11/18/2004: Swarm at the pyramids
 

http://cellar.org/2004/locustswarm.jpg

full story - dateline, YESTERDAY. It started as a West African infestation, then swarmed into Cairo. From out of nowhere, the city streets were thick with these 3-inch monsters:

http://cellar.org/2004/locustswarm3.jpg

Locusts. Pink ones!

And by nightfall, they were all gone.

This kind of swarm hadn't been seen in the lifetimes of most of the city's residents, and it was described as "biblical". Well, sure!

Can you imagine what this might have seemed like in biblical times? Without a strong grasp of how these things work - without the communication and science to notice and warn of the West African infestation - this would definitely look like something that a higher power had engineered. For the lot to suddenly appear as if out of nowhere, and then to disappear so quickly? The instinct to understand, to have a story, to answer the question "Why?" is so strong in us, that it's easy to imagine explanations developing out of well-intentioned storytelling.

And then, to develop rules that seemed to act as prevention - especially if that "Why?" question was answered with "Probably because of something you did." A parent-child relationship being the most familiar rule-making structure, that became the narrative for the higher power who would get angry and swat His people with plagues.

On the other hand, perhaps the people of Cairo HAVE been bad, and perhaps a higher power DID engineer the plague by setting up the conditions under which an investation would develop.

Enh, your call. But in the end, it's all about who sets up the story, who controls the narrative.

PINK LOCUSTS.....hmmmm......i think it IS a sign from god. i think he's telling us that gay marriage IS ok with him. no?

It takes a deity who is very comfortable with his omnipotence to send a plague of pink locusts.

Fundamentalist Christian take on this? "It is a sign from God that both Moslems and Gays are bad. C'mon. Pink locusts in Cairo? How else can that be interpreted?"

exactly.

Plus, I'm committing suicide later this week.

You are all welcome.

I can remember as a child in south Ga. having a similar looking locust infect the area ever so often. However, I never remember thinking this was a plague of a Higher Power.
Actually, higer power is a complex word that could mean anything from God to an oak tree. If you are a follower of religion of some type. God,Allah,Jehova...etc... would be considered a higher power. If you believe in nature, An oak tree is a power greater than yourself. By the way the pink locust may have been female or of the femine nature. However, the ones I remember were redbreasted, which I guess accounts for their aggresive nature.

I'm hearing a song...Pink Locusts in Cai-ro....They jump, they fly-o...Is it a plague? see pyramid so vague.....uh....thats all I got.

Swarms of locusts ain't so bad. Locusts are good eatin'. Free food and they're all OVER the place. Get a net, catch yourself a few hundred. A few of those can easily replace a meal's worth of crops they might eat. Especially if the buggers are 3 inches long. And dried bugs don't rot, they'll keep for months! :yum:

Swarm at the pyramids
 

A friend of mine lived in Zimbabwe or Rhodesia as it was called then and he told me about locust pie which used to be sold in bush meat markets
Too gross for words !!!!

God IS angry
 

This might seem kinda strange, but I went for a walk around the island of Manhattan the other day to try and listen to the song of the earth (literally, I walked about 20 miles).

Yea, it's a bit freaky, but sometimes you have to push yourself to overcome the limits of standard cognition. Pain is a wonderful clarifier, especially if it is welcomed and willful (forcing pain on others tends to muddle information).

Rest assured however, the forces beyond our comprehension have taken note of our actions, and they are not pleased. The two-headed turtle attests to this. The swarm of locusts is another 'sign'. The discovery of the missing link. is another.

Strange things are afoot. Of that there is no doubt.

two head turtles are the result of pesticides, swarms of locusts are seasonal, or at least or byproduct of global warming.

Uno mas
 

there are the male fish with the eggs and such. <-my take.

or go straight to the national geographic web page.

If the 'god talk' rubs you the wrong way...how about..."There is a disturbance in the Force." Then we can use one of the modern day myths, instead of the old skool stuff.

Or maybe...'a glitch in the Matrix' is a better way to state it.

:biggrin:

I'll bet there were two headed turtles long before anyone ever thought of pesticides. :eyebrow:
Pink locusts too.

We don't know whether its a matrix, a force or a god - but we're qualified to recognize a disturbance (glitch, anger...)in it? :eyebrow:

Well, 'we' (I) don't know what 'word' you (both singular and plural) use to describe such things. Hence, we use a more 'linguistic shotgun' approach.

It certainly <i>seems</i> like a disturbance. It certainly <i>feels</I> like one. To call such events 'normal' seems a bit of a stretch, IMHO.

Some folks get very, very hung up on words. So much so that using one conception or another causes them to stop thinking entirely about the dataset being presented.

:cool:

I beg to differ. You don't know how many two headed turtles there has been, how often they appear or why. You're assuming something you aren't knowledgeable about portends bad shit.

Btw, love your picture, Jinx. :love:

What I'm saying wah, is that "we" (as in all of us) don't even know what/that "it" is - how then do we know that "it" is disturbed? I say we don't. If you want to strap on a sandwhich board and declare the end is near! though, be my guest.

Ahh! Are you trying to get me beat up or something? I don't want your harem comin' after me... :worried:





Ps: :biggrinlo

What's disturbed is the delicate balance of nature. Of course, the only delicate thing is the current balance. Once upset, it will happily find a new balance. We can only hope the new balance is one we can live with.

I can't imagine a place less in touch and/or more removed from "the song of the earth" than Manhattan.

No wonder your picking up all this weird shit - It could be that the ammonia from homeless urine is interfering with the signals you are picking up from the earth spirit or maybe you are confusing the gentle voice of mother earth with the humm of the subway HVAC units. Just a theory.

Hugs and Kisses Bruce said Are you assuming it does not? If so, then we on equal footing here, no? All I'm saying is that perhaps we should spend a bit of time reflecting on our actions. "The Day After Tomorrow" would not be a good reflection, as time is compressed into a ludicrous density...but the data does seem to suggest the course we are on is not a particularly healthy one for our species. I'll not bring up the war because that could prove a useless tangent, but well, tell me this guy isn't looking at the face with a thousand masks (god/matrix/yoda/buddha).

Jinx : I guess all I can say is that I disagree. I would say that 'we' can know if 'it' is disturbed by looking at all that is going on around us and reflecting upon the answer, or some type of plausible explanation. I would say that I have, and I would go further out on the limb and say that <i>I know</i> what "it" is (in a sense).

I would say this because I <i>feel</i> it, and I would be happy to be strapped up to a bunch of electrodes to illustrate this fact (no, I haven't had shock therapy before (haha), but I have read a bit about the neurological basis for "feeling", and believe such to exist and be useful).

Happy Monkey : Yes, and we should hope that "it" doesn't decide "we" are what needs to be removed to return the balance. "It" finding a new balance could very well spell 'calamity' for the species human. Then again, maybe there is just a thorn in a paw somewhere, and we must simply remove it and dress the wound.

Beestie: True, which is why I had to walk all the way around it to hear much of anything. BTW, and just FYI, I do have a bit of the blood of this land (the native blood) in my viens. Also, I've seen pictures of the song.. :3eye:

The halfway point of my walk led me to this plaque.

The voice of gentle mother earth is not so gentle at this time, IMVHO opinion. It is quite angry, IMVVHO.

The one of Jinx in the pool was far less scary.

Huh...huhhuh...uhuh...Jinx said "strap on"...uhuh...huh...

All right. You have already been delivering pizzas too long, Beavis.

It's back to the fast food place and the fryer for you.

Not to worry, they can be stopped by a mouse (click) ;)

The lack of sleep is really beginning to catch up to me, and I've only worked two nights so far. Man, I am a wimp.

Not the wording, just that, put slightly obliquely, correlation does not equal causation. We fuck up the ecosystem, the ecosystem gets fucked up, extrapolating anything else from that is erroneous. My gut tells me we've just fucked up something major too, mostly a reaction to the news we've probably just hit that fun halfway point in atmospheric damage where feedback kicks in and it only gets faster but in the end, it's just that, nothing more, nothing less.

As for dan rather on Iraq, fuck him and his glorification of war and death, I bet the Spaniards said the same about those they sent to annihiliate the aztecs.

Locusts are freaky. My understanding is that they come about when population densities of grasshoppers become too high and mutate into these agressive little bastards. Creepy.

Correlation and Causation
 

Jaquar said:you are missing the part where the ecosystem fucks us up in response, to return the balance. Again, just staying within your own use of the words, and extrapolating from your givens.

Additional the correlation/causation thing is more of a statistical thing, yes? We are not talking about a statistical situation, but more of a 'gut feeling'. In that sense, there is little difference. It is evident that we could slow down the causes of the correlation, but have chosen not to, based on some sense of 'faith' that we'll just wake up one day and find everything to be peachy keen. I don't see that happening, or really, see any evidence of it ever happening in history. It takes action to counter-act action, not blind faith or fervent hope.

Nothing more and nothing less that us fucking up something major. That is quite a bit of something, IMHO.

I don't know how Dan Rather came into the discussion, I was referencing the look on Miller's face, and his growing status as a 'War Icon'. You can see, reflected in his eyes, the Infinite.

It is an awesome picture that can capture such a thing, IMHO.

Or you're anthropomorphizing the ecosystem, the same way the greeks said the reason the sun went over the sky was because it was the wheel of Apollo's chariot.

I'll work on the assumption that 'that' was meant to be than. A bit of something it is, quite possibly it'll lead to the biggest upheval in centuries but it is nothing more or less than that, however much it may be.

I didn't quite follow you were talking about just the pic for some reason, my bad really. While it certainly is becoming an icon of sorts I'm not so convinced of the Infinate, call me down to earth but it looks like a tired soldier grabbing a fag and keeping an eye out for stray Iraqis with automatic weaponary.

Some would say, that thinking obsessively about the database being presented; could get one very hung up on th words......

The plague of pink locusts coincided with the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library.

The end is nigh.

AHHHHHHHH !!!!!!
She is right !!!

The only reason he ended up in the while house was to get him OUT of Arkansas !!!!

Biblical?
 

As a child I remember hearing about people in biblical times "feasting" on wild locust and honey.
Isn't there a botanical version of locust? I hope so.....................
"and in the year of the famine, hunger and black death raced across the land, many were tortured and set sail for the Americas. For some there was hope, but some couldn't cope, so they spent their lives in search of fools gold" Thin Lizzy

No, they just ate locusts, you still can, dipped in chocolate to boot.

There is indeed a plant called locust, but it is an extremely hard, thorny tree, so I'm guesing it's the bugs they were eating.

Honey Locust
Black Locust
:vomit:

So I take it that the lord didn't leave the second kind laying around in the desert ...

I think I'll just have some of the insects, Au Jus :yeldead:

http://cellar.org/2004/locustswarm4.jpg

They've made it to southern Israel now

Eeek! My hair! My hair!

"Bugs Mr. Rico! Zillions of 'em!"

Conditions are right to produce swarms of these buggers. The real test would have been an Aesopian ant-grasshopper thing; are you prepared to have your crop stripped clean overnight? Did you work enought to have some surplus stored? In this case though, they're just creepy and delicious roasted.

Jaguar said: Well, as we now have the theory/myth of evolution, one could quite rightly, IMHO, say that we have been antropomophized by the ecosystem.

It would only be kind to return the favor.

Also said: O.k., I shall call you down to earth in that case. :) No one can tell you what the matrix is...it is something must be believed to be seen. A curious conundrum, that.

LET THOSE PEOPLE GO!!!

:(

Now they are in the Canary Islands. I guess they went from Africa to Israel and then all the way around the globe back around to the other side of Africa again.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/image...arm-afp203.jpg


http://a.abcnews.com/images/Internat...511291829.jpeg


http://surfersvillage.com/img/news/15025.jpg

That couldn't be another swarm, could it? I mean who's to say that one swarm is comprised of all of the pink locusts that exist in that area?

Or perhaps the bugs turned south and skimmed the southern coast of the Mediterraean Sea...?

Or maybe they appear on one horizon, move across a landscape and vanish into nothing on the other horizon like in that game Cleopatra?

Different bugs bugging buggers. :o

[quote=Undertoad]http://cellar.org/2004/locustswarm4.jpg

OWL IN MY HAIR! OWL IN MY HAIR!!