David Custis Kimball - blog

Medicine, Environment, History, Humor, Theology, Science

My point here is that nature still has its forbidden ‘fruits’, or animals, or people, or lifestyles, or philosophies.  They are self-sustaining only and wish to ensnare others for some ritual of ‘selfishness’, and might be in addition to the evil we of faith acknowledge in ‘deceivers’, to that of those who practice self serving ‘pride’.

Here’s where I branch away from a lot of holy rollers who might tell us that ‘these are going to be punished with Hell-fire’.  Well maybe not; they will remain like rocks on the shore of an unlit stormy coast as very secure… just a danger.  To be avoided.

 Which reminds me of a Ben Franklin story… he having made a perilous voyage across the Atlantic and in a storm barely missed an outcropping of deadly rocks, was known to have said, ‘If I were a Catholic, I might have given a large sum in the name of some saint who protects those on the sea, but since I’m not, I think I’ll put my money in a light-house.’  Which goes to the options we have at confronting danger, and helping others to avoid it.  Frankly the ‘Hell-fire’ approach presents a false sense of security or absurd in the case of the rocks.

And then there is another story here in my town, where a short lived Environmental Officer of Palm Beach County was quoted in a Winter newspaper ‘Don’t breath the air along the beach.’  Not a welcome warning for tourist-seeking businesses along the beach.  Yes, he was damned into silence.  It did awaken my curiosity and I learned during my course in Geomarine Chemistry that ‘Red Tide’ dinoflagalates (sp) produce a protective saxotocin neurotoxin which can become airborne and affects the muscles around the lungs and perhaps within the lungs to ‘stop your ability to breathe’.  Now Red Tide thrives on all the nutrients we as humans pump into the ‘infinite’ (354 million cubic miles) of salt water, and have no qualms.  However ‘pollution’ occurs when the local waters cannot ‘handle’ what foreign substances are being impressed upon them. Since there’s no great hurricane occurring all the time, mixing of shoreline waters and those a mile or so offshore does not occur, hence ‘POLLUTION’ dumbass.

But Dinoflagelates only put out the neurotoxin when threatened, and they are threatened when all the pesticides, selecticides, herbicides (all human suicides) are washed into the shore waters by rainfall.  So it was that Winter season of tourist nirvana of golfing and flowering gardens and agriculture in plastic mulch with poison dajeure here in South Florida.  So perhaps the sacrifice of that one Environmental Operative, awakened peoples consciousness to poisoning themselves as it  hasn’t occurred in over ten years.  Or just newer more powerful, but shorter lived chemical poisons are being used… Only your Chemical Poison Company knows for sure.

Moral: Cut it out… the poison stuff, or I’m going to buy you a pair of these birds to play with.

biomedicalephemera:

Pitohui variable (now Pitohui kirhocephalus) - The Variable Pitohui

Though all pitohuis have been found to have at least some level of toxin in them, the variable pitohui and hooded pitohui have by far the highest and most consistent levels of it, both in their bodies and throughout their feathers.

The toxins carried by the pitohuis aren’t actually produced by them - like the Columbian poison dart frog, they acquire the toxin from their food sources. Actually, the chemical makeup of their toxin is almost identical to that of the poison dart frogs. They secrete neurotoxic alkaloid compounds known as batrachotoxins. These toxins are lipophilic, and can permeate unbroken skin. They bind to nerve cells, and basically “break” them - they open up the sodium channels in the cells (permanently depolarizing them) so that the nerves can no longer fire, and a flaccid paralysis ensues.

Bizarrely, the tetrodotoxin of the pufferfish may be a possible “treatment” for batrachotoxin-induced paralysis. Tetrodotoxin is non-competitive with batrachotoxin (meaning it wouldn’t be trying to bind to the same part of the cell, and wouldn’t have to remove the batrachotoxin first), and causes an extreme tetanic (stiff) paralysis, because it causes nerve cells to enter a state where they’re permanently firing and can’t stop.

Well, toxin or not, no deaths due to the pitohui have ever been recorded. The Papuan natives see pitohuis as “rubbish birds” because of their toxins, and avoid hunting them. Surely a few natives or explorers have died eating them in the past, but they aren’t an active threat to anyone.

The birds of New Guinea and the adjacent Papuan Islands. R. Bowdler Sharpe and John Gould, 1875-1888.

(via marineknowledge)