I learned something fascinating this week...

When a diving mammal (e.g. whales) dives down they exhale. The oxygen they survive on when under water for all that time, is stored inside their cells, muscle in particular.

Simply fascinating.

And, I have made a decision. a big one. I am going to volunteer for the Kakapo conservation project of COD Fish Island, just of the coast of Stuart Island. You have to be super super fit...eight hour hikes up hill, no path ways, just through virgin forest, carrying packs weighing upwards of 15 kilos each.

One of the jobs I would love involves camping alone in the forest, watching a nest day and night, you know,m just to make sure the birds are doing okay.

It would be awesome!!!

But, there is no way on Gods green Earth that I could do it at the moment. I mean... I'm a hippo. Guess I'm off to find out about gym memberships this weekend.

Okay, still enraged.

A while ago (i have no idea if we're talking a few years, or a couple of decades) one of my current lecturers discovered a new species of fish. It lives only in a small group of wet lands in a certain part of the country, and no where else. In the last two or three years, two of the main areas they live in have "gone up in flames" as he puts it. I don't know what that actually means, did they get set on fire?

Now, the local council want to run the sewage treatment system for the region right through the remaining habitat of this unique little fishy. Pisses me right off!

Why is it that money is more important than our biodiversity???


Okay, to the point...

I'm not a very scholarly person, I certainly don't spend as much of my time thinking godly thoughts as I probably ought to... but I have been a pondering...

God made man (and woman) to be lord over the earth and all the varying critters. Which, I would take to be, we were made to look after the earth and all the varying critters.

I mean, if you think about he servants who were given talents, and what each of them did with them.... there's the guy who looked after his masters money and grew the investment, and there's a guy who buried it the ground and did nothing with it, just gave it back when his master returned. We hear this parable and we think, "nah, I don't want to be that second (or actually third) guy!" We think we want to make sure to look after, and grow, the things that God had given us. Right?

Hasn't He given us a planet??? Hasn't He given us a variety of animals beyond what we have so far been able to discover?

So, God gives us a planet and a bunch of animals, which servant are we? We aren't even the guy who did nothing with what he was given. We are the guy who sets his masters house of fire, and lets his sheep get out.


So why is it, that more Christians aren't concerned with saving the environment; petitioning against the cutting down of rain forests for palm oil production, and protecting marine habitat, saving endangered species? Do we just think God doesn't care? Somehow I doubt he would have gone to the trouble of making the natural world so "unnecessarily beautiful" if all he wanted to look down on was concrete.

A Return to Commercial Whaling?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?

HOW DARE THEY! HOW DARE THEY! HOW DARE THEY! How DARE the NZ government even consider allowing a return to commercial whaling! How F**king DARE they!

We used to be the little country that could.
We stood up to our nuclear armed allies, even in times of war, and forbid them from bringing nuclear powered ships and subs into our waters.
We were the first to climb to the worlds highest peak.
We beat the Wright brothers into the air, regardless of what some history books say.
We were the first, the very first, to give women the right to vote.

We used to be this tiny little island nation at the bottom of the world who put older, bigger, richer countries to shame with our ingenuity our courage, our boldness and our determination to what was right, not what was merely easy or convenient.

What happened to us??? How could any black-blooded Kiwi EVER agree to this?

When did we as a people decided that if at first we didn't succeed, we would turn round and bend over instead?

On the news last night, they stated this would be a return to commercial whiling for Japan, Iceland and Norway. Are we really so stupid as to think that legalisation wouldn't have other countries demanding their share of the Whale meat pie?

I know Japan continues whaling under the guise of scientific research, despite global disapproval and protest, I know. But how does anyone trick themselves into believing that giving them, or any other country for that matter, our nod of approval will makes things better.

yes, if something is made legal, rules and regulations can be put in place. But honestly, if a country is prepared to go against international requests, to so blatantly break international law, and enter other countries territories to it, do you really think they'll be bothered by restrictions desired by the very same countries they currently ignore.

What happened???

Is this latest move by our government, the ultimate and irrefutable proof that the brain drain is complete? Or, have we become so caught up in the race to be more like our neighbors, that we have forgotten, or no longer care, who are?

How is it that Australia is displaying more environmental balls than us?

We should all be ashamed!

My latest epiphany

I used a phase in my general ramblings yesterday, that though accidental, I have been looking at and thinking, is really very true of my life. I said something about wanting to be an "active participant" in my own life.

The truth is, I have not been actively participating in my life for a really long time. I would say, it's been more than sixteen years.

