hobbits | the letter j | the internets | sharks

hobbits may have actually existed? scientists are finding bones of smallish human beings in caves in an indonesian island. the scientists are calling them 'hobbits'. if this is true, my already tenuous grasp of reality will be further in jeopardy.... ;-) as a wee gurl in alberta, maybe, just maybe i stopped trying to get my horses to speak to me too soon!

a couple in america has just had their 16th child - and they want to start trying for another one right away. they are from (you guessed it) arkansas and apparently the father has aspirations of political office. all 16 kiddlings have names starting with the letter 'j'. somewhat similar to my family - except for my parents stopped at 3 j's. thank the gods. however, i was slightly alarmed when my brother named one of his kids josh! his other two are kaitlin and kelly... so the j-dynasty is over... but there seems to be some sort of attempt to found a k-dynasty.

and did you know that technically, america controls the internet? and that the un is getting involved? and that other nations are severly pissed? no, neither did i. but it's an interesting thought - the fact that something that really is supposed to be a global tool for the free flow of information and ideas is actually governed by a country that for the past 6 years or so has essentially been pulling back from the rest of the world. that and the fact that the man running the country that runs the internet calls it "the internets".

and finally and most cool - great white sharks might use stars to navigate. recently a random great white was tagged off the coast of south africa and this shark ended up on a migration trek to australia - over 12,000 miles. marine biologists had no idea or proof (but tiny hunches) that the great whites travelled this far. it's possible that this girl shark headed to aussie to find a boy shark before returning to south africa 9 months later. while on her trek, she dove deeper than 3,000 metres (a record for great whites) but spent more than half of her trip swimming along the ocean surface, leading to the celestial navigation theory. there were 30 sharks tagged at the same time and this one was the only one to make this trip... but i highly doubt that she is the lone visionary of all the sharks. or then again, maybe the boy sharks in her neck of the woods were just all jerks and she felt she needed to get out to meet someone new... not so unrelatable!

[music | ladytron, "destroy everything you touch"]