You will know when you see it.

Also thought I’d share this link which is a gif of a human heart from a donor being kept alive in a mechanical system which keeps it warm, oxygenated, with nutrient enriched blood pumping through.

There’s a species of small fish from the Amazon called the Splashing Tetra fish, Copella arnoldi, which have an amazing spawning ritual. The males periodically jump from the water up into low hanging foliage to find the right leaves under which they can land on and stick to. They then guard them until a suitable female mate comes along with which to reproduce. They line up at the water surface and propel themselves in perfect synchrony out of the water, into the air, and stick onto the back of the leaf side by side. There they lay several eggs at a time before falling back into the water and repeating the process until they’ve laid and fertilised around 60 or so eggs.

And that’s not all folks… At this point you’re probably having a slight evo-gasm or adapta-spasm like I am, but it gets better. The males apparently stick around for the following few days whilst the eggs develop and periodically splash the leaf, and eggs, with fresh water so they stay moist and oxygenated. After about two days the small fry (yep, that’s where it comes from, baby fish are called ‘fry’) fall to the water that dad has splashed up to them.

Mind blow…!

Lonesome George died on Sunday, and with him disappears yet another species (well ‘subspecies’ to be correct, but it still matters!!) from the face of the earth. He was the last known individual of his species the Pinta Island tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni,

The last known individual of the subspecies was a male named Lonesome George(Spanish: Solitario Jorge)^[2], who died on 24 June 2012^[3]. In his last years, he was known as the rarest creaturein the world. George served as a potent symbol for conservation efforts in the Galápagos and internationally.^[4].

George was found in 1972 on Pinta Island when his subspecies was believed to be extinct. Since then he has been a conservation icon for the Galápagos National Park Service. Unfortunately, repeated efforts to breed Lonesome George with two females from the Espanola tortoise population, species Chelonoidis nigra, had failed. However, he at least had their company until the end.

It’s nice to note that the category of ‘No Religion’ has grown by 3.6% in the past 5 years, getting close to representing a quarter of the Australian population. One more encouraging point is that numbers in every other religious group appear to have dropped! Onward bound!!!

So if you’ve a spare 60 or so minutes to kill and honestly have nothing going on, what better way to waste an hour of your life than listening to the 100th ep!

Here it is! Stream it online or download it.

Indonesia: A Moderate Islamic Country?

I jumped off the plane in Java expecting the worst. I’d heard something like 90% of Indonesians were muslim, and the rest were some other form of religion. I’d read and blogged about the treatment of an Indonesian atheist who posted a few Facebook statuses that upset his town and he was subsequently bashed and had his business place smashed up. So right from the start as I walked into the international terminal I was getting ready to shut my mouth for the coming month.

As I lined up at immigration I suddenly became aware of, and somewhat surprised at, the number of middle eastern muslims in the queue with us. Young men in their 20s and 30s were all hanging out chatting loudly whilst next to each of them stood their lesser half, donning the dark black burka from head to toe with barely a 2cm slit for their eyes.

I was with two others, Jane and Bill, who were from the museum and scientists like myself out here for fieldwork. Jane bumped into one of the younger men waiting in line as the queue moved forward. He turned and looked her up and down, and left his gaze on her chest as he grinned salaciously. Creeped the hell out of her, as it did Bill and I. As this happened another middle eastern man walked up to where we were standing in line and bent down under all the ropes as one of the immigration officers became vacant. Several Italian men at the front of the line became enraged, and one of them started shouting at him in english asking why he did that. The middle eastern man pretty much just brushed it off and said “It’s ok, I’ve been here before”. Man these guys were just oozing with self-entitlement and chauvinism!

Eventually we made our way through immigration and into the baggage collection area. I got my first real glimpse at a room full of Indonesian people. There were many women in the head veils, and men wearing their islamic caps, however there were also quite a few men and women not wearing any religious garment. We picked up our luggage and left the airport whilst getting quite a few stares from people, as ‘bules’ (pronounced ‘buley’, meaning Westerner or white person) weren’t that common in this country I quickly found out.

We were picked up by an Indonesian man who worked at the museum in Bogor, with which we were collaborating on this project (all research has to be done in collaboration with Indonesian scientists nowadays or it’s impossible to do fieldwork there). We crammed into his car and some of the first things I noticed were the arabic writing on islamic decorations in the car. I prepared myself for a long, awkward, silent trip to the hotel, but was incredibly surprised, and had to stop myself from giggling, as the man turned the radio on and out came blasting the latest album from the Indonesian Idol winner. Not the sort of music I picked for an islamic man (turns out Indonesians are obsessed with the worst kind of pop-music, and especially love Karaoke). This guy seemed already, and my first impressions of him were that he was a really nice, boisterous, eccentric, kung-fu Panda in appearance (seriously he had this look down pat), and happy man. Not the sort of adjectives I had expected to be throwing his way, but it was a nice surprise. The call to prayer sounded as we were driving, and kept getting softer then louder as we passed by the numerous mosques along the highway. I asked the man what does he do with regards to praying if he’s driving. He told me he never really bothered with it. I was shocked yet again…!

My first few weeks had me meeting some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, at least as a tourist in a foreign country. Everyone in the street wanted to say hello to you, wanted to speak to you, wanted to know your name and where you were going (never worked out why that was such an important question for them? “Hello Mister! Where you going?”). Within the first day I was approached by two groups of Indonesian girls, all wearing hijabs, who wanted photos with me and/or wanted to practice english with me. I was so surprised these girls were even acknowledging my presence, from previous experiences with islamic girls in Melbourne, Australia, let alone them looking me in the eye, smiling, laughing, wanting to speak to me. And pretty quickly it became obvious that this would be a repeated pattern all throughout our travels in Java and Sulawesi. No matter where you went, everyone smiled, everyone acknowledged you and pretty much treated you like a close mate, although sometimes too close…

Looking awkward during the first of 100s of photos I was asked to be in with locals

It had me questioning my previously staunch anti-islam beliefs. How could such nice, friendly, open people, despite being islamic, be so bad? They seemed like any other average person from Australia, just often wearing an islamic cap or hijab. I’d expected it to be like walking off the plane into Yemen or Iran when I’d gotten to Indonesia, after learning it was the country with the most muslims in it in the world. Maybe I was wrong, maybe these guys weren’t that bad…?

For the first week or so I felt somewhat ashamed that I had had such a negative preconceived idea of these people, solely based on religious grounds, prior to coming to this country. I had wanted to dislike anyone, thing or idea even remotely related to the religion of islam prior to coming here, but it felt like perhaps these guys weren’t as bad as the muslims of the middle east. I had always thought there was no such thing as a moderate muslim. That to be islamic meant you wanted death to all unbelievers, and for islam to spread and take over the world. But could I have been wrong? Could there be ‘moderate islamic’ country after all? Could it be Indonesia?

Every form asked me what my religion was, and I answered every one of them the same way despite constantly getting a scowl from the (almost always muslim) bureaucrats. (FYI, they wouldn’t accept “None” or leaving it as blank).

I don’t know if they’ll ever let me back into the country again, but screw it! I’m not lying!