On Super Moon Sunday

I was outside around 5:30 this morning, and the moon was indeed huge and glorious. It had awakened me and Abigail and caused her to insist that I get up and go out. But, as often when seasons change, I become reflective, and the beginning of summer this year was no different. I have always been fiercely independent. While my husband will ask for a back scratch, I will grab a comb, scissors, or an 'official' back scratcher when I have an itch. I have a few really close friends that I've known for many years, but I don't make very many new, close friends. I am "friendly" with co-workers, but find the notion of making people at work close friends a bit dodgy. So, what level of grade school am I still in that makes my feelings hurt sometimes that I'm not included in the workplace "cliques?" Independence has its costs, and at what age do we, or I, realize and embrace that rather than bemoaning it? I guess it is a question of self acceptance, as in, when do we achieve that? Or am I WAY behind other people of my age?

Speaking of summer, I keep seeing fragrances for sale as both colognes and room fresheners that are called "Linen this" and "Linen That." I love linen as a fabric, apart from the fact that it develops wrinkles between taking it off the ironing board and hanging it up, let alone wearing it! But I've never noticed a particular fragrance to this rough cotton fabric. Nothing rainy, or "crisp," or anything. I guess these fragrance names come from the same people who make sunflower fragrances. Sunflowers are my favorite flower-love them.  I've sniffed them wild, and sniffed them in flower sections of super markets, and I've sniffed the ones that people who know me send me when they send me flowers for whatever reason. They don't really have a fragrance. When I smell rose perfume it smells like a rose. Where does this idea of sunflower linen come from?

There is a commercial about a certain company that provides security systems for homes. The gentleman in the commercial is telling the story of the day his home was robbed, and how he arrived at home after he got the call, and the security company had already called the police quickly enough that they caught the robber coming out. Then he says how "lucky" he is to have this system. Lucky? I can tell you, he CHOSE to have this system installed in his home, and he pays them a monthly fee for monitoring. He also pays an extra monthly fee for having the privilege of the police being on call by the monitoring call center. What does "luck" have to do with any of that?

I have been among the many Americans who have accepted the arguments for Asian medicine, and the notion that it has worked for thousands of years longer than "Western" medicine, and therefore should be included or integrated into the medicine we use to heal in this country. I still think Yoga is a good way to discipline one's body, and I've heard some good anecdotal things about acupuncture. But a few days ago I remembered the use of testicles and horns of endangered animals being ground up and used as "medicine" to provide virility to males, and I suddenly experienced a real distaste for Asian medical traditions. Not only do I question the idea that virility comes from the testicles or ivory horns of macho animals, I cannot accept that  everything that is continued because it is "traditional" is good or valid, and this is why we must QUESTION EVERYTHING that we are told about such things. If there is a cost that is too large, or great harm comes from any type of tradition, it should be easily dropped. Asian medicine that uses parts of endangered animals and causes poachers to believe that destroying these animals is okay because of the money they can make doing it, then it is just plain wrong. Wrong.

As an environmentalist I have heard much about the wasting of water, in particular, when we send streams of water running down the concrete jungle. I can understand that when that water goes into sewer systems, it is essentially gone. But when water stays on the concrete until it evaporates, does it not return to the hydrologic cycle? Water is a non-renewable resource and should never be wasted. I'm not a fan of watering lawns, or planting grasses (such as St. Augustine in Texas...not native or drought resistant, much water is used just to keep it green when native grasses would do better here...) but big picture, can we be more realistic about what we choose to worry or fuss about?

