Word: insects
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...flight to LaGuardia was the girl sitting next to me, a short hairy creature with the most annoying laugh I have ever heard in my life, a dry croaking hiccup which made it sound as if she were trying to cough up a large and unwieldy insect. Unfortunately, she found her shorter, hairier traveling companion a source of boundless levity, and by the time we landed it was all I could do to keep from plunging my plastic cheese knife into...
...Bring You the Soul of America, I undertook a journalistic odyssey to determine the causes behind this obsession with all things green an lush (or smelly and insect-ridden for you urban purists...
...they have lost legal battles in Arkansas, Texas and most recently Louisiana to require their teachings in public school biology classes, the creationists continue their attack against evolution. For their latest foray, they have enlisted the aid of a favored if surprising ally: the bombardier beetle, a half-inch insect found near streams and ponds around the world. Their case is presented in a new book for children titled Bomby, the Bombardier Beetle, published by the Institute for Creation Research in El Cajon, Calif. Author Hazel May Rue, a retired schoolteacher, argues that the nature of the diminutive creature...
...Bomby, as well as in The Plain Truth, a fundamentalist magazine, creationists argue the beetle could not possibly have evolved separate chambers of chemicals that, in the event of a genetic misstep, would have blown the insect up. A prominent member of the Institute for Creation Research, Duane Gish, who holds a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, contends the beetle would not have any use for its storage, temperature and aiming facilities until they were completely formed. Says he: "I would challenge Dr. Eisner to sketch out how an ordinary beetle could evolve into a bombardier...
Going further, Eisner points out that none of the bombardier's chemicals are unique to the insect. Hydrogen peroxide is often a by-product of metabolism in the cell. Phenols, the chemical group to which hydroquinones belong, are employed by many plants and primitive animals to heal and disinfect wounds. "The beetle didn't invent anything," says Eisner. "It just found novel uses for existing elements...