Comments on: Aren't there bears "outside"?

Aren't there bears "outside"?

jonson — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:19:52 -0800

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:31:32 -0800

Not getting the "horrible" here....

By: scody

scody — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:32:53 -0800

Heh. Brings to mind my current favorite Werner Herzog quote: "I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder." (Say it in a German accent for maximum effect.)

By: edgeways

edgeways — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:33:47 -0800

'Nature" kills to eat, it takes real culture to kill for sport/country/politics/religion...

By: you just lost the game

you just lost the game — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:36:47 -0800

Somehow, I don't think you'd find the inside of a slaughterhouse any less appealing. Human beings are animals, the same as any other...we just have a grossly inflated sense of our own importance.

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:39:48 -0800

does peta know about this?

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:42:52 -0800

Are there any herbivorous spiders? I've never heard of such a thing, but I'd almost be surprised if there weren't any. It seems like such a diverse order...

By: Uther Bentrazor

Uther Bentrazor — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:43:17 -0800

that's quite an impressive mantis.

By: thanatogenous

thanatogenous — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:45:24 -0800

The human mind bends what it sees into concepts of beautiful and horrible. Nature is merely apathetic to human aesthetics.

By: Stauf

Stauf — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:47:13 -0800

I was watching a really cool show about driver ants last night, as they went on massive and well-organized raids and systematically destroyed everything in their path in order to feed the colony. Nature is so fucking cool!

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:47:51 -0800

You forgot the parasitic wasps.

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:51:22 -0800

Those spiders are adorable.

By: eustatic

eustatic — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:56:05 -0800

Great tarantula picture in the 'spiders of vietnam' link.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:57:45 -0800

I thought you worked for AAAS and you were referring to Nature.

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:00:14 -0800

The human mind bends what it sees into concepts of beautiful and horrible. Nature is merely apathetic to human aesthetics. Alternatively, the presence of beauty and abomination in nature merely indicates that we are, ourselves, natural creatures. We belong here, and the pleasures and abjections of sight prove it. (That's what Kant says, anyway.)

By: sluglicker

sluglicker — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:04:30 -0800

This guy regularly pits a mantis against various small mammals in a caged deathed match. Here's one that features mantis vs. mouse. Guess who wins? Most sources have deleted the clip due to their TOS regs.

By: sluglicker

sluglicker — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:05:07 -0800

*death

By: 2sheets

2sheets — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:06:32 -0800

The life cycle of just about anythng I eat is much more horrible than anything depicted here.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:07:18 -0800

According to Schelling, on the other hand,

The vital point is that things in themselves and 'representations' cannot be absolutely different because we know a world which exists independently of our will which can yet be affected by our will:
one can push as many transitory materials as one wants, which become finer and finer, between mind and matter, but sometime the point must come where mind and matter are One, or where the great leap that we so long wished to avoid becomes inevitable.
The Naturphilosophie includes ourselves within nature, as part of an interrelated whole, which is structured in an ascending series of 'potentials' that contain a polar opposition within themselves. The model is a magnet, whose opposing poles are inseparable from each other, even though they are opposites. As productivity nature cannot be conceived of as an object, since it is the subject of all possible real 'predicates', of the 'eddies' of which transient, objective nature consists. However, nature's 'inhibiting' itself in order to become something determinate means that the 'principle of all explanation of nature' is 'universal duality', an inherent difference of subject and object which prevents nature ever finally reaching stasis. At the same time this difference of subject and object must be grounded in an identity which links them together, otherwise all the problems of dualism would just reappear. In a decisive move for German Idealism, Schelling parallels the idea of nature as an absolute producing subject, whose predicates are appearing objective nature, with the spontaneity of the thinking subject, which is the condition of the syntheses required for the constitution of objectivity, thus for the possibility of predication in judgements.

I hope that's clear; if not, there are many more paragraphs where that came from.

By: Acey

Acey — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:10:04 -0800

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:16:13 -0800

How to get many comments 101: Phrase your Post in the form of a simplistic opinion.

