Xenophilia, Live at Swabbies

Swabbie’s At Metro Marina
5871 Garden Hwy
Sacramento, CA 95837
(916) 920-8088

We played about 5 PM to 6 PM, followed by the Alanis Crow Project. This was our first gig with Kendall on bass. Great place, right on the river.

Piglet with monkey’s face / Holoprosencephaly / Homer’s Cyclops

Curious locals flocked to the home of owner Feng Changlin after news of the piglet spread in Fengzhang village, Xiping township.

“It’s hideous. No one will be willing to buy it, and it scares the family to even look at it!” Feng told Oriental Today.

He says the piglet looks just like a monkey, with two thin lips, a small nose and two big eyes. Its rear legs are also much longer than its forelegs, causing it to jump instead of walk.

Feng’s wife said the monkey-faced piglet was one of five newborns of a sow which the family had raised for nine years.

“My God, it was so scary. I didn’t known what it was. I was really frightened,” she said.

“But our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk.”

Neighbours have suggested the couple keep the piglet to see how it looks as it matures. – orange

Okay, wow. That’s some mutation. Human-pig hybrid embryos have been approved in the UK. How about China?

NOTE: China is a leader in pig genetics.

Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Danish Committee of Pig Breeding and Production (DCPBP) jointly announce the public release of pig genomic sequences. The released sequence data include 3.84 million pieces of the genomes of five different domestic pig breeds from Europe and China. The data are generated from the first large scale pig genome sequencing effort, the Sino-Danish Pig Genome Project, started in 2001 on the basis of a long standing collaboration of scientists and research institutions from China and Denmark. – continues on science daily

Update: Thanks to SilviusMD for pointing out that this is the result of a neurological-facial malformation called Holoprosencephaly. “The cause is thought to be a genetic alteration, in this case probably due to environmental exposure to certain chemicals.”

With some trepeidation, I did a google image search for “Holoprosencephaly” and found some Cyclops looking individuals. One startling photo showed baby with its two eyes in a central eye socket … and no nose. So, it’s not just pigs. This happens occasionally in humans too. This same developmental disorder caused the cyclops kitten you may have seen a while back.

It would be interesting to figure out which chemicals might have caused this… but keep in mind that legends of a Cyclops goes way back, so modern pollutants can’t be the only cause. Yes, I think Cyclopes were real.

Hesiod describes one group of cyclopes and Homer describes another. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Zeus releases three Cyclopes, the sons of Uranus and Gaia, from the dark pit of Tartarus. They provide Zeus’s thunderbolt, Hades’ helmet of invisibility, and Poseidon’s trident, and the gods use these weapons to defeat the Titans. In a famous episode of Homer‘s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and a nereid (Thoosa), who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant country. The connection between the two groups has been debated in antiquity and by modern scholars.^[2]

This from Science Daily:

Homer’s Cyclops might be myth, but a disorder that can cause babies to be born with only one eye is very real. Scientists from Cleveland, Ohio, and Paris, France, reached an important milestone in understanding one of the molecular causes of a rare, but serious birth defect, Holoprosencephaly. …a known mutation of the TG interacting factor (TGIF) gene, called TGIF.P63R, causes Holoprosencephaly, which affects brain and skull formation. In particular, researchers found that this mutation not only does not produce the protein necessary for healthy fetal development, but the mutant protein may actually destroy the small amounts of the normal protein that is needed. … Holoprosencephaly occurs when the embryonic forebrain fails to divide into the two lobes that make up the cerebral hemispheres. As a result, people with this disorder have a single-lobed brain structure and severe skull and facial defects. In most cases, the disorder is so severe that fetuses die before birth. In relatively “mild” cases, babies may be born with near-normal brain development, but they usually have facial deformities affecting the eyes, nose, and/or upper lip.

Unique Habitat Found Inside Earth

Researchers studying life in the deep subsurface of our planet have discovered a unique bacterium living 1 mile (1.7 km) below the Earth’s surface. The tiny bacteria live in a community of subsurface microbes inhabiting a South African platinum mine.

The deep subsurface of Earth harbors many unique microbes that are only accessible through large scale drilling projects or mining. By trekking into the ultra-deep mines of South Africa, researchers are getting a rare glimpse into this unique habitat. In the depths of South Africa’s Northam Platinum mine, scientists from the University of Western Ontario and Princeton University have gained access to many previously undiscovered microbial communities.

While mining and drilling allow scientists to sample the unique environment below the Earth’s soil, these activities obviously disturb the subsurface of the planet. Digging into the ground disrupts the microbial communities that live there. When people enter mines and caves, they bring with them a massive number of non-native microbes. Because of this, it’s difficult to get uncontaminated samples.

The team from the recent study decided to test samples from mines in order to determine just how contaminated they really are. They collected samples from slime, or biofilm, growing on the walls of the Northam mine in South Africa. An explosion of life occurs where subsurface water leaks out of the mine walls and meets with oxygen, leading to films of microscopic organisms.

