Science Archives - Tony Ward Studio

Bob Shell: Lions, Tigers, and Thylacines, Oh My!

Lions, Tigers and Thylacines, Oh My!

As regular readers of my posts know, I was originally a Zoologist. I was on staff at the Smithsonian Institution in the mid- to late 1960’s before shifting gears into photography and writing. I know my animals.

The other day someone gave me an issue of The Red Bulletin, a magazine primarily dedicated to promoting Red Bull energy drink. It also has some interesting articles.

In this issue there’s an article about a 32 hour bicycle trip through Tasmania by a man named Patron McElveen. There are some very nice photographs with the article depicting parts of his journey through dense forests of tree ferns.

Tasmania is a big island located between Australia and Antarctica with more sheep than humans. It is the only place in the world where the small Dasyuride predator known as the Tasmanian Devil is found.

Because it is well south of Wallace’s Line, the native land mammals are all marsupials. The placental mammals like dogs, cats, foxes, rats, etc. were all introduced by humans.

With that short zoological lecture as background, imagine my surprise when I read that McElveen says he’d seen animals in the forests including “tigers” and a “single Tasmanian Devil.”

Tigers in Tasmania? Tigers are placental mammals from Asia. There are no tigers in Tasmania! So far as I recall, the farthest south tigers live is Sumatra, which is one hell of a long way from Tasmania.

So, what did he see?

If he saw a large striped mammal in Tasmania, there’s only one candidate, the Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalis), the largest predatory mammal native to Tasmania.

That’s a problem, because the Thylacine has been extinct in Tasmania for almost one-hundred years! The last known one died in the Hobart, Tasmania, zoo in the 1930’s. They’ve been extinct on the Australian mainland for hundreds of years, although there have been purported sightings of a ‘tiger’ in Queensland in recent times.

I wanted to write to McElveen or the editors, but I searched all through the magazine and couldn’t find an email address.

Ever since that last known example died there have been sightings, footprints, and sounds attributed to living Thylacines in Tasmania. Some zoologists believe there is a small remnant population living in remote areas of Tasmania.

If you search on the Internet, you can find a recording of a supposed Thylacine cry, and lots of images of the animal. One of the best pictures of a Thylacine I’ve seen appears on the cover of the album ‘Thylacine’ by the group Orochen. Can’t say I like their music, but I love that image.

I’ve been fascinated by the Thylacine ever since I stroked the preserved striped pelt of one at the museum when I worked there. Here was an animal completely unrelated to canines that looked so much like a wolf that only an expert can tell the skulls apart. It is the best example of convergent evolution that I know of, where unrelated animals inhabiting similar environmental niches come to resemble each other. Simon Conway Morris has written about this in his books.

There is a project in Australia to resurrect the Thylacine using DNA from preserved material and a Tasmanian Devil as a surrogate mother. I hope it succeeds. But, meanwhile, the possibility of a remnant population in some remote corner of Tasmania is tantalizing.

The Thylacine did not go extinct naturally. It had the unfortunate habit of killing sheep, so sheep farmers killed every one they found. The Tasmanian government even put a bounty on them! Since they weren’t prolific breeders, it didn’t take all that long to exterminate them.

Sheep farmers called them vampire dogs due to their supposed habit of killing sheep and only drinking the blood. Personally, I’m skeptical of that belief. The animal had strong jaws that it could open exceptionally wide (as shown in the Orochen album cover) and the teeth of a carnivore. I’m sure it ate meat. The zoo animals were fed meat.

The extinction of the Thylacine is just one more example of human stupidity in dealing with the natural world.

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author, former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine and veteran contributor to this blog. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 17th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia.

On September 16, 2024 Shell’s release date got moved up six years due to new “mixed charges” law to February 2, 2030. It was 2036.

To read additional articles by Bob Shell link here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-ancient-aliens/

Bob Shell: Ancient Aliens?

Ancient Aliens?

