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Items to fit into your overhead compartment |
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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| A few days ago, we had the article about a correlation between hairiness and the speed of wound healing. Well, this one, from PopSci, talks about the hair part. How is head hair different from body hair?  There's a reason you can't grow your armpit hair to your belly button. You know if we could, someone would turn it into a fashion statement. Hair can be curly, straight, thick, thin, brown, black, blonde, or auburn. It can be long or short, frizzy or lush. The musical did it better.We have two types of hair, says dermatologist Elizabeth Houshmand. Vellus hairs, or “peach fuzz,” cover virtually our entire body but aren’t easy to see. Our head, chest, armpit, and pubic hair consists of terminal hairs. These are thicker and darker. The author forgot nose and ear hair in the latter category. But not all terminal hairs are alike. For example, the hair on our head can grow far longer than that on the rest of our body. To understand why, we have to dive deep into our skin. Phrases like that really get under my skin. The article goes into a brief bit of scientific detail, then: But bald men can still retain thick body hair. Radusky, who has worked on clinical trials for hair loss conditions, explains this is due to the conversion of testosterone as we get older. An enzyme called 5-alpha reductase changes the hormone into dihydrotestosterone. And so we see how another problem is caused by testosterone. The article's pretty short (unlike my hair) and, I would hope, uncontroversial, so I don't have anything else to say. I'm sure people have something to say to me, though, like "Get a haircut and get a real job."To which I can only reply: No. |
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