And while we are on the subject of science, I made a brash claim to some friends a few days ago that I was going to scientifically prove with this post that dogs are smarter than cats. A few looked at me with furrowed brows, but I've been surprised that no one sent me hate mail or death threats. People can be so entrenched as "dog people" or "cat people." But this is not about my opinion, it is about science; in particular, evolution. Cats were only domesticated around four-thousand years ago. Dogs have been domesticated for around thirty-thousand years or more, so time is definitely on the side of dogs evolving to be more "human friendly" than cats. But the stand-offishness of cats has been occasionally used to prove that cats are smarter-not as deferential or "emotionally needy." But evolution is about organisms adapting to their environments in order to survive and pass on genes to a new generation. (Excuse me for anthropomorphising a bit here,) but there had to be a first "social, non-fearful" wolf that noticed how well they could eat when they hung around the encampments of early man.  guess we wasted food even then! Will we ever learn?) So, perhaps this wolf-couple was discussing this, and the alpha female said to her mate, "You know, if we befriend them, perhaps I can have our pups here, and they'll be safe?" And she was right. Once that was settled, and these friendly canis lupus' were on the way to becoming canis familiaris, a relationship of trust was built with the humans. And then when the humans were threatened, the canines guarded the camp, and the humans realized that these beasts had something to offer in exchange for being fed and housed with the human community. Cats still, though there are exceptions, haven't realized this. They get those benefits, but they look at their human benefactors at times with some disdain, as if they are entitled to this food and housing, clean water and the scooping of their waste. I've heard some folks refer to a cat's independence as proof of their intelligence. But I disagree (I know, opinions are not science,) I believe it is a sign of two things: 1. After four thousand years, they still don't "get us." And, 2. They don't understand that humans are the beings who won the dominance game. Dogs were prescient enough to catch on that we were going to win the survival game, and they signed on to let the dominant creatures take care of them. Cats aren't there yet, and whether anyone believes that my observations are scientific enough or not, well, you are probably right. I'm not a scientist, but this is my argument, and I'm standing by it.

Well, not really standing by it. I'm not sure why I decided to stir up this hornet's nest. The truth is that cats and dogs have different ways of dealing with humans, and I'm not certain that one way or the other really means that one is smarter than the other. We've all known people who are extremely intelligent but have very poor social skills, or they lack "social intelligence," as in, they aren't very good at picking up social cues. Dogs are very good at reading human faces, and figuring out what we want from them. This deference sometimes costs them dearly-their easy trust of us, hard-wired into their DNA for about thirty-five thousand years, as some humans do unimaginably cruel things to dogs. But the diffidence that cats have for us is also well earned. I personally remember some boys I went to school with bragging about doing horrible things to cats, and thinking such stories were quite funny. So, why should they trust us, and fawn over us? I've shared my life with both cats and dogs, and currently reside with one of each. We have to work much harder to have a relationship with the cat than we do with the dog, but I, in truth, don't believe one is smarter than the other. They are different, as are we all. 

Of Kudzu, Bath Salts and Zebra Mussels

We live in an apartment complex that boasts a saltwater pool. According to the signs, this allows them to use fewer chemicals to keep the pool sanitary, and the saltwater is better for our skin and hair. I'm also a girl who enjoys a nice, soaking bath. A dear friend recently gave me some lovely bath salts from Grand Turk Island, which make for a very relaxing soak. My question is, when I leave the tub, or we get out of the pool, is the water level diminished? Does all that salt make us retain water?

Can someone explain to me the toilet paper commercial I heard this week which claimed that "you use four times less...? Is that 1/4 as much? What does that mean?

My husband loves to watch the Do It Yourself channel "crash" shows. These are programs in which the TV stars stake out home improvement stores, find someone who has an ugly yard, bathroom or kitchen, and then the contractor/TV star goes to that home and redoes which ever room that particular one works on. My question...well, I guess I have two:
1. Where do they find all these beautiful people? None of these contractors look like normal people-they are all gorgeous, buff, charming and funny.
2. Sometimes when the contractors are talking to prospective crashees, they are often told, "Ohhhh, my yard is full of dead plants...." Well, if your yard is full of dead plants, why don't you pull them? The chances of meeting one of these guys at your local home improvement store is pretty slim, so instead of complaining about your yard-CLEAN IT!
Uh-oh...I just thought of a third question: The contractors often talk about doing these redecorations in a 'sustainable' or 'eco-friendly' way. But then they use woods such as "Brazilian Redwood." Is that sustainable? Is it okay with the Brazilians?

I have a question that most women MAY be able to relate to. We've all had jeans that come out of the dryer kind of tight, and then through the day they loosen up and can become a bit baggy. But why doesn't the waist band stretch out like the legs and bottom? Aren't they made of the same material?