Yes, I admit it, I watch the History Channel’s ‘Ancient Aliens’ programs. Why? Because, even though they are about 60% horse hockey, they do slip in some interesting accurate facts.

But I strongly disagree with their basic premise, which is our ancient ancestors were too stupid to do this stuff, so either: A. They had the help of aliens; or B. The aliens did it. Our ancient ancestors were as intelligent as we are. They just understood things we don’t. They had a lost technology for moving very heavy things with little effort. What was this technology? We simply don’t know.

In Florida there is something called the Coral Castle. It is made of very large pieces of coral rock, pieces weighing tons. One stone, a revolving doorway weighing tons, is balanced so precisely that a child can turn it. I’ve been there and found it astonishing. All of the stones were moved and positioned by one man, working alone at night, with only a wooden tripod. There was a rectangular box mounted atop the tripod. We have no idea what was in it. The man who accomplished this amazing feat claimed he had rediscovered the technology the Egyptians used to build the pyramids. Whatever that secret was, he took it to the grave with him. He certainly did not claim alien assistance. All attempts to duplicate his feat have failed. I’m sure you can find photos and more info by Googling ‘Coral Castle.’ Around the world there are ancient megalithic structures. Megalith means ‘big stone,’ and the stone are big. Some are larger than city buses and weigh hundreds of tons. We’d be hard pressed to move them today with our most advanced machinery. I’m sure the ancient builders used big stones because it was easier for them than using lots of little stones, as later cultures had to do. But I don’t think aliens had anything to do with it.

Ancient humans, and by human I mean Homo sapiens, had brains just as large and developed as ours. Their culture and cultural references were just different. As was their technology. At a time when they supposedly only had tools made of stone or soft copper they created gigantic, polygonal stones, and fitted them together like three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles as though they weighed nothing. Since we find the same building style worldwide, I believe there was once a worldwide civilization that vanished at the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,500 years ago. There is considerable evidence that this Ice Age ended suddenly, causing worldwide flooding that is the root of flood myths in nearly all cultures. Graham Hancock has discussed this idea in his books.

Archeologists say the Giza pyramids and Great Sphinx are only about 3,000 to 5,000 years old. But geologists, who know more about rock weathering say they’re far older, dating to that same 12,500 years ago. I trust the geologists a lot more. This means that the ancient Egyptian civilization we know about did not build them. They were already there when that civilization arose. There is clear evidence that the face of the Great Sphinx was originally different, not the face of a pharaoh. That was changed later during dynastic times. Probably the original face wasn’t human at all, more likely a lion’s face.

Many of the programs in the ‘Ancient Aliens’ series are old, but they keep running them. Stan Friedman, my late friend, has been dead for years, but he still pops up there.
Because many of the programs are old, they don’t reflect the latest discoveries. For example, we now know that those famous cave paintings in France and Spain were painted by Neanderthals. They used their own saliva to mix with the pigments, and left their DNA behind. It’s Neanderthal DNA. The Neanderthals weren’t apelike subhumans. They had red hair and blue eyes. Dress one in a business suit and he wouldn’t attract any attention on Park Avenue. The slouching, bowlegged reconstruction that we saw for years came from a single old man discovered early who suffered severe osteoarthritis and other ailments.

Neanderthals had larger brains than modern humans and considerably larger eyes, so they may have been primarily nocturnal or crepuscular. Because there is no DNA in the megaliths, it is quite possible that Neanderthals were the builders. And Neanderthals are alive today in most of us. Unless your heritage is 100% sub-Saharan African, you carry Neanderthal genes. Apparently they never migrated south of the Sahara, which, to my mind, casts doubt on the ‘out of Africa’ theory of human evolution.
In the 1920s, when the great Roy Chapman Andrews led the American Museum of Natural History’s Central Asiatic Expeditions, the dominant theory was that humans originated in central Asia. Those expeditions were looking for ancient humans. Unfortunately, Andrews found that the rocks of the right age to contain fossils of early humans had weathered away, and he became famous for finding dinosaurs instead. I believe that the reason most early human fossils have been found in Africa is that the rock strata containing the fossils have weathered away everywhere else or are under dense tropical jungles and inaccessible. Fully modern humans lived worldwide millions of years ago, in my opinion.

