Dragons, Birds and Dinosaurs

In this post I'm going to be looking at the similarities between birds and dinosaurs. These similarities have been noted since the 19th century, so it's not a new idea. However, I would go a little further and suggest that something is quite askew with our current thinking about "dinosaurs", and that perhaps mainstream science is a little confused on the topic.

Firstly we'll just look at body shape. If we consider dinosaurs like the T-Rex or raptors we can notice that the shape and angles of their bodies are very bird-like. In fact, the only place we tend to see this body shape in modern day nature is in flying creatures like birds, and it makes perfect sense. When birds fly the head is naturally out in front of the body, the wings horizontal to the ground.

(Dinosaurs and birds - comparative body angles)

It's also worth noting how strangely small the dinosaur arms are. It's hard to imagine what purpose such tiny arms could have in nature.

(The tiny arms of a dinosaur)

However, the similarity to birds doesn't end with the body shape. Dinosaurs, like birds, also often have hollow bones. Likewise they often have air sacs too. These are pockets of air within the body and are also common to birds.

There have been several reasons put forward for the presence of air sacs in dinosaurs - to increase respiratory capacity, to help improve balance and manoeuvrability, to act as part of a cooling mechanism. However, the most obvious reason in my opinion for hollow bones and air sacs would be to lower density. A useful and important aspect of achieving flight. Again the fact that birds have these features too would lend weight to this argument.

So when looking at the skeletons of creatures like the T-Rex I would speculate that they're either simply misidentified varieties of the wider bird species, or alternately that these are indeed "dinosaurs", just dinosaurs that are missing their wings for some unknown reason. Perhaps the material which the wings were made of was more prone to decomposition?

Also, of course, it has to be stated that often dinosaur skeletons are "reconstructed" from just a handful of bone finds. So it's also entirely possible that the inferences made from these few bone fragments about the wider "projected" skeletons are just plain wrong.

Dragons in Mythology

It also occurs to me how superficially similar the "dinosaur" is to the dragons we have in our various mythologies. It's almost like we dismissed dragons as myth with the rise of reason, but then we resurrected the archetype in a way that was more palatable to our post-enlightenment tastes.

(Saint George Killing the Dragon,

c. 1430-1435 - Bernat Martorell)

As a child it was always easy to confuse the two. Dragon and dinosaur toys always looked so similar. In fact, the only real difference between say a dragon and a T-Rex was the lack of wings. Quite interesting given the bird-like body shape of the T-Rex.

Of course, a T-Rex with wings would to all intents and purposes be a dragon. Minus the fire-breathing that is :)

So it seems you can follow the magical route and consider the idea that perhaps dragons were real after all. Or you can go down the more mundane route and simply re-brand all these "bird-like" dinosaurs as simply misidentified varieties of the bird fraternity. The much loved T-Rex and Velociraptors of Jurassic Park and wider popular culture may have to go though.

Then again, who really knows.

The Squirrel King; Or the False Dichotomy of Rent Or Mortgage

[The Rent/Mortgage problem is a topic I've touched upon before on this blog. In this article I attempt to explain it in a way that most people will hopefully understand.

Also, for anyone that's came here via the YouTube video you may want to start further down the page; from the "This Is The Human State" heading.]

Imagine a squirrel. He just finds a tree and that's it. He has a home. If he doesn't like it he just finds another tree. Simple.

After that all he has to do is find some acorns. To eat, and maybe to put some aside for the winter. Some days he may collect quite a few. Other days not so many. Either way he can relax safe in the knowledge that even if he starts falling behind he can just pick up the pace a bit.

However, imagine he wasn't allowed to just live in the tree. Let's imagine there is a squirrel king or landlord who owns not just his tree, but all the other trees as well. And that in order for our squirrel to live in his tree he has to pay this Squirrel King let's say 5 acorns a day.

Now imagine our squirrel's situation. Every day, before he can even think about collecting acorns for himself he has to find 5 for the king. Every single day. Imagine the extra workload and the extra stress. Knowing that every day he has to find 5 acorns just to be in the tree, before he can even do anything else.

What happens if he falls behind? If he has a bad day and finds just 4 acorns. Or finds only 5, but is so hungry he needs to eat a few himself. Then knowing that the next day he needs to find 6 or 7 at least just to get by. Imagine the constant state of anxiety this squirrel would be in.