There is a columnist that I enjoy named Dan Savage. He was the guest on Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Report" last week, and he made a comment that suddenly made me very confused as  to why so many republicans are upset about President Obama's "Affordable Care Act." As Mr. Savage pointed out, the original plan was devised by a conservative think tank called "The Heritage Foundation," and it was actually intended to force people to buy health insurance from their buddies, the insurance companies. Which is exactly what it turned out to be. I'm thinking it's only anathema to the right because Obama did it. If Romney had been elected president, and he had implemented the plan, the right would have been happy about it. And perhaps the left would have been as angry as they should be now that the real winners are big insurance, possibly the uninsured who get the government subsidies, and for everyone else, having health insurance through our companies means less and less.

Lastly, a couple of science questions. In watching some programs this week about what it would take to give humans a new planet to live on when we've damaged earth beyond repair, one theorist claimed that all we need to make Mars amenable to human life is start putting plants there. He said that the two things required for the advancement of life are liquid water and plants. Yes, these two things gave rise to the life we see on earth; the water gave rise to single celled life that evolved into plants, which then gave off the oxygen we needed to arise from the oceans. But why do we assume that it would take that very same chemical equation to create life elsewhere?

If this one is repetitive, I apologize, but I always get upset when humans talk about "invasive species." There is certainly no animal on earth that is more invasive than we are, and we tend to destroy everything we touch with our greed and shortsightedness. We are the only species that has adapted to survive in every single climate, and on every single continent. So the ability to travel from one ecosystem to another, create a niche, and out-compete whomever is already living there. It is what life does-it finds a place to survive and reproduce, and takes its place there. In my humble opinion, there is no such thing as an "invasive species." 

Honeysuckle Spring

Well, here we are at spring time again. The weather is heating up in Texas, and the wild fields are full of blooming honeysuckle. I know this subject may be tiresome as I've mentioned it around this time for the last three years, but when Abigail and I take our evening walk, and that heavy, romantic smell is in the air it makes me feel as if the warming is a good thing. Of course, the fact that it comes earlier and earlier, and that earth has just now passed the supposed tipping point of 400 PPM of carbon in the air, and then I feel as if I should not allow myself to enjoy the moment. I do manage to watch Abigail enjoy chasing a squirrel or a rabbit, and then I realize that these pleasant moments are all we really have. The fact that we have now passed that carbon milestone tells us it is too late, and that there has never been the will to make any changes that would keep earth's environment in the balance that has allowed us to enjoy several millenia of a fairly balanced climate. So, now we are fighting about the Keystone pipeline, and some experts warn that this, and other methods of keeping our addiction to fossil fuels fed will prevent the changes from escalating. And we are on the way through one one geologic/climactic cycle to another. First there were bacteria and other living creatures that gave off carbon as a byproduct, and humans would never have been able to survive there. But then, as a result of this, plants began to thrive and they gave off oxygen as a byproduct, and this allowed the animals to spring up; each of these eras lasting multi-millions of years. More years that most of us can imagine.

Yes, I'm giving up my liberal, tree-hugging cred here (not the first time) because I see the pattern here, and I'm not about to start hyperventilating (too much carbon release.) This occurred to me last week en we had a very unusual cold snap-if you can call it that. The daytime temperature dropped from upper-80s to the mid-60s for one day. A coworker and I were standing at the fax machine, and she (who is a raging conservative, fundamentalist) made a snarky remark to me about how true global warming is. I didn't bother to mention that science has nearly 200 years of daily records to watch long term trends, and the long term trend is warming. One odd cold snap can't erase that, but the conversation would be wasted with someone who is so certain of her certainty. But as I was thinking about it later, and watching a four-part series on PBS about the evolution of life and how well preserved it is in Australia, I realized that a HUGE part of the reason people can't grasp the facts of global climate change is that almost no one, particularly laymen, can wrap their heads around the amount of time it takes for these changes to occur. Just like the folks who say that we couldn't have come from the sea because their is no fossil of a fishman, and we couldn't have come from apes because their is no fossil of an apeman-they will never understand that we have large numbers of transitional fossils. They just simply show small changes for millions and millions of years before they show another small step. Yes, there are some animals in which we can see evolution take place in real time-such as the British coal region moths, and beaks of finches, etc. But for very, very long times that we cannot fathom because of our very limited lifespans.