I do not believe that the various Australopithecines found in Africa are human ancestors, just products of convergent evolution. Unfortunately, they’re far too old to extract DNA and set the record straight. Like gorillas and other apes, they are our distant cousins, not our ancestors. Fully modern human skulls have been found that are older than our supposed ancestors. See ‘Forbidden Archeology’ by Michael Cremo for details. More on this topic later.

On September 16, 2024 Shell’s release date got moved up six years due to new “mixed charges” law to February 2, 2030. It was 2036.

To read additional articles by Bob Shell link here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-robots-and-evolution/

Lifestyle: How to Keep Your Ass in Shape

young black woman wearing g-string with beautiful ass in shape — Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2024

How to Keep Your Ass in Shape with Diet and Exercise

Keeping your glutes in shape doesn’t have to mean spending hours in the gym or following a strict diet. With a few targeted exercises and smart dietary choices, you can strengthen and tone your backside while maintaining overall health. Here’s how to shape your glutes through balanced lifestyle habits and workouts.

Glute-Focused Workouts

Squats: The squat is a classic move for good reason. Variations like sumo squats, jump squats, and goblet squats help target all three glute muscles while also working your quads and hamstrings. Aim for three sets of 12-15 reps, and remember to engage your core and keep your chest up for maximum effect.
Lunges: Lunges not only tone the glutes but also improve balance. Walking lunges, reverse lunges, and Bulgarian split squats all target the glutes from different angles. Try three sets of 10 reps per leg, ensuring your knee stays aligned with your ankle for proper form.
Hip Thrusts: Hip thrusts and glute bridges are great for isolating the glutes. For added challenge, place a weight on your hips. Perform three sets of 12 reps, squeezing your glutes at the top of each rep.
Deadlifts: Deadlifts are fantastic for building strength in the glutes and hamstrings. Romanian and sumo deadlifts specifically target the glutes. Aim for three sets of 8-10 reps, focusing on proper form to protect your lower back.

Diet for Toned Glutes

Lean Proteins: Protein is essential for muscle repair and growth. Incorporate lean sources like chicken, turkey, fish, eggs, and plant-based proteins to support your workouts.
Healthy Fats: Fats are essential for hormone production and recovery. Include sources like avocados, nuts, seeds, and olive oil to keep your body fueled.
Complex Carbohydrates: Carbs provide energy for your workouts. Opt for whole grains, sweet potatoes, and quinoa, which offer sustained energy and aid in recovery.
Hydration: Staying hydrated is key for muscle function. Water helps with circulation, digestion, and energy levels, so aim for at least eight glasses a day.

Consistency is Key

Keeping your glutes in shape requires consistency. Aim for a combination of resistance training and a balanced diet, and remember that gradual progress is more sustainable. Set realistic goals, and adjust your routine as you get stronger. With commitment and the right approach, you’ll see results that boost your strength and confidence.

Bob Shell: Robots and Evolution

AI image of robot on factory floor — AI generated image.

Robots and Evolution

Throughout history innovations have been resisted.
There is the possibly apocryphal story that one of the Egyptian pharaohs issued an edict banning steam powered chariots because the noise frightened the horses.
In verifiable history, in the late 1700s a Frenchman named Jacquard invented an automatic loom. Amazingly for its time, it used punchcards to control the mechanism. The automatic loom quickly supplanted weavers, because it could produce fabric far faster and cheaper. The weavers’ guilds objected. Many of the weavers broke into automated factories and threw their wooden shoes into the looms to shut them down. Those wooden shoes were called sabot, thus we get the word sabotage.