By: Decani

Decani — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:20:16 -0800

Oh, come on. It's all part of our loving heavenly Father's grand, and oh-let-us-not-forget, very intelligent design! Not the random results of an infinite, roiling cosmic stew! No no no, nothing like that! All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small! And, I shouldn't wonder, the purple-headed love leviathan. I mean mountain!

By: overanxious ducksqueezer

overanxious ducksqueezer — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:21:37 -0800

Dilemma of a Carnivore

By: econous

econous — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:22:12 -0800

(That's what Kant says, anyway.) Kant Touch This. Has our nature been circumscribed?

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:23:31 -0800

SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKING MARSUPIAL

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:25:20 -0800

And the hummingbird/mantis link is a double post.

By: 3.2.3

3.2.3 — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:40:09 -0800

Brings to mind my current favorite Werner Herzog quote exactly who i was thinking of when i saw this: herzog in burden or dreams going off about the "obscenity" of nature.

By: slatternus

slatternus — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:45:32 -0800

Nature is revolting. We should pave the Earth flat and cover it with malls and condos and theme parks and beaches. It's the only way to break the endless cycle of cruelty.

By: slatternus

slatternus — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:47:07 -0800

How to get many comments 101: Phrase your Post in the form of a simplistic opinion. How to be a wet blanket 101: State the obvious in a condescending tone.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 13:48:15 -0800

I hope that's clear; if not, there are many more paragraphs where that came from. Words to live by, LH; words to live by.

By: Decani

Decani — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:02:37 -0800

We should pave the Earth flat and cover it with malls and condos and theme parks and beaches. It's the only way to break the endless cycle of cruelty. No. I think we should just rely on the innate stupidity, greed, ignorance and short-sightedness of humanity to create the conditions in which it will destroy itself. Oh look. We are doing. How splendid.

By: hank

hank — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:04:42 -0800

Great! spider pictures, thankssssssss.

By: davebush

davebush — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:05:12 -0800

Spiders of Vietnam would be a fantatstic band name.

By: squirrel

squirrel — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:05:48 -0800

How to be a surrealist 101: a horse dressed as Darth Vader standing in chocolate.

By: scblackman

scblackman — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:14:17 -0800

Um ... 5-inch diameter snake swallows 16-inch diameter kangaroo? Nature is so fucking amazing.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:16:11 -0800

Death is as much a part of life as food is, except for people lost in Bambi-land.

By: redbeard

redbeard — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:23:59 -0800

seriously

By: sluglicker

sluglicker — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:27:45 -0800

How to get many comments 101: Phrase your Post in the form of a simplistic opinion. Is this a contest?

By: philosophistry

philosophistry — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:28:04 -0800

yay surrealism

By: sluglicker

sluglicker — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:41:00 -0800

redbeard posted seriously "My banana slugs are just so damn cute!" A bunch of us were walking through a field towards a pond where we would fish. There was a slug on the stalk of a weed and someone pulled it off thinking it would make nice bait. Exposing the underside, we all agreed on what it resembled. I licked it and the rest is history.

By: sluglicker

sluglicker — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:42:07 -0800

True story.

By: pjern

pjern — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:43:04 -0800

Heh, funny this should pop up here the day after I posted this on my blog.

By: bradth27

bradth27 — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:44:17 -0800

'Nature" kills to eat, it takes real culture to kill for sport/country/politics/religion... Perhaps.... but "nature" doesn't kill ONLY to eat.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:58:46 -0800

Here is a close-up of the biting. The slug on the left is biting the genital opening of the slug on the right. [...] So what is so interesting about banana slugs!? Well, these slugs are hermaphrodites, which means that they can act as both males and females at the same time. When they mate, they insert their penises into eachother at the same time. The unusual thing (in case you don't find that unusual enough!) is that sometimes, but not always, when they finish mating one slug will chew the penis completely off the other, a process called Apophallation. Sometimes it happens that both slugs engage in chewing so that at the end of the mating encounter, both slugs are penis-less. [...] This is a slug penis. This particular slug was injected with the peptide hormone APGWamide. This hormone causes erections within minutes. I am using this for several aspects of my research. Uh.... that's... awesome.

