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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. |
| The random number generator laughs at me once more. Here's another bit about happiness, this one from last year in Knowable. Scientists scrutinize happiness research  From meditation to smiling, researchers take a second look at studies claiming to reveal what makes us happy "Claiming" being the key word there. As if the answer is the same for everyone. We all want to be happy... [Citation needed] ...and for decades, psychologists have tried to figure out how we might achieve that blissful state. Maybe it's by not paying any attention to psychologists? But psychology has undergone serious upheaval over the last decade, as researchers realized that many studies were unreliable and unrepeatable. This is my shocked face:  Here’s what we know so far, and what remains to be reassessed, according to a new analysis in the Annual Review of Psychology. I'm skimming a bit. I'm late getting to this today, and tomorrow's entry may be early; plus, I just ragged on happiness research yesterday. One long-standing hypothesis is that smiling makes you feel happier. Spoiler: questionable, unverified. Which, again, absolutely shocks me (in a sarcastic way), because if there were ever a perfect example of confusing cause and effect, this would be it. I don't doubt it works for some people. But again, not everyone. For me, if I had to paste a fake smile on my face all day (say if I had to work a ret-hell job), someone would end up getting punched. Researchers have also found that external agencies can promote people’s happiness. Giving people cash promoted life satisfaction, as did workplace interventions such as naps. Huh. By absolute coincidence, having money and taking naps make me happy. The researchers didn’t find clear evidence of benefits for volunteering, performing random acts of kindness or meditation. I take it they also didn't find those things decreased happiness, so if you want to do them, do them. Dunn and Folk didn’t find any preregistered studies at all on exercising or spending time in nature, two oft-recommended strategies. Again, just me here, but I find that exercise has other benefits; spending time in nature, on the other hand, just means I have to check myself for ticks afterwards. It does make me appreciate my nice comfortable house and bed more, so I suppose there's that. Anyway, most of the article is about applying greater rigor to psychology studies, which is probably a good thing overall. And that's probably all I have on happiness for a while. Maybe. Hopefully. |
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