Riding the giant worm in London

 “The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is 3,959 miles, which isn’t so very far. It has been calculated that if you sunk a well to the center and dropped a brick into it, it would take only forty-five minutes for it to hit the bottom (although at that point it would be weightless since all the Earth’s gravity would be above and around it rather than beneath it). Our own attempts to penetrate toward the middle have been modest indeed. One or two South African gold mines reach to a depth of two miles, but most mines on Earth go no more than about a quarter of a mile beneath the surface. If the planet were an apple, we wouldn’t yet have broken through the skin, indeed, we haven’t even come close.” Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

I was running through man-made underground tunnels for a fair chunk of yesterday. Literally running like an energetic ant, bumping other tunnel travellers out of the way, apologising to every second one. I of course, on my busy day of business meetings, was utilizing one of the best underground rail systems in the world, the London Underground. Commonly known as ‘the tube’, the London Underground is a generally well-organised people moving system, which sees trains rapidly soaring over 249 miles of track. At some points, the tunnels are as deep as (approximately) 60m and if you use your imagination whilst riding, you can pretend you are inside a giant worm.

It’s cozy and warm inside the trains too, much like I imagine it to be inside a giant worm. The people tend to be quiet because there is no phone reception underground and if you fall asleep on your short trip, it’s almost like you have been teleported when you arrive at your destination. You literally walk deep down into the earth in one part of London, wake up and walk out into a completely different part of the city. Like magic!

An average of 2.7 million tube journeys are made per day and I’m guessing that involves an average of 1.2 million humorous situations. From a stranger losing balance and tumbling into an unfriendly looking other stranger to elegant corporate women losing all credibility when they inelegantly squeeze onto the train and get their hair stuck in the closing doors. There are drunken chatterboxes who ride the tube, and adorably innocent children asking consistently stupid questions. I’ve watched a pair start an awkward-for-everybody-but-them conversation and exchange numbers and a man attack another man for being verbally abusive to a mutual stranger. And I have only lived here a month.

I also recently learnt that the tube is a trouble spot for suicide. With it being so notorious that there was even a film, Three and Out, made, and severely criticised. The Brits seem to be a little bit desensitized to it all though, with underground management and train drivers making common announcements such as “person under a train” or “person on track” to explain the inconvenient train delay. It seems to be much more of a bother to late passengers than a shock and grief effect.

“The database shows that 18,677 accidents occurred across the Tube between January 2006 and March 2011, with 835 serious accidents and 188 fatalities.” http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/09/12/jubilee-line-had-most-safety-incidents-since-2006-london-underground-data-reveals/

Of course those 188 fatalities couldn't have all been from suicide, I know for a fact (read on a banner) that someone died from people pushing and shoving on the escalators last year.

In an ant's world

I’ll tell you what’s cool. Ants. Ants are cool. A large number of ants is referred to as a “colony” for starters, and if that’s not cool, then call me uncool.

Colonies refer to a group living together, which consist of original settlers and their descendants and successors, a community if you will – a community that works together to progress by providing the right sort of living conditions and defense.

Most ants you tend to see (and probably squash) will be worker ants and they are female ants who don’t reproduce. Would you believe that there is not a single male worker ant? They just don’t want to do it, all they want to do is have sex and die. Well, I’m not sure if that’s what they want to do, but that is their role in the colony. They serve the queen ants who are bigger than other ants and have wings which get torn off by her male sex slaves when getting down and dirty. 

So while these promiscuous queens spend their lives mostly inside laying eggs in their nests (although you may see them outside during mating season) the other more petite, but still strong, female ants keep the colony alive by taking care of the young, building & cleaning the nests, and providing food (sounds like my mum).

Worker ants come in different sizes, the smaller ants which you might see modeling on the front of an ant’s Cosmopolitan magazine do most of the work I just spoke about, while the larger ants will use their plus size to fight and defend the colony.

Isn’t it funny how it’s a woman’s ant world down there and used to be a “man’s world” up here? Hopefully they can get some “masculinist” petitions going on down there or something. I bet the guys aren’t even allowed to vote yet.

OK, so I have touched lightly on the sexist community that exists in the world of ants, but now let’s talk about how cool their tunneling abilities are. For starters, they don’t use machinery to build tunnels they use their “mandibles” which are like human hands in the sense that they are used to hold and carry things, but a little bit more super powered because they are also used for biting, crushing, cutting, digging, fighting and hunting.