THIS IS THE HUMAN STATE.

And this is why most humans are in a constant state of anxiety.

Stressed. Depressed and unable to enjoy their existence.

We wake up every day knowing that if we don't find enough acorns to pay the rent this week, then next week we'll be homeless. We need to pay this toll every week just to have some place to exist. We're in a constant state of anxiety because of this. Paying to live, sleep and breathe. Never in a position to relax.

Now we automatically accept that it's normal to pay rent or mortgage every week or month, but is it normal, and does it have to be this way? No other animals live like this. In fact, even primitive human tribal groups and nomads don't live like this. I would say it's highly unnatural - and that it's the number one cause of human misery.

In an ideal world everyone should have their own space to exist. Somewhere to sleep, be, relax. Somewhere that belongs to them, that they don't have to constantly pay another human being for the privilege of using.

Now people may say, we can't simply give everyone a house, and I agree it would obviously be a little impractical to do this at this exact moment in time. However, once everyone recognises the problem we can at least start moving towards the concept.

We could for example make housing much much cheaper. It may sound a little crazy to people so unaccustomed to this way of thinking, but I would say that we should be pushing to make a standard house cost as much as a small car.

A young person should be able to save up for say a year and be able to buy a house outright. Then spend the rest of their life without the constant anxiety and stress of needing to pay rent or mortgage week in week out.

There would also be huge benefits for the government and taxpayer in doing this as well. One of the biggest costs when paying state benefits is the cost of Housing Benefit. If someone is unemployed they will get about £75 a week in Jobseeker's Allowance, yet maybe £120 a week Housing Benefit. If we had a situation where everybody already owned their own home that £120 bill for the taxpayer would disappear.

On top of this, if everyone owned their own home and wasn't constantly spending the larger portion of their income on rent or mortgage it would be much easier for them to save for a rainy day. Just like the squirrel saving his acorns for the winter. So maybe many unemployed people wouldn't even need the £75 a week, as they'd be in a position to put money aside for such periods of unemployment.

Again, this idea of super cheap housing may seem very alien to people. However, in this idea lies the solution that both the right and the left have been looking for ..but have been unable to see due to this false dichotomy of rent or mortgage.

People on the right of the argument tend to believe in home-ownership, but are too wedded to the belief that high house prices are beneficial to make it accessible to everyone. Whereas people on the left see the problem of high house prices, yet think the answer lies in state ownership, or even communism. The real answer lies in universal home-ownership.

Previous article on the topic; Rent, Mortgage and the Real Origins of Slavery

The Billion Dollar Mouse Problem

This may seem like quite a mundane post, but it's actually quite an important one to me, and one I've been meaning to write for a while. It concerns the problem of mouse infestations - I know, quite a prosaic topic. I've worked at quite a lot of normal jobs over the years and I've noticed that this is a big problem pretty much everywhere, especially in retail and restaurant work.

I'm a vegetarian and quite hostile to the idea of killing innocent animals, however, at the same time practical experience tells me that this is a real problem, and one that companies and small businesses can't not deal with.

If you have a problem with mice, but aren't prepared to literally kill these little animals what can you do? The answer is, at the moment, very little. Apart from keeping things tidy and making it hard for mice to get access to food, it really is pretty much a case of exterminate or let them run riot. This is especially the case for businesses that can't afford to devote hours of man power doing all the little things that might help keep mice at bay - and this is pretty much all businesses these days.

On top of this extermination is never a complete solution - as mice will keep coming back as long as there's an environment in which they can thrive, no matter how many are killed.

It's like throwing down bird seed in the garden. You could get rid of every bird in your garden one day, but as long as there is food on the floor more will keep coming no matter how many you get rid of.

Now the obvious solution is to run a tidy ship and keep things nice and clean. However, in our bustling, interconnected world no business is an island. You can do everything in your power to limit the conditions for mice, but if the businesses next door are not following the same strict protocols you'll still suffer from their negligence. And more to the point your business will suffer more as the added expense you're going to in trying to tackle the problem is making you less competitive than your more cavalier neighbours.

So for me this is a very big problem that needs a solution. For personal and moral reasons I deem it an absolute tragedy that so many innocent and sentient mice are being killed daily. It's an endless cruelty that underpins our entire economy and is unacceptable in my opinion.