In the early 1900s there was resistance to automobiles, largely by carriage makers, buggy whip makers, draft horse breeders, etc. In England, under pressure from these groups, Parliament passed a law saying that any motorcar must be preceded on the road by a man waving a red flag. That law persisted until 1918, when it was finally realized how impractical it was.
In my own case, I was in the magazine business from the early 1980s. I watched the transitions as new technologies made former jobs redundant. Initially I wrote my articles on a typewriter and mailed them in to the magazine, where a typesetter retyped them on a device that wrote them onto the offset plates used to print the magazine. Photos to accompany my articles had to be made on film and the film had to be developed and printed, a laborious process.

I got my first computer in 1986. It was a Heathkit/Zenith that arrived in kit form. I was happily surprised when it worked after I assembled it. It had no hard drive, just ran on the old big floppy disks. The monitor had a black screen on which orange letters appeared as I typed. I wrote my first book on that computer. It worked for text, but could not handle images. My printer was a Kyocera dot matrix device that used long rolls of paper. I mailed my finished articles on floppy disks along with a hard copy and my photographs. Later, I upgraded to a Windows computer and bought a Nikon scanner to scan negatives and color slides. But I still sent my images in on physical media, floppies at first, later CDs.

I won’t go into more detail about the transition. I’ll only say that our typesetters lost their jobs, along with the repro camera operators, but new jobs were created operating the Mac computers used to lay out the magazines. Staff numbers went down, but only slightly, and the new jobs paid well. Of course, printed magazines have pretty much vanished today, gone on the Internet or out of business entirely. Since I don’t have Internet access, my choices of magazines has been severely limited, and those print magazines that survive are mostly priced out of my range. I subscribed to Rolling Stone since the 1960s, but when it jumped to sixty dollars a year I had to drop it. I used to get Professional Photographer, but that’s now only available to Professional Photographers of America members. I used to be a member, even wrote for the magazine, but membership would be useless to me now. I haven’t had a camera in my hands for seventeen years. I was reminded of these transitions by the dockworkers’ strike. One of their demands is protection from automation. They’re just like the weavers. Resisting the advance of technology is futile, it can’t be stopped. Rather than try to stop it we must adapt to it.

In the late 1990s, I’ve forgotten the exact year, on one of my trips to Japan, I toured a fully automated Canon camera factory. It was the size of a football field, but in the entire factory that churned out hundreds of cameras an hour there were only four humans. Dressed in white jumpsuits, they walked around with clipboards writing down readings from gauges.
Robot forklifts ran around the floors following yellow stripes on the floor picking up pallets of parts and carrying them to the big machines assembling the parts into cameras. The factory operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Robots don’t need coffee breaks, food, sleep, medical insurance, etc. That is the future. Human manual labor is disappearing, and the speed is advancing. Rather than trying to stop or slow it down, we humans must learn the present jobs automation cannot do or new jobs that technology is creating.

On September 16, 2024 Shell’s release date got moved up six years due to new “mixed charges” law to February 2, 2030. It was 2036.

To read additional articles by Bob Shell link here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-ufo-nonsense/

Bob Shell: UFO Nonsense

AI illustration of a UFO landing in a desert in California

UFO Nonsense

On Friday night, August 23, 2024 News Nation aired a one-hour special program about Lue Elizondo and repeated the program Sunday night. Elizondo is a former US intelligence officer who headed a top secret government program to study UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, what everyone else calls UFOs.

In the program, Elizondo made numerous claims: UAP are real, the US government has retrieved some of them for study and reverse engineering, they’re abducting people and implanting ‘things’ in them, etc. This is all stuff students of UFOs have been studying for ages.

This may have been news to many people, but it was old hat to those of us who have actually studied the UFO phenomenon. I first started studying UFOs in the late 1960s (yeah, I’m old!). My first paid writing gig was writing a column on UFOs for Gnostica News, a new-age publication produced by Llewellyn in the early 1970s. It was edited by P. E. I. Bonewits, author of the book ‘Real Magic.’ He gave me free rein to write what I chose.

