Birthdays, Birds, and Blogs

The minute I'm writing I am currently turning a whole two decades old and I didn't really envision myself spending half of my birthday today intensely watching a bird documentary and writing more blogs like today was my last day on Earth. Yet here I am, typing this blog as if I have currently 8 hours, 14 minutes and some seconds to live. The desperation of a college student proves itself once again! All right so let's get down to business:

For the reading this week, I specifically chose to read Safina's chapter "Whines and Pet Peeves". Prior to reading, I had assumed it was a chapter revolving around good ol' man's best friend and some gripes about Safina's and other researchers' experiences with them. On one hand, I was about 25% right; on the other hand, Safina had a lot more to say about how ridiculous and convoluted animal research and research theory has become. If anything, I was mentally cackling at how absolutely right Safina was. I loved his recount about a pair of researchers presenting a "Theory Theory" and mocked at the stupid audacity that that idea entailed. Animals are complex to an intent, but the methods of interpreting their complexities don't need to be. Safina goes on to tear down the all holy Theory of Mind standard and makes it clear that that standard was not only unfair but unattainable. He observed that the way humans measure animals' mental capabilities are even beyond human capability and that this method was simply not ideal. Furthermore, I admired his firm views in which the most organic method to study animals is to observe their authentic selves in their own environments. Overall, I was happy to find that Safina had a realistic and light-hearted enough view to poke fun at the fact that scientists and researchers alike tended to over dissect and prod things to theorize upon theories upon theories, especially with animals.

In the beginning of the quarter, I was definitely heavily biased towards canine or marine/aquatic life to research about. I live with three dogs nearly 24/7 and the ocean itself always has more to discover and understand. However, after this week, I can see myself choosing primate work or even insects and birds! To be quite honest, even as a child with figures like the late Steve Irwin and the vastness of funny YouTube pet videos and available documentaries, animals have been a long time fascination. Frankly speaking, I could see myself doing anything so long as there was something remotely interesting to take a look at. My research process this week was mostly just whatever had been assigned this week. This included the Twitter feed, Safina readings, the documentary, etc. Thankfully though, I think the assignments have given me a good rough idea of how to approach and narrow things down. I will say though some of the easiest and hardest to research scientists were on Twitter. A lot of times the researchers were either very avid on promoting other's or their own works, or it was a difficult mix of that and personal political opinions and other non-research related topics. I think what's cool to note as well are researchers' presences in podcasts relating to their fields! The lovely Barbara J. King was one of many, but I also wanted to note that John Marzluff had been a prominent scientist featured in a lot of our past readings. I've found that the best strategy to find resources is a mix of the following: 1. Checking one scientist/researcher's Twitter profile then looking through who they are following! This will give more specifics into organizations and people they're involved or work with!

2. Googling their names and looking at all of the following: 1) Wikipedia page (if one is there) 2) bio page at the respective university they teach at and 3) websites with their published work

PHEW! I can wrap this blog up now! I woke up around 10:30AM today and I have yet to eat a meal. I will now proceed to celebrate that I've managed to be on this planet for 20 years now. As some French lady once said, "Let them eat cake!"