June 17, 2003
Teeny Tiny Things
Another thing we did on Saturday was examine microbes under the microscope. Roommate has a microscope fetish (and that's all I'll say about that), but it provides a bit of entertainment for me. I like microscopes and telescopes, too, although I'm perfectly happy to not collect them at the same time.
So, we drove out to Aquatic Park in Berkeley to cruise for microbes. The brackish pond is murky and a wonderful ecosystem to breach with our plastic bottles. We took samples and returned to the laboratory to view the contents under the scopes. It was really cool. At first, all I saw were little paramecia swimming around in three dimensions!! That was trippy. I looked at the slide on which was the drop of water in which the paramecia were doing backflips and my head exploded. How could something that small do flips in a space so small and how could I see it all? What the fuck. Keep me away from these instruments. I tell ya, just a little bit and I start to think I'm an intellectual or something.
After a while, we found an amoeba. Much bigger than the paramecia we saw earlier, this thing was amazing. I haven't seen creatures like this since eighth grade biology with Ms. Sweet. She was cool. Ms. Sweet taught me something I will never forget as long as I live: you spell diaphragm dye-a-p-h-raggum. Also never tip your eyedropper upside down while it contains a sample. The rubber of the dropper will contaminate your specimen. I just don't know how I could live without this information!
So this amoeba was wriggling around our field of view, we could see the cilia, we could see its nucleus. We could watch it move around doing whatever amoebas do. I won't personify it too much, but I do have to wonder if it is conscious. Yes, I'm serious. It's like because I can see it, I know it's there, I become aware of it, and I wonder if it's aware of itself.
What the fuck did I say up there in paragraph two? It's not conscious. It's just a thing. Right?
And then I watched Bowling for Columbine. My head exploded again, only this time it was to learn just how scary this country can be. Did you know that the average annual gun-related homicide rate in Japan is 39 while in the US it's over 11,000! And did you know that Charleton Heston is an ugly old man who should have been gone a long time ago? OK, maybe that part was opinion. I was completely disturbed by this video. I guess that's the point.
I've never liked guns. My father had a rifle of some kind, no idea, it was long with a nice, light brown wooden handle. He took my sister and me to the shooting range one day to give us a chance to shoot it. I didn't like it at all. Then, when I was in navy boot camp, we had to go to the shooting range to give us an introduction to guns, etc. We were given a bunch of rounds, can't remember how many, maybe just ten, and were told to shoot at the targets. OK, no biggie. If Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson can do it, so the fuck can I! Bang! Bang! I hit the target only three times out of ten. And those shots weren't even close to the center. I think I may have shot the manufacturer's seal on the target instead of the target itself. Needless to say, I am not familiar with how they work or how to use them. I don't like guns. Guns scare the piss out of me. Strangely though, I love Lara Croft and other shoot-em-up type video games. In fact the bloodier the better. Go figure.
