This is so cool — a sublime moment of Continuity & Persistence. An East Indiaman (replica) offers a tow. From Gotheborg of Sweden:
Imagine losing your rudder out at sea and sending out a distress call. And then the largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship in the world comes to your rescue. Or in the words of the sailors on the sailing boat: “This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it?”
*
It’s a little disconcerting to be listening to Jonathan Maberry’s mad science thrillers featuring operator Joe Ledger and have something like this pop up. From NBC News:
Local and federal authorities spent months investigating a warehouse in Fresno County, California, that they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.
The Fresno County Public Health Department has been “evaluating and assessing the activities of an unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, the health department’s assistant director, Joe Prado, said in a statement Thursday. All of the biological agents were destroyed by July 7 following a legal abatement process by the agency.
“The evaluation required coordination and collaboration with multiple federal and state agencies to determine and classify biological and chemical contents onsite, in addition to assessing jurisdictional authority under this unique situation,” Prado said.
According to court documents, city officials inspected the location at 850 I St. on March 3 for building violations and found various chemicals being stored. On March 16, an inspection by county public health officials allegedly turned up medical devices thought to have been developed on-site, such as Covid and pregnancy tests.
“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” court documents said. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested the substances and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes, according to a Health and Human Services letter dated June 6.
My friend Erik Dolson wonders why this isn’t front page news across the country. Along with the aliens. Valid question. This is seriously fucked up and dangerous.
Forget it Jake. It’s Fresno.
It’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine…
Next up:
Oh, hell… might as well throw Jurassic Park into it:
(CNN) — Scientists have revived a worm that was frozen 46,000 years ago — at a time when woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and giant elks still roamed the Earth.
The roundworm, of a previously unknown species, survived 40 meters (131.2 feet) below the surface in the Siberian permafrost in a dormant state known as cryptobiosis, according to Teymuras Kurzchalia, professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden and one of the scientists involved in the research.
Organisms in a cryptobiotic state can endure the complete absence of water or oxygen and withstand high temperatures, as well as freezing or extremely salty conditions. They remain in a state “between death and life,” in which their metabolic rates decrease to an undetectable level, Kurzchalia explained.
“One can halt life and then start it from the beginning. This a major finding,” he said, adding that other organisms previously revived from this state had survived for decades rather than millennia.
lane batot says
Yeah, that abandoned lab with mice infected and human fluids in the fridges, etc., is TERRIFYING to me. “12 Monkeys” coming true? Or some foreign agents? Have you ever read “The Hot Zone”? A very scary book, about experiments on deadly contagious diseases(like Ebola) nearly escaping a Washington D. C. lab…….
JimC says
Yep. People are disturbing.
Matthew says
About the boat, I sometimes think that elements of the past will save the present. This seemed like a literal example.
About the illegal lab, that is something from like a comic book. Superman or someone always had deal with mad scientists. I know some people call that anti-science (usually those who make a religion out of science.) I tend to think it just means that science can be misused like anything else. I think of Fritz Haber who both created a process that helped feed the world and created poison gas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
David Wrolson says
From my end of the trapline, I found an Africa book for you.
“Sand Rivers” by Peter Mathieson. The core of the book is a non-hunting walking safari in the Selous with an old-time Selous hand.
I loved every page. Unfortunately, took place in 1979, so that Africa is long gone. The rhinos and such.
I bought the book when we got back from South Africa, because certain happenings on this trip had me add “Hunting buffalo on the sand rivers of Africa” to my bucket list.
JimC says
Mathiessen was a helluva writer. His Edgar Watson obsession, played out over multiple books, is 100-proof Frontier Partisan spirit. I’ll have to run this one down.
lane batot says
Yes, I have “Sand Rivers”, a splendid, beautifully photographed safari-in-a-book! I wouldn’t say THAT Africa was totally gone–the Selous Game Reserve is touted as being the LARGEST such preserve in the world–there are places there where virtually no humans penetrate. I was at the top section of it back in 1983–Mikumi National Park–and one rumor(kinda like a Bigfoot tale) was that there were still wild bushmen living in parts of the Selous! As far as I know, it is still a very wild place! Selous himself would be honored to have such a place named after him……
Erik Dolson says
Who in hell were those funding / creating bioengineered mice to spread COVID, with “HIV, hepatitis and herpes” as additional pathogens onsite? Maybe a vial of ebola? This was not someone tinkering with lawnmower robots in their back yard. There is much more to this story, none of it good, to come out.
Jean says
Very cool about the ship rescue. I dreamed of “going to sea in a tall ship” when I was a kid. Treasure Island and other books made we want to do that. I love anything about the tall ships that have been rebuilt. Thanks again.
Wayne says
Peter Matthiesen’s Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age about a 1961 expedition to a remote region of New Guinea where the residents hadn’t yet encountered Westerners and still engaged in intertribal warfare, and The Snow Leopard, the chronicle of his travels in Nepal to study Himalayan blue sheep and search for the elusive snow leopard should be added to your booklist. Matthiesen was one of those rare blends of scientific knowledge and exceptional writing talent. His Wildlife in America introduced me to the history of the repetitive destruction of whole American ecosystems for profit. It wasn’t just the beaver and the buffalo, it started with fish stocks on the east coast, whitetails shot just for their hides, the passenger pigeon served by the thousands in restaurants, nesting Florida birds slaughtered for decorations for ladies’ hats, etc. I’m a hunter, but the historical
truth from the days before the conservation ethic was popularized is hard to read.
JimC says
It’s one of the most challenging things I’ve had to reconcile — or maybe just accept. The men who were my heroes since I was a wee lad were incredibly destructive of the natural world. As you point out, the examples are endless and repetitive over centuries.
Ugly Hombre says
Holy chit!
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/illegal-california-lab-run-by-chinese-biotech-firm-contained-mice-engineered-to-spread-covid/
”Wang Zhaolin, a spokesman for Prestige Biotech, told the San Joaquin Valley Sun that the mice “were genetically engineered to catch and carry the Covid-19 virus,” the newspaper reported. Court documents further showed that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducted tests on the more than 800 chemicals found at the site and that over 20 infectious agents were found present, including Hepatitis B and C, streptococcus pneumonia, chlamydia, rubella, and Herpes 1 and 5.”
Yikes!
“Certain rooms of the warehouse were found to contain several vessels of liquid and various apparatus,” one document reads. “Fresno County Public Health staff also observed blood, tissue and other bodily fluid samples and serums; and thousands of vials of unlabeled fluids and suspected biological material.”
Well… they found one clandestine Chinese bio lab in California so you can bet there’s at least 10 more-? maybe 100 more?. I wonder how many of the thousands of military age Chinese men Ho Bai Din is importing into the country are Chicom MSS special forces? Wuhan based bio- weapons troops?
Nah.. no way Jose! paranoid thinking-they are economic refugees for sure. And its the only
one– totally innocent.
After all the Chicom virus came from a bat.
Verily…
All under heaven is fabulously fooked up.
Unreal-