Defiance

Be inspired.

Thursday 6/10

Calling

When all of the birds fly south for the winter, they fly here, to Texas.  Any street corner that time of year which is home to at least one fast food restaurant looks something like this.

Don’t forget to shut your sun roof and roll up your windows!

Monday 4/12

Age Old Answer

Which came first: the chicken or the egg?  This is a very interesting question.  You ask someone and they usually have an answer for you fairly quickly.  Either the chicken came first or the egg.  Then you ask the counter-question to their answer, either the egg was laid by a chicken or the chicken had to have hatched from an egg.  Soon, you’ll start to sound like those vultures on the Jungle Book deciding what to do for the day.  It’s a vicious cycle of repetitiveness.  The more you think about the chicken or the egg, the more confusing it gets.  That’s kind of backwards from how you normally figure something out.  You’re supposed to come to a conclusion, not to venture out from it.  Well, there may be several reasonable answers for which actually came first.

So, again . . .

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer 1: The Velociraptor

Let’s say you’re a big fan of Charles Darwin’s work: evolution, natural selection, and all that jazz.  Let’s rule out the egg.  If the egg “came first,” then there would not have been any nurturing parent chicken or protector.  Anything that hatched from that egg wouldn’t have lived more than a week (and that’s just sad).  Your answer would be that the chicken came first.  You should also be ready if someone were sly enough to challenge you with asking where that chicken came from.  Just tell them dinosaurs because birds came from dinosaurs and so the velociraptor clearly came first. 

Answer 2: The Rooster

Well what if you’re not convinced by evolution.  You’re a hard-core creationist.  God created the Earth in six days and rested on the seventh.  Fact.  And in due time, He took some dust from the ground, created a man, Adam, and breathed life into him.  Then, from one of Adam’s ribs, He created Eve.  It might be safe to assume that some of the other animals that roam the Earth were created in the same manner.  God may just as easily have scooped up some dirt and made the rooster and when the rooster was lonely, He used a drumstick to make the chicken (no souls, of course).  Voila!  The rest is history.

Answer 3: The Chicken

(Well, that seems pretty straight forward.  What gives?)  Some believers out there think UFOs and extra-terrestrials visit Earth from time to time.  In my opinion, “to each his own.”  But let’s be open-minded.  We’re all waiting for aliens to visit us and bestow upon us unimaginably advanced technology and understanding.  Perhaps in an inter-planetary fly-by, some Alien race decided our world could be a better place with fried chicken, chicken kiev, and barbecued chicken pizza so they left us one to get started with (and a rooster, too, because . . . you know, it takes two to tango). 

So choose a side, or make up a different theory.  Just realize you’re practically justifying your entire religious and scientific beliefs in the answer to one silly, age-old riddle!

By: S. Cole Garrett

Wednesday

Chicken

Fear is a funny thing. It’s an emotion you can get from watching a movie. It can come from being chased by a large bear (or a serial killer, you know, just whatever). Fear comes in many varieties, too. It ranges anywhere from simple caution to paranoia. It can be derived from immediate and definite threat or even non-existent threats. Phobias and anxiety are often described as fears, but they may actually be illegitimate perceptions of danger rather than real danger. Perhaps one of the stranger associations we make with fear, however, is its animal: the chicken.

We use many different animals to describe human traits and sometimes for emotions as well. One could be stubborn as a mule or as sly as a fox. For some reason, cats and chickens are deemed the expressions of fear. Why is that, exactly? Are felines more often or more intensely frightened than other animals? Are chickens really that chicken?

The truth is, not really. Chickens (mostly roosters) are just about anything but chicken. In some cases, the chicken is a much more revered animal. Ancient Greeks, for example, even thought lions to be afraid of roosters. The devil supposedly flees at the morning crow of the rooster. Roosters are subjects of the very ruthless (and very illegal) cock-fighting sport. Even in Socrates’ dying words, he supposedly asked his debt (a rooster) be repaid for him. So why the negative connotation?

Most negative emotions come from the same gland in the brain, the amygdala, and from many factors like conditioning and different levels of cognition. Animals, too, have this gland which is of course much smaller, respectively. So yes, animals can be scared. Chickens flee from threats greater than they can tackle which is to most chicken farmers, a sure sign of intelligence. But when faced with danger at or below its level a rooster will fight to the death (fearlessly, I might add). Cats behave similarly, but the term scaredy-cat or fraidy-cat has a little more ground seeing as though cats seem to be universally afraid of water.

So be more refined in your insult-flinging! Besides, there are many other endearing terms for the chronically fearful. Try wimp, wuss, pansy, crybaby, weakling, scallywag, yellow-belly, pant-soiler, fright-fleer, danger-dodger, adversity-avoider, uncontrollably-unconfident, or just plain coward. Take your pick, but leave the chickens out of it!

By: S. Cole Garrett
3/15/10