These mandibles are designed to carry over 20 times the weight of the ant, with their strength coming from their middle. They move dirt to create tunnels and chambers in the soil and as the colony grows, so do the size of these astonishing nests. Some types of ants build their nests around 6 meters below the ground and some nests may be as wide as a tennis court, with millions of ants living, working and having sex down there. The poor little things only have a life span of about 45-60 days, but apparently that is enough to excel in your career, give birth to hundreds of baby ants or become a master in the bedroom.

The ants detect their way around the tunnels through their sense of smell. Each ant in the colony is recognised by its distinct smell, so if a mini me was to wander in their looking for a party, I’d be killed immediately and possibly eaten.

I certainly don’t do it now, but as a kid I remember squashing an ant or two if they were brave enough to stroll into whatever game it was I was playing on the ground outside. I distinctly remember the horrible smell of my fingers after the fatal squish. I was told once that that smell was a defense mechanism to warn the other ants that death had caught up with one of their mates and there would soon be troops sent out after me to avenge their honour. Of course I wish this story was true, but unfortunately the truth is a similar, less Game of Thrones like version. While the ants do release a pungent smell brought on by a number of chemicals building up inside, it’s used as more of a danger warning for nearby ants to get the hell out of there. They go into a frantic tiz, trying to find protection for themselves and their colony, tapping their mandibles together and getting a little feisty with one another.

That’s about all I know on that, Google it if you don’t feel satisfied. You’d be surprised about how many people search for answers on ants. Ant answers.

All in all, ants are impressive little creatures who some people are fatally allergic to, and I will leave you with this final fun fact about ants – they are fast for their size. Put into perspective, if humans could run at the same speed for their size, we would run as fast as racehorses. So maybe instead of just watching horses race, we might race ourselves against said horses. That would be good.

Kangaroos and your vehicle

I ran into a bloody Kangaroo last night. It was awful. I was about 15 minutes out of my home town in Central-West New South Wales, and the bugger hopped right out in front of me. Every single moment was horrific, sad and expensive.

The second I saw it standing on the other side of the road to which I was driving, I just knew I was going to hit it. I naturally put my foot on the break as I watched it bound across the road. I could see immediately that there was absolutely no way in the world that this Kangaroo was getting out of this alive. The timing of my vehicle and its leaps were just too impeccable.

As I neared it, I probably only managed to drop about 50-60km off my original speed before making a little squeak to accompany my cringe and then THUD. The poor kangaroo went flying forward and I was left with a devastating view of an injured kangaroo through the chunks of kangaroo fur floating in the headlights.

I think I said "Ohhhh nooooo," and my heart was racing a million miles an hour. Being with Julz was great because he is sweet and supportive, but with him having lived in a country that doesn't have kangaroo warning signs on the road, for most of his life, I didn't feel he was really in a position of knowledge on next steps. I was on the phone to my dad within seconds and asking him what I had to do with this poor animal who was obviously in horrendous pain (I will not go into the graphic details because it isn't nice).
Dad suggested ways to put it out of its misery but I'm afraid by the time we built up enough courage to take action, the kangaroo had perished, and so had its baby (insert sad face).

I of course balled my eyes out after my adrenalin rush subsided - it was a bit much for 6pm on a Sunday night.
A nice country boy with a very serious face and temperament stopped his truck in front of ours, which was still ticking away with it's hazard lights on, and he pulled the kangaroo off the road for us (and anyone else who may have got a surprise speed bump), checked that the baby wasn't breathing and bid us good day.

Now that the drama of a wounded kangaroo on the road was finished (but not forgotten) I realised I could potentially have another serious problem at hand. What about the vehicle I was driving?
I was driving my mum's partner, Mark's, bright yellow ute (apparently utes are very Australian, so for those of you who do not know of the ute, it is a utility work vehicle which tends to have a tray on the back for transporting large objects) and this ute is a city ute and is not equipped with a 'roo bar' - a strong metal bar attached to the front of the vehicle to redirect damage in situations such as my current one.
I looked at the ute and it appeared to be missing its front grill, but fortunately the radiator which lives behind said grill was still in tact and the car didn't seem to be overheating. My brother kindly advised me over the limited telephone reception, that it should be fine as long as it wasn't a particularly busy night for bugs who would be inclined to bake on the radiator.

To cut a long story short so that I can move back on to the subject of menacing road kangaroos, I have to pay $500 in excess for the yellow utility vehicle to be fixed by an insurance company (insert mad face).