So this post was really supposed to be about the long term costs of doing nothing. Not willing to pay the true cost of fossil fuels today is creating changes so immense that we cannot perceive it. Not willing to pay the true cost of keeping water clean, reducing family size, stopping the waste of food and water, and on and on. But my mental acrobatics and ADD simply will not let me stop in the next fifty years, or the next century. If earth survives, and it may not, the animal life will be so different than humans that we would not recognize them as our descendants if we were able to travel forward in time to see them, any more than the sea worms that spawned us would recognize us as their infinitesimally related great grandchildren. It's about time, and we can't conceive of it. All we know is what we are, and that the things we are doing will change our chances for survival. But, as I've said before, we will simply become something different. If the giant meteor, volcano or earthquake don't end it all sooner.

The truth is that I have kept a note about watching people in Texas taking their children and puppies for photos in the large fields of bluebonnets that bloom here in the spring. The pictures are undeniably beautiful, and the fact that a couple of people start it, and then everyone does it until the wonderful blooms are trampled and won't come back until next year. How many golden retriever puppies have been sold by being photographed in a fabulous field of these wonderful blue/purple flowers. I always wonder about fire ants, too, in those wild fields of flowers. Their bites are pretty painful, and they are everywhere!!! Sorry I got distracted by laymen's level evolutionary biology. I still admit to being an unapologetic science groupie.

Another thing I've thought a lot about the last few weeks is an explosion that happened in a plant about
100 miles from where I live. This (ironically) happened while the governor of my great state was traveling about the country bragging about how little regulation occurs in our businesses in Texas. The truth about Texas and business regulation is that in Texas we may have lots and lots of jobs, but we also have a much larger percentage of low wage jobs, and uninsured workers than many other states. So the truth is that unless the governor is bragging about being a shark in an ocean full of defenseless baby seals, there is little to brag about. It turns out that this plant was in violation of hundreds of business regulations, and had not been inspected since 1985. That this explosion happened should not surprise anyone. It's not a tragedy, it's a travesty. And the truth is that this is an endemic problem-and the reason that there will have to be a giant worker's rebellion and a return to unions before anything at all will get better. Business will never, ever regulate itself. Those at the top have only one goal in mind, and that is to make more money. In order to do that, short cuts must be taken, and they must ensure that the smallest possible workforce must do the most possible work with the fewest possible benefits. This fact should not be read as anything explosive-I try to be rational and reasonable, though I often fail. But I think this one succeeds in that. The explosions will be coming from more factories and plants that are unregulated in Texas, and the injured from these explosions may well be without health insurance, and will be among the millions in this country that we hear about who go bankrupt due to medical bills.

Lastly, I would love to get away from the gun debate. I haven't seen any reasonable or rational discussion of this since December, or ever, truth be told. But last week I was driving home from work, and saw a bumper sticker that said, "The Constitution Guarantees My Right To Bear Arms." This is true. There can be more than one way to interpret the Second Amendment, but the words do say what this bumper sticker asserts. And then a thought washed over me, which may not be original to this argument, but I've never heard it before: The Declaration of Independence guarantees me The Right To Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." These two needn't be mutually exclusive if reason were to prevail. But reason doesn't seem to do that in this conversation, in my opinion, particularly on the gun rights side. Reason would not suggest that an AR15 would prevent the government from becoming tyrannical. Reason would not suggest that such guns would be useful in a home invasion in which there was more than one person in a household. Reason would not allow that a locked up gun with a safety lock would be useful to a homeowner with an intruder in the home. Reason WOULD, however, allow that if your aim hits me just right, whether deliberately or by accident, you have taken away my right to life. If that shot doesn't kill me, but paralyzes me, you have denied me my right to liberty. And if your gun kills my child, or if your gun designed for a child is used by your child or my child to kill one of my children, you have denied me my ability to ever, EVER pursue, let alone discover happiness. The parents who have lost children to gun violence will never recover, though they may find a way to carry on. Balance that, People of Reason.

