with the impendingness of thanksgiving, i know i will not be posting anytime soon.

ah well.

i will have food and family and games!

and food!

so

happy thanksgiving (pre a bit) and have a great good happy time….
enjoy your tryptophan!

in class today, we made the students watch a video about Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. there was in general silence (amazing in a class of 700 students) so i’m unsure if they were sleeping or if they were actually watching. i remember the first time i saw this video, or perhaps one very similar to it…seeing DDT being sprayed on pools, on children running through the streets, on soldiers, on people EATING…. and i remember being horrified. the students made mutters while seeing little girls in their 50s outfits being sprayed down with white clouds of DDT…

and i guess i have to wonder…how stupid were they? or we? if it is that poisonous to insects, what the hell made them think that it wouldn’t kill horses? or birds? or humans?

in my mind DDT shouldn’t even be produced, though i know it still is…no matter how good the properties for killing insects are. for me, my generation, we never think about DDT as a good thing…we’re raised with the bald eagles and Who Really Killed Cock Robin? and we never think of WWII and we only think how stupid history is/was…

but have we really improved beyond this? we now aim for biological controls and release more invasive species to control other invasive species, we have herbicides that are “weed specific” so you can spray them directly onto your crops and not kill your crops…but i don’t really fancy eating roundup myself….

maybe we learn, albeit slowly.

people are now aiming for species specific insecticides, to make substances that are tailored to unique sequences of DNA or proteins in a specific species…and kill them all…eradication…and yet, we watch the insects, we see the orkin roach motels fail and fail and fail again…do we really think we’ll ever beat the bastards at their own game? when you’re small and easy to kill in small numbers, you breed like a mofo and get your genes out there as much as possible, as many times as possible…so single beneficial mutations spread like wildfire…under our massive selection pressure what are we breeding in our resident pest populations? and what will we evolve in the future?

I think I need a life.

Opinion #3-

All cats should be indoor cats and all feral cat communities should be exterminated.

Why?

Ah. Why. Felis domesticus is not native to the United States and the native wildlife has not evolved to have protection from this species. Especially the birds…poor sweet little North American songbirds that lose an estimated 1,000,000 individuals per year to feral cats, loose house cats and barn cats. It’s a terrible choice. I’m a cat lover…I have three, if I could have more without being the crazy cat lady, I would have many more. I’d save them all if I could. But I also hate seeing Fluffy the house cat stalk and kill the birds, you know, drag home the sweet little mourning dove and leave it on the doorstep. Invasive species wreak such terrible havoc on the environment…and we feed and nuture and encourage this one.

“Unspoiled, undamaged, ruled by her own natural law and subject only to her own will – and the great void whence she sprang – the great Mother Earth took pleasure in creating and sustaining life in all its prolific diversity. But pillaged by a plundering dominion, raped of her resources, despoiled by unchecked pollution, and befouled by excess and corruption, her fecund ability to create and sustain could be undone.

Though rendered sterile by destructive subjugation, her great productive fertility exhausted, the final irony would still be hers. Even barren and stripped, the destitute mother possessed the power to destroy what she had wrought. Dominion cannot be imposed; her riches cannot be taken without seeking her consent, wooing her cooperation, and respecting her needs.” —-Jean Auel

Opinion #2-

The end is pretty damn near nigh. Oh, not tomorrow, and probably not next week. But, in my *humble* opinion, it’s coming. Doom, gloom and impending hell on earth. The environment is raped, pillaged and plundered by the canker of humanity, by our swelling excessive 6 billion plus population (see previous opinion).

I give us about 20 years, assuming that we continue at the rate we are going. If we (as a general culture) wake up and kick our own asses and pretend to care about the world we live in rather than our own comfort and cash, perhaps 40 or 50. But in my own mind, it’s already to late to stop the impending crash.

It’s been staved off several times, the green revolution and the like…and so many people rely on the faith of technology to sustain them and their hope for the future. And who knows….maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the gods of technology will pull something miraculous out of their collective asses and allow us to clean up the environments, to understand ecosystems well enough to balance them, to save the endangered species and to understand the idea of sustainablility.

But I don’t believe it.

I anticipate the crash. Somedays, it makes it hard to get out of bed…looking at my consumeristic life, naseated by the things that I do. It’s a terrible inconsistency. I believe that this doom is our fault…and yet at the same time, I don’t want to give up my own comforts to stop the doom. I’m a hypocrite, I’ll be the first to admit that. But I do try, at least in some ways….I don’t let the water run while I brush my teeth…I bike to work rather than drive…I turn off my lights when I leave the room. Salve to my grassroots conscience I guess.

Opinion #1 (and it’s additional sub-opinions)

This world is overpopulated with humans and that breeding should be constrained in human populations – all of them, including the US. And by constrained, I feel, it should be one child is okay, two is frowned upon and three is illegal as hell. I also feel you should have to pass genetic screens and psychological screens to have those children. Natural selection isn’t acting on humans anymore…so we need to do something to reduce the sheer number of breeders, since there isn’t anything to kill them.

i think i might have some opinions.

ugh.

Sick.

urp.
I wanted to make a Xanga post…but I gotta go TA my Thursday lab.

They’re dissecting worms, grasshoppers and shrimp.

I’m betting…that worm guts are going to be thrown at least once. I hope I don’t get hit, I am wearing a cute shirt today and I am loathe to wash worms out of it.

Also. I hope they don’t lynch me for the suckiness that was yesterday’s exam. Blech. DNA exams = hard. Duh! I know this! I told you this people! Whyfor did you not STUDY?

What I did (am doing) with my day off:

It’s Veteran’s Day, or rather, it is the day that we at OSU get off for Veteran’s Day. So. No classes to teach (thank god) and not really too much to do… so what am I doing on my day off?

1.) Slept in until 9am when Boots stood on my face and prickled me with her claws and said: “Dammit! Get up and feed ME!” Well, she actually said: “Me-ow! Prrrrt!!! MEEEEEE.” But I knew what she meant anyway.

2.) Fed the cats and scooped mad litter (from all three litter boxes no less)

3.) Breakfasted on Big K Cola and fresh baked cookies (not good ones, ones that you buy, break apart and then bake)

4.) Sat in my pjs pre-shower and talked online to a friend from Toledo. He winked at me.

5.) Took a shower.

6.) Finished reading Pawn of Prophecy (again) while sprawled on my bed in my bathrobe.

7.) Biked to work, cleaned a sequencing reaction

8.) Typed this list!

What am I going to do?

1.) Bike home (slowly? dunno…it’s relatively warm out but it could rain at any point in time)

2.) Eat myself a big ol’ dagwood style sandwich of sweet italian bread, manchego cheese, salsalito turkey, chipoltle mayo and romain lettuce.

3.) Lounge. Watch Buffy. Play me some Literati? (anyone wanna play?)

4.) Possibly craft. But probably not. That’s too much like work!