By: Postroad

Postroad — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 14:59:44 -0800

Nature red in tooth and claw--Tennyson Do you eat meat? where does it come from?

By: Mean Mr. Bucket

Mean Mr. Bucket — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:05:13 -0800

I was expecting a hot asian girl crushing a kitten.

By: salvia

salvia — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:25:50 -0800

Man, and you should see what those snakes do to get chic lawn furniture! And office supplies... Ghastly.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:34:49 -0800

And the hummingbird/mantis link is a double post. so is horrible.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:58:57 -0800

I don't know, you could use some images of that flesh eating virus stuff for horrible in your post. None of this is particularly horrid, just nature being nature. Its worse when they cut open the shark and find plastic trash in its stomach.

By: afx237vi

afx237vi — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:12:19 -0800

Urrrrrggghhhhhh, why did I click on the spider link 15 minutes before my bedtime? I scream like a baby when I see a tiny house spider running up my living room wall, so that shit is just too far out. At least I learned one thing, though: I am NEVER going to Vietnam.

By: kimota

kimota — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:21:05 -0800

I think a large part of the 'horror' here stems from a perceived violation of (what we take for granted as being) the natural order: things lower on the evolutionary ladder are supposed to be eaten by things higher on it (until it's time for decomposition, of course). It just seems 'unnatural' for a spider to catch and eat a bird, which is the specific example I read about as a kid that made me notice this concept.

By: kristin

kristin — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:24:13 -0800

Argghhh....the horror is that the arachnaphobic, like me, can't help but scroll through that page of spiders, feeling more and more sick at every picture, and when we finally get to the end of it, a million tiny points on our skin feel like spiders are crawling on us. That's the bloody horror of this post!

By: elpapacito

elpapacito — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:25:40 -0800

I don't like spiders and hummingbird eating , therefore nature suck. Wow now that's some generalization !

By: kimota

kimota — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 16:26:53 -0800

I meant to specify that thanatogenous got it right, but more succinctly. And that the aesthetics (s?)he refers to largely stem from the Aristotelian great chain of being.

By: Hildegarde

Hildegarde — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:04:26 -0800

Now, if that last link has been full of pictures of fish, rather spiders, I would have felt that familiar terror. But we can't pick our phobias, now can we. I like spiders, but Canada mostly only has little ones that eat mosquitos, so that might be why. Anything that eats mosquitos is okay in my book.

By: fFish

fFish — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:09:20 -0800

Spiders of Vietnam would be a fantastic band name It sounds like one of those names like London Suede that exists to differentiate between bands with the same name from different regions; Spiders of Vietnam would need the "of Vietnam" to differentiate themselves from these guys. Only reason I know this? I grew up watching this guy in this.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:14:59 -0800

spiders are cool looking, but I wouldn't want to tangle with a brown recluse

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:22:46 -0800

It just seems 'unnatural' for a spider to catch and eat a bird Well, it's certainly rude. :-) This comparison of evolutionary paths and the 'chain of being' is obviously anachronistic. The GCB isn't really tied to size or complexity, but to virtuousness, i.e. the share of Being a thing has. By that logic, every time David beat Goliath, it would be 'unnatural.' I like the organic complexity test though. The way you describe it, the disgust we feel might be: simple things winning the life-and-death struggle over complex things. Me, I root for the little guy, but nature put more work into some bits of itself than others. When a virus takes a human life, for instance, it seems unjust. Anyway, spiders are better when they're small and squishable. Those pics were way too large. Teh gross.

By: anotherpanacea

anotherpanacea — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 17:30:25 -0800

Also, Hegel wipes the floor with Schelling in the Encyclopedia. He's all, like, smack! Smack! Reason, bi-atch! And Schelling's all like... dude, you're dead; can I have your job? Then he tags Kierkegaard and they do one of those illegal tag-team pile drives on G.W.F.'s bloated corpse. Poor guy.

