Blog #203--Interesting Tidbits Not Included in Book, Part 16

This continues a series of articles sharing brief topics that reinforce concepts shared in my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass It On: a Toolbox For Life.”

One summer our family vacationed for a week in the southwest. We spent a couple days in Las Vegas because it was an inexpensive place to take a large family, as long as we didn’t gamble. We decided to fly from there to the Grand Canyon on a brief tour, and it was a spectacular view of a much larger formation than we ever understood previously.

My biggest surprise was seeing all the branching of the canyon, especially to the West of the main park. Some of these branches are perpendicular to the Colorado River, which made me wonder how the river could have formed them. Certainly, there is evidence the river cut through the rock to increase the canyon’s depth, but how did it turn 90 degrees or more with sufficient force to carve out these deep side-branches? Rainfall and runoff may have contributed, but that is an area that receives only a small amount of rain.

If we look at the entire expanse of the Grand Canyon from an aerial view, it reminds a great deal of the neuron dendrites in our brains, as well as the roots of trees and other vegetation. When lightning hit a flag on a Utah golf course, it created patterns in the ground that appeared similar as well. Several branches of burnt grass radiated out from the center, and each had multiple offshoots. If these are all so similar, is it possible they are all created in a similar way?

A few scientists have postulated a theory called the Electric Universe, which goes against theories preferred by the minions of orthodoxy. The entire universe is flush with electrically charged plasma (ionized gas), which reacts strongly when moving through an electromagnetic field such as a planet’s gravity. In the same way electrical storms are produced on Earth, is it possible more massive, catastrophic events have occurred in our distant past? There is evidence that the alignment of planets in our system used to be much different than today. Perhaps some could have interacted in ways that produced electrical discharges capable of carving out huge canyons on the planet’s surface.

This is speculation of course since scientists have not yet gained a consensus backed by provable and repeatable research. But a recent discovery in Greenland adds strength to this model. Using advanced technology to “see” through deep layers of ice, a canyon much larger than the Grand Canyon has been discovered there. Since the phrase “as above, so below” is a truism in this world, perhaps we can’t discount the Electric Universe model just because we don’t want it to be true. Maybe the “thunderbolts of the Gods” described by the ancients are more real than we imagine, especially since similar rifts and trenches are common all over the Earth and elsewhere.

Tidbit #2: Most people prefer to retain the status quo as long as their survival isn’t threatened, but we might try riskier gambles if our present status is deteriorating. Many animals do the same. But scientists have recently shown that plants seem to know when to gamble as well.

Newsweek’s Douglas Main, in an article called “’Pea-Brained’ Plants Know When to Gamble” and published July 8, 2016, discussed a study published recently in the journal Current Biology. Pea plants were planted so that their roots grew downward to two separate pots, one with a stable level of nutrients and the other with a variable amount of nutrients. The plants grew more roots into the stable soil. But when the stable environment’s nutrient levels were lowered, they began to grow more roots in the soil with a riskier nutrient level. And they grew more roots in areas where nutrient levels were improving and away from areas that were becoming more depleted.

Like people and animals, plants were thus proved to follow a predictable instinctive pattern to aid their survival. Of course, they have neither a brain nor nervous system. Plants are more like us than many of us wish to believe.

Tidbit #3: Little by little, all the “evidence” we rely upon to separate ourselves from the rest of Nature is falling by the wayside. As we learn more about ourselves and our world, we find to our dismay that we have far too much in common to claim a separate origin or destiny.

If you ask most people, they will say that fur on mammals, feathers on birds and scales on reptiles are vastly different from each other. A recent discovery proves differently. Researcher Michel Milinkovitch bought a naked bearded dragon because it had no scales like other reptiles. He decided to study its DNA to see how this might have happened. Milinkovitch and Nicolas Di-Poi reported in the journal Science Advances that a mutated gene was responsible for the lack of scales.

But that gene is the same one which produces fur in mammals and feathers in birds. They may look different on adult animals, but they start the same. Thus, they must all have a common ancestor. And by the way, hair on people is basically fur, so trying to separate humans from this story won’t prove accurate. Eventually, we will have to accept the reality that we are one with all other life forms.

Tidbit #4: Great white sharks have never been kept successfully in an enclosure. Scientists seem baffled by this and have sought ways of making it happen. But if my theory is correct, they will not be able to keep a great white shark alive in captivity. These are highly dominant animals, and dominant animals need vast amounts of territory. Keeping them enclosed in a small area goes against their instincts and stresses them at an extreme. Many species of sharks travel thousands of miles during their lifetimes, and great whites perhaps have the largest territory of all. They need such freedom to survive.

Like I mentioned in my book, dominant humans locked in small prison cells are forced into more extreme behaviors to free themselves from their constraints. Perhaps it was their life path to live in a ghetto or other small area without an opportunity to expand territory, and this fact may have led to their criminality in the first place. If we care about rehabilitation rather than just punishment, putting dominant prisoners alone in a vast wilderness where they can do whatever they want might be a more effective “treatment” for their problems than locking them in cages.

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