Previously, researchers overlooked these biofilms because they thought the films would be too heavily contaminated. To test this theory, the team determined whether or not their biofilms were formed by contaminant organisms from the surface, or by unique subsurface organisms.

The study, by Greg Wanger, Tullis Onstott and Gordon Southam, was published in a recent edition of the journal Geobiology.

The authors showed that the biofilms contained a number of unique organisms associated with the deep subsurface, and therefore such films might be an excellent place to search for new and unusual species of microbes. In fact, in their study the team came across one particularly strange microbe shaped like a tiny, microscopic star. – continued on yahoo

The mystery of the Chinese pyramids

The virtually unknown Chinese pyramids are historic monuments that now struggle against the ravages of time and the elements. The elaborate walls of one grand structure were accidentally discovered by U.S. pilot James Gaussman towards the end of the Second World War.  His engine failed when returning from a mission to aid the Chinese army en route to his base in Assam, India. Flying over Xi’an at a low altitude, Gaussman was astonished at the site of an enormous pyramid in the distance. The pilot did not waste this precious opportunity, and flew over, taking the photographs that would later accompany a report presented to U.S governmental authorities. In 1947, another U.S. pilot, keen to the legend of Gaussman’s mysterious ‘Great White’ Chinese pyramid, flew close enough to the structure to catch a glimpse for himself. He estimated the ancient wonder to stand nearly 1500 ft high in comparison to Egypt’s great pyramid of Giza which stands a mere 480 ft. from base to vertex. Yet this miraculous pyramid remained a closely guarded secret, kept hidden from the prying eyes of international investigation by Chinese authorities. … In 2000, China recognized that there were some 400 pyramids in the Shanxi region, to the north of Xi’an. Smaller than the legendary ‘Great White’ pyramid, these ancient remains have been classified by some as burial mounds.  While some of these structures do in fact serve as tombs, others suggest the earliest Chinese pyramids served a more mysterious purpose. – mysterytopia

Here is some info on what is supposedly the largest pyramid in the world.

“Great White Pyramid” of “Xian,China” is the “Worlds Largest Pyramid”. It is reported to be about 300 meters high. It is found in Tibet – located in the Qin Ling Shan mountains, about100 km southwest of the city of Xi’an, in the People’s Republic of China. Life Magazine had a picture of this Tibetan Pyramid taken in 1957. The first picture to be seen here was taken from a C-54 in world war II by a pilot who flew supplies through the Himalaya Mountain terrain as a volunteer helping the Chinese. Hartwig Hausdorf, a researcher in Germany, sent over photographs from his collection, taken during his 1994 trip to the Forbidden Zone in The Shensi Province in China. Estimates for an age are 4,500 years old. Hausdorf mentions the diaries of two Australian traders who, in 1912, met an old Buddhist monk who told them these pyramids are mentioned in the 5,000 year old records of his monastery as being “very old.”- 2002china

I’d love to learn if there is any writing or rooms inside this pyramid. Perhaps this one shows that Tibet was the center of a forgotten “advanced” human civilization which led to the pyramids in Egypt and elsewhere.

One theory about unexplained UFOs is that a past Earth civilization went underground and continued to progress technologically to a point where they are now superior to us. This may explain encounters with “Nordic” human looking aliens, or the “Men in Black” who seem very odd and otherworldly and who turn up in connection with some UFO and strange creature sightings (like the Mothman.)

Scientists expose mystery behind northern lights

Scientists have exposed some of the mystery behind the northern lights. On Thursday, NASA released findings that indicate magnetic explosions about one-third of the way to the moon cause the northern lights, or aurora borealis, to burst in spectacular shapes and colors, and dance across the sky. …

A fleet of five small satellites, called Themis, observed the beginning of a geomagnetic storm in February, while ground observatories in Canada and Alaska recorded the brightening of the northern lights. The southern lights — aurora australis — also brightened and darted across the sky at the same time.

These auroral flare-ups occur every two or three days, on average.

A team led by University of California, Los Angeles, scientist Vassilis Angelopoulos confirmed that the observed storm about 80,000 miles from Earth was triggered by a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. Every so often, the Earth’s magnetic field lines are stretched like rubber bands by solar energy, snap, are thrown back to Earth and reconnect, in effect creating a short circuit.

It’s this stored-up energy that powers the northern and southern lights or, in other words, causes them to dance, according to Angelopoulos…. – yahoo

Last-of-Kind Giant Galapagos Tortoise May Become Father

Lonesome George, the long-living Galapagos Islands giant tortoise thought to be the last of his subspecies, might soon be a father.

The Galapagos National Park announced Monday that a female tortoise that has accompanied George since 1993 laid three intact eggs that are being cared for in an artificial incubator.

The female belongs to the closest existing phenotype to that of George, though they are from different islands and hence different subspecies.

The eggs have appeared “after 36 years of multiple efforts … when we thought it was impossible for the tortoise known as Lonesome George to reproduce,” the park said in a statement.

Found in 1972 on Pinta island, George is estimated to be in his 70s — middle age for a giant tortoise.

It will take another 120 days to learn if the eggs are viable. – fox