Whether these are formed as questions or not, there are still intense questions being asked here, and likely no answers to be found. But, as always, I welcome conversation, debate, answers and more questions. 

Time Spent Just Shaking My Head

The last few weeks have given me many, many opportunities to shake and scratch my head. I don't think I've ever seen anything as strange as the republican candidates for president in 2012, or the people who follow them. But personally life is just strange as well. For example, for the last forty years environmentalists have been complaining about the amount of packaging used to sell the products we use. But every day something is being introduced that is bringing more and more trash to our landfills. Now every coffee company is packaging coffee in plastic containers for individual servings. Even allegedly green companies are doing this, and I've contacted a couple of them-they admit that their individual serving cups are not biodegradable. We now have pieces of fresh fruit in glass jars and prunes in a waxed-paper container, then wrapped in individual cellophane wrappers. Grrrrrrrrr! Helloooooo-ooooo? Anybody out there?

I LOVE R&B singer John Legend. At times he's seemed to me the reincarnation of Marvin Gaye. He's touring this summer with Sade, whom I also like. But in a list published in my local newspaper recently, SHE was listed as one of the top grossing concerts this summer. Shouldn't he have been on that list as well?

How can we say we know what prevents cancer? There is a new story almost daily about something that prevents some kind of cancer-but people keep getting cancer, even though,as long as that list is, there can't be much left that everyone on earth does. So it seems that cancer rates should be going down.

I wonder if we set politicians up for corruption and arrogance when we talk about their looks. I can think of two who are about as smarmy and dishonest as any politician in history, Rod Blagojevich and Rick Perry, who have commonly been called "Governor Good Hair," that believe their crimes are not even wrong doing. Maybe good looking people in our world just get away with way too much, and come to believe that the rules don't really apply to them.

Who said that dogs don't really have a sense of time? When I recently babysat a dog for a friend who was out of town, interestingly, his behavior began to change about one and a half days before she returned. Nothing else that we could explain had changed.I  believe he knew "Mom" was coming home.

In Texas 2011, we have had the hottest summer on record. We even beat the dust bowl summer of Oklahoma in 1929. If we had a breeze this drought stricken summer, there was fire danger. If we didn't have a breeze, the heat created pollution alerts. I couldn't help wondering how President Obama, Eric Cantor, and other legislators in this country could reverse anti-pollution rules. Aren't they parents? Don't they know how many children are affected by pollution? I don't want to talk about global warming and its long term consequences. I want to talk about what we are doing to ourselves right now. We are making ourselves sick, and I don't want to live in a dirty world with dirty air. I have two grandchildren, and one more on the way. I don't want them to spend their childhoods in the ER getting breathing treatments because of the oil and coal lobbies.

This past Wednesday there was something called "The Tea Party Debate" with the republican candidates for president. Several years ago there was a giant kerfuffle in Texas when Governor Rick Perry made it mandatory for pre-adolescent girls to get a vaccine against the human pappiloma virus, which has been proven to cause cervical cancer. We have been vaccinating children against communicable diseases for about a century. Some of these diseases have been all but eradicated. But people got angry with the governor for this one. One reason was because of financial connections to the big-pharma company that provided the vaccine-reasonable argument. But I can't help but wonder if a part of the anger was because there might be something like "S-E-X" attached to this one. That certainly seemed to be the case with Michelle Bachman in her criticism at the debate Wednesday. And then she came back with a story of a crying woman who came to her and said that the HPV vaccine "gave her daughter mental retardation." Sigh. Yes, anecdotes are now science, right? So Rick Perry said-he attacked Bachman for taking the woman's story as fact when she had "no science to back it up." The explosion in my gut was hard to contain on that one, when just two weeks ago, Rick Perry was talking about the science on evolution and climate change not being in. Since when does Rick Perry know or care anything about science? He suggested that the pope who imprisoned Galileo was a scientist who just disagreed with Galileo's scientific theories at another debate. The far right of the republican party has been consistently anti-science and anti-intellectual for years. That's exactly why Sarah Palin has the following she does; she suggests that smart people who consider facts before they speak or pick a position are not real American "Joe Six Packs." I'm sorry, Governor Good Hair, you can't have it both ways.