Going Bat-Shit

I've never been very much into science.

Sure, there was a time when I put salad dressing, ice cream, bits of old candy bars, a celery stalk, and strips of cheese into a soda bottle and would leave it on the kitchen counter, covered with a towel, for a month to see what would happen, but that was largely the extent of my interest in science. I got an "A" in chemistry, probably because my teacher was insane, definitely through no actual comprehension of the Periodic Table or any tenets of Chemistry, and we know that my affiliation with Physics lasted for all of two days.

When I hear a story on the radio about something sciency, that's generally my cue to tune out and gaze out my windshield at some unsuspecting pedestrian/joggers tank-top-covered breasts and, usually, get caught doing it because, while I have limited scientific abilities, my slickness abilities are far more limited.

Yesterday morning, however, a sciency story caught my ear and actually held my interest, but it wasn't necessarily because there were no boobies to stare at, or because it was particularly interesting, it was because it made me mad.

The story, (admittedly, I didn't catch the whole thing) centered around an alleged problem that was occurring with recently-constructed wind turbines, which are wind-powered generators of electricity, just on the off-chance you didn't know that.

Apparently, these ostensibly ecologically and environmentally-friendly energy producers are secretly creating an unintended though significant problem in our fragile ecosystem:

They're killing bats.

You know-- these things:


Yikes, right?

According to scientific research, bats are being killed by wind turbines, and not necessarily in the way you might think they're being killed. See, you might be tempted to think that, because wind turbines have dangerous, rotating fan-type things that spin around at sometimes high rates of speed that bats are being essentially filleted to death as if by a Hibachi chef at your table side on a Saturday night-- but that's not what's going on at all. No, it's not the bird getting sucked into the 747's engine fan situation. Apparently, according to research (that's probably being paid for by the government, you know, while the whole country is basically out of work) the pressure that is built up inside the wind turbines is so great that, when a bat gets near the turbine, its lungs and/or other internal organs basically explode.

And I was sitting there in my car, driving to therapy, actually, thinking to myself,

"So?"

I mean-- take another look


and ask yourself


"Do I give a shit about this?"

Chances are you'll probably come up with, as I did, "No. I do not."

See, the way I look at things like this is the old Cost/Benefit method. Less dependence on oil, gasoline and coal, versus some dead, disgusting, fucking scary-ass flying fang-fuckers? I'm kind of okay with that.

The other thing is-- is there some kind of law that says that scientists have to ruin everything? Okay, so, you're bored. You're sitting in your high-tech laboratories playing "Zelda" and looking for chicks who dig losers on E-Harmony and you're wondering about what you can write your next $3.2 million dollar grant for, and you come up with this? The Effect of Wind-Turbines on the Bat Population of America?

Come on, guys. Why don't you just shut the fuck up? Focus on the remote possibility of your ability to procreate and leave the rest of us alone.

I don't know-- maybe if Koala bears or puppies were having their organs explode because of wind turbines I would care a little bit more, but bats? You're gonna have to try a little harder than that to take my attention away from the tank-tops and bobbing up and down ponytails of the world.