Ponderings of a Scientist

In the name of full disclosure I feel it necessary to lay
out my ideological framework for any of you who haven’t already had the
pleasure of debating with me or listening to my verbose ranting, usually as the result of reading some new book or listening to NPR.-*Warning advice coming, avert eyes as desired, author is not responsible for injury* READ!! and listen to NPR (I recommend the Diane Rehm show…most intelligent conversation on the radio…again I don’t know how to link our I would direct you to her site for podcasts and other archived media). NPR is the only non-conservatively biased news broadcast in the U.S. and its only slightly liberally biased, which really means it caters to intelligent people who make obvious decisions based on the facts in front of them.

Well thanks to my drifting from the thesis sentence of
paragraph one you can begin to get a sense of my ideological framework, aha my scrabbled thought process actually has an underpinning of order. Back to business with a little anecdote: before upgrading to my current career, I was
a high school science teacher and my loving students (they really did love me…ah to be a teen idol again) would say to me “Mrs. H. you’re a tree-hugger”. They were right, in the sense that I care about the environment, drive a hybrid car (wot, stop the over consumption of
fossil fuels), eat organic food (wot, stop the over consumption of poorly
treated animals, pesticides and genetically modified organisms), and think
whales are cute. Well, I don’t really think whales are cute, as a fisheries biologist I have much deeper, more scientific, opinions on cetaceans and the role they play in the ocean, but that is for another day.

I wouldn’t call myself a hippie (think 1960’s), but I do live my life while being conscience of our Earth and how its mistreatment pollutes nature and ourselves (although I’m not perfect, unfortunately I’m currently commuting 100 miles each day for work- stupid economy- and spend too
much money on fashionable clothing). In fact, I live my life more conscientiously then many of the true 1960’s hippies currently do. Dad what happened to you and your buddies??? To many once objectors of the status quo are now conservative, nascar car watching, rednecks (this is meant to be minimally offensive and thought provoking to former hippies near and dear to me). I applaude those of you that have not let the big business, wasteful, consumer-driven bandwagon (that word again!) plow you over. As for the rest of us, all I’m saying is take the extra minute to think about the decisions you make everyday. For example, next time you are at the market buying fish, select something local and support your neighbors, not a foreign country, select something caught sustainably and support the continued consumption of fish as a good quality protein instead of supporting the collapse of fish populations. If your grocer doesn’t know the answers to
your questions or can’t supply you with good quality products (this goes for
things besides fish for those of you not seafood inclined) go somewhere else,
your dollars spent in the correct places, whether you like it or not, help
force change, more than just about anything else you can do.

As you can see I have a lot of things to get off my chess. Apparently, I should have started this blogging thing earlier (Zipy and others no comments please). In an attempt to not scare off my small, but growing, readership I will end here today, take a deep breath and when I blog again I will have a clear focus. I will give you my biased view on only one topic and I will hopefully present it in a persuasive, yet not offensive manner.