The Humanist Symposium

I love reading blog carnivals. For those of you who don't know, a blog carnival is a serial post on a certain topic that showcases articles from multiple bloggers. There are blog carnivals on every topic you could possibly imagine, but the one that I have followed every three weeks since its inception is The Humanist Symposium. I post this now because the #15th Humanist Symposium is the first one to occur since I started this blog, but I will be posting the location of each one every three weeks when they are published. So, to reiterate, the 15th Humanist Symposium is now up at Cafe Philos.


So, why post this at all, aside from wanting to share the work of some amazing and talented writers? Well, the primary purpose of this blog is to air my thoughts on things that are important to my world view, and standing at the forefront of that world view at this moment is my position on religion and where it stands in the "quest for the meaning of life." Though this may not be well-known to anyone currently reading this blog, I decided several years ago that I was an atheist - which means that I weighed all my observations about the world with everything I had been taught about the idea of God as the creator of it all, and decided that there was no longer any reason for me to believe in something when I have no proof that it exists. That is the simple explanation, which I will expound upon at a later date.

However, after doing a lot of reading and self-evaluation of my thoughts and feelings with regards to being an atheist, I decided that it was not the label that I wanted to apply to myself when someone asked me what I believed in. To be an atheist is to not believe in something, and I am an atheist in the same way that I am a a-Santa-ist, an a-fairy-ist, and an a-Easter Bunny-ist. Not believing in something is not the best foundation for one's outlook on life, nor is it a good way to describe one's self when asked what one does believe in.

So I eventually came to the conclusion that I was a secular humanist - I believe that this life I have on Earth is all I've got, and that the same is true for everyone else, so I want to work every day to make the lives of everyone I meet (and those that I don't) a little better with my actions and my presence. As a humanist, I hold the care of my fellow humans above all else, but it is a secular humanism because I do not feel this way as a result of any religion or a belief in any deity. I wish I could explain it better, but I am still having difficulty expressing my thoughts and feelings about this significant change in my life.

That's where the Symposium comes in. It was started by my favorite atheist blogger, Ebonmuse, over at his blog, Daylight Atheism, and has been going strong since April of last year. The wonderful bloggers who contribute to the Symposium every three weeks express their thoughts and feelings about what it means to be an atheist and a secular humanist better than I ever could, so I will continue to follow and advertise this excellent Symposium now that I have a blog of my own.

Baby Pictures! (sort of)

OK, so, as a shameless excuse to finally let people know that I have a blog, I give you... more new rat photos! (I promise this blog is about more than rats, really)

Aren't they adorable!

Myst the eternally curious

I still can't believe how tiny Pepper is!

I'm ready for my close-up

Look at those big dumbo ears

The best of friends

OK, that's all for now. I'll try and think of something more interesting to post about tomorrow.

The Year of the Rat 2 - Meet the Family!

So this post is a little late in coming from my previous post, but since no one reads this blog yet anyway, I guess that's not such a big deal. Anyway... in the second post in my ongoing series about the amazing rat, I would like to introduce you to the rats that I have in my life. This post is fitting because we just added two new members to our family this past Saturday. So, without further ado, it's time to meet the family.

Maya

Maya is currently our oldest rat, and she is almost 2 and a half years old. She is a black Berkshire rat, which means that she has black coloring over her back, but has white coloring on her belly and paws, and the tip of her tail is white. She was the first rat we ever got from Camarattery, the rat breeder that we get all our rats from now, and she has been a pleasure and a joy. She is a very active rat: she runs on the wheel in her cage almost constantly when she is awake (and she is the only rat we've had so far that has run on the wheel), and she loves to try and run off into our apartment to explore whenever she is let out to play. She was the first rat to discover that she could easily jump or fall off most of the surfaces in our house (tables, chairs, desks, the couch) and not get hurt, and has used this cunning escape mechanism to get away from us at every opportunity. Fortunately, she is also very trusting and has an insatiable appatite for treats, so she is always easily lured back into her cage again.

Cas

Cas was the baby of our little family until last weekend. She is around one year old. We adopted her from our rat breeder at six months old, so she had already been given the name "Castaway," which we shorted to "Cas" (pronounced KAZ). She is an odd rat, more nearsighted than most (and all rats are so nearsighted as to be almost blind anyway), a bit aggressive and clumsy around her cage mates, and a complete homebody. She hates exploring, or even coming out of her cage. She is a Lilac Merle Variegated Down Under rat, which describes the color of her fur, that lovely light brown, and the fact that she has that color on her head and shoulders, with a white blaze on her forehead, spots of color running down her back, and spots of color on her belly. Rat coloration terms can get very technical.
Cas is a wonderfully calm rat when being handled by people. She will let you hold her without squirming, and she loves having her belly tickled. Though she has always been a little odd, we love her dearly, and her quirks are a further example of the depth and complexity of rat personality.