I’d inherited my interest in UFOs from my father, Jim Shell, a news anchor at WSLS TV in Roanoke, Virginia. He’d reported seriously on UFO phenomena in Virginia, particularly a UFO ‘flap’ in Wytheville, Virginia, that lasted for several years. After interviewing many eyewitnesses, he’d realized that something real and important was happening.

My interest in UFOs continued for years. While living in Washington, DC, and working for the Smithsonian Institution in the late 1960s I spent time hanging around the NICAP offices (National Investigions Committee on Aerial Phenomena ), studying some some of their files and their extensive library of books about UFOs and other paranormal phenomena. I met and talked with Don Keyhoe, the Director. It is a well-known fact that the CIA infiltrated and destroyed NICAP.

In the mid 1990s I researched the infamous Alien Autopsy film and coauthored the 1996 book ‘Beyond Roswell.’ (My name is not on the cover of the book due to contractual issues, but I am credited as coauthor inside the book. I was Editor in Chief of Shutterbug magazine at the time, the world’s largest circulation photography magazine, and was asked to keep my UFO activities sub rosa.) That book is still considered essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the UFO phenomenon and the Roswell event in 1947. My late friend Stan Friedman said it was the best book ever written about Roswell. It is out of print now, but still readily available on Amazon.

When the book came out I was interviewed by Art Bell on Coast To Coast AM (that interview can be found on the Internet), by Ollie North on his radio show, and was flown to Paris to appear on a two-hour TV special program on TF-1, the main French TV network. I was also a speaker at UFO conferences worldwide. So I know this subject inside-out.

My main criticism of the Elizondo program is that they didn’t do any research into the history of the phenomena they discussed. If they had, they would have known of the work of Dr. Roger Leir. In the 1990s Dr. Leir surgically removed many ‘alien implants’ from abductees. At least one was analyzed. It was metal, and the isotope ratios were not those of any metal found on Earth. It was absolutely extraterrestrial. Dr. Leir’s work and the book he wrote about it seems to have been forgotten. I knew Roger, and I believe he was an honest investigator studying a highly unusual phenomenon.

None of Elizondo’s revelations is anything new. My only criticism is that he and the people who produced the program about him didn’t do their homework. If they had, they’d have added some historical context. Lue Elizondo appears to be just what he claims to be, an insider who believes people have a right to know what’s going on behind the scenes of secret government programs that are breaking the law by not briefing Congress on what they are doing, and what they’ve discovered.

Angry Congressmen have demanded full disclosure, and have passed laws to force it. But, as Elizondo says, ‘religious fundamentalists’ within the Pentagon will do anything to block full disclosure. These paranoid idiots believe UFOs are made and controlled by demons.

Jacques Vallee and Graham Hancock have pretty firmly established that the UFO phenomenon goes back beyond written history and is behind much myth, legend, and folklore. Human encounters with these ‘aliens’ probably predate modern humans.

I had the honor of interviewing Col. Philip Corso not long before his death. Like Elizondo, his credentials were impeccable. He said that he was the man at the Pentagon entrusted with the Roswell debris, and his job was to turn it over, a little at a time, to US industries for reverse engineering. He wrote a book, ‘The Day After. Roswell,’ in which he divulged much, but he told me and other interviewers, “What crashed at Roswell was not a spaceship. It was a time machine.” Perhaps the ‘aliens’ are us from some distant future, or others from some disant past. One NASA scientist claims there is evidence of an ancient prehuman civilization.

Whatever the truth, we deserve to know it.

The Elizondo program was followed by a totally ridiculous program in which Dr. Michio Kaku showed his abysmal unfamiliarity with the subject and Seth Shostak, head of SETI, showed that he has his head firmly buried in the sand. His insistence that advanced alien civilizations would use radio to communicate is absurd. It’s like looking for smoke signals in outer space. As Arthur C. Clarke said, any advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. With all due respect to Seth, I believe SETI is a waste of time and resources. The ‘aliens’ are already here.

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author, former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine and veteran contributor to this blog. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 15th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read additional articles by Bob Shell, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-nasas-nazis-and-alternative-physics/