So what is the story behind our national emblem being such a deadly nuisance on the road? 

The kangaroo and its smaller kin, the wallaby are notorious for hopping onto the road and not only endangering their own lives but also the lives of those behind the wheel.

These bouncing bundles of problem account for 60% of fatalities and 40% of injuries in accidents involving animals in my friendly home state of NSW. (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2948/kangaroos-are-menace-aussie-drivers)

The problem is that drivers will often swerve their car to avoid hitting the animal and then find themselves wrapped around something much bigger and badder, like a tree, instead. It is common law among those who know the dos and don'ts in generating road kill, that you DO NOT swerve to miss said victim. You have a much better chance of getting out unharmed by hitting the animal front on. Luckily for me, I am not naturally inclined to swerve. My natural inclination is to hit the breaks and make "ohh nooo" facial expressions. I think I can just feel the dangers of a swerve at such speeds.

According to the article referenced above, a study found that kangaroo hitting is most likely to occur between dusk and dawn, when kangaroos are out looking for a graze and they tend to be more frequent in the colder months and on weekends. So I am pleased and not pleased to say that I ticked off all the boxes required for a likely kangaroo crash. I'm not really sure about the weekend statistic though - why would they be busier on weekends? They don't have any sense of 'day of week'. They don't go out shopping for their groceries on a Sunday night or bounce over to their mate's place to watch True Blood.

I believe the main reason kangaroos get all up in your grill (literally) is because they become blinded by the headlights of a vehicle, freak out and hop back in direction that they came from. It really is a frequent problem on Australian roads and people from the country just aren't big advocated of the kangaroo for this reason. Many country folk will fit their vehicles with 'Roo Bars', also known as 'Bull bars' just to avoid the $500 excess fee I've been punched in the face with.

After living in the country and trawling those roads for over 23 years, your would have thought that I would have known to drive a little slower at dusk. But noooooo.

I ended up leaving the scene feeling very wounded inside, a little bit shaky and a little worried about failing to locate the piece of grill that fell off the front of the car.

Seems to me like some of us were luckier...

Just going to touch on a topic which has been popping up in different parts of my life recently. It’s based around the curious fact of why Europeans and other societies advanced so quickly into the civilised world and left some countries and cultures behind.

One theory, which makes absolutely 100% sense to me, is the geographical luck of Europeans. Because although every modern human on every part of the globe started as hunters and gatherers - always on the move, following the migration of animals and good weather - only some of us were more fortunate in having good agriculture and livestock to start rapid farming.

When the earth’s climate changed so many thousand years ago, the human food supply started to become scarce. With our evolutionary luck of growing the brains to think to collect seeds from crops and plant them, we became farmers.

This of course didn’t only happen in parts of Europe, South America and Asia, farming was happening in less advanced societies like Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, due to the geographic location of Papua New Guinea, these guys didn’t have access to the protein enriched wheat, barley or rice crops. Crops which can be planted with a simple throw of seeds over the earth and grow efficiently, quickly and in abundance. No, Papua New Guinean’s main crops were bananas or taros (a root vegetable which is cultivated individually by hand).

Papua New Guinea cultivating taro plant

As for animals –

“Of all the animal species in the world, only 14 have ever been domesticated. 12 of these are native to Eurasia. One, the llama, is native to South America – and the farmers of New Guinea managed to domesticate the pig. But pigs can't pull plows, and until the arrival of Europeans in the 20th century, all New Guinean farming was still done by hand.” – Guns, Germs & Steel

So in no way is it about the intelligence of the more advanced over the less advanced societies. In fact, the less advanced of us are far more resourceful than the western world and can survive in situations people from the Western world would perish at the thought of.

These more advanced civilisations were simply lucky enough to have the plants and animals which were easy to farm and reproduce to feed the masses. Groups of people and villages were able to expand and grow, living together and working together to continue to flourish, build and invent. Breeding animals to eat their meat and drink their milk, domesticating them so that they could be ridden or pull plows.

Tree house in Papua New Guinea. The people of Papua New Guinea build their houses up to 100 feet above the ground!

Places like Papua New Guinea had no such animals. They weren’t able to live in big groups and build progressive buildings with natural materials. They managed to domesticate the pig, but those fattys are no good for anything except delicious crispy bacon and roast pork.

Funnily enough, I was inspired to write this blog yesterday in the Monday morning WIP meeting at work when a colleague was asked to choose an inspiring picture to present and talk to (someone gets randomly selected each week).