Myst

The first of our two new babies, Myst is an 8-week old American Blue rat. She has perfect color, and I have totally fallen for the "blue" color, that lovely silver-gray that gave me the inspiration for her name (even though I spelled it in honor of my favorite video game). Though we haven't known her for very long, and she has not yet been introduced to our older rats, I can tell that Myst is going to be as friendly and outgoing as Maya. She is as full of energy as any young rat could be, she loves to be the center of attention, and she is constantly peeking curiously out of her cage at every new sound. She is also very sweet, and already licks my hand whenever I open the cage door to say hello. I can't wait to watch her grow up.

Pepper

The true baby of the family is Pepper, our other new arrival. She is only six weeks old, and is still so tiny that she fits entirely in the palm of my hand. She is a black Berkshire Dumbo Rex rat, which means she is the same color and has markings similar to Maya, but she has "dumbo" ears that stick out straight from the sides of her head instead of pointing up, and she has curly fur and whiskers rather than smooth. She is also outgoing and rambunctious, but easily frightened and skittish as she is still so very young. She is also an attention-grabber, who will push her nose in wherever Myst is, and even tries to push or pull the larger rat out of the way when she feels she isn't getting her fair share. She and Myst are great companions already, which bodes well for their introduction to Maya and Cas in several weeks, after the mandatory quarantine period is up.

IN MEMORIUM

Maya, Cas, Myst, and Pepper are our current rat family, but they are not the first rats we have had, nor will they be the last. Though rats make wonderful pets, the sad fact is that they do not live very long, usually around 3 to 5 years, though a good diet and healthy living can extend that period. As such, we have had four other wonderful rat friends that are no longer around.

Rosco

Rosco was our very first rat. We rescued her, unintentionally, from a pet store that sold rats for food. This meant that she had never been socialized, had never been around people, and we had no way of knowing how old or healthy she was when we got her. Despite that fact, she lived with us for over three years, finally dying this past November of old age and cancer. Rosco was not very rambunctious or social, but she loved to explore and spend time running around on the couch or our desks while my husband and I watched TV or did homework or played video games. She was a great friend, and we were very sad to see her go.

Nick

Nick (short for Nicodemus - like most new rat owners, we named our first two for the rats of Nimh) was Rosco's first cage mate, we bought them both at that pet store and brought them home together. Nick and Rosco were my very first pets (besides fish), so when she got sick and died within a week, I was understandably devastated. All rats suffer from a respiratory ailment known as mycoplasma, and when they get sick or their immune systems weaken, this ailment becomes a full-blown disease that can kill them very quickly. We took Nick to the vet and got her antibiotics, but she was just too small and sick to last very long. Though we didn't know her for long, she will always hold a special place as one of our very first rats.

Pip

Pip was our second attempt at purchasing a pet store rat, this time from a major chain pet store that actually sold rats as pets, not as food. He was also our only male rat, as we thought that breeding him and Rosco and having a cage of male rats and one of female rats would be better than buying just one rat at a time. Unfortunately, he and Rosco never even got to meet, as he got sick just like Nick and lasted only two weeks, despite visits to the vet and antibiotics as well. After more experience with rats, we believe that Pip was too young to have been taken away from his mother, and that the stress of a new environment on such a tiny rat was what killed him. After he died, we decided to look into rat breeders, which led us to the wonderful breeder that we get all our rats from today.

Callie

Callie came to us from a friend who was being deployed by the Navy and couldn't take his pet rat along. We have no idea how old she was, but she was definitely the biggest rat we have ever had. She was also a sweetheart, calm and sedate, and she would grab your hand and lick it forever if you let her. We got her around the same time as Maya, so she, Maya, and Rosco were our first rat family until she died of unknown causes (probably an age-related stroke) a year and a half later. She was a great matron to our younger rats, and will always be remembered for her caring ways and adorable face.

And that's our family, past and present. In my next installment, though I will try to write about something other than rats before then, I will write about why rats are such good pets, as well as some of the things that you should know about them before choosing a rat as a pet. Until next time... a bit of trivia:

A group of rats is called a "mischief." And believe me, it is fitting.

Happy Darwin Day!

Today is Charles Darwin's birthday, so it's only fitting that we acknowledge the man who started us on the path to realizing exactly how we got to where we are today: evolution and natural selection. The images here were submitted as e-card designs to RichardDawkins.net in honor of the day. And, so as not to forget that he shares this auspicious birthday with another great man, I leave you with this card as well.


Celebrate knowledge, freedom, and the wonder of life today!

