Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

Dutch Vroege Vogels radio reported on 31 May 2019 that a lichen species, new to science, had been found.

It was discovered in 2016 on willow wood in the Biesbosch national park. After much research, it turned out to be a new species. It was called Chaenotheca biesboschii, after the place where it was found.

They are small, making them inconspicuous. More research found out that they are not rare in the Biesbosch.

We don’t know where the species came from. The very small spores of this lichen genus probably can travel over long distances. Maybe it is from a country where some lichen species are still unknown. Chaenotheca gracillima from India (which also occurs, rarely, in the Biersbosch) is a close relative. So, maybe, the spores of Chaenotheca biesboschii traveled all the way from India to the Netherlands.

This 25 January 2018 video says about itself:

What’s in a Lichen? How Scientists Got It Wrong for 150 Years | Short Film Showcase

For 150 years, scientists believed lichen were defined by a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and algae. Meet the team of researchers who upended this belief in this short film by Andy Johnson, Talia Yuki Moore, Chris A. Johns, and Kate Furby.

From the Field Museum in the USA:

When the dinosaurs died, lichens thrived

Mass extinction hurt land plants, but DNA shows that some fungus/plant combo organisms rose up

June 28, 2019

Summary: When the asteroid hit, dinosaurs weren’t the only ones that suffered. Clouds of ash blocked the sun and cooled the planet’s temperature, devastating plant life. But fungi, which decompose dead stuff, did well. So what happened to the lichens, which are made of a plant…

The conventional use of “atheism” is to describe a denial or a rejection of any belief in religions and gods and deities. To try and avoid the negative connotation of merely rejecting and denying the beliefs of others, some have redefined “atheism” to be the “lack of belief” in religions and gods and deities. As the American Atheists state

Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

This replacement of “denial of belief” by “lack of belief” is  merely a cosmetic change. A lack of belief cannot define what there is a…