There's also the business imperative. Think of how much stock is written off on a daily basis due to mouse damage across the UK. Add to this the sheer number of man hours spent everyday trying to tackle the problem, not to mention the cost of the resources needed. I would love to see the figures on what it costs the economy on a yearly basis.

There's also the simple fact of how unfair it makes the marketplace. Companies that spend money dealing with the issue, or that go the extra mile to deal with the issue in an ethical way suffer, whilst laissez faire, profit obsessed companies fuel the problem for everyone else.

All the discount chains and takeaways that now proliferate on our high streets are creating havens of mice and rat infestation. It's impossible for any conscientious business to insulate themselves from this.

So what can be done? Surely we are intelligent enough to find more elegant solutions to this problem. I would say that first of all the problem needs recognising and raising to public discussion. Although it's not a glamorous topic to talk about I think politicians need to bring it to prominence. I also think that governments should allocate much more money to not only tackling the problem, but also to pushing new technologies and ideas to take things forward. We need a smarter attitude to this problem.

There should also be policies in place that reward businesses that try to deal with this issue in a progressive and ethical way. Likewise the interconnected nature of the problem needs recognising.

For my two cents one simple and practical thing that could be done is to regulate the packaging that pet and bird foods come in. Often the packaging that say a large bag of birdseed comes in is very flimsy and easily ripped (or nibbled through). Such poor packaging makes it very easy for mice to get access to food. Obviously most people are much less fussy about the food they buy for outdoor wildlife or household pets than they are when it comes to food they buy for themselves and their family. This means there's much less of an impetus for companies to go to the extra expense of providing decent packaging for these products.

It may sound like a small inconsequential thing, but at two separate places I've worked the mouse problem has started around the pet and bird food section. It's a real weak link in the chain. It could be so easily plugged.

To conclude, it seems no-one really appreciates the scale of this problem, or the potential reward of working around it, but it's costing the economy a lot of money, and leading to the endless unnecessary suffering of countless mice.

The daily mouse massacre is an unseen added cost to almost every transaction we make.

Crows, Seagull Culls and Tree-Like Lampposts

At the start of the year I said I was going to focus this blog more on animals. I haven't really done that though, it's been mainly Flat Earth and the Ball. I do actually have a post about animals today though (:

I feel very British touching on this topic. It seems a very "middle England" thing to talk about. Not very cool or esoteric, but quite important for animal lovers - and for people being regularly pecked by large birds.

It would seem in Britain at present seagulls are becoming, quite frankly, a pain in the arse. They're attacking and harassing people in the streets. Stealing food. Attacking and killing other animals. There have even been reports in the press of seagulls killing family pets. They're kind of the new chavs. It's became such a problem that there is now strong talk of a population cull. Normally I'm aghast at the very suggestion of anything like this, however in this case I had to pause for thought, as even I've had my run-ins with angry urban seagulls.

When asked it would have been nice to have simply said that I'm against culling, but that would have been avoiding the obvious problems we're having with seagulls. Simply saying a cull is wrong isn't much use to someone who's being constantly attacked by what are quite large, aggressive animals. Anyway, the issue has been on my mind over the last few months and after thinking about it I've finally realised what should have been obvious straight away really; that the seagull problem has been caused by the way we have changed the landscape of our country.

Native birds are happy in trees and hedges, however when you watch seagulls inland they tend to loiter on man-made things: lampposts, buildings, chimney pots. Our concrete jungles are inland cliff faces, and by creating this landscape we have essentially invited the seagulls in. What's worse by doing this we have pushed the seagulls natural competitor in size, the crow, out. For example, recently a large tree where crows nest near my home was cut down. The crows are now gone, and seagulls now rule the roost. Tall trees of course are perfect for crows, but totally unsuitable for seagulls, who aren't designed to be flitting about in tree branches. Crows, although large in size, are generally much more well behaved than seagulls too. In fact, compared to seagulls, they're almost our perfect avian neighbour.