This is probably due to my various tragic life experiences, which have left me too scarred to function. And I've realized, I exist, but do not live. I have not been going out and doing things, I have been waiting for them to happen to me. But more than that, I have been in a place where I would pretty much just accept whatever I got as being all I would get. I would accept less than mediocrity, because I couldn't go out and take more for myself. I have spent almost ten years working as a florist, and am good at it, but I hate it I have always been at least indifferent about the "chosen" field, and for a very long time, like about 5 years, I have HATED it entirely.

I say "Chosen" with quotation marks, because I didn't choose it. I had been going to be baker for most of my high school life, because I couldn't think of anything else I could do, because I had been convinced that I was stupid by years of home and school yard bullying. So, when I developed debilitating allergies that prevented me from continuing on the path to being a baker, my mother said to me "why don't you be a florist?" - and then told me she had already arranged for me to do work experience with someone she knew through work, and it would make her look bad if I didn't go. So I did. I didn't became a florist because I liked her suggestion, but because I had no other ideas and really couldn't be bothered enough with my own life to defend myself against her pressuring me.

I got so... honestly I can't even think of a word that's strong enough.... sick, angry, furious, sad, depressed.... about my job that I was forced by life to act some form of action, so I did what I should have years ago and enrolled in University. I planned my escape. But, I still need to pay the bills while I study, so I still have to work part time in the hell hole of a job I was trying to escape, and full time during the summer. But, I realized last night, that while this was a good baby step, the getting a real education and embracing the fact that I am not a complete imbecile like I was taught, it was just a beginning.

I haven't done much else really. I told myself that I was not wasting my precious time doing other things because I was being responsible, and making sure I had the time to study. But, I think I was still just waiting for things to happen. I still couldn't go out and take hold of life. So really, all the groups I signed up with this week,they are much more important than just things I find interesting, that was me going out and living... and I wasn't even trying to. I just did it!!! It is actually a bit impressive.

I think, even my list, the book of things I want to be able to tick off as having been done, it was a way of putting things off. I had listed them, so I was going to them, but it would be some day in the future. Certainly not now, well not unless someone else did something to make it happen. I mean, yeah I have done a bungy jump...but only because a friend of mine put me in her car and took me there (it was a surprise birthday present).

And, for the first time ever, I have actually started to consider selling my old bagpipes. I can't really play them, I can't even tune them properly, so if I do decide to try to practice (like once a year) they sound so bad I stop after one song. But I couldn't think of being rid of them, because that would be taking action, making a decision, without help from anyone else.

I hadn't realized any of this of course, this is all a day old epiphany.Or maybe I had been aware of it, just not the depth of it. I knew I did nothing, but I didn't know that I was avoiding doing anything for myself.

Stupid traumatic childhood. Oh well, never mind.

Happily confused

Wednesday was club day for Orientation week... which basically means all the clubs have little booths where they try and get you to sign up, and a church goes along and gives out candy and stuff. Last year I never even went to have a look, but this year I am fully embracing the idea of being an active participant in my own life and headed over after my last lecture was let out. I ended up singing up for not one, but three different groups, in addition to the one I signed up for on Monday.

1. Conservation Volunteers
(My passion. A tree hugger from day one)

2. Biology club
(well, it is my major)

3. Greens on Campus
(which is is directly related to the Green Party)

4. Catholics on Campus
(an attempt to make new friends and reestablish faith in my day to day activities)

I know, it is an odd mixture, science, politics, religion and conservation.

I was chatting to a friend this morning about a paper that I am taking this year, and she had to take next year. She, having found out that I am "religious" earlier this week, was confused about how I could be taking a paper on evolution, because wouldn't I be offended. my church friends have the same question.

I can't say this wasn't an expected question, but still I couldn't seem to articulate my answer. Which I guess could be best summarized by saying that i don't think common sense and hope are mutually exclusive concepts. if I'm perfectly honest, I think even as a very small child, I always classed, Adam and Eve as Fairy tales. I never really considered them as having lived exactly as the bible says.

But, I think even if I was to say to myself that every single word of the bible is to be taken as a literally truth, then I would still be comfortable taking this evolution paper, because even though it compares evolution to intelligent design, and discredits creationism, it is still simple information that I can apply to my degree. I am able to learn something even if I don't agree with it, after all, what is there really to stop a vegan learning to fish? Only the will to try.


I doubt i have explained this right, but anyway...

I am happy, I am comfortable, and I can admit that both as a follower of Christ, and a scientist, I have work to do. Will I ever be fully able to reconcile the two conflicting parts of my world? I don't see a conflict. The only real problem I have, is not upsetting my friends on different sides of the fence, because I don't 100% agree with either of them. I think it comes down to my intense fascination with life and the world around me, and a refusal to accept that things are a certain way because some one says so, I want evidence. Which, believe it or not, is a pro-god thing as well as a pro-science thing.


Again, I doubt I have explained this right, but that's abstract thought for you.