and you thought your alarm clock was grating.

i like balance. i like symmetry and complementary colors and meals that incorporate appropriate portions of all of the essential categories of foodstuffs. part of it is maybe that i'm a libra, but i think a lot of it is that i'm a biologist. i am happiest when systems function cooperatively in an effort to support a greater whole. i like it when my personal physiological systems do that, i like it when my household and workplace do that, and i am elated to the point of an out-of-body experience when my society and/or planet does that. if you have read a paper or watched the news lately, you may have guessed by now that i am infrequently elated. if you have spoken to me or read this blog lately, you know that i am routinely paralyzed by hopelessness and disgust.

tonight's dose of anti-homeostatic despair was delivered to me by the national geographic special whales in crisis. the documentary, airing on pbs, suggests that human-generated noise, in particular that made by sonar equipment used by the navy, has a horrifically distressing effect on whales and can often drive them to strand themselves on nearby shores. i'd never considered this cause-and-effect scenario before, though of course i should have; marine mammals are completely dependent on their own intrinsic sonar systems for communication and to locate food, so they would naturally be hypersensitive to any external sounds of a similar frequency. in deeper waters, the sonar can sometimes drive whales to surface too rapidly, and they can end up with the bends. the navy is supposed to be abiding by environmental regulations limiting where and how often they can conduct such exercises, but who knows whether or not they'll follow through, and it's likely that numerous exceptions will be made, given the standards of the current american government. i wish i were able to appreciate the opposition points that insist navy training exercises involving sonar are essential for the safety of military personnel and civilians, but my head says we don't really belong on the open ocean at all, and we definitely don't belong on it in navy destroyers that are driving its native species to suicide almost a hundred at a time. we are such a cancer in this body, indifferent to the health of any cluster of cells but our own. we keep enough systems up and running to keep us fat and multiplying, and after that it's just so much useless tissue.



bad cancer. bad. this earth loved you.