Therefore, if we want to rid ourselves of the seagull menace we have to change the landscape. Simply culling a bunch of seagulls would only be a short term, and somewhat cruel, solution. Their numbers would simply rise again after the cull to refill the ecological niche once again. A more intelligent solution is needed. Firstly, we need more trees and hedges - tall trees especially need to be protected and encouraged. It would also be useful if we could introduce changes to architecture and street design that would dissuade seagulls of the merits of town life, and that would maybe encourage other species to take up the occupation. It sounds silly, but even if lampposts were more "tree-like" in their design it would make a huge difference. We'd have starlings instead of seagulls.

Capture Shock - Evidence for God?

I've been considering the big questions recently. God, death and the like. Is there a God? Why is there evil in the world? And so on. Anyway, on the question of death people often ask, "If there's a God why does he let people die?" This is a question we all ask in childhood and never really find an answer to. So over time we just brush it off.

Recently the question has crept back up on me, so I've been wondering what would happen if we couldn't die? Immortality sounds great, but it gets dark when you really think about it. Suffering could be infinite. Imagine you're locked in a metal box or a dank dungeon with no way out. Or paralysed with no way to move. Just infinite suffering with no release. Or imagine an even more abstract scenario - you get pulverised to dust by an asteroid, or chopped into a million disparate parts by a thousand tiny knifes - yet still no death.

When we think about death in this sense it becomes our 'get out of jail free' card. It's something of a mercy.

I think of the Bob Dylan line from 'Precious Angel';

When men will beg God to kill them and they won't be able to die

Or the Leonardo da Vinci quote;

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death

Of course, the answer to all this would then be, "Why would God create a world where people can suffer in the first place?" I'll leave that question for another day though :p

But going back to the death-as-mercy idea one thing that I think might illustrate this to be true is capture shock. This is where animals die simply due to the stress of being captured in a cage and trapped. It's not uncommon for monkeys and other animals to die in this way after being trapped, or while kept in cages during transit from one place to another. They don't die due to injury. disease or lack of air and water - their death is brought on by the stress and panic of the experience.

A familiar example of this is when mice die after being caught in humane mouse-traps. The traps don't harm the mice, they only capture them, but the mice often die simply as a consequence of the panic brought on by being trapped. Obviously this must be a harrowing experience for the poor mouse, but the alternative of dying slowly after being trapped for days or even weeks would maybe be much worse.

I wonder if nature/God has built this capture shock system into animals in order to alleviate suffering? Off the top of my head I can't think of any obvious evolutionary reason for it.

In fact, I first read about capture shock in a book which was stating how odd it was that humans don't experience it to anywhere near the same extent as animals do. Do we not need it as much because we have the option of suicide? Can we consciously choose to end our lives, whereas animals need to unconsciously expire?

Maybe death means the happiness of existence outweighs the suffering that comes with it?

Earth: Our Pet Project

I've been thinking about our relationship to the animal kingdom a lot lately. Whether it's nature documentaries, Christmas TV adverts or YouTube animal videos we seem to be anthropomorphising animals more and more. I wonder where it's going. It's like we're moving every animal on the planet to the status of pet.

Personally I think this is probably a good thing overall, but I wonder what effect it will have. Human beings are now so ubiquitous on planet earth that for any land animal we're pretty much unavoidable. Is this affecting the evolution of those animals? Are tigers becoming more cuddly in order to survive in our world? Are we saving or wiping out animals on the basis of how cute they are? If we are, is this a bad thing?

There was recently an article in the news about seals violently attacking penguins. Everyone, myself included, was slightly shocked by it - "Really? seals doing this? but they're cute? This can't be right." Our cuddly Pokemon-style view of the animal world was ripped from us. (I wonder how this PR disaster for the seals will effect the way we protect them in the future. They might wanna buck their ideas up if they wanna survive in our cartoon vision of Earth.)

I had an example of this sort of confused thinking myself the other day. I was buying dog treats for my friend's dog. I'm a vegetarian, but all the treats contained meat of some sort. I then had a crisis of conscience trying to decide whether it was morally right to buy something for a dog that contained meat. Starve a dog, or kill an animal? In the end I bought the treats, but it made me think. I read somewhere that Paul McCartney's dog is vegetarian. Fair play to him if that works out for them, but you've gotta wonder how the dog feels about it :p

I think this is a topic I might come back to over the coming year. It seems more and more relevant. I might make 2015 the 'co-existing with animals' year. I don't think there's going to be any easy, honest answers though. It seems we're all too confused.