The Year of the Rat

In recognition of the Chinese New Year, my next few posts are going to be all about rats. The rat is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, and people born in the year of the rat are supposed to possess the qualities of creativity, honesty, generosity, ambition, a quick temper and wastefulness. I was not born in the year of the rat, but I find it fascinating that the Chinese, as well as other Eastern cultures, hold the rat in such high regard when it has been thoroughly reviled in most Western cultures. Because the truth of the matter is that there is much more to the rat than their depiction as filthy, thieving, disease-carrying pests.

I could almost write a book on all the things that I find fascinating about rats, but most of that information is written about elsewhere. Instead, I will simply share what I find to be a few of the most amazing facts about rats:

1. Rats Laugh

Despite what people see in movies and TV shows, rats do not run around everywhere squeaking. The only time that rats make noises audible to the human ear is when they are angry or in pain. Normal rat communication takes place in the ultrasonic range, and they are not extremely vocal creatures. However, using special equipment, scientists discovered that rats make short, high-pitched "chirping" noises during playful social interactions with other rats or with people. They also found that rats are ticklish in the same way that people are ticklish; they have sensitive areas on their skin that generate more laughter than others. The playfulness, and the laughter that accompanies it is seen more among younger rats, and the tendency to laugh and play declines as rats age, indicating that it is a social construction meant to stimulate joy and good feelings among groups of young rats, much in the same way that children laugh when playing with one another.



2. Rats are Highly Intelligent and Social Animals

Pet rats have been kept since the 19th century, when professional rat-catchers would keep some of the rats they caught for exhibition or fights. When they started breeding the rats, they began to realize that rats were highly intelligent and trainable, so they started selling them as pets. Through years of selective breeding, people eventually bred the domesticated "fancy rat" away from the common sewer rat, but the similarities remain. Rats are social animals who require the company of other rats for health and friendship. They engage in play, mutual grooming, and a complex social hierarchy that dictates their interactions with one another.

In the wild, rats are colony animals that work together to find food, protect their homes, and defend against predators, chief of which is man. However, human beings have to fight constantly to stay one step ahead of the rat. Rats communicate with one another through complex scent trails - a single drop of scent can tell another rat everything about the one that left it, from their age and health to whether the food they were eating was good or poisoned. Rats follow known paths to and from reliable food sources on a daily basis. A trap set where rats are know to travel may catch one, or maybe two, but not before they have warned every other rat that passes that way about the danger. Rat catchers in New York have been known to come across nests that were lined with the shredded remains of rat traps.

Poison is also ineffective because rats have poison testers - one rat eats any new, unmarked food source first and the other ones stand around and watch to see if anything happens to him before deciding whether it's safe to eat or not. This is why the best current rat poisons are blood thinners, because immediate or fast-acting poisons are useless. Poisons and traps are only deterrents, not devices of extermination, and the rats are figuring them out almost as fast as we are designing them.

As human society has evolved, so has rat society. As our cities have grown taller, they have burrowed deeper. They outbreed us like crazy and are way more likely than we are to survive anything we may do to the planet.We will never be rid of rats in the wild, but why would we want to be? We are learning to mitigate much of the damage that can be done by rats, just as they have learned to avoid the harms set against them by us. Any species that intelligent should be respected.

3. And Speaking of Intelligence...

The final item on my list for today is one of the more amazing things I have ever heard. Rats display metacognition - also known as the process of thinking about thinking. In other words, rats are aware of their own thoughts and are capable of using that awareness to guide future decisions. They are the first animal outside of primates that has been found to have this ability. It was discovered through a study that began by asking the rats to define whether a tone that was played was short or long. If they gave the correct answer, they got a large reward, but if they got the wrong answer, they received no reward. However, at the beginning of the test, the rats were given the option of receiving a small reward for opting out of the test. Over the course of the study, it was found that if the rats started having difficulty getting the right answer, they would choose to opt out of the test, thus demonstrating that they recognized when they didn't know the answer to a question. This is a fascinating discovery in the field of neuroscience, and one that I will definitely expound upon in further posts.

Well, since this post is long enough to be a college essay, I'll leave you with this picture.


Tomorrow, I'll introduce you to my rats and talk about why they make such great pets.

First Post

I might as well admit right now that I have no idea what this blog will turn out to be about. I've tried many times to keep a blog without much success, so for now I'm just playing it by ear. I have a lot of things I want to say, and not many people to share them with, so consider this a conversational blog. If I think about it, I will probably write about it.

Possible topics at the moment include:
- Observations on life in this crazy world of ours
- Books, movies, games and other entertainments of note
- Stories about my pet rats
- Politics, religion, the weather, and other controversies
- Stories from other blogs of note

... and those are just the topics I could write about right now. So, stay tuned for a series of observations on the cosmos. Love it or hate it, I hope I give you something to think about every once in a while.