Birds and why I should let go of my prejudice

Personally, I'm torn over the subject.  I love birds of prey.  I could watch them all day.  There is a peregrine falcon that lives nearby, and I look for it all the time, I even go over to where it roosts to check out the dead bodies it drops onto the ground.  Birds of prey are interesting.

However, I detest looking at songbirds.  They are tiny and they flit around like they have really bad cases of ADD, and it's terribly difficult to distinguish between them.  They are boring and silly.  They have chirps and tweets that are all too high pitched for my poor ears to distinguish between, and they are hard to focus on because they can't sit still.

I don't mind crows, or blue jays.  When they are making a huge fuss and a lot of noise, you can follow them and find cool things.  Blue jays and cows are known for mobbing things [read: predators higher on the food chain].  If you follow them, you may find some cool animals like hawks or owls.  If you follow a songbird, you'll probably only find berries, seeds, or more songbirds.

This little tale is to make a point.  We humans care a lot about things that we can eat, and things that can eat us.  I should also include things that we can use to benefit us, like things we can make into medicine or something comfy to sit on or what have you.  It's awful, but its true.  If you'd like proof, go to a museum and look at what they have fossils of on display.  Pay particular attention to what you are drawn to.  It will be something big, or with pointy teeth, or both.

We shouldn't let our interest limit us.  There are things out there that I never thought I would be interested in.  I'm writing this to encourage you and myself to break out of your tunnel vision.  You can do anything.  Next time you go outside, look up instead of down at your feet.  Next time you read a book, pick a genre you'd never normally read in your life.  Next time you search something lame on YouTube, search something on TED or AcademicEarth or 5min.  Learn something.

I spent hours on TED the other day because I was bored and came upon a brilliant video on the potential of focused ultrasound in surgery.  It's about non-invasive surgery.  It's nothing like what I'm normally interested in, and it's an absolutely fascinating talk.

I'm sharing it, in hopes that you'll click on it, and watch the whole thing, and get as excited about it as I am.

Ignore the cheesy introduction to TEDMED.  But the idea and concept is amazing.  Sometimes I just look around and I'm humbled by what the human race has managed to accomplish.  We have a responsibility that we need to keep in mind, because as a species, we are aware and cognizant and able to influence all other species on earth.  That's huge.  Huge.  So we shouldn't just be interested in whatever we want.  We should be interested in everything.

Keep in mind that things we might not be interested in now could save our lives in the future.  No one thought bacteria was very interesting, and yet now it's important because we found out it's capable of killing us.  No one thought fungi was very interesting until we realized we could use fungal chemicals to produce antibiotics.  Some of the things we don't care about right now could save our lives in the future.

No one might thinks horseshoe crabs are that critical, but their blood contains a reagent that clots around the endotoxins in bacteria.  They use this to test EVERYTHING in the medical industry to make sure it's free of bacteria.  Intravenous drugs, vaccines, medical devices, etc.  Everything.  So maybe we should be a little more considerate towards these creepy little things.

Anyway, my point with this rant is to make sure you guys realize how lucky we have it, and how narrow minded most people [including myself] are when it comes to the world around us.  So next time you take some time to yourself, do something unexpected, not for yourself, but for the world around you.

I'll show you vampires

This rant was prompted by a very dear friend who enjoys romance novels.  Specifically paranormal ones.  I have nothing against that.  Read whatever you want to read.  What I have an issue with is the moment in the book after the vampire bites his lover, where he licks the wound closed because their saliva is supposed to have amazing healing properties.

I understand that this is a very specific issue to have with vampires in books.  But I want to keep this post away from the normal "I hate Twilight" nonsense.  Dracula was the only vampire story for me, and that's the way it will always be.  I never even picked up another vampire book.  So I'm staying away from that potentially disastrous conversation.  Frankly I'm amazed people still talk about Twilight, if it was so horrible.

Anyway, back to my problem.  The licking to seal the wound closed.  Vampire bat saliva has anticoagulants in it to prolong bleeding.  Not to heal wounds.  I think all these authors wanted to pretend their vampires were more like other mammals in the sense that wound licking can have some healing properties.  Everybody has heard stories about some dog licking a wound, and it helps to heal, or whatever.  That's true, wound licking does sometimes help, through cleaning or whatever.  It also sometimes introduces bad oral bacteria into your system and can kill you.

In this case, the authors made their vampires more like this:

Than this:

And it's a tragedy.  Truly a tragedy.