If you want to observe one classic sting in nature, check out bee orchids. To attract male wasps to pollinate them, the orchids not only look like an insect Marilyn Monroe, they exude a fragrance even more bewitching than the real sexual attractant of the females they're mimicking. The male wasps, which mature a month before the females, lurch from orchid to orchid, looking for love in all the wrong places. Meanwhile they spread the wily orchids' pollen in fruitless grand rounds of "pseudocopulation" that don't get no satisfaction, at least not for them.

That pseudocopulation brings to mind those supposedly triple A-rated bundled mortgage CDOs packaged by Wall Street to look like the sexiest investment on the Street. Then they turned out to be pseudo-investments that spread the nectar of wealth only among the rarefied orchids of high finance.

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Biomimicry, the design science of "innovation inspired by nature," is unearthing untold treasures from nature's playbook that we can mimic for our technological and industrial recipe book. But naturally, as human beings we're meaning-making creatures who are suckers for a good story or metaphor. It's seductive to search the biomimicry database for lessons we can apply to human social relations. Some call it "social biomimicry."

After all, who can resist the metaphor of geese that fly in a V formation and rotate the lead goose to lighten the load of bucking the most severe wind resistance?

Or the Seven Sisters oak trees in Louisiana that can withstand fierce hurricanes because their roots grow together to make an entire community of resilience.

How Recent Solar Flares Are Affecting Us

Sent to us by Barry Kapp

"A recent study in the New Scientist magazine indicates a direct connection between the Sun's solar storms and the human biological system. The conduit which steers Earth's weather through the Magnetic Field on Earth is the same conduit that facilitates the influx of charged particles from the Sun through the magnetic (auric) field around the human body."

That means a solar flare may cause disturbances in our nervous system, behavioral patterns, and our physical, mental and emotional responses.

A giant Coronal Mass Ejection occurred on the Sun on June 7, 2011. If you are one of many who have been feeling "off", or "wired", or "headachey" since Tuesday, you might want to have a look at this article.