She posted a picture of a bunch of Olympians, both old and new and spoke about the stereotypes of different countries and their sports. Eg. Australians and swimming, Africans and running, China and gymnastics etc.

She pointed out that it can be incredibly racist sometimes. Like the comment that was made that Africans are good at running because they run to school. When one of our Nigerian world champions pointed out that he grew up next to his school and simply jumped the fence each day. If anything, you’d guess he was good at high jump.

Perhaps Australians are supposed to be good swimmers because of our lovely weather which allows us to be outdoors more and encourages us to hit the water.

Oh boy Australians are lucky – we have a beautiful country with great weather. Our animals are native and our beaches are sandy. OK, well not all our animals are native. Did you know that our rabbit problem started with some muppet bringing 12 rabbits into the country to shoot in his backyard for sport? There was absolutely no farming, eating or agricultural reasoning, it was simply because he was bored and could entertain himself with death and blood. We did try to wipe them out once by releasing the myxomatosis virus on their furry little butts, we managed to kill 95% of them or something. But alas, there were a few who were immune to the disease and survived, and we all know that bunnies don’t take long to bump. Pop, pop, pop, pop – out come a bunch of myxomatosis resilient bunnies to take over the land again.

Reference: http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/show/episode1.html

Let's Blow This Volcano Stand

My first understanding of volcanoes probably came from watching cartoons as a kid. From there, I feel that I really developed my strong understanding of lava when we would play games pretending that the floor was made of the stuff. 'Don't step in the lava!' We would joyfully cheer, as we bounced inconsiderately all over Mum's nice furniture. 


Lava is formed from liquefied rock, also known as molten rock. The rock deep down in the earth is exposed to such extreme temperatures that its arse just melts. When the lava first erupts from a volcano, it can comes out at temperatures between 700 to 1200°C and perhaps higher. It can flow great distances before it cools and starts to solidify. 

A volcano is essentially a pressurised chimney which transfers the molten rock from the depth of the earth to the surface. 

Volcanoes, like other naturally disastrous forces of human nature, come in all levels of dangerous. Not only can a volcano cause earthquakes, fast floods, mud slides, tsunamis and the likes, but the dust, ash and molten rock that comes with them can kill life in mass scales and have long term effects like famine. 


The most fascinating volcano (in my and many other's opinion) is the sleeping dragon which lies under Yellowstone Park, in the United States. This guy hasn't erupted in about 640,000 years, but according to some scientists, it is a few thousand years over due.


Because the volcano is essentially a 64 kilometre wide, severely pressurised bath of molten rock, lying only 10km underground, the eruption of said bath would cause disaster at a level which is pretty hard to comprehend. The lava would be flung some 50 kilometres into the earth's atmosphere with virtually all life within 1000 kilometres perishing under the falling ash, lava flows and sheer explosive force of the eruption.


"One thousand cubic kilometers of lava would pour out of the volcano, enough to coat the whole USA with a layer 5 inches thick....it would bring the bitter cold of Volcanic Winter to Planet Earth. Mankind may become extinct." - Bill McGuire, professor of geohazards at the Benfield Greif Hazard Research Centre at the University College of London.


While this probably is a real threat, it's really nothing to dwell on. It could erupt in two years or it could be one thousand. How are we to know? There are many real threats out there, for example, the earth could be hit at any moment with a flying, giant space rock that we wouldn't even spot until it reached our atmosphere, possibly giving us a couple of minutes to call our loved ones and say goodbye. Exciting and depressing! Such is life I suppose.

The Scale of the Universe

We're small. Stupidly small. There are much bigger things in this universe than you or me, much more powerful and much more fascinating. 


I am in no way trying to insult your intelligence by telling you this, as I have no doubt that you're already fully aware about how insignificant we are in the scheme of things. I just thought I'd try and get you to stop and think about it for a second or more.


So here is my home-made perspective: 


Walking at a quick pace, it will take me 10 minutes to walk 1km and then 1 hour to walk 6km at the same pace. Walk 36km at this pace and I'll finish in 6 hours. 72km = 12 hours and so on. 


Now think about the circumference of the earth at the equator - 40,075.16km around, now divide that by 6km per hour and apparently it would take me 278 days, almost a year, to walk around what is essentially, a small planet. 


I don't have that kind of time to spare.


