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This evening coming home from work, Rob & I spotted a gas station at the corner of Charleston & Decatur selling E85. Of course, it was almost as expensive as regular gasoline. But still - E85! In Vegas!
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During my last class on Ecology, I learned that certain parasites can affect the behavior of their hosts in order to further the parasites ability to breed and complete its lifecycle. The most notable affects fish - the parasite causes the infected fish to behave in ways that make the fish more vulnerable to predatory birds. The parasite needs the birds to host its final developmental stage.

I just read an article (Return of the Puppet Masters about the toxoplasma virus transmitted by cats. It's estimated that approximately half the human population is infected with it. It tends to make an infected person, male or female, more self-reproaching and insecure. However, men become jealous & paranoid and defensive while women become more open-hearted and outgoing. If a person is badly infected - usually an infant whose pregnant mother passed the toxoplasma to them or someone w/a compromised immune system, they can develop schizophrenia. Now, rats w/a toxoplama infection become less sensitive to the scent of cats - and rats are an important host for the toxoplasma's life cycle. The cat passes the virus into its feces, a rat ends up eating something infected from the cat, the rat becomes less wary of cats, the cat eats the infected rat and the toxoplasma life cycle continues.

But why would this virus initiate changes in humans? In women I can understand - a more warm-hearted woman would be more likely to be a cat person. So are suspicious, jealous men more likely to have warm-hearted and outgoing women in their lives, who are also cat people? Therefore providing the toxoplasma host with a warm bed & plenty of food and kitty litter? I just don't see suspicious jealous men being more cat-people than normal guys. Most guys I know are jealous, suspicious and self-reproaching, which makes me wonder if all the men I know have been infected by toxoplasma.

Apparently, many drugs used to treat schizophrenia can push the toxoplasma virus into submission - and a drug used to treat a toxoplasma infection can alleviate the symptoms of schizophrenia.

This whole thing was started by me wondering what else a Burmese python could eat besides rats and its owners. I went from the Burmese python diet (small rodents to large mammals, fish, lizards, other snakes, birds, small children) to wondering if ball pythons could be safely fed other types of meat - which yes, they eat birds, lizards and small mammals. However, a ball python fed chicken would be more likely to carry and transmit salmonella. A lot of zoos feed their big pythons road kill. Nice, huh?

Oh, and I was also trying to determine if in Buddhism, animals could be reincarnated as humans. They can, and humans can end up as animals. In the Tibetan Buddhism cosmology, a human soul is more desirable than an animal soul. Personally, I think otters have it easy. They crack open seafood on their bellies. I would so like to come back as an otter. I'm just not sure how badly I need to fuck up my karma to just end up as an otter and not, say, a cockroach. I'd say I'd like to come back as a pet dog or cat, but with my luck I'd end up a pit bull being used for dog fights, or a stray cat with no tail or something. Used to think I'd like to be a dolphin in another life, but the oceans are so polluted... ugh. I really wish there were some decent Buddhist resources here in Las Vegas to answer questions like this for me. "Pardon me, revered Master - how bad do I need to screw up to come back as an otter and not, say, a pit bull used in dog fighting?"

(Ok, an aside from Cash Cab - all the inside numbers on the roulette wheel add up to 666)
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I'm all for energy efficiency. I'd like nothing more than to save a little on the power bill... and maybe the cost of replacing light bulbs. We bought some of those compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Regular incandescent bulbs just can't handle the strain of running for about 14 hours a day, and they burn out constantly around here. They also blow out when emotions or energy runs a little high. I always stop, take a few deep breaths & count to 10 before hitting light switches when I'm revved up (I can turn the television off without using the remote or hitting the power button, too, but one day that tube is gonna blow and then I'll feel like an ass). So anyway, back to the fluorescents. I'm not real sure about these things. We had to get smaller ones for the hall lights - the regular sized ones won't fit inside the light covers (strike 1). They have a different quality of light, more diffuse (unless you look right at them, anyway) and not as bright (strike 2). So we put two in the hall & one in my secondary bedroom lamp. Tried to put one in my main bedroom lamp, but the bulbs have these big plastic safety thingies on the bottom, next to the part that screws into the socket. My lamp has a lyre-shaped wire holding the shade on, and the bottom part of the wires are too narrow to accommodate the fluorescent bulb's bulbous bottom (strike 3).

It seems to me that manufacturers of energy-efficient and green energy alternatives have been paid well by producers of traditional fossil-fuel dependent energy sources to make their new products not as good as, more expensive than or more inconvenient than less-energy-efficient ones. And it's not like these fluorescent bulbs were cheap, either.