By: Hildegarde

Hildegarde — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 18:42:43 -0800

I wouldn't want to tangle with a brown recluse Holy mother of Jesus, that put the fear of God in me. And reminded me of exactly why I prefer to stay NORTH NORTH NORTH. Eeeep!

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 18:51:50 -0800

There was an SA thread a little while back about the "most disturbing but beautiful pics you can find." Sure, a lot of folks posted massive storm pictures, but I got a real chuckle after some guy found a bunch of pics of odd deep-sea creatures and rather angry looking squid. His comment on the bottom of the post? seriously, fuck the ocean.

By: j-urb

j-urb — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 19:05:20 -0800

I wonder what would happen if you kicked the boa while its eating the kangaroo.

By: nonmerci

nonmerci — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 19:12:35 -0800

Thanotopsis, why does that make you chuckle? What you might find humorous someone else might find terrifying, deep-sea creatures included.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 20:28:22 -0800

Is this the beast of the web?

By: bwg

bwg — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 20:46:29 -0800

What's troubling Gus you sound demented is it because someone talked and she told me he no longer thinks anything that moves and everything he sees is something to kill and eat? "Gus is an actual Polar Bear who lives in the Central Park Zoo. Ol' Gus became famous when the Zoo's curators and specialists noticed that their once jovial bear had become lackadaisical, complacent and locked in an unhealthy routine." "If you substitute the name Gus for that of a certain American president ..."

By: rmm

rmm — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 21:15:16 -0800

Nature may be many things, but disgusting is not one of them. Humans, now those are often disgusting. ("all of nature pleases, only man is vile" - Reginald Heber). What humanity is doing to the natural world is both vile and disgusting.

By: all-seeing eye dog

all-seeing eye dog — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 21:55:15 -0800

Nature isn't awful; it's just full of ignorance.

By: caelumluna

caelumluna — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:24:03 -0800

Nothing beats the enterobius vermicularis moving in your cecum.

By: luckywanderboy

luckywanderboy — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 23:26:35 -0800

Easy mistake; you obviously just meant to write "Nature is so fucking MËTAL!"

By: pracowity

pracowity — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:39:34 -0800

If I was a snake, I think I'd look into evolving some cutting and grinding teeth. Damned if I'd settle for having to swallow kangaroos whole.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:54:59 -0800

j-urb: I wonder what would happen if you kicked the boa while its eating the kangaroo. Can a TV show be based around this concept? Every time I picture that, I can't help laughing.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 04:03:32 -0800

Here's one that features mantis vs. mouse. Guess who wins? Wow, and I thought this video of a centipede eating a mouse was cool (guess who wins).

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 06:18:01 -0800

Nature is so fucking horrible. Nature doesn't have too many nice things to say about you, either.

By: davy

davy — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 07:26:43 -0800

If you people think this stuff is horrible you should see photos and videos of people having sex. Especially home videos of average-looking American amateurs -- "real people" not pr0n starz. YUCK. Maybe that explains why manga is so popular here.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 08:05:19 -0800

wow, there are a lot of people in this thread who take tossed off comments like "nature is so fucking horrible" way too seriously.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 09:26:50 -0800

This FPP should give Colbert enough Threat-Down material for a month.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 13:27:13 -0800

SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKING MARSUPIAL posted by mr_crash_davis Bwhahahahahahahahaha! Who knew a mantis could catch a hummingbird? Or that they ate birds? The spider pics are amazing!

By: ktoad

ktoad — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:24:34 -0800

This FPP should give Colbert enough Threat-Down material for a month. If he ever gets back from his freakin' vacation! Oh wait, think the Daily Show & C.Report are new tonight, finally. Sweeeeeet.

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:20:54 -0800

Nothing beats the enterobius vermicularis moving in your cecum. Oh God, nature IS fucking horrible!

By: shoepal

shoepal — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:48:38 -0800