I only really used 6km/hour as an example because that is about my walking speed on the treadmill at the gym, but that's tiring after an hour. The average human walking speed is approximately 4km/hour, so in actual fact it could take us over a year (417 days) to walk around the world - this is of course if you didn't need to stop, eat or sleep, you could walk on water and didn't you mind a bit of harsh terrain.


As you can see, we are pretty small and walking around the world isn't something you really consider (although it has been considered and then done http://www.blessitt.com).  


Sometimes it even annoys me having to walk down to the shops to buy milk. Mostly because I don't really drink a lot of milk, but also because I wish I could fly - even walking a couple of hundred metres can take up way too much of my valuable time in the day.


Now let's look at this picture. Hello picture.

See how earth is only a fraction the size of beasts like Jupiter or Saturn? Imagine how long it would take to stroll around those mothers. Then there's the big ol' sun, which is vastly greater than any of the pathetic looking planets there. And then of course there are all the other millions of suns out there that would make our sun look like a marble next to a football (the soccer kind silly).


Another interesting thing about our planets, which Bill Bryson kindly enlightened me with in the early chapters of A Short History of Nearly Everything, is the idea that although the picture above is a common way of displaying the scale of our planets in size, it in no way depicts the scale of distance between them.


There is no way we could do that on one piece of paper. In this picture, Jupiter is shown to be only a couple of centimeters away from Earth, with Pluto, just a few after that. In a real sense, if we had Earth depicted as the size of a pea, we would have to place Jupiter about 300 meters away, with Pluto hanging out almost 2.5 kilometers down the road.


It really is an absolutely astonishing perspective and I hope you've enjoyed having a little think about it. 


On that note, I leave you with this website which will hopefully enlighten you even further than Earth from Pluto.


http://scaleofuniverse.com/

They're Extinct and that Makes Us Stink

I felt it relevant to touch on the fascinating subject of the different species the earth has been home to over the past 4 billions years. One reason being because of the sad death of the very large tortoise named George, who was the last left of his entire species and the other being that I finally finished A Short History of Nearly Everything last night and the final chapter was primarily about this topic exactly.


The chapter put a great emphasis on how irresponsible and dangerous us humanoids are to all other species on this planet. Apparently we have wiped out thousands upon thousands of species of animal, plant and bird. We are real shit heads to be quite frank. There used to be plenty of large and robust mammals scooting around this earth with us, now there is just four - elephants, rhinos, hippos and Healthy Harolds.


George the large turtle was about 100 years old and was from La Pinta, one of the smallest islands in Galapogos, Spain. Apparently his species are known to live up to 200 years old though, which I think is absolutely incredible. Imagine that, mid-life crisis at 100 anyone?


They don't know what George died of, but they know that all his family and friends had died at the mercy humans, who hunted the tortoises for meat to the point of extinction while we let our pesky introduced goats eat away at their habitat.


A lot of extinctions were a result of introduced species. We've introduced cats that have eaten birds, pigs that have spread the flu, even humans have even killed masses of humans by introducing foreign germs and diseases. Of course, luckily, our species as a whole hasn't suffered just yet.


So how many species have actually existed on earth so far? There really is no way of telling. It's said that it could be anywhere between 5 million to 100 million or even more. Species naturally come and then they naturally go. Whatever species we were before we evolved into modern humans, that species has now perished too. Apparently a species or two before we turned into the homo sapiens that we are now, was a species who looked just like us, however held the intelligence of a baby. If you were to stumble across one and make eye contact thinking you had made some type of connection, to them you would be seen as no more than a threat or perhaps prey. Scary to imagine huh? Vicious. Perhaps this is where our disregard for other species started - long before we even had the brain capacity to sympathise or empathise properly.


Some extra careless people may argue that an average species will only last about four million years anyway, so they will eventually die out anyway. It's not really the point though is it? Every single living creature has an equal right to live on this earth and it's not fair that we are interfering. We all only have one earth, one chance and we seem to be making a terrible mess of it. Because we can. We are intelligent and stupid enough to make a mess of it.


We have the brains and hands to make the tools we need to churn through forests, seize billions of fish from the ocean, create enough carbon dioxide to break holes in our ozone layer. We are absolute walking disasters in all sense of the term.


With a world that is falling away at our finger tips all we can do as individuals is try. Even though at times you may feel like recycling, composting, riding a bike or doing anything else environmentally friendly won't make a difference, I believe it's worth doing anyway. Surely it won't make a significant difference but it will make some.


Try to appreciate every living thing you cross paths with, appreciate what you have and try to be respectful of everyone and everything. Life is just so so so short isn't it!