In other news, things have definitely quieted down around here. No more household goms run amok, no more unfortunate accidents. Except for me falling over while trying to pull my shorts up today. I cannot wait til I can put weight on this fucking knee. Went to my third physical therapy appointment. The therapist is working the incision sites to 'desensitize and mobilize the scar tissue'. I also get deep-tissue work on my calf to loosen things up for the cramping I've been having. I thought massage was supposed to feel good. This crap they do to me just makes me want to climb the walls to get away from their probing, prodding fingers.

Impact

Feb. 14th, 2007 12:07 pm
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So I've been taking this Environmental Science class, and it's not too bad. Talks a lot about biomes and the impact various organisms have on biomes. Nevada hosts 7 of the 12 largest recognized biomes, including the Sonoran and Great Basin deserts. We have over 300 endemic species, including the pupfish thingy. Some of our native tribes (the Northern & Southern Paiute & the Western Shoshone) speak 6 of the 7 Central Numic languages, but of those tribes, only the Western Shoshone is willing to continue fighting the NV State & federal governments for their homeland). It also talks globally about how populations tend to exert more pressure on their environment because of affluence and technology, moreso than actual people. America has only 5% of the world's human population, but we produce about 75% of all waste products.

I think about my hormones more now than I used to, and I've always thought about my hormones... not so much the timing of my periods or the possibility of pregnancy or even mood swings - the Pill is my savior, I have no PMS. But I think a lot about the environmental impact of my hormones. For the life of me, I cannot think of an environmentally safe way to dispose of personal hygiene items. If I flush them, those hormones enter the water chain. If I throw them away, they still enter the water chain through runoff and scavengers have access to them, thereby entering the food chain directly. Even composting puts those hormones back into the environment. If I use re-usable, washable pads, well... ya gotta wash 'em sometime, otherwise the potential there is too disgusting to think about. And I'm not the only woman who menstruates or uses hormonal birth control. We've got over 2.1 million people here in Las Vegas alone - a goodly portion of them female.

Is it any wonder that we have hermaphroditic carp & bluegill in Lake Mead?

The whole class so far has my mind wobbling. I knew people were bad for the environment, but... we are really bad for the environment. We are the most invasive 'weed' species on the planet. We're pioneers and opportunists, able to invade hostile environments with ease & push out native species without even flinching. Instead of shaping ourselves to fit into our environments, we shape the environments to fit our wants - not our needs, even - but our wants. An economist, Barbara Ward, said the greatest battle any environmentally-safe plan is to be economical & palatable to the masses. We want change to be easy and cheap, but the longer we keep pushing things, the worse it's going to get & the more costly it will become.

But still... the United States government has taken some drastic steps to become 'greener'. They recently removed the CFC's from the launching systems of their IBM's... so if we ever have a nuclear holocaust, it will be environmentally friendly.

I'm totally rambling right now because I took a glucose tolerance test about 2 hours ago & I still haven't come down. I've got a bad case of sugar-induced ADHD. I cheated on my last blood test & ate something, so my blood sugar was elevated... and because I didn't want to tell my doctor I 'cheated' I consented to a sugar test. I'm like, wtf, I'll get it over w/so she can't nag me. The nasty orange crap was not as bad as I remember it, but I haven't had as much as a Coke since the beginning of December when I started my diet. Even water tastes richer somehow. And because I didn't cheat this time around, I was fucking starving by 8am so that may have contributed to the overall flavor of the orange syrup. I've gotten used to eating smaller meals more often over the past few weeks - I'll have like, a tangerine or a low-carb granola bar around 1am, then my 'lunch' at 5am & then maybe a bowl of cereal (I've honestly got to say, I can't tell the difference between whole milk & 2% milk, so I've been buying the 2%. My cholesterol went off the hook when I tried switching from butter to margarine so that is not a lower-fat option), or some nuts & olives when I come home around 8am. So by the time real food headed my way around 10:30... well, I had bread (a Great Steak & Fry Company sammich) and french fries & a vitamin-enriched real-fruit smoothie at the mall. So much for the diet today, I wanted carbohydrates... mmmm, carbohydrates. I also wanted some slow-release sugar to counteract the inevitable crash that was going to happen once I burned off the high-fructose corn syrup orange-ade.

I scheduled my vacation this morning before I left work, & am now just waiting on my FMLA paperwork, which should be here by Friday or Monday. Even if they deny my vacation, I'm still hoping the FMLA goes through. And the insurance approval, of course :P

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Rainbow Serpent Woman

August 2014

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