On my way to work, I saw…

Though technically that was Monday, and today is Wednesday. This is important as harvest started on Tuesday and this view is now straw stubble. Rather than being an eyesore it makes the drop of the land into the valley even more stunning.

The Desserter and I tried the walk out on Monday. It is about 40 mins from my house to college and is a pleasant walk – very open with spectacular views across the valleys that I never knew existed. There are only a few tight bits where you go through gates and the like. I’m not sure if it’s a viable option to walk on your own long term, though I used to do dodgier walks with the dogs… I did the walk on my own today, well – on my own bar my 7 inch bread knife. Trusty knife. Keeps the little paranoia demons happy.

My honey project is winding me up. I’ve done so many pilot studies I’m earning flying hours. My final ever experiment has just become a pilot study for the final ever experiment tomorrow. Which will probably end up as a pilot for next week. *sigh*

Would you like some ethics, this fine Wednesday evening? Here’s the state of the law at present. It is illegal (in the UK) to take an organ from one animal and transplant it into another, even if it doesn’t result in the death of the donor (or if the donor was dead to start with). It is illegal to collect blood from live donors for the purpose of building up a blood bank. It *is* legal to collect blood and transfuse it into a animal at the same practice in order to help the recipient. It’s a slightly grey area – donation of blood or body parts requires consent – which an animals cannot give. However if it is for the purpose of saving another animal (or ironically for experiments and you have a licence from the home office etc) it enters the grey area. However sterilisation should also require consent – the health risks alone are not necessarily enough to truly call it a benefit to the health and thus totally justified. In Norway for example, sterilisation is very rare, yet their pets don’t fall down dead as a result. Chemotherapy in animals is not to cure – it is to palliate. It is to improve quality of life, and/or to lengthen the life expectancy – it is not to cure the cancer. This is because animals cannot comprehend that the suffering of human style high dose chemotherapy is necessary to attempt to cure, and again, they do not give consent to suffer a decrease in life quality for a potential cure.

Shall we get to the point? I have waffled enough. If there is an animal that needs blood, and really needs it, my pets could donate. However, if they did so they would be put through an intensely stressful and somewhat terrifying experience of travelling, hospitalisation and blood collection. All of this is not beneficial to my pet at all, and may even be detrimental, even though it may save the life of another, and as such I would be very reluctant to offer my pets. After all, I haven’t asked for their consent. However, reverse the tables. If it’s my pet that needs the blood, how sympathetic would I be to someone who refused to provide their pet as a donor, simply because it would get stressed? In fact, imagine it’s my pet that needs the blood – would I put her sister through the stress of donating, to potentially save her life? Of course I would – in an instant. And therein lies the ethical dilemma. If I would stress my pet to save my other pet’s life, why will I not stress my pet to save an unknown pet’s life?

It is perhaps an interesting look at the nature of humans, and perhaps my own nature. My family, my friends, my pets – all are intensely valuable to me. I would give away everything I owned to save my pet’s life. Everything else is of little value to me, and perhaps to some degree expendable. I view the US method of using the kidneys of stray cats for kidney transplants, and then euthanasing said stray (it would be euthanased anyway in theory) unethical, even though it is less wasteful in a way (!) However, if my cat needed a transplant, my views on this practice would probably swing right back around. Or rather, they wouldn’t change, but I wouldn’t care. I would blacken part of my own soul to save my cat.

It’s quite scary when I consider the lengths I’d go to to save a member of my family (pets count as family) – all thoughts of ethics, social acceptability, karma (or heaven and hell) and consequences become immaterial and are discounted from the equation. It can be intriguing knowing that given the right circumstances, you can be a totally different person.

On a slightly lighter note, I’ve developed an interest in innappropriate adverbs. I think they are called adverbs – adjectives that describe a way a verb is carried out. I envy the Americans with their structured English language education – actually learning that brackets are called parentheses etc. Anyway, inappropriate adverbs. The following are examples.

“He muttered darkly” – darkness is a measure of light intensity, a sound cannot have a light intensity…
“The silence was deafening” – not quite the same thing but interesting nonetheless.
They are actually quite hard to think of.

And similar things from other people:
“He moved a cautious hand” – can a hand be cautious? Does a hand have motive of its own at all?

*chortles*
— the dash — it is not the only punctuation mark — there are others.

And of course, “to mutter darkly” is not really inappropriate – for as Dictionary.com says, among the definitions of “dark” are:

6. Characterized by gloom; dismal: took a dark view of the consequences.
7. Sullen or threatening: a dark scowl.
9. Concealed or secret; mysterious: “the dark mysteries of Africa and the fabled wonders of the East� (W. Bruce Lincoln).
11. Exhibiting or stemming from evil characteristics or forces; sinister: “churned up dark undercurrents of ethnic and religious hostility� (Peter Maas).
12. Being or characterized by morbid or grimly satiric humor.

And in fact can be a aspect of prounounciation:
15. Linguistics. Pronounced with the back of the tongue raised toward the velum. Used of the sound (l) in words like full.

And now, I mutter darkly, thoroughly upset the computer by playing with its slidey door bit, and wend my way to bedfordshire. Darkly.