Have you ever read Greek mythology and thought, "you just can't make this stuff up"? But maybe they did make it up. Like the reason Chiron was "the superlative centaur" among the other centaurs (according to one version of the myth) was that his dad was a Titan who took the form of a horse while impregnating a nymph. Because, you know, horses having sex with human-form nymphs are inconspicuous.

"When Kronos' tryst with the nymphe Philyra was interrupted by Rhea, he transformed himself into a horse to escape notice and the result was this two-formed son." To escape notice.

Chiron was the half-brother of Zeus. But their body forms were very, very different because their dad was a shape-shifter who thought horses were "inconspicuous".

The other centaurs - the wild, violent and lustful ones - were born to a cloud transformed by Zeus into a nymph in the shape of the goddess Hera. That's a wild story, too. I can't see where the "half-horse" thing fits into this myth. But why not? Maybe Indonesia can set some wild centaurs against the globalists who are destroying their country.

Chiron was nurtured by Apollo and Artemis. And he, in turn, mentored many human heroes in Greek mythology. Achilles in particular. But also Jason, Hercules and Asklepios. So humans now have botany, medicine, etc.! Chiron is still remembered at medical schools. But they have now expanded their appreciation of ancient medical traditions.

Medical students at the University of Minnesota must now take an oath to "honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine" and fight "white supremacy, colonialism, [and] the gender binary."

So maybe they can finally give up the Hippocratic Oath and invent a new, indigenous Greek "Chironic Oath" to honor instead! Images of a creature with a horse's ass re-appearing in graduation ceremonies may be appropriate. Would some people trust him more than his namesake, the CDC?

It will also be interesting to see if students learn to honor, say, traditional Chinese medicinal foods, like those at the wet markets that the CCP is trying to stamp out.

Speaking of wet markets, the narrative about the origin of the virus which produced the Covid 19 pandemic is changing fast! On March 9, Powerline reported on developments in the UK.

Via The Telegraph:

Matt Hancock was censored by the Cabinet Office over his concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic began with a lab leak in Wuhan, the Lockdown Files reveal.

The former health secretary was told to tone down claims in his book because the Government feared it would "cause problems" with China.

Mr Hancock wanted to say that the Chinese explanation - that the virus being discovered close to a government science lab in Wuhan was coincidental - "just doesn't fly".

But, in correspondence from late last year and leaked to the Telegraph, the Cabinet Office told him that the Government's position was that the original outbreak's location was "entirely coincidental". . .

In the U.S., like the U.K., fear of the Chinese led government to suppress the obvious explanation for the Wuhan virus, i.e., an inadvertent escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where research on bat viruses, including gain of function research, was under way. In this country, along with misleading pronouncements from the likes of Anthony Fauci, that suppression took the form of government agencies working through social media and tech companies to censor any discussion that deviated from the party line.

I wonder what has changed, leading Congress to vote with one voice to declassify information on the origins of the virus. I'm not sure I understand this smoking gun. Maybe there's a clue in J.J. Sefton's great roundup of links yesterday:

OH WAIT - MAYBE IT'S RACCOON DOGS

Well, now we've gone from suspecting bats and snakes to pangolins to humanized mice to raccoon dogs. Have I missed any animals? Covid 19 pandemic may have originated in raccoon dogs in China

Three years after COVID-19 brought the world to its knees, the scientific community remains bitterly divided over the origins of the virus, despite the growing consensus that it was manufactured inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during gain-of-function research.

But a new analysis of genetic material from the infamous Wuhan wet market points to a new unlikely culprit -- the raccoon dog.

Analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market in January 2020 shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market may have been carrying and shedding the virus at the outbreak of the pandemic, according to a wild new report in the Atlantic.

The analysis of the genetic sequences has been led by Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in California; Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia; and Michael Worobey, a virologist at the University of Arizona.

According to the Atlantic, the trio found that "several surfaces in and around one stall at the market, including a cart and a defeathering machine, produced virus-positive samples that also contained genetic material from raccoon dog."

It is the first time the finger has been pointed at the fox-like animal as a possible host of the virus -- although the researchers have expressed caution about their own findings.

Last year, Ace found a video about the prominent place of Japanese raccoon dogs in Japanese culture. One of their legendary features is that they can shape-shift, even turning into people for years. Sort of like the father of Zeus and Chiron in Greek mythology!

Fractured Myths

Music

The The Unicorn

Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.

This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.

Last week's thread, March 11,How did you observe International Women+ Day?

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