Our Eating habits threaten over 1/3 of entire amphibian species

Well, this is another one for the books. This article is merited with the “I forgot to tell how it happens” award. This award should be placed right next to the Negligence and Misinforming the Reader awards. More stories for the grandkids, I guess.

I suggest you read the article before moving forward.

“The scientists found no recorded cases of the extinction of a frog species caused by collection for food. However, given the growing importance of aquaculture to supply frog legs to global markets, the team stresses that the risk of disease spread through poorly regulated amphibian trade is probably an even greater risk to amphibian biodiversity than the direct population effects of overharvesting.”

Onto the story. This research has been in the works for years yet none of the articles I researched seem to give reasons on how, just conjectures. The article simply implies that poorly regulated amphibian trade markets is a greater risk to amphibian populations than overharvesting because of this fungal disease that I guess is being spread through what? Amphibians being farmed and harvested in areas that are not separate from the local ecosystem? If that’s the case then it’s no wonder we have rogue fungal diseases harmful to amphibians running rampage. What would happen if we didn’t domesticate our livestock and hold them to be raised and slaughtered in an “isolated” ecosystem? I don’t know? wide-spread disease for livestock and other animals living in the surrounding environment? We’ve already noticed just some of the effects our lack of discretion can cause, when it comes to dumping in a natural environment.

Here’s some research magic. Wikipedia-ed even.

“Bullfrogs (Rana catesbiana), also widely distributed, are also thought to be carriers of the disease due to their inherent low susceptibility to Bd infection.^[14][15] The bullfrog often escapes captivity and can establish feral populations where it may introduce the disease to new areas.^[6] It has also been shown that Bd can survive and grow in moist soil and on bird feathers, suggesting that Bd may also be spread in the environment by birds and transportation of soils.^[16] Infections have been linked to mass mortalities of amphibians in North America, South America, Central America, Europe and Australia.^[17][18][19] Bd has been implicated in the extinction of the sharp-snouted day frog (Taudactylus acutirostris) in Australia.^[20]“

Even after reading that excerpt which is well researched and cited, one will still find a lack of certainty. I would think it most common that bullfrogs are the primary amphibian in this case, what with their delectable appendages. This being assumed, We still have inconclusive evidence. Simply stating that bullfrogs often escape captivity which results in feral populations is indicative of nothing with the exception that humans are still the cause.

Religious evolution: A compromise of religious thought in a largely secular world

To my misfortune when sifting through science news in New York Times’ website this afternoon, my eyes fell upon another disturbing struggle for religion in an increasingly science dominated world. What is written below may be too stark and ugly for scientific minds.

“Does religion have a future? Who looks more like an evolutionary dead end: the religious American or the agnostic European? Or will both give way to some sort of compromise — people bound by new institutions that provide the social benefits of religion without belief in a traditional deity?”

My goodness, This article lacked an extreme amount of research regarding the religions used to make arguments. We live in a world abound with information, accessible via internet connection in tangent with one’s ability to call into question. I respect opinion but only in a format that conveys critical thought, not an individual’s ability to say “uh uh” when submitted content and asked to give a reaction.  I can understand this article isn’t an argument of the author’s opinion of the subject matter, but rather to gather people’s reactions by placing himself in the position of translator or event-general public informer.  The problem is one’s inability to conserve the original idea,  ”How will religion Evolve?”  Nothing of the sort was covered, save rhetoric for a bored mind.

Here’s what I anticipate happening to Religion and it’s almighty “IF”.  We need to realize that generating interest in our economy means turning education into priority one. “if” we have well educated journalists, then we may have a chance at understanding this question in mainstream philosophy. “if” we do that, we may find individuals of the social behavior under microscope talking back to us or more importantly, getting individuals of alternative cultures involved with each other (i.e. scientific and religious communities on a local level sharing interest and communicating amongst themselves). This resulting in many regional “oh, ok”‘s such as science realizing that they sometimes do incorporate incomplete ideas into highly sensitive areas of study such as statistics, logic, and reason which rely solely on human perception. This is the same idea behind a religious fanatic exclaiming that a resulting phenomena was an act of a god purely due to the lack of the complete logic needed to understand the event. Science’s inability to throw questioning along side it’s incomplete data allows for these answers called “miracles” to happen for people, effectively turning them off of conventional rationality. That rationality being, “I don’t know” instead of, “It’s a Miracle!!!!!” This is how we lose an amazing amount of important information that could be used as a basis for scientific experiment, we lose them to superstition and complacency.

All in all, religion needs to be taken out. It’s destructive to the mind and to the progression of our specie. I’m not saying that it isn’t important as a phenomena but, I believe we’ve progressed past the point where human beings are restricted to understanding the world by writing stories and just believing them. We have real stories, ones that happened and are explainable. We have tools that we can use as a medium to link what we think to what is true. We just need to replace, “It’s a Miracle,” to, “It’s an explainable event that we have yet to understand!”

Honestly, it’s time to admit that we don’t need institutionalized religion to congregate as a community.