collapse that would wreak havoc with almost everyones life.  So I was very surprised to hear that the House of Representatives rejected the big Bail-Out.  I hope this is not a result of people holding out for some pork-barrel favors!   I don’t know what the other options are to the bail out package, so I sure hope that someone comes up with a solution that prevents us all from losing our jobs, and homes, and starving to death!  This is pretty serious stuff!

Well history certainly is in the making, there is no doubt about that.  Big financial corporations are failing left and right.  I have no pity on those corporations, but I do understand that if they don’t get some kind of rescue from the US the economy is going to be in even deeper trouble than it is - and that is hard for me to imagine. 

I have a few friends who claim “so what, it doesn’t effect me, so I don’t care.”  They don’t understand that as the problems trickle down they could lose their jobs and not be able to find new ones.  Without their jobs they will be unable to pay their bills, might lose their homes and starve to death.  So this is a much bigger deal than a lot of the “common folks” really understand.  I know I’m nervous about my own job!

I was reading on a few Internet sites that the Royal Society’s education director Professor Michael Reiss has resigned from his post due to a controversy that occurred when he was misquoted regarding creationism being taught in the classroom.  He claims that he said that if a student brings up creationism that the class should be encouraged to understand evolution.  He was misquoted as saying that creationism should be taught in the classroom.

This is a classic case of people being misquoted and the havoc it can wreak in their lives.  I can think of a few times that I’ve said something and I was misquoted and I ended up in unfortunate circumstances, such as losing a valued friend.

A lie that is believed can have the same consequence as if